Grounded Read online

  ‘Cian?’ My voice echoes in the empty room. ‘Cian? It’s Declan.’

  Nothing. The house feels even emptier when the echo dies.

  I go back into the hall and try the door on the right. This room has a bigger window and the moon lets me see a pile of beer cans in front of the fireplace. The stench of old piss makes me screw up my nose. I remember the policeman saying kids had been using the place as a drinking den and toilet.

  I don’t want to go upstairs. I know this is a wild goose chase. But I might as well do the thing right. And when I go home I’ll tell Stacey what Cian said about hiding. Mum said the police had drawn a blank with his mates in Portadown, but what about his hiding places there? Where was it he’d said? An old house? I hadn’t believed him but I think I do now.

  ‘Cian?’ I shout again. ‘Are you up there? It’s OK. I want to help you.’

  My voice sounds ridiculous in the empty house. I feel like I’m in a really bad film. The naive teenager in the haunted house. Where the next frame has the gangleader standing at the top of the stairs with a gun, laughing.

  Only there is no gangleader, just an even more naive teenager who needs his head seen to. Or maybe nobody.

  Anyway, I’ve come this far. My eyes are getting used to the dark, and there’ll be moonlight in the bedroom windows to help me see. The worst danger is probably from the rotten wood of the stairs. I test the first few. It’s so damp my feet sink into the carpet like it’s moss. A couple of them creak but I get to the top safely. The biscuity smell of mice is stronger here, and when I open the first door there’s a scuffle. My toes clench inside my boots. Two years of hanging around stables has made me pretty cool about mice but I don’t fancy them running over my feet. Anyway, he isn’t here. Nobody could stay for three days somewhere so crawling with mice.

  OK, it was a stupid idea, but at least I tried.

  Outside feels warm and quite light compared to the gloom of the house. But the looming, corrugated-iron barn makes me shiver. I’ve thought about it so many times in the last few months, even though I’ve tried so hard not to.

  I don’t have to go inside.

  You’ve come this far. What if he’s hiding there and you miss him?

  I can’t go in.

  Don’t be daft. Maybe if you did … it can’t be as bad as you remember. Nothing could be as bad as the dead horse and the dying foal, and your poor, angry, ghostly Folly.

  Ghosts is right. What if they’re haunting the place?

  No. The place is haunting you. You and Folly. If you go in now, just look at the barn, maybe it will help you understand her.

  It’s not about Cian now; it’s all about Folly.

  The rope that tied up the barn door is gone, and it slides open easily.

  The barn is even darker than the house because there’s no windows. No wonder Folly’s eyes are so sensitive. But as I slide the double doors further apart the moon shines in behind me and starts to show me the scene I’ve been flashing back to all these months.

  Only different. The same reek of death – but is that my imagination because I know what happened here? The straw’s been roughly cleared out – I suppose the police or environmental health or somebody cleared it out when they came back for the mare’s body. It’s just an empty barn now. In the corner where Folly stood the wall’s all battered, as if she stood there and kicked it. In the other corner the pile of wooden pallets.

  I force myself to look. And remember. And it doesn’t make me feel any better at all. It makes me ashamed that Folly came from here and I wouldn’t let myself think about what that meant, about how traumatised she must be. It was too horrible to think about where she’d come from, so I cared too much about where I wanted her to go and what I wanted her to be.

  Look. Stay. I know you want to jump on your bike and cycle home and never think about this place again but you must see it for what it was.

  I make myself walk right in.

  I force myself to go over and look at the wooden pallets, as if seeing Folly’s teeth marks on them will make some kind of difference.

  Something bigger than a mouse scuttles over my foot and I jump and shiver. And that sense of being in a film takes over again. Only it’s turning into a horror film.

  And then something – a sense of movement, of something swinging – makes me look up.

  And see Cian. Because he was here all along. I just didn’t notice because he’s high above me, hanging from the beam.

  2.

