Surviving Michael (25 page)

Danny looks at Nick, and then Charlie and then at me, but I haven’t a fuckin’ clue what they’re talkin’ about.

‘You don’t have to go back,’ Charlie tells Danny.

‘I’m sorry,’ Danny says and then walks off.

‘Look,’ Charlie calls after him, ‘you didn’t kill the father.’

Danny stops and turns back around.

‘Are you crazy?’ he shouts, ‘I saw the nail in his head. I saw the cops at Nick’s place. He's dead, Charlie.’

‘No, I mean...’ Charlie says, but Nick interrupts him.

‘Charlie, don’t,’ Nick says again, but he ignores him.

‘I mean to say,’ Charlie continues. ‘I mean he wasn’t the father.’

Danny’s head jerks back as if he’s been slapped.

‘You know who the father is?’ Danny asks. ‘You knew who he was? You knew, Charlie? And you didn’t say anything?’

Danny’s face turns red, and he takes a few quick steps towards Charlie and then pushes him hard against the rail.

‘What the fuck, Charlie. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I couldn’t tell you,’ Charlie says. ‘I tried to. Honestly, I did. I tried to.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ Danny screams at him. ‘Why?’

‘Because,’ Charlie almost whispers. ‘Because it’s me.’

Danny takes a few steps back as if Charlie’s just punched him.

‘Jesus, I’m so sorry Danny. I wanted to tell you. Honestly I did, but I just couldn’t. I’m so sorry, Danny. I’m so sorry.’

For a few seconds, I think Danny is about to faint. His head rolls backwards as if he’s searchin’ for somethin’ in the sky.

‘We were going to tell you. Ruby and me, I mean,’ Charlie says to him. ‘I wanted to tell you but Ruby said to wait. Jesus, it was only one time, Danny I swear. We were both pissed out of our minds.’

Danny’s head straightens, but he walks as if in a daze. As if he’s just been given a knockout punch. He grabs the rail of the ship and looks out at the bay and the sea.

‘She loves you, Danny,’ Charlie tells him. ‘She’s crazy about you. You could raise the kid as your own. I told her that. You still can.’

Nick doesn’t look as shocked by the news, so I’m guessin’ he already knew. Charlie continues to plead with him, but Danny remains motionless.

‘I’m so sorry, Danny,’ he says. ‘We can make this right again, I promise. I know what you’re going through. I know how you feel for what happened to Ricky. I'm the one who pushed Mike, remember? And I’m the one who stopped Nick from trying to save him. It was all on me. Always has been. I know exactly how you're feeling. I live with that feeling every fucking day and it’s shit. My life is so fucked up and I don't want you to have to go through that as well. Please, Danny. Please forgive me. Please.’

Danny continues to stare down at the sea, but he doesn’t move. Almost like a statue. None of us move. I can’t tell if he’s goin’ to turn around and beat Charlie to a pulp, or just collapse onto the deck.

‘Fuck,’ Nick calls out.

I run over to him. Looking down at the harbour, I see a barrage of Garda cars and uniformed guards and detectives runnin’ towards the ferry.

‘Oh, shit,’ I say. ‘What do we do?’

Charlie looks over at us, and Nick merely shrugs. He doesn’t come over to us. Instead, he stays talkin’ to Danny.

‘Come on, Danny. We’ll all go back now.’ He reaches out and touches Danny on the shoulder. ‘It’s all over now,’ Charlie tells him.

Danny raises his head, and looks out over Dublin Bay.

‘It’s all over now,’ Danny repeats.

He turns around to face Charlie. His red eyes stare into him. His face goes into a rage and Charlie shuts his eyes and winces as if expectin’ a punch.

Then, it’s almost like what my eyes are seein’ is a lie and my brain refuses to accept it. In one fluid movement, Danny spins around on his heels, grabs the railing and jumps over it, legs first into the sea. One second he’s there. The next he’s gone.

I feel as if the ship suddenly dropped twenty feet, and my stomach goes into my throat. I stand frozen to the spot.

Charlie, not having heard, felt or seen anything opens his eyes. Not seein’ Danny, he looks all around him and over at us. Nick is chargin’ over to him.

I break out of my daze and run to where Danny was standin’ just a few moments ago.

