20

Every cop who’s been undercover knows there’s nothing in the world quite like the day before you go into a job. I figure astronauts on countdown know the feeling, and parachute regiments lining up for the jump. The light turns dazzling and unbreakable as diamonds, every face you see is beautiful enough to take your breath away; your mind is crystal clear, every second spreads itself out in front of you in one great smooth landscape, things that have baffled you for months suddenly make perfect sense. You could drink all day and be stone-cold sober; cryptic crosswords are easy as kids’ jigsaws. That day lasts a hundred years.

It had been a long time since I’d been under, but I recognized the feeling the second I woke up on Saturday morning. I spotted it in the sway of the shadows on my bedroom ceiling and tasted it at the bottom of my coffee. Slowly and surely, while Holly and I flew her kite in the Phoenix Park and while I helped her with her English homework and while we cooked ourselves too much macaroni with too much cheese, things clicked into place in my mind. By early Sunday afternoon, when the two of us got into my car and headed across the river, I knew what I was going to do.

Faithful Place looked tidy and innocent as something out of a dream, filled to the brim with a clear lemony light floating over the cracked cobbles. Holly’s hand tightened around mine. “What’s up, chickadee?” I asked. “Changed your mind?”

She shook her head. I said, “You can if you want, you know. Just say the word and we’ll go find ourselves a nice DVD full of fairy princesses and a bucket of popcorn bigger than your head.”

No giggle; she didn’t even look up at me. Instead she hoisted her backpack more firmly onto her shoulders and tugged at my hand, and we stepped off the curb into that strange pale-gold light.

Ma went all out, trying to get that afternoon right. She had baked herself into a frenzy—every surface was piled with gingerbread squares and jam tarts—assembled the troops bright and early, and sent Shay and Trevor and Gavin out to buy a Christmas tree that was several feet too wide for the front room. When Holly and I arrived, Bing was on the radio, Carmel’s kids were arranged prettily around the tree hanging ornaments, everyone had a steaming mug of cocoa and even Da had been installed on the sofa with a blanket over his knees, looking patriarchal and a lot like sober. It was like walking into an ad from the 1950s. The whole grotesque charade was obviously doomed—everyone looked wretched, and Darren was getting a wall-eyed stare that told me he was inches from exploding—but I understood what Ma was trying to do. It would have gone to my heart, if only she had been able to resist taking a quick sidestep into her usual MO and telling me that I was after getting awful wrinkly around the eyes and I’d have a face like tripe on me in no time.

The one I couldn’t take my eyes off was Shay. He looked like he was running a low-grade fever: restless and high-colored, with new hollows under his cheekbones and a dangerous glitter in his eyes. What caught my attention, though, was what he was doing. He was sprawled in an armchair, jiggling one knee hard and having a fast-paced, in-depth conversation about golf with Trevor. People do change, but as far as I knew, Shay despised golf only marginally less than he despised Trevor. The only reason he would voluntarily get tangled up with both at once was out of desperation. Shay—and I felt this counted as useful information—was in bad shape.

We worked our way grimly through Ma’s full ornament stash—never come between a mammy and her ornaments. I managed to ask Holly privately, under cover of “Santa Baby,” “You having an OK time?”

She said, valiantly, “Amazing,” and ducked back into the clump of cousins before I could ask any more questions. The kid picked up the native customs fast. I started mentally rehearsing the debriefing session.

Once Ma was satisfied that the tack alert level had reached Orange, Gavin and Trevor brought the kids down to Smithfield to see the Christmas Village. “Walk off that gingerbread,” Gavin explained, patting his stomach.

“There was nothing wrong with that gingerbread,” Ma snapped. “If you’re after getting fat, Gavin Keogh, it’s not my cooking that done it.” Gav mumbled something and shot Jackie an agonized look. He was being tactful, in a large hairy way: trying to give us some family togetherness time, at this difficult moment. Carmel bundled the kids into coats and scarves and woolly hats—Holly went right into the lineup between Donna and Ashley, like she was one of Carmel’s own—and off they went. I watched from the front-room window as the gaggle of them headed down the street. Holly, arm-linked with Donna so tight they looked like Siamese twins, didn’t look up to wave.

Family time didn’t work out quite the way Gav had planned: we all slumped in front of the telly, not talking, until Ma recovered from the ornament blitzkrieg and dragged Carmel into the kitchen to do things with baked goods and plastic wrap. I said quietly to Jackie, before she could get nabbed, “Come for a smoke.”

