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Girl goes missing, and the boyfriend is the last person to see her alive, fine. Suspect. Obviously. But if Kate Larkin was the last person to see her sister and could corroborate Barry’s story then there was no logical reason to think that he was a suspect in her disappearance.
Who’s feeding us this narrative? she wondered. The guards? Or someone else?
Patricia Skelton knew silences. This was a very specific, very Irish kind of silence. The silence of a family closing ranks.
Patricia Skelton did not know what this woman had experienced. But in that gaze she caught the shadow of it, and it chilled her to her marrow.
“Folklore,” as she soon learned, was not simply stories. It was, in essence, any information that was passed along verbally. Stories and songs, yes. But also vernacular architecture, superstitions, folk cures, fairy lore, recipes, marriage customs, and on and on.
“We shall not use the word ‘sí,’” he told his students in their first lecture. “We shall not refer to them as síogaí or (God forbid!) fairies. For the sake of politeness (and our own safety) we shall use the terms Na Daoine Maithe or Na Daoine Uaisle.* For, as we shall see, when dealing with these gentlemen we must at all times be seen to be respectful. Or else.”
Some accounts say they are the Tuatha De Danann, the old gods of Ireland, who retreated beneath the earth when they lost the country to the Gaels
I literally just watched a movie about that the other day. The Watchers
That is the purpose of Na Daoine Maithe. The awful and arbitrary cruelty of life, reduced to something that can be bargained with, reasoned, or outwitted. A face, put upon that which cannot be faced.”
“Great!” said Betty. “Is it in the archive?” “It is!” he said merrily. “Will you give me the reference number?” she asked. “I will not!” he said, with the exact same tone.
Lol why can I can hear this scene play out in my head
“Heya, love,” said Ashling from the top of a ladder, where her head was still lodged in the hood of the nine-foot-tall papier-mâché vulva that had been constructed over the theater entrance.
Lol and I thought it was going to be a cat joke
Ashling shrieked as she almost lost her balance and nearly achieved penetration.
LMAO!
Eugene looked up admiringly at her handiwork, and his eyes fell on the Gaelic football that had been covered in pink papier-mâché and placed under the hood as a clitoris. “Found it!” he called, pointing at it proudly. “Very funny, Euge,” Ashling said.
what does he see on the road but a dead man. And of course, he couldn’t leave the poor man there. So doesn’t the scholar take the dead man on his shoulders, and begin to walk on, hoping he can find somewhere to give the man a good Christian burial.”
Ok WHY is up with this? Is it normal for people who come across a corpse in the road to think it's a good idea to take it with them? Cuz it aint for me!
“He could hear the wife?” Betty repeated, not sure what she meant. “That’s right. He could hear her with the dead man.” It took a few seconds for the hideous penny to drop. “You mean they were … she was?” “Ag bualadh craiceann,” * Eilis said, and gave a hideous skull’s grin. Betty felt her stomach turn. There was a line between pleasantly scary and grotesque and upsetting, and Eilis had lightly stepped over it and grinned at her while she did it.
Ew and suddenly it all makes sense what the farmer's wife was up to when Etaine heard their bed squeaking all those years back.
Eilis stared back at Ashling. Betty suddenly felt as if she had walked into the middle of an old family feud. It felt like there was unfinished business between these two, who had never met. The kind of resentment that lurks beneath still waters, deep, dark, and silent, like an alligator.
What she felt for Ashling now was love. It was, she knew, not a particularly healthy kind of love. She loved Ashling because Ashling had cared for her, looked after her, held her, saved her when she most desperately needed her. It was the kind of love wounded soldiers felt for their nurses.
It would be like tidying the garden shed. What’s the point, it’s not like I’m going to have visitors there.
Um you can still do it for yourself and your own personal hygiene. Since when does grooming depend on someone else?
They kissed again and Betty’s eyes glanced up at the papier-mâché clitoris that hung over them like mistletoe. Found it, she thought.
Lmao this book is so cheeky
She knew without asking that he had wanted to go to the funeral, and that it was Etain who had refused. Kate herself had very nearly done the same thing, and God knew she had less reason than her sister. But in the end, whether out of guilt or a lingering sense of filial obligation or perhaps just a need to bear witness, she had attended the funeral and stood in Glasnevin Cemetery as the remains of Mairéad Larkin were returned to the earth.
