The Boy from the Sea

by H L Macfarlane

  A raised eyebrow. “You don’t fuck them, either.”

  “Lir!”

  “I’m just telling it like it is!” he protested, taking his hands off the wheel for a second in a gesture of surrender. But he was smiling, so I knew he couldn’t be that pissed off.

  “…found dead in the supply room by the pool,” a reporter on the radio said, immediately cutting through the easy atmosphere of the car like a hot knife through butter. Both Lir and I stilled. I turned up the volume so we didn’t miss a single word of the news.

  “Coroner’s report determined that the man, identified today as Trinity College student Cian Byrne, was drowned, though there were marks on his neck that suggest strangulation was also involved. Byrne, age twenty-three, was staying in Glasgow for a swimming competition held at the University of Glasgow. Police are treating the case as a murder and are encouraging any witnesses who may have seen him in the hours before his death to come forward.”

  Even after the news turned to more banal topics like sports and the music charts neither Lir nor I spoke a word. Silence stretched between us for what felt like hours.

  Eventually I said, “Lir, I’m so sorry. To lose your friend like that…I can’t imagine it.”

  But Lir did not seem in the least bit upset, nor was his face blank like it had been as he talked of his parents’ deaths. No, he seemed – I wasn’t sure what he seemed – but if I was going to pick a word for it I’d have said he seemed vindicated.

  Lir unclenched the steering wheel and all the tension left his body. He turned his head, cocked it to the side and beamed, the epitome of an angel fallen down upon the mortal earth.

  “He was never my friend.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  By the time we reached Campbeltown I'd forced thoughts of Lir's reaction to Cian's grisly death out of my head. It hadn't been how I'd expected him to react, sure, but who was I to understand the full extent of their childhood ‘friendship’? For all I knew Cian had done something horrific to him when they were kids. That I couldn’t imagine what kind of horrors a child might inflict upon another didn't mean those horrible things never happened.

  So I pushed Lir’s eerily angelic smile into a dark corner of my mind.

  Despite the fact we would be spending most of our time in his adoptive family home Lir had booked us a lovely waterfront cottage (complete with a refurbished bathroom containing a shower big enough for two) for the duration of our stay in Campbeltown. I appreciated the gesture: though I looked forward to meeting the people who had raised him for most of his life I was so nervous I was sure I’d vomit if I so much as opened my mouth.

  “No need to be nervous, silly,” Lir reassured me as I fidgeted with my hair, my ear, my sleeve. I’d agonised over what to wear to his aunt and uncle’s anniversary, rueing the fact I hadn’t packed anything appropriate for a semi-formal event. I’d settled on the one long-sleeved dress I’d packed, which was floral and floaty but entirely backless. I’d meant to wear it to dinner somewhere nice with Lir, just the two of us.

  Now that we were outside the door of his family’s house I sincerely wished I’d worn something else.

  Lir laughed when he caught my eyes scanning over my outfit. I hated how effortlessly good he looked in a pale blue shirt – two buttons undone at the collar and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows – paired with grey linen trousers cuffed at the ankles and smart, straight-out-of-the-box white trainers.

  “You look amazing, Grace,” he said, lacing his fingers with mine as he opened the door. “My folks are gonna love you. Just try not to be sick the moment you have to say hello.”

  “Why would you say that to me right now?!” I cried, though my complaint was entirely lost in the cacophony of voices that met our ears as we stepped foot into the hallway. For a moment my new surroundings overwhelmed me as I took them in, from the vaulted ceiling overheard to the white-painted walls adorned with tasteful artwork to the sheer size of the house’s interior.

  Lir’s aunt and uncle were very evidently well off, which for some reason surprised me. Lir himself had always come across as someone who came from very little and thus was happy with very little. He wasn’t materialistic in the slightest, and most of his favourite sports and hobbies required next to no money to pursue them.

  But, then again, he also spent over two hundred pounds on a single book and could afford not to have a part-time job whilst he studied at university. Both were signs of a financially-secure individual.

