Chapter 1: The Night Shift

The exchange floor smelled of warm dust and metal, like a radiator that never cooled. Rows of positions sat under fluorescent light, each station a small island of cords, lamps, and paper slips. It was not the sleek future the adverts promised. Most calls now ran through automated kit elsewhere, but this room still handled operator services, assisted connections, and the stubborn old circuits that refused to behave. Maeve Donnelly slid on her headset, tucked a curl behind one ear, and let the rhythm take her. Plug, ring, listen. “Number, please.” Plug, ring, listen again.

Outside, Belfast was April-wet and black. Rain made the streetlights soft and orange. Inside, the voices were sharp. A woman whispering for a taxi. A man asking, too loudly, if the line was clear. A teenager calling a friend and laughing as if laughter could keep the night away. Maeve kept her face still. She had learned that the exchange was a place where you could hear everything and know nothing. You did not react. You did not repeat. You were a channel, not a person.

At two in the morning, the supervisor did a slow walk behind the operators. Maeve’s lamp blinked again. She connected a call to the Royal Victoria Hospital, then another to a bakery that would not open for hours. Someone swore when the line crackled. Someone else thanked her as if she had handed over water. She logged the routine faults on a slip with a time stamp, neat block letters, the way she’d been trained: nothing extra, nothing that could be read as opinion.

When her shift ended, she walked home with her coat collar up. The street was quiet in a way that felt watched. Her father, Da, sat at the kitchen table in his vest, a cup of tea gone cold beside the newspaper. The headline was about politics again, and the smaller print was about another search, another arrest, another “incident” that meant blood.

“You’re late,” he said, though he knew her hours.

“The buses,” Maeve replied, hanging her coat. Her hands still carried the phantom feel of cords.

Da folded the paper carefully, as if neatness could keep the city neat. “Listen to me, Maeve. You do your job and you come home. You keep your head down.”

She poured herself tea, the kettle’s hiss filling the gap. “I’m only connecting calls.”

“That’s what you think.” His eyes were tired, not angry. “This place pulls everyone in. It pulls at your sleeve until you turn around. Don’t turn.”

Maeve stared at the steam rising from her mug. In the exchange, voices floated in and vanished. At home, every word stayed.

“I won’t,” she said, and meant it, because she wanted peace, even if it was only the kind you pretended was close.

Chapter 2: Wires and Warnings

The next week, the supervisor called them together near the noticeboard where memos curled at the corners. Her name was Mrs. Sloane, hair pinned tight, lipstick never smudged. She held a clipboard like it was an extension of her spine, and behind her the board was crowded with shift swaps, fault bulletins, and reminders about the new automated exchanges coming online in other districts.

“Confidentiality,” she said, tapping the board with a pen. “You do not discuss callers. Not at home, not on the bus, not with your mates. Not here, not anywhere. If you think you’ve heard something, you haven’t.”

A few operators nodded quickly. Others kept their eyes down. Maeve felt heat creep up her neck. She had never gossiped, but the reminder landed like a warning meant for someone.

Mrs. Sloane’s gaze moved across them, sharp and practiced. “And if anyone approaches you for information, you send them to me. You do not get clever. You do not get brave. You log faults. You follow the queue. You do not improvise.”

The word improvise hung in the air like smoke. Maeve thought of the way the city demanded improvisation from everyone: which street to avoid, which shop to enter, which words to swallow.

After the meeting, Maeve returned to her station and found a small paper cup of tea waiting beside her console. Declan O’Hare stood there, half in the aisle, half ready to disappear.

“You left this?” Maeve asked.

He shrugged. “The canteen’s still open. Thought you might want it.”

Declan was a junior line technician, always carrying a tool bag that looked heavier than him. He had hands nicked by wire and a face that tried to stay blank but failed when he smiled. Maeve had seen him crouched by panels, tracing faults with a patience she envied.

“Thanks,” Maeve said, lowering her voice. “You’re on the floor a lot lately.”

“More faults,” he replied, though his eyes flicked toward Mrs. Sloane’s office. “Or more people saying there are faults.”

Maeve sipped the tea. It was too sweet. “What does that mean?”

He leaned closer, careful to look casual. “They’ve been checking the exchange more often. Men who don’t wear company badges. They stand by the frames like they own the place.”

Maeve’s throat tightened. “Police?”

Declan didn’t answer directly, which was its own answer. He glanced at the ceiling where cables ran like vines. “Could be. Could be someone else. But they don’t talk to me like I’m staff. They talk like I’m furniture.”

Maeve set the cup down with too much care. “Why tell me?”

“Because you’re careful,” he said. “And because you sit on the front line of it. You hear things before anyone else does.”

