the cops left Rebecca slapped my face. She said, that’s for running around with sick Goths. What planet is she on? What sick Goths? Just because Kevin dyes his hair, she keeps saying he’s like a vampire. It’s not fair. I don’t cut myself. I don’t get pregnant like Julie did. So why am I grounded for a fucking month? Thank God, Jeremy is on my side. He thinks Goth is an expression of individuality. It always sounds pretentious when Melancholia says that but he made it sound true. He was always getting into trouble when he was a teenager. His father said he’d never amount to anything but he did. His ad about the shopping centre won an award for innovation. His photo was in the papers. Rebecca stuck it on the fridge. I see him every time I open the door.
No more ouija board. It’s banned from my life. Even if I played snakes and ladders Rebecca would freak! I’d stopped believing in it anyway. I just wanted it to be real because I need to know if you’re in Heaven. I’m finding it harder and harder to believe you’re there…or anywhere except in my head. Maybe you were a dream I dreamed and you and Daddy never existed. Maybe I’m a dream and living in everyone else’s dreams. Maybe angels do come at night and read letters. Maybe it’s not a con job thought up by Lydia Mulvaney to stop me snivelling over her fish fingers and chips.
X
Cathy
20 Oct 1990
Dear Mum,
I’m back in your room again. Julie and Paul have moved out. They used Gramps’ money for a deposit on a house in Swords with wood floors so Jonathan doesn’t have to breathe in the dust from our carpets. It makes his asthma worse. Julie gets so scared when he starts to wheeze but the doctor said asthma is not a problem with the right medication and lots of kids grow out of it. Their next new baby will be born in April. Julie calls it ‘another mistake’ but I know she’ll love it just as much as she loves Jonathan. I cycle to Swords with Kevin once a week and we baby-sit so they can go to the pictures.
Sometimes Jeremy stays over in our house. I saw him kissing Rebecca in the hall last night. I didn’t mean to spy and was only going downstairs to get a glass of milk. Rebecca’s hair was like a rope around his hands and he was pressing her against the wall and whispering, let me stay…they won’t hear anything…I promise…promise…kissing her all the time. I was afraid to move in case they saw me. She let him stay. He was wrong. I heard. It makes my tummy swoop to think of it and the more I try not to the more I do.
Love to Dad and all,
Cathy
5 Nov 1990
Dear Mum,
Serious news. Lauren’s in hospital. We’re all in shock. She keeps saying she didn’t mean to do it so deep and she’s promised Rebecca she’ll never do it again. Is she crazy or what? She’s in a private room with flowers. Mr Moran said it’s only right to look after her properly and he’d pay. He brings her chocolates and fluffy toys. Mrs Moran said if they’d had their way in the beginning, all this could have been avoided. She said it low to Mr Moran so that Rebecca couldn’t hear. But I did. The cheek of her. What does she know about anything except being stinking rich and showing off her fancy house in magazines? They’ll never be our parents, no matter how hard they try. Watch over Lauren and make her stop hurting herself.
Love you all,
Cathy
Chapter Fifteen
Rebecca’s Journal–1990
I was searching under her mattress for blades and I found poems instead. Only a few. I suspect she’s destroyed most of them or maybe hidden them somewhere else. But I’m not going to pretend I know. She values her privacy too much. I cried when I read this one. I thought it was about gardening when I saw the title but she’s obviously still clinging to memories of our mother. At least, in this instance, Lauren has released them in ink, not blood.
Crying is not for the faint-hearted. I thought I’d never stop. Only that Jeremy was calling…I don’t ever want him to see me in such a state. We’ve moved on from that time…tick tock tick tock tick…
I’ve copied this poem and others into the journal. Some day when she’s stronger, I’ll persuade her to send them to a publisher.
Deadheading the Red Geraniums
I watch you
Deadheading the red geraniums
The withered petals
Blood-staining your hands
When you snap the head
From its slender stem.
I watch you
Breathe the perfumed air
As sweet peas waltz
On bamboo stilts.
Adrift in pink until the pods
Wither and decay.
I watch you
Gather roses: crimson, cream and peach.
The prayerful thorns sink
Into your flesh.
Stigmata lifting you
Across the deep abyss.
I watch you
Stroke the birch, the silvery bark.
A family tree, denuded.
A wafer fragment
Falling. Ash to ash…
Ash to ash.
Chapter Sixteen
Letters to Nirvana
26 December 1990
Dear Mum,
Guess what Jeremy gave Rebecca for Christmas. A really flash solitaire. They’re getting married in June 1992. Julie and Paul didn’t stay long at the engagement party because of Jonathan and the carpet dust. Lauren is good since she came out of hospital. At the party, all the boys wanted to dance with her…except Kevin. He thinks she’s a real head banger and even though I agree, I hate it when anyone says things like that about her.
Mr Moran proposed a toast to Rebecca and Jeremy and said may all their troubles be little ones. He can talk, said Julie. Where’s his little ones? If he had any he wouldn’t be so slick with his words. She is afraid Jonathan will have another asthma attack and go to hospital again. Sebby sends her postcards from Australia. She calls them salt in the wound.
XXX
Cathy
15 Jan 1991
Dear Mum,
It’s six years today. Rebecca forgot to organise the mass. She can talk about nothing but Jeremy this and Jeremy that and she looks different, like a light is shining inside her. I know you don’t mind but she should have done the mass.
XXXX to you and Daddy on this special memory day,
Cathy
12 April 1991
Dear Mum,
I went shopping with Melancholia today. She gave me this amazing jet black cross for a present and showed me where to find fantastic clothes in the George’s Street arcade. Black net gloves to my elbows and a long black dress with a scooped neck, perfect with the cross.
Rebecca hates my new clothes. She’s always going on about Satanic influences, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Well, I know what it means but that’s not us. All we do is play our music and read Anne Rice. I don’t know how someone as nice as Jeremy can possibly be in love with her. He must be only pretending. He’s probably terrified of her. Everyone else is. She keeps going on about me staying out late and how she has responsibility for my welfare. Who does she think she is? You and Daddy were responsible for my welfare, no one else. Julie’s too busy to talk since Philip was born. He looks like a troll