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.   

I found my father through facebook

My sister joined Facebook in 2009.  In April of that year she searched our surname with the forename Rock. We knew our father had a son from a second marriage that he had called Rock for the actor Rock Hudson.  It was one of the few things we knew about our father. I had never met him and my sister had not seen him since she was eighteen months old.  We were now in our late twenties. 

My parents met and married in Hove, England in the early 70s.  They lived there for six years before my mum fell pregnant with my sister.  I knew little about that time.  Growing up, our father was not spoken of and I had not felt encouraged to ask.  Occasionally my mother might say, ‘You’re just like your father you…’ but she said it to my sister, it was not said to me.  To the extent that I thought he was her father alone and when people asked me about my father, I told them I didn’t have one, because, as a child, I believed that to be the truth.

A lone parent in a rural Irish town in the 80s was the exception, not the norm.  I was the only child in my primary school class from a single parent family.  When I did not draw a picture of Galway winning the All-Ireland hurling final, the class assignment for the day, the teacher brought me into the corridor to ask why. 

‘But Miss,’ I told her, ‘I don’t know what a hurling match looks like, I don’t have a father.’ 

Then I started to cry.  She cried too.

I cried because I was a being unjustly admonished for my failure to complete an impossible task.  She cried because she pitied me.  Her compassion scared me so I cried harder.  What was the big deal, what was I missing out on?

Secondary school presented more problems.  My father, his occupation, appearance, his likes and dislikes were the fodder of French and German oral work. I grew weary of answering questions on my family.  My lack of basic paternal knowledge was an annoyance, a nuisance.  I invented different versions of a father for each class and no one challenged me on them.  My father was a series of petty peeves and irritations, a question on a medical form I couldn’t answer, a missing signature on a homework journal, a spare seat at a school concert. When I hit that inevitable patch of adolescent angst I had no fantasies of him coming to save me.  My heart was a walled garden. 

There were terrible inferences, none of which had ever been confirmed. That he had abused my mother in some way to cause her to flee.  He must be a bully, he must be violent.  I didn’t dwell on it, it wasn’t spoken of and it didn’t affect me.  After my initial outright rejection of his existence, when I discovered its biological impetus, my next assumption was that I wasn’t his child.  Who could casually abandon their own children, would he not at the very least have been curious to see what I looked like?  No, there must have been some question over my parentage that my mother was keeping schtum on. 

What had I picked up about him over the years? That he was tall with blond hair.  That he was a plumber.  That my mother ran away to Ireland when she was eight months pregnant with me, on the ferry, with the help of her brother.  That he chased after her.  There was a reconciliation.  I was two weeks overdue.  He re-plastered the ceiling of my grandparent’s sitting room.  Then, growing restless awaiting my birth, he borrowed money off my grandfather to go to the Netherlands to find a new job but the next time he was seen or heard of again was by my mother’s friend, at a bus stop in Hove with another woman. 

My mother kept contact with my fathers’ parents.  They were his adopted parents, and his adoption was often cited as the reason he had a ‘chip on his shoulder’.  We knew we had a half-brother named Rock because when my English grandmother died, my mother went over to the funeral and met my father and his new family there.  Despite wanting to, we were not allowed to go to the funeral.  Your father has a ton of other children now, she reported back, with names like Rock and Brent.  How many, we asked?  She couldn’t say, four or five.  What were the other ones called?  She didn’t remember.  Did they look like us?  A bit, not really. 

My sister searched our half-brother’s name on Facebook, and a dark-haired, stern-faced, hoodied youth who bore her more than a passing resemblance showed near the top of the list.   She sent him a private message. 

Is your father Richard?

wot of it? 

Were his parents Seb and Bella?

yeh

Does he have two daughters from a previous marriage?

Rock confirmed this to be the case.  My sister rang me, I was on my way home from work, it was Friday and a sunny evening.

‘No way!’ 

‘Way.’

‘Send me the messages, what does he look like in his profile picture?  I’m going to add him!’

Blithely I sent him a friend request and less than an hour later he accepted it.  I had already been to the off-licence, I sat at my laptop with my glass of wine and I typed.

Hi

We got to chatting.  I went from being the younger of two children to being the second eldest of nine children my father sired.  Nine, an obscene number, an irresponsible number, he wasn’t even Catholic.  No wonder he could afford to let one or two drift by the wayside.  I felt reckless and surreal so I rolled out the banter.

Your mother must be in bits, mine got off easy.

lol

He listed his other siblings.     
   
Dan is adopted

Okay right

Why would someone with multiple children adopt another?  Turns out it was family joke I failed to get.  Where were they living, still in Hove?  No, they’d been brought up in Luton , the rest were scattered but Lexus and Brandon were living in Letterkenny with their parents.  Letterkenny, in Ireland? Letterkenny?

