The Girl From Yesterday (28 page)

‘I might,’ I said. ‘How many are we talking about?’

‘Maybe twelve – maybe more. I’m not a hundred per cent certain as yet.’

‘I’m still not going to cut my hair,’ I said.

‘I know that,’ he said, and I thought I saw just the touch of a smile.

‘Let’s talk when you have all the information,’ I said.

‘Let’s do that. See you soon.’

And I left him to his ruminations.

* * *

The beach that summer night was calm and cool. Millie ran her concentric circles for a while, sniffed about for a time, then lay down beside me, panting heavily. I watched the waves coming in: steady, interminable, relentless. Behind me across the fields and trees, occupied now by badgers and foxes and a colony of long-eared bats, sat the ancient Blaney house with its dust and its madness and its shadows. I wondered if anyone would ever live there again, or if Gerry would eventually have it demolished. Maybe he would allow the land to go to seed, and the very countryside itself would reclaim the house.

I felt someone sit down on the other side of Millie, looked over, and there was Lonnie Whitmore.

‘Where have you been?’ I asked. ‘There’s been a lot of stuff going down, you know. Might have been nice to have you around for a little backup.’

‘You don’t need me around anymore, and you know it,’ Lonnie said, his hand resting on Millie’s flank. ‘I’m not sure you ever did to begin with.’

‘You know I did,’ I said, looking at him. ‘You were my best friend. That’s no small thing for me to say, Lonnie.’

‘I’ll always be your friend,’ he said. ‘Death doesn’t change that.’

‘No?’

‘No. We are the things we have done. We are the difference we made. We are the impact we had on the lives of people around us. You changed me, Shane. Made me better. That doesn’t stop.’

‘I think we made one another better,’ I said.

He sat, mostly in shadow – I could just see his thick, untidy hair and his heavy brow.

‘You going to stay in Garshaigh?’ he asked.

‘I think so. I’ll give it another year, anyway. I can’t leave the Blaney kids, and I like the newspaper and the classes. I think some of the locals are even starting to accept me.’

‘People want to accept you, you know,’ he said. ‘You need to learn to let them. Start seeing the world with optimism. Hope. There’s enough darkness in it. Let yours go.’

‘I will,’ I said. Then: ‘I miss you.’

‘I know. Thank you for missing me. But I have to go.’

‘I know that.’

He stood up. Millie stirred, standing up, shaking herself. He stroked her head.

‘Goodbye, dog,’ he said, and began to walk towards the ocean.

Millie whined and went to follow him.

‘Stay,’ he said, holding his hand out in warning.

Whimpering, she complied.

Lonnie turned back to me one last time.

‘Be happy,’ he said and, saluting us both, walked down the beach to the eddying sea, leaving no tracks as he passed. Before he reached the water he was gone.

I held Millie and sobbed inconsolably. The greyhound lay against me, and as my crying eased she licked my tears away.

‘He loved you, you know,’ I said. ‘And I know you loved him.’

She watched me as if she understood every word I said.

He loved us both.

I got home around midnight. I reached for the whiskey bottle but then changed my mind. I made some tea and, with my dog snuggled against me, watched Tom Selleck as
Magnum PI
, racing around Hawaii in a bright red Ferrari.

It was a funny episode. I laughed. I think Millie did too.

I slept the night through, and awoke to find the following day beautiful and sunny.

‘Hi,’ the girl said.

‘Hey.’

‘I rubbed the lamp.’

‘Did you? Did the genie come out?’

‘Not right away, but I made the wish anyway.’

‘Did it work?’

She sat on the couch in her new home, wearing a bright blue dress. Her hair, much shorter now, was clean and smelt of peaches. The bald patches were scarcely noticeable, and it was the first time I had ever seen her wearing shoes.

‘I didn’t think it did, at first,’ she said.

‘At first?’

‘Yeah. The men came and took me. I ran to the hideout we made, but they found me there and took me. And then I was in the hospital, and that was rotten. But then they brought us to this house, and it’s clean and beautiful, and Shona comes to see us every day to make sure Mam feeds us. And look!’