Maeve’s lamp blinked. She reached for a cord, grateful for the simple instruction of a ringing light. Plug, ring, listen. Her voice came out steady. “Number, please.”

Declan stepped back. “Just mind yourself. And if you notice anything odd, don’t write it down where it can be found.”

Maeve looked at him. “What if I notice something odd and I can’t forget it?”

Declan’s expression softened, then hardened again like a door closing. “Then you’ll learn what everyone learns here. Forgetting is a skill.”

He walked away, tool bag swinging, leaving Maeve with the tea and the hum of lines that carried too much.

Chapter 3: A Name in the Noise

It happened on an ordinary Wednesday, the kind of day that made Maeve believe her father might be right. A steady stream of calls, a few wrong numbers, one man singing into the receiver like he’d mistaken her for a friend. The exchange ran on routine: time stamps, routing slips, the soft clack of plugs seating home. Maeve liked the predictability. It made the rest of Belfast feel farther away.

Near midnight, two lamps blinked at once. Maeve moved fast, plugging cords with the automatic grace of practice. The first call went through clean. The second, she connected, then realized she had left the cord seated a second too long on the first jack. A small mistake. A heartbeat. Enough.

In her headset, a voice snapped into focus, male and clipped. “Aye, it’s sorted. Same street as before.”

Another voice, lower, impatient. “Don’t say it on the line.”

Maeve’s hand froze on the cord. She should have pulled away at once. She should have cleared the connection and let the sound vanish. But the first voice pushed on, as if urgency made him careless.

“Beechmount,” he muttered. “Near the corner shop. Delivery’s Friday.”

Delivery. The word was ordinary and wrong at the same time. Maeve’s mind filled the gap with things she had heard on the news and refused to picture: vans with false plates, bags left where children walked, men running with their heads down for reasons that were not her father’s advice. Her fingers moved at last, disconnecting with a small click. The lamps steadied, then blinked again, innocent as raindrops.

Maeve swallowed and reached for a scrap of paper. Her pencil trembled as she wrote: Beechmount. Corner shop. Friday. She stared at the words, plain and unforgiving, and felt as if she had stolen them. She thought of Mrs. Sloane’s warning. She thought of Declan’s face when he said men without badges had been checking. She thought of her father’s voice in the kitchen: Don’t turn.

Maeve tore the scrap in half. The rip sounded too loud in her own ears. She held the two pieces, one with the street name, the other with the day and the word delivery. A split decision, made physical. She slid the Beechmount half into her pocket, then hesitated and pulled it out again. Her heart thudded like an unbalanced machine.

She looked around. The other operators were hunched over their consoles, faces lit by blinking lamps. No one was watching her. Everyone was watching their own lights. That was the rule of the room: mind your own board, mind your own business, and maybe the city would not notice you.

Maeve crumpled both halves together and stuffed them into her bag, then immediately hated herself for it. She could not tell if she had just protected herself or marked herself.

When Declan passed behind her station, she wanted to grab his sleeve and show him the paper, beg him to tell her it was nothing. But his eyes were forward, his steps quick. He looked like someone who had learned not to stop.

Maeve answered the next call with a voice that did not shake. “Number, please.”

But the static in her headset felt different now, as if it had learned her name.

Chapter 4: Echoes of a Funeral

April didn’t end gently. The news came in pieces, carried in headlines and murmured radio updates, then finally spoken aloud in the exchange like a prayer no one wanted to say. Another attack. Another funeral. Another set of streets closed off by soldiers and police, another morning when people pretended to be surprised.

Maeve didn’t trust the details that travelled by rumour, the way names and places got swapped in a single telling. She heard “Newry” more than once, and “mortar” more than once, but always with the vagueness of frightened people repeating what they thought they’d heard. The only certainty was the pattern: violence, then the scramble to find out who was alive.

Maeve heard it first through calls. People asking for hospitals, for relatives, for someone who might know something. A woman sobbing into the receiver, trying to keep her voice quiet so children in the next room would not hear. A man barking orders, then going suddenly silent when Maeve asked him to repeat the address. “Just put me through,” he snapped, and she did, because that was her job, because the job was sometimes the only thing that held.

The exchange floor, usually a controlled hum, tightened with tension. Even Mrs. Sloane’s footsteps sounded sharper. She leaned over Maeve once and spoke low. “Stay focused. Don’t let emotion slow you. Log your times. Keep your slips tidy.”

Maeve wanted to ask if emotion could be unplugged like a cord. She said only, “Yes, Mrs. Sloane,” and wrote the next fault report with careful hands.