As the mother was buried, the daughter was exhumed.
Mam says God gave us Niamh to apologize for Ashling.”
Whereupon, the commenter would be asked to refrain from being a white-knighting cuck and the conversation would return to how frustrating it was that Etain Larkin couldn’t seem to remember a single, solitary thing about her captivity
Such an accurate description of Reddit lol
“He never touched me,” she repeated. “It’s yours.” Those were the words. The tone said: and that is the last time we will ever discuss this.
The child furrowed her brow but had stopped crying and looked up cautiously at the stranger looking down at her. Then she had gripped Kate’s finger and held on to it tightly, like someone finding a friend in a hostile foreign land.
Kate loved both her nieces, but Ashling had a special place in her heart. She loved Ashling in the same way she had always loved Etain. And for the same reason. I love them because they deserve to be loved. And because I know their mothers don’t. Where did these awful, cruel thoughts come from, Kate wondered.
Mairéad had lost her balance on the landing and come crashing down the stairwell, breaking like an egg on every step. She had rolled to the bottom, both arms and five ribs broken, her hip in pieces. It had taken her half a day to die.
There was death, and there was death.
Like a child who prefers to play with the box more than the toy that came in it, Mairéad had lavished more care and attention on the spaces where her daughters had slept than on the daughters themselves.
Kate had moved to London and did not wish to be contacted.
Kate asked Etain not to let Barry know she was returning the money, because Barry would ask questions which neither she nor Etain wanted to answer.
These aren’t the lesbians you’re looking for, move along.
Lol
She turned to see Ashling sitting on her bed, wearing her earrings. Exclusively.
haha wow
“It was fine.” “It was great! Ow.” “Sorry, Ash, I think I might have accidentally kicked you. I think I kicked you there.” “Yeah. You did.” “Did I? Sorry.”
Lol
The woman in the car was indeed beautiful, and might very well have been cool. But, Betty thought, she could only be Ashling’s mother. The slightly hard green eyes, the sallow complexion, the dark hair.
Auntie Kate
“Betty?” “What?” “Nothing. It’s just a very straight name.”
I mean... she aint wrong. lol
“‘Where is she? Where is she? Give her back, you bitch. Give her back. Haven’t you taken enough from me?’
She knew that Ashling’s mother had a drinking problem, and that when she got drunk she would call Ashling and remind her that she had destroyed her life.
Kate flashed her the slightly harried smile of a woman who had started one part of the cooking too early and another part too late and was trying desperately to get the two ends to meet in the middle.
Something had indeed aged this woman, but it was not time.
She then realized that the wound was old, and that Etain must have lost her ring finger on her left hand many years ago.
Yikes did she chop of her finger to rid herself of that cursed ring?
“She’s my girlfriend,” said Ashling, meeting the gaze of no one at the table. Etain looked deeply confused by this. “Is Ashling gay?” she said at last, to Kate, with the vaguely disinterested tone of someone walking in on an episode of a soap opera that she is several weeks behind on. “Yes,” said Kate. “No,” said Ashling. There was a stunned silence.
“I’m not really attracted to men or women. I just get attracted to certain people sometimes. Actually just you.
So Pan or Demi maybe?
“Or to put it another way…” Etain said, “… she’s ‘less-bian’ and you’re ‘more-bian’?” Kate and Ashling both stared at Etain as if she’d grown a second head. And then suddenly they burst out laughing.
Lmao ok that was unexpected
She had a sudden, troubling realization. Never mind who the blond girl is. Why isn’t Ashling in a single one?
Oh no what happened to her sister?
Someone picked her up after school and they just … poof. Gone. Vanished.”
So she just vanished like her mom almost did that one time? Wow
Ashling had been left ajar. She was not fully open, by any means. But light was streaming in from the next room at last.
“You want to know if my dad did it.” Betty shook her head vigorously. She was not at all sure that she did. “I don’t think he did,” said Ashling. “And maybe I’m a fool. But I don’t believe the man I remember could have done that.”
They blamed Barry AGAIN? This poor guy couldn't catch a break.
Just goes to Youghal, books a hotel room, and kills himself. Doesn’t leave a note, doesn’t … What was that? Guilt? Or … he just couldn’t live without her anymore.
I go back and forth. He did it. He didn’t. He was a good man. He was a monster. Sometimes I believe both at once.”
