Daddy's Return 1

It wasn’t a new car or a posh car, it was beat up and rusty and when he looked in the window he saw the ashtray was full of stubbed-out roll-up ends. His stomach flipped like a fish at the end of a line. His thoughts were woolly. There was nowhere else to go but into house. He went to the back door with dragging steps and a heart that clanged.
 Slowly he raised the latch and cocked a shy head into the kitchen.
‘Well Kai,’ said Daddy.
‘Well,’ said Kai.
He shuffled inside. He stood stock-still for a second before slinging the bag off his shoulders. It landed with a thud on the floor. No thud had ever been as loud. He froze. Two bright balls of colour burnt up his cheeks. It was difficult to look or not to look at Daddy.
‘You’ve grown a couple of foot since I seen you last,’ he said.
He was sitting at the kitchen table, neither made a move towards the other. Kai examined the patch of floor at his feet. Daddy whistled; his eyes roved the kitchen. Kai glanced up, he saw the grey in Daddy’s hair, the stooping of his shoulders and the wrinkles that had deepened around the mouth that drew on roll-up ends.
‘The old place hasn’t changed much,’ said Daddy, catching his eye.
Kai blinked. ‘Where’s Granny?’ he asked.
‘Sure sit down and have a chat with your old man.’
‘I better go and let her know I’m home.’
Before he could instruct them, his legs hurried him past Daddy through to the dining room. Granny wasn’t there. She wasn’t in the hall or the sitting room either. He didn’t want to call out. He didn’t trust his voice. He thumped up the stairs.
 ‘Granny?’
 He opened her bedroom door softly, fearful of the surprises that lurked around each corner. She was in the bed. Her hands fidgeted smoothing invisible creases in the cover. They went to her head, distractedly patting the tufts of hair. They waved through the air disturbing it for the sake of disturbing it. Her thin shoulders rose and fell visible through the transparent material of the nightgown. Her fret was working itself towards a fever.
‘That man.’ ‘That man,’ she said and she could hardly hack out her indignation as a cough wheezed and barrelled through her.
  Kai poured her a glass of water from the jug on the bedside locker and her hands shook as she lifted it to her mouth so he placed a hand on hers to steady it.
‘That man showed up today and he hasn’t been heard from in years.’
She had breath enough to get the words out. Her eyelids drooped. The eyes were pink and tired. He could feel her bird bones through her paper skin. In her nightgown, short sleeved, she was withered and defenceless.
‘Does Mammy know?’ he asked, part croak, part in a whisper.
‘I tried calling her in the shop but he wouldn’t hear of it. Told me I’d be upsetting her with her having to work the rest of the day through. I suppose he had a point. She’ll find out soon enough. If the shock doesn’t kill her,’ said Granny and she made the sign of the cross.
Kai didn’t want to leave Granny. He sat beside her on the bed. Their whole world was this room. The bed was an island. The carpet around the bed was an ocean. No one could cross from the door to the island bed without a boat or else they would drown. He and Granny were safe on the island. The drawers opening and closing downstairs, the footsteps pacing the kitchen, the sound of a throat clearing and the radio switching on were far away things, like things that happen in space. Where stars explode all the time but no one on earth can feel it.
Granny’s tablets were on the dresser beside the bed. That was another continent but one he could reach at a stretch. There were lots of tablets. Orange and yellow capsules in a brown container, bright pink ones in a foil packet, chalky looking blue ones that were too big to swallow. ‘One to be taken two times daily’ He spilled them onto the white bedspread and organised them into her pill boxes – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Granny told him what each and every tablet was for and how often she had to take them. They were all to make her better. Her heart, her chest, her shaky hand.
The stool in front of the dresser would be a boat if they had to escape across the ocean. Out the window, not down the stairs, they couldn’t risk passing the kitchen. Kai knew the tablets were not sweets, he’d heard it often enough. He could taste the chemical zing in his throat, they were colour coated poisons. He looked from them, to Granny, to the Sacred Heart above the bed. He sighed, Granny would never make it out the window and down the side of the house to escape even if their boat didn’t capsize.
The clock beside the bed ticked towards the time Mammy was due home. He wanted to warn her. But he didn’t know how to do it. He hadn’t started his homework. He thought of his schoolbag abandoned on the kitchen floor. She was going to be cross with him. There was a strange man in the house. The ghost of Daddy.
His tummy was rumbling but he wasn’t starving. Besides, there was no dinner. The wood on the stairs signed softly like someone was coming up them who didn’t want to be heard. There was a quiet knocking on the bedroom door. Granny’s eyes met Kai’s. Both sets turned to the lock. There was a key in it but it had not been turned.



What happens next?

