We hope you enjoy this extract from our July Great Read, The Guilty Heart (Macmillan), by Julie Parsons.
Outside the moon hung in the black sky. From time to time dark clouds put out its brightness. Inside Nick lay on his back, his eyes open, watching the glow from the street lights pattern the ceiling. When he had woken first he hadn’t been sure where he was. He had been dreaming about home. There was no form or narrative to the dream. He could remember nothing of what had happened or not happened. But he had been there in that house that once had been his, and now as his eyes flicked around this darkened room it’s shape was unfamiliar and strange. The windows were in the wrong places. The ceiling was too low. There was no full length mirror on the wall in front of the bed. And where was Susan? In his dream he knew she had been lying curled up beside him. He could still feel her thighs pressing against his, her breasts and stomach soft against his spine, her hand holding onto his.
He lay still listening for the sounds of the world outside. What would he hear? The early morning call of a thrush or blue tit? The slow toll of first bell of the day and the hollow thump of Mrs Morrissey’s front door as she banged out of the house two doors down on her way to early morning Mass?
Somewhere out on the river a tug boat hooted. It was a low and mournful sound. He lay still waiting for an answering call, and heard it in the tone of a second boat, a note or two higher. He listened to the two boats’ voices across the river’s rippled black water. And remembered the fog horn which sounded every winter in Dublin Bay. An insistent lowing, an ugly sound. November weather. Mist in the morning and evening. Stillness and silence, blackness in the dead of night and barely any sun at all, even at midday. The fires of Halloween burning to keep the dark away. The day that Owen had gone missing. Mist in the afternoon, and a cold northerly wind. And that night and every other night of that long month of November, lying without sleep, Susan flat on her back beside him, both with their eyes open, watching the clock, listening for the phone and hearing only the sound of the fog horn, bellowing out its ugly cry, regularly, reliably, every twenty seconds. Feeling the cold on their faces, wondering, where was he? Was he hungry, thirsty, frightened, injured? Was he calling for them? Was he waiting for them to find him? Reaching out to take Susan’s hand, realising that she at last had fallen asleep, the tears wet on her pillow. Knowing that no sooner had she woken him that it would be his turn to sleep. So they would avoid yet again the words that had to be said.
*How could you?
How could you leave hi like that?
Why didn’t you check where he was?
Why didn’t you make sure that Marianne was with him?
What were you doing all afternoon, anyway?
Why don’t you tell me the truth?
Knowing the truth would end it for them.
Do you love me?
If you love me as you say you do, how could you do it?
Don’t you want me still?
You don’t, do you?*
As they lay side by side, not touching, listening to the sound of each other’s breath and the moan of the fog horn. Each one crying in turn as the hours passed by.
Now he sat up and switched on the light unable to bear any longer the images which pressed in upon his eyelids. This room took shape. Small and square. Unadorned white walls and dark wooden floor. A bed, a chair, a wardrobe. A ceiling fan that whirred slowly above. He got up and opened the bag which was lying half packed in the corner. He rummaged inside it and pulled out a large plastic wallet. He reached into it. His hands were filled with photographs. Owen’s face stared up at him, new born, cradled in his mother’s arms, his skin so perfect and untouched. He flicked through them watching as Owen grew and took shape before his eyes. Crawling, standing, taking his first tentative steps. Running, kicking a football, riding his bike, playing with his friend Luke from across the square. His first day at school. Learning to swim, on holidays in their favourite village in Crete, wearing a snorkel and a mask, standing on the edge of the swimming pool, poised to dive, while in the background Susan looked up from her book, the sunlight glancing from the lenses of her dark glasses. Always smiling, showing off the gaps in his teeth, his thick fair hair standing up on his head. A winter’s day in the garden. Snow cushioning the lawn, and Owen with Marianne and the others. Chris and Roisin and that friend of theirs, Ed, wasn’t that his name? A quiet, shy boy, with a slight stammer. And Owen pointing to the tracks in the snow, a regular line of small pawn prints, his face suffused with joy, as he points for the camera.
“Look Daddy. Look what was here last night. I saw her from the window. And I was right, you didn’t believe me, did you, you thought I was making it up, didn’t you? But she was here. The fox was here in our garden. And this proves it.”
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