Ronan’s offices are on the top floor of a contemporary, glass-fronted building overlooking Grand Canal Dock. It’s only when I’ve exited the lift into the understated retro cool of the vast, modernist foyer that I appreciate the full extent of his material success. Power & Co. is a firm started by his father, Charles, but it’s Ronan who runs the show now. As I wait for the man himself, I watch the day fade over the docklands below, dusk capturing the old city mills as their modern counterparts cast a kaleidoscope of light onto the water.
I see the boy first, the dull gray uniform unadorned by colors and crests. A woman with brassy hair and slouched shoulders follows behind, deep in conversation with Ronan, and I finally understand the lack of interest in the case. Josh Blair is not the private-school boy I’d pictured, the one who would set two bastions of South Dublin society against each other. He’s just an ordinary kid with no media-friendly angle, one of a multitude without leverage who fly under the radar. I wouldn’t have paid him any attention if I’d passed him in the street, with his cropped brown hair and pale, freckled skin.
Ronan walks them to the lift before crossing the polished concrete floor to greet me.
“Was that…?” I ask.
He grimaces, a deference to his duty of confidentiality, but he doesn’t need to answer. I could feel the defiance in Josh, the head held high despite it all. Some memories are written on the body. That’s what I focus on now, the struggle for justice, the desperate hope of it. Because if I think about why Josh is here in the first place, I might fall apart.
Ronan leads me past reception, into a bright and spacious office full of vintage leather and teak. I sit on one side of a large desk and he takes position opposite.
“Thanks for doing this, Lou,” he says, turning his computer monitor toward me. Laid bare on the screen in my carefully chosen words is the stark reality of my Highfield history. “This is fantastic work. It’s all so vivid, and intimate at the same time. You’re a great writer.”
“Thank you.”
I don’t want to tell Ronan about Damien Corrigan’s online exploits, at least not yet. I know from before just how easily evidence can be dismissed by savvy lawyers and legal loopholes and I need to find out exactly how to leverage my discovery first. Joe is an investigative journalist with the Irish Times; he’ll help me get what I need. And he’ll know what I can threaten to publish and how best to do it. I want to come at Highfield with the full force of this and without warning. There’s too much at stake now, for me, for Josh and for every other kid who swims at that club.
“There are just a few points I want to clarify,” says Ronan.
“Before we get into that, I really do need to know what Shauna’s going to say. Will I get to see her testimony?”
“No, not if it doesn’t go to trial.”
The frustration gusts out of me, and the illusion of control with it.
“She won’t talk to me, she won’t communicate with me in any way. What you’re both asking of me is a big deal, and I could do with a bit of support, or at least some clarification.”
“It’s not personal,” says Ronan. “She just wants to leave the past in the past.”
“OK,” I say as I struggle to control my anger. “That sounds like a plan … let’s all leave those inconvenient memories behind.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that.”
“You know what, Ronan? I’m not sure I can really remember any of it anymore. I mean, it was all such a long time ago.”
“Come on, Lou.”
“No, I think it’s a great idea. Let’s just forget any of it ever happened.”
Ronan folds his hands on his desk, a performance of control that reminds me of the nuns before they went in for the kill.
“I didn’t want to do it this way,” he says quietly, “but if you do have trouble remembering, there are plenty of things that could help.”
“Like what?”
“There’s the interview you gave to a certain student newspaper. I still have a copy of that, if you want a refresher.”
Joe’s article. If Ronan’s held on to that, he could have any number of obscure documents from back then. I push back the chair and I’m on my feet before I realize I’m shaking.
“Look,” says Ronan, standing up to face me. “Can we start again? Let’s have a drink.”
He pours two whiskeys and I sit down and drink until the ice clinks against my teeth. Outside, the docks are backlit by a pink and orange sky that does nothing at all to soothe me.
“I know how difficult this must be for Shauna,” I say. “Of course I do. I’m just trying to understand why she won’t even talk to me.”
“She’s a very private person these days,” he says.
“So private she’s prepared to confess everything to the world?”
Ronan winces and I wonder if I’ve hit a nerve.
“I’ve told you, it probably won’t come to that. Shauna’s prepared to sacrifice her privacy to help Josh and, let’s face it, all the other kids at risk, but that’s the only boundary she’s willing to push.”
I concede a sigh of weary resignation and Ronan’s shoulders relax.
“Look,” he says, “it’s been hard. For all of us, not just Shauna. I hold my hands up, it took me years to come to terms with it, maybe even to believe it.”
“You were very quick to believe the worst of me.”
Ronan’s eyes don’t leave his desk as he takes a deep breath. It’s only on the exhale that he looks up.
“I’m very sorry about that, truly.”
All I can do is nod.
