Those We Left Behind (22 page)

USING A TROWEL,
Ciaran makes a hole in the loose earth about the size of his fist. Emmet presses the root ball down and in, the flowers wavering as he compacts the soil around them. Ciaran has lost count of how many they’ve planted. Dozens and dozens.

The sun is out and warm on his back, and its light reflects off the petals. Orange and pink glares that linger in his vision.

‘You all right?’ Emmet asks.

Ciaran says, ‘Yeah,’ and digs another hole.

‘You weren’t chatty yesterday, but you’re even quieter today.’

Ciaran shrugs, keeps his eyes averted from Emmet’s.

‘Did you sleep last night? You look knackered.’

‘I’m okay,’ Ciaran says, his voice harder than he’d intended.

Emmet remains quiet for a while, but watchful. Then he asks, ‘Is it true what the others said about you?’

‘What others?’ Ciaran asks.

‘The boys in the van. They were talking about you on the way to pick you up.’

Ciaran lays the trowel on the earth. ‘What did they say?’

‘That you’re the kid who was all over the news years ago. The kid who killed his foster carer.’

Ciaran held Emmet’s stare. ‘That’s right.’

‘Jesus,’ Emmet says. ‘But you’re not like that any more. Are you?’

Ciaran does not reply. He picks up the trowel and starts digging again.

‘All right,’ Emmet says, ‘no need to get the arse with me. I’ll just keep my mouth shut.’

Ciaran has been distracted all morning. The day before, the digging had soothed his mind, flushed it out. Today it does not. Today Ciaran only thinks about her and how she left him in that cell and didn’t come back like she promised.

She promised she would take him to the seaside, back to the old house.

The promise was a lie.

Just like Thomas had always said. No one can be trusted. They are the deceivers, all of them. They will cheat Us and hurt Us always. If They are not Us then They are against Us.

Waves of anger keep creeping up on Ciaran, so fierce they make him shake. Earlier, he said he needed a toilet break. The foreman had looked him up and down as if he was a fly crushed against the wall, then told him to be quick. Ciaran had gone to the portable toilet and locked himself in. He had covered his mouth with his hands and screamed, felt the pressure build in his head until he thought his skull might crack open.

It was not only her betrayal, her abandoning him, that caused the anger: it was that piece of paper that said he couldn’t see Thomas. Now he feels alone and frightened.

Ciaran doesn’t know what else to do, so he works.

His back and shoulders are sore from digging, but he ignores the discomfort. He feels no relief when the foreman calls the lunch break. He remains crouched, keeps digging as Emmet stands.

‘You not coming?’ Emmet asks.

‘I’ve no lunch with me,’ Ciaran says.

‘I know. Have you any money?’

Ciaran puts his hand in his pocket, retrieves a few pounds in change.

‘There’s a shop down the way,’ Emmet says. ‘Go and get yourself something.’

Ciaran hesitates. He doesn’t like going to shops.

‘I told you, you’re not having any of mine.’

As Emmet walks away, Ciaran’s stomach growls. He gets to his feet and calls after Emmet. ‘Which way?’

Emmet stops and points to the street behind Ciaran. ‘Down there and turn right, I think.’

Ciaran nods a thank-you and slips the gloves from his hands. He walks in the direction Emmet pointed, past rows of houses built of beige brick. Small gardens, some neat and tidy, others overgrown and strewn with rubbish. A dog barks at him from a window. He turns right and keeps walking. After thirty yards or so he realises there’s no shop.

He stops, looks around, and walks back the way he came.

At the end of the street, he pauses to get his bearings. The site and his workmates should be to his left. He turns right, looking for a sign, a flash of colour amongst the dreary homes. The road curves first one way, and then the other. A minute or so has passed when he stops, looks around again, turning in a circle. The houses all look the same.

Ciaran realises he can’t remember which way he came. He’d lost track when he turned around. Fear rises in him. He doesn’t even know what this place is called, let alone where it is. No one around to help him. He can’t manage on his own. Thomas is right, Ciaran can’t do anything for himself.

He should run. But which way?

Ciaran’s breathing quickens, shallow gasps as his heart beats faster. He needs to run, get out of here. But which way? Thomas, which way do I go?

Thomas isn’t here. Just choose a direction. That’s all. Just choose.

Ciaran runs.

A jog at first, then faster. Fast as he can go. Legs and arms turning churning quickly-slickly. The scared driving him on.

As the road curves he stumbles off the footpath, between the parked cars, his boots slapping on the tarmac. His eyes are hot. Tears stream towards his temples, blown back by the breeze as he cuts through the air.

A car ahead, heading straight for Ciaran, but he doesn’t see it, not really, not until it’s close and he hears the tyres bite into the road as it slows.

