The Game Changer (21 page)

‘We’re safe now, my darling,’ she told Lily. Before she’d left for the island, she had taken out enough money to cover them for at least a year. She wanted to be generous. Saka had told her that some people couldn’t afford the same level of contribution, members like Aoife or Stephen. They had no income or savings. Why shouldn’t they have the same opportunities as her? And Saka had said she could stay as long as she liked.

John would have been furious as soon as he discovered how much money she had taken. He’d have ranted and raved and let his anger out, but in the end, he would realise that it was rightfully hers.

She took two tablets from the bedside locker, the ones given to her to help her relax. The water felt cold as she swallowed them. Soon her eyelids were heavy and the tension remaining in her limbs had eased. Cuddling Lily, she heard her say, ‘Mama,’ for the very first time.

THE NIGHT LED INTO THE EARLY HOURS OF THE morning, and Kate was tossing and turning in the bed, having the same dream as before, only this time someone was trying to suffocate her. It started with her memory of the attack from childhood, then she would see her father hovering, watching her without saying a word, before her mother appeared. She could only barely make her out. It was as if she was coming in and out of focus, then Kate would hear the loud voices, and her mother whispering, ‘The children, the children.’ After that, she would feel as if she was falling into an abyss, tumbling into missing hours, and a darkness full of vulnerability, before the presence would arrive, and she was aware that there was someone other than her and Adam in the room. They would stand on the right side of the bed, and she would sense them getting closer, moving to the other side, where she slept. When they stood directly over her, they pressed down with what felt like a large pillow. And she couldn’t breathe, and would force herself to wake up, discovering none of it was real. The last time she had woken up, Adam was gone.

After breakfast, she thought about phoning Declan and asking him to mind Charlie for a while, but perhaps Adam was right. Maybe she was overreacting. The note was upsetting but, other than her paranoia, there hadn’t been anything else to justify such a drastic move.

When she had dropped Charlie safely at school, she made up her mind what she would do next. It had been years since she had gone to the place where it had all begun. She had knowingly avoided stepping back into that world, but now it felt like the right thing to
do. She knew there wasn’t any logical reason for that, but logic and emotion didn’t always go hand in hand.

Walking towards the car, she felt the autumn sun on her face. She had the distinct feeling that somehow she was travelling back in time. Her mind felt absorbed. It was as if she was driving to her destination on autopilot. Instinctively, she went over the fragments of information she could be sure of and, almost as if time was playing tricks on her, she reached the mountain road sooner than she expected. She parked the car nearly a kilometre away. The road was deserted, other than the odd passing vehicle. Ten minutes later, she stepped in from the main road and searched for the opening she had discovered years before.

It was overgrown and practically hidden by the surrounding woodlands, unless you knew what you were looking for. She imagined lovers using it as a secret sanctuary, or children, on discovering the opening at the end of the pathway, treating it like a hideaway. As she walked in deeper, closer to the centre, she took in everything around her, the sights, the smells, the sounds. With the overhang of the trees blocking the sun, and the sharp breeze whirling in different directions, the space felt several degrees colder than it was outside. She could hear her footsteps and felt like an intruder within the orchestra of woodland sounds, the place almost bewitching, seductive, until she felt like that twelve-year-old girl again.

In a few more steps she would be at the centre, where the light could push through, the exact place she had gone searching for that missing ball. Standing in the opening, her adult self realised that, coming out from the darkness of the trees and the undergrowth, she would have become clearly visible to anyone watching her from the woodlands. There were any number of vantage points within the trees, any number of places her attacker could have hidden. He would have been able to bide his time, making sure her friends were far enough away, ensuring they couldn’t help her. They couldn’t have heard any sounds she made, those silent screams she remembered, the ones that sounded as if they belonged to someone else.

