The Changeling (13 page)

On the far side of the road was a small white modern bungalow, its porch supported by plastic Greek-style columns, fir trees densely planted around the border of its garden. This was Lois Munnelly’s house and, like Aoife’s own, it had clearly been built on the fairy road, and it was blocking her way. She could hardly knock on the door at this time of the morning and demand to walk straight through and out the back. Yet if she changed direction around it, she felt she might lose her way . . . Extraordinary thought – could she go
over
it? Up the drainpipe and over the roof? Could she? Why not? Imagine Lois waking up to see Aoife gliding down from the roof, past her bedroom window, the way she had glided down from the ash tree . . .

Lois would probably decide it was just more attention-seeking.

Oh, this whole thing was crazy.

Aoife had to talk to someone down to earth, or her head would explode. Carla. Carla would know how to explain this. She checked her phone. Just gone six thirty. She tried calling anyway, but the other end rang out. Sometimes Dianne Heffernan took her daughter’s phone away at bedtime, to make sure she went to sleep. Aoife would have to throw stones at the bedroom window. She turned away from the fairy road and took the ordinary human road towards Kilduff, towards her friend.

Passing the turning to her own house, she glimpsed the roof of her father’s car making its way up the winding boreen between the hedges. She scrambled over a gate and crouched down behind brambles. She wasn’t ready to face her parents yet, not while she was still trying to figure things out. A few seconds later, the car turned out of the lane towards Kilduff. Aoife stayed low, peering through the brambles, until they were gone. Her parents had clearly guessed exactly where she would be headed – towards Carla’s.

A hundred metres further on, the garage was already open for early business. Dave Ferguson was walking around inside his little shop, phone to his ear, gesticulating furiously with his spare hand. Bent low so as not to be seen, Aoife hurried past the shop and shed, into the yard behind.

The cream BMW’s
FOR SALE
sign had been removed. She opened the driver’s door and slipped in behind the wheel. She would hide here for a while, just till her parents had given up driving around looking for her, and until Carla woke up and saw the missed call, and phoned her back. The soft red leather seat embraced her; she leaned back in it and tiredness swept over her. She’d had no sleep at all. She closed her eyes.

And opened them. The clock in the walnut dashboard said just after seven. She’d been asleep for only twenty minutes, but felt wide awake and refreshed. The key was in the ignition. She touched it lightly, and the car started. Alarmed, she tried to turn it off again, but couldn’t. What if Dave Ferguson heard the engine running and came storming out of his office? Yet she wasn’t doing anything wrong – it was her own car and she wasn’t driving it anywhere, she was just sitting in it, here in the yard.

The BMW slid forward across the tarmac.

Panicking, she slammed her foot on what she thought was the brake, but it clearly wasn’t, because the car turned and glided luxuriously up the slope by the side of the workshop. Sweating with fright, Aoife grabbed the steering wheel and stamped on the other pedal. The BMW carried straight on past the pumps and out onto the Clonbarra road, in the direction of Kilduff. Now she was afraid to touch anything, in case the car went even faster. As she entered the square, a Gardaí car passed her coming the other way. She shook the steering wheel frantically. ‘
Stop, you stupid lump of—!
’

The car pulled in by the church and parked. Aoife got out as fast as she could, and stood there, half laughing, half shaking. Had she really driven this beautiful car? Although it felt more like
it
had driven
her
– she was just so relieved it had stopped when she had shouted at it. Is this what it was like to be a fairy? Able to make things happen – but not really being in control? Fun but incredibly scary?

Across the square, the shop was already open, a bread van parked outside. The sight of the huge loaf painted on the side of the van made Aoife realize that she was hungry again – she’d had eaten nothing since last night’s dinner. While she was here . . . She felt in the pocket of her trackies. Plenty of money left from yesterday. She headed into the shop, grabbing a basket. Bananas, apples, a big bag of mixed nuts, a coffee cake, a litre of milk and some just-baked white rolls. At the counter, she held a twenty out to the man checking her purchases through the till. It was mad John McCarthy from the graveyard, the uncle of the man who owned the shop.

When he looked up to take the money, the old man did a double-take, as if the sight of her shocked him. ‘Aoife O’Connor!’