Ciaran knows this car. As it stops just feet from him, he knows it, but he keeps running until his hands touch the bonnet. He stops there, breathless, feeling the engine’s rumble through the metal and paint.

Tears come now, free and uncontrolled, waves hot on his skin, salty on his lips.

The driver opens the door and gets out.

Comes around to the front.

Thomas takes Ciaran in his arms.

They have been driving for half an hour before Ciaran speaks.

‘What happened to your hand?’

Thomas flexes his fingers on the steering wheel. His left hand is wrapped in a handkerchief stained with red blotches. He has blood on his sleeve and trouser leg.

‘Nothing,’ Thomas says. ‘I got bitten, that’s all.’

‘By what?’

‘A dog. But it’s all right. Forget about it.’

‘We’re not supposed to see each other.’

‘Yeah,’ Thomas says. ‘That bitch gave me a letter too. Fucking bitch. I told you, didn’t I? Always the same. All of them.’

‘I should go back to work. Lunchtime’s only forty-five minutes.’

‘They can’t treat us like that,’ Thomas says. ‘We can’t let them keep us apart.’

‘I want to go back to work.’

‘I should be at work too. But I’m not. Why were you crying?’

‘I was lost.’

‘Well, you’re all right now. I found you.’

‘I want to go back.’

The seatbelt grips Ciaran’s chest as Thomas brakes. The car skids and stops.

‘We can’t go back,’ Thomas says. His hands shake until he grips the steering wheel tight enough to steady them. ‘It’s all fucked now. That probation officer and that cop made sure of it. Fucking bitches.’

Ciaran wants to tell him to stop calling them that. But Ciaran can’t tell Thomas anything.

‘Two years I waited for you,’ Thomas says. ‘Two years so we could be together. And I was good all that time. Now you’re out and they’re trying to break us up.’

Thomas leans forward until his forehead rests against the wheel. He wraps his arms around his head.

‘I’m not well,’ he says. ‘These things in my head. They’re making me sick. Making me stupid. Since you came out, I’m losing control. I was good for two years. Now you’re back, and I’m losing it. I’m not thinking right. I shouldn’t have gone to her house. I shouldn’t have done that.’

Ciaran is afraid to ask, but he asks anyway. ‘Done what?’

Thomas sits back. Closes his eyes as he breathes in and out. He shakes his head like he’s freeing himself from something.

‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘It’s all fucked now, anyway.’

‘It’s your fault,’ Ciaran says.

‘What?’

Ciaran regrets the words as they leave his tongue. He meant to only think it, not say it out loud.

‘What did you say?’ Thomas asks, a tremor in his voice.

‘Nothing.’ Ciaran stares straight ahead at the not-moving road.

Thomas’s right hand lashes out, striking Ciaran’s cheek. ‘What did you say?’

‘It didn’t have to be like this,’ Ciaran says. ‘But you made it like this. It’s your fault.’

Thomas sits very quiet and still for a time. His breathing the only sound in the car.

Eventually, he says, ‘Give me your arm.’

Ciaran shakes his head. ‘No.’

Thomas’s hand moves again, but he pulls it back, inhales. ‘Give me your arm. Now.’

‘No,’ Ciaran says.

Thomas grabs for Ciaran’s wrist, but Ciaran whips it out of his reach. He fumbles at the door handle as he undoes his seatbelt.

‘What are you doing?’ Thomas asks.

Ciaran opens the door and gets out. Ignores Thomas calling after him. As he walks along the road he hears the driver’s door open, feet scuffing the ground. A hand on his shoulder. He shakes it off and keeps walking.

‘Ciaran.’

He puts his head down, walks faster.

‘Ciaran, stop.’

The hand on his shoulder again. Ciaran swipes it away.

‘Stop, Ciaran. Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.’

Thomas passes Ciaran, turns to him, blocks his path.

Ciaran slaps his brother across the cheek. Hard.

Thomas rocks on his heels, stares back at Ciaran.

‘You did this,’ Ciaran says, the tears coming again, his palm stinging. ‘All of this. You did it.’

‘I did it all for you,’ Thomas says. ‘So we could be together. That bitch Flanagan had to go and—’

‘Don’t call her that,’ Ciaran says.

‘Why not? That’s what she is.’

‘Don’t,’ Ciaran says.

‘She’s a bitch.’ Hate twists Thomas’s face until Ciaran can barely recognise him. ‘Her and the probation woman. Both of them. Bitches. Just like Mum. They’re all the same.’

‘Don’t call Mum a bitch,’ Ciaran says.

‘But that’s what she was.’

Ciaran slaps him again. This time he leaves a glaring red mark beneath Thomas’s eye. Thomas blinks three times. Steadies himself.

‘She promised she’d come back for me,’ Ciaran says, fresh tears erupting.

‘Me too. But she went and killed herself with the drugs, so that was that.’