When Maeve got home that morning, the house smelled of fried bread and worry. Her mother moved around the kitchen without sitting down, wiping an already clean counter. Da stood by the window, watching the street as if expecting it to change shape.

Seán came in late, still wearing his bar shirt. He was twenty-four and tried to act older than his years, but his hands betrayed him. They shook as he reached for a cup.

“You’re home early,” Maeve said.

“Closed up,” Seán replied. He stared at the table. “They were talking in the bar. Not just talking. Arguing, like it was their right to decide who gets to live.”

Mam set a plate in front of him. “Eat.”

He didn’t. “It feels like the city’s holding its breath again,” he said, voice rough. “Like everyone’s waiting for the next thing.”

Da turned from the window. “Keep your head down,” he told Seán, the same words he used for Maeve, but heavier. “You pour pints. You don’t listen.”

Seán gave a short laugh that held no humour. “You can’t not listen. They talk at you. They watch who you serve first. Who you smile at. Who you don’t.”

Maeve thought of the crumpled paper in her bag, now soft from being handled too much. It felt like a coal she couldn’t drop.

That evening, Maeve sat on her bed and listened to the radio through the thin wall. Reports, statements, names. She pictured wires running under streets, carrying fear from one kitchen to another. She opened her bag and found the paper. Her fingers smoothed it flat, then stopped. She did not read it. She folded it smaller and hid it in a book, as if a cover could make it harmless.

Outside, Belfast breathed in and held.

Chapter 5: The Anglo-Irish Word

By November, the cold had settled into the bones of the city. Maeve heard it in the way callers coughed, in the way voices sounded tight as they asked for numbers and hung up fast. The radios in kitchens and taxis carried the same phrase over and over, like a stone being turned in a pocket.

Anglo-Irish Agreement.

Maeve’s mother listened while making tea, the radio perched on the windowsill. “They say it’ll help,” Mam murmured one morning, not looking at anyone. The kettle rattled as if impatient.

Da snorted. “They say plenty.”

Seán, shaving at the sink, called out, “They’re all talking like it’s the end of something.”

Da answered, “It’s the start of another row.”

At the exchange, the talk was not open, but it seeped through the lines. Maeve connected calls that sounded like tests. Men speaking in careful phrases, pausing for responses. Women saying names twice, as if checking who flinched. Someone asked for a number and then, before Maeve could provide it, said, “Just seeing if you’re there,” and hung up. The automation elsewhere might have made connections faster, but it hadn’t made people kinder.

Mrs. Sloane posted another memo: NO UNAUTHORIZED ASSISTANCE. FOLLOW PROCEDURE. Beneath it, a typed note about increased security checks and the need to keep the corridor phone free for official use. Maeve read it twice, feeling the room tighten around the words.

Declan appeared at Maeve’s station with a small stack of routing slips. “They’ve changed a few trunk lines,” he said, eyes on the paper, not on her. “More than usual. New patching orders. Some of them don’t have the proper sign-off.”

Maeve kept her voice light. “Maybe they’re preparing for the winter storms.”

Declan’s mouth tightened. “Aye. Storms.”

A call came in, and Maeve connected it. The voices on the other end were low, but she caught a phrase that made her fingers go cold.

“Who’s with us,” a man said, “and who’s with them.”

Maeve disconnected when the call ended, staring at the empty jack as if it might explain itself. She felt the city’s arguments traveling through her hands, turned into clicks and rings.

On her break, she stood by the vending machine with a paper cup of watery coffee. Another operator, Nuala, leaned in, her lipstick chipped from biting it.

“My cousin says there’ll be trouble when it’s signed,” Nuala whispered.

Maeve’s heart kicked. “Don’t say things like that.”

Nuala rolled her eyes. “Everyone’s saying it. You’ll see. They’ll shut the roads. The shops. The whole place.”

Maeve looked down the corridor toward Mrs. Sloane’s office. “We’re not meant to talk about it here.”

Nuala lowered her voice further. “You’re so careful, Maeve. Sometimes I wonder if you’re afraid of your own shadow.”

Maeve forced a smile. “Maybe I am.”

Back at her console, the lamps blinked and blinked. Maeve began to feel that the lines were being used not just to speak, but to measure. To find the ones who hesitated. To find the ones who helped. When she walked home in the early morning dark, the posters on walls looked fresher, the slogans bolder. She kept her eyes ahead, but she could not keep her ears from remembering.

In 1985, even a word like agreement sounded like a dare.

Chapter 6: A Quiet Request

The call came on a damp afternoon when Maeve was covering an earlier shift. The exchange windows were fogged, and the air smelled faintly of wet wool from coats hung near the door. The day staff moved with a different energy, brisker, less resigned, but the same rules held. Maeve’s lamp blinked, and she slipped into her practiced tone.

