Page 103 of 56 Days
She types inOliver St Ledgerand hits Enter, holds her breath—
There’s a match.
23 Days Ago
“It went on for a while,” Oliver continues. “I don’t know how long. And then Shane stops, and sort of sees Paul for the first time, properly, like he hasn’t even realized what he’s been doing, like he’s been in some kind of fugue state, and Paul has got blood all over him and he’s got this cut.” Oliver traces a line through his right eyebrow with a finger. “There’s alotof blood. I remember, one of his eyes was filled with it. He looked... It was terrifying. But what we didn’t realize was that it was just a small cut that bled a lot and that it looked much, much worse than it actually was. We panicked. We’d had PE that morning, I had my clothes in my bag—I got out aT-shirt, my NASA one, and gave it to Paul to hold against his forehead, to try to stop the blood, but it just kept... It kept coming. And then Shane and me, we look at each other, and that’s when... That’s when—”
The rest comes quickly, in a rush.
Almost there, he thinks.
“—Shane says to Paul, we’re going to wash the blood off in the river. And I justknewwhat was going to happen, what he’d decided to do, but it was like—It was like there was one half of me that felt like, yeah, good idea, that’s what we have to do, whatIhave to do now, to help Shane, to protect him, to stop him from getting in trouble. But at the same time, the other half of me was looking at Paul, all covered in blood, saying okay and obediently following Shane down to the water, and that part wanted to scream, ‘What the hell are youdoing?Run. Runaway.’ But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything. Instead, I... I just followed them to the water and I helped Shane push Paul into it and then I helped hold him down.”
One last breath, three more words, and then it’ll all be out.
He inhales; it makes his chest hurt.
“Until... Until he drowned.”
Silence.
Ciara says nothing, remains staring blankly out through the glass of the patio doors.
Oliver can’t stand to let the words he’s just said hang in the air any longer, so he carries on.
“The guards came that night. To our homes. Shane had come up with a story that he said we both needed to stick to, that was basically, yeah, we saw Paul on the way home, but he ran off toward the river and we just carried on. But we’d been spotted with him, by several people—he’d had on this distinctive jacket, abright-redone—and the sightings didn’t match up with what we’d said, and when they found him... they found theT-shirt, too.”
He pauses here, remembering the moment that realization dawned, when he knew with absolute certainty that there was no way out of this, that they had committed an act so horrible that it had literally ended one life and, figuratively, two more: the ones he and Shane were supposed to have.
“Everything happened really quickly after that. We were charged and sent to Oberstown—it’s a juvenile detention center. There was a trial. Our identities had to remain a secret so we became Boy A and Boy B. We were both found guilty of murder, but got different sentences based on our level of... involvement. I got out on my eighteenth birthday and Shane... Well, Shane took his own life on his. He still had another fifteen years to go at that point.”
Now, finally, Ciara raises her head.
Oliver doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t risk losing his chance, doesn’t even wait to interpret the look on her face, the way her features are crumbling—
“I’m not some evil seed, Ciara. I’m no psycho monster. I was just a child who, for five minutes, completely lost his fucking mind. A kid who, on the way home from school one afternoon, made a stupid,terriblemistake because he didn’t want to look like a coward in front of his older, bigger friend. I wastwelve. I couldn’t undo it so I did the next best thing: from that moment on, ever since, I have tried to make up for it. I have done everysinglething I was supposed to. I took my punishment. I was a model detainee. Did all the therapy, obeyed all the rules. Whatever they asked of me, I did it and then more besides. And since the day I was released I haven’t as much aslittered. But it doesn’t matter what I do because all anyone thinks about, all anyone cares about, is what Idid.”
He moves closer to her.
One step, two.
“And then I meet you. And you like me. And when I’m with you, it’s like... I feel likeme. The me I should’ve been. The me I reallywas. Am. And even though I knew it couldn’t last, knew you’d find me out eventually, I kept wanting to feel that way, so I kept seeing you. And then, unbelievably, a bloodyglobal pandemiccomes along, and we hear there’s going to be a lockdown, and you’re living in this tiny apartment, working from home, just moved to Dublin, not knowing anybody and”—he shakes his head in disbelief—“you don’t evenuse social media, so I think to myself,I’ll just take these two weeks. I won’t tell her for two more weeks. And I hoped, I desperately hoped, that by the time the truth came out, you’d have seen enough of me to know thatthisis me. Now. Here.”
Oliver stops, holds his breath. So long as she’s still here, so long as she’s willing to listen to him—
But then Ciara gets up and runs out of the room, into the bathroom.
And starts retching.
78 Days Ago
FYI Oliver (Ollie) St Ledger back in Ireland—KB StudiosDublin.
A “Jane Smith” with no profile picture posted that in Justice, Not Protection! one week ago.
The comments on it are either advising her to repost it following the established format or expressing confusion because no one knows who Oliver St Ledger is. A few members ask for the victim’s name or other details so they can identify the case, but “Jane” never returns to answer their questions. When Ciara searches within the group, she can’t find any other posts from this user.
On a hunch, she searches forOliver (Ollie) St Ledger Dublinacross all of Facebook, but filters the results so that they’re confined to mentions in groups. It turns out that “Jane Smith” posted the exact same thing in at least eight other places, including a victims’ rights organization and a group obsessed with Irish true crime.