She gave me a wary look, like a kid who knows she’s earned a clatter when her ma gets her alone. I said, “Take it like a woman, babe. The sooner you get it over with…”

Outside it was cold and clear and still, the sky over the rooftops just deepening from thin blue-white to lilac. Jackie thumped down in her spot at the bottom of the steps, in a tangle of long legs and purple patent-leather boots, and held out a hand. “Give us a smoke, before you start giving out. Gav’s after taking ours with him.”

“So tell me,” I said pleasantly, once I had lit her smoke and one for myself. “What the fuck were you and Olivia thinking?”

Jackie’s chin was arranged all ready for an argument, and for a disturbing second she was the spitting image of Holly. “I thought it’d be great for Holly to get to know this lot. I’d say Olivia thought the same. And we weren’t wrong there, were we? Did you see her with Donna?”

“Yeah, I did. They’re cute together. I also saw her bleeding devastated over Kevin. Crying so hard she could barely breathe. That was less cute.”

Jackie watched the curls of smoke from her cigarette spread out over the steps. She said, “So are all of us in bits. Ashley is as well, and she’s only six. That’s life, sure. You were worried Holly wasn’t getting enough real stuff, were you not? I’d say this is as real as it gets.”

Which was probably true, but being right is beside the point when it’s Holly on the line. I said, “If my kid needs an extra dose of reality here and there, babe, I generally prefer to make that call myself. Or at least to be notified before someone else makes it for me. Does that sound unreasonable to you?”

Jackie said, “I should’ve told you. There’s no excuse for that.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“I was always meaning to, honest to God, but… At first I figured there was no point in getting you all bothered, when it mightn’t even work out. I thought I’d just try bringing Holly the once, and then we could tell you after—”

“And I’d realize what a wonderful idea it was, I’d come running home with a big bunch of flowers for Ma in one hand and another one for you in the other, and we’d all throw a big party and live happily ever after. Was that the plan?”

She shrugged. Her shoulders were starting to ratchet up around her ears.

“Because God knows that would have been slimy enough, but it would’ve been a hell of a lot better than this. What changed your mind? For, and I have to pick up my jaw off the floor before I can say this, an entire year?”

Jackie still wouldn’t look at me. She shifted on the step, like it was hurting her. “Don’t be laughing at me, now.”

“Believe me, Jackie. I’m not in a giggly mood.”

She said, “I was frightened. All right? That’s why I said nothing.”

It took me a moment to be sure she wasn’t yanking my chain. “Oh, come on. What the fuck did you think I was going to do? Beat the shite out of you?”

“I didn’t say—”

“Then what? You can’t drop a bleeding bombshell like that and then go all coy. When have I ever in my life given you any reason to be scared of me?”

“Look at you now, sure! The face on you, and talking like you hate my guts—I don’t like people giving out and shouting and going ballistic. I never have. You know that.”

I said, before I could stop myself, “You make me sound like Da.”

“Ah, no. No, Francis. You know I didn’t mean that.”

“You’d better not. Don’t go down that road, Jackie.”

“I’m not. I just… I hadn’t the nerve to tell you. And that’s my own fault, not yours. I’m sorry. Really, really sorry, like.”

Above us, a window slammed open and Ma’s head popped out. “Jacinta Mackey! Are you going to sit there like the queen of Sheba waiting for me and your sister to put your supper in front of you on a gold plate, are you?”

I called up, “It’s my fault, Ma. I dragged her out for a chat. We’ll do the washing up after, how’s that?”

“Hmf. Coming back here like he owns the place, giving orders all round him, with his silver polishing and his washing up and butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth…” But she didn’t want to give me too much hassle, in case I grabbed Holly and left. She pulled her head back in, even though I could hear her giving out steadily till the window banged down.

The Place was starting to switch on the lights for the evening. We weren’t the only ones who had hit the Christmas decorations hard; the Hearnes’ looked like someone had fired Santa’s grotto at it out of a bazooka, tinsel and reindeer and flashing lights hanging off the ceiling, manic elves and gooey-eyed angels splattered across every visible inch of wall, “HAPPY XMAS” on the window in spray-on snow. Even the yuppies had put up a tasteful stylized tree in blond wood, complete with three Swedish-looking ornaments.

