The Changeling (6 page)

Aoife texted with her thumb:

No prob all good only just left

Then let her hand drop, and lay there with her eyes closed.

A car was coming slowly up the road from Kilduff, loud as a fleet of motorbikes – the silencer gone. She kept her eyes closed. The car thundered past her, then stopped. Then reversed and stopped again, right next to where she was lying. Unable to ignore the racket any longer, she opened her eyes. A red beaten-up three-door Ford with no registration plates. She recognized it from the day before – Shay’s brother’s car. Puzzled, she sat up. The black-headed driver leaned across from behind the wheel, winding down the window on her side. ‘
Wahu.
’

It was Shay himself.

Aoife was so startled, she forgot to be surprised that he was actually talking to her and blurted out: ‘You’re driving? You’re only fifteen!’

He looked faintly offended. ‘Nearly sixteen. You want a lift?’

‘No, you’re all right . . .’ She scrambled to her feet, and picked up the bike. ‘I have this with me.’ She hesitated. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about everything, and thanks for sticking up for me yesterday, and I’m really sorry – I’m an idiot, OK? I’ll see you in school tomorrow.’ Then walked off towards her lane, pushing her bike, relieved to have got it said.

He drove slowly along beside her. ‘We could put it in the back, on top of the chickens.’

She glanced into the car. There was a big cage on the back seat with about ten annoyed-looking chickens in it. ‘I don’t think it would fit.’

‘Maybe you’re right. I was just on my way into Clonbarra to sell this crew for a few quid. You want to come? We can fold the cage flat after and get the bike then.’

Aoife could feel a smile forming inside her, right in the centre of her chest. ‘No, you’re grand.’ She kept on walking, past the garage. She could see Dave Ferguson, Sinead’s uncle, in the yard behind the shop, tinkering with an old cream-coloured car.

Shay kept on driving along beside her. She stopped. He stopped too, engine idling. She walked on again. He followed. She stopped. He stopped. ‘I can drive, you know. I run her around the farm all the time.’

Aoife leaned the bike against the hedge and got in. It took three slams to properly close the badly-hung door. The foot well was full of straw, sweet wrappers, Coke cans and an old sketchbook.

Shay said, ‘Just kick that stuff out of the way.’ He revved the engine, pulled away from the verge, jammed a tape into the ancient radio-cassette. After much hissing, Christie Moore burst out of the tape deck –
Ride On.
Old folk, cool in its time.

Aoife shouted over the music: ‘Won’t you get in trouble driving into Clonbarra? I mean, you’re not insured, are you?’

Shay turned the music down to a background crackle. ‘Ara ya, they let me into the scheme young, ’cos I’m a class driver.’

‘Really?’

‘No.’

She laughed. ‘But the guards . . .’

‘Sure, what will they do, ban me?’ Shay drove on at what seemed to be the car’s maximum speed of forty kilometres an hour. His hands were curled loosely over the wheel, his long fingers tapping lightly in time to the music. He had rolled up his white sleeves and the skin of his arms was a dark golden brown. His tight-cropped black hair and collarless shirt revealed the strong curve of his neck which ran from his shoulder to his sloping jaw. The single silver earring glinted high in his ear. Without moving his head, his hazel gaze flicked towards her, a very slight smile in it.

Aoife quickly turned her head away. A song lyric had popped into her mind:

I dream of this:

Under the hawthorns he raises me with a kiss.

Worried she was going to blush, she leaned down to pick up the sketchpad lying in the foot well among the straw and opened it on her lap. On the first page, in black pencil, an old sheepdog slept in the sun, flies circling its nose . . . ‘Hey, this is really good!’

With an alarmed glance, Shay said, ‘Don’t look at those.’

She turned another page. ‘Oh—’

He jerked the pad out of her hand and tossed it over his shoulder into the back, setting the chickens off squawking and crashing about in the cage. ‘You don’t want to be looking at my old rubbish.’

Grinning as well as now actually blushing, Aoife put her hand up to hide her face, staring out of the passenger window across the fields. She’d only got a glimpse, but she could have sworn the next picture – done in watercolours – was of a red-haired girl in a short green dress running up a hill towards a hawthorn circle.

They had reached the point where the Clonbarra road pushed up closest to the mountains. Wild rhododendrons piled across the dry-stone walls. Somewhere near here was the old bog road, which Thomas Ferguson had for some mad reason decided to take and so had got them lost, and so had led to all the trouble.

