Chapter Twelve
‘Sounds like a banshee to me,’ says Meg.
I check to make sure nobody on the bus is listening. ‘What?’
‘In your dream, the screaming woman. It’s obviously a banshee. And in the photo too.’
She looks at me as though this is a straightforward statement and I’m the weird one for questioning it.
‘You’re saying my dad has a photo of a banshee?’
‘A woman surrounded by death, screaming? That’s a banshee, Michael.’
I shudder. I had a sleepless night the first time Nanny Bet told me stories about the wailing spirit you hear when a family member is going to die. ‘I don’t really want to think about it being a banshee.’
‘Well, I’m not sure what else it can be.’
Meg takes out her phone and starts googling banshees. We scroll through photos of make-up tutorials and illustrations of large-breasted women with big eyelashes, combing their hair beneath a full moon. She stops at a sketch of a woman in a long dark dress, her head thrown back and her mouth open.
‘Familiar?’
‘Well, yes, but I think we have to consider the possibility of it being something less…terrifying.’
She opens the website and starts reading.
I think back to my dream. Her pale skin, the darkness of her mouth.
‘What about the girl outside Cormac’s?’ I ask, eager to change the subject.
Meg sets down her phone. ‘Yeah, that’s strange. You didn’t recognise her?’
‘No, but it looked like she was from the seventies, so I guess it could be anyone.’ I chew my lip. ‘Could we ask around? Find out if any houses on the street were raided by the army?’
‘Right, sure.’ Meg creases with laughter. My face burns and she stops. ‘Wait… Oh shit, you’re serious?’
I pull at my T-shirt collar. ‘Yeah, why?’
‘Well, there would’ve been lots of houses raided during the Troubles.’
‘Why?’
She checks to see no one is listening and whispers. ‘Looking for the IRA.’
I flinch at the words. ‘So, my grandparents’ neighbours were in the…’ I can’t say it. Any talk of the IRA, the Irish Republican Army – freedom fighters to some and terrorists in the eyes of the British government – was totally off limits in my house. I’d learned what I could from the internet and references in a few TV programmes set here, but Mum and Dad both said they’d moved to London to get away from all that. It feels like a bad word and I can’t quite believe Meg is talking about it.
She frowns. ‘Well, yeah. I mean they could’ve been. Lots of people were. But also, the army raided Catholic houses back then if they had the faintest suspicion someone might’ve been involved. Like, that was kind of the point of internment, you know?’
‘What’s internment?’
‘Are you serious?’ Meg’s eyes widen. ‘Wow. OK, so you really don’t know a lot about this place, do you? Internment allowedpeople to be imprisoned without trial if it was even suspected they were in the IRA. So, yeah, lots of houses were raided and so many people were arrested. It was a completely oppressive regime established by the British government.’ She shakes her head. ‘How do you know not know this?’
The heat spreads to my cheeks. ‘Sorry. I didn’t grow up here. Do you know much about British political history?’
She tuts. ‘Um, yeah, because this –’ she gestures to a mural of the hunger strikers outside the window – ‘isBritish history.’
‘I—’
‘What?’