2 stop d 2 yung uns getting into trouble Lol 

They had moved to Ireland a few years previously but Rock hadn’t wanted to go, nothing to do there, no mates, nothing but fields.  He worked occasionally in hotels and mainly at trying to stay out of trouble.  His interests were alcohol, women and weed.  He liked hanging around causing trouble with his brothers, I might have heard of them they were (in)famous, but not with Dan because he was a junkie.

Are they on Facebook? 

They don’t get much internet access at the moment I was told.  What was it like growing up with such a big family, I asked?  His mother was a saint but his father ran the house like a boot camp.  It was becoming clear they didn’t get on. 

U find out urself wen u met him lol

He didn’t have a number for the house in Letterkenny or a mobile number for his father.  He might have a mobile number for his mother somewhere.  I was giddy and lightheaded with my bottle of wine.  I had been keeping my sister up-to-date on the progress of our chat.  I trawled Facebook for the accounts of the other siblings he’d named.  The photos I had access to were few and far between, the shots were too blurry and of bad quality.  Still I scoured them for resemblances.  I logged onto Bebo to find my youngest half-brother’s account.  There was a nice photo of him in Letterkenny with a dog.  There were no photos of my father. 

I dialled my father’s second wife’s number.  She didn’t pick up.  I left a voicemail, my words were garbled, my voice was squeaky, I spoke at a fast-pace. I sent her a text in case she didn’t listen to the voicemail. 

Is your mother’s name Vivian?
 
She replied to my text.

Yes

Your dad is out walking the dog.  I’ll get him to call you when he gets back

Boom! Nearly 30 years of nothing, no contact, no correspondence, such an anodyne response.  I was jittery, terrified, what would he think of me and what would I think of him?  He rang the next morning.  His voice was deep, gravelly and very English.  We had difficulty understanding each other.  He wanted my mother’s number to get her permission before speaking with either me or my sister.  I was angry, I couldn’t give him my mother’s number, I couldn’t land that on her doorstep without warning her first.  Why did he need her permission? I was an adult capable of making decisions in my own right.  As a compromise I gave her his number, she called him and then he rang me back and we spoke.  He filled me in on ‘my brothers and sisters.’

‘Two of your brothers are at her majesty’s leisure.’

But what did that mean?   I was confused, the omens had been there since my conversation with Rock, I knew without being able to seize the meaning.  I brushed over it.  They’d moved to Letterkenny for the good of the younger kids, to keep them out of trouble, but only the very youngest Brandon at fifteen was living there.  His sister Lexus 16 had stayed one year before running back to the UK to live with her sister.  I only retained snippets of that first conversation, impressions.  He was exceptionally fond of his dogs. 

I didn’t say much about myself.  There was a worm of doubt in my mind - this man has no interest in you, you are strangers with nothing in common; I didn’t want to bore him.  He asked after my mother, he was very interested in what she had been doing with herself and particularly in her love affairs since his departure.  It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to contact us you see, he had heard a rumour she was shacked up with a man in Dublin and had started a new life there.  How long had he been living in Letterkenny.  A few years, he had driven past our house once with work and thought about popping in.  Why didn’t he?  He didn’t know, he thought our mother didn’t want us to have anything to do with him.  I quizzed him on his health, heart disease and congenital illnesses.

I wanted to meet him.  I had only a sketchy idea from a handful of photos what he looked like.  He was someone to poke with a stick, to regard with curiosity and wonder, a circus freak.  The sooner we met the better as far as I was concerned.  Get it over with, like ripping off a plaster.  I chatted more to Rock, who had also been inside, the extent of the schism between him and our father became apparent.  He was suggestive of things like ritual beatings, sadism, a highly dysfunctional household.

I am not sayin he wer a nonce or ne ting

Another word whose meaning I had difficulty grasping. I resolved to avoid further Facebook chat with Rock.  My perspective of my father was being coloured. I read Steven Pinker books to assess the genetic implications of my discoveries.  Nature or nurture, should I be concerned about my genes?  How closely related were these half siblings to me?

‘Your father always said he wanted enough children for a football team,’ said my mother.

Would she have provided him with one if they had stayed together?  Alternate history versions of my life streamed through my head, like movies in which the Nazis win the war. 

Then my 16 year old half-sister contacted me via Facebook.  A second perspective assuaged my fears on the brutality of their upbringing.  She lol-led away Rock’s insinuations.

