Closer Than You Think

by Darren O’Sullivan

  I closed my eyes, and as I spoke, I pictured Owen stood in front of me, his hair wet and stuck to the side of his face, like mine. His smile, beaming in my direction. It almost felt like, if I reached for him, I could take his hand.

  ‘Hey.’ My voice cracked as I fought to keep it light. I waited for a response that didn’t come. He just continued to smile. ‘I’m sorry I’ve not been before, it’s been, well, I’m guessing you know. And I know I should have come, but…’

  I imagined him nodding knowingly, encouraging me to carry on. I did, but the words were sticky in my mouth.

  ‘I guess I don’t really have an excuse for not coming, not after so long.’

  I had to pause, wiping a tear from my eye that I didn’t try to hold back. ‘Owen? Can you hear me? Are you there?’

  More tears. This time I didn’t catch them but let them fall, as they should have done ten years ago. Rain water ran off the end of my nose, dripped off my chin. My hair was heavy and soaked, and several beads of the ice-cold water escaped from my hairline down the back of my neck and slid between my shoulder blades. I was cold, my hands turned slightly blue and my body shook as my muscles fought to stay warm, but I didn’t care. I could feel the rain, the cold, the water running down and under the back of my bra. Owen couldn’t feel anything, and the last thing he felt, I couldn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘I miss you.’ The words were heavy after a decade of waiting to be said. ‘I think about you every day and it’s weird, but I still, even after all this time, expect you to be beside me… I expect to hear your voice.’ I lowered my head, ashamed of the fact I couldn’t remember what he sounded like anymore. ‘When I woke up, in the hospital after… and Mum told me you had died, that they had buried you, I tried to come. They told me I couldn’t… I should have said no, I should have insisted I came to see you… but the media wouldn’t leave me alone. I was the one who lived, and the world wanted to know about all of it. I wasn’t strong enough to cope, and Mum took me to England to live with her and Geoff. I didn’t know what else to do. I know that doesn’t excuse ten years of not being here with you.’

  I felt my chin wobble and the icy hand that permanently hovered relaxed, letting me breathe freely for the first time since landing in Ireland. When I spoke, the words came through sobs that hurt so much it almost brought me to my knees. ‘I’m so sorry, Owen, can you hear me? I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when they buried you, I’m so sorry I’ve not been back in so long. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I escaped.’ Looking at his golden name in the dark marble I blinked away the tears, so I could see the letters clearer. Owen Moore, my Owen Moore. I continued, my voice at barely a whisper. My words just for him and me. ‘I should have died with you that night, I’m sorry I let you down.’

  Leaning in, placing my left knee on the ground, aware his head was under it somewhere, I kissed his name and slowly rose to my feet.

  ‘I’m going now. I hope you are somewhere better, my love,’ I said, trying to sound more upbeat. It didn’t last. ‘I hope you can forgive me.’

  I smiled a weak smile, wondering if he might see it somewhere, and walked towards the car, not able to look back. As I climbed in, Mum handed me a towel from the back seat and I dried my hair and face. She offered no sympathy, no platitudes about Owen, but just nodded and fired up the engine to leave. As she slowly pulled away, I looked back at Owen’s stone, and already I had lost its place amongst the others. I felt so ashamed. So guilty.

  Just as we were about to leave the cemetery Mum slammed on her brakes, and although we weren’t going quickly, the seatbelt dug into my collarbone.

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘What, Mum, are you OK?’

  ‘Some idiot just ran across the entrance, I nearly hit him.’

  ‘What? Where?’ I looked in front and around, I couldn’t see anyone.

  ‘He went that way,’ she said, pointing to our right. Again, I looked, but no one was there and as Mum pulled away and indicated to turn the way the man had run, I kept looking. It was probably just someone running to evade the rain, and he absentmindedly ran in front of the entrance, perhaps not expecting anyone to be in the cemetery in such horrid conditions – but I couldn’t fight my heart rate rising.

