Those We Left Behind (6 page)

DANIEL ROLSTON REWOUND
and watched it again.

The car nudging out of the gateway, the pressmen holding their cameras to the windows, the blue-white flashes, the shouting. The woman drove, her displeasure clear on her face. In the passenger seat, Ciaran Devine, holding his hood closed over his face. Hiding. The coward.

‘You can’t hide from me,’ Daniel said.

He felt foolish as soon as the words came out of his mouth. Foolish and weak. Talking to himself in the living room of the flat he shared with his girlfriend. They had moved in together six months ago, renting a one-bedroom in a repurposed linen mill near the city centre. The rent stretched their budget, but back then, it seemed the right thing to do.

Daniel had been angry for days. No, that wasn’t true. He’d been angry for years, and afraid. But the anger had been dormant for so long he’d grown so weary of it. And then he’d seen the newspaper, and the anger blossomed anew, like a tree bursting from the ashes of a forest fire.

All he’d ever wanted was for the brothers to tell the truth. Once the grief and rage at the destruction of his family had sunk into the background of his being, the remaining wound was the lie they’d told. He would never have believed a lie could hurt so much had he not lived in its shadow for so many years.

And to think, Ciaran had been a sort of, almost, friend. Just for a little while.

Daniel watched the car drive away from the photographers.

Then, an old image of the house he grew up in. The policemen coming and going.

He lifted the remote control and hit rewind again, watched the house disappear, the car reverse through the gates. He pressed play.

The woman. She’d been with Devine at the shopping centre. Who was she? Some relative? Or some official assigned to look after him?

He watched the car pull away from the men once more, smoke from the exhaust left in its wake. His thumb found itself on the pause button, froze the image of the vehicle’s tail. With his free hand, he lifted his notepad from the coffee table, compared the car’s registration, even though he knew it matched.

The creak of the door startled him. He dropped the notepad onto the couch, hoped Niamh did not see.

‘What are you watching?’ she asked, her words blunt with sleep. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

He had no answer for her.

She sat down beside him, ran her hand across his shoulders, down his back. ‘Come on to bed.’

‘In a while.’

Niamh rested her head on his shoulder, the fabric of her pyjamas rubbing against the polyester of his work shirt. His tie hung loose at his collar. They sat silent for a time.

‘What about now?’ she asked.

‘I’ve stuff to do,’ he said. ‘I haven’t done the dishes yet.’

‘Sure there’s hardly any to do. I can—’

‘I’ll do them,’ he said, his voice harder than he’d intended. He waited, wondering if she would return his anger, scowl at him and leave. The disappointment when she didn’t surprised and shamed him.

Instead, she said, ‘Go and do them now, then. Stop dwelling on this.’

Niamh pointed at the television. She knew exactly what he’d been watching, had texted to tell him it was on the news, that she had recorded it for him.

‘I’m not dwelling on anything.’

‘Where were you this evening?’

‘Out,’ he said.

‘Out where?’

‘I went to the cinema.’

‘What to see? I might’ve wanted to come too.’

‘You never want to see anything I want to see.’

‘Maybe this would’ve been an exception.’

Daniel hoped she would leave it at that, but she asked, ‘Did you go looking for that boy?’

He stared at the chipped surface of the coffee table, a blocky piece made from particleboard that they’d bought from Ikea.

She would not take his silence for an answer. ‘Did you?’

‘He’s not a boy,’ Daniel said, his voice crackling in his throat. ‘He’s a—’

‘You promised me,’ she said, more sorrow than anger in her tone. ‘Jesus, Daniel, you promised me you wouldn’t do it.’

‘I just wanted to—’

‘We can’t go on like this. You have to stop dwelling on it.’

‘I’m not dwelling on it.’

She reached for the remote control, still in the grasp of his right hand. ‘Then give me that.’

He whipped it away, pushed her with his left arm, rocking her against the armrest. Niamh stared at him for long seconds, her lips pinched tight, her nostrils flaring with each breath.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘Go fuck yourself.’

She said it with no passion, her voice flat and dead. She stood and left the room, closing the door behind her, the wood whispering in the frame. He felt the draught of it on his face, carrying her faded perfume with it.