I thought about coming back to this same spot every Sunday evening, watching the Place move through the familiar rhythms of its year. Spring, and the First Communion kids running from house to house, showing off their outfits and comparing their hauls; summer wind, ice-cream vans jingling and all the girls letting their cleavage out to play; admiring the Hearnes’ new reindeer this time next year, and the year after that. The thought made me mildly dizzy, like I was half drunk or fighting a heavy dose of the flu. Presumably Ma would find something new to give out about every week.

“Francis,” Jackie said, tentatively. “Are we all right?”

I had had a first-class rant all planned out, but the thought of belonging here again had dissolved the momentum right out of me. First Olivia and now this: I was getting soft in my old age. “Yeah,” I said. “We’re OK. But when you have kids, I’m buying every one of them a drum kit and a St. Bernard puppy.”

Jackie shot me a quick wary look—she hadn’t been expecting to get off that easy—but she decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Away you go. When I throw them out of the house, I’ll give them your address.”

Behind us, the hall door opened: Shay and Carmel. I had been placing mental bets with myself on how long Shay would be able to go without conversation, not to mention nicotine. “What were yous talking about?” he inquired, dropping into his spot at the top of the steps.

Jackie said, “Holly.”

I said, “I was giving Jackie hassle for bringing her round here without telling me.”

Carmel plumped down above me. “Oof! Janey, these are getting harder, only that I’m well padded I’d’ve done myself an injury there… Now, Francis, don’t be giving out to Jackie. She was only going to bring Holly the once, just to meet us, like, but we were all so mad about her we made Jackie bring her back. That child’s a little dote, so she is. You should be dead proud of her.”

I got my back against the railings, so I could keep an eye on everyone at once, and stretched out my legs along the step. “I am.”

Shay said, feeling for his smokes, “And our company hasn’t even turned her into an animal. Mad, isn’t it?”

I said sweetly, “I’m sure it’s not for lack of trying.”

Carmel said, with a tentative sideways look that made it into a question, “Donna’s petrified she’ll never see Holly again.”

I said, “No reason why she shouldn’t.”

“Francis! Are you serious?”

“Course. I’ve got better sense than to come between nine-year-old girls.”

“Ah, that’s brilliant. The two of them are great mates, so they are; Donna would’ve been only heartbroken. Does that mean…?” A clumsy little rub at her nose; I remembered the gesture, from a million years ago. “Will you be coming back as well, like? Or just letting Jackie bring Holly?”

I said, “I’m here, amn’t I?”

“Ah, yeah. And it’s lovely seeing you. But are you…? You know. Are you home now?”

I smiled up at her. “Lovely seeing you too, Melly. Yeah, I’ll be around.”

“Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, and about bleedin’ time,” Jackie said, rolling her eyes. “Could you not have decided on that fifteen years ago, saved me a load of hassle?”

“Ah, deadly,” Carmel said. “That’s only deadly, Francis. I thought…” That embarrassed little swipe again. “Maybe I was being a drama queen, sure. I thought as soon as everything was sorted, you’d be gone again. For good, like.”

I said, “That was the plan, yeah. But I’ve got to admit it: tearing myself away turned out harder than I expected. I guess, like you said, it’s good to be home.”

Shay’s eyes were on me, that intent expressionless blue stare. I gave it right back and threw in a big old smile. I was just fine with Shay getting edgy. Not wildly edgy, not yet; just a shimmering extra thread of unease, running through what had to be a pretty uncomfortable evening already. All I wanted for now was to plant the tiny seed of realization, somewhere deep in his mind: this was just the beginning.

Stephen was out of my hair and Scorcher was getting there fast. Once they moved on to the next case on their list, it would be just me and Shay, forever and ever. I could spend a year bouncing him like a yo-yo before I let him be sure that I knew, another year hinting at my various interesting options. I had all the time in the world.

Shay, on the other hand, not so much. You don’t have to like your family, you don’t even have to spend time with them, to know them right down to the bone. Shay had started out high-strung, spent his whole life in a context that would have turned the Dalai Lama into a gibbering wreck, and done things that wrap years’ worth of nightmares around your brain stem. There was no way he was more than a short stroll from a breakdown. Plenty of people have told me—and several of them even meant it as a compliment—that I have a God-given talent for fucking with people’s minds; and what you can do to strangers is nothing compared to what you can do to your very own family. I was pretty near positive that, given time and dedication, I could make Shay put a noose around his neck, tie the other end to the banisters of Number 16, and go diving.