It weren’t dat bad lol 

U’ll see wen you met him u shud meet him lol

We met on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Athlone.  Athlone, the heroin capital of the midlands, I thought on the train there.  My sister was coming from home, me from Dublin and our father from Letterkenny.  It had seemed convenient.  What could I wear that said fuck-you-I-never-needed-you, yet showcased how slim, attractive and blazingly intelligent I was, while indicating my availability to take any money he might want to compensate me with.  Topshop.   I was on the train and we three were to meet in the train station car park. 

I drank too much coffee and tapped my fingers on the table top in time to some blasting techno.  My sister promised she would come alone, she had three children and a husband, I had no one, but when the train pulled into the station her car was full.  This wrong-footed me, I had wanted it to be about us three, myself and my sister and our relationship with our father.  Not about grandchildren, they could be relegated to some future date, our primary relationship should take precedence.  They had just driven down for moral support she assured me.  They wouldn’t interfere. 

Her husband was concerned about her safety; he wanted to ensure he wasn’t a psycho before she got into a car with him.  The car was some make of SUV and Lily Allen was playing through the speakers.  First impressions, he seemed fine.  His hair was too long and he was wearing jewellery, ‘Never trust a man who wears jewellery,’ my grandmother always said.  His clothes were a bit Jack and Jones, mutton dressed as a lamb, for my tastes but that is hardly a capital offence. 

I sat in the back.  We were tongue tied and awkward.  Presumably we agreed to go from the train station to the town to find somewhere to have a coffee and chat because off he drove with my sister’s husband and their kids tailing him.  Once he was out of the car I saw my father was very tall.  Nearly 6’4’’ in his heyday, he remained an impressive height and build.  He laughed because myself and my sister are so short, the runts of the litter and I’m 5’6’’.   All his other daughters tipped 6’’. 

I picked a pub, not a café, and ordered a Bulmer’s to suit the weather.  We sat on a hard wooden bench around a cramped wooden table in a dark corner of the pub while the sun blazed on outside.  He talked more about his dogs, about breeding them and showing them competitively. 

‘So you’re into breeding?’ I said.

I do a line in abandonment humour.  He liked music too; he’d seen T-Rex before they were T- Rex.  He had to repeat a lot of what he said, his English accent was so thick.  Great, my father is Jim Broadmoor, I snorted into my pint.  There were breaks in the conversation.   He mostly questioned us about our mother.  He told us some anecdotes from their youth involving sexual exploits, he was not embarrassed to share them with us. 

Everyone went outside for a cigarette.

‘Fancy meeting you here!’ said my sister’s husband, as he strolled past with the kids. 

There were handshakes and introductions, we piled back inside for King Crisps and Coca-Cola.  I zoned out, the conversation was dominated by grandkids, babies, he’d never seen Rock’s baby girl.  Rock’s fault of course.  He hadn’t contacted us because he’d assumed my mother didn’t want him to.  He’d shown up at the divorce proceedings, she had not.  Somehow this was the irrefutable evidence he’d needed that she’d wanted nothing more to do with him and as such that he should have nothing more to do with us either.  Our English grandparents, they were no saints, they’d had his dog put down when he was a teenager. 

He left hurriedly.  The train trip had been longer than the meeting.  His wife didn’t want him to meet us.  Why? I asked.  She needed time to adjust, to get her head around it, he said.  She seemed okay in the text messages, I said.  Did he want me to talk to her?  It wasn’t a good time he said, the youngest daughter back in Britain, she missed her company.  Why did you let her go her go if she is only 16, I asked?  Couldn’t stop her, anyway what was the worst that could happen with her older sister looking out for her.   He was there by stealth - he’d lied to his wife, as far as she knew he was out doing the shopping.  He had a shopping list he was in Athlone to fill.  Brandon, the youngest, was waiting for him at home.  This last remark, piqued me, fuck Brandon, I’d been waiting by whole damn life. 

The monster Rock’s words conjured was not the man who appeared in the flesh. 

Life went on with the odd text message exchanged between my father and I.  Things weren’t going well for him at home.  His wife was agitated.  She’d threatened to kick him out of the house, he was sleeping in the car.  I was perplexed, was their marital disharmony my fault? 

One evening I saw I had a missed call from my father as I left my creative writing class.  ‘Your brother Brett is out of prison today,’ he said, when I rang him back, ‘we’re celebrating.’  Fantastic news.  Great to hear.  I cycled home and on to the Tesco up the road past my house.  Inside, as I walked up and down the aisles, I began to cry.  I couldn’t find the tuna fish.  It wasn’t where it usually was.  The supermarket had been rearranged.  Things weren’t where they were meant to be.  Everything was wrong. 

I found it difficult to motivate myself to do things.   Walking to work one morning I felt an intractable pull towards the train station.  Before I knew it I was chugging my way down the coast.  Playing hookie, on the mitch, skiving, what did it matter, nothing seemed important any more, everything was absurd, ridiculous.  I wrote a poem about it. 

