Page 24 of The Last Bench

Anne and Michael nodded their consent solemnly.

‘But you can’t be here for that,’ John said to Michael. ‘Go back to Dublin. Tell the girls you will come home tomorrow with them.’

Michael held a hand up, ready to argue.

‘I mean it, Michael,’ John stated firmly. ‘I won’t have any discussion on this. I’ll take care of the body and, if this comes back on us, so be it. But I will not allow this to come back on you.’

Anne was sobbing now, the shock wearing off and in its place horror flooding in. ‘Please, Michael. Do as your dad says.’

Eventually Michael reluctantly agreed. Before he left, he hugged each of them tightly. And he held on to John for longer than he had done since he was a little boy.

‘I’m not sorry, Dad,’ Michael whispered into his embrace. ‘He would have killed you both.’

‘I know, son.’ John clapped his back and drew him in closer.

‘I want to stay.’

‘I know that too. But one day, when you have children of your own, you’ll understand why I’ve made you leave.’

Once Michael was on his way, John put Hinges back into the wheelbarrow.

‘We’ll not bury him in our garden – he needs to go into the top field,’ Anne said.

Together, they moved Hinges’s body. Then John started to dig on what would be the hottest day of the summer of 1998.

By the time John had broken the soil and started to make some headway into the dry, packed dirt, the sun was beating down on his back. A river of sweat travelled from the nape of his neck down his back. His T-shirt was plastered to his body.

‘Let me help,’ Anne pleaded for the third time.

He shook his head, refusing to stop and answer her. They had been through this before. Her back had always been a vulnerability for her, and he would be damned if he let Hinges cause her any more pain. Besides, John needed to do this. With each strike into the soil, John thought of Margaret, of the day she was born, tiny, a scrap of a thing weighing five pounds six ounces. He’d been worried ever since Anne had discovered she was pregnant. It was too soon after their firstborn, Mary, who was only three months old. Irish twins. They were barely making ends meet, both exhausted from work and parenting. In Wexford Hospital, after twelve long hours of labour, Anne handed Margaret to him, fear shadowing her eyes, unsure whether he would love his second child as much as his first, whether he had room for another person in his heart.

But he need never have worried, because when Margaret’s little hand clung to John’pinkie, all his doubts and worries vanished. As Anne always said, he was wrapped round Margaret’s little finger. And what a wonderful place that was to be.

Love filled him as more memories flooded him.

Watching her receive the sacrament on her First Holy Communion, wearing a long white dress with a lace veil. She swaggered towards them, making a face as she tasted the holy bread for the first time, Anne and John stifling a laugh. Then as Margaret sat back down between her parents on the church pew, John had a vision that took his breath away.

He saw Margaret, a young woman, again in a long white dress with a lace veil, walking down the church aisle on his arm to her beloved.

But, of course, there would be no white wedding for Margaret.

John felt a hand graze his shoulder, bringing him back from his memory, which could cause him so much joy and sorrow, all at once.

‘That’s enough, John. You can stop digging now,’ Anne said. And her eyes glistened in understanding. Without any need for explanation, she understood what her husband was going through, because his pain was her pain too.

John pulled his T-shirt off and over his shoulders, using it to wipe the sweat and tears from his face. Then he looked around himself in amazement at the deep hole he’d created and was now standing in. It was nearly as tall as he was, at least six feet.

John heaved himself out of the hole and walked over to the wheelbarrow that sat a couple of metres away. A tarp that usually covered the patio set in the evenings was now draped over a body.

How had they come to this?

‘Are you sure?’ Anne asked. ‘We can still call the Gardaí and I’ll confess.’

John’s answer was to wheel the barrow towards the hole and tip it over.

Hinges landed with a dull thud.

He started refilling the hole with soil, quickly covering the body. Then, once John had filled the hole half a metre high, he added a bag of compost. Anne dragged the six-foot blossom tree towards him, and he placed it into the hole before shovelling the earth back in.