Shay had his head tilted back, eyes narrowed, watching the Hearnes move around Santa’s workshop. He said, to me, “It sounds like you’re settling back in already.”

“Does it, yeah?”

“I heard you were round Imelda Tierney’s the other day.”

“I’ve got friends in high places. Just like you do, apparently.”

“What were you looking for off Imelda? The chat or the ride?”

“Ah, now, Shay, give me some credit. Some of us have better taste than that, you know what I mean?” I threw Shay a wink and watched the sharp flash in his eye as he started to wonder.

“Stop that, you,” Jackie told me. “Don’t be passing remarks. You’re not Brad Pitt yourself, in case no one’s told you.”

“Have you seen Imelda lately? She was no prize back in the day, but my Jaysus, the state of her now.”

“A mate of mine did her once,” Shay said. “A couple of years back. He told me he got the knickers off her and, honest to God, it was like looking at ZZ Top shot in the face.”

I started to laugh and Jackie went off into a barrage of high-pitched outrage, but Carmel didn’t join in. I didn’t think she’d even heard the last part of the conversation. She was pleating her skirt between her fingers, staring down at it like she was in a trance. I said, “You all right, Melly?”

She looked up with a start. “Ah, yeah. I suppose. It just… Sure, yous know yourselves. It feels mad. Doesn’t it?”

I said, “It does, all right.”

“I keep thinking I’ll look up and he’ll be there; Kevin will. Just there, like, below Shay. Every time I don’t see him, I almost ask where he is. Do yous not do the same?”

I reached up a hand and gave hers a squeeze. Shay said, with a sudden flick of savagery, “The thick bastard.”

“What are you bleeding on about?” Jackie demanded. Shay shook his head and drew on his smoke.

I said, “I’d love to know the same thing.”

Carmel said, “He didn’t mean anything by it. Sure you didn’t, Shay?”

“Figure it out for yourselves.”

I said, “Why don’t you pretend we’re thick too, and spell it out for us.”

“Who says I’d have to pretend?”

Carmel started to cry. Shay said—not unkindly, but like he’d said it a few hundred times this week—“Ah, now, Melly. Come on.”

“I can’t help it. Could we not be good to each other, just this once? After everything that’s happened? Our poor little Kevin’s dead. He’s never coming back. Why are we sitting here wrecking each other’s heads?”

Jackie said, “Ah, Carmel, love. We’re only slagging. We don’t mean it.”

“Speak for yourself,” Shay told her.

I said, “We’re family, babe. This is what families do.”

“The tosspot’s right,” Shay said. “For once.”

Carmel was crying harder. “Thinking about us all sitting right here last Friday, the whole five of us… I was only over the moon, so I was. I never thought it’d be the last time, you know? I thought it was just the start.”

Shay said, “I know you did. Will you try and keep it together, but? For me, yeah?”

She caught a tear with a knuckle, but they kept coming. “God forgive me, I knew something bad was probably after happening to Rosie, didn’t we all? But I just tried not to think about that. D’yous think this is a comeuppance?”

All of us said, “Ah, Carmel,” at once. Carmel tried to say something else, but it got tangled up in a pathetic cross between a gulp and a huge sniff.

Jackie’s chin was starting to look a little wobbly around the edges, too. Any minute now, this was going to turn into one great big sob-fest. I said, “I’ll tell yous what I feel like shit about. Not being here last Sunday evening. The night he…”

I shook my head quickly, against the railings, and let it trail off. “That was our last chance,” I said, up to the dimming sky. “I should’ve been here.”

The cynical glance I got off Shay told me he wasn’t falling for it, but the girls were all big eyes and bitten lips and sympathy. Carmel fished out a hanky and put away the rest of her cry for later, now that a man needed attention. “Ah, Francis,” Jackie said, reaching up to pat my knee. “How were you to know?”

“That’s not the point. The point is, first I missed twenty-two years of him, and then I missed the last few hours anyone’s ever going to get. I just wish…”

I shook my head, fumbled for another smoke and took a few tries to light it. “Never mind,” I said, once I had taken a couple of hard drags to get my voice under control. “Come on: talk to me. Tell me about that evening. What’d I miss?”

Shay let out a snort, which got him matching glares from the girls. “Hang on till I think a minute,” Jackie said. “It was just an evening, you know what I mean? Nothing special. Am I right, Carmel?”

The two of them gazed at each other, thinking hard. Carmel blew her nose. She said, “I thought Kevin was a bit out of sorts. Did yous not?”