“I wish I’d had the tools to understand,” he says, “but that took a while. It wasn’t until a few years after that Shauna told us what he’d done to her and … I dunno, I didn’t want to believe it. I even blamed her, for being the way she was. But she couldn’t move on so the rest of us couldn’t pretend it had never happened. It started to eat away at me, you know? Especially after I had kids of my own.”
“How old are they?”
“Tommy’s fifteen, Milo is ten and Oscar is eight.”
“And how’s Carol?”
He smiles at the mention of her name, my old classmate, my Highfield nemesis.
“Carol is good, yeah. Actually, she’s the one who pushed me to take this case.”
“Really? Why?”
He laughs knowingly and I break a smile.
“Carol was Miss Highfield,” I say. “Born and bred.”
“It’s caused a few ructions in her family all right. But Carol’s been close to Shauna since we got married.”
It shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, that Carol has spent all this time with Shauna. But it feels like Carol got it all when she already had more than her fair share.
“I’d like to see Carol,” I say. If she has Shauna’s ear, maybe she can help me understand.
“OK.” Ronan nods slowly. “I’ll have to check with her first, but I can’t imagine she’d have a problem with that.”
“Thanks.”
He eyes me as he sits back, drumming his fingers on the arm of his leather chair.
“Lou,” he says hesitantly. “You came out of it all OK, didn’t you?”
He registers the bewilderment on my face and holds his hands up in apology.
“I mean, after … everything. You survived, you made a life for yourself.”
“I guess so.”
“Well, your testimony will help Josh to do the same.”
I’m not sure Ronan knows what that means, if anyone else really understands. Yeah, I survived. If you don’t count the insomnia, the night terrors, the unbearable weight of sadness, you could almost say I made it. But I never escaped Highfield. It’s still the yardstick by which my life is measured, the distance traveled from it. If I’m a survivor, it’s only in relation to those who didn’t make it.
“Like I said,” says Ronan, “we need to go through some of the details of your statement, but, all going well, I’m going to file proceedings to the High Court on Tuesday, so you’ll need to be prepared.”
“For what exactly?”
“There’s always media interest in my big cases, and once reporters see Highfield on the paperwork…”
“They’ll be able to see everything?”
“Just the names of the parties and an outline of the claim. But as far as you’re concerned, it won’t take them long to connect the dots. It could get nasty.”
My whole body tenses, the fear rising through my chest. I already know how brutal online strangers can be, those dark nights spent trawling the true-crime message boards and blogs. My past words and actions dissected and distorted and not a thing I could do to answer back.
“What exactly do you mean by ‘nasty’?”
He sighs slowly through pursed lips.
“It can be intense. It’s just the way social media works these days—it’s an outrage machine. Try not to take it personally and switch it off if it gets too much. Honestly, my life has been so much easier since I deleted my Twitter account.”
I’ve never really experienced Twitter as much more than a one-way conversation, sporadic literary criticism tweeted to an audience of a few hundred. The prospect of a public hate campaign fills me with such dread, I’m more determined than ever to put an end to this before it even gets a chance to begin.
“What’s the timeline for everything?” I ask.
“Once I issue proceedings, they have eight days to respond and, fingers crossed, that will be with an appropriate offer.”
“Do you really think they’ll settle?”
“Josh’s testimony is pretty damning, and another swimmer can back up some of it. And then there’s Shauna, you and six others from over the years.”
It could all be wrapped up in a couple of weeks, before Liam Kelly or Shauna or anyone else has a chance to speak out. I’ll have to tell Alex and Joe, of course, but there’s no point alerting work to something that might never happen. I have eight days from Tuesday to confront Highfield, and that might be the last I ever have to think of that place.
KATIE AND ALEX ARE IN the kitchen chopping vegetables when I get home, thick as thieves with their smiles and glances, and I know I’ll be sitting down to dinner with an agenda. I’m happy to give in to almost anything to avoid an argument but I’m not prepared for the news that’s delivered with the aubergine parmigiana.
“I’ve been picked for a swimming gala,” says Katie with a nervous smile.
“That’s wonderful,” I say, and I reach across the table for her hand. “Baby, I’m so proud of you.”
“It’s next week, on Saturday,” she says, and takes a slow breath. “At Highfield, the McQueen Centre.”
I hold on to my smile and to Katie’s hand, while I try to control my emotions and think of the least bad thing to say.
“It’s great news, isn’t it?” says Alex. “And we’ll both be there, won’t we?”
The McQueen Centre, Ireland’s first fifty-meter pool. But it’s still the same place to me and I haven’t set foot in there in over thirty years. I don’t know how Alex thinks I’m going to be able to do it, but then again, she doesn’t know the full story.
“I … eh…”
Flashes of cold, limp flesh, rough hands on damp skin and the rolling echo of the one word that screams inside my head: No.
“Yes,” I say, “of course.”
And then I let go of Katie’s hand, mumble an excuse and walk slowly out of the extension to the understairs loo and vomit as quietly as I can.