“Number, please.”

A woman answered, voice steady but strained. “This is Mrs. Kavanagh. I need to reach a family on the Springfield Road. The Donaghys. It’s urgent.”

Maeve hesitated. “Do you have the number?”

“I’ve been given it,” Mrs. Kavanagh said, “but it’s not going through. The line keeps failing. They’re stuck. There was a clash last night. They can’t cross back, and their wee one’s ill.”

Maeve glanced at the memo board, then at Mrs. Sloane’s office door. The rules were clear about repeated attempts and queue order, and the assisted connections desk was meant to be impartial. But the woman’s voice carried something Maeve recognized. Not drama. Not gossip. Simple fear, the kind that made you speak carefully because you were trying not to frighten yourself.

“I can try again,” Maeve said. “Hold, please.”

Maeve moved faster than procedure allowed, jumping the call ahead of a routine business connection. She rerouted through an alternate trunk line she had seen Declan use during faults, the kind of workaround you learned by watching and never admitting you’d watched. Her fingers were sure, but her stomach was not.

The line clicked, then rang. A man answered, breathless. “Hello?”

Mrs. Kavanagh’s relief was immediate. “Mr. Donaghy, thank God. It’s me. Listen, I’m going to get someone to bring medicine. Stay inside. Don’t take chances. If the line goes again, I’ll send word through the hall.”

Maeve kept the connection steady until Mrs. Kavanagh finished. When the call ended, Maeve’s hands lingered on the cords as if they might burn. She wrote a tidy fault note that said nothing about who had called, only the technical excuse: intermittent failure, alternate routing used, time and position number. It was the sort of entry that could be read as diligence or as disobedience, depending on who held it.

Declan appeared beside her station minutes later. “That was you,” he said quietly.

Maeve’s face flushed. “How do you know?”

“I saw the routing,” he replied. “It jumped.”

Maeve’s voice sharpened, defensive. “It was a community worker. A child was sick.”

Declan’s expression didn’t accuse, but it didn’t soothe either. “I’m not saying you were wrong. I’m saying even kindness can be read as taking sides.”

Maeve swallowed. “By who?”

Declan’s eyes flicked toward the far end of the floor where two men stood near a panel, not in company uniforms. They spoke to Mrs. Sloane with the ease of people who expected answers. One of them held a folder as if it were a warrant, even if it wasn’t.

Maeve’s mouth went dry. “They’re here again.”

Declan nodded once. “Aye.”

Maeve thought of Mrs. Kavanagh’s voice, calm with urgency, and of Mr. Donaghy’s breathless hello. She had not asked their politics. She had not asked their religion. She had asked only for a number and then made it work.

“Should I have left it?” Maeve whispered.

Declan’s voice softened. “No. But now you know. The wires don’t carry only voices. They carry meanings people invent.”

Maeve looked at her console, at the blinking lamps waiting for her next choice. “I just wanted to help.”

Declan shifted his tool bag higher on his shoulder. “That’s the trouble,” he said. “So does everyone.”

Chapter 7: The Day the City Roared

15 November 1985 began with a gray sky and a radio that wouldn’t stop talking. Maeve heard the news before she left home. The Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed. The announcer’s voice tried to sound measured, but the words came fast, as if chasing the day. Names of leaders, mentions of consultation, promises of cooperation. Maeve understood enough to know it would not land gently in Belfast.

Da stood in the doorway as Maeve pulled on her coat. “Straight there and straight home,” he said. “No stopping.”

“The buses might not run,” Maeve replied, already hearing the distant thrum of a crowd.

“Then you walk with your head down,” he said. His hand hovered near her shoulder, then dropped. He didn’t know how to protect her from a city.

By the time Maeve reached the exchange, Belfast was already loud. Not just noise, but a roar that seemed to rise from the pavement. Protesters gathered, and the streets clogged. Shops pulled shutters down. People moved in groups, faces set. Police Land Rovers idled at corners. Soldiers stood where they always stood, watching as if watching could hold a line.

Inside the exchange, the atmosphere turned frantic. Lamps blinked in clusters. Operators spoke in quick, clipped tones. Calls stacked up. Businesses demanded updates. Families tried to locate sons and sisters. Emergency services lines crackled with urgency. Maeve’s board lit like a Christmas tree, bright and relentless.

Mrs. Sloane stood at the center aisle, directing like a conductor. “Keep the queues moving. No delays. No personal calls. Log your times. If a line fails, mark it and move on.”

Maeve’s headset pressed into her hairline. Her ears ached from listening. “Number, please.” “Hold, please.” “Yes, I’ll connect you.” The words became a chant, and she clung to it like a railing.