Daddy Day Care

No babies were injured in the taking of this photo

The shame of breastfeeding

I am a breastfeeder. ‘Brilliant.’ ‘Yeah deadly.’ ‘It’s so good for them, isn’t it?’ ‘I don’t know how you do it.’ ‘You’re feeding him yourself? Fair play.’ Six months pass. ‘Wow! You’re still at it.’ ‘Good for you. Are you going to go much longer?’ ‘You must be wrecked.’ What a curiosity we are as we approach a year. ‘But he can eat proper food now can’t he?’ ‘Has he many teeth?’ ‘You’re not still doing that, are you?’ They shift in their seats and look away. Fourteen months. ‘Have you weaned him yet?’ ‘He’s not still… is he?’ Wide-eyed disbelief. ‘It’s unnatural,’ my mother says and she should know she’s a nurse. ‘Think of all the vitamins and minerals he’s missing out on in the follow on milk. It’s especially formulated for infants’ needs you know.’ Not like my lowly home brewed milk. My hooch. ‘You’re in a minority,’ says his father. He wants nothing to do with this in public. He open a newspaper pretending not to know us as we feed. ‘How long are you going to keep this craic up for?’ his godfather says. Even the public health nurse looks embarrassed at our 18 month check-up. Yet I defiant choose to fly in the face of convention. Every night of broken sleep his paternal grandmother blames on my unwillingness to comply, on my yielding to my sweet pea’s comfort. I breastfeed against the odds to make my pumpkin happy, he asks me to. Judge me if you will, he is almost two. My Babbin Tiny Boo

Teenagers

Kai switched on the kettle.  The sound of the water bubbling against the element irritated him.  He took his favourite mug from the mug tree and threw a teabag in it.  The inside was stained, off-white with a brown rim that didn’t look clean.  He rinsed it under the tap, rubbing at it with his thumb until it squeaked but the stain wouldn’t shift.  He put some washing-up liquid on a scrubber and brushed it under the hot tap but it didn’t come white.  He noticed a crack on the lip of the mug he had not seen before.  He left the teabag in it to brew.  He had had to re-boil the kettle. 

The tea tasted off.  He sniffed the milk suspiciously.  He tipped a little in the sink to watch if it curdled.  It created a rainbow on the metal basin of the sink like the multi-coloured sheen of oil on water.  An image, seal pups bobbing in the ocean, oil coalescing in death-rainbows across their backs and them freezing, the oil-slicked fur not insulated against the cold, hazy before his eyes. 

He blinked and the seals vanished.  The tea was missing sugar.  He took a spoon of sugar from the sugar bowl, spooned it in and stirred. 

‘Kai,’ said Mammy, ‘the past few days have been difficult.’

He tasted the tea again but it was bitter so he added a second spoon.   He stirred.  Her presence in the kitchen had surprised him. 

‘I hope we can put them behind us, the three of us, and forget about them.’

He tasted the tea and thought it was fine for a moment, until, its aftertaste rose up his throat and poisoned his mouth. 

‘Not hold grudges. I’m sure we’re all sorry for what went on.’ 

Perhaps the teabags were different, he examined the box then set it down, they were the same as always. 

‘And we can be friends again, the three of us.’

He spooned in two more heaped spoons of sugar and stirred vigorously around and around so the granules would not stay lodged at the bottom. 

‘I hope that you are sorry too,’ she said.

He sipped it again, really wanting to be able to drink it.  Wanting to heat himself up. 

‘That you’ve thought about what you done.’

The tea was stubbornly vile.  He poured it down the drain. He didn’t understand the way she was looking at him.  It was undrinkable, perhaps from the dirt of the cup.

‘Did,’ he said.

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s did, not done,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said.

He looked at her.  The hair at her temples, up-close to the roots were grey, coarse and wiry. It wasn’t just her hair; it was the lines around her eyes.  Crows’ feet extending backwards as she smiled at him, some kind of fake smile.  He watched the creases around her mouth as her lips moved. 

‘Stop, smiling’ he wanted to say. ‘Stop talking.  Can’t you see the damage you’ve done to your face?’ but he said nothing.

Bridging chapter

Trying to edit a bridging chapter all morning, the passage of time is quite clunky.  Granny has just died and Kai is still innocent, but not for too much longer...

All February long the house kept itself as quiet as the hills.  No one except Daddy bothered much with making noise.  Kai was sad even when the sunshine came.  Mammy looked like a line, drawn straight with a ruler from head-to-toe.  Grown so skinny she was sore to look at.  She welcomed the spring birds back to the garden through the window over the sink.  Her rubber gloves were yellow like the daffodils that had begun to flower.  They talked of Granny and how she loved the springtime.

He was waiting, for March winds to come and blow the grief out of the house.  For a morning when he did not wake up happy to remember Granny had died.  

He checked her room every day to make sure it was the same.  Her clothes still hung in the wardrobe.  The Sacred Heart still burned above the bed.   He picked her perfume up off the dresser and sprayed a squirt into the air.  Granny was a gap in a day made longer.  She was a name that had changed columns in the nightly roll call of prayer.

Lent was easy, nothing left was difficult to give up.  On St. Patrick’s Day they went into town to watch the parade and eat green ice-cream.  Tractors with banners on their sides and lorries with trailers advertising local businesses slowly circled the square.  It was a traffic jam dipped in bunting. 

There were cheerleaders with bayonets who didn’t look American.  Kai stood on the bottom rung of the barrier rail to see if Jimmy was in the crowd.  The town was thronged.  He smelled a chip van.  

Some faces were painted, everyone wore green.  A stage was set-up in a giant trailer at the top of the square.  Mammy tugged his elbow to get down before he fell.  She was frozen and shivered in a denim jacket.  They were leaving.  Daddy was like a cat on hot bricks all day waiting to get into town.  They were leaving.  Before the parade was even over.  Daddy had disappeared, so he got to stay.  He was gone to wet the shamrock, god-knows-where.  He could find his own way home.  They were leaving.  Before the band came on stage, before he found the lads, before getting chips from the van.  She had had enough of it.   

