Aoife never made it home the way she meant to. She crossed the river with dawn in her eyes, the city waking around her, and her phone still warm in her pocket from the message she’d just sent.
All she wanted was her car, her bed, and a few hours where nobody needed anything from her. Galway, apparently, had other plans.
Aoife got as far as the car park before the cold finally reached under her skin.
It wasn’t the weather. Galway did what Galway always did—spat a fine mist sideways and called it a day. This was different. A shift in the air, like the city had leaned closer to listen.
Her car sat where she’d left it beneath the sodium light, a small hatchback with a dent she’d never fixed and a dangling air freshener shaped like a shamrock. Ordinary. Familiar.
Except the driver’s door was slightly ajar.
Aoife stopped so abruptly her heel scraped the kerb.
For a moment she told herself it was nothing. She’d been up too long. She’d clicked it shut but not properly. She’d imagined the gap because her head was full of three notes and a stranger’s eyes.
Then she saw the glove mark on the window, a smeared crescent where someone had leaned in.
Her pulse kicked.
“Aoife?” Niamh’s voice called from behind her, faint and tired. “Are you still out there?”
Aoife didn’t answer. She approached the car slowly, keys clenched in her fist, the metal biting her palm. Every nerve on alert, every stupid horror story she’d ever heard flooding in and lining up like an audience.
She nudged the door with her hip.
It swung open too easily.
Her handbag sat on the passenger seat, straps looped neatly as if she’d placed it there with care.
Aoife’s throat tightened.
That wasn’t how she left things. She left things in a rush, always. Tossed. Half-open. Life lived at an angle.
Her fingers shook as she reached for the bag.
The zip was open.
Aoife’s stomach dropped.
She rifled through it, fast and furious—wallet, keys, hand cream, spare phone charger, tissues, the little tin of mints with the cracked lid—
No recorder.
Her breath stalled.
The small plastic rectangle she used like a second brain. Like a confession booth. Like a tether to her mother.
Gone.
Aoife sagged against the car, nausea rolling through her. The rain felt suddenly sharp. She swallowed hard and forced herself to breathe, in and out, in and out, as if she could breathe the thing back into existence.
It wasn’t valuable. Not to anyone else.
But to her…
She closed her eyes for a heartbeat, the world roaring. Somewhere a car passed too slowly. Somewhere a laugh bounced off stone and died.
“Aoife!” Niamh appeared at the edge of the car park, hair damp, face pale in the light. “What’s wrong?”
Aoife opened her eyes and looked at her friend.
“I’ve lost it,” she said, and the words came out flat, as if her mouth didn’t want to admit it. “My recorder.”
Niamh’s expression tightened instantly. “Where did you last have it?”
Aoife’s mind rewound in fragments—ward noise, hand sanitiser sting, her own thumb tapping record under the desk, a voice note whispered between obs and charts. Her bag on the chair at the station. Her bag in the staff room. Her bag on her shoulder when she walked out.
“I had it,” Aoife said, panic sharp now. “I had it tonight. I know I did.”
Niamh moved closer, scanning the ground like the answer might be sitting there, obedient. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. Breathe. We’ll check the ward.”
“It’s not there,” Aoife whispered.
“You don’t know that.” Niamh grabbed Aoife’s wrist gently, grounding her the way you’d steady a horse. “We go back, we look, we ask security, and we don’t panic until we’ve exhausted the practical options.”
Aoife let out a laugh that wasn’t a laugh. “Since when are you the calm one.”
“Since you look like you’re about to vomit on your own shoes,” Niamh said, and her voice softened. “Come on.”
Aoife hesitated, eyes on the open car door, on the wet asphalt, on the empty spaces where things went when they were taken.
Taken.
The word sat heavy.
She shut the car door firmly, locked it twice, then followed Niamh back towards the hospital entrance.
But as she walked, her gaze kept snagging on the shadows between the lamps, on the corners of parked cars, on the place the studio door had been a moment ago—dark now, quiet.
The three-note melody played again in her head.
This time it didn’t feel like a song.
It felt like a warning.
* * *
Back inside, the hospital smelled harsher, like the disinfectant had teeth.
Security sat behind a glass window near A&E, a bored man in a high-vis vest scrolling his phone as if the world wasn’t bleeding all over his desk. When Niamh rapped the counter, he looked up with the weary patience of someone who’d seen every kind of human panic.
“We need to report a lost item,” Niamh said briskly. “Small recorder. Black. About this size.” She held her hands apart, precise.
Aoife hovered behind her, pulse still sprinting.
The guard blinked. “A recorder?”
“Yes,” Aoife managed. “I had it on shift. It’s… important.”
The guard leaned back, eyes flicking over Aoife’s lanyard, her uniform, her face. “Name?”
“Aoife Byrne.”
His brows lifted slightly. “Right. Hang on.”
He turned to a clipboard on the desk, flipped a few pages, then reached under the counter and produced a small clear bag. Inside it sat Aoife’s recorder, dull and innocent.
Aoife’s breath punched out of her. “Oh my God.”
Niamh exhaled sharply. “Thank Christ.” She leaned in. “Where did you find it?”
The guard shrugged. “Was handed in earlier.”
“Earlier?” Aoife repeated, voice thin. “By who?”
The guard fished a loose note from beside the clipboard. “Some fella,” he said, squinting at handwriting. “Said he found it on the pavement outside the main entrance. Left this.”
Aoife took the note with shaking fingers.
Hi. It’s Ronan. (Studio by the river.) I found this earlier—figured it was yours. Text me if you want me to drop it by.
A phone number.
Aoife stared at the ink until the letters went soft around the edges.
Niamh’s eyes widened. “Studio by the river,” she echoed, impressed despite herself. “That’s… romantic. In a grimy way.”
“It’s not romantic,” Aoife said automatically.
Niamh’s gaze slid to her. “You’re clutching the note like it’s oxygen.”
Aoife swallowed. “He could’ve taken it.”
“He didn’t,” Niamh pointed out. “He handed it in.”
Aoife looked at the guard. “Did he—did he say anything else?”
The guard shrugged again. “Just told me to make sure it got back to you. Seemed… sound.” He went back to his phone, already finished with the drama of her life.
Aoife turned the recorder over in her hand, checking it like it might have been opened, altered, emptied of her small hours. It looked the same. Felt the same.
But her skin wouldn’t stop buzzing, and the three notes were back again—soft, insistent—threaded now with a name.
Ronan.
Niamh nudged her gently. “Text him,” she whispered. “Say thanks. Then go home and sleep before you start seeing ghosts in the vending machines.”
Aoife’s mouth was dry. “I don’t even know him.”
“Exactly,” Niamh said. “That’s why it’s interesting.”
Aoife shot her a look.
Niamh lifted both hands, innocent. “Just saying. Galway’s small. The universe is nosy. Take the hint.”
Aoife stared at the number, thumb hovering over her phone like it belonged to someone braver.
The hospital behind her hummed with daylight shift energy, clean and bright and ordinary. But in her hand, the note felt like a door cracked open in the dark.
And Aoife had no idea what was waiting on the other side.
She typed, before she could talk herself out of it.
Where are you now?