She picked up a remote control and hit a button and a television in the corner blazed into life. To my delight the girl burst into excited laughter.

‘We have a telly!’ she squealed, unable to contain her joy. ‘Just like you said we would!’

‘So maybe you were right about the genie,’ I said. ‘Looks like you got everything you wished for, doesn’t it?’

‘You know what the biggest part of my wish was?’

‘What?’

‘That I wouldn’t be afraid no more.’

‘How’s that bit going?’

‘Goin’ pretty good.’

‘I’m glad, Emma.’

We sat in the strange, shiny new living room for a while, grinning at one another.

‘So what do you want to do then,’ I asked. ‘We can watch some TV, listen to some music, play your brand spanking new Xbox . . .’

Emma laughed nervously.

‘Know what I’d like to do?’

‘What?’

‘I’d like to play Cloud Shapes.’

For some reason, I felt tears come to my eyes at that.

‘I’d like that too,’ I said.

We went out into the sunshine.

As we lay watching the sky I remembered her earlier comment: ‘You said the genie didn’t come right away?’

‘No. I din’ see him until they was carryin’ me off.’

‘But you saw him then?’

‘One of de men had me over his shoulder so I was lookin’ back, away from him. I seen a little man, dressed all in mad colours. He had sticky-up hair and a thick forehead. He was standin’ in the door to our hideout and he was smilin’ at me and he said to me that I had my wish, and not to be afraid. It would be all right. And you know what?’

‘What?’ I said, feeling the words catch in my throat.

‘I knew he was tellin’ me the truth.’

She fumbled about and found my hand and held it.

And we lay and watched clouds until the sun set.

The Girl from Yesterday
is a book that in many ways wrote itself. It revealed its mysteries to me a piece at a time as I wrote it at breakneck speed the week I celebrated my fortieth birthday. This might sound strange for a book that sits in the non-fiction section of your bookstore or library, but in actuality the layers of this complex story were not clear to me when I started writing – I
thought
I knew what had happened, but discovered as I returned to Garshaigh and its wild, ancient countryside that I didn’t know the half of it. Writing can be a cathartic experience, but it can also be a revelatory one. The truth is (and I have really tried to portray plainly that I was a bystander in many elements of the Blaney case – an observer, really) that the motivations of many of the players are still a mystery to me, even now. I hope you get something from trying to pick apart the mixed, muddled and in some parts ridiculous aspects of it all. It was certainly fun sifting through the murk again, with the benefit of hindsight.

It was fun, but it was painful, too.

I had never been involved in a child protection case as an observer before, as someone with no authority and no real capacity to affect what happened. I was lucky to end up working with Sid Doran, who was, I believe, much more courteous to me than I would have been to him in similar circumstances. I am, occasionally, accused of arrogance and having a hero complex in book reviews and general conversation, but a surefire way of knocking those two flaws out of your personality is to find yourself in the child protection system as a member of the public. It can be a real leveller. My experience with Sid taught me that there are many people who deserve care in any interaction between a family and the system, not just the children and the workers themselves. For that lesson, I am eternally grateful.

Emma, Dom, Winnie and Jim are doing well now. They courageously set about the difficult task of learning to be a family, along with their mother Dora, despite the horrors of their lives up to that point. I can attest to the fact that they had a wonderful family support worker in Shona Grant, and she helped them through a lot of tears, much doubt and several occasions when it looked as if the whole thing would come crashing down about them. All the children struggled at school, but again, with the patience of some talented teachers and a willingness to go that extra mile, they are making headway.

I will freely admit that I harboured a lot of resentment to Nathalie Lassiter for her shock turnabout, and I can also attest that, when I have run into her in the years since, I have nodded a hello and kept going. Yet I do understand why she decided to throw her lot in with Gerry Blaney, and why she signed that petition that had such a devastating impact on our attempt to remove the children from harm. I even think that, somewhere in her head, she thought she was doing the right thing. God knows, I was going through a lot of doubt myself at that stage of my life, wondering if I had any right to do some of the things I had done in the name of child protection in the past. Family is such a sacred thing, and anything that interferes with that has to be looked at gravely. I think that Nathalie was certainly put under pressure by Gerry and his cronies, but I also think she examined her own conscience and came to believe that perhaps such an invasive approach might not be the right path to take.