Shay shook his head in disgust and turned his shoulder to them, distancing himself from the whole thing. Jackie said, “He looked grand to me. Himself and Gav were out here playing football with the kids.”

“But he was smoking. After the dinner. Kevin doesn’t smoke unless he’s up to ninety, so he doesn’t.”

And there we were. Privacy for tête-à-têtes was in short supply around Ma’s (Kevin Mackey, what are the two of yous whispering about there, if it’s that interesting then we all want to hear it…). If Kevin had needed a word with Shay—and the poor thick bastard would have gone chasing after exactly that, once I blew him off; nothing more cunning would ever have entered his head—he would have followed him out to the steps for a smoke.

Kev would have made a bollix of it, messing about with his cigarette, fumbling and stammering over bringing out the jagged bits and pieces that were slicing into his mind. All that awkwardness would have given Shay plenty of time to recover and laugh out loud: Holy Jaysus, man, are you seriously after convincing yourself I killed Rosie Daly? You’ve it all arseways. If you want to know what really happened… Quick glance up at the window, stubbing out a smoke on the steps. Not now, but; no time. Will we meet up later, yeah? Come back, after you leave. You can’t call round to my gaff or Ma’ll want to know what we’re at, and the pubs’ll be closed by then, but I’ll meet you in Number Sixteen. It won’t take long, sure.

It was what I would have done, in Shay’s place, and it would have been almost that easy. Kevin wouldn’t have been happy about the idea of going back into Number 16, especially in the dark, but Shay was a lot smarter than he was and an awful lot more desperate, and Kevin had always been easy to bulldoze. It would never have occurred to him to be afraid of his own brother; not that kind of afraid. For someone who had grown up in our family, Kev had been so innocent it made my jaw ache.

Jackie said, “Honest to God, Francis, nothing happened. It was just like today. They all had a game of football, and then we had the dinner and watched a bit of telly… Kevin was grand. You can’t be blaming yourself.”

I asked, “Did he make any phone calls? Get any phone calls?”

Shay’s eyes flicked to me for a second, narrow and assessing, but he kept his mouth shut. Carmel said, “He was texting back and forth with some girl—Aisling, was it? I was telling him not to be leading her on, but he said I hadn’t a clue, that’s not how things work nowadays… He was awful snotty with me, so he was. That’s what I mean about out of sorts. The last time I saw him, and…” Her voice had a subdued, bruised note to it. Any minute she was going to start crying again.

“No one else?”

The girls both shook their heads. I said, “Hmm.”

Jackie asked, “Why, Francis? What difference does it make?”

“Kojak’s on the trail,” Shay said, to the lilac sky. “Who loves ya, baby?”

I said, “Put it like this. I’ve heard a whole bunch of different explanations for what happened to Rosie and what happened to Kevin. I don’t like a single one of them.”

Jackie said, “No one does, sure.”

Carmel popped paint blisters on the railing with one fingernail. She said, “Accidents happen. Sometimes things just go terrible wrong; there’s no rhyme nor reason to it. You know?”

“No, Melly, I don’t know. To me that looks exactly like all the other explanations people have tried to shove down my throat: a great big stinking lump of shite that’s nowhere near good enough for either Rosie or Kevin. And I’m in no humor to swallow it.”

Carmel said, with certainty weighing down her voice like a rock, “There’s nothing that’ll make this better, Francis. We’re all of us heartbroken, and there’s no explanation in the world that’ll fix that. Would you not leave it?”

“I might, except that plenty of other people won’t, and one of the top theories has me down as the big bad villain. You think I should just ignore that? You’re the one said you wanted me to keep coming here. Have a think about what that means. You want me to spend every Sunday on a street that thinks I’m a killer?”

Jackie moved on the step. She said, “I already told you. That’s just talk. It’ll blow over.”

I said, “Then, if I’m not the bad guy and Kev’s not the bad guy, yous tell me. What happened?”

The silence went on for a long time. We heard them coming before we saw them: kids’ voices twisting together, a quick hushed running murmur, somewhere inside the dazzle of long evening light at the top of the road. They stepped out of that dazzle in a tangle of black silhouettes, the men tall as lampposts, the kids blurring and flickering in and out of each other. Holly’s voice called, “Daddy!” and I raised an arm to wave, even though I couldn’t make out which one she was. Their shadows leaped down the road in front of them and threw mysterious shapes at our feet.