  As we turned into the flow of traffic and increased our speed, Mum pointed out the man she nearly hit. He wasn’t running but stood under a bus shelter and I let out a sigh of relief. As we passed, he turned, and in his hand I noticed a camera which he held up to his eye, blocking out his face. I saw a bulb flash and as he lowered the camera, I gasped.

  ‘Claire? Love, what is it?’

  ‘It’s him. I’m sure of it!’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Killian. The man you nearly hit was Killian.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, no. I don’t know, Mum.’

  ‘If it was him, what’s he doing here?

  ‘I think he was taking photos of me.’

  Hello, Claire,

  I wonder if you somehow sense how close we have been to one another. How both you and I have stood in the same places, looked at the same things. I wish I could have seen your face when you visited the grave. I wish I could have examined up close the expression: I wish, Claire, I could have heard the words you no doubt said… I wonder how they would have sounded?

  Of all the nights I worked in Ireland, of all the houses I visited, of all the lives I ended, I think about the night with you the most. Perhaps it was because you refused to die, when the others accepted their fate. Or perhaps, and here is the kicker, Claire, perhaps it’s because I let you go.

  That’s right, Claire, I let you climb out of the bathroom window that night. And although I know you will not read these words for some time, I still feel excited writing them, knowing one day you will.

  And the reason I let you climb out of that window? You fought back, you dictated you wouldn’t die without trying, and I enjoyed that. I let you climb out, and I watched you drag yourself through the grass, wondering if you would survive. And you did, look at you! I find it entertaining that the world thinks you escaped from me. But I could have stopped you. I almost did, but as I watched you crawl through the mud, I knew you were meant to survive.

  All I ever wanted was for people like you to learn, and in that moment I knew what a great asset you’d become. Your face wasn’t just another face, another victim. You were something else, and as long as people remembered who you were they would think about me, and about what I stood for. But, now, ten years on, you are forgetting me. You are forgetting why I came.

  You were never supposed to get over that night. You were supposed to stay trapped in the existence I created for you, for ever. But you have chosen another way, one you don’t yet understand is the same way you once lived.

  That night, our night, is the closest I have ever felt to anyone. Nothing has come close to that moment we shared. But knowing I mean less to you now means I need to act. Someone will die soon. A woman. My eighth, the eighth – the one that could have been you. And once she is gone, the journey that will bring us together again will begin, to relive our moment together.

  Until then, I’m never far away. I’m closer than you think.

  Chapter 17

  18th May 2018

  Cullen, Ireland

  After Kanturk we went straight back to the B&B. I was feeling too unsettled, too on edge to do the other thing we had planned for our trip. The only other thing we needed to do. I foolishly hoped that seeing Owen and talking with him would bring me peace, and allow me to sleep. It may well have done were it not for seeing Killian, or someone I thought was Killian, his camera raised, capturing my startled look. If it was him, I couldn’t fathom how he knew we were seeing Owen at that exact moment. If it was the date of the ten-year anniversary, then I could understand, but us going the day before. There was no logical explanation other than he had been following us the entire time we were in Ireland. Thinking about him lurking around, watch
ing, sent a shiver up my spine with such force I was sure it had frozen entirely. Thick ice spread across my ribs, sweeping around their curves, rendering my entire core solid and lifeless. Then again, I was certain I had seen Tommy Kay in a field with a Labrador when I knew Tommy Kay was dead. I was wondering if I was starting to properly lose my mind.

  On the drive back, I told Mum about how Killian had once been someone I’d confided in. What she didn’t know was how things between us had become weird. He’d sent gifts – not the ones that the Facebook group sent, via Mum, of food, books, and those cheques I couldn’t bring myself to bank. Killian’s gifts were personal, and without the group involvement. He sent chocolates, flowers, CDs he liked and thought I would like to, and when I asked him to stop, he became angry, calling me ungrateful. Pointing out the things he had done, the effort he went to for me, his words stinging and forceful. He later apologised, and I accepted it, but things hadn’t felt right since. There was something in the way he spoke, an undertone that made me want to back away. That feeling had died down, but it had never left. His messages, although infrequent, still felt invasive. Until the cemetery, I’d tried to rationalise that how I felt about them said more about me than him.