Then, in the middle of the rush, Maeve caught a call that felt wrong. The voice was calm, too calm for the day. A man asked for a number, then changed his mind.

“No, forget it,” he said. “Tell him the parcel’s going to the garage off Donegall Road. Before dark. You understand?”

Another voice answered, short. “Aye.”

Maeve’s fingers hovered. Parcel. Garage. Before dark. It fit too easily beside the word delivery she had heard months ago, the scrap of paper she had hidden and never dared unfold again. Her heart thudded against her ribs, each beat a question.

She tried to focus on the next call, but the coded phrase stuck like a burr. Outside, the city’s roar grew louder, as if the streets themselves were chanting. A strike was called. People flooded the roads. The air felt charged, ready for a spark.

Declan rushed past with two other technicians, his face pale with concentration. Maeve wanted to shout his name, but Mrs. Sloane’s eyes snapped toward her station, and Maeve swallowed the sound.

Calls kept coming. A mother begged for a school. A shop owner shouted about smashed windows. A man demanded to speak to “someone in charge.” Maeve connected, disconnected, reconnected, her hands moving while her mind stayed caught on the garage off Donegall Road.

Before dark.

Maeve glanced at the clock. The afternoon was already slipping. In Belfast in November, dark came early, like a lid.

She felt the static on the line thicken, as if the wires themselves were holding their breath for what would happen when the sun went down.

Chapter 8: Crossing the Line

Maeve’s break came late, and it didn’t feel like a break at all. She stood in the corridor by the payphone, the smell of cigarette smoke drifting from a nearby stairwell. The corridor was always colder than the exchange floor, as if the building saved its warmth for the work. Her hands were cold even indoors.

She fed coins into the slot and dialed Declan’s extension, counting the rings like a prayer. The payphone’s plastic was worn smooth where thousands of fingers had pressed it, urgent and ordinary.

He answered, breathless. “O’Hare.”

“It’s Maeve,” she said, forcing calm. “I heard something. A call. Coded.”

A pause. “What did you hear?”

Maeve shut her eyes. “They said a parcel’s going to a garage off Donegall Road. Before dark. It sounded like a plan.”

Declan didn’t speak for a moment. When he did, his voice was lower. “Which line?”

Maeve gave him the trunk identifier as best she could, repeating it twice. She hated how shaky she sounded. “Can you check if it’s been tapped or moved? Or if it’s one of the ones they keep fussing over?”

Declan exhaled slowly. “Maeve, listen. I’ve seen unusual rerouting orders. Not signed properly. Things shifted to odd paths. Like someone wants certain calls to pass certain points.”

Maeve gripped the receiver. “Who would do that?”

Declan’s answer was careful. “People with access. Or people who can force access.”

Maeve’s mouth went dry. “So what do I do? If I’m wrong…”

“If you’re wrong, you’ll have scared yourself,” Declan said. “If you’re right, and you do nothing…” He let the sentence hang. Maeve heard shouting faintly through the exchange walls, distant but real. The city was still roaring, and the sound made her feel small and exposed.

“I can’t go to the police,” Maeve whispered. “Not directly. If it’s nothing, I’m finished. If it’s something, I’m… I don’t know what I am.”

Declan’s voice softened, but it carried weight. “There are other ways. Quiet ways. People who work between. Liaison groups. Community contacts. They pass warnings without turning it into a spectacle.”

Maeve thought of Mrs. Kavanagh and her steady urgency. “I know someone,” she said. “Mrs. Kavanagh.”

“Aye,” Declan replied. “She’s sensible. She won’t shout it from a rooftop.”

Maeve swallowed. “Will you help me?”

Declan hesitated, and in that hesitation Maeve heard the risk he was measuring: his job, his name, the way suspicion stuck to people like damp. Then he said, “Yes. But we do it so it doesn’t point back to you. Or your family.”

Maeve’s throat tightened. “Thank you.”

Declan’s voice turned brisk. “Go back to your station. Keep working. If you hear the line again, note the time. Not on paper you carry home. In your head. If anyone asks, you heard nothing but faults.”

Maeve hung up and stood still, the payphone receiver warm where her hand had been. Her father had told her not to turn. But she had already turned, just a little, and now she could not pretend she hadn’t seen the shape of the street behind her.

When she returned to the exchange floor, the lamps blinked like restless eyes. Maeve sat, placed the headset over her ears, and felt her own breath loud in the small space.

“Number, please,” she said, and listened for the static that might become a warning.