Kai said ‘Thank you,’ for the Easter eggs.  The count was one short without Granny’s.  The stretch in the days made the farm bigger.  There were further away places to explore before coming home for the dark.  The calving was over and the lambing had begun.  There were three new calves; Kai fed one with a bottle.  Daddy got up in the night time to lend John-Jo a hand.  He was in charge now, making the decisions.  They were going to keep chickens and grow potatoes and lots of other vegetable that weren’t potatoes.  Like rhubarb and carrots, and tomatoes and lettuces that grew under glass.  They cleared the weeds and the high grass from Granddad’s old glasshouse.  Part of the frame was held together by twine, that didn’t matter.  It did the job.  

Kai hoed and weed.  There wasn’t much talking just the distant purr of tractors on a slurry scented breeze.  Warmth bounced from the soil onto his face.  Daddy rolled cigarettes leaning on a rake.  He shielded his eyes from the sun with a flat palm to inspect Kai’s work.  Kai liked the dirt. He liked discussing how the cabbages were doing and talking about the weather.  He learnt when the best time to spray for greenfly was.  He picked a caterpillar off a leaf and set him to the side.  He shook his head to scold him so he wouldn’t come back.

Granny and Granddad had kept vegetables back when they could manage.  Watching them grow was exciting.  Daddy said they would save money.  He wanted goats as well as chickens.  To whitewash the shed and mend the walls.  To make it one of those open farms, which wasn’t proper farming just taking school kids around on tours.  It was easy money with a grant for keeping old rusty machinery and planting apple trees.  Mammy wasn’t sure.  He had no experience, children drove him nuts.  But that wasn’t the point, nothing she said about it was.  

‘That’s where we found you,’ said Daddy pointing to a cabbage.  He laughed and so did Kai.  It was one of his funnier jokes. It made Mammy happy to see them out working together.  It mattered less then when he fetched messages from town and took his time in coming back.  

She sat at the table with her face in her hands, exhausted -  they’d been talking about the farm. The wind banged a door shut.  She jumped.  Daddy, waving his arms about the room, with his projects and plans, the new ideas, the ones he never stopped from having.  Her shoulders bunched around her ears.  Her feet under the table shifting.  She reached for the cigarettes.  She’d shaken her head against the talk but still she’d said ‘yes.’  Conceded and agreed as he blustered and blew.  The more animated he became the more she seemed to fade.  

The forms for the bank loan were laid out on the table.  Along with the solicitor’s letter making him executor to the changes. The big changes.  The ones that would change everything.  The loan for improvements for an open farm to get the free money from the grant.  The loan against the farm.  Her lips moved word-for-word as she read and her finger underlined the sentences.  ‘You’re sure?’ she asked him later.  Her signature scratched slowly across the line, she stopped, she looked up, ‘I’m sure,’ he said.  ‘You’ll like goats on the farm, won’t you Kai?’ he said. He winked.

‘Yay!’ said Kai to Mammy. 

She preferred the calm of letting things alone.  Of leaving the dust to settle on the farm like it had on Granny’s dresser.   But the forms had to be signed for the changes to go ahead.  ‘Yay!’ Kai said, excited about the goats.  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Daddy.  His hand on her shoulder but he didn’t smile.  She stood up from the table, ‘I don’t think…I just think…I.’  But it was too late; he’d stormed out the door.  

He stayed away a long time until the tock tick of the clock was worried.  Until the television finished saying its ‘Prayer at Bedtime.’  Mammy’s nails tap-danced on the arm of the chair.  No one told Kai to go to bed.  The door hadn’t opened, no matter how much they didn’t looked at it.  He had had a fine evening drawing pictures of the goats.  He stayed up until he could stay awake no longer.  In the morning Daddy was back and happy.  The forms had been signed so the goats were being ordered.  ‘Yay!’ Kai smiled.  Mammy’s smile was watery.  ‘Of course I trust you,’ she said. 

Daddy’s humour was as predictable as the weather.  Which meant Kai never knew if he was in good form or not.  His jokes weren’t like Jimmy’s jokes, they weren’t always funny.  Kai was learning how to tell the different jokes apart.  There were the jokes to make you laugh and jokes to make you cry.  ‘She’d never win the Housewife of the Year, would she Kai?’ as Mammy served them up the dinner.  Kai knew it was a joke because he laughed.  Kai laughed too but wasn’t very funny.  Mammy un-laughing found the ridge of the scar on her chin with her finger.   She traced the pale crescent like there was something she had to remember.  Kai ate-up the grey dinner as an apology for the laughter.  Mammy’s knife pushed the food around her plate, piling it from one side to another.  Kai wasn’t allowed play with his food like that.  They were waiting to hear back from the bank. 

Daddy’s jokes could be mean or they could be embarrassing.  ‘An arse on her like the back end of a knacker’s pony’ and Kai sniggered because it was funny picture but not a very nice thing to say about Theresa.  At least she had plenty on top.  Not like Mammy, who was ‘like two Disprins on an ironing board’.  Kai blushed eyes fixed on the middle distance.  He was in good form because the loan had been approved.

They could be warnings or threats.  ‘We’ll end-up in the poor house if she has her way,’ with a wink to Kai while he explained to Mammy everything she was doing wrong with the books.  It wasn’t different ways of doing things; it was her way was the wrong way.  She was addled by the figures.  A mind like a sieve, so she went to lie down. ‘Women eh?’ said Daddy.  Kai shrugged. They’d been fine for years before Daddy came back but he didn’t want to say it. ‘A man doesn’t want to come home to a face like a long streak of misery,’ he bared his teeth with a smile.

