Page 40 of The Elements

It’s the seventh day of the trial. Lauren has given evidence.

Robbie has given evidence. Everyone who was present in Robbie’s apartment that night has given evidence.

The gaffer has given evidence. Robbie’s closest childhood friend has given evidence.

A player I’m friendly with from the Ireland team has given evidence, testifying to my good character, and is now being pilloried in the Irish press and getting crucified on Twitter.

He’s backtracked since, naturally, pledging a month’s salary to the Rape Crisis Centre in Dublin, but it’s no good.

He’s basically fucked. And, today, I gave evidence.

Leaving the courthouse afterward, I’m stopped in my tracks when I see someone completely unexpected waiting for me on the pavement.

Fr. Ifechi Onkin, the Nigerian priest who caters to his small flock of four hundred on the island, and who I have not seen or spoken to since leaving.

I regret not using a different exit, but he’s looking directly at me and nodding his head in greeting, so I have no choice but to go over.

“You’re here,” I say, extending my hand, which he takes between both of his.

“Evan,” he replies. “You’re surprised to see me, I imagine?”

“Yes.”

“I wondered whether you and I might talk?”

Before I can answer, I see my father descending the steps of the courthouse and charging toward us, a big smile on his face. He throws an arm around Ifechi’s shoulders, a gesture the priest shrugs off like a bad cold.

“Father,” he says. “Is it yourself? Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?”

“It was something of a last-minute decision,” he replies.

“But you’ve come to support us,” says Dad, and Fr. Onkin’s face doesn’t change, neither confirming nor denying this assertion. “Were you in the courtroom earlier?”

“I was, Charlie.”

“So you heard this one’s evidence?” he asks, nodding toward me.

“I did.”

“And what did you think?”

“The jury seemed receptive to Evan’s account of what took place,” he replies.

A moment later, Mam joins us. Like me, she’s confused by Ifechi’s presence. For some reason, an image of that last morning on the island comes back to me, her pushing banknotes into my hand and saying, Go on now, you, and don’t look back.

“Can I buy you a pint, Father?” asks Dad.

“No, Charlie,” says Ifechi, shaking his head. “I would, however, like to spend a little time with your son, if you don’t mind.”

“Good luck getting any conversation out of him,” Dad says.

“He has all the personality of a brick wall, this one. But that said,” he adds, turning to me, “you did well in there today. You got the tone just right. You didn’t lay it on too thick about the little slag, but you didn’t let her off the hook either. You played it exactly right.”

I glance toward Mam, whose expression is dark and difficult to read, but Ifechi’s appearance is unsettling me, so I agree to join him.

We make our way down a narrow lane, where he indicates a coffee shop on the corner, but I see a pub a few doors further along and ask if we can go there instead. Reluctantly, he agrees. After today, I need something to help me take the edge off.

Before we go inside, I notice Juror no. 6, Dr. Freya Petrus, standing by the open door of a sports car with a boy who I think might be her younger brother, as he can’t be more than fourteen.

They’re talking animatedly as he throws a tote bag with the phrase “The Rozelli Programme’” printed on it into the back and climbs into the passenger seat.

Walking over to the driver’s side, she glances in my direction, catching my eye for a moment before turning away.

In the pub, I order a pint, and Ifechi asks for a small whiskey, but I make it a large one.

“Why are you here?” I ask him when we’re both seated.

“I wanted to see you.”

“Are they calling you?” I ask, and he frowns. He doesn’t understand my question. “The prosecution,” I say. “Have they asked you to give evidence?”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. It’s just—”

“There is absolutely no reason why they would do that, Evan,” he says. “I can offer nothing to this trial. The prosecution doesn’t even know that I exist.”

Frankly, I wish that he didn’t. At least not here. I want him to go back to the airport and return to the island.

“It’s not my intention to cause any trouble,” he continues. “You understand the seal of the confessional, yes?”

I nod. Although the school forced us to troop up the hill to the church every Thursday morning when I was a child, I never had much to confess, so I simply made things up.

Ordinary decent sins. Until the day came when I found myself in such distress that I finally used the sacrament for its intended purpose.

“This is a difficult time for you,” he says, and I’m tempted to laugh.

“You think?” I say.

“What will you do when it’s over?” he asks.

“I’ll go to jail,” I tell him. “Or back to the club. One or the other.”