Chapter 9: A Door with Two Locks

Maeve and Declan met Mrs. Kavanagh after Maeve’s shift, when the sky was already dark and the streets smelled of damp leaves and exhaust. They chose a church hall off a side road, a place that looked neutral from the outside. A plain door. Frosted glass. Two locks, one above the other. Maeve noticed the locks and understood them. Belfast taught you to secure what you could.

Inside, the hall was warm with old radiators and the scent of tea. Plastic chairs lined the walls. A few posters about youth clubs and food drives hung slightly crooked. A notice about a Christmas collection sat beside a handwritten sign asking people not to leave bags unattended. Mrs. Kavanagh stood by a folding table with a kettle and a tin of biscuits, her coat still on, as if she might need to leave quickly.

“You both look done in,” she said, not unkindly. She poured tea into thick mugs, the way people did when they wanted to give your hands something to do besides shake.

Declan took a mug and nodded. Maeve wrapped her fingers around hers, grateful for the heat and for the ordinary comfort of it. The hall phone sat on the wall, beige and scuffed, its cord stretched from years of being yanked by anxious hands.

Mrs. Kavanagh kept her voice low. “Declan says you heard something on the lines.”

Maeve’s heart kicked. “I wasn’t trying to listen,” she said quickly. “It was a mistake. But it sounded like they’re planning something tonight. A garage off Donegall Road. Before dark, they said.”

Mrs. Kavanagh didn’t gasp or clutch her chest. She simply listened, eyes steady, as if she had heard worse and learned not to show it. “Do you have an address?”

“No,” Maeve admitted. “Just that. And a sense of it. The way they spoke.”

Declan set his mug down. “There’s more. The routing’s been odd. Calls moved around. It could be nothing, but it could be someone trying to keep things hidden, or someone trying to make sure someone else hears.”

Mrs. Kavanagh’s mouth tightened. “And if you go to the loudest authorities, you risk being used as a piece on the board.” She said it like someone who had watched people become examples.

Maeve stared into her tea. “My brother works in a bar,” she said quietly. “People talk. People watch. Da says Seán’s already under watch for who he serves.”

Declan glanced at her, surprised. Maeve had not said it aloud before, not even to herself with clarity. Saying it made it feel more real, and more dangerous.

Mrs. Kavanagh folded her hands. “There’s a local liaison group. Not glamorous. Not powerful. But they can pass a warning in a way that doesn’t put a spotlight on you. They can nudge the right door without banging it down.”

Maeve looked up. “Will they act?”

“They will try,” Mrs. Kavanagh said. “Sometimes trying is all you get. But it’s better than silence.”

Declan leaned forward. “If we do this, Maeve’s name stays out.”

Mrs. Kavanagh nodded. “Agreed. I’ll make the call from here, from the hall phone. No exchange logs tied to you. And you two go home like you always do. No sudden changes.”

Maeve’s stomach twisted. “What if it comes back anyway?”

Mrs. Kavanagh’s eyes softened. “Then your family will face a hard truth. That in Belfast, saying nothing does not always keep you safe. It only keeps you quiet.”

Mrs. Kavanagh picked up the hall phone and dialed, her voice calm. Maeve listened to the clicks, each one a step across a line she had been taught not to cross. Tea was poured like a shield, but Maeve knew shields could crack. Still, she sat upright, held her mug steady, and waited for the call to connect.

Chapter 10: The Turning Point Call

Evening fell early, and the exchange lights looked harsher against the dark outside. Maeve volunteered to stay late. Mrs. Sloane raised an eyebrow but didn’t refuse. They needed every operator they could keep, and the Agreement day had turned the city into a knot that would not loosen. Maeve told herself she stayed for the overtime, for the duty, for anything that did not sound like fear.

She sat at her console with a tightness in her chest that didn’t ease. She had done what she could through Mrs. Kavanagh, but the day still moved forward like a heavy wheel. Outside, protests and stoppages had snarled the roads. Inside, the calls kept coming, frantic and mundane at once. A chemist asking if deliveries could get through. A woman trying to reach her mother before the phone lines went “funny” again. A man demanding the number for a solicitor, his voice sharp with panic he refused to name.

Around six, Maeve heard it again. The same calm tone, the same careful phrasing. Her lamp blinked, and she connected the line, then recognized the cadence in the first sentence.

“Is it set?” the man asked.

“Aye,” came the reply. “Same place. Behind the shutters.”

Maeve’s fingers went numb. She should have disconnected at once. Procedure demanded it. The rules were clear. But she held the connection, pretending to adjust the plug, buying herself seconds the way people bought time in Belfast: with small, quiet tricks.

“Which garage?” the first voice pressed, irritation slipping through. “Say it now. I’m not running about.”