‘In the cell. She said she’d come back for me if I talked to her.’

Thomas takes a step back. ‘Flanagan?’

‘She said she’d come back. She said she’d take me to the seaside.’

Ciaran cries so hard it blinds him. He brings his hands to his face, hides behind them. Arms slip around him. The familiar embrace. Thomas’s lips at his ears.

‘They’ll always let you down,’ Thomas says.

‘But she promised.’

Thomas takes Ciaran’s hands away from his face, wipes the tears from Ciaran’s cheeks. ‘Do you want to go and see her?’ he asks, his voice very soft.

‘We can’t,’ Ciaran says.

Thomas pulls Ciaran close again. ‘Course we can. Remember I told you? I know where she lives. Do you want to go and see her? Do you? Do you want to do that?’

Ciaran lets his body go soft, sinks into his brother’s arms.

‘Yeah,’ he says.

CUNNINGHAM CURSED AS
she drove past her house, a Mini parked in her space.

Not that it was really her space, owning a house didn’t mean you owned the road in front of it too, but generally the neighbours in the terrace of small homes stuck to the principle of respecting everyone else’s few feet of tarmac.

‘Fuck it,’ she said, and pulled in three doors down. She didn’t know the people who lived in this house, but there was usually a red Mondeo parked outside. It wasn’t quite mid-afternoon, so they wouldn’t be back for a good three hours. Once the Mini moved, she would come out and shift her Nissan back to where it belonged.

She locked the car and walked back to her gate. As she opened it, she made the hundredth mental note to herself to paint over the rust. It clanked shut, and she awaited the usual clamour of barking from inside the house.

No barking.

Cunningham paused and listened. No, nothing.

Worry, quiet but insistent, in her gut. She walked to her door, rummaging in her bag for her key. Still no barking. No silhouette through the frosted glass, charging up, batting at the door with its paws.

As Cunningham opened the door, the worry grew from a whisper to a frightened voice inside her. ‘Angus,’ she called. ‘Angus?’

She pushed the door closed behind her, listening all the time. She stayed still and quiet, afraid to go any further into her own house.

A movement of cool air distracted her.

The clack-clack of the train on the Bangor line. Louder and clearer than it should be. The way it would sound if the sliding patio door leading from the kitchen to the yard lay open.

‘Shit,’ she said.

Cunningham walked along the hall, slow, one hand on the wall, until she reached the living room door. She saw the books first, scattered on the floor. Some of them with pages ripped out. And CDs, DVDs, the few photographs she kept, now behind the broken glass of their frames. She stepped across the threshold and saw the television lying face down where it had been tipped from its stand. A wet stain on the wall: the almost full wine glass she’d left on the coffee table last night.

Nothing stolen. Simply destruction for its own sake.

The shakes started then, wave upon wave. Feeling another breeze, she looked through to the kitchen, saw the patio door open, the lock twisted away from the frame. The tiled floor covered with broken glass and crockery.

‘Angus?’

Perhaps he had run away. The door was open, he could have fled. But the gate beyond remained closed. Whoever had broken in and done this had scaled the back wall.

‘Oh God, Angus.’

Upstairs, under her bed. That’s where he always went when he was scared. Thunder, fireworks, her own angry outbursts. He always took refuge under the bed.

Cunningham returned to the hall and went to the bottom of the stairs. She called the dog’s name once more, listened, then climbed towards the silence.

At the top, the bathroom door opened onto the same devastation. The mirror over the hand basin had been shattered. All of her small and personal things strewn and poured across the floor, puddles of shampoo and shower gel, tampons and cotton wool balls mired in them.

Cunningham allowed herself only a moment to take it in before moving to her bedroom. There, on the sill between the carpeted landing and the laminate wood floor of her room, she took one sharp breath.

Amongst the ruin, the scattered clothes, the torn sheets and exploded pillows, a pool of deep red spreading from beneath the bed.

‘Oh no,’ she said.

Cunningham stepped into the room, picked her way through the debris. She saw the thick-shafted screwdriver, its blade speckled with red. Her hand went to her mouth, her vision blurred by tears.

‘Oh Jesus no,’ she said and took small, slow steps to the bedside.

From beneath the bed, a bubbling exhalation ending in a high whine.

Cunningham dropped to her hands and knees, ignored the splashing of the blood, peered underneath. There, in the shadow, Angus lying on his side, his chest rising and falling with each shallow breath, his tongue lolling in pinkish-red sputum.

She reached under, scrabbling for him, got hold of his legs and pulled. Another whine at the pain it caused him. She gathered him in her arms, her feet slipping on the blood as she fought to get herself upright.

‘It’s all right,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘You’re going to be all right.’

Cunningham didn’t care about the open patio door as she ran to her car, the dog’s blood soaking her clothes.