“No, you misunderstand me,” he says. “I don’t mean after the verdict is delivered. I mean fifteen years hence, when this trial is a distant memory and your playing career has come to a natural end. What will you do then?”

“I won’t go back to the island, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ll never go back there.”

“It might call you back,” he says. “Don’t we all dream of returning home?”

“You don’t,” I say.

“I don’t what?”

“Dream of going home.”

“You don’t know anything about my dreams,” he tells me.

This is true, and I feel slightly chastened by his response. “Sorry,” I say. “I’ve just always assumed that you didn’t leave Nigeria of your own accord. That you escaped.”

“What an extraordinary word to use,” he replies, looking mildly offended. “I love my country very much. And I miss it.”

“I couldn’t even pick it out on a map, if I’m honest,” I admit.

“I will certainly go home one day,” he says. “Just as you will. I will be buried in the earth of Nigeria, alongside my people. And I believe that you will eventually be buried on the island. Alongside yours.”

This sounds almost threatening when he says it. As if this might happen sooner than it should.

“How is your mother coping with all of this?” he asks.

Only one person can guess my real reason for leaving the island, and that is Ifechi, although Mam, I think, has her suspicions.

Consumed by shame, I came close to confiding in her on the night before I took my father’s boat out into the waves between the island and Galway, planning to throw myself over the side when I got halfway, when I knew that I was too far from land to swim to safety.

Although, in the end, I simply sat there, staring at the water, knowing that I couldn’t take this final step, so hoping that it might pull me into its embrace.

Eventually, Dad, Luke Duggan, and two of his friends came to find me, and I sat in their vessel, crying like a baby as they brought me back, before running up the dunes, away from the chattering crowd that had gathered in the hope of drama.

“She doesn’t say much,” I tell him.

“She loves you.”

“She’s my mother.”

“She doesn’t want to think badly of you.”

I take a long draft of my beer. I have nothing to say to this.

“And your father?”

I offer a quick, bitter laugh.

“He doesn’t care whether I’m guilty or not,” I tell him.

“All that matters to him is that I keep playing football. He’s already been in touch with the Irish manager, you know, about the World Cup qualification campaign.

He’s told me that when I get off—his phrase—my place in the squad will be secure. He doesn’t see what I see, though.”

“Which is what?”

“The messages posted on socials.”

“I don’t know that world at all.” Ifechi waves a hand in the air dismissively. “Fools.”

“Noisy fools.”

“What do they say?”

“Half the men call it a setup,” I tell him with a shrug. “The other half polish their halos and say I’m a degenerate animal.”

“But your text messages,” says Ifechi, shaking his head, and I look away in shame. It feels at times as if everyone in Ireland and the UK has read those WhatsApp messages. If I am found guilty, it will be the callousness of them, their unapologetic misogyny and depravity, that will convict me.

“And as for the girls,” I continue, “some of them call Lauren Mackintosh a slag. They say, look at the getup of her in those photos. The ones leaked from her Instagram account before it was deleted.”

“And the rest?”

“They think I should be castrated.”

Ifechi finally lifts his whiskey to his lips.

“As you know,” he says at last, “I would never break the seal of the confessional with a third party. But I remain at liberty to discuss certain matters with you.”

“I’d rather not,” I tell him.

“If that was true, then you would have declined my request to join me here. You would have found an excuse to return home.”

“You came all this way, Father,” I say. “I do have some manners, you know.”

We stare at each other for the longest time. It’s obvious to me that he’s waiting for me to introduce the subject. In the end, I have no choice.

“You want to talk about Cormac, don’t you?

” I say with a sigh, looking down at the wood of the table, which is badly scarred by the fingernails, keys, and glasses of many years.

I run my thumb into one of the grooves until the point of a splinter touches the tender place beneath my nail.

I hold it there for a moment, considering pushing harder.

“Yes,” he tells me. “I want to talk about Cormac.”

“Where is he anyway?” I ask. “Still working on his father’s farm, I suppose?”

I can hear it in my voice. I want to sound contemptuous, but, instead, I sound desperate to know.

“Working on it?” he replies. “No, of course not.”

I look up. For a moment, I imagine Cormac traveling the world. Working in an Irish bar in Munich. Studying for a degree in America. Teaching surfing in Australia. The idea of any of these things is painful to me.

“He’s running it,” says Ifechi.

I look up, surprised.