Lost . . . A coolness suddenly trickled through Aoife’s blood, fizzy and tingling. She could see her now, in her mind’s eye, as clear as anything – a little girl stumbling across the bog. Scared. Alone. Lost.

Not a lamb.

She took down her hand, and stared up at the passing mountains. In the distance, a pale ribbon wound across their purple slopes. The road across the bog. Any moment, they would pass the turning. She had to make Shay stop. She had to make him take the old boreen, the same as Thomas Ferguson had done . . .

Suddenly Shay was wrestling with the steering wheel. ‘Holy Mary, what’s the matter with her? Holy— How the—? Whoa! Stop!’ The car spun hard right, straight across the road towards the turning, just failed to make it and smashed hard into the corner of the wall.

The old Ford’s bonnet was drawn back in a lopsided snarl, the bumper twisted like a circus ringmaster’s moustache. A headlight dangled from its socket like a hideously gouged eye. In the cage on the back seat, the chickens were going demented.

Shay stood in the road, clutching his black hair. ‘Ah Christ, what am I going to do – it’s a write-off. Mary and Joseph, John Joe is going to beat the bejaysus out of me.’

Aoife turned to him, horrified. ‘What do you mean,
beat
you?’

He looked startled and uncomfortable, as if he hadn’t realized he’d spoken his thoughts out loud. ‘Nothing, it’s grand – I just mean he’ll go mental at me. This is his car and he doesn’t even know I took it.’

‘But it wasn’t your fault—’

‘That’s right – I didn’t hit the wall, the wall hit me.’ He peered into the engine, which he could do without having to lift up the bonnet. It was still running, even louder than before. ‘She’s still going, anyways.’

‘It can’t have been your fault, it’s not like you were speeding—’

‘Aoife, calm the form, John Joe will be fine – I can handle him.’

She couldn’t help feeling responsible – she had been thinking so hard about making him turn right, and then he did. ‘Look, seriously, something must have broken.’

‘I was thinking it might be the drive shaft . . .’ Shay was checking under the chassis now. ‘Nope. Can’t see anything wrong. Maybe I can fix her up.’ He jumped into the driver’s seat and reversed in a wheel-spinning semicircle, setting off a fresh explosion of anxiety from the chickens in the back. Then he pulled up beside Aoife. ‘Not a bother on her! I’ll hammer her back into shape, and she’ll be as good as new. Hop in.’

She didn’t move. The narrow dusty road wound up away between green fields brilliant with gorse.

‘Are you coming? I don’t blame you for being a small bit careful but I swear I’ll drive like a nun . . .’

Oh God. Before she could change her mind she blurted out in a rush, ‘All right, I know I’m mad, but I can’t help thinking,
What if I really
did
see a little girl and she’s still out there somewhere, wandering around on the bog – she could die, she could drown
—’

‘Aoife.’

‘She was lost and I didn’t help her—’

‘
Aoife.
Stop.’ Shay was gazing at her steadily; he didn’t seem exasperated with her for being a total idiot – just genuinely concerned. ‘You don’t need to get all up in a heap about this. If there was a child gone missing, then we’d have heard about it. I listened to the news yesterday, every hour on the hour, and there was nothing.’

She felt a rush of gratitude towards him – at least he had taken her seriously enough to check. ‘But what if she was abandoned by someone who didn’t report it to the police? Her own parents, even?’

‘Ah, Aoife—’

‘I’m sorry. I have to go look. You go on. I’ll walk.’

CHAPTER FOUR

She stood on the rocky outcrop near where she’d seen the child, staring around. The landscape was still empty, dotted with white tufts of bog cotton, steaming in the May sunshine. Creamy clumps of sheep. A shining stroke of distant sea. No houses. No one visible for miles. No little girl.

Shay waited patiently beside her, arms folded, shirt sleeves pushed up above his elbows. A short way off was the hill capped with the tightly wound circle of hawthorn trees. Aoife could smell the blossom – the breeze must be blowing directly towards them.

There was no reason to return to the hawthorn circle. She knew exactly what was there.

Nothing.

She shoved her hands into the pockets of her hoodie.