  Now, seeing him taking photographs and knowing he’d been following me made me realise that my instincts about him were right.

  That is, if it was him at all.

  Mum told me, reassured me, that if he bothered us on our final day here, she would ‘sort him out’. I laughed, picturing my mum exercising her martial arts she took up in her early fifties – Killian wouldn’t know where to turn.

  After a fitful sleep, I was up, showered and sat in the breakfast room to force down a bowl of muesli I couldn’t stomach. Paul had messaged late at night, but I didn’t respond. I was too tired to work out what to say. Besides, Paul had the ability to see through me. I knew if I messaged saying things were fine, he’d know the reality, and worry. I didn’t want to do that to him, not when I knew he would feel powerless to help. Over breakfast he messaged again, asking if I slept well, and again I couldn’t reply. I didn’t want to lie and say I slept fine but also didn’t want to say that last night’s dreams were horrible. In my sleeping state I’d relived the moment I’d woken from what I was told later was a Rohypnol-induced unconsciousness, my body being dragged and dumped in the bathroom. In my peripheral vision was Owen’s lifeless body, with his limp left arm hanging over the edge, somehow looking thinner than it should have done. The man stood over me with the bolt cutters. His face a blur, but for his mouth, wide-open and bloodied. A dark cavern that seemed too large to be human. I often dreamt of that moment, but seldom did I recall what happen next. Usually I woke up as he stepped towards me, my subconscious knowing what was to come. Last night, I hadn’t. And in my sleep, I’d endured the agonising moment the cold, sharp metal pinched my toes. Then, with one swift movement, white hot pain shot up my leg as he removed them. I must have cried out, because when I came to, Mum had been by my side, stroking my hair.

  It’s been a long time since I did that.

  Finishing our breakfast, we packed up the car, as after our final trip – the one thing still left to do – we were driving back to Shannon to fly home. Sat in the passenger seat, I read the messages from Paul again, guilty for not being able to respond. Knowing I wasn’t in the mood to talk, Mum gently hummed to herself as the Irish countryside rolled by. As we passed a sign saying Newmarket was two kilometres away, the air in the car started to feel charged. Mum stopped humming, her nerves showing signs of fraying as the intensity built. She tried to hide it by chitchatting about the weather – right now it was sunny, but rain was only one cloud away – and I nodded politely. I was in no mood for small talk. If we were to speak, I needed it to be direct, and about why we were here.

  ‘Mum, what if there is another house there now?’

  ‘There won’t be, the land is still ours.’

  ‘What? You didn’t sell it?’

  ‘I couldn’t let it go. That bungalow was the one you grew up in. You played hula-hoop, built dens. You and your father played hide and seek in the garden. And when he was unwell, it was the place your father would sit, listening to the wind in the trees – he made peace with dying because of that garden. I know I should have sold the land, I should have got rid of it after that night. But I was so focused on helping you through it, it hardly seemed a priority, then, time went by and it was less important.’

  ‘Do you know what’s there?’

  ‘Some of the bungalow remains, but not a lot.’

  ‘I see.’

  The land was still ours, probably untouched in the past decade apart from what the forensics had done, and the media who seemed to enjoy reporting from the garden once the police has finished with it. But the home that had been built on it, the one we all loved so much, that was gone. In some ways, I wished the land was too.

  As we hit Newmarket town centre, I felt the familiar stirring on my diaphragm. The hand didn’t pluck but ran its nails across the muscles in my chest, like fingers on a chalkboard, scratching a noise that hurt my teeth. The town centre was quiet, and besides the occasional traffic light being red, we didn’t stop as we drove down the arterial road, Church Street. It was in this town Owen and I would get a takeaway after a few drinks in the pub, him leaning on me, singing because he’d had one too many. It was in this town I first told him I loved him, and he said he loved me too. It had been here I could sense him hinting that he wanted to marry me. Being back on this road, I expected something to happen: a face I’d not seen in a long time to look up and catch my eye, a yearning from me to get out and walk around. But there was nothing. We passed through Newmarket like it was just a place, a small town, like any other. But it wasn’t, and once the town centre was behind us, I knew it was less than three kilometres until we were back home. Back to the place that haunted my dreams.