“Now,” Carmel said softly, to herself. She took a breath and ran her fingers under her eyes, making sure nothing was left of her cry. “Now.”

I said, “Next time we get a chance, you’ll have to finish telling me what happened last Sunday.”

Shay said, “And then it got late, Ma and Da and me headed for bed, and Kev and Jackie headed for home.” He threw his cigarette over the railings and stood up. “The end,” he said.


As soon as we all got back into the flat Ma kicked things up a gear, to punish us for leaving her to her own terrifying devices. She was doing ferocious things to vegetables and issuing orders at warp speed: “You, Carmel-Jackie-Carmel-whoever-you-are, get them potatoes started—Shay, put that over there, no, you simpleton, there—Ashley, love, give the table a wipe for your nana—and Francis, you go in and have a word with your da, he’s after getting back into the bed and he wants a bit of company. Go on!” She smacked me across the head with a dish towel, to get me moving.

Holly had been leaning against my side, showing me some painted ceramic thing she had bought in the Christmas Village to give Olivia and explaining in detail how she had met Santa’s elves, but at that she melted neatly away among the cousins, which I felt showed good sense. I considered doing the same thing, but Ma has the ability to keep nagging for so long that it borders on a superpower, and the dishcloth was aimed in my direction again. I got out of her way.

The bedroom was colder than the rest of the flat, and quiet. Da was in bed, propped up on pillows and apparently doing nothing at all except, maybe, listening to the voices coming from the other rooms. The fussy softness all round him—peach decor, fringed things, muted glow from a standing lamp—made him look bizarrely out of place and somehow stronger, more savage. You could see why girls had fought over him: the tilt of his jaw, the arrogant jut of his cheekbones, the restless blue spark in his eyes. For a moment, in that untrustworthy light, he looked like wild Jimmy Mackey still.

His hands were what gave him away. They were a mess-fingers swollen huge and curled inwards, nails white and rough like they were already decaying—and they never stopped moving on the bed, plucking fretfully at loose threads in the duvet. The room stank of sickness and medicine and feet.

I said, “Ma said you fancied a chat.”

Da said, “Give us a smoke.”

He still seemed sober, but then my da has poured a lifetime of dedication into building up his tolerance, and it takes a lot to put a visible dent in it. I swung the chair from Ma’s dressing table over to the bed, not too close. “I thought Ma didn’t let you smoke in here.”

“That bitch can go and shite.”

“Nice to see the romance isn’t dead.”

“And you can go and shite too. Give us a smoke.”

“Not a chance. You can piss Ma off all you want; I’m staying in her good books.”

That made Da grin, not in a pleasant way. “Good luck with that,” he said, but all of a sudden he looked wide awake and his focus on my face had got sharper. “Why?”

“Why not?”

“You were never arsed about keeping her happy in your life.”

I shrugged. “My kid’s mad about her nana. If that means I have to spend one afternoon a week gritting my teeth and sucking up to Ma, so Holly won’t see us tearing strips off each other, I’ll do it. Ask me nicely and I’ll even suck up to you, at least when Holly’s in the room.”

Da started to laugh. He leaned back on his pillows and laughed so hard that it turned into a spasm of deep, wet coughing. He waved a hand at me, gasping for breath, and motioned at a box of tissues on the dresser. I passed them over. He hawked, spat into a tissue, tossed it at the bin and missed; I didn’t pick it up. When he could talk, he said, “Bollix.”

I said, “Want to elaborate on that?”

“You won’t like it.”

“I’ll live. When was the last time I liked anything that came out of your mouth?”

Da reached painfully over to the bedside table for his glass of water or whatever, took his time drinking. “All that about your young one,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Load of bollix. She’s grand. She doesn’t give a fuck if you and Josie get on, and you know it. You’ve got reasons of your own for keeping your ma sweet.”

I said, “Sometimes, Da, people try to be nice to each other. For no reason at all. I know it’s tough to picture, but take it from me: it happens.”

He shook his head. That hard grin was back on his face. “Not you,” he said.

“Maybe, maybe not. You might want to keep in mind that you know just under shag—all about me.”

“Don’t need to. I know your brother, and I know the pair of yous were always as like as two peas in a pod.”

I didn’t get the sense he was talking about Kevin. I said, “I’m not seeing the resemblance.”

“Spitting image. Neither of yous ever did anything in his life without a bloody good reason, and neither one of yous ever told anyone what the reason was unless he had to. I couldn’t deny the pair of yous, anyway, that’s for sure.”