  At least two dozen strangers filled the gargantuan open plan living room and dining kitchen, almost all of whom stared at us as we made our entrance. My grip on Lir’s hand grew so tight I saw his brow twitch a little in response but I didn’t dare loosen my hold. I was so nervous. This was a terrible mistake. I’d never had a long-term boyfriend – much less met their parents – and somehow I’d thought I’d be able to manage an entire party full of extended family and friends?

  I must have gone mad.

  A woman with artfully greying hair secured in an elegant knot at the base of her neck rushed over to us immediately, a wide smile on her face as she slung her arms around Lir’s neck. Her embrace forced him to let go of my hand; I clasped my hands together, behind my back, to stop myself from fidgeting.

  “Dylan!” the woman cried, delighted. “You never told me you were going to make it. Oh, Tommy, look who’s here!”

  A middle-aged man quickly appeared by her side. His tawny hair and grey eyes were so startlingly like Lir’s that I literally took a step back when I saw him. The man – Tommy – gave me a warm smile before clapping his nephew on the shoulder when the woman who was presumably Róisín finally let him go.

  “Leave it to you to surprise us like this, Dylan,” he said. “But the last thing I expected was for you to bring a lassie with you. So who might you be, young lady?”

  “This is Grace,” Lir said, speaking for me on the off-chance I really was going to throw up. “She’s my girlfriend. I’m really excited for you to finally meet her.”

  I jutted my hand out towards Lir’s uncle, who shook it confidently and easily. I realised that I quite liked him based on first impressions alone. “I – um – it’s really nice to meet you,” I stammered, then took a second to collect myself. All I had to do was breathe and talk and listen. It was just a party. My teaching persona could help me out a lot here. I relaxed my posture and said, brightly, “Happy anniversary! My parents celebrated their thirtieth last year but they spent it in the South of France for a month without me.”

  At this Lir’s aunt burst out laughing. “We were almost tempted to do the same thing! My mum insisted we had to celebrate properly, though. Of course, she fell asleep drunk in the corner about an hour ago, so maybe I shouldn’t have listened to her. It’s lovely to meet you, Grace. Would you like a drink?”

  “We’ll get them,” Lir said, taking my hand once more and guiding me through the small crowd of people towards the fridge. He was greeted by many of them as he poured a glass of wine for me and, after searching through the cupboards, a measure of whisky for himself.

  “Why do they all call you Dylan?” I asked him in an undertone, deeply curious. “I thought your family would surely call you Lir. I mean, Cian did, didn’t he?”

  “Ah, that’s my fault,” Tommy said, surprising the both of us. He took the whisky out of Lir’s hand and poured himself a glass, winking at his nephew as he did so. “Thought you could pull out the good stuff without telling me, huh?”

  Lir shrugged, a small smile on his face I’d never seen before. It was…relaxed. Effortless. He and his uncle clearly had a strong, comfortable relationship, just like the one I had with my dad. “I know you have another bottle of it in the study,” Lir said. “You’d never miss this one if I drank it all.”

  “Precocious little brat, isn’t he?” Tommy said, directing the jibe at me. “When we took him in Dylan insisted on using his middle name. It’s the one my brother, Sally, and her sister all used, so he wanted to stick to
it. I told him the kids in school would tease him to no end for having a strange name. You know what they’re like.”

  I did, and for the first time it occurred to me that I’d never asked Lir if he’d been bullied before. But he seemed too – I wasn’t sure how to put it – aloof to be bullied.

  “My uncle was right, of course,” Lir easily admitted, pouring me another glass of wine in the process. I hadn’t even realised I’d finished the first one. “I was torn to shreds by them. I hated it. I didn’t want everyone’s attention on me. So I used my first name and the other kids finally started ignoring me.” He chimed his glass against Tommy’s, and they both drank heavily before doing the same with a second round.

  “I didn’t want him to be ignored,” his uncle clarified after a moment or two. He sighed in satisfaction when he took another swallow of whisky. “But I suppose with all the swimming and studying he didn’t really have time for lots of friends, anyway. And for what – a marine biology degree at Glasgow! I’ll tell you again, Dylan: it’s a waste of your talent and you know it.”