They were two hardworking men who had been out in the garden all day the least they deserved was a clean house and a decent dinner.  It was time for her to move on, to pull herself together.  If not for Daddy’s sake then for Kai’s.  ‘Yeah!’ Kai agreed, they were getting goats and the free money. 

Mammy looked different now he say her through Daddy’s eyes. 

Mammy’s sleeve was zigzagged with snail trails from her nose when she asked him where he’d been.  A man needed a reason to come home in the evening so Daddy went to the pub.  Kai was glad it was time to move on because he wanted bars for his packed lunch and his uniform laid out in the morning the way it used to be.  They laughed that she wouldn’t know how to cook the vegetables once they’d grown them.  ‘The mice will run away,’ said Kai because the cupboards were bare.  He and Daddy shook with laughing, but inside Kai didn’t laugh, he knew it wasn’t funny.

The next Sunday Mammy smiled and put on lipstick.  ‘We’re going to have a roast,’ she said, ‘the way Granny used to make it.’  Mammy’s teeth were lipsticked too, as if they’d bitten on the tube.

Granny didn’t use as many pots.  Granny didn’t let the spuds boil over.  Mammy transferred them from one pot to another, they were overcrowded.  She scalded her thumb, ‘Feck,’ she said and shook it.

‘Feck!’ she said again, because the oven wasn’t switched on. 

There was no tinfoil for over the chicken.  She forgot the lemons.  She put the gravy through a sieve to try to get the lumps out.  The greens were turning floppy.   Kai wished it was dinner from the freezer like pizza and chips.  It was well after dinner time.  He had set the table. Daddy sighed behind his newspaper.  Mammy’s face was shiny with steam.  It would ‘Just be a minute.’  Kai’s stomach was growling.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Daddy as he left the kitchen.

‘Where you going?’ asked Mammy

‘To get something decent to eat,’ he said taking his coat from the rack in the hall

Mammy’s hands dropped to her sides.  She watched his back leave.  He didn’t turn to see her watching.

The spuds were soupy in the pot and the meat bled under its black skin.  Kai picked about the chicken.  He didn’t touch the spuds.  He put six green beans on his plate for Mammy to count.  The gravy tasted good.  There was ice-cream out to defrost, lots of ice-cream because there was no one there to share it with.  Mammy sat at the table with him smoking while he ate.  She didn’t touch her dinner.  She smiled when he said it was lovely but the rest of the time she sat there her forehead was creased with thinking.  He did all the washing up until his fingers were shrivelled and smelly.  She smoked another fag and went to bed.  It was too early for Kai’s bedtime. 

He was shy to go into the bedroom since Daddy had come back.  It smelt different.  But he went in and he left her a glass of water.  It was dark with the curtains closed and she lay on the bed in her clothes.  Only her eyes acknowledged him. ‘Goodnight’ he said, setting down the water. ‘Goodnight,’ she blinked with her eyes. 

It was a treat having the television to himself and the ice-cream.  He watched Satan climb on top of a lady and they had a baby who was Satan’s baby in New York.  The farm outside was still, he drew the curtains, the quietness scared him.  She had short hair and her name was Rosemary.  He flicked the channels when the bad stuff happened with the neighbours.  He guessed how long it would be each time before it was safe to flick back.  He had to read for a long time after before he could fall asleep.

The next morning the cows were restless in the field, Daddy hadn’t gotten up for milking.  A bellow echoed the farmyard as he left for school, the cows were in distress.  Mammy wasn't up either. 

That week a timber frame was erected for the chicken coop.  Rolls of wire netting rested against the wall of the shed.  There were plywood planks in the shed to be sawed into shape for the walls.  Kai’s job was going to be painting them.  Sheets of galvanising would be screwed down for a roof. Chickens lay eggs in nesting boxes.  

Three weeks flew by. Mammy eyed it each evening for progress.   Some hinge or nail or stable was missing so he couldn’t get it done.  Mammy nodded.  She understood.  They did it all on the Saturday, the one the chickens arrived, John-Joe lent a hand.  Kai’s paint was drying on their new home when they got there.  The robin had watched him work.  The walls were crooked in places.  The chickens would have to mind the draft.  

Kai did his homework; he kept out of the way.  Daddy gave him a spin in his new car.  No goats had come.  All the trees had leaves and the flowers were in bloom.  The world was full of life again.  Mammy hardly went out anymore, only to go to work.  If the phone rang, Kai had to answer, ‘She’s just gone out,’ he said, ‘I’ll get her to ring you back.’  But she didn’t ring back and the phone rang less.  

His evenings were for birdsong and for walking.  Confirmation was coming soon.  Daddy rubbed his hands together, Kai was going to clean up.  

‘Do you remember that time we went to the beach in the summer, the hottest summer ever?’ Mammy asked.

‘No I don’t remember,’ Kai replied, he said it with a swallow.   

Novel outtakes - Greta

My book has a female protagonist too, this is an early draft of one of her chapters.

The more I read about over my writing, the more I see I write versions of the same thing.

Maybe some day I'll stop, when get it right. 