Kate stopped in the centre, concentrating on the roar of the wind, which was gaining strength, causing the loud creaking of branches on the taller trees. She tried to break down the different sounds, gaining a fuller concept of the terrain surrounding her. She heard twigs breaking underfoot. Was someone else in the woods? If they were, they might be close. She knew the area could play tricks with sound, the wind and streams pulling conversations and other noises from miles away, misplacing them, making faraway things seem closer than they were, but then she heard the sound again. She glanced around her, trying to work out which direction the noise had come from. It was impossible. Calm down, she told herself.

Taking a couple of steps forward, she heard the crunch of her own feet on the forest floor, then stopped again. Could her footsteps be echoing? As a child, she wouldn’t have thought about any potential danger. She would have focused on the task in hand, simply following the ball. Leaning down, as she would have done all those years before, she mentally and physically retraced her steps, searching in the darkness of the lower woodland for an imaginary ball that she would never find.

After a few moments, she sat up on her hunkers, looking all around her again, realising that she had limited visibility. She couldn’t see behind her. Even if she turned her upper body as far to the left or the right as she could, there was still a blind spot. He must have been observing her, contemplating his next move.

Was that why she felt someone was watching her now? Was her mind playing tricks on her yet again? Telling her she was no longer alone? Standing up, she hesitated before turning, part of her feeling more like the twelve-year-old girl than her adult self. What would she see if she turned? Would he be standing waiting for her? Would he say,
I remember you, Kate
?

Her body moved in slow motion. It was like some elements of what she was feeling were in the present, while others were firmly rooted in the past.

The terrain didn’t change as she turned. It was as if it was
mocking her, taunting her to find the subtle differences that could give answers. The sights, sounds, smells and wind chill remained the same; the only things looking back at her were the trees, tall and dense and capable of hiding secrets. Slowly her eyes moved towards the sky. It was clear and blue. Then, with an innate mixture of anxiety and concentration, she looked down again, searching through the lower foliage of the spruce trees, past the thick bark and into the dark undergrowth, before finally focusing on a brown mound, minuscule in the distance.

With each step she took towards it, the mound grew larger and clearer, until she stared into the beady eyes of a dead female blackbird. She picked it up, thinking of the dead raven on the steps of the apartment building the day before. The raven had been dead for some time, but the blackbird was still warm, its neck severed, the blood spilling between Kate’s fingers, the brown foliage covered with muck. She turned it over, seeing that both wings had been torn from their sockets, each hanging limp. The wounds couldn’t have been made by a woodland animal. The cut to the neck was too clean. It had been slit by a blade, the torn wings pulled back in an almost identical fashion.

A number of thoughts merged in her mind. Someone had done this to the bird. They wanted her to know they had made it suffer. And that someone was still watching her.

MAMMY SAYS I SHOULD LOVE THE ISLAND. SHE SAYS it’s beautiful.

I like the wind because it blows in different directions, and sometimes if I run fast enough, I can work out the exact spot where it goes from right to left.

I miss my school friends, and my other friends from where we used to live. Most of the people here are big people. Some are friendly, but I don’t like everyone. Mammy says it’s not good to dislike the people here. Now I don’t tell her about the people I don’t like, not now.

I miss Daddy too. He said he loved me more than the whole world, but he is in the whole world, and I am here. A woman with a baby doll has come to the island. She thinks it’s a real baby, which is silly. I asked her could I play with it, and she said I was too young. I wanted to ask her why she thought the doll was real, but I didn’t. Mammy used to say it was good to ask questions, but she doesn’t say that now.

I like the water here too. I really like the waves. They can be ginormous, and when I’m by the water, the sound of the waves and seagulls blocks out loads of stuff. I miss my bedroom, and our street, and buses, and escalators in shopping centres, and birthday parties. I had one friend here. His name was Donal. He liked the wind too. He was a bit older than me, he was ten.

