Trey thinks this over and rejects it. Most of the men in the townland appear to an outside eye to be better bargains than her father, but she wants nothing to do with any of them. “Why’d you pick him, so?” she asks.
“I can’t remember that far back. I thought I’d reasons. Maybe I just wanted him.”
Trey says, “You coulda told him to fuck off. When he came home.”
Sheila presses the tip of the iron along the shirt collar. She says, “He said you’re giving him a hand.”
“Yeah.”
“What way?”
Trey shrugs.
“Whatever he’s promised you, you won’t get it.”
“I know. I don’t want anything offa him.”
“You know nothing. D’you know where he is? He’s out hiding gold in the river for that English fella to find. Did you know that?”
“Yeah,” Trey says. “I was there when he said it to the others.”
For the first time since Trey came in, Sheila lifts her head to look full at her. The sunbeam shrinks her pupils so that her eyes look one hot, clean blue.
“Go to Lena’s,” she says. “Pretend Cal Hooper’s your daddy. Forget this fella was ever here. I’ll come down and get you when you can come back.”
Trey says, “I wanta stay here.”
“Pack your things. I’ll bring you now.”
“I’ve to go,” Trey says. “Me and Cal have that chair to do.” She goes to the sink and rinses her bowl under the tap.
Sheila watches her. “Go on, so,” she says. She bends over the iron again. “Learn your carpentering. And remember, your daddy has nothing to give you that’s worth half as much. Nothing.”
Trey takes it for granted that there are unseen things on the mountain. The assumption has been with her from as far back as she can remember, so that the edge of fear that comes with it is a stable, accepted presence. The men who live deeper in the mountain’s territory have told her about some of the things: white lights luring from the heather at night, savage creatures like great dripping otters snaking out of the bogs, weeping women who once you get close aren’t women at all. Trey asked Cal once if he believed in any of these. “Nope,” he said, between delicate hammer-taps on a dovetail. “But I’d be a fool to rule them out. It’s not my mountain.”
Trey has seen none of them, but when she’s on the mountain at night, she feels them there. The sensation has changed in the last year or two. When she was younger she felt herself glanced over and dismissed, too slight to be worth any time or focus, just another small animal going about its business. Now her mind is a denser, more intricate thing. She feels herself being noted.
She sits with her back to an old wall, watching dusk fill up the air with hazy purple. Banjo is slouched comfortably against her calf, his ears and nose up to track the progress of the evening. Farmhouse windows are sprinkled, neat and yellow, among the dimming fields below them. A lone car curves down the road, its headlight beams long in the emptiness. The small gray cottage where Rushborough is staying stands alone in the shadow of the mountain, unlit.
Whatever lives here, Trey expects to meet it in the next week. She’s used some of her carpentry money to buy five days’ worth of supplies, mainly bread, peanut butter, biscuits, bottled water, and dog food. She’s stashed them, and a couple of blankets and some toilet roll, in an abandoned house up the mountainside. Five days should be more than enough. Once she does what she’s about to do, Rushborough will be gone as fast as he can pack. And once the men find out he’s left, her dad will be gone in no time. All she needs to do is stay out of his way till then.
She doesn’t trust Rushborough, but she can’t see any reason why he would rat her out. To her dad, maybe, but not to the other men. If anyone asks why she was gone, she’ll say her dad came home raging because he’d slipped up and Rushborough got suspicious, and she ran for fear he’d take it out on her, which is close to true. She’s left a note in her bed saying “Have to go somewhere. Back in a few days” so her mam won’t worry.
She even remembered a knife for the peanut butter. She grins, thinking how proud Cal will be of her manners, till she remembers she can’t tell him.
Trey has been thinking about Brendan. She doesn’t think about him as much, these days. When she first learned what had happened to him—by accident, Cal said it happened, things just went bad that day, with the implication that that should make some kind of difference—she never stopped. She spent hours going back and redoing things in her mind so that she kept him from leaving the house that afternoon, warned him what to look out for, went along with him and shouted the right words at the right moment. She saved him a million times over, not because she believed it would change anything, just for respite from a world where he was dead. She stopped when she realized Brendan was starting to feel like someone she had made up. After that she thought only, ever, about the real him: she went over every word and expression and movement she could recall, tattooing them on her mind and pressing deep so the marks would stay sharp. Every one of them hurt. Even when she was doing something, working with Cal or playing football, what happened to Brendan was a cold fist-sized weight below her breastbone, dragging downwards.
