Read Online Nothing On Earth by Conor O'Callaghan - Free Book Online Page A

red and sore. Her navel was pierced with some kind of crystal stud. Her arms had freckles peppered on them. She tilted her head and, unfolding her arms, formed a rope of her falling hair.
    He said, ‘What’s on you?’
    â€˜Food!’ She sat down on the end of the bed where Paul was sitting. It was only then that she noticed he was clutching his suit trousers in his lap. She asked him, ‘Are you okay?’
    Red dust off the site had stuck to the oil on her skin. From the way her skin glittered, there must have been particles of mica in the dust. She had the exact same solitary mole on the underside of one of her breasts that Helen had.
    â€˜I never noticed that before,’ he said. He sounded like a little boy.
    â€˜I should hope not.’ Her voice was soft, like tar in hot sunlight. ‘It’ll be okay.’
    For the first time, after weeks of keeping calm, the weirdness of it all was apparent on his features. The weirdness of what? Of his wife going missing, and her face in newspapers and on community noticeboards in shops. Of the way the world just carried on after a fashion, like a lake’s surface flattening after a splash, and expected the three of them to follow. Of how the girl assumed her missing mother’s name. Of how Martina’s presence probably helped to bypass any grief he might have been expected to experience. Of how like his vanished wife she must have been, in the bedroom that had been theirs, almost completely naked, her black hair and green eyes, the tiny gap between her front teeth.
    â€˜Helen,’ Paul said. crouching slightly forward.
    â€˜Sssh,’ she was saying very softly. ‘It’s okay.’
    He closed his eyes, squeezing them tight. ‘Helen.’
    â€˜It’s okay.’ She couldn’t think of anything else to say. She wasn’t even certain what was happening. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’
    His breath stopped, kind of rattled, and released after several seconds. There was the smell then, like disinfectant. Martina went into the en-suite for some reason, ran the taps, sloshed suds around her hands, though she hadn’t touched him at all. Paul sat there, head bowed, not moving. She shut the en-suite door quietly. She said she meant it when she’d said that it would be okay, that she would see him downstairs. She stepped onto the landing and shrieked, ‘Jesus, Helen!’
    The girl was barefoot on the landing, her headphones removed. It was possible that she had been standing out there all along and met Martina emerging from the master bedroom with her hands freshly washed. Martina said, ‘Your daddy’s just a bit wobbly, love. I was talking to him.’
    â€˜Is he okay?’
    â€˜He’s grand. Let him dress and we’ll go down and pick something from the menu.’
    The nearest takeaway, in town, was called the Lucky House. The woman delivering arrived in a van and shouted through the open door. It was Paul who went out. She stood there staring past him into the house, even after Paul had paid her. There was a small boy in the passenger seat of the van. The food was steaming in a brown bag. They had thrown a handful of fortune cookies on top. Martina had dressed and laid the table, and the three of them ate as if nothing was any different.
    â€˜This day has been bizarre,’ the girl said.
    â€˜What do you mean?’ Martina was glancing back and forth between the girl and Paul. When the girl didn’t reply immediately, she asked again, ‘Helen, how was it
bizarre
?’
    â€˜I saw
Mutti
in the garden.’
    â€˜Your mother? Today?’
    â€˜While you were upstairs. She walked across the garden.’
    â€˜While we were . . .?’
    â€˜Upstairs. Talking.’
    Martina and Paul waited. This, they seemed to agree, tacitly, together, at once, was the girl’s way of telling them she believed something had happened. Perhaps even that she had heard.