  Lir narrowed his eyes at his uncle. I could tell this was a conversation they’d had many times before: a point of contention between two otherwise very close individuals. “Grace just handed in her thesis at Glasgow,” Lir told him. “She’ll be a doctor soon. Is that a waste?”

  Tommy turned to me in interest. “What’s your doctorate in?”

  “The use of recombinant proteins in targeted gene therapy,” I immediately replied, so used to giving my rote answer to students that I forgot to use my ‘simple’ answer. I gave Tommy an apologetic smile at the blank expression on his face. “Molecular biology.”

  “Aha!” Lir’s uncle exclaimed, triumphant. “See, Dylan? That’s a useful subject. You should have let that scout sign you for competitive swimming back when you had the –”

  “Thomas Murphy, will you leave your poor nephew alone?” Róisín cut in, appearing from behind her husband with a knowing look on her face. “You’re going to scare off his lovely girlfriend.”

  “Oh, I’m enjoying this,” I chuckled. “He never talks about his life before university. I’ll take any and all information I can get.”

  “Don’t,” Lir warned his uncle, when Tommy slapped his hands together and poured another whisky, a mischievous gleam in his eye.

  “If she wants to know she wants to know! I think it’s little Gracie’s right, don’t you think? Is Gracie okay? Or is it just Grace?”

  I smiled softly, a glow filling up my chest at the familial nickname. “Gracie is fine. I like it.”

  “Well then, Gracie, let me tell you about the time…”

  For the next hour or so his uncle – and, sometimes, his aunt, when she stopped by to check on us and top up her wine – regaled me with all manner of stories from Lir’s youth, Lir all the while sighing and tutting and throwing in protests when a story was ‘untrue’, ‘exaggerated’ or ‘just plain embarrassing’. It was a whole new side to Lir that I had never seen, and by the time I reached the end of a bottle of wine I was more in love with him than I had been before the party, somehow.

  Eventually I needed to pee so badly I began squirming on the spot.

  “The bathroom’s down the corridor,” Lir said, noticing my discomfort immediately. “Second door on the left. Want me to show you?”

  “I can manage it myself, I’m sure,” I said, not wanting to interrupt his time with a now very drunk Tommy.

  Feeling warm and tipsy from both the wine and the pleasant trip down memory lane with Lir’s aunt and uncle, it occurred to me as I locked the bathroom door behind me that I was actually having a good time. Not only that: after my initial nerves had passed I’d felt like myself around Lir’s family, rather than having to put up a front. I realised that could only mean good things for us as a couple.

  I wondered if I should add a visit to Largs into our trip so Lir could meet my parents.

  After fussing with my hair for far too long in front of the mirror and reapplying my lipstick, I left the bathroom and began making my way back to the living room. But then I heard a snippet of conversation between an ageing couple that gave me pause.

  “…still don’t understand why they took him in after what happened. The boy wasn’t right in the head.”

  “Oh come now, Mary. Dylan seems fine now, doesn’t he? After what happened to his parents I’m not surprised he was a bit of a broken child.”

  I hid behind a tall fern in a humongous, elaborately tiled pot, heart hammering painfully in my chest. Of course I was madly curious. Just what on earth had Lir done?

  The woman called Mary tutted at her companion’s remark. “Dragging your aunt to her death hardly counts as being a bit of a broken child, Harold. It’s the mark of a sociopath. And all to get ‘home’, he told his uncle! Home? Ha! What on earth was that supposed to mean?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t talk about such things in front of my girlfriend, Mary,” Lir said, surprising myself, Mary and Harold all at the same time. The couple stared at him, wide-eyed, then spied me hiding behind the fern.

  Mary had the sense to look ashamed. “You know what I’m like when I’m drinking, Dylan dear,” she said, though her flushed cheeks had nothing to do with the brandy in her hand. “What happened was a tragic accident. But one can’t help but gossip about such things!”

  Lir didn’t move, standing perfectly still as he gave Mary perhaps the most chilling smile I’d ever seen. It was all gleaming white teeth, pulled-back lips and emptiness. It was a threat if ever I’d seen one. “If one gossips about a six-year-old deliberately murdering their aunt then perhaps one should entertain the notion that they themselves are mentally disturbed,” he said, each word intonated in an identical, almost poetic fashion. And then, in a completely different voice: “Grace?”

