Belfast Confidential

by Bateman, Colin

  We drove on until we came to the factory site. The security gates were lying open, so we drove in and parked. Patricia helped me out of the car, and we stood together in the mud, surveying the scene. The Portakabins had already had their windows smashed and were covered in graffiti. The stage was broken in two, the Ryan Auto banner was flapping, half-burned, in the breeze. The plastic chairs were gone, and the plastic ground cover had been ripped apart by joyriders.

  'Well,' Patricia said, 'it was fun, wasn't it?'

  'That's one word for it.'

  'I thought I'd lost you. But then I think that a lot, and you always come bouncing back.'

  'Luck's going to run out sooner or later,' I said. I was thinking about the youth club, and the seemingly innocent kids in that photo, and what they were capable of. Was it a sign of the times, or were kids always capable of that kind of violence? It was Lord of the Flies, really.

  I wondered about Carmel, and whether she was still waiting for her sister to arrive.

  Then Patricia gave an excited little whoop. 'Oh look, Dan, isn't it pretty?'

  Before I could say anything, she'd bent down and plucked a yellow diamond daisy out of the soil. She held it up.

  'You shouldn't really,' I said.

  'Why not?' she asked. Then she nodded across the churned-up field. 'Look – there's dozens of them.'

  And there were.

  They were survivors. Just like us.

  Trish blew on the little petals. Several of them floated away. 'Is it a weed or a flower?' she asked.

  'It's a flower,' I said.

  'How can you tell?'

  'Easy,' I said, taking it from her hand and blowing the rest of the petals off. 'It looks like one.'