“You’ve already found some interesting bits, haven’t you?” I remembered what she’d told me last night.
“Yes. There were some nuns who stayed here briefly. Two of them kept journals. I haven’t read through them yet, just skimmed the first couple of pages. The box is at my house.” She shone the torch to see me. “The wardrobe has clothes in it still. I wonder if someone pregnant was here and moved elsewhere to have the baby or moved when the baby was born.”
“And moved quickly. There’s a children’s book there too.” I reached over to the bottom of the wardrobe and pulled out a book. “‘Baby’s Childhood Days.” I flicked it open. “It’s for the parents to fill in. Look.”
I placed the book on the bed, Ava glued to my side, and we started to pore over the first pages where the baby’s name was written and her date of birth. Mary Ada O’Brien. Her mother was Kathleen, her father James.
“I’ll start researching. Mary Ada may have relatives I can pass this on to.” She looked up at me and I caught tears glistening in her eyes.
“She’ll be Catholic so she’ll probably just have been called Ada,” I said. “Why are you upset?” I turned to face her and wrapped my arms around her, muting the light from both our torches as they faced the floor. Her face pressed against my chest, her arms around my waist. I bent my head and smelled her hair, flowers and sunshine and understood something right then.
Ava Callaghan was never going to be just four nights. She was going to be more, much more. She just didn’t know it yet.
“This room feels like it holds so much and I can’t explain it. Houses have this effect on me sometimes, like they hold all the thoughts and feelings that the occupants had,” she said. “I’m never like this. Sorry.” She pulled her head back and gave me a forced smile.
“I get what you mean. But I’m not creeped out by it, I just feel intrusive. Maybe we should take the box and head downstairs. Call it a day and come back one evening next week with better lighting,” I said, still holding her.
“I think that’s a good plan. I have no idea what to do with the furniture.”
“Are you in a rush to get rid of it?”
She looked about the room, what little we could see in the dimmed light. “No. I have time before I’ll need to decide what to do in here. I’ll do some research on the names and a bit more on the history of this place.” Her head went against my chest again and I felt like a god. “I really hope there was nothing bad here. The Catholic church – you read so much in the media.”
“Doesn’t mean that this place has a bad history.,” I said, wanting to reassure her. “You don’t know. I’ll help you with your research. My mum was obsessed with genealogy for a while.”
She laughed. “Claire was too. I think she still is. I might get her to have a search online as well. We could go round one evening, get pizza and go through all of this…” She stopped, realising what that would imply. “It can be just as friends.”
I pressed my lips to the top of her head. “Let’s decide when we get to that point. She’s got a new baby, so she might not want anything extra to do at the moment.”
“True. But it’s Claire. She’ll be going insane in a couple of weeks.”
“You might be surprised. Right, let’s go down those stairs and get some fresh air. Then I’ll buy you fish and chips.”
She looked up at me and laughed, her smile now genuine. “I thought we were going somewhere posh. I’ve brought my finest to wear.”
“Excellent,” I said. “It’ll look good on my bedroom floor later when I take it off.”
Chapter Five
Ava
May
The terraced housewhere I was living for a couple more weeks had a spare bedroom, usually taken over by Seph when he didn’t want to be on his own and our other siblings had become irritated with him. Seph hated living alone, and had somehow managed to move in with our eldest brother Max and his girlfriend Victoria, who we all thought Seph had a crush on, although he denied it – especially if Max was around.
I left the box from the secret room there, placing the book on top, determined to give it the attention it deserved when I had a spare afternoon. There was a story to uncover, I knew, and I had a feeling it wasn’t an entirely happy one. That room was hidden, and for someone to be staying there when there were six other bedrooms available suggested that they were also being concealed.
Once I had closed the bedroom door behind me I headed to the room I slept in to get ready for meeting Eli. He was taking me for fish and chips, just somewhere more expensive than the places that served it in mock newspaper. Wright Brothers were an upmarket fish restaurant in Borough Market. I’d been a couple of times before and it was classy without being overly dressy, so I’d gone for the boho look: a long floral dress and open-toe strappy boots, twisting part of my hair up and keeping the rest long. I felt summery and pretty, the other version of me that wasn’t wearing a high vis jacket or being covered in paint or wallpaper paste.
My phone pinged several times, sounding impatient, and I debated switching it off without checking, but I knew it would be my family with another group message that consisted of someone trying to arrange something and a mass exchange of insults. I picked it up and started to scan through the comments.
Maxwell:How many are coming for Sunday lunch tomorrow after the rugby? Vic needs to know.
Claire:Why is it Vic who needs to know and not ‘we need to know’? Are you not part of organising this? Are you letting Victoria succumb to the pressures of the expectations of being female in a patriarchal society? Get in that fucking kitchen, Maxwell!
Jackson:Jesus, Claire! I think my fucking phone just exploded with the transference of your wrath! Are you sure your daughter’s called Eliza and not Germaine?
Callum:Germaine? Why would she call her daughter after a cream?