All three of us look over the side but see nothin’. Not even a splash.

‘No,’ Charlie screams down into the water, pullin’ at the rail with both his hands as if locked in a cage. He takes the gym bag off his shoulders and balances it on the rail, then pulls off his shoes.

‘What are you doing?’ Nick asks him.

‘We have to try to save him,’ Charlie says.

‘You’re mad,’ Nick pleads with him, ‘you'll get caught up in the currents.’

‘Yeah, well maybe I deserve to,’ Charlie says and stands up on the rail.

‘Gardaí,’ someone screams behind us. ‘Nobody move.’

Charlie looks over as more guards make their way onto the deck.

‘Hands in the air,’ a detective calls out, pointin’ a gun at us.

We all raise our hands, including Charlie. He looks down at us and we look up at him.

‘Fuck it,’ he says, and with his arms still raised, dives off the side.

We watch his body fall down the side of the ship and then disappear under the water.

EVERYTHING IN MY mind seems to fall apart and unravel. I feel dazed. My head is spinning. I can hear the guards shouting at me, and I try to focus, but my head feels so light. I grab the rail to steady myself, but my hand grabs the gym bag full of the money instead and knocks it over the side.

I almost fall after it but a hand grabs me as I watch the bag fall into the water and then vanish below the surface. Liam pulls me back and steadies me to my feet.

‘Hands in the air now.’

They must have been yelling at us for half a minute or so, because I finally gain my composure and see two guards charging at us. They dive as if they’re performing a rugby tackle. Of course, I crash to the ground with the guard on top of me.

When the other guard hits Liam, he hits him head on, and Liam barely even notices as the guard collapses at his feet unconscious, like a bird falling to the ground after smashing into a window.

When I raise my head to look up at Liam, he’s looking down at the guard. Then I see the detective, and I’m almost sure it’s the one from the car chasing us, raise his Taser gun at Liam and fire.

The Taser races across the deck with its thin electrical lead trailing behind it. Unfortunately, for him anyway, he’s too far away to have fired because the electrical points of the Taser fall short of hitting Liam, and land on the Garda at his feet.

Well, I’ve never seen any unconscious man come to life so quickly. The poor Garda jumps up and down on the deck as if having an epileptic fit.

‘Turn it off. Turn it off,’ one of the detectives calls out.

Two other detectives race towards Liam with their guns raised.

‘Get down,’ they yell, but keep their distance, as if it was Liam’s fault that the Garda is unconscious at his feet.

Liam obeys and they handcuff him. Then they pull me up and onto my feet and they handcuff me as well.

Back in the harbour they put us in separate cars. As we drive away. I watch the surface of the sea, hoping to see some trace of Charlie or Danny.

I pass the car that has Liam in it, and I can see he’s doing the same.

July 5, Friday, 3pm.

MY DAD ONCE told me that the two best decisions he ever made in his life were giving up cigarettes and marrying my mother; and that the two things he missed most in life were smoking and being single.

I didn’t realise what he meant at the time, but I think I do now. He was trying to tell me, or possibly warn me, that I was living my life with one foot on either side of the fence. I was always thinking the road was smoother on a different path than the path I was taking, and because of that I was missing out on what was right in front of me.

For the first three months in Mountjoy Prison I cried every night, but not because I was in prison. You don’t need four walls and a locked door to be in prison. Some men I’ve met in here are freer than I ever was outside. I led a life that was walled by fears, and by the lies those fears told me.

I cried for Aoife. I cried for Danny. For Charlie.  For Michael. I cried for all the messed up opportunities and all the wasted time, and it took them taking everything away from me, including my time, for it all to finally make sense to me.

I miss Aoife every day. I always did. But the difference now is that longing and that pain is a part of me, not something I’m trying to hide and bury all the time. A scar, like any physical scar. It’s surprising how much energy is required in denying to yourself and to everyone else that those scars don’t exist.

My final sentence was reduced to five years, but my lawyer said I should be out after three. That’s only two more. The time goes by pretty fast in here. One day bleeds into another, and if you don’t spend all your time watching the days, soon another month is gone.