  Chapter 18

  18th May 2018

  Newmarket, Ireland

  I slowly pulled myself from the car and took a few steps towards the shell that had once been my home. A section of roof above the bathroom and front bedroom was entirely missing. All of the windows had been blown out in the fire, or smashed since, by kids no doubt. On the walls of the side where the roof was missing, I could see the black smear of fire damage, even after all this time. I turned to tell Mum it was like it happened weeks ago, not years, not an entire decade, but she was still sat in the car, looking my way, and I couldn’t work out if she was giving me space, like she did when visiting Owen, or if she could not face the house that nearly killed me.

  Turning back to the ruin I could feel the walls trying to whisper to me, trying to tell me the secrets they held, and for a moment, I listened, unable to move, incapable of blinking. That night tried to force its way into my head with all of its horrid, violent detail, but I stopped it, I held it back. I didn’t want to remember anymore. I wanted to let go, and I guess that was why Mum had insisted, rather forcefully, that we came here, not to reminisce, not to remember, but to say goodbye. I knew that what had happened that night would always hold on to me, it would always impact on how I saw the world, but maybe it would loosen its grip.

  For years I thought if I ever came back here it would kill me, but so far it hadn’t. I had been to see Owen’s final resting place and survived. I had seen someone spying on me, taking photographs of me. Maybe it was Killian, maybe it wasn’t, either way I survived, and I would survive this. I became someone who was getting by.

  Without looking back again to Mum, I walked towards the ruin, taking measured steps, trying to minimise my limp. It felt important to step back into that moment as someone who was not a victim. I wanted the universe to know I was here through my own choice.

  I made my way round to the back of the bungalow. Everything that happened to us occurred at the back. As I passed the front door and went down the side of the bungalow, the icy hand played its tune, the song that was about this place, that night. It tried to stop m
e, but I pushed it out and kept going. Kept breathing.

  I waded through weeds that strangled the bushes I’d once pruned and stepped into the large back garden. The first thing I focused on was the small patch of fencing in the furthest corner, next to the compost heap where we threw out bush trimmings and grass cuttings. It was there they’d found me on that night, the helicopter lighting me from above. The place they shot that picture. The one they dug up every year. The three-foot chain link that bordered our land from the farmer’s behind was still bent from the damage I’d caused when I tried to lift myself over to escape. The view behind it was beautiful in the late morning sun. I had forgotten how much I loved it. I heard footsteps behind me and panic shot though me until I realised it was Mum who had quietly come to stand by my side

  ‘The view really is something special,’ she said lightly.

  ‘It rained that night,’ I replied, surprising myself. She didn’t respond but waited for me to continue.

  ‘And you see the way the fence post is at an angle,’ I continued, pointing to the corner I couldn’t avoid, despite not wanting to look at it, ‘that’s from where I tried to climb over it and it bent under my weight.’

  I didn’t think I would ever talk about that moment; I thought it would be something Mum would never know about beyond what was printed in the papers, and yet, saying it out loud felt good. It felt needed, and now I had started I didn’t want to stop. I looked towards the remains of the bathroom window. And from where I was standing, I was almost able to see inside.

  ‘When I fell out of the window I landed there,’ I said, pointing to patch of tall weeds below it. ‘Then I crawled away as fast as I could. To that corner.’ I walked towards the fence, feeling the weight of the past pressing down on me. Mum followed beside me, not offering any kind words, but allowing me to have the moment I didn’t know I had needed for so long. It was weird, but as I continued it felt like the wind had stopped blowing so the trees could listen to my story.