  It’s not real. It’s a game – I always knew he was a nutter.

  And this has happened to me before – when I went in that morning three years ago and found Mum lying in bed with a bottle of pills beside her. I was sure she was dead but she wasn’t. And Cian can’t be. He’s fifteen. He can’t be dead.

  But I’m kidding myself. The way his body’s hanging and especially the way his head lolls, swollen and purple, with his eyes staring and popping – of course he’s dead. Dead but not real. It’s still like a film. It’s not the kind of thing that happens in real life.

  I fumble in my pocket for my phone. That’s when I realise how much I’m shaking. My fingers slip on the screen but I manage to hit the nine three times and tell them what’s happened and where.

  And saying it – I’ve found a body. A boy has hanged himself. I know who he is – makes it real.

  When we found the horses I could hardly bear to stay inside in the barn, but now I feel I can’t leave Cian alone. I feel as if I should touch him, even though I can’t bear to, but he’s so high up – he must have climbed up the pallets – that all I can reach is his foot. But I can’t bring myself to touch it. His trainers are laced up properly. It seems incredible that he can be hanging there, dead, and his trainers stay on.

  It’s just a body; it’s not really him.

  But it is him. The face is distorted but it’s Cian’s face and his red hair falls over his forehead in the same way it did when he was alive. I wish I could cut him down – there’s something grotesque about him dangling there – but I wouldn’t know where to start, and anyway, I know I shouldn’t mess with anything. It would be different if there was any chance of resuscitation, if it had just happened, but even though I’m not an expert on corpses I can see there’s no chance of that.

  I need to phone Mum; she could tell Stacey, before the police get there. I can’t remember now what I said to the police. I didn’t know his surname but I told them where he lived. They’ll have gone round there. And then come here? Or maybe a different lot will come here?

  Thinking about procedure, wondering what happens, keeps me just about sane while I’m waiting. I phone Mum but it rings and rings and then goes to voicemail. I listen to her voice and then to the sound of my own breathing, and there isn’t anything I can say so I hang up.

  And then everybody arrives – police, ambulance – and it’s not just me and Cian any more.

  A blonde policewoman leads me away from Cian and asks me questions. I feel as if I’ve been in the barn for hours but when I check my watch it’s only been ten minutes since I phoned. She keeps asking if I’m OK.

  ‘I’m OK, I’m not the one that’s … Does his mum know?’ I ask. ‘Did I give you the right address? I can never remember what number it is but it’s straight across the street from number thirteen.’ I don’t know why I’m babbling so much.

  ‘Yes, another car has gone there. Don’t worry, you’ve done a great job.’

  I haven’t done anything except make a phone call.

  ‘Do you know how long … when he … how dead he is?’ This hasn’t come out right but she knows what I mean.

  ‘Not offhand, no. But a day or so, probably.’

  ‘If I’d thought – I only remembered today that he might have come here. I came as soon as I could. But if I’d remembered sooner …’ My hand flies up to cover my mouth. I don’t want to look behind me at what they’re doing to the body but at the same time I can’t not look. He’s on the ground now, his head still at
that weird angle.

  The sound of an engine breaks into the night and another police car comes into the yard. Stacey gets out and a policewoman half-carries her past me. Stacey looks tiny. She isn’t crying, but she’s whimpering the way Madison was when she hurt herself. She doesn’t seem to see me. ‘Come on,’ the woman keeps saying to her, ‘I’ll be with you. I won’t leave you.’

  A moment later there’s a scream and then Stacey loses it completely, wailing over and over and over, ‘Oh, my baby, my baby, my baby!’

  My stomach lurches and I have to dash to the doorway and breathe the fresh air, but the wild shouts follow me. I hug myself to try and stop the shivering. Behind me in the barn are professional people doing what they do and yet nothing seems to be really happening.

  My policewoman comes out and finds me again. ‘Poor woman’s demented. Not surprising. Nobody wants to believe their child could die, and especially not like that.’