The second voice hesitated, then spoke fast, as if spitting out poison. “McKenna’s, off Donegall. Number twelve.”

Maeve’s mouth went dry. Number twelve. An address. A shape that could be found on a street, that could be checked, that could be warned. She broke the connection with a sharp click and forced her hands to move to the next call, a woman asking for her sister. Maeve connected it, then ended it, her mind racing ahead of her fingers.

Neutrality is not the same as safety, she thought, and the sentence felt like a stone in her mouth. If she did nothing, she would carry it forever. If she acted, her voice would leave a trace.

Maeve waited for a moment when Mrs. Sloane was pulled away to deal with a jammed queue report, then stood and walked quickly to the corridor phone. Her legs felt unsteady, but she did not stop. She could hear her own blood louder than the exchange hum.

She dialed the number Mrs. Kavanagh had given her for the liaison contact, a man named Tom who answered with a guarded “Hello?”

“It’s the exchange,” Maeve said, keeping her voice low. “I have information. Donegall Road. Garage off it. McKenna’s, number twelve. Something planned tonight. They said behind the shutters.”

Tom’s breath caught. “Who is this?”

Maeve swallowed. “Someone who doesn’t want their name used. Please. Just pass it on. Quietly. If you can, get someone to look before anyone gets hurt.”

A pause, then Tom said, “I’ll do what I can. Stay where you are. Don’t make yourself visible.”

Maeve hung up and leaned her forehead against the cool wall. She could feel the weight of what she had done, not heroic, not clean. Just a choice made in a corridor that smelled of smoke and damp coats.

When she returned to her console, the lamps blinked as they always had. But Maeve’s hands were different now. They were the hands of someone who had spoken into the city’s machinery and could not pretend she hadn’t.

Chapter 11: After the Sirens

The night stretched thin and tense. Maeve stayed at her station, listening to the exchange’s hum and the occasional burst of shouting from the street outside. The calls shifted as the evening deepened. Fewer business complaints, more family checks, more clipped questions that ended quickly. The kind of calls that sounded like people counting heads without saying so.

Then, near nine, sirens rose in the distance. They grew louder, then faded, then returned, weaving through the city like a thread pulled tight. Operators glanced at one another but didn’t speak. Mrs. Sloane’s mouth was a hard line, and she kept walking the aisle as if motion could keep panic from settling.

Maeve’s stomach knotted. She pictured Donegall Road, the garage, the shuttered front. She pictured people walking past without knowing what was behind metal and brick. She didn’t want to imagine more than that. She tried to anchor herself in the small tasks: clear the queue, note the time, reset the cord, breathe.

Later, the exchange seemed to fall into a sudden quiet that felt heavier than noise. Fewer lamps blinked. The air felt thick, as if everyone had run out of breath at the same time. Maeve caught scraps from callers: “road blocked,” “police everywhere,” “they’ve got the dogs out,” “don’t go near it.” No one said McKenna’s. No one said bomb. In Belfast, people learned to speak around the sharp edges.

When Maeve finally removed her headset, her ears rang with phantom static. She was gathering her bag when Mrs. Sloane called her name.

“Maeve. Office.”

Inside, the office smelled of strong tea and paper. Two men sat in chairs that didn’t belong to them, coats still on. One had a notebook. The other watched Maeve like she was a line on a form. On Mrs. Sloane’s desk lay a printout of call logs and a maintenance docket, the kind with carbon copies that smudged your fingers.

Mrs. Sloane didn’t offer her a seat. “There’s an irregular log entry,” she said. “Position four. A connection held longer than usual at eighteen forty-two. And a corridor call placed during peak load at eighteen forty-seven. That phone is meant for authorised use.”

Maeve’s hands went cold. “I… I don’t know,” she began, then stopped. Lying badly would be worse than silence.

The man with the notebook spoke. “We’re not accusing you. We’re clarifying. Times, reasons, who instructed what. That’s all.”

Maeve forced herself to meet Mrs. Sloane’s eyes. “The lines were busy,” she said carefully. “There were faults all day. Trunks dropping and coming back.”

The second man’s gaze sharpened. “Faults don’t explain everything.”

The door opened, and Declan stepped in without knocking. His face was pale, but his voice was steady. “It was me,” he said. “I was testing the trunk line. There’s been interference. I asked Maeve to hold the connection while I checked the path. I also used the corridor phone to ring the test desk. I should’ve logged it properly.”

Mrs. Sloane’s eyebrows rose. “You didn’t file a report.”

“I should have,” Declan replied. “I didn’t. That’s on me. I can give you the docket number I started, and I’ll write the full report now.”

Maeve looked at him, stunned. Declan didn’t glance her way. He kept his eyes on Mrs. Sloane, offering himself like a shield.