Over time it’s eased. She can do things free of that weight, see things without that blackness blotting out part of her vision. Sometimes this makes her feel like a traitor. She’s thought of cutting Brendan’s name into her body, only that would be stupid.
What she hopes to meet on the mountain is ghosts. She has no idea whether she believes in them or not, but if they exist, Brendan’s will be here. She doesn’t know what form he might take, but none of the possibilities are enough to deter her.
Bats are out hunting, quick deft swoops and shrills. The first stars are showing. Another car sweeps down the road and stops at Rushborough’s cottage, barely visible now in the thickening dark. After a moment it sweeps away again, and the cottage lights flick on.
Trey unfolds herself and starts to make her way down the mountainside, with Banjo at her heel. She has the camera zipped under her hoodie, to leave her hands free in case she trips, but she won’t.
She watched Rushborough all yesterday morning, just like she’d promised her dad. Mostly he just wandered around the lanes and took photos of stone walls, which to Trey seem like an idiotic thing to photograph; once he scraped around in the dirt for a while, held something up to squint at it, and then put it in his pocket. He stopped a few times to chat to people he came across: Ciaran Maloney, moving sheep between fields; Lena, out walking her dogs; Áine Geary, watering plants in the garden with her kids pulling at her. Once or twice Trey thought she saw his head turn towards her, but it always kept on turning. It was worth a wasted morning to find out where he’s staying. When she reported back to her dad, at first he looked like he’d forgotten what she was talking about. Then he laughed and told her she was a great girl, and gave her a fiver.
Rushborough, when he opens the door, looks taken aback to see her. “My goodness,” he says. “Theresa, isn’t it? Your father’s not here, I’m afraid. He very kindly took me to see a few sights, and then dropped me back here. He’ll be sorry to have missed you.”
Trey says, “Got something to show you.”
“Oh,” Rushborough says, after a second. He steps back from the door. “In that case, do come in. You’re welcome to bring your friend.”
Trey doesn’t like this. She meant to show him there on the doorstep. It seems to her that Rushborough should be warier of a kid he doesn’t know. Her dad said Rushborough is an innocent who thinks all of Ardnakelty is leprechauns and maidens dancing at the crossroads, but Rushborough is no innocent.
The sitting room is very clean and very bare, just a few bits of pine furniture arranged in unnatural spots and a painting of flowers on the wall. It smells like no one has ever lived there. Rushborough’s coat, hanging on a coat tree in the corner, looks faked.
“Won’t you have a seat?” Rushborough asks, gesturing to an armchair. Trey sits, measuring the distance to the door. He arranges himself on the flowery sofa and cocks his head at her attentively, his hands clasped between his knees. “Now. What can I do for you?”
Trey wants to be out of there. She doesn’t like the way his teeth are too little and even, or the disconnect between his pleasant voice and the expert way he watches her, like she’s an animal he’s deciding whether to buy. She says, “No one hasta know it was me that told you.”
“My goodness,” Rushborough says, his eyebrows going up. “How mysterious. Of course: my lips are sealed.”
Trey says, “You’re going out tomorrow to look for gold in the river.”
“Oh, your father let you in on the secret?” Rushborough smiles. “I am, yes. I’m not getting my hopes up too high, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if we found some? Is that what you have to show me? Have you found a bit of gold of your own?”
“Nah,” Trey says. She unzips her hoodie, takes the camera out of its case, pulls up the video, and hands it over.
Rushborough gives her a look that’s somewhere between amused and quizzical. As he watches, it fades off his face till there’s nothing there at all.
“That’s gold,” Trey says. All her instincts are pulling towards silence, but she makes herself say it. “That they’re putting in the river. For you to find.”
“Yes,” Rushborough says. “I see that.”
Trey can feel his mind working. He watches the video to the end.
“Well,” he says, with his eyes still on the display. “Well well well. This is unexpected.”
Trey says nothing. She stays ready for any sudden move.
Rushborough glances up. “Is this your camera? Or do you have to give it back to someone?”
“Gotta give it back,” Trey says.
“And do you have this backed up anywhere?”
“Nah,” Trey says. “Don’t have a computer.”
“In the cloud?”
Trey gives him a blank look. “Dunno about the cloud.”