He was enjoying himself. I knew I should keep my gob shut, but I couldn’t do it. I said, “I’m nothing like any of this family. Nothing. I walked away from this house so that I wouldn’t be. I’ve spent my whole life making damn sure of it.”

Da’s eyebrows shot up sardonically. “Listen to him. Are we not good enough for you these days, no? We were good enough to put a roof over your head for twenty years.”

“What can I say? Gratuitous sadism doesn’t pop my cork.”

That made him laugh again, a deep harsh bark. “Does it not? At least I know I’m a bastard. You think you’re not? Go on: look me in the eye and tell me you don’t enjoy seeing me in this state.”

“This is something special. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

“See? I’m in bits, and you’re loving it. Blood tells, sonny boy. Blood tells.”

I said, “I’ve never in my life hit a woman. I’ve never in my life hit a child. And my kid has never in her life seen me drunk. I understand that only a seriously sick sonofabitch would be proud of any of those, but I can’t help it. Every single one of them is proof that I have sweet fuck-all in common with you.”

Da watched me. He said, “So you think you’re a better da than I ever was.”

“That’s not exactly bigging myself up. I’ve seen stray dogs who were better das than you.”

“Then tell me this and tell me no more: if you’re such a saint and we’re such a shower of shites, why are you using that child for an excuse to come around here?”

I was headed for the door when I heard, behind me, “Sit down.”

It sounded like Da’s own voice again, full and strong and young. It grabbed my inner five-year-old around the throat and shoved me back into my chair before I knew what had happened. Once I was there, I had to pretend it was by choice. I said, “I think we’re more or less done here.”

Giving the order had taken it out of him: he was leaning forward, breathing hard and clutching at the duvet. He said, on short gasps, “I’ll tell you when we’re done.”

“You do that. Just as long as it’s soon.”

Da shoved his pillows farther up behind his back—I didn’t offer to help: the thought of our faces getting that close made my skin crawl—and got his breath back, slowly. The ceiling-crack shaped like a race car was still there above his head, the one I used to stare at when I woke up early in the mornings and lay in bed daydreaming and listening to Kevin and Shay breathe and turn and murmur. The gold light had faded away; outside the window, the sky over the back gardens was turning a cold deep-sea blue.

Da said, “You listen to me. I haven’t got long left.”

“Leave that line to Ma. She does it better.” Ma has been at death’s door ever since I can remember, mostly due to mysterious ailments involving her undercarriage.

“She’ll outlive us all, just out of spite. I wouldn’t say I’ll see next Christmas.”

He was milking it, lying back and pressing a hand to his chest, but there was an undercurrent to his voice that said he meant it at least partway. I said, “What are you planning on dying of?”

“What do you care? I could burn to death in front of you before you’d piss on me to put me out.”

“True enough, but I’m curious. I didn’t think being an arsehole was fatal.”

Da said, “My back’s getting worse. Half the time I can’t feel my legs. Fell over twice, the other day, just trying to put on my kacks in the morning; the legs went out from under me. The doctor says I’ll be in a wheelchair before summer.”

I said, “Let me take a wild guess here. Did the doctor also say your ‘back’ would get better, or at least stop getting worse, if you went off the booze?”

His face curled up with disgust. “That little nancy-boy’d give you the sick. He needs to get off his ma’s tit and have a real drink. A few pints never did a man any harm.”

“That’s a few pints of beer, not vodka. If the booze is so good for you, what are you dying of?”

Da said, “Being a cripple’s no way for a man to live. Locked up in a home, someone wiping your arse for you, lifting you in and out of the bath; I’ve no time for that shite. If I end up like that, I’m gone.”

Again, something under the self-pity said he was serious. Probably this was because the nursing home wouldn’t have a minibar, but I was with him on the wider issue: death before diapers. “How?”

“I’ve got plans.”

I said, “I’m after missing something, along the way. What are you looking for off me? Because if it’s sympathy, I’m fresh out. And if you want a helping hand, I think there’s a queue.”

“I’m asking you for nothing, you stupid little prick. I’m trying to tell you something important, if you’d only shut your gob long enough to listen. Or are you loving your own voice too much for that, are you?”

