Surviving Michael

by Birchall, Joseph

  She also recommended me taking up some exercise, so I go to the gym quite often. That’s usually where I bump into Liam. He lives in there these days. Surprisingly, he’s taken to the training and has already lost a load of weight. The crap food in here helps as well. Nobody will recognise him by the time we get out. Maybe that’s his plan. He’s still an idiot though.

  He’s even started reading quite a bit, now that his life isn’t filled by porn. I see him sometimes sitting on his own with his head in a book. Although it’s usually something by Dan Brown or Dick Francis. But like I said, he’s still an idiot.

  After we’d been arrested, he got a text from the girl he’d met in the nightclub. Before they took his phone away, he texted her back telling her what happened. About two weeks later, a letter arrived from her asking if she could come visit him. She now comes to see him every Sunday afternoon. Last month he told me he was trying to arrange a ’congenital’ visit. It takes all sorts, I suppose.

  My parents visit quite often. It’s easier to talk to them in the visiting room than it was to talk to them in their sitting room. I dreaded them coming in at first, but now I look forward to seeing them. I think they enjoy our visits too. At least I hope they do.

  They allowed us to attend Charlie’s funeral. Secretly, I was hoping they wouldn’t, but now I’m glad they did. Christ that was a hard day. Ruby’s bump was starting to show by the time he was buried. They never found Danny, and they never found the money either. Both washed out to sea, the papers said. The experts advised that it would take an Olympic swimmer’s strength to beat the currents. Besides, Danny had a disability, they said. So they stopped looking after a few days.

  Ruby made eye contact with me over the graveside, but I didn’t have the strength to look at her for too long. That was the last time I saw her.

  At least, until two weeks ago when I got a letter from her. She even sent me a picture of her holding her baby boy. She called him Max. He has a head of thick blond hair, and has to be the best looking baby I’ve ever seen. She moved back to California. She said the photo was taken in her apartment, and if that’s true then she’s living in one very nice apartment. I can see the beach not too far from her back door. I can see palm trees touching the surface of the water. I can see the setting sun and the red sky illuminating her tanned face.

  She invited me to come over to her when I get out. She even invited Liam. She wrote that she has loads of room and that ‘everything will be taken care of’.

  It was Liam who noticed it first. I was so focused on the beach, I never even spotted it. She’s holding the baby up to the camera with her left hand, and she’s wearing a gold wedding ring. I can’t be sure, but it’s a very large and old wedding ring that she’s wearing. And in a way, it’s almost like she’s showing off the ring, and not the baby.

  Liam says he’s sure he knows where that ring came from, but I’m going to wait till I get out of here and enjoy dwelling in the hope that it is what we think it is.

  I remember in the interrogation room after we’d been caught, I never denied anything we’d done. I told the two detectives the whole story and in fairness to them they’d listened to me for hours. The younger detective, Tom, was a bit of a prick and had to be restrained after he found out it had been us who’d stolen his unmarked car.

  Finally, the older guy, Doyle, got up and rubbed his hands over his face and said it was up to a judge and jury now to decide our fate.

  ‘Such a waste of your lives,’ he had said.

  I agreed with him. Especially, as I told him, that fifteen years ago lying in the grass on a sunny day, we had had such high hopes.

  ‘That’s irrelevant now, Nick,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I said to him before he left, ‘but in the grand scale of things, in the big fucking picture; it’s all irrelevant. Irrelevant moments, one after the other. Story by story, day by day, hour by hour. Each moment as infinitesimally unique, pointless and beautiful as the next.’

  I try to convince myself that I’ll go and live in California when I get out of here, but I know I won’t. I have to believe that I have another chance, that there’s always hope, and that I can face and beat my demons here at home. Somewhere out of the rubble of my being, I will salvage and build a worthwhile life.

  A life worthy for having survived Aoife and Charlie, and for surviving Michael.

  THE END

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my wife, Eileen, for her constant support, and for allowing me the freedom to sneak away for an hour or two every day to write this book

  Thanks to my friend, Jean Grainger, for her knowledge and constant encouragement in helping me to publish this book.

  Thanks to those who first read and proofed this book: Kay, Claire, Mary, Eileen, Billy Behan and Shane Kenny.

  And thanks to you for reading it.

  Thank you for reading Surviving Michael. JB

  Follow me on Twitter @anyjoesoap or you can email me directly at josephbirchall@mail.com

  Upcoming novel – The Reluctant Millionaire. Coming Soon…