She shrugged. ‘Ah, you know. Old things.’
‘What old things?’
A shrug. Her eyes were fastened on the table. One finger was tracing the grain of it, over and over again.
‘Can you tell me about it?’ he asked, keeping his voice gentle. ‘This is me, Orla. How long have we been friends? For ever. So why not tell me what’s been going on with you?’
Orla’s fingernail dug into the grain, leaving a half-moon mark there. Her eyes flickered up to his face, then back to the wood.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Old stuff.’
‘Such as…?’
Again, a shrug. ‘Nothing that matters any more.’
This was driving him mad. He had to know. ‘Come on, Orla, tell me.’
Now her eyes met his. She picked up the dregs of the whisky, drank it down in one.
‘Tory used to come into our room – mine and Redmond’s. Pat too. He liked to watch.’
Rufus sat back with a frown. Of all the things she could have told him, he hadn’t expected that.
‘Come into your room…?’ he queried.
‘To have sex with us,’ she said, and gave a tight little smile.
Rufus sat there feeling as if the marrow in his bones had been turned to ice.
‘You what?’
‘That’s why I don’t like it much. Sorry.’
‘Orla… for the love of God, what are you telling me? You’re saying your two elder brothers abused you? Both you and Redmond?’
She nodded. And then she smiled.
‘But Tory’s dead, and Pat went missing long ago, so I suppose he’s dead too.’
‘Jesus… Orla…’ He couldn’t get his head round it. Her elder brothers, who should have been protecting her, loving their sister as any brother should, had been doing that to her? And to Redmond as well!
‘Don’t feel sorry for me,’ she said. ‘It happened years ago, it’s all forgotten.’
No it isn’t, thought Rufus. You’re scarred right through from it, but you think you’re normal. You poor bitch.
‘I had no idea.’ He was thinking of the lock on her bedroom door, the clenching when he tried to make love to her, the dislike of babies. ‘There wasn’t… I mean, did anything happen after they’d…’ He couldn’t even say it. It was too monstrous, too awful.
She took another gulp of whisky. ‘I thought I was pregnant at eleven years old,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t. Which was lucky.’
‘Oh Jesus. Orla…’ He thanked God that Tory was dead. He wanted to dig up that bastard’s bones and beat them against a wall, he felt so choked.
‘You can’t imagine how it was. I was so confused. This was Tory, this was Pat. They played football with us, with Redmond and me and baby Kieron, out on the lawn. Like a normal family would do, with Mum and Dad looking on. And then at night, nothing was normal. Nothing at all.’