Daniel pressed the stop button and the television returned to some late night panel game, second-rate comedians cracking jokes about the week’s news. He turned the volume down until they were mute, opening and closing their mouths like cattle chewing cud.

Ciaran Devine was out, like his brother two years before him. And there wasn’t a thing in the world Daniel could do about it. When the Probation Board had contacted him this time, he hadn’t even responded. It had done no good when Thomas Devine was up for release. He had emptied his heart to them, told them exactly what the brothers’ actions had cost him, but it made no difference. They had let him go anyway.

At the time, Thomas’s release hadn’t been much more than a ripple on the surface of Daniel’s life. He wasn’t happy about it, but what could he do? Nothing, he told himself, quite reasonably. He’d had no desire to track Thomas down, to confront him, to ask him why.

But then, weekend before last, Ciaran’s photograph on the front of the newspaper. Daniel had been in the newsagent’s, getting the papers when he saw the headline on one of the local weeklies.

He remembered shaking, dropping the newspapers he’d already selected. His bladder suddenly aching for release. He was a child again, that disorienting shock of the world shifting beneath his feet as his mother told him what had happened. All over again, the years between then and now compressing into nothing.

Why had Ciaran’s release hit him this way, and not Thomas’s? Daniel couldn’t explain it to Niamh, though he did try. She had hugged and comforted him as he tried to articulate it, but his thoughts got ground up in his anger until he could make no sense of them, let alone share them with someone else.

Nine months those boys spent in his parents’ house. His house. Except it was never really his house.

Something had gone wrong when Daniel was born, his mother had tried to explain it to him, something to do with her womb. He had almost died inside her. It left her unable to have more children. Whenever he tried to complain about another foster child coming to his home, to eat at his table, to share his toys, his mother reminded him that his birth meant he would have no brothers or sisters, so she wanted to care for the children that most needed it. As if their invading his family were a punishment for the ruin he’d left in her belly.

‘Not every child’s as lucky as you,’ she would say, and she would give him that cold stare. And he would try to embrace her, and she would shrug him off and tell him not to be fussing round her, he was a big boy now.

So he would be polite and smile as another boy or girl arrived. He would help him or her carry their bags to his or her room. Show them his PlayStation, his games, the garden, how to work the TV and the DVD player.

Each newcomer would stay anything from a few weeks to a year, but only ever one at a time.

Until the brothers came.

Daniel had turned fourteen a few weeks earlier. He had more than two years on Ciaran, but only six months on Thomas. And Thomas was taller, with hard hands. It wasn’t so bad when the foster kids were smaller. They would stay out of his things and out of his way. But not the bigger kids. They came from the rough areas, knew how to fight, didn’t cry when they got hurt. They knew Daniel for a weakling the moment they saw him, and they knew everything that was his was now theirs.

‘Don’t be selfish,’ his mother would say. ‘Look at all the things you have. Learn how to share.’

But there was no sharing. Not with the older kids. There was only taking.

Thomas had made Daniel’s position clear two days after arriving. Daniel had found him in the kitchen, taking a biscuit.

‘You’re supposed to ask,’ Daniel had said. He lingered in the doorway, feeling his own kitchen had become their territory, and he an intruder.

Thomas and Ciaran had been respectful and polite since they’d taken the spare bedroom. Especially Ciaran, who stuck by his brother’s side like a ghost that haunted the living. He had sat there at the table, eating the biscuit his brother had taken, staring at Daniel. Smaller than Thomas, but stringy thin like him. Always watchful, as if he was merely a spectator in this world.

Thomas didn’t answer. Pimples scattered across his face, a dark and bitter smell about him.

‘You’re supposed to ask,’ Daniel said again, firmer, meaning his authority to be noted.

Ciaran’s gaze moved back and forth between them both.

‘Who am I supposed to ask?’ Thomas said.

‘Mum or Dad,’ Daniel said. ‘You can’t just take stuff.’

‘Your ma and da aren’t here,’ Thomas said. He finished the biscuit, wiped his hands on his T-shirt, and opened the fridge.

‘Mum’s just gone to the shop. She’ll only be a minute.’

Thomas took a sealed packet of sliced ham from the fridge and set about opening it.

‘That’s for our lunch,’ Daniel said.

