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The
Blamed

Reviews

“Part psychological thriller, part literary family drama, part sun-soaked nostalgic noir and a must-read for this summer.”
- The Sunday Independent

“Skillful, evocative and moving… This is one of those books that stays with you after you’ve read it.”
- Sinead Moriarty

“Insightful and astute writing… Emily Hourican has a wonderful understanding of human nature.”
- Louise O’Neill

Extract

That was the summer I came into my powers. Like a witch.

Those months slip in and out of focus. Isolated moments burning like lanterns in fog, looming up, then fading, lost in a haze of many things. Drunkenness, drugs, desire. The light they cast is distorted – things loom larger, fuzzier, more grotesque than they should. But this is how I remember it.

I was twenty-five, and nothing in my life had hinted to me of the person I could become. But the second I got to that city, stepped out of the airport and into the heat of that June morning, I saw my new self and moved quickly.

I had wanted to go to Paris for the summer, not Brussels. I had been so disappointed not to find the things I needed there – a part-time job, a language course, a flat I could afford – but that morning, instantly, I knew I was in the right place. My place. It was in the sound of the bus as it moved away from the kerb in front of me, in the shouts of the taxi drivers as they disgorged passengers and bags, and called loudly to one another. Most of all, it was in the way these things soothed rather than frightened me.

I knew who to be in this city, which was shabbier than I’d expected, a semi-precious place, rather than the hard bright diamonds of Paris, Milan, Vienna.

Brussels, I realised then, has no glamour or reputation. It just is. But there was a whiff of explosion to it that I loved. Or maybe just the bit of it I found to live in.

Fate – I’m sure of it – led me to the little flat above the Chez Léon bar, owned by Jacques, whom Fate could not have invented. The place was small and the windows rattled with the passing of traffic outside. There was a bed on a mezzanine level, which was tacked so badly to the wall that I wondered would it crash down one night with me on it, and a strange little bath, stained algae-green in a trickle below the tap. The flat would be noisy at night – I saw that straight away – and hot, while the line of ancient, treacly grease between the cupboards and the floor hinted at the kind of horrors that would have had my mother on her hands and knees with bleach and grim satisfaction, but I ignored them.

I wasn’t here to be the girl my mother had brought up.

I wrote to Jessie – the best friend I missed already, although we had parted only a day before – describing the flat:

It’s like an afterthought in a narrow building, made up of bits of cupboard and hall, blocked off by flimsy partitions. It smells of traffic fumes from the road outside, but it’s in the middle of everything. My bed is just a box with a mattress on it, but big enough for you to share, and there’s a hip-bath. I won’t begin to tell you about the loo until I see you! Come out, Jessie, please do. Get time off work and just come.

She had said, ‘I might, if I can’, and I needed her to say yes, she would. We did everything together. I wanted her to do this with me too.

I spent an hour unpacking, putting my clothes into the few drawers and cupboards, marvelling at the way the place looked exactly the same when I had finished, then went out to walk and stare and wonder at everything I saw. The streets smellt of rubbish from giant bins that sweltered on corners, and urine. There were homeless people, mainly men, with muscular dogs in doorways, and I began to understand the kind of area, or quartier, as I reminded myself to call it, I had landed in. There were rich smells of garlic and butter that made me think of long, late lunches and crisp white wine. I felt like a wild animal, tracking the story of the city through nose and instinct.

Above the shops and cafes there were tall narrow houses and windows with long wooden shutters closed against the afternoon sun. I imagined them from the inside, dark and cool, slanted bars of light pouring in around the wood, making dusty patterns in the air. What were the people in those dim apartments doing? It seemed impossible that they would be working, preparing food, studying, cleaning, any of the normal things that fill days. Instead, I thought they must be writing books, painting, making love as a sophisticated, creative act, not just an urgent fumble.

Eventually I found myself in a park lined with tortured trees, their branches twisted into a lattice that exposed and imprisoned them. They reminded me of a painting I’d seen once in a book, of Andromeda chained to a rock, straining against her ties, while beside her Persius fought the sea monster.

I sat on dry, yellowing grass and ate a sandwich I had bought, watching a fountain trickle dirty water into a worn stone basin. In the distance, I heard sirens. Within minutes I had been approached by two different men, who lied smoothly, told me I was beautiful and asked if I would go for coffee with them. When I said no, they didn't seem offended, or particularly disappointed. One even sat and chatted for a while, asking where I was from and advising me on how to negotiate the city. When he had finally gone, dispirited by my monosyllables, I lay back, even though the grass smellt of dry dog shit, and considered what to do with myself. I had nowhere to be until I started my so-called job on Monday in two days time, and I wasn’t sure I could last that long alone.

I had some introductions, people I could call. Like a heroine in a Henry James novel, I thought. Newly arrived in the old world from the new.

There was the friend of a friend who was doing an internship at the parliament, a couple of kids working in Irish bars, and a girl whose parents mine knew, because they had all been at college together; she had lived in Brussels all her life.

‘They have a beautiful house, very big and central,’ my mother had said. ‘I’m sure you could stay there for a while until you find your feet.’ She was nervous, didn’t like the idea of me going away alone for so long. But I knew I could do it.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, ‘but I’ll ring her.’

She seemed the most promising, because she had been there the longest, could be expected to know the best places to go. There was no way I was going to hang out in Irish bars. Bet – short for Elisabeth – invited me to over that afternoon.

‘It’s so hot. Come and sit in the garden and get cool and tell me why you’re here.’ Her voice was deep, with what wasn’t quite an accent, more a careful way of pronouncing her words that made her seem almost foreign. She sounded like the kind of girl I might have been a little afraid of if I had met her at home. But not here.

She gave me directions from the Métro station closest to her, and I set off to find the one closest to me, ‘Parc’. The jerky escalator brought me down to a grey tunnel with dirty walls and a floor that was sticky and sweetish-smelling.

The air was so grubby, I felt I could have rolled it between my fingers and seen thin lines of visible dirt emerge like worms.  A hot wind blew from the mouth of the tunnel onto a platform that was empty, except for back-lit ads for supermarkets, and a man with no legs, who played the accordion vigorously. Beside him was a skateboard, his means of transport, I thought. I wondered how he managed the accordion, which was nearly as big as he was. Did he use the escalator? Was there a lift? Or maybe he had a friend, who came for him in the evenings and helped him home.

I saw the scattering of coins across the thinning red velvet of the accordion case and added a handful. The man began to roll his eyes at me in a way that was both funny and terrifying. I moved to the far end of the platform and was standing close to the dark mouth of the tunnel, watching the accordion player in the convex mirror fixed to the wall, when the train came barrelling through, drowning the mournful music. It came without warning and was as empty as the platform. Where was everyone?

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