In the Forest (29 page)

The night he stole out there were thousands of stars and he crossed the fields and climbed over the town gate and walked and walked until he came to a big wood where there was all sorts of activity. It was buzzing. There was bats and game birds and badgers all doing the things they could do only at night; scaring each other and fighting and eating their suppers and rolling around in the leaves, basking and having fun. Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it’s off to play we go.

When it was time to sleep he got into a big bed of pine needles and thought I’ll be a potato, I’ll be a spud and snooze down here. He slept a beautiful sleep and there was no telling how long he slept and it didn’t matter.

Meanwhile there was major commotion at home, his mother, his father, the guards, the whole country out looking for him. They called in water divers because he loved going to the lake for picnics but he could only swim with arm bands. They were demented.

He came out of the wood, his clothes all crumpled and pine needles in his thick mop of brown hair. He could see the house with the roof gone, nettles and cows in the front garden grazing between the broken statues. Fawn cows and spotted cows. They just went on grazing, they didn’t pay any attention to him. Sometimes cows look cross and have glum faces, but these didn’t. He walked in and out between them. They were far taller than he was, their coats were silky and they had big soft pink diddies. It was amazing the amount of grass they could take in their mouths, but of course they spilt a lot of it. Their tongues were rubbery. A farmer came and said, ‘Are you the boy that’s missing?’

‘I dunno.’

‘Yes, you are, you scallywag.’

When his mother and father arrived with a guard and a man there was a big reunion, kissing and crying and his mother wrapping a tartan rug around him in case he caught cold. ‘Where were you?’ ‘Brazil.’ ‘Weren’t you afraid?’ ‘No.’ ‘Did you miss us?’ ‘No.’ ‘Just say you missed us a teeny little bit.’ ‘A teeny bit.’

They’d never know, they’d never get to the bottom of it and they shouldn’t.

Magic follows only the few.

In April 1994, Imelda Riney, aged twenty-nine, and her son Liam, aged three, went missing from her isolated cottage in Co. Clare. Father Joe Walshe, a curate in Co. Galway, disappeared a few days later, and when their burnt-out cars were found, suspicion pointed to Brendan O’Donnell, a local youth, home from England, on remand from prison. O’Donnell was captured after six days, having abducted another young girl, Fiona Sampson. Later, the bodies of the three missing people were found in nearby Cregg Wood; all had been shot at close range. Brendan O’Donnell was charged with their murders and in 1996 tried in the Central Criminal Court in Dublin. He was jailed for life. In July 1997, he was found dead by nursing staff, in the Central Mental Hospital in Dublin.