They listened to her call as they hid.   Greta clamped a hand to her mouth.  It seemed an unreasonable amount of time before Aine gave up.  It was better for her like this.   Aine didn’t drink and it was already bad enough that neither she nor Sharon smoked.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

Sunday stretched out failing to deliver.  A grey day, she didn’t want to go home after Mass but there weren’t many other places they could go or things they could do.  They went to the basketball court of the old national school and bounced a ball about.  Its slap against the asphalt and the bleating of a sheep stopped the world from being empty.  When it started to drizzle they sheltered under the back porch of the school and looked in the windows at the art work hung in their old classrooms, remembering the names of their teachers and recalling the times they had had there together. 

They weren’t so long gone that the changes, like the new colour of the painted walls and the repositioning of the statue for which the school was named went unnoticed.  Yet she could have been gone millennia.  She thought of the lunchtime smell of soggy sandwiches and of the sponges rancid with crumbs they used to wipe down desks when it was their turn on the rota.  How the texture of them had made her gag.  Mrs Ryan who ran the church choir had had them sing holy songs lunchtimes it rained.  They sang some of those songs now giggling.  They sang them not because they were holy or because it was Sunday but because in the secondary there were no more songs at lunchtime holy or otherwise.  The Ave Marie clung to her breath long after the other two had stopped singing. 

There were three of them.   Two were in secondary school together and another who had gone on to a co-ed that was less well thought of.  They had seen each other outside the church gate and chatted, admiring each other’s nail polish.  They decided to come here.  Blue, pink and silver glitter.  The basketball was Sharon’s, she lived in the village.  So did Aine. Her’s was the pub, Sharon’s was the garage.  Aine’s polish was the only thing about her that sparkled.  She was heavier since they’d last seen her, slower too, in movement and wit, as if it were possible to grow stupid and know less. 

The classrooms were filled with the ghosts of the people they discussed.  Who was shifting who and what buses into which towns they took.  She liked to keep track of their old classmates.  A rainbow shimmered gently in the distance.  Aine scraped her foot across the tarmac and said

‘I’d better head back, I have to make the dinner.’

She was sorry for Aine, her eyes blinking in the new light left by the clouds when they passed over, for Aine’s pock marked face and her hair frizzy with rain.  Sharon said she was walking the same direction as Aine so they would go together while the rain had stopped.   She felt a tightness in her chest, not wanting to be left alone, not wanting to go home.  She willed something to happen.

Then the boys came cycling around the bend.  They stopped at the school gates on their bicycles and called to the girls for directions.  They weren’t from here, they said, they were going between Birr and Cloghan to a mate’s house and had lost the way. 

‘You’re not gone too far wrong’ said Aine, and she stood at the edge of the road pointing directions.  But the lads didn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry or to be listening too hard.  They cycled their bikes in a circle around the girls.

‘Were ye out drinking last night?’ they asked. 

The girls laughed because they were too young to drink.

‘First we shared a shoulder and then we had a naggin each.’ 

‘Then I had six cans and he had a flagon.  He drinks cider but I can’t stomach the stuff.’

‘We were fair bolloxed’ they said.

‘No, we don’t have a light’ said the girls.

‘We don’t smoke’ said Aine.  Greta leaned a little away from Aine to imply there was no ‘we’.

‘What are yer names?’ asked the boys.

Aine told them.  The other two giggled.

‘Come on now don’t be shy’ said the boys, as if Aine had not answered.

‘What school are ye in?’ they asked, and she saw how one of them in particular was staring at Sharon’s chest. 

The circle made by the bikes constricted. She wondered if they were settled travellers, she had never spoken to a settled traveller before.

‘What school do ye go to?’ asked Sharon. 

Aine had a cousin who went to their school.  No they weren’t wet, they were like ducks and didn’t mind the rain.  She didn’t fancy them. But they were boys and they were here in the village and it was Sunday with little else to do.  They stayed giggling and half-talking, the boys loosened the circle and the girls sat up on the school wall because no one was going anywhere in a hurry any more.  Seeing as they were having such a fine time and all, the boys said maybe they would stay there longer and not meet their mate as he lived too far away anyway and would not mind if he had known they had met such nice girls as themselves.  The girls smiled at each other and Greta wished she had put on makeup and a skirt that morning.  Yet they were slightly uneasy, swinging their legs at the roadside and hoping no neighbour would pass by who would tell their parents what they saw.

Then Aine said she really had to go or she would be in trouble because of the dinner.  Sharon was going with Aine.  Greta couldn’t stay alone with the boys.  She swung her legs too hard and a plimsoll flew off and landed in the grass.  Mark picked it up.  Those were their names, Terry and Mark.  She didn’t know if they were traveller names.  They both wore tracksuit pants, Mark had a gold stud in his ear and his front tooth was chipped.  Their heads were shaved.  They were what her Nana would have called forward but she didn’t care. It was Sunday with nothing else to do and she wasn’t going home.

Mark threw the shoe to Terry, Terry threw it back to Mark.  Greta sat on the wall because she couldn’t get her sock wet on the road.  Sharon and Aine made feeble attempts to intercept the passes.  Terry held the shoe high above his head and Sharon jumped up, chest bouncing as she leaned over to grab it.   The girls tried to make their voices stern, like the voices used by the teachers in the school behind them, to command the shoe back but failed.  The sentences squeaked with suppressed laughter.

‘It would be great’ said the boys ‘to go drinking again like last night.’  They meant with the girls.