Thomas took a slice, shoved it in his mouth, made slapping noises as he chewed.

Daniel went to the fridge and closed it. ‘You can’t just take stuff.’

Thomas held the packet out to Ciaran. The younger brother took a slice, folded it, and nibbled at the corners. Like he wasn’t really hungry and only ate because he was told to. Thomas showed Daniel the packet.

‘You want some?’

‘No. You can’t just take stuff without asking. I won’t tell Mum this time. She might not notice. But if you do it again, I’ll—’

When he thought about it later, Daniel couldn’t remember Thomas moving across the room towards him. Only that he had been by the table, the packet of ham in one hand, then that same hand had been at Daniel’s throat, squeezing it tight. Thomas kicked at Daniel’s heels, took his legs from under him.

The tiled floor slammed into his shoulders, cracked against the back of his skull. Black circles danced across his vision, a galaxy of dark stars. Thomas grinning through them, his weight on Daniel’s chest.

Ciaran stood over them both, his face without expression. Not amusement, not anger, not fear. A blankness that still woke Daniel in the night.

Thomas reached out his hand, the one that didn’t have a hold of Daniel’s throat. He felt around for something that Daniel couldn’t see. Daniel heard plastic slide on tile, and something wet. Thomas’s hand came back, a slice of ham in his fingers, retrieved from the floor where he’d dropped it. Daniel saw hair and grit clinging to the pink flesh.

‘You sure you don’t want some?’

Daniel shook his head.

‘Ah, go on,’ Thomas said.

Daniel croaked out the word, ‘No.’

‘Ah, go on.’ Thomas grinned. ‘Ah, go on, go on, go on, go on . . .’

He repeated the words over and over, like that housekeeper from the old comedy programme Daniel’s parents loved.

Daniel opened his mouth to shout something, leave me alone, get off, something, his mind hadn’t formed the words yet, but Thomas’s fingers rammed between his teeth, along with the ham and the hair and the grit. He gagged as the saltiness cloyed at the back of his throat, felt the hardness of the fingers on his tongue. Through no will of his own, his body bucked, throwing his hips from side to side, but Thomas stayed on him, laughing.

Daniel didn’t know how long had passed, how much he had endured, before the idea entered his head to close his teeth together. He hesitated, doubting his desire to do this boy harm in spite of the torment. Then he tightened his jaw. He felt the flesh and the bones through his teeth. Thomas’s grin widened, his eyes flashing. He did not pull his hand away.

‘Do it,’ Thomas said. ‘Bite harder.’

A scream trapped in the back of his throat, Daniel increased the pressure.

‘Bite them off,’ Thomas said. ‘I dare you.’

The fingers writhed, the nails scratching his tongue, the insides of his cheeks, the soft floor of his mouth.

No air. Not a breath in the world. Pressure behind his eyes. Fear came in like a torrent of water. Panic, wild and thrashing in his heart. The roaring in his ears drowning out Thomas’s laughter.

He felt the heat then, spreading between his legs. And with it, almost instantly, the burning shame. He stopped resisting. His defeat total, his humiliation complete, he let his body go limp.

The fingers withdrew from his mouth, and he coughed up torn meat and bile. Thomas’s weight left his chest. He gasped air, coughed it out again, gasped, coughed, tears streaming from his eyes.

When he had recovered enough to breathe without hacking, to open his eyes and see through the tears, he realised Thomas and Ciaran had gone. Probably up to their room. The urine had started to chill. He pulled himself up to a sitting position and battled himself under control.

By the time his mother came home, he had changed his trousers, cleaned his face, and had mopped up most of the liquid. He had poured bleach on the floor to cover the smell.

His mother asked what had happened as she put the shopping bags on the counter.

‘I spilled a can of Coke,’ he said, his shame real, even if the words were a lie.

‘Who said you could take a Coke?’ she asked.

‘No one,’ he said. ‘I just took it.’

‘Well,’ she said, looking down at the wet floor, streaked by the mop. ‘Serves you right for stealing. You know you’re not to take things without asking. You might think it’s only a can of Coke, but next thing you know, it’ll be money. Or worse. And what’d you use bleach for? Sure, water would’ve done.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, his head down, his voice small in his throat. ‘I wanted to make it clean.’