I’m seeing a therapist, Sandra Kennedy, once a week, and she’s nice. Sometimes I barely say anything and other times she can’t shut me up. Either way, I always feel good after our sessions. I tell her about when I was a kid. When we all were. Carefree summer afternoons drinking by a lake. I wonder if the boy then, if he could see me now, would he be happy with the man he’d become. Most likely not. But I’m trying to be that man.

She also recommended me taking up some exercise, so I go to the gym quite often. That’s usually where I bump into Liam. He lives in there these days. Surprisingly, he’s taken to the training and has already lost a load of weight. The crap food in here helps as well. Nobody will recognise him by the time we get out. Maybe that’s his plan. He’s still an idiot though.

He’s even started reading quite a bit, now that his life isn’t filled by porn. I see him sometimes sitting on his own with his head in a book. Although it’s usually something by Dan Brown or Dick Francis. But like I said, he’s still an idiot.

After we’d been arrested, he got a text from the girl he’d met in the nightclub. Before they took his phone away, he texted her back telling her what happened. About two weeks later, a letter arrived from her asking if she could come visit him. She now comes to see him every Sunday afternoon. Last month he told me he was trying to arrange a ’congenital’ visit. It takes all sorts, I suppose.

My parents visit quite often. It’s easier to talk to them in the visiting room than it was to talk to them in their sitting room. I dreaded them coming in at first, but now I look forward to seeing them. I think they enjoy our visits too. At least I hope they do.

They allowed us to attend Charlie’s funeral. Secretly, I was hoping they wouldn’t, but now I’m glad they did. Christ that was a hard day. Ruby’s bump was starting to show by the time he was buried. They never found Danny, and they never found the money either. Both washed out to sea, the papers said. The experts advised that it would take an Olympic swimmer’s strength to beat the currents. Besides, Danny had a disability, they said. So they stopped looking after a few days.

Ruby made eye contact with me over the graveside, but I didn’t have the strength to look at her for too long. That was the last time I saw her.

At least, until two weeks ago when I got a letter from her. She even sent me a picture of her holding her baby boy. She called him Max. He has a head of thick blond hair, and has to be the best looking baby I’ve ever seen. She moved back to California. She said the photo was taken in her apartment, and if that’s true then she’s living in one very nice apartment. I can see the beach not too far from her back door. I can see palm trees touching the surface of the water. I can see the setting sun and the red sky illuminating her tanned face.

She invited me to come over to her when I get out. She even invited Liam. She wrote that she has loads of room and that ‘everything will be taken care of’.

It was Liam who noticed it first. I was so focused on the beach, I never even spotted it. She’s holding the baby up to the camera with her left hand, and she’s wearing a gold wedding ring. I can’t be sure, but it’s a very large and old wedding ring that she’s wearing. And in a way, it’s almost like she’s showing off the ring, and not the baby.

Liam says he’s sure he knows where that ring came from, but I’m going to wait till I get out of here and enjoy dwelling in the hope that it is what we think it is.

I remember in the interrogation room after we’d been caught, I never denied anything we’d done. I told the two detectives the whole story and in fairness to them they’d listened to me for hours. The younger detective, Tom, was a bit of a prick and had to be restrained after he found out it had been us who’d stolen his unmarked car.

Finally, the older guy, Doyle, got up and rubbed his hands over his face and said it was up to a judge and jury now to decide our fate.

‘Such a waste of your lives,’ he had said.

I agreed with him. Especially, as I told him, that fifteen years ago lying in the grass on a sunny day, we had had such high hopes.

‘That’s irrelevant now, Nick,’ he said.

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I said to him before he left, ‘but in the grand scale of things, in the big fucking picture; it’s all irrelevant. Irrelevant moments, one after the other. Story by story, day by day, hour by hour. Each moment as infinitesimally unique, pointless and beautiful as the next.’

I try to convince myself that I’ll go and live in California when I get out of here, but I know I won’t. I have to believe that I have another chance, that there’s always hope, and that I can face and beat my demons here at home. Somewhere out of the rubble of my being, I will salvage and build a worthwhile life.

A life worthy for having survived Aoife and Charlie, and for surviving Michael.

THE END

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my wife, Eileen, for her constant support, and for allowing me the freedom to sneak away for an hour or two every day to write this book

Thanks to my friend, Jean Grainger, for her knowledge and constant encouragement in helping me to publish this book.