56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard

48 Days Ago

Saturday morning they wander around town for a while, searching for somewhere to have breakfast. She points out a bustling café at the top of Dawson Street with seats outside, but he doesn’t really want to give hundreds of people the opportunity to take a good long look at his face as they stroll past, and he doesn’t like feeling as if someone unseen could be watching him. When he suggests a small, basement-level restaurant a few doors down, she makes a face and says that maybe somewhere bigger and more open would be a safer option—you know, global-pandemic-wise? In the end they settle on Bewley’s on Grafton Street, partly because they’re both vaguely aware that it’s supposed to be somewhere special and partly because there’s already a line of people waiting to get in, a good sign.

As soon as they get through the doors themselves, Oliver sees that it’s the perfect choice. Inside it has the same airy, high-ceiling design as grand continental cafés and, better yet, the host leads them all the way to the back and around the corner to a little table where there’ll be no passing traffic. He offers Ciara the seat that faces into the café so he can sit with his back to it.

He doesn’t care about the food or the coffee. He just wants to make sure that he won’t have to regret this any more than he already does.

He picks up the menu and pretends to read.

“I am starving,” she says, picking up hers.

Thursday night was supposed to be the end of this. He was going to meet her for a drink and then disappear. That’s what he’d needed to do and he was going to do it.

And it would’ve been easy to, what with everything that’s going on now. She probably wouldn’t even have thought twice about it, and she certainly wouldn’t have suspected him of anything.

Instead, they’d ended up back at his place. Undressing each other. Somehow. Now she not only knows where he’s living but she’s slept in his bed and seen his scar.

Caught out unexpectedly, he’d told her the same story he’d told Lucy back in London. He hopes this isn’t a sign of things to come.

Part of him can’t believe that it’s happened, but a larger part knows it did because he’d wanted it to.

Because he likes her.

He likes her and it’s going to ruin everything.

Again.

“What are you having?” she asks. “I think I might get the baked eggs.”

He knows he’s standing with his hand in the fire. He can see the flames tickling his skin. And past experience tells him that any moment now, the heat will burn through the outer layer to his nerve endings and drop him into a world of screaming pain.

There’s no other possible outcome, he knows this.

But he just can’t pull his hand away.

He likes the heat.

“Sounds good,” he says. “I think I’ll have that too.”

They set their menus down. He can’t see any waiter in this section of the café, but presumably one will appear.

“Don’t look,” Ciara whispers. “But in the corner, to your right.”

Then she lifts her chin to indicate that he should look.

One of their fellow patrons is standing, balanced precariously, on her chair, pointing a camera the size of a small dog at the tableful of artfully arranged food and drink below her. After she inspects the results of the latest shot on the camera’s screen, the photographer bends down to slide a coffee cup a couple of inches to the left, wobbling a bit as the wooden chair rocks unsteadily beneath her feet.

Behaving in public in a way that attracts so much attention without seemingly caring who sees is such an alien behavior to Oliver that he classes it as a kind of psychopathy.

“Anything for the ’Gram,” Ciara mutters.

They’d woken up in the same bed this morning but they hadn’t stayed together since; after he suggested they walk into town for breakfast, she’d told him she’d meet him there instead, that she needed to “get ready” at her place. Change clothes, put on makeup, whatever else women do. It gave him an hour at home alone, which he used to search for her on social media, more thoroughly this time, using all the information he’d gleaned—but, again, to no avail.

He hasn’t been able to find anything even resembling a corresponding profile on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, despite forensically searching for every possibility he could think of. Her full name. Her first name plus “Dublin.” Her first name plus “Cork.”

All those with her last name and first initial.

All recent posts tagged with things like #thesidecarbar, #cocktails, and #French75 in case her username was a string of random numbers or some other name altogether.

Nothing.

Not even an account set to private that might be her. No old posts belonging to other accounts in which she’d been tagged.

She just wasn’t there.

And not just on social media, but online in general.

Apart from the LinkedIn profile he’d found for her on the day they’d met, there wasn’t a single Google search result about her. She was so not there, it was suspicious.

A person would have to work at keeping the internet so clean of their name.

Or would they?

Maybe if you were a normal person, it wasn’t that hard.

And Ciara might just not use social media. It wasn’t unheard of. After all, weren’t digital detoxes all the rage? And in the hours they’ve spent together, he’s never seen her take a single picture with her phone. Any time he’s caught a glimpse of her screen, she seems to be checking her email or scrolling through news headlines.

And now that she’s brought up the subject, it’s an opportunity he can’t waste.

“You’re not on the ’Gram, then?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “Nope.”

“Not now or you never were?”

“I think I had an account for about five minutes a few years back, but I never posted anything to it. Why? Are you?”

“Oh, so you’re going with pretending you haven’t already had a look for me on there, are you?” He grins.

“I haven’t! I swear . . . Honestly, it wouldn’t even have occurred to me.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“So you’re not down with all the cool kids, then?”

“I think,” Ciara says, “that using the phrase ‘down with all the cool kids’ might preclude you from being that . . . ?”

“Fair. And I’m not, to answer your question. On the ’Gram.”

“What a shame. You’d be such a hit on there.”

“Would I?”

“With that face?” she says. “Of course you would. And you’re an architect, for God’s sake.”

“Not quite.”

“You would be on there. Social media is no place for nuance. You need to milk all that building buildings shit.”

“That’s actually what my degree course was called: Bachelor of Building Buildings Shit.”

She laughs. Then says, “So why aren’t you on there?”

“Honestly . . . ?” He exhales, buying time. He needs to do a better job of this than he did with the scar. Keep it simple. “I just don’t, you know, get it. I’m not against it or anything, I just wouldn’t know what to do with it.” He pauses. “Why aren’t you on there?”

“Because I’ve seen behind the curtain.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“I meant for it to.” She leans forward, elbows on the table. “Look, nothing is free, right? We pay for these apps with our data. That’s what all those user agreements that no one ever reads actually say. But the fact that all these tech giants are collecting information about us is not what everyone should be worried about—it’s what they’re doing with it that’s terrifying. I can make a list of documentaries for you to watch—horror movies, really—but the too-long-didn’t-read is that they’re feeding the data to AIs that are working to erode the very idea of free will. I can’t stop it—I don’t think anyone can, it’s too late—but I don’t need to actively help either. So I’m down to just LinkedIn because in our industry if you’re not on there it’s like you don’t exist at all, but that’s it. Our robot overlords are coming regardless, but I’m not going to hold the door open for them.”

He allows himself a moment of believing all this, of contemplating what it would mean for him if this were actually true, if Ciara really didn’t use social media. He tries to imagine it. What if there were no danger that, through her, his name and face would make their way online, sending some vigilante Twitter mob into the street bearing torches and pitchforks, catching the attention of the tabloid media?

He could keep seeing her. For a little while longer, anyway.

So long as she keeps believing him.