Barry stood still, unsure what to do. He wanted to go and help her, tell her everything was all right, but he was too scared to move. So he stayed there just like she’d told him to, even as she wept and threw up and spat, even as Rob came running from the van.
He woke up in the strange bed, Josie beside him. Mrs. McCue in the village had given them a room and Josie had insisted she stay with Barry, said she didn’t want him to be alone.
The police had come in a helicopter. It had made a big noise as it landed in the field behind the house. Two policemen and a pilot. The policemen went into the garage, and when they came out, their faces were different. Like they’d grown older in there.
They asked lots of questions. When did Barry last see Mum? Had her and Dad been fighting? Was Dad angry lately? More police came, some without uniforms, and they all needed to talk with Barry. And two different doctors. Low voices and warm hands. They told him things he didn’t understand, about Mum, about Dad, big words that didn’t make any sense. So he stopped listening.
Josie stayed with him all the way through the questions, and eventually she told the policemen to stop. They could do more tomorrow. And then they talked about where Barry could stay for the night. Josie knew Mrs. McCue had a big house, so she got Rob to drive her into the village to ask.
As Barry got out of the library van, people on the street looked at him strangely and whispered to each other. Josie gathered him in close, let him hide his eyes in the billows of her cardigan.
She sent Rob back to the mainland, said she’d stay here with Barry, he needed someone to look after him. So they slept in the big old bed in the draughty room, Josie still wearing her clothes, Barry in the pyjamas she found in his bedroom.
Now it was light outside and he was wide awake. Josie snored softly, the kind of sound a cat makes, he thought. He lay still and quiet for a long time until he could see the sun through the crack in the curtains.
Barry realised it would soon be time for the ferry, and Mrs. McCue’s house was only a couple of streets away from the slip. It wouldn’t take long to get there. Of course, the library van wouldn’t be on the ferry this morning, it had only been here yesterday.
But maybe Mum would come back.
Barry knew something bad had happened at the house. Something to do with Dad. But he didn’t know what. People in the village seemed to know. Maybe Mum had heard about it and she’d come back to take him away.
The idea grew in his mind.
Yes, she would surely know something bad had happened and she would come back this morning. Barry was certain of it.
He slipped out of bed, found his shoes on the floor, and carried them out of the room. The door creaked as he pulled it to, and he froze, watching Josie. She huffed and rolled over.
Barry went down the stairs and paused at the bottom to put his shoes on. He didn’t know how to do up the laces, so he tucked the loose ends down the sides of his feet. The front door didn’t make a sound as he opened it. He stepped through, but didn’t close it all the way, in case the noise would wake Josie.
The streets were empty on the short walk to the slip, no one to stare, no one to whisper about the boy in the pyjamas.
Old Man Gove saw him approach. The loading officer’s shoulders slumped.
“What are you doing here, son?” he asked, his voice softer than Barry had ever heard it.
“I’m going to wait for the ferry,” Barry said.
Old Man Gove shook his head and looked sad. “Why?” he asked.
“Mum’ll be on it,” Barry said.
And when he said it out loud, it made him even more certain, because now it was a real thing, not just an idea in his head.
Old Man Gove breathed out long and slow, and he blinked tears out of his eyes.
“Ah, Jesus, son,” he said.
Then he looked away, out across the channel as he wiped at his red cheeks.
“Is she coming in on time?” Barry asked.
Old Man Gove sniffed hard and said, “Aye.”
The Green Lady
Billy dipped his bucket in the water as the bright dart of a stickleback flashed against silt and pebbles. Too quick, it zipped past, lost amid the blinding patterns on the stream’s surface. The sun warmed Billy’s shoulders through his Starsky & Hutch T-shirt.
“You near had him, then.”
Billy fell back at the sound of the voice. The bucket slipped from his fingers and the stream’s plucky current snatched it away.
The old woman resting on the opposite bank clucked. “Ah, now you’ve lost your bucket too.”
The orange plastic vanished around a bend in the stream. He’d only got it a couple of weeks ago when he went on a Sunday School trip to Portrush.
“That’s a pity,” the old woman said, drawing her green shawl around her shoulders.
Billy wondered how she didn’t melt. The telly said it would be the hottest day of the summer, and here she sat with a shawl and big layered skirts. Her shoes looked funny too; more like the kind of boots the soldiers wore when they patrolled the streets.
The old lady smiled. “Have you no one to play with today?”
Billy shielded his eyes from the sun and shook his head.
“Speak up, wee man. Don’t be shy.”
Swiping dust from his jeans, Billy got to his feet. “I called for my friend, but he wasn’t in. His daddy took him to Belfast.”
“Have you no other friends?” She tilted her head as she studied him, her grey-green eyes picking over every bit of him.
Billy sucked on his lower lip and looked at the baked earth beneath his feet. His mum had taken him out of the Drelincourt School where all the other kids on the estate went and made him go to the big school in town. Because he was smarter than the others, she said. Now he had no one on the estate left to play with.
The old woman clucked and smiled, showing her stained teeth. Midges swarmed around her head, mingling with the loose silver strands of her hair to make a shifting halo in the sunlight. Somewhere in the trees a bird called. Billy looked around him. Down here at the water’s edge he couldn’t see the playground up above, or the houses beyond.
“I remember when this was a real river,” the old woman said. “It stretched from yon houses up there, all the way back to the houses on the other side. It cut this big bowl through the earth. But there were no houses then. Except mine.”
Billy looked downstream, wondering if the bucket might have snagged on some rocks. He should go after it.
“I’m going to get—”
“It’s gone, wee darling. Sure, it’ll be halfway to the sea by now.”