  ‘He’d been missing,’ I tell her. ‘They were looking for him, but … He’s only fifteen. He was in trouble with his mum and school and – well, I think he owed somebody money. I’m sorry, I’m talking too much, amn’t I?’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  ‘How long does all that’ – I gesture towards the barn – ‘take?’

  ‘It depends. He’s been pronounced dead. We have to wait for the mortuary to come and take the body away. There’s procedure. It all takes time.’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘You can, as soon as we’ve taken down some details.’

  Suddenly Stacey appears in front of me. Her face is wild with shock. ‘How did you know?’ she screams. ‘How did you know he was here?’ She starts beating at me with her fists.

  ‘I didn’t! I only – tonight, I suddenly thought of it. I knew it was empty. He once told me he … he liked hiding out in places. I came the minute I thought of it.’ You didn’t even phone the police, I think, but I don’t say it. Someone takes her away. The blonde policewoman tells me not to worry, it’s not my fault, people just strike out at the nearest person and I mustn’t take it personally.

  I feel tireder than I ever have in my life and, even though I’m surrounded by people, absolutely alone.

  I don’t want this kind, patronising middle-aged woman who doesn’t know me telling me what I’m feeling.

  I’m freezing. I hug myself really tightly. I want Seaneen. And at the same time I’m glad she’s not here, that she doesn’t have that image of Cian’s hanging body seared on her brain the way it is on mine.

  * * *

  Mum comes out of Stacey’s house as I’m taking my bike out of the back of the police car. ‘Oh, love,’ she says. ‘What a terrible …’

  I set my bike down on the ground. ‘I’m OK,’ I say before she starts into one of her fusses.

  Mum folds her arms and looks in the car window. ‘I’m sitting with the wee girls,’ she says to the blonde policewoman. ‘Her other kids. She hasn’t really got anybody else. But if there’s anything I can do …’

  ‘Someone will be round to see her tomorrow. And if you could give her this number – it’s a support service for people who’ve been bereaved by suicide. Most people find it very helpful.’

  Mum takes the card. ‘You don’t believe it could happen to someone you know, do you?’ she says and the policewoman shakes her head.

  I stand in the street for a moment while Mum finishes talking to the policewoman. As soon as she does she comes over and tries to hug me, a bit clumsily since I’ve got one hand on the seat of my bike. ‘That must have been a terrible thing for you to find,’ she says.

  ‘I’m tired, Mum, I just want to go to bed.’

  ‘I have to stay at Stacey’s. The girls were in bed when the police came – they don’t even know. I can’t leave them.’

  ‘I know. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘You can’t go in on your own! Not after a shock like that. Come on into Stacey’s and let me make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘No.’ I can’t go in there. I turn and go into my own house. I’m too tired to go round the back with the bike. I just prop it up against the front wall. If anybody nicks it, too bad.

  I sit in the living room and try to warm up but the trembling inside won’t stop. I make tea but as soon as it hits the back of my throat I gag. I turn on the TV but all I can see is Cian hanging.

  And I know that’s all I’m going to see all night, and for God knows how long.

  3.

  Usual round of Saturday brats. Somebody gets bucked off and howls. Get over yourself, I think, opening the gate of the school for the end of the eleven o’clock ride. The shivering hasn’t stopped and all I’ve had to eat all morning is paracetamol.

  Cam sighs as she passes me. ‘Gosh,’ she says in a low voice. ‘They don’t get any better. Some of them really should give up.’ She laughs. ‘Only I hope they don’t. Go after them and make sure they run their stirrups up properly.’

  I catch up with the line of ponies making their way to yard. The ponies shake their heads and look bored. Their riders squeal and pull at their reins.

  ‘Stop that,’ I say to Casper. ‘Would you like somebody pulling at your mouth that way?’

  Unfortunately I say it just as we’re going past Casper’s mum. Her fish face gulps in horror. ‘Look, I have to tell him the same thing every week,’ I say. ‘If he’s that stupid he shouldn’t be here. He’s too fat for our ponies anyway.’