This may be the most pathetic thing I’ve ever admitted: deep down, a speck of me clung on to the chance that he might actually have something worthwhile to say. He was my da. When I was a kid, before I copped that he was a world-class fucknugget, he was the smartest man in the world; he knew everything about everything, he could beat up the Hulk with one hand while he bicep-curled grand pianos with the other, a grin from him lit up your whole day. And if ever I had needed a few precious pearls of fatherly wisdom, it was that night. I said, “I’m listening.”

Da pulled himself up, painfully, in the bed. He said, “A man needs to know when to let things lie.”

I waited, but he was watching me intently, like he was expecting some kind of answer. Apparently that was the sum total of enlightenment I was going to get off him. I could have punched myself in the teeth for being thick enough to look for more. “Great,” I said. “Thanks a million. I’ll bear that in mind.”

I started to get up again, but one of those deformed hands shot out and grabbed my wrist, faster and a lot stronger than I had expected. The touch of his skin made my hair stand up. “Sit down and listen, you. What I’m telling you is this: I’ve put up with a load of shite in my life and never thought about topping myself. I’m not weak. But the first time someone puts a nappy on me, I’m gone, because that’s when there’s no fight left where winning would be worth my while. You have to know what to fight against and what to leave alone. D’you get me?”

I said, “Here’s what I want to know. Why do you all of a sudden give a tinker’s damn about my attitude to anything?”

I expected Da to come back swinging, but he didn’t. He let go of my wrist and massaged his knuckles, examining his hand like it belonged to someone else. He said, “Take it or leave it. I can’t make you do anything. But if there’s one thing I wish I’d been taught a long time back, it’s that. I’d have done less damage. To myself and everyone round me.”

This time I was the one who laughed out loud. “Well, color me gobsmacked. Did I just hear you take responsibility for something? You must be dying after all.”

“Don’t fucking mock. Yous lot are grown; if you’re after banjaxing your lives, that’s your own fault, not mine.”

“Then what the hell are you on about?”

“I’m only saying. There’s things went wrong fifty years ago, and they just kept going. It’s time they stopped. If I’d’ve had the sense to let them go a long time back, there’s a lot would’ve been different. Better.”

I said, “Are you talking about what happened with Tessie O’Byrne?”

“She’s none of your bloody business, and you watch who you’re calling Tessie. I’m saying there’s no reason your ma should have her heart broke for nothing, all over again. Do you understand me?”

His eyes were a hot urgent blue, crammed too deep with secrets for me to untangle. It was the brand-new soft places in there—I had never before in my life seen my da worried about who might get hurt—that told me there was something enormous and dangerous moving through the air of that room. I said, after a long time, “I’m not sure.”

“Then you wait till you are sure, before you do anything thick. I know my sons; always did. I know well you had your reasons for coming here. You keep them away from this house till you’re bloody sure you know what you’re at.”

Outside, Ma snapped about something and there was a placating murmur from Jackie. I said, “I’d give a lot to know just what’s going on in your mind.”

“I’m a dying man. I’m trying to put a few things right, before I go. I’m telling you to leave it. We don’t need you causing trouble around here. Go back to whatever you were doing before, and leave us alone.”

I said, before I could help it, “Da.”

All of a sudden Da looked wrecked. His face was the color of wet cardboard. He said, “I’m sick of the sight of you. Get out there and tell your ma I’m gasping for a cup of tea—and she’s to make it a decent strength, this time, not that piss she gave me this morning.”

I wasn’t about to argue. All I wanted was to grab hold of Holly and get the pair of us the hell out of Dodge—Ma would blow a blood vessel about us skipping dinner, but I had rattled Shay’s cage enough for one week, and I had seriously misjudged my family-tolerance threshold. I was already trying to decide on the best place to stop, on the way back to Liv’s, so I could get Holly fed and stare at that beautiful little face till my heart rate dropped back into normal range. I said, at the door, “I’ll see you next week.”

“I’m telling you. Go home. Don’t come back.”

He didn’t turn his head to watch me go. I left him there, lying back on his pillows and staring at the dark windowpane and pulling fitfully at loose threads with those misshapen fingers.

Ma was in the kitchen, stabbing viciously at an enormous joint of half-cooked meat and giving Darren hassle, via Carmel, about his clothes (“… never get a job as long as he’s running around dressed like a fecking pervert, don’t say I didn’t warn you, you take him outside and give him a good smack on his arse and a nice pair of chinos…”). Jackie and Gavin and the rest of Carmel’s lot were in a trance in front of the telly, staring slack-jawed at a shirtless guy eating something wiggly with a lot of antennae. Holly was nowhere. Neither was Shay.

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