Ru’s throat seized up. “I love you too.”
He pushed his phone back in his pocket. It had shocked Ru how hard he’d found it to tell Ink that he loved him. He’d been made to say it to his uncle and aunt when he’d been younger and the words had come to mean nothing to him.
So when are you going to get moving?
Sometimes Ru thought the voice in his head wasn’t really his, but an actual person standing next to him. The invisible friend who’d come and gone since he’d lost his brother.
How are you solving anything by standing here?
Ru took a deep breath and began walking.
Fifteen minutes later he was on the bus to Wicklow. When he’d last been in Ireland, he’d driven his uncle’s Land Rover from the farm to Dublin, with no driving licence or insurance. Though he’d driven machinery on the farm, he’d had to steady his nerves before he could risk pulling onto a main road.
A chance sighting of a magazine in Dublin had told him his brother, who Ru had believed dead, was still alive and Ru’s heart had somersaulted in his chest, over and over and over. He still remembered that feeling of intense joy, a sensation so strong that the world had stopped for a moment and his heart had felt as if it were going to explode. Immediately followed by such a profound horror when he read that Ink had spent so long in prison. Two extremes of emotion that had left him helpless for a while.
After Ru had contacted the magazine’s publisher, his world had lurched onto another path. One he’d been dragged along by Vicki, and it was a path he now almost regretted taking. But what was done, was done. Once he’d sorted out a passport—pretending to be his cousin, the person he’d denied he was for the last twelve years, and armed with a ticket booked for him by Vicki, he’d dumped the Land Rover in the long stay car park at Dublin airport. When he reached Liverpool, he’d been met by her, and he’d told the English police everything. At least that had been the right thing to do, but it hadn’t made the Garda very happy. They should have been told first.
Ru still had no driving licence, so until he did, he was reliant on public transport or cabs. Until he had a job, he had to be careful about how much he spent. Most of the money he had, wasn’t even his. He’d searched the farm before he left and found just over seven thousand euros hidden in various places.The Sunday Timeshad paid him three thousand pounds for his story and though he didn’t like carrying all his money around with him, he had brought a chunk of it with him. The rest was hidden at his parents’.
Planning for the future seemed impossible until he was sure his past was behind him. Even so, he was scared that his dream of being an equine vet would remain a dream. When he was being sensible, he knew it wasn’t going to happen. He’d not been to school since he was eight. His aunt had taught him basic maths and English, and books had been ordered for him to teach himself. Boredom had been an effective motivator. He’d learned about animals from his uncle, particularly horses, but on paper he was uneducated. He had no qualifications, insufficient money to support himself for long and no home. He didn’t want to live with his parents. Ink was due compensation for wrongful imprisonment and had offered to help him, but Ru wanted to stand on his own two feet, shaky as they were.
It’s not wrong to ask for help.
His head was in such a mess, he could barely think straight.
Ask for help.
Ru smiled. He hadn’t even wanted to ask the bus driver where he needed to get off. He wasn’t good at talking to people. Casual chatter was beyond him, though he was trying. He waited until the last stop which turned out to be Wicklow Gaol, now a tourist attraction. Google Maps guided him to the Garda station.
It was just gone three in the afternoon when Ru entered the building. He went to the front desk and waited for the officer to look up.
“I’m Ruari Byrne. I’m here to see Sergeant Brendan Walsh.”
A few moments later, he found himself shaking hands with a tall, pencil-thin guy with wavy ginger hair. He led Ru to an interview room.
“Take a seat. The water’s for you.” Walsh nodded to a bottle on the table.
“Thank you.” Ru put his backpack on the floor and sat on the hard plastic chair.
“I’ve read the report you made to the police in Liverpool. And the article in the English newspaper. I’m sorry you had such a bad time of it.”
Ru nodded. Not as bad as anything Ink had gone through.
“I’m going to have to ask you to go over it all again. I’ll record what we’re saying. Okay?”
“Yes.”
Ru began on the day he’d waited for his brother outside the school gates. Walsh stopped him a few times to ask questions but mostly, he let Ru tell the story. Although Ru didn’t like going over everything that had happened, each time he did, it grew easier, as though he was becoming detached from past events, or was detaching himself. He hoped that was a good thing.
“You could have spoken to the Garda when you reached Dublin,” Walsh said. “Youshouldhave. Really, you should have spoken to the paramedics that came for your uncle.”
There was the criticism Ru had expected.
“I’m not sure I was thinking straight.” Which wasn’t entirely true. He’d been in shock when his aunt and uncle had been taken away, and once he’d reached Dublin and read that magazine, he’d had a single thought in his head, a determination to get to his brother. “If I’d not seen the magazine and that headline,Lost Boys, I probably would have come to you.” Which was true. “Though I was afraid I wouldn’t be believed. All I could think about was getting away from my aunt and uncle, going to England and finding my brother.”
“How did you even know you needed a passport?”
Ru tried not to bristle. “I might be uneducated, but I’m not stupid. They’d brought me into the country on my cousin’s, but it had long expired. I knew I needed a passport to leave so I used my cousin’s birth certificate to get one. That was a crime, I know, me doing that.”