She was suddenly very conscious that she had no shoes on, and that her clothes were in bits from crashing over hedges. She said as nonchalantly as possible, ‘Yep, that’s me.’

‘Aoife O’Connor, who came in here yesterday with the hundred-euro note?’

‘Yes why?’

John McCarthy eyed the money in her palm, but didn’t take it. ‘Would that be the change we gave you from that note or is it the same sort of money you came in with yesterday?’

Aoife began to feel uncomfortable, like she was being accused of something. Did he think she’d stolen the hundred? ‘It’s the change from yesterday. Sorry, is there a problem?’

‘Not at all. That’s grand, so.’ He smiled with very few teeth, took the note and counted out the change into her palm. ‘I’d say this twenty-euro note will stay as the good Lord made it, then, it not being fairy gold.’

She stared blankly at him. ‘Sorry – what?’

He rolled his marble-blue eyes to heaven, and pointed to a large dead oak leaf lying on top of the till. ‘And what do you think that yoke is that I found in the drawer only this morning?’

‘A dead leaf. But what—?’

‘See, your type of gold’s not much use to us poor mortals. Sure, I had that Sinead Ferguson in here yesterday evening trying to buy sweets with another leaf the very brother of this one. Fair flittered, the poor girl was, when she couldn’t find the fifty she says you gave her—’

‘What’s that about my daughter?’ Thomas Ferguson had just come into the shop, his glasses askew on his bald head and his shirt buttoned wrong. ‘Morning, Aoife.’

‘Morning.’ Aoife was stacking her purchases into a cardboard box as quickly as she could, in a hurry to get away.

John McCarthy said, ‘I was just saying how the fifty Aoife here gave to poor Sinead turned out to be fairy gold and melted away.’

Thomas laughed, although rather sourly. ‘Maybe that would explain what happened to the thousand my brother says was robbed out of his own till last night. He just got me out of bed to bring down a couple of coffees and a sandwich for the guard, because apparently they can’t catch criminals on an empty stomach.’

‘And would the drawer have been left stuffed with leaves like this one here?’

Thomas Ferguson looked startled at the oak leaf in John’s hand. ‘How did you—?’

‘Fairy gold, Thomas – it turns to dead leaves in human hands. Doesn’t it, Aoife O’Connor?’

Aoife fled out of the shop, across the square, slung the box of food into the BMW’s passenger seat and jumped in behind the wheel. She was shaking. The garage till was full of leaves . . . So that was why there had been a dead oak leaf in her mother’s purse . . . Oh God, she had cheated Dave Ferguson. She would have to bring the car back to him right away. Hopefully, the guards wouldn’t arrest her. She touched the ignition, turned the wheel. Nothing. She leaned back in despair. Then, remembering she was starving, tore a chunk off the coffee cake and washed it down with the milk. Then, still hungry, crunched down an apple, and a handful of nuts. She had to talk to someone. Carla. No, not Carla – much as Aoife loved her, it had to be someone who wouldn’t just be kind and gentle to her because they assumed she’d lost the plot. It couldn’t be someone down to earth. It had to be someone who might believe the impossible . . .

Shay. He had talked to her about fairies. His own father, Eamonn Foley, had believed in them. She needed to talk to Shay.

The car started up again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Three kilometres beyond Kilduff, the Atlantic came to meet her and the cream BMW swung west along the coast road. Aoife clung anxiously to the wheel – the hundred-metre drop to the ocean was unfenced. But after a while she found herself gaining in confidence. The mistiness of early morning was fading, and the sun was getting hot. The land grew wilder, flushing from green to purple. The mountains rose higher with every bend in the road. To her right, the ocean was a vast blinding, rippling sheet, stretching to the horizon. The roof of the convertible slid open and the warm sea breeze fluttered her hair. Cautiously, she leaned her elbow on the door, fingers resting only lightly on the wheel; the car drove smoothly on.

After several kilometres of nothing but empty, rolling mountains, a turning appeared ahead – a farm track, hedged by wild rhododendrons and gorse, cutting into a greener valley between steep purple slopes. While Aoife was wondering where the boreen led, the car took the turn and drove bumpily along the track, stones spitting out from under its wheels. Stone-walled fields came into view, then a breeze-block shed and a long one-storey farmhouse with a blue tin roof. Two sheepdogs and a terrier came barking furiously down the boreen. The car swept through the pack into the farmyard and screeched to a halt, scattering chickens right and left.

