Free Crying in the Dark by Shane Dunphy Page B

respectful. To be honest, I had fun with them. They were easy to work with and I looked forward to coming over and spending time with them. When the subject of their father came up, which it did at almost every session, they behaved as if their relationship with him was perfectly normal. I asked them on my third visit how they knew when to go out to the garden to see him.
    ‘I hears him calling us,’ Micky said. ‘He shouts
“Micheál! Micbeál!”
and I goes out and there he is, down by the ditch.’
    ‘Do you hear it like that too, Bob?’
    ‘No, he calls to Micky.’
    ‘Do you not hear him calling then?’
    ‘No, but I sees him when we goes out there. I loves my daddy.’
    ‘Boys … do you know your daddy is dead?’
    This may seem a terribly blunt statement, but a primary rule in childcare is that you are always truthful with the children you work with. I wanted them to see that, from my point of view at least, their father was not there. The boys stopped making the castle they had been building in the sand-tray I had brought over and looked at me solemnly.
    ‘No,’ Bobby said with firm resolution. ‘You see, Shane, that was a mistake. Daddy told us he wasn’t ready to be dead. They made a mistake.’
    ‘Weren’t you ever at his grave?’
    ‘No.’ Micky shook his head vigorously. ‘There idn’t any grave, cause he’s ain’t dead.’
    And that had been the end of the conversation on that matter. As far as both boys were concerned, their father was very much alive and well.
    I watched the drama unfolding outside with rapt fascination. I had absolutely no idea how the hallucination worked. I did, however, know one thing for certain:
they were seeing something.
Of that I was in no doubt.
    My mobile phone rang.
    ‘Yeak.’
    ‘Hi, Shane. Ben here. Could you swing by the Henrys as soon as possible? Mina has done a bunk again.’
    ‘No problem. I’m just about done here anyway.’
    Dirk Henry sat in his study behind a huge oak desk, a glass of whiskey in his hand and a cigar smouldering between his teeth. He had come home from work to meet me, so he was dressed in an immaculately tailored grey suit. He was not in a good mood.
    I don’t know what he did for a living. He had snorted at me that he was involved in finance. I thought that that was a pretty broad field of endeavour, but kept the opinion to myself.
    ‘We did as you suggested, Shane, and operated the alarm system.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘It worked. She has not escaped from the house.’
    I waited, saying nothing. Dirk was obviously used to chairing meetings, and he had a flair for the dramatic. I knew that a punch line was coming, and I gave him the opportunity to deliver it in his own time.
    ‘She ran away from the workshop this morning.’
    It made sense. If one avenue of escape was cut off, Mina was always going to look for another one.
    ‘You didn’t think to inform the workshop that she maybe needed to be watched?’
    Dirk’s eyes narrowed. ‘I would have thought that was your job,’ he said very quietly.
    I shrugged. Dirk was probably used to having employees tremble when he squinted like that and lowered his voice. But I wasn’t his employee, and men in suits have rarely frightened me. I stood up.
    ‘Where are you going?’
    ‘To look for your daughter.’
    ‘Where the hell are you planning to look?’
    ‘Well, I’m going to begin by going over to the workshop to see if anyone there had any ideas, seeing as there seems to be something of a shortage of them around here.’
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
    ‘It means that I want to begin looking for Mina, and that I’m not prepared to sit around here any longer while you make yourself feel better by showing me how tough you are.’
    I left him chewing on that, and went out to the car, feeling quite pleased with myself. Which probably made me just as childish as him.
    Community workshops for people with special needs all look alike, built to the same basic design. I think