Slowly we took them through it. They had last seen Katy on Monday evening. She had had a ballet class in Stillorgan, a few miles in towards the center of Dublin, from five o’clock till seven. Rosalind had met her at the bus stop at about 7:45 p.m. and walked her home. (“She said she’d had a 48

Tana French

lovely time,” Rosalind said, her head bent over her clasped hands; a curtain of hair fell across her face. “She was such a wonderful dancer. . . . She had a place in the Royal Ballet School, you know. She would have been leaving in just a few weeks. . . .” Margaret sobbed, and Jonathan’s hands gripped the arms of his chair convulsively.) Rosalind and Jessica had then gone to their Aunt Vera’s house, across the estate, to spend the night with their cousins. Katy had had her tea—baked beans on toast and orange juice—and then walked a neighbor’s dog: her summer job, to earn money towards ballet school. She had got back at approximately ten to nine, taken a bath and then watched television with her parents. She had gone to bed at ten o’clock, as usual during the summer, and read for a few minutes before Margaret told her to turn out the light. Jonathan and Margaret watched more television and went to bed a little before midnight. On his way to bed Jonathan, as a matter of routine, checked that the house was secure: doors locked, windows locked, chain on the front door.

At 7:30 the next morning, he got up and left for work—he was a senior teller in a bank—without seeing Katy. He noticed that the chain was off the front door, but he assumed that Katy, who was an early riser, had gone to her aunt’s house to have breakfast with her sisters and cousins. (“She does that sometimes,” Rosalind said. “She likes fry-ups, and Mum . . . Well, in the mornings Mum’s too tired to cook.” A terrible, rending sound from Margaret.) All the girls had keys to the front door, Jonathan said, just in case. At 9:20, when Margaret got up and went to wake Katy, she was gone. Margaret waited for a while, assuming, like Jonathan, that Katy had woken early and gone to her aunt’s; then she rang Vera, just to be sure; then she rang all Katy’s friends, and finally she rang the police. Cassie and I perched awkwardly on the edges of armchairs. Margaret cried, quietly but continuously; after awhile Jonathan went out of the room and came back with a box of tissues. A birdlike, pop-eyed little woman—

Auntie Vera, I assumed—tiptoed down the stairs and hovered uncertainly in the hallway for a few minutes, wringing her hands, then slowly retreated to the kitchen. Rosalind rubbed Jessica’s limp fingers.

Katy, they said, had been a good child, bright but not outstanding in school, passionate about ballet. She had a temper, they said, but she hadn’t had any arguments with family or friends recently; they gave us the names of her best friends, so we could check. She had never run away from home, nothing like that. She had been happy lately, excited about going away to In the Woods 49