By the time Aoife had opened the driver’s door, the dogs had formed a growling semicircle around her. She ordered, ‘Stay! Sit!’ They bared their teeth, but didn’t approach. Well-trained farm dogs. The chickens were settling already, like gold-brown leaves only briefly disturbed by a gust of wind.

No human came to meet her.

She’d never been here before, but it wasn’t hard to work out where she was. John Joe Foley’s old red Ford was sitting among the dismantled wrecks of several other cars in the corner of the yard. The car’s bonnet was still crumpled up in an evil grin, and engine parts were lying all around. A blue tractor with no cab was parked on the other side of the yard. Washing hung on a line across the open-fronted turf shed: a set of blue overalls, two frayed white shirts and a Kilduff soccer strip.

Where was everyone? Where was Shay? Aoife checked her phone. Eight o’clock. Maybe he’d gone for the school bus already.

She glanced in through the open door of the barn, but there were only a few bales of hay, a half-built chicken coop, sacks of sheep nuts and three large containers of diesel.

She crossed the yard. The house was rundown but not badly kept. The walls had been whitewashed recently and the door was painted the same sky blue as the tin roof. The plastic guttering was broken but tied up neatly with nylon string. There was no knocker; she rapped on the door with her knuckles, and a few flies that had been warming themselves on the wood in the morning sunshine drifted upwards in an iridescent puff. Silence followed, apart from the breathy growling of the dogs. And then even they fell quiet. She tried to see in through the window.

‘Stay right where you are!’

With a cry of shock, Aoife spun round. The man slapped his big hands flat against the door on either side of her, trapping her between his muscular arms. He was in his twenties, well over six foot and very strongly built – huge muscled shoulders, and arms like iron. He was wearing dirty blue farm overalls, cousin of the clean ones on the line; he was handsome, black-haired and brown-skinned, but his hazel eyes were narrow with anger. He roared in her face, ‘Where’s ya thieving tinker friends – where are they hid? Nobody’s stealing anything off me this time around. If I find them first, I’ll burst them, so I will. This time I won’t hold back.’

Aoife smiled as brightly as she could, to hide her alarm. ‘I’m not a thief, I’m just lost.’

‘Oh, you are, are you?’ He looked her suspiciously up and down, from the goose grass tangled in her hair to her naked dirty feet. ‘And where were you going when you got yourself so lost?’

‘Do you know anyone around here called Shay Foley?’

His hard eyes flashed, then narrowed. ‘And what would you be wanting with my little brother?’

So now there was no doubt – this was the violent, bullying John Joe. A shiver of fury ran through Aoife, followed by a fierce, wild determination. ‘It’s not Shay I’ve come to see. It’s you.’

‘What the . . .?’

‘I’ve come to tell you it wasn’t his fault he crashed your car, it was mine.’

‘
What?
’

‘And I’ve bought you another, to replace it – see, there it is, it’s really nice and it drives perfect—’

John Joe barely glanced at it; he brought his angry, handsome face even closer to hers. ‘Let me get this right. Are you after saying to me that my thieving little brother not only stole my car but let a wee girleen like you drive it? Wait till I get my hands on him, the lying little—’

She cried in horror, ‘No, that’s not what happened! It wasn’t his fault! I’ve bought you another one with my own money!’

‘I don’t deal with little girls too young to drive. It’s my lying brother that will be paying for this—’

‘
Just take it.
’ And she dropped the car key into the front pocket of his overalls.

He fished it out instantly, with a growl like one of his dogs – but instead of throwing it back at her, he turned to look at the car. A long appreciative whistle escaped from between his teeth. ‘Looks nice enough.’ He strode long-legged towards it across the yard.

Aoife followed, heart still beating furiously, not sure if this was some sort of a cunning trap. She called encouragingly, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice, ‘It’s got red leather seats and everything.’

‘I can see that.’ John Joe was leaning in over the door, running his hand across the walnut dashboard. ‘A vintage convertible – very nice.’ Then puzzlement crept into his voice. ‘Must have cost you a few bob.’

‘It did, but . . .’ She thought quickly. ‘I claimed on my insurance.’