A few weeks ago, when we were messing in the water, he told me he could swim home if he wanted to. I told him that was stupid, but he didn’t listen. He started swimming straight out. ‘Look, Chloë,’ he shouted, ‘I can swim to the sun.’ The sun was orange,
and halfway down in the water. He waved to me a few times, and I think I told him to come back in, but I can’t be sure. His head kept getting smaller and smaller. When it was really tiny, it went in and out of the water, disappearing and reappearing. Then I couldn’t see his arms any more, even though a few minutes before, he was waving them like mad. The sea ate him – gobbled him up whole. That’s what I told everyone. They didn’t say anything bad when I told them that the water had eaten Donal, but they looked at me all serious and I wanted to cry. I didn’t. I wish Donal was still here, but he’s gone, like the escalators and all the other stuff.

I found Mammy spaced out this morning. I knew she was spaced out because Donal’s mammy used to be spaced out too, and that was what he used to call it. Her eyes were all funny, and she did everything really slow. Donal’s mammy isn’t spaced out any more. She does a thing called meditation. Humming and closing her eyes and raising her arms up to the sky with her legs crossed. I don’t know why she isn’t spaced out any more and Mammy is. I asked Jessica why Mammy can’t do meditation instead of taking medicine, and she said everyone was different, and she needed her pills to get better. I don’t think Jessica is a doctor. If Mammy dies, I’ll never get home. Mammy uses a wheelchair now when she leaves the room. She doesn’t leave the room much, except for the meetings, or if she needs to talk to the camera. Sometimes Jessica lets me ride on the back of the wheelchair. Sometimes I slip, and my foot gets caught in the wheels, and I scream. Mammy doesn’t say anything, and Jessica keeps on pushing.

A new boy arrived with the woman called Sarah. He’s much older than Donal. I think he’s nice. He threw my Frisbee up so high it took ages to come back down. My neck hurt looking up at it in the sky. I nearly toppled over and he laughed. His laugh reminded me of Daddy’s. It sounded like a donkey. Mammy used to say Daddy laughed like an idiot, especially when he was curled up in a ball on the floor. She wasn’t really giving out about him. She was only messing. When I jumped on Daddy’s back, he would
laugh more, and Mammy would say there were two of us in it, a right pair. I miss Daddy laughing too. I miss Mammy saying stuff like that. I hope the boy stays for a while. He says he’s here on holidays, but other people said that, and they’re still here.

Saka calls me one of his island children. He says he knows the sea ate Donal, and that makes me feel better because he believes me. There are other children here too, but Saka says I am more special than any of the others. He says that when he whispers in my ears it’s the sea talking to me, not him. I don’t know how he knows that, but everyone says he knows lots of stuff.

Saka says that I don’t have to go to the meetings if I don’t want to, so I don’t. Some of the children go anyway. He says I’ll know when I’m ready, even though I don’t know what I need to be ready for. When I asked Jessica, she told me, ‘It’s about becoming grown-up,’ and if I’m a good girl, I won’t have to wait too long.

Sometimes I like to hide behind the big rock down at the water’s edge. The big rock is where Donal and I used to play. We called it that after we measured all the other rocks. We didn’t have a ruler, so he used my body instead. Donal had a purple marker, and I stood beside each rock while he measured me against it with one eye squinting closed, drawing an imaginary line from the top of the rock to me. When we worked out the biggest one, it got the name Big Rock. Sometimes, when the tide comes in, you can’t see all of it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there, or that it isn’t Big Rock any more.

Daddy used to say, ‘Your eyes don’t see everything.’ Now I know what he meant. Mammy used to say, ‘You need eyes in the back of your head,’ but I haven’t worked that out yet.

My granny died before we came to the island. Mammy said it was because she was sick. I got upset because I get sick sometimes and I didn’t want to die. Mammy told me not to worry, that really Granny died because of her age. I wish she had said that in the first place. Then she said Granny was in Heaven, but she doesn’t say that any more. All she says is that Granny is gone. Because I
am six that means I’m not old at all. I’ll live longer than anyone else on the island, and then I’ll be on my own, without people or escalators or Daddy or anything except the waves and the sea and the wind. I like the wind the best. It didn’t eat Donal.