At work I looked around the office floor and giggled. I was in a hyper-surreal stare, peeling away from reality, detaching from what was going on.  Where did I fit between the people in the suits and my new family?  The 16 year old was pregnant. Her boyfriend was older than me.  Aligning the columns of my excel sheets seemed trivial.  Was my baby brother really a junkie?

My father text my mother.  Odd sporadic texts.   Reminiscing about their time together, versions of stories she strongly disputed.  The deviation between their remembrances of a shared history was extreme.  They each doctored the past, sanitised it so it fit in line with their individual narratives.  Revisionists, truth was eroded or lost, telescoped against the subsequent events that occurred in their lives.  

I was sad, that I had stirred this to the surface, that the past meant more to them than the future, that one day this would happen me too.

We met our father for a second time. He came to my home town and the three of us went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner.  He talked more about his house, the décor, the dogs, his love of cooking but most of all he spoke about my mother.  The great sex they’d had on their honeymoon, what a goer she’d been.  I drank too much.  He was drinking too; but it had little effect.  In the smoking area of a local pub he told me I was hard, my defences were up, I wasn’t letting him in.  He wanted to hold my hand walking down the main street when we left the pub.  I let him.  In the same spirit as a child who holds their hand over a flame to see how long they can keep it there. 

He had nowhere organised to stay.  He wanted to stay in my mother’s house.  She was away at the time but I could not allow it, plus I did not want to stay with him alone in the house.  He ended up staying on my sister’s couch and driving away before breakfast the next morning.  I haven’t seen him since. 

He continued to text my mother, frequently and intensely, despite her ignoring him, then despite her asking him to stop.  He still loved her.  He’d never loved anyone else.  She was his real wife because she was his first wife and any other wives after that didn’t count.  We were his only real children, not the children he had brought up and was still bringing up, but me, who he had met twice, and my sister who he’d abandoned at eighteen months.  A man only has one wife and therefore his children by her are the ones that count. 

My youngest half-brother sent me a message on Bebo, hate mail.  I was destroying his life, tearing his family apart, why had I ever made contact, and what did I want from them?  He despised me and he hadn’t even met me.  I text my father.  He didn’t reply.  I rang him, he didn’t answer.  He text me back later, he was watching Michael Jackson’s funeral with his wife.  He was busy. 

Later that summer my mother called me at work.  He was hounding her, insisting they meet.  He had left his wife for her.  He wanted them to be together.  To pick up where they’d left off 30 years later.  I paced outside the office listening to more tales of their marriage that I had never heard before.  Things she was prompted to tell me by his persistent calls and text messages. 

Then work threw me a curve ball.  I was being deployed to a role in the UK, to Hove to be exact. 

‘Did I know it?’

 ‘Yes, I had family there.’ 

‘Lovely,’ the HR representative replied.

I deleted my Facebook account. 

I thought about places that may have been relevant to my parents but I did not seek them out. Where they had married, the first house they’d bought.  I’d received a present of Hove Rock which I read.  Was there a criminal undertow to the town?  My bones were tired as I watched the grey waves smash against the stony shore. 

The day I finished for Christmas the south coast of England was covered in snow.  In January I was re-deployed to London.  My walk to work in the morning took me from St Paul’s over Southwark Bridge at the Tate modern and along the bank side to my office near London Bridge.  Squinting as the early morning light bounced up from the bleak concrete streets, I should have found the view edifying.  But I was worn out, bleached by the light, faded and hollow. 

I wasn’t thinking about my father or his family anymore, but in a way I was.   The structures of the universe had altered.  The discoveries that I had so casually made had underwritten my identity, what I thought I knew about myself, what I thought I knew about the world.  The disclosures of the past year did not have an immediate effect on me but a powerful one.  I’d opened a Pandora’s Box for everyone including me, I’d engendered needs I’d spent a lifetime supressing and received a second rejection – it was my mother he wanted not me. 

In March I took to my bed.  I decided not to go back to London any more.  I decided not to do most things anymore.  It wasn’t a decision so much as a physical inability to force myself to do them.  I had atrophied. 

My Dad reappeared.  I had not been in contact with him.  He showed up at my sister’s house demanding to know why our mother had not shown up at the divorce proceedings thirty years previous.  My sister, losing patience, told him to ask her himself.  He went to batter down my mother’s door.   She hid by a window in the upstairs landing pretending not to be at home to have a good view of him shouting his demands and questions up at her.  He left a large candle in a candle holder, like something from an altar, outside the front door.  And though she says she wants nothing to do with him it sits in pride of place in her hall. 


also see: poem

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