Page 152 of A Long Way Back
Ink was frantically trying to make sense of it all. How could his father have identified Eagan as Ruari?
“Auntie Nessa called me Eagan,” his brother whispered. “I was sick. Well, I thought I was sick, but it was them who were making me sick. I asked for you and they said you were in the hospital with the same as whatever was the matter with me, but you were worse. Bela was in a cage in my room and they wouldn’t take the padlock off and let her out. They fed her and gave her water, but I think they worried she might give them away. Well, later I thought that.
“They took me to Ireland on the ferry, went over with the Land Rover and the mobile home. I was hardly conscious. I suppose they claimed I was asleep. They used Eagan’s passport. I saw it later. They got away with kidnapping me. And Bela. They got away with a lot.”
“Jesus Christ,” Tay muttered.
“We went to live on a farm. It was out in the middle of nowhere. And then they allowed me to let Bela fly.” He stroked her stomach with his finger. “She’d never leave me. I won’t leave her.”
Ink was spellbound. He was hardly aware he was breathing. Shock had immobilised him.
“I wasn’t allowed to go to school. I was made to learn Gaelic. That was all that was spoken in the house for a long while. If I spoke English, I was punished. Then once I could speak Gaelic well enough, the three of us spoke a mixture of that and English. Auntie Nessa taught me as if I was at school—when she was okay. If she wasn’t, I kept out of her way. There was no TV, no computer, no landline, but plenty of books and games. Our uncle had a mobile phone which was always locked. But who did I have to call? I thought our parents were dead, and then they told me you were too.”
“And you believed them?” Ink couldn’t hold back the snap.
“I was eight years old,” Ru replied gently. “What was I supposed to think?”
“Did you wonder why Eagan wasn’t with them?”
“They told me he’d died a couple of months before. At that point, I believed them. It wasn’t as if we saw much of them, not the way Dad and his brother were. A long time later, Uncle Felan told me the truth. Some of it. Auntie Nessa had hit Eagan on the head while she was having one of her manic episodes. She was convinced he wasn’t dead. Uncle Felan wasn’t prepared to lose her, so he didn’t phone the police. He put her to bed, gave her a strong sedative and somehow came up with the idea that he could put things right by trapping Bela, then kidnapping me.”
“How did he know when to get you from school? We always came home together.”
“I think he was lucky that day. He came to the school and told me he was going to give up when he saw you with me, but when you ran back into the building, he took his chance. A way to hide that his wife had killed his son, a way to make her happy again, and an opportunity for revenge.”
Ink didn’t realise he had tears running down his cheeks until Tay wiped them away with his thumb.
“How did Dad not realise it wasn’t you?”
“Eagan was the same age as me, same build, same hair and eye colour.” He huffed. “No fillings. He smashed Eagan’s teeth after, when he… Eagan was wearing my clothes. Bela’s red bead was in the pocket of my shorts. Then he… He said he just hit Eagan over and over. He cried when he told me. But he said Eagan was already dead, so it was to destroy enough of his face that Dad wouldn’t question whether it was me. Uncle Felan sobbed. He said he’d no choice. He’d lost his son and he wasn’t going to lose his wife.”
Tay gasped. “Oh my God. How could he do that?”
“Because if he was to get what he wanted, he had to,” Ru said. “A son for his crazy wife who would neither go to jail, nor to a psychiatric hospital. And a way to hurt our father. I had to call themmàthairandathair, mother and father. It made life easier to go along with what they wanted.”
“He framed me.” Ink clenched his fists and Tay wrapped a hand around his.
“When he told me, I was horrified. Why not take both sons from his brother? How much he must have hated our father. Uncle Felan went to see Dad to offer to look for me. Brother helping brother at a time of tragedy. He took the opportunity to steal a pair of your jeans and T-shirt and put my blood on them.”
“Shit. So Wes had nothing to do it? Why the fuck did he get involved?”
“He was probably trying to get you into trouble and got trapped by his lies,” Tay said.
“He might have stumbled across the body before the police found it and decided it was a chance to wreck your life.” Ru took a deep breath. “I had no idea you’d been charged with my murder, found guilty and sent to prison. I… But even if they’d told me, I had no way to tell anyone else. My life was…different, controlled. When they worried less about me just walking off into nowhere with Bela, I helped on the farm. They bred horses.”
Bela tipped back her head and cawed.
“Sometimes Uncle Felan went off for a week or so and he always had money when he came back. He was the one who did all the shopping. I don’t think anyone knew I existed. In the early days, I tried to run away, but one of them always found me and brought me back. If visitors came, I was gagged, and tied up in the barn. They threatened to kill Bela if I made a sound. But visitors were rare. Just one who came every month or so who owned the closest farm. Malone. I was allowed to meet him. But never left alone with him.”
“How did you find out everyone was still alive?” Ink asked.
“Two months ago, Uncle Felan had an accident on his quad bike and broke his leg. He wouldn’t go to hospital. I think he knew that if he called an ambulance, I’d tell them they were pretending I was their son. Auntie Nessa splinted his leg, but he grew sicker and sicker and he told me all of it then, about you being in prison. I think he wanted it off his conscience, wanted me to forgive him. He saidWe gave you a good life.” Ru huffed.
“He wanted me to look after Aunt Nessa, to promise him that I would. I lied. I convinced the ambulance to take her too, which wasn’t difficult. I’d messed around with her medication and she was…off her head. I wanted to go home, back to England, but I had no passport. The one I’d arrived on had long expired.
“I had our uncle’s phone, but no way to use it. I collected all the money I could find, several thousand pounds, because they didn’t believe in banks, along with Eagan’s birth certificate, and bills—though they weren’t in my name, I hoped they’d be enough—packed a bag, made sure the horses were okay, and drove in the direction that Malone had always come from until I reached a farm. I’d never driven before, but I worked out what to do.
“I told him my aunt and uncle were in hospital. I gave him five hundred pounds to look after the horses and animals until I came back and told him…some of the truth. He explained how to get a passport and I drove to Dublin. By the time I got there, I felt safe behind the wheel.”