  He indicated towards the stairs with his head, breaking from his eerily calm composure in the space of a second. Numbly I followed him, stumbling up the stairs without looking at anyone – especially Mary, who was now complaining to Harold about the manners of ‘kids these days’. I didn’t know how to process what I’d just heard. For how could I?

  Lir hadn’t really killed his aunt, had he?

  When we reached our destination I realised Lir must have taken us to his bedroom. The place was impeccably tidy, though the walls were adorned with multiple shelves bursting at the seams with books as well as drawers and carved wooden boxes filled with even more books. The curtains were a tasteful, seafoam green; they matched the duvet on the double bed. Going by the colour I knew Lir himself must have chosen both of them.

  He sat on the pale green bed now, patting the space beside him until I, too, sat down. Neither of us spoke for several minutes; below us the noise of the party carried through the carpet, muffled and unrelenting. I wished we had silence.

  After a while I realised my hands were shaking so I stuck them between my knees to try and make it stop. A lock of hair came loose from behind my ear. I didn’t move it back, but Lir did.

  “Grace,” he said, very softly and with none of the venom with which he had spoken to Mary lingering in his voice. His fingers moved from my hair to trail down my jawline. “Grace, ask me to tell you what happened to my Aunt Orla.”

  I didn’t dare look at Lir, though I knew he desperately wanted me to. “Y-you didn’t, did you?” I stuttered, keeping my gaze firmly on my hands. They began to make the entire length of my legs shake. “You didn’t murder her, did you?”

  Lir placed a hand on my right knee. He squeezed it so hard my chin jutted up in response, and he turned my face to look at him with a gentle finger on my cheek. His grey eyes were too bright, like he was on the verge of crying.

  “I didn’t murder her,” he said. “But I did kill her.”

  A sound came out of my throat that was somewhere between a sob and a choke. “W-what does that mean?”

  “It means I’m the reason she died. I made her take me to the beach where my parents…where they walked into the sea.
” There were tears in his eyes now, which Lir made no attempt to brush away. He squeezed my knee again, and the next words tumbled out of his mouth so fast I didn’t think Lir could have stopped them even if he’d wanted to.

  “I made my aunt come into the waves with me,” he said, “to follow the path they took back home. I knew we could reach them. I just knew it. But Aunt Orla…she didn’t believe me, even though she was the one who told me where they went in the first place!” I wanted him to stop talking – so desperately wanted to cover my ears with my hands and block out his recount of what happened – but Lir just kept on going.

  “And she panicked, and I tried to calm her down but she just wouldn’t. I didn’t mean to hit her with the rock – I didn’t know that would make her fall unconscious or that the current would carry her away from me. I thought we’d go home, together. But I lost my strength and when I woke up in the hospital…well, she was gone. She was gone and it was my fault.”

  Lir wasn’t the only one crying now, and I wasn’t the only one trembling. Hot, ugly tears were running down my face, dripping off my chin and landing on my chest. This was all too much. Lir’s childhood was too much.

  “I’m so sorry,” was all I could croak out. “Lir, I’m so, so sorry. At least…well, at least she’s with your parents now. She isn’t alone.” Not that I’d ever believed in an afterlife, but who was I to deny comfort to a grieving boy?

  The blank stare Lir gave me was as unsettling as the smile he’d given Mary mere minutes ago. “No she isn’t.”

  Something told me I didn’t need a clarification over what he meant. Or, rather, didn’t want to hear it. I asked anyway. “I…what do you mean, Lir? They’re all –”

  “My parents aren’t dead,” he insisted, standing up so abruptly I flinched in surprise. He began riffling through a bookcase, tossing a leather-bound tome on the bed, then another and another. “They went home. They’re where they’re meant to be. I’ll reach them if I can make things right.” He carefully extricated a roll of parchment scrolled all over in blue ink from a box, then moved over to a second bookcase for…whatever it was he was looking for.