down again, our heads sinking into dozens of maroon-coloured coats and blazers. Mar took another bite out of her apple. The bell rang.
‘I suppose we’ll see him at the Colum’s disco anyway.’
‘Do you think we’ll be let go?’
‘No,’ she smiled, ‘but so.’
There was a list of things to do stuck to one of the cupboards in the kitchen. A sure sign there was something wrong with Mam: she’d never written a list before in her life. She just got on and did things. There was no question of sitting about making notes.
I could hear her on the landing. She had the radio on.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ she croaked when I asked her if she was okay, her head peering round the top of the stairs. She had that deranged look on her face she got after spending more time than is good for anyone ironing sheets and underpants. She was a little peaky-looking too.
‘Are you feeling better?’
‘Me? I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Dad said you weren’t feeling too well.’
‘Jesus, that man can keep nothing to himself. I’m fine. I had the one glass of wine and it didn’t agree with me is all.’
Blue was yelping to be let in. She must have heard me being dropped off at the gate from school. She’d stopped barking suddenly. Then there was a loud knock, and another – a thud. I found her ready to throw herself against the door for a third time when I went downstairs.
‘You’re weird, Blue,’ I said, crouching down to pet her.
She looked up at me and wagged her tail, mouth hanging open for air, as if she’d run round the world to welcome me home. The fur on her belly and legs was soaking wet, and she was raring to jump up on me, her nails scratching the parquet floor. I turned and she followed, panting.
Mam was in the bathroom upstairs. I stood on the landing beside her ironing board, holding my breath, wondering if I should ask her again if she was okay. The iron was still hot. She’d put out clean linen for my bed.
‘Mam, don’t worry about changing my sheets. I’ll do it myself.’
She didn’t respond. I went and got the blow-dryer out from the drawer of her dressing table, plugged it in in my room, and pointed it at Blue. Her legs quivered.
‘It’s for your own good. If you want to come anywhere near me. You’re soaking wet.’
Her hair was starting to whiten – around her mouth and eyes, and around the star-shaped patch on her breast. She was forty-nine in dog years – half my age if I were a dog. If I were a dog I might be dead, I was thinking.
Then I heard the click of the lock on the bathroom door and Mam’s standing looking down at me and at Blue.
‘Now what have I told you about blow-drying the dog in here? You’ve my heart broke.’
She had a thing about dog hairs getting into the carpet and onto my duvet and curtains.
‘And that awful smell—’
Her eyes were bloodshot.
‘For God’s sake, Mam,’ I said. I couldn’t think what else to say, and I couldn’t not say anything. I didn’t want her noticing I’d seen how red her eyes were. ‘There’s no hairs . . .’
She turned abruptly and walked out, Blue skulking at her heels.
Gran was watching an old World Series of Poker video, with Lazy Bones tucked snugly under her right arm. It was raining. I could hear it thrumming on the windows. I glanced up at the road. No sign of him. It was a little early yet. The air was so heavy with rain I worried I might not see him if he passed by. Dad was out the back, breaking branches over his knee, setting another fire. I stood at the kitchen window and gazed out at him, wanting to cry. I wandered from room to room, avoiding going up to my own, where Mam was fussing over my unmade bed, the clothes on my floor, the dog hair, her eyes still sore-looking. Without bothering to change out of my school uniform as I usually would, I threw on one of Dad’s old jackets and skulked off to the graveyard. I didn’t turn to hear what Dad said as I passed him. I couldn’t be sure, anyway, if it was me he was talking to or himself, as he often talked to himself, and I didn’t want to have to explain to him where I was going at this time of night and in this kind of weather and with my school uniform still on me.
A drizzle of sweat had formed on my back and on my forehead before I’d even reached the top of the drive. I could feel my face reddening as I put my hand up to pull strands of hair away: they were sticking to my skin, catching at the corners of my mouth and in my eyelashes. There was no sign of anyone on the road. I turned up left to the graveyard, walking in on the grass verge. I waved at passing cars though I couldn’t see the drivers’ faces. Headlights were blurred in the rain. As I turned past the cottage and walked up through the side gate I realised I wasn’t alone.
He was there. Earlier than he’d been the evening before, earlier than he should have been, standing in the same place, staring off into the distance. I went suddenly cold. I tried to get a good look at him, but it made me feel kind of dizzy, like I might faint. And the rain. And again we were too far apart for me to make out any detail.
He didn’t seem to notice me. I kept walking uphill, fingers tearing at old bits of tissue and chewing-gum wrapper inside the pockets of Dad’s coat. I could hear Blue panting behind me, which worried me for a moment – he might hear her too – but the noise from the rain on the trees would have drowned out any small sound. Blue ran ahead of me.
I felt so exposed up there – not just to the rain and the wind, but to him. I’m sure he’d seen me there before – he must have – but before it hadn’t bothered me. I hadn’t thought how unbearable it could be for his eyes to be on me, though it’s what I wanted more than anything. I pulled the mac down below my backside, held it taut, and sat on the edge of the slimy slate beneath the stone cross, praying he wouldn’t notice. Blue was sniffing around the headstones, sticking her nose into plastic wreathes, trying to bite blades of grass. She could smell herself on things. She chomped the air and sneezed. She was moving further and further away from me, down the path. Towards him.
Then he stood up and held his hand out to her, and I could just make out his voice calling to her, and him whistling. And my hearing seemed to go: there was a sudden hush in my ears like hailstones. I was burning hot, though my skin was stinging cold. The boy was down on his haunches then, and Blue clawing his knees. She only did that with people she knew.
I didn’t dare look straight down at them. Instead I looked the other way, pretended to myself I was looking at something in the trees, resting my head in my blue hands in an effort to shield my face from him and cool my cheeks. I was sure my thoughts were there, clear as day, to be read. I couldn’t just up and leave. I was stuck.
I don’t know how long I was there but my hair was sopping, and I could feel the wet soak into my skirt, and I thought, all of a sudden, if I stayed a moment longer it would be too late. Too late for what, I didn’t know. I drew myself up slowly, hands still in pockets, and sauntered back down the way I’d come, beneath the yew trees. I didn’t once look over at him. My legs nearly went from under me a couple of times as I walked down the laneway and on to the road. And I didn’t look back once to see if Blue would follow, though I heard her a few minutes later, just as I could see home.
The kitchen was warm with smells from the oven, and I felt ravenous with hunger. Mam was back to her cheery self, fanning the smoke from pork chops under the grill with a tea towel. There were spuds on the boil, and steam rising from other pots of vegetables. She smiled at me as I walked in.
‘Look at you. You’re soaked.’
She told me dinner would be five minutes, and didn’t I have good timing, and would I call Dad. No word about where I’d