‘Go on’ they said ‘it will be a right laugh.’

Greta didn’t know them but they laughed at her jokes, even the unfunny ones.  Sharon’s too and less so Aine’s.  They weren’t giving her back her shoe and she was starting to worry.  Aine had to leave now.  She was already in trouble and Sharon was walking with her so she couldn’t be on her own with the boys.

She didn’t know how far they would take it.  It was almost too far now as they tossed it back and forth.

‘I could get some from the storeroom’ said Aine slowly.  She knew by the way Aine said it that she meant it.  She tried not to look surprised.

‘Is it not locked up?’ said Sharon.

‘The door from the kitchen to the yard is always locked, but the window in my bedroom opens onto the yard.’  The yard was an enclosed one. ‘The shed is usually open during the day.’

The implications of this swept across the group. 

‘What’s in the shed?’ asked the lads.

‘All sorts’ answered Aine ‘except kegs.’

The girls were scared of Aine’s mother who had run them from the pub last summer when they were paying customers, drinking diet coke and putting money in the pool table.  They had had to leave without finishing their game and there had been a scene when she had roared at Aine for having her friends in distracting her when she was supposed to be minding the bar.

‘Get out.  Out!’ Aine’s mother had said to them, pointing at the door although they’d paid for the drinks.  It was totally unfair.

None of them drank beer.  They hadn’t been back to the bar since and with Aine in a different school it hadn’t been an issue.  Greta’d drunk two pints of cider at her cousin’s wedding in the summer and had gone a bit mental.  She drank Baileys with her mam at Christmas and had tried peach Snapps one time and Malibu another with her sister and her sister’s friends in the house when they’d been over getting ready to go out.  Sharon swore by Tia Maria and milk.  Her mother had let her try it at her Nana’s funeral but she thought the wine offered to her at family occasions was disgusting.   Aine didn’t even drink.  The punters down the bar put her off she’d said. 

The lads wanted vodka.  Aine said the girls should try alcoho-pops because they weren’t disgusting like beer but sweet like Mr Freeze’s.  Greta and Sharon would go with Aine to the pub and the lads would wait at the school, behind the bike shed at the back, the one facing onto the playing pitch so they wouldn’t be seen from the road and look suspicious.  They asked if the lads were sure they wanted to wait, it might take ages but the lads were sure.  They would cycle down the village, buy some chips and a lighter.

The bang of dinner hit them as soon as they walked in the door of the pub.  Aine’s face fell because she knew she was in a world of trouble.  The other two tried not to betray excitement on their faces.  The atmosphere in the house made that part easy.

 ‘What time do you call this, fuck’s sake?’ said Maura, Aine’s mother.  Greta cringed, her own mother never cursed and she’d forgotten Aine’s mother did.

‘Sorry, sorry Mammy’ Aine said eyes downcast, skulking slowly round the edge of the table towards the stove where she picked up a ladle and stirred at the slop in the pot.  Aine’s brothers and her sister were there too.  Aine was the eldest, they were all fat except Maura and the younger sister who was the spit of her.  The baby’s face was a mess of mucus and drool, his hands were filthy, no one was dressed nicely despite the fact that it was Sunday. There were two massive pots on the range, one for the spuds and the other for the bacon and cabbage.  The waft off it was making her nauseous.  She counted the seconds they were there to stop herself from vomiting.  It was a Saturday dinner in her house she thought. 

‘Long time no see ladies,’ said Maura to her and Sharon ‘You must be very busy in the new school.’

‘Homework.’ they said.

‘The baby is getting very big.’ she said by way of conversation.

‘He is, he is’ said Maura.

‘What age is he now?’ asked Sharon.

‘Eighteen months’ said Maura.

‘Gorgeous’ said Sharon like the word meant something else.

‘Yeah he has lovely…’ she said as means of qualifying it ‘… hair’ after too long a pause.

Maura was folding a mountain of ironing.

The boy and the girl colouring at the table started to squabble, slashing at each other with their pens.  Aine scalded her finger straining the potatoes ‘Ow’ she said, as she ran it under the cold tap.  Now were they were scribbling in the margins of each other’s pages, trying to protect their own by shielding them with their elbows out.   Aine cut the top of her finger chopping an onion for the white sauce, she held it bleeding under the tap.  Now they were grabbing at each other’s pages, elbows high, getting feistier and more raucous. 

‘Stop it, stop it you two’ said Aine from the sink looking at the slice in the skin of her finger.

The boy’s elbow caught his sister’s face.  She roared, conjuring panto-tears.

‘For fucks sake!’  roared Maura, leaving down a sheet to take a swipe at him. The baby roared too, more snot running from his nose.

Aine tied a tea towel around her finger to stem the blood.  She wondered would they use it to dry the dishes later.  Greta was feeling ill again.  The kitchen was getting stuffier.

The spuds at the top of the pot had fallen apart.

‘For fucks sake’ said Maura to Aine as she hefted clumsily past her leaving it back on the hob for them to dry out.  The children were laughing now, slapping at each other hands, no one had wiped the baby’s face. 

‘Are you staying for some dinner?’ Maura asked the girls.

‘No, no’ they said.

‘No thank you’ they remembered to say.

Her stomach was in her throat as she watched Aine move in slow motion about the kitchen.