The man with the notebook leaned back. “You understand this is serious.”

Declan nodded. “Aye. I understand.”

Mrs. Sloane’s lips tightened, but she seemed relieved to have a neat explanation. “Get it in writing,” she snapped. “Time, trunk ID, reason. And next time you follow procedure.”

Declan agreed, voice even. The two men stood, their chairs scraping the floor, and left without another word.

When they were gone, Maeve exhaled shakily. Declan finally looked at her. His expression said, without words: Not here.

Outside the office, in the corridor, Maeve whispered, “Why did you do that?”

Declan’s jaw worked. “Because they were looking at you. And because if someone has to be blamed for a fault, it might as well be the lad with the tool bag.”

Maeve’s eyes stung. “They’ll come after you.”

Declan shrugged, but it wasn’t careless. It was resigned. “They already do, in their own ways.”

The sirens were gone now. The exchange was quiet. Maeve realized that sometimes protection looked like a lie told at the right moment, and the cost of it sat in someone else’s pocket.

Chapter 12: The Line Holds

Weeks passed, and Belfast did not become a different city just because papers were signed. The streets stayed divided by habit and history. The arguments continued, softer in some places, louder in others. The Agreement became another word people carried around, turning it over, testing its weight. Some spoke it like a promise. Others spoke it like an insult.

Maeve heard fragments about the night of the sirens. A search near Donegall Road. A cordon that held for hours. People turned back from streets they’d walked all their lives. No one in Maeve’s house said the word bomb, but the way her mother checked the window latch twice told Maeve what her mind was circling. Maeve never learned exactly what had been found at McKenna’s, or whether the warning had changed anything. She only knew the city had not added another funeral to its calendar that week, and even that felt like a fragile thing to claim.

Maeve’s home changed in small, painful ways. Da watched the street more. Mam listened to the radio with her mouth set tight. Seán came home earlier than usual and spoke less about the bar. When he did speak, it was about ordinary things, as if ordinary could be rebuilt by repetition.

Maeve said nothing at first. She tried to return to ordinary life, to let the exchange be only work again. But secrets have a way of leaking, not in one dramatic spill, but in damp marks that spread. She startled at knocks. She flinched at the ring of the phone at home, as if the exchange had followed her into the kitchen.

One Sunday afternoon, Da found Maeve sitting at the kitchen table, staring at her hands. He set down his tea and studied her, the way he used to when she was small and had scraped her knee.

“You’ve been carrying something,” he said.

Maeve’s throat tightened. “It’s nothing.”

Da’s voice stayed calm, but it had steel under it. “Don’t insult me. Not in my own house.”

Mam paused at the sink. Seán looked up from the newspaper, eyes narrowing.

Maeve took a breath that felt too big for her chest. “On the day of the signing,” she began, then stopped, choosing words that would not betray anyone else. “I heard something on the lines. I warned someone. Quietly. There was police activity later. I don’t know what was stopped or what wasn’t. But I couldn’t do nothing.”

Seán’s face changed first, anger and fear colliding. “Are you mad?” he hissed. “Do you know what that could do to us?”

Maeve flinched, but held her ground. “Yes,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want it on you.”

Mam’s hands gripped the edge of the counter. “Maeve,” she whispered, “why didn’t you come to us?”

“Because Da told me to keep my head down,” Maeve replied, and immediately regretted the sharpness. Her voice softened. “Because I wanted you safe.”

Da stared at her for a long moment. Maeve expected shouting. Instead, he sank into the chair as if suddenly older.

“I said keep your head down,” he murmured, “because I didn’t want the city to take you.”

Maeve blinked hard. “It takes people anyway.”

Silence settled, thick and real. Then Da reached across the table and covered Maeve’s hand with his. His palm was rough from work, warm in the cold kitchen.

“You did what you thought was right,” he said, each word careful. “And now we do what we must. We mind each other.”

Seán looked away, jaw tight. After a moment, he said quietly, “If anyone asks at the bar, I know nothing.”

Maeve nodded, grateful and aching. “That’s enough.”

When Maeve returned to the exchange after the holidays, the floor looked the same. Fluorescent lights. Blinking lamps. The hum of lines that never slept. Mrs. Sloane barely looked at her. Declan, now under closer scrutiny, moved with a new caution, but he still offered Maeve a small nod when he passed.

Maeve sat at her console and put on her headset. The static was there, as it always was. But her hand was steadier on the cord.

“Number, please,” she said, and listened, understanding that history did not resolve in one agreement. Still, small acts of care could hold a line. Sometimes, that was the only peace you got, and you took it with both hands.