“Well,” Rushborough says again. “I do appreciate you looking out for me. It’s very kind of you.” He taps his front teeth with a fingernail. “I think I need to have a conversation with your father,” he says. “Don’t you?”
Trey shrugs.
“Oh, definitely. I’ll give him a ring and ask him to pop round now.”
“I’ve to go,” Trey says. She gets up and holds out her hand for the camera, but Rushborough doesn’t move.
“I need to show this to your father,” he explains. “Are you afraid that he’ll be angry? Don’t worry. I won’t let him do anything to you. I’m delighted that you brought me this.”
“I said. No one hasta know it was me. Just say someone told you.”
“Well, he’s hardly going to spread this around,” Rushborough points out reasonably. He pulls a phone out of his pocket and dials, keeping his eyes on Trey. “This won’t take long,” he tells her. “We’ll clear everything up in no time. Johnny? We’ve got a bit of a situation. Your lovely daughter is here, and she’s brought me something that you ought to see. When can you be here?…Marvelous. See you then.”
He puts the phone away. “He’ll just be a few minutes,” he says, smiling at Trey. He sits back on the sofa and flicks through the other photos on the camera, taking his time over each one. “Did you take all of these? They’re very good. This one wouldn’t look out of place in a gallery.” He holds up a photo Cal took of the rooks in their oak tree.
Trey says nothing. She stays standing. Banjo, getting restless, nudges her knee with his nose and makes the ghost of a whine; she puts a hand on his head to quiet him. Something is wrong. She wants to make a run for the door, but she can’t leave without Cal’s camera. Rushborough keeps scrolling, examining the photos with interest, giving one of them a little smile every now and then. The windows are black and she feels the distances outside them, the spread and the silence of the fields.
Her dad is there faster than he should be. The car speeds up the drive with a rip of spraying gravel. “There we are,” Rushborough says, getting up to open the door.
“What’s the story?” Johnny demands, his eyes skittering back and forth between Trey and Rushborough. “What are you doing here?” he asks Trey.
“Shh,” Rushborough says. He hands Johnny the camera. “Have a look at this,” he says pleasantly.
Johnny’s face as he watches the video gives Trey a savage flare of exultation. He’s white and blank, like the thing in his hand is a bomb and he’s helpless against it; like he’s holding his death. He lifts his head once, his mouth opening, but Rushborough says, “Finish watching.”
Trey puts a hand on Banjo and gets ready. She puts no store in Rushborough’s talk about not letting her dad be angry with her; she’d rather put her faith in the mountain. The minute her dad loosens his hold on the camera to start coming up with excuses, she’s going to grab it, shove her dad into Rushborough, and run for her abandoned house. You could look for someone all year, on this mountain, and never find a sign. And once the townland learns that Rushborough is gone, her dad won’t have a year.
When the video ends and Johnny lowers the camera, Trey waits for him to start spinning whatever story he thinks Rushborough’s thick enough to believe. Instead he lifts his hands, still holding the camera, its strap swinging crazily.
“Man,” he says. “It’s not a problem. Honest to God. She’ll say nothing. I guarantee it.”
“First things first,” Rushborough says. He takes back the camera. He asks Trey, “Who have you told about this?”
“No one,” Trey says. She doesn’t get why Rushborough is acting like the boss, giving her dad orders. None of this makes sense. She has no idea what’s going on.
Rushborough looks at her with curiosity, his head to one side. Then he backhands her across the face. Trey is flung sideways, trips over her feet, slams into the arm of the chair, and falls. She scrambles up, putting the chair between herself and Rushborough. There’s nothing to grab for a weapon. Banjo is on his feet, growling.
“Call your dog,” Rushborough says. “Or I’ll break his back.”
Trey’s hands are shaking. She manages to snap her fingers, and Banjo reluctantly eases back to her side. He’s still growling, low in his chest, ready.
Johnny hovers, his hands fluttering. Rushborough asks again, in the same tone, “Who have you told?”
Trey says, “I never said a word. Them bastards can all go fuck themselves. Alla this place.” Blood comes out when she talks.
Rushborough lifts his eyebrows. Trey can tell by him that he knows she means it. “Well,” he says. “Why?”
Trey lets her eyes slide over his shoulder to her dad, who’s trying to find something to say. “If it hadn’ta been for them treating you like shite,” she says, “you wouldn’ta gone.”