The Infirmary (DCI Ryan Mysteries prequel)(86)

Phillips stood and moved aside, to give them the privacy they needed.

Eve sank onto the chair beside her son, her strong, handsome son who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. It was too much for anybody to bear.

She took his hand and held onto it when he would have pulled away.

“I want to tell you two things,” she said, and her voice shook with emotion. “The first is that we love you, so very much.”

A tear tracked down his face, but he would not meet her eyes. Eve moved to perch on the bed beside him, so she could reach up and smooth the dark hair away from his face.

“The other thing you need to know is that it wasn’t your fault.” Her daughter was lost to her and there was a hole in her heart, one that would never heal. But her boy was not to blame for that.

Ryan’s face crumpled and she rubbed her palm against his cheek, as she used to do when he was a child.

“My boy,” she murmured, though he was a grown man.

“I almost killed him,” Ryan whispered. “With these hands, I almost killed a man.”

Eve’s lip trembled, then she took both his hands in her own, warming them.

“You witnessed something nobody should ever have to see. But you’re better than that—that monster, Ryan. You stopped yourself, before it was too late. You have nothing to reproach yourself for.”

Ryan heard the words, but could not bring himself to believe them.

“Please, son. Come back with us,” his father said. “Let us look after you.”

Ryan turned away, and his eye caught on a decorative coaster sitting on the bedside table. It was an image of the castle on Lindisfarne, a tiny island separated from the mainland twice a day, sixty miles north along the Northumbrian coastline. They said it was a place of sanctuary where it was possible to think, to reflect. Perhaps it would be a good idea to turn his back on the world, at least for a few weeks.

“I need to get away for a while,” he said, in an odd, emotionless voice. “I’ll keep in touch, I promise. I just—I can’t be around people, for a while.”

His mother looked down at their hands but nodded, trying to understand.

“Where do you plan to go?”

“Holy Island.”

*

The sixty-mile drive from Newcastle city centre to the remote island of Lindisfarne was faster than Phillips would have liked. There hadn’t been nearly enough time to try to talk him out of it, nor to remind his friend of all the people who cared about his wellbeing and would rather have kept him close. He stole a glance at Ryan’s profile in the passenger seat and then back at the scenic lane which wound its way through the countryside towards the sea, then heaved a sigh.

It had been a week since Ryan had been discharged from the hospital and four days since they had buried his sister at the family home in Devonshire. Phillips had been in attendance, at Ryan’s invitation, alongside MacKenzie and Gregson. He’d stood a few rows behind his friend inside a pretty little church packed to the rafters with family and friends who had come to pay their last respects to Natalie Finlay-Ryan, and had watched Ryan standing tall, his spine ramrod straight as a priest spoke of healing and forgiveness. He’d watched Ryan’s mother reach out to him, needing to hold her remaining child close, and had seen that spine stiffen through the material of his fine black suit. With quiet admiration, he’d watched his friend shake hands and thank well-wishers, his face shuttered as they subjected him to endless reminisces about his sister, which only served to remind him of the enormity of what had been lost.

Pain, Phillips thought. So much pain.

The sun broke through the clouds overhead and cast long, hazy rays of dappled light through the trees lining the roadside but Ryan saw none of it, his thoughts were far away and remote; snatched memories of his sister he tried to capture and hold close to his heart. He saw them as children playing hide-and-seek, then as teenagers arguing over something trivial. A thousand flashing images of a life only half lived.

“Penny for them,” Phillips murmured, breaking into his reverie.

Ryan merely shook his head and turned to stare out of the window at the passing landscape. As they rounded a bend, the island appeared before them, rising up from the sea like an apparition, shrouded in mist. The tide was out, revealing an ancient causeway that allowed safe passage across from the mainland twice a day. It had been the pathway for saints and pilgrims since time immemorial and, though he would not consider himself a religious man, there was a sense of peace in the air; a serenity awaiting him on the little scrap of earth where a community had endured wind and sea for a thousand years after its priory was first built.

Perhaps he, too, could learn to endure.

“I can walk from here, Frank,” he said quietly.

“I can give you a lift across—”

“I appreciate it,” Ryan cut in. “But I could use the walk.”

“It’ll do you no good, hiding away from the world, away from your friends—”

“It’ll just be until the worst is over,” Ryan said. “I need time, Frank. I’ll ask Gregson for a sabbatical; it’s what the psychologist recommended, anyway.”

Phillips nodded, wishing there was more he could say, more he could do.

“You’ll call me, if you need me?”

Ryan paused in the act of reaching for the door and gave his sergeant a hard hug, which was returned.