  I busy myself checking on the ponies, and ignore the sight of Fish Face striding off to the barn, clearly looking for Cam.

  I take the wheelbarrow into the school to clean up any poos before the next lesson. From the school I can see that Folly’s fine. I should go and check her properly – I’ll get half an hour for lunch when I’ve done this so I can do it then. Lara rides into the school on Promise, the mare shining like ebony in the autumn sun.

  ‘There’s a ride at half twelve,’ I say.

  ‘So? I’m only going to warm her up and then we’re going on the farm trail. She’s fantastic at the cross country jumps. But then, she did cost seven thousand.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t be fit to ride anything that didn’t, would you, Lara?’ I can see her working out what that’s meant to mean.

  I empty the wheelbarrow on to the dung heap. It seems to take a long, long time.

  ‘Declan!’ Cam bears down on me, her face pink with rage, clashing with her red hair. It makes me think of Cian, his red hair, only his face was purple. How can a face go purple? Was it blood, or…

  ‘…can’t believe you’d be so bad-mannered! To a customer! I know he’s annoying but as I keep saying, that’s what pays your wages. Lara’s just complained that you’ve been rude to her – and you’ve put Magic’s saddle on Bella – no wonder she bucked! What the hell is wrong with you?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘I know you’ve been in a funny mood recently but this – do you actually want this job?’

  I look into the wheelbarrow. It’s smeared with traces of wet dung.

  ‘Declan. Would you look at me?’

  I look up at her and then down at the wheelbarrow. ‘Sorry,’ I say and then the wheelbarrow disappears in a blur of tears. I look at my hands on the handles and they’re shaking uncontrollably. I can hear the shouts of the brats saying goodbye to each other, and the ponies shifting their hooves in their stables.

  ‘Declan? Are you ill?’

  I find some kind of a voice. ‘No. I – something happened. I found – there was this boy …’

  She pulls my hands off the wheelbarrow handles since I don’t seem to be able to do it myself. ‘Come into the house.’

  ‘You have a lesson.’

  ‘Not just yet.’

  She makes me come into her kitchen and sit down. She makes me a cup of coffee. I shake my head. ‘I won’t be able to drink it,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, you will. Now tell me what happened.’

  So I do. Her face stiffens with horror. ‘Oh good God. And you – this w
as a friend of yours?’

  ‘Not a friend. I didn’t even like him. But – if I’d found him sooner …’

  The tears pour down my face and I’m too tired to wipe them away. I’ve never cried in front of Cam. She pats my arm from time to time, awkwardly, and says, ‘I’ll ask Pippa to take you home. You can’t be round horses in this state, never mind customers.’

  ‘No! I can’t go home. It’s all everybody’s going to be talking about. Please Cam, don’t send me home. I promise I won’t be rude to anybody else.’

  ‘You’re not fit for work. Did you get any sleep last night?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘If you won’t go home, at least go and rest in the living room.’

  ‘But it’s Saturday. You’re really busy.’

  ‘I’ll be OK. I’d like to keep the customers I have.’ She smiles to show that she’s trying to make a joke. ‘Go on. Take your coffee.’

  I don’t remember being in Cam’s living room before. It’s shabby and cosy, and as soon as I see the big squashy sofa all thoughts of going back into the yard leave me. The door opens and Spick and Span skitter in, their tiny claws scraping the wooden floor. ‘Thought you’d like the company,’ Cam calls in. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  I know I won’t sleep, and I don’t even want to close my eyes because that’s when I see the hanging body worst of all, but I curl up on the sofa anyway, turn on the horse channel and watch some showjumping from America. Spick and Span bicker to get in the crook of my legs and in the end they both squeeze in and I start to warm up for the first time since last night.

  When I open my eyes the room’s dusky and the dogs have gone. My head feels thick and my legs are cramped from lying on the sofa.