Chapter 59
‘Some parents would find it hard to believe,’ said Mrs McCoy, ‘but I haven’t been in there since before the accident. Aaron nipped in the odd time to get some clothes and things, but I just couldn’t.’
‘But even those few nips in were …’ Mr McCoy trailed off and then said quietly, ‘… hard.’
‘Well, maybe now’s not the right time …’ I began.
‘No, Brendan,’ said Mrs McCoy. ‘It’s well past time. We shouldn’t be keeping doors closed anymore, should we?’
I looked at them standing behind me, they nodded and I turned back to the door, reached, grasped the handle, twisted it and pushed.
From the shadow of the hallway I peered into the half light of Ronan’s bedroom.
The curtains were parted slightly and a crack of dusky light lit up the middle section of the floor that was strewn with a few scrunched-up T-shirts and an open suitcase that some clothes were hanging out of.
I remembered then that the McCoys would have just got back from their annual summer trip to Boston a few days before the accident and it appeared Ronan hadn’t got round to unpacking properly.
I took a gentle step into the room. It smelt musty and slightly sweaty; more or less how my room would probably have smelt to anyone other than me because I was used to it.
My eyes quickly adjusted to the new light.
I looked over to his single bed with a Liverpool duvet cover all scrunched up and flicked over from when Ronan had last climbed out of it.
The wall the bed was up against was covered in Liverpool posters, magazine cuttings, newspaper articles, red and white bunting.
In fact, as I looked around, every wall had something Liverpool-related stuck on it.
There were bookshelves that had lots of little trophies and medals from the various races Ronan had run in and football tournaments his team had won and certificates for academic awards in frames.
There were little football figurines of players dotted on the shelves too; they looked like something you got as prizes in breakfast cereal boxes.
I took another step and looked over to the other side of the room to a wooden desk that was littered with paper cuttings, Sellotape strips stuck along the ledge, a glue stick with the lid off all dried up, and various other stationery that looked like the evidence of some art project he’d been in the process of creating, or maybe it was the remnants of the time capsule he’d been putting together.
The chair was pushed out from the desk as if he’d just gotten up out of it moments ago.
I could almost picture him right in front of me putting the finishing touches to his time capsule, getting up with it under his arm and running past me and out the door.
I stepped aside as if the force of him shooting by unsteadied me and I felt something hard underfoot.
I lifted my foot to see a little plastic whiteish-greenish star, one of those glow-in-the-dark stars you can stick on the ceiling.
I looked up. The whole of Ronan’s ceiling was covered in them.
Model rockets and airplanes from craft kits hung down from string the whole way across.
I turned and looked at Mr and Mrs McCoy, who were still standing in the doorway watching me.
‘A constellation,’ I said.
They took a small step forwards but not quite into the room and looked up.
As if the sight of those stars pulled them they slowly walked in, hand in hand, still looking up.
As we stared at the stars above us, it was like we three became suspended in the atmosphere and floated together in the space of Ronan’s room, surrounded by everything that was him, and then gently came back to earth again.
I looked down at my feet to the little star that had fallen from the ceiling and picked it up and held it in the flat of my palm.
Mr and Mrs McCoy stepped closer and looked down at it with me.
They had smiles on their faces and I felt myself smiling too, no tears in our eyes.
We were feeling something other than sadness.
Maybe it was pride, probably it was love.
Mrs McCoy closed her hand over mine and gently curled my fingers over the star and guided my hand to my chest. I held it there for a moment, breathing deeply, and then put it in my pocket.
Without words, the three of us drifted off gently around the room, not touching a thing, simply exploring the frozen world of Ronan. A time capsule of a kind.
I don’t know how long our exploration lasted, but there came a time when I noticed that Mr and Mrs McCoy were standing in the hall again, watching me.
It was only then, when I happened to glimpse myself in the mirror on Ronan’s wall, that I saw what they must have been seeing in me; smiling, yes, but in a way I didn’t recognise. I think … I think I looked …
I broke my own gaze and walked back towards the door to join the McCoys in the hallway. I turned to look into the room once more and reached to seal it away until next time, but felt a hand at my elbow.
‘No, Brendan,’ said Mr McCoy. ‘Leave it open.’
I let my hand drop to my side and across to my thigh where I could feel the outline of the plastic star in my pocket. I turned and looked at Mr and Mrs McCoy and didn’t know whether I was speaking to them or to Ronan or what words could possibly be enough to describe how I felt, but I simply said:
‘Thank you.’