Even the Dead by Benjamin Black Page A

and set it on a low table beside her chair. “There doesn’t seem to be anything much to eat,” he said. “Would you like—I don’t know—an egg, maybe? Or I could open a tin of soup.”
    Despite herself, she laughed. “I’m fine, Quirke,” she said. “I’m not hungry, I don’t want anything.”
    He squatted on his heels to pour the tea. She was reminded again of childhood games, Quirke now her pretend father and she his pretend little girl. It surprised her, how calmly she could think of all they had not had together, of all they could have had, if he had not given her away at birth to Mal and his wife, Sarah, to be their pretend baby. So many lies, so much subterfuge, such grievous betrayals. Why was she not angry? Why was she not in a permanent fury at this man who had behaved so disgracefully towards her, who had robbed her of the childhood she should have had by rights?
    He poured tea for himself, too, but she could see he had no intention of drinking it, that he was just being polite. That, it struck her, was what Quirke thought life consisted of: going through the motions, observing the forms, doing the right thing.
    “Tell me what happened when you got to Ballytubber,” he said. “By the way, why did you go back, when you’d just been there?”
    “I don’t know myself,” she said. He had put too much sugar in her tea. “I suppose I must have had—I don’t know what to call it. A premonition? A bad feeling, anyway. And I was right. The house was empty, Quirke. I mean, not only was Lisa not there, but every trace of her was wiped away. I began to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing, if I’d never gone down there with her, if I’d never met her in the first place, if all of it was just a figment of my imagination.”
    Quirke picked up his teacup and put it down again. “Surely there must have been some sign of her having been there,” he said.
    “There wasn’t. The place was bare.”
    Quirke rose and went to the mantelpiece and took a cigarette from the silver box there and lit it. He wore corduroy trousers and a bulky old sweater the color of wet wheat. Also he had slippers on; she didn’t think she had ever seen Quirke in slippers before. The outfit somehow made him seem not homely but, on the contrary, peculiarly sinister, like one of those suave villains in a spy picture, an enemy agent masquerading as a country squire.
    “Remind me of her name again,” he said.
    “Lisa Smith.”
    “Yes, yes, that’s right, Lisa Smith. What else do you know about her, aside from her name, which you don’t even think is genuine?”
    “Nothing,” Phoebe said. “Except what I told you, that she’s pregnant.”
    They were silent for a while; then Quirke spoke. “Look,” he said, “I’m sure she’s all right. What could happen to anyone in Ballytubber? Plus there’s the fact that no one knows she was there except you.”
    “I do know where she lives,” Phoebe said. “Or where she has a flat, at least. I don’t know anything about her family, about her background. She just appeared out of nowhere, and now she’s gone back there.” She lifted frightened eyes to Quirke’s face. “It was so eerie, Quirke,” she said. “The house was completely empty, as if no one had been there. Where can she have gone to? She wouldn’t have left by herself, I’m sure of it. Someone must have followed us, someone she knew, that she would open the door to. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense.” She paused, staring at the flames of the gas fire. “She was so terrified, I could feel it, the way you can feel a child has a raging temperature even without feeling its forehead.”
    She saw that Quirke was gazing at a framed photograph on the mantelpiece. It was of himself and Delia, Phoebe’s mother, arm in arm with Mal and Sarah, Delia’s sister. They were dead, both of those sisters. Delia had died giving birth to Phoebe, and Sarah had been struck down by a brain tumor—how long ago was it now? She