I cannot blame her for that.

Emma, who is at the centre of this story, and through whose eyes we see much of what is going on, is one of those children who touched my heart deeply. There is about her something so incredibly gentle, yet profoundly strong, so wilful yet unbelievably sensitive. She is a child with an old soul, I think. She will be an adult to be reckoned with.

Tom Blaney never came out of the psychiatric hospital. Dora visits him. His children choose not to do so.

Gladys Pointer is one of the best students I have ever taught. Despite her difficulties she went on to graduate with Distinction from her FETAC Level 5, and went on to further studies. She now runs a large community childcare centre near Garshaigh and is a gifted childcare worker. She and I keep in touch, and it is always a pleasure to hear her irreverent take on life and her stories about the ups and downs of working in the huge crèche she runs – I often envy her the work she does; it sounds like such fun!

The truth of Gladys’s story is that education, which is, I believe, the birthright of every single person, can be a deeply distressing experience if you are not lucky enough to be ‘average’. Gladys’s difficulties were not even that extreme or unusual – a little help would have been enough to get her through her school exams with flying colours. Yet somewhere along the line a callous teacher said some cruel things, and a young girl who was actually very bright was left believing that she was stupid and worthless. It angers me that, in this day and age, children are still being subjected to this sort of Dickensian treatment. This is, I feel, utterly criminal. I am delighted that Gladys was able to rise above such small-mindedness and reach her true potential.

George Taylor is one of those men who somehow fits the stereotype (look up the words
principal
or
headmaster
in the dictionary, and you may well find a picture of George), yet he also surpasses it in almost every way. He is a man of supreme intelligence, incredible loyalty and a great sense of humour. I remain grateful for the chances he gave me. I know beyond any doubt that had those thugs decided, as Mr Taylor put it, to
throw down fisticuffs
, he would have responded in kind. In his world, if a member of his staff is threatened, his job is to stand side by side with them, come what may. If I ever find myself in a pub brawl, George Taylor is certainly someone I would like to have on my side.

I toyed with the idea of not telling the story of Jeff McKinney in this book, even though it was certainly a part of what happened. I felt certain that many readers would feel I was picking on someone with a disability. And
that
is the reason I finally decided to put it in here: you see, the fact that Jeff McKinney was in a wheelchair is inconsequential. The truth is that he was a predator – he worked his way into the lives of vulnerable young women and he then abused their trust. His disability is simply a facet of his physical description – it did not
cause
him to do the things he did.

George Taylor, for all his integrity, could not find it in his heart to fire Jeff, although he did confront him. Jessie and Carla could not go to the police because they felt sorry for him. The manageress of the hotel who had taken him in could not evict him, despite his antisocial behaviour. All felt trapped by the fact that, as a person with a disability, he deserved our charity and our pity. In truth, well-meaning as they were, they were doing him no favours.

And even as I write this, I feel honour bound to tell you, dear reader, that even after Jeff turned his attentions on me I failed to go to the police about it, for much the same reason. It was only after months of harassment (and being urged to sort the matter out by someone far more sensible than me) that I changed my number and handed the texts over to the police.

Sometimes it’s not easy to practise what you preach.

Robert Chaplin has not, as of yet, published his book on the Blaneys. Robert tells me that Gerry is continuing to keep things interesting around Garshaigh, wheeling and dealing and generally getting up to all kinds of mischief. Gerry is also a regular visitor to Dora and the children, and seems to have developed a fondness for them all. In some ways, I suppose, that is a happy ending.

Midden Development’s plans to build a shopping complex on the Blaney land never materialized. The legal machinations dragged on for several years, but finally the company threw their collective hands in the air, and were never heard from in the area again. At the time of writing, someone has begun grazing cattle on those wild fields again. I’d give a penny to a pound those cattle belong to Gerry.