Free Mr Lynch’s Holiday by Catherine O'Flynn Page B

passengers. I saw them there, but just forgot I was supposed to pull in. Raging they were, but I was listening to a conversation in a restaurant. Can’t remember any of it now.’ He shook his head. ‘Only bit of German I have is, “He can’t breathe.” Funny to remember just that.’
    He fell silent again for a few moments before adding, ‘I’m not sure you’d ever really need to say it. You’d think the facial coloration would tell the story well enough.’

11
    When he awoke from the dream he had forgotten where he was. The room was pitch black and for a moment Dermot thought he was back in the bed he’d slept in as a boy. He reached out instinctively for a lamp he hadn’t thought of in over sixty years and as his hand flailed in the dark he remembered everything. He lay there still, trying to control his breathing and contain his sense of loss.
    Finding the door eventually, he walked through the darkened apartment to the kitchen. He had gone for a glass of water, but found himself getting instead a beer from the fridge.
    He slid open the door to the terrace and sat on a plastic chair. The air was warm and filled with the sound of night creatures vibrating invisibly in the bushes around him. He turned his gaze upwards. He’d become accustomed to city night skies, a meagre scattering of greyish pinpricks in the strip of hazy orange above the streetlights. Here he felt himself pushed back in his chair by the spectacle of the limitless stars and constellations covering every part of the sky above him. He remembered another night, lying on his back in Hamilton’s field, his younger brother by his side. Dominic had woken up scared by noises coming from the kitchen and Dermot had taken him downstairs to show him there were no ghosts or banshees and told him that even if there were, they would certainly flee at the sight of such brave boys. Afterwards Dominic wanted to go out to the field. They lay on their backs, Dominic taking Dermot’s hand and pointing up at the sky. He told Dermot the names of the stars, or at least the
names he had given them, which were their own names and those of people and places and things they knew – their whole world mirrored in the night sky above them. He pointed out Sam the cat and old Hamilton’s mad dog Blackie, he pointed out the constellations of their father, their brothers and their sisters, of the biscuit tin and the bar of chocolate hidden in Peggy’s pillow, he pointed out their father’s wife, Teresa, and somewhere further back in the sky at some infinite depth of space and time he showed Dermot the star that was their mother. Dermot scoured the sky now for any trace of these things, but found they had gone.
    He was roused from his reminiscences by a low moan. He looked over the balcony in time to see a black shape darting along the side of the pool, realizing then it had just been a dispute between cats, a territorial confrontation in the deep end. He watched the vanquished tabby retreat and take cover in shrubbery and then looked up once more at the stars. It was a sure sign of old age, this constant picking over the past, a growing affliction since Kathleen’s death. He made his way quietly back to his room, sitting on the bed and rubbing his face. He looked at the clock. Another two hours before dawn.

12
    They had been caught. If he ever read the emails, or picked up the seemingly endless ‘Dates for your Diary’ slips that fluttered from his mailbox each time he passed, or took any notice of the forlorn printed reminders stuck on lamp posts all over Lomaverde, he would have known that it was not safe to leave the apartment that day. But he did none of those things and as a result, while he and his father were setting off for a stroll, Jean had spotted them.
    ‘Oh, Eamonn, lovely! You’re bringing Dermot too.’
    He saw the folder under her arm and realized his error. At the same moment he had a flicker of hope that Dermot could be his salvation.
    ‘Hi, Jean.