‘Did you bring the flask?’ asked Mr McCoy.
‘In your backpack, I made you decaf.’
‘Did you?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Aye, I was wondering, I didn’t even think we had decaf.’
As we came up to the edge of the forest and entered under the trees, we stopped to put our fleeces on and Mrs McCoy tucked a blanket around Ronan.
‘Much colder in here,’ she said. ‘I knew it’d be.’
There was a rough dirt track that led off to the left and a smooth tarmac path that led straight ahead.
‘This has all changed from when I was last here,’ I said.
‘The tarmac path is new,’ said Mrs McCoy. ‘I phoned ahead to ask about best routes for wheelchair users and the lady said we can follow the tarmac path the whole way round.’
‘We’ll come back some other day and take the dirt track once we get the off-road rally wheelchair, won’t we, Ronan?’ said Mr McCoy and Ronan growled a manly ‘yes’.
‘Can you get those?’ I asked. ‘That’d be class!’
‘No, there’ll be no off-road stuff going on!’ said Mrs McCoy.
Ronan groaned.
‘Well, at least not for now, Ronan,’ she said. ‘Tarmac path today. Lead the way, boys.’
I pushed Ronan forward into the sun-dappled forest.
It was so quiet, with only the sound of birds and the wheelchair tyres on the tarmac as they cracked across fallen twigs. Ronan was silent apart from some cooing sounds he made every now and then, along with big breaths in and out. Mr and Mrs McCoy were wordless too; any time I glanced back they were holding hands and either looking up at thecanopy above or into the maze of trees surrounding us. Maybe someone should have started a conversation, but it felt the most natural thing in the world for us to walk and be silent. It had been a long time since any of us had had a moment of quiet, not to have to do something, be somewhere or make plans. The McCoys had been confined to their house, which had become the centre of all organised and scheduled activity and appointments. I’d been obeying my schedule of revision, school, Feeney’s, driving. Ronan had his ream of commitments for home schooling, hospital appointments, physio. Life outside the forest needed to be controlled, monitored, planned. But inside the forest our bodies seemed to pause all outgoing energy and open up all the vents to suck in the air of calm, quiet peace. The forest was taking care of us, leading us. We didn’t have to make a route for ourselves or worry what direction to take; the tarmac path led the way smoothly, easily, and we followed it.
I don’t know how long we’d been walking before we entered a clearing with two wooden benches facing a break in the trees looking out over hills stretching away for miles.
‘Stop for a cuppa?’ said Mr McCoy.
It was the first words anyone had spoken since before entering the forest.
The three of us sat on one bench with Ronan beside me. Mrs McCoy poured hot tea from a flask for herself and me, Mr McCoy drank coffee from his, and Ronan had an orange juice drink that fitted into an attachment at the back of the wheelchair with a drinking straw that came out of it and round to his mouth.
‘Well, this is just lovely,’ said Mrs McCoy. ‘Absolutely lovely.’
‘Wouldn’t it be great if we had somewhere like this closer to where we lived?’ I said.
‘Aye, but you know yourself, Brendan,’ said Mr McCoy, ‘ifyou lived close to somewhere like this you only think you’d be here every day but people don’t appreciate what’s on their doorstep. I bet you the majority of the people who come here are people like ourselves who’ve travelled a fair distance. There’d be no locals here except maybe the dog walkers and the joggers, but that’s only exercise, they’re not really here tovisit. Toappreciate.’
‘Aye, you’re right, Mr McCoy,’ I said, ‘there’s things we have on our doorstep back home that I’ve never been to, like the Irish Museum; I’ve never been inside.’
‘No, I’ve never been in it myself, have you, Emma?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Aye, well, that’s the same thing. People from far away would be visiting that museum and saying, “Oh, if I lived nearby I’d be here every day,” and there we are living beside it practically and not one of us has set foot inside.’
‘Maybe we should go then?’ I said.
‘Yeah-sh,’ said Ronan.