There was a photograph hanging on the wall of Aine on their Holy Communion day, clean and serene with her fingers locked in prayer.  Her curly hair shone in perfect ringlets, her skin was peach pure.

‘We just came to borrow some books,’ said Sharon

Aine’s father came into the kitchen in only a vest and trousers.

‘Well ladies,’ he said.  He wasn’t embarrassed of how undressed he was or of how his gut was showing, he could have been proud even.

‘Well,’ they said.

‘Long time no see.’  He looked them over, then looked at his lumpen daughter sweating over the stove.

You could see him wish Aine looked more like they did, then you could see him un-wish it. 

‘Is the dinner not ready yet?’ he asked Aine.

‘She was off gallivanting,’ said Maura.

‘Sorry daddy,’ she said not looking up from the slow stirring mystery of the pot.

‘Shur you’re only out of the fucking bed,’ said Maura, ‘it’s breakfast you should be having.’

He snorted at her.

‘Spuds are ruined anyway,’ she said.

‘Fucks sake,’ he said.

 ‘You get them those books so they can leave,’ said Maura, ‘I’ll keep an eye on the sauce.’

She swallowed, relieved to be almost out of the too steamy, cramped kitchen with the too loud children.

‘C’mon,’ said Aine and they followed her into the bedroom.

She looked behind her as she left the kitchen.  Aine’s father was looking at her again.  She hated that look, she hated it at home too.

‘Don’t be long,’ he said.

‘We’ll only be a minute daddy,’ said Aine.

They were in Aine’s bedroom.  ‘Fucking prick,’ said Aine, surprising her once again.

‘Now what?’ she asked.

As agile and fast as she was cumbersome and slow in the kitchen Aine went through the open bottom window and passed them in six bottles of Woodies alcohol-pop and a litre of Smirnoff.

Then Aine stretched back through the window, flattening her overdeveloped boobs to do so, they wrapped the bottles in a towel off the floor and put them in a rucksack thrown there also.

Now all they had to do was pass back out through the kitchen to freedom and then the boys.

It wasn’t a problem, Maura and Aine’s dad had started bickering at each other while they were in the bedroom and the baby was set off again by the upset.  She wondered did they just not care that they were in the house and if it was true when it was said the pub was going down the toilet.  She remembered the rumours that Aine’s dad had a fancy woman called Theresa and a baby by her, a son, the same age as Aine.  How many fat children does he need, she thought and she looked at her friend with her eyes cast down and pitied her. We should hang out with her more she thought.  Then she saw the dirt of the bit down nails underneath the glitter nail polish as Aine stroked the repulsive baby’s arm to sooth him.  Greta and Sharon left quickly through the kitchen. 

‘Come sooner next time,’ Maura called after them.

‘We will yeah,’ they said, even though they knew she was being sarcastic.

‘I might see you in hour, after dinner,’ said Aine.

‘You’ll be cleaning up first before you can go anywhere,’ said Maura.

‘Thanks for the books,’ said Sharon.

No one sniggered.

They walked for a minute once they were outside, then they ran the 500 metres to the cross roads and burst out laughing and hugged each other.  Neither said anything about the house they had just been in or Aine.

‘What if they aren’t there?’ was what they talked about.

Should they buy something to mix the vodka with or should they wait until after they’d seen the boys again because if they weren’t there then they wouldn’t drink it.  They assessed each other’s clothing and fixed themselves as best they could with Vaseline and lip-balm.

They didn’t fancy the boys but Sharon didn’t fancy Terry more then she didn’t fancy Mark.  What kind of a name was Terry anyway and would they have to find out their surnames before they knew if they were really settled travellers.

They went round to the back of the school with the bag and the boys were there, reclined against the wall, smoking.  They hadn’t thought to bring a bottle opener.  They refused the cigarettes the boys offered them because neither of them had ever smoked before.

Terry popped the cap off a bottle for Sharon against the side of the bicycle stand.  Mark did hers for her with a nail he found on the ground.  They had six bottles and they drank one each.  The girls exchanged glances, there would be none left for Aine.  They had thought the boys would drink the vodka but the boys laughed because they had to ease into it.  Greta shivered because it was getting cold and Mark put an arm around her to ward off the draft.  She felt giddy.  She and Sharon drank the last two Woodies while Mark and Terry filled a half can of Fanta they had got with their chips with vodka. 

‘Woo-hoo, rocket fuel,’ they laughed, Sharon wouldn’t try it, but she did and coughed and spluttered it back out.  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, embarrassed, but the boys thought it was hilarious.

They could hear Aine calling them.   Her mouth was open to call back but Mark hushed her.

They hid, hunched and quiet and she wondered how long her friend, afraid to walk alone into the darkness, would stay calling to them.   She looked at Sharon and Terry, then at herself and Mark.  The maths weren’t looking good for Aine.

‘F-f-faine,’ whispered the lads to each other laughing and she barely knew what they meant.

That Aine had done herself up, with blue eye shadow was clear from a startling distance.

I’ll tell her they were gone when we got there, she said to herself, and we threw away the drink because we couldn’t bring it home, or we hid it and then it was gone when we went back, that someone must have found it.  She’s better off, she rationalised, she doesn’t drink and it’s bad enough already that neither of us smoke.  They watched her bulky frame leave slowly. 

