She takes a couple of deep breaths.
“No, I’m sorry. This isn’t about you, Maeve, this is my stuff.”
She smiles at Roe and me. “Can we go get a tea, or something?”
As soon as we’re back in Bridey’s, Roe’s mother calls.
“Jesus,” he says. “Looks like it’s a day for badly timed mother calls.” And then it’s his turn to step outside.
Me and Fiona sit on the big squashy couch, and I want to ask her more about life at home. Her family are so charismatic and fun-loving, I completely missed any tension that might be bubbling under the surface.
But before I can form the words, I hear something. A voice. A familiar voice.
“Two coffees and a muffin for six euro,” he says to the cashier, sunny and disarming. “Wow, you wouldn’t get that kind of value in Dublin, would you?”
I turn my head around, hoping that I’m mistaken, and there’s some other upbeat American in Bridey’s. But no: it’s Aaron. Aaron holding two steaming takeaway cups and a brown bag. I watch him for a moment, fascinated that someone like him could be making small talk over coffee, then go back to Fiona and our shared pot of tea.
“Maeve,” he says, like he’s just seen an old family friend. “Fancy seeing you here. You and Roe left in such a