How invested am I? Really? Or how cleverly have I been played (perhaps)?

Might it help to analyse Kim’s purported opinions on various individuals and then to gradually work my way back?

With regard to … to the child (for example), or Kalinda, her mother? Father Hugh?

Kalinda ‘Lonely’ Alloway/Cleary?

Orla Nor Cleary?

Father Hugh/Pietr Tierney?

The first: tough, creative, brilliant, fiercely ambitious, flawed.

That’s Kim’s view. And my view? Pretty much identical to hers. But throw ‘slut’ into the mix, will you? Oh, and ‘castrator’. To put it baldly, Kalinda ‘Lonely’ Alloway (we only met twice, and on the second occasion she stuck her tongue into my ear – it was a very, very long tongue – for a bet, apparently) always scared the living daylights out of me.

The second – Orla Nor – a Thalidomide child and a daddy’s girl. Utterly captivating, intriguing, tragic. Hysterical. Gentle. Sincere.

That’s Kim’s view. My view? Honestly? Attention-seeker, hysteric, circus freak.

Well you asked, didn’t you?

The third: Father Hugh (Eh? Father … Father who?!), a priest totally, totally obsessed. Slightly desperate and pathetic. Kind but somewhat weak. In way, way out of his depth.

That’s Kim’s view. My view? The priest was the patsy. Or was he the controlling genius? Might he even – with a little stretch of the imagination – have been both?

Because – let’s face it – if Kimberly wasn’t actually an honest witness … and if I am to be found so … so partial, so ignorant, so easy to manipulate, then what the heck else might be eluding me about this story?

My mind quietly wrestles with these questions as I take the two most ‘incriminating’ photographs of Carla Hahn to the open fireplace, turn them over and shove them into the grate. I find a match, strike it and, one after the other, in quick succession I … I burn them. I burn the very idea of them. I alter history.

It’s only as they flame up that my eye alights on the two numbers, written in Kim’s careful hand, at the rear. The first: 40. The second: 04.

Ha! Ha! Just a coincidence. Surely? I promptly stand up – knees creaking – somewhat chastened, then issue an involuntary yelp as the telephone commences its strident ring.

(Ho-ho! Guilty conscience, anybody?)

Hello?

It’s Father Hugh/Pietr Tierney. He’s cancelling our meeting. Father Hugh has a very soft, lilting, Irish voice, a kind voice. He’s ringing from a call box. He sounds a tad furtive. He apologizes and says that he’s changed his mind. He’s very sorry to have given me the wrong impression, and doubly sorry about my recent loss …

My recent …? But how …?

He will naturally be offering a mass (had offered? Would offer?) for the repose of Kimberly’s soul.

No. No. No. No. I won’t be fobbed off! I’m still coming, Father Hugh, I say, I must come (if only to have a chance to meet … well, myself. My double. Him. Me: the genius, the dupe). No, he says. There’s no point. He won’t see me, he … he can’t see me. It’s impossible.