If she could take one look, just
one
, in the pool, it would surely satisfy this insistent worry, once and for all. Like double-checking a door was locked, or a light turned off. She said, ‘Look, I’m crazy and I know it, but I think I’ll just take another look up there by the trees.’

‘Don’t go falling in any bog holes again.’

She said with a flash of irritation, ‘I feel stupid enough about this already – no need to rub it in—’

‘Ah, I was only joking you. Come on. Look at me.’ Shay’s voice was teasing. ‘Come on, Aoife. Look at me.’

She looked, frowning. As soon as she met his green gaze, a wide grin spread across his face. ‘Race you!’ And without any further warning, he sprang down from the outcrop.

Aoife scrambled down after him and out across the bog. He had almost twenty metres on her, leaping long-legged from patch to patch of the firmest ground, arms stretched out at his sides to retain his balance, everything about him taunting her. But she was gaining on him. His trainers were leaving deep prints in the soft ground while, unlike yesterday, her own feet barely bent the heather. She was gaining, gaining . . . She was fast, she was feather-light . . .

Yet now Shay had reached the stony track, and was himself able to display the unnatural speed he showed on the GAA pitch. He had reached the foot of the hill before Aoife caught up with him, but just as he started up the slope, she managed to grab the back of his shirt, and that slowed him down enough for her to slip past him and take the lead.

‘Cheat!’ He made a grab for her, but she dodged and scrambled on up the green sheep-trodden mound. Nearing the summit, she felt safe enough to turn and do a little victory dance, but he surprised her by being right behind her, and she turned and fled again with a shriek – but not before he’d seized her by her hood. Aoife flailed her arms and stumbled and slipped, and twisted to free herself, and suddenly she was on the ground with Shay on top of her, and his face was so close to hers that she could see herself reflected in his dark green eyes. His expression became suddenly very serious, thoughtful, his mouth drawing closer to hers . . .

He rolled away, laughing. ‘Jesus and Mary, but you can run. I never knew anyone could run faster than me. Let me get my breath here for a minute.’ He lay on his back, panting lightly, staring at the sky.

Feeling confused and slightly disappointed by his sudden change in mood, Aoife lay with her arms by her sides and concentrated on breathing. Her heart stilled. The sun was beautiful on her face. Around them, the bog hummed softly under its gauzy net of flies and bees.

‘Hey, Aoife, look at this . . .’

She rolled onto her side, to face him.

Shay was leaning on his elbow, with his other hand palm up – a green caterpillar was crawling across it. As soon as he was sure she was watching, he closed his fingers over it, holding her gaze with a smile, the gold-brown depths of his green eyes lighting up.

She said, ‘What?’

‘Wait . . .’

‘For what?’

‘Now.’ He opened his hand. A blue bog butterfly fluttered upwards.

Aoife was delighted. ‘How did you do that?’

‘Something my mother taught me . . .’ Shay’s eyes darkened for a moment, and then he was smiling again. ‘A magic trick. Good, isn’t it?’

‘Show me how you did it! Did you have the butterfly up your sleeve? Where’s the caterpillar? Give it here to me!’

She held out her hand, but he was laughing at her. ‘Gone! Turned to a butterfly!’ Then, glancing at her palm: ‘What happened to your hand?’

For a moment Aoife thought he meant the scratches from the hawthorn circle, but they seemed to have healed already. ‘Oh, that . . . A scar from when I was a little kid – I fell off my first bike and grabbed a barbed-wire fence.’

‘Let me look . . .’ Shay was reaching out to take her hand, but then seemed to change his mind about touching her and turned onto his front, pulling up blades of grass.

Aoife sprang to her feet and ran the rest of the way up to the circle.

She couldn’t find her way in through the trees. She could see the way she and Carla had gone in and out – their footprints were still clear in the soft ground, running right into the wall of thorns. But where the gap had been, the flowering branches were locked together, as if they had grown again overnight. She pressed her palms against the thorns. Instead of giving way, as they had yesterday, they remained as tightly woven as the rest of the circle.
Locked.

Shay came up behind her. ‘Careful now, they’ll stab you.’

‘It’s weird – I got through here yesterday, right at this spot, but it’s like the branches have grown back.’

He tried to part them himself, then swore and stood back, sucking a large thorn from the base of his thumb before wiping the red blood on his faded jeans. ‘Are you
sure
this is where you got in before?’