Terry cycled down to the village shop to get a litre of cola.  They spilled almost a third of it out onto the grass and filled the bottle back up with vodka, the girls had wanted to keep more coke.  Sharon was kissing Terry but she hadn’t kissed Mark yet although they were holding hands now, she couldn’t remember when that had started.  She saw that when it was Sharon’s turn to take a chug from the bottle her lips barely tipped it and she took only the teensiest sip out.  So she copied her.

‘Let’s go back to the bike shed,’ Mark said, ‘to give them some privacy.’

‘Okay,’ she said, they brought the vodka cola bottle with them. 

‘I could tell when I first seen you were really smart,’ he said ‘I like that about you.  You have lovely lips.  Can I kiss you?’

She wasn’t sure so she said nothing; he bent to kiss her but her face turned away. 

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ she asked.

‘I do,’ he said, ‘but I only go out with her out of pity, because she begged me to.  I’d dump her in the morning if you said you’d go out with me.’

It was disgusting but it was nice at the same time.  She felt floaty, like the world was beautiful and anything was possible.  She smiled; she was still holding his hand.  The stars were out, loud and clear and singing in the sky.

‘I can’t kiss you, you have a girlfriend,’ she said giggling. 

He picked up a green barrel that had Litear stencilled in white letters on the side and he turned it over so all the rubbish fell from it onto the ground.  Then he kicked it so it rolled a little away from them.  She giggled, for some reason this was funny and romantic.

She was impressed by his display of strength and she could heard her blood flow around her body with joy but she still didn’t want to kiss him.

She was the coolest girl he’d ever met and he would die unless she kissed him.  This was hilarious but she withheld her embrace.  She held her hand out against his chest and folded double with laughter, he was cracking her up, his face showed that he didn’t find it as funny.  She wasn’t cold anymore, she was infused with warmth and glowing and it didn’t matter that they didn’t know where she was at home it would all be okay and she wasn’t even hungry although she hadn’t even eaten all day.  Vodka is great, she thought.  And they were so fortunate to have met on what could have been just another Sunday, the universe made perfect sense, everything was fated to happen the way it did which was the right way and one-by-one she thought she could see all its secrets unlocking themselves to her. 

She was deep in this realisation when Sharon and Terry came to find them.  Their eyes were shining and Terry wanted more vodka.  Sharon was her best friend and she loved her, but Sharon had to go home.  They played a game first, of basketball with the empty glass bottles of Woodies smashing them through the hoop at one end of the basketball court.  Sharon was sobering now and she had to leave before her parents sent a search party out for her.  Sharon wanted her to go with her but she didn’t want to even though she was her best friend and she loved her. 

‘Stay, stay,’ said the boys, ‘we’ll look after her,’ they told Sharon.   There were going to walk her home later but she should wait with them now and go home sober.  She wasn’t afraid because the universe had perfect understanding and life was beautiful.

Sharon left and she drank more vodka because she was so thirsty.  She tried just to sip.   They went further up the playing field to the trees along the back of it because the lads said they heard a car coming.  Mark kissed her and she let him this time, except when she opened her eyes again it was Terry and not Mark who was kissing her.  Mark was behind her and there were hands everywhere and she was laughing again because it was too hard to keep them off.  Her shirt was open down the front and she didn’t remember how that had happened.  There were more fingers to open buttons than there were to keep them closed.  But she couldn’t stop laughing even though she didn’t want it to happen. 

She said, ‘Stop it, stop it!’ but the hands were everywhere so she tried to run.

She was unsteady on her feet and still laughing though it was getting serious and her shoe was gone again.  Mark had grabbed her arm and it hurt.  She could see in his face that he hated her now, he always had, though she still loved and understood him, the universe and everything.  Terry had her other arm.

‘Stop it, stop it,’ she said but she felt weak like she couldn’t stop it even though she didn’t want it to happen.  Being far from the road was no longer a good thing and she couldn’t remember why it had been such a good idea to come up here.  She forgot why it was a good idea not to home.  Maybe they had heard her question in her mind if they were settled travellers and had taken offence.  It was probably her own fault; she hadn’t called out to Aine.

She was weak now, weak and slow, unable to push them off and part of her still found it funny that it was happening to her although it wasn’t funny at all because she didn’t want it to happen. 

There was a hand on her belt and she considered how easy it was for a tracksuit pants to come off compared to jeans. 

‘Look at her eyes,’ said Terry to Mark, ‘first time you’ve taken a yoke?’ they asked her and slapped her lightly on the face.  She didn’t know what they meant but the stars were still singing and she could hear the earth speak as they pushed her down into it.  There was still love as she turned her eyes away not wanting to see what was going to happen.  She understood why it needed to happen.

She could feel them hate her and she felt sorry for them.

When she awoke she convulsed again and vomited.

There was vomit smeared cold against the side of her face, the one that had been pressed flat against the grass and pieces of it strewn like flowers through her hair.

And the ground was cold too and silent, wet like it might have rained while she slept.  She shivered and tugged jeans up, it was cold and wet there too. She held one side of her shirt tight to the other because her fingers couldn’t cope with closing all the buttons and some were missing having fled away in the dark.

She was alone.  It was what she wanted, no one to see, hear or know.

She found the vodka bottle by the side of the court as she made her way to road.  It was empty.  She smashed it right through the hoop an excellent shot.  She found a coin in her pocket as staggered to the phone box and she used it to ring her stepfather who lived with them at home.  This was another secret to add to the ones between them already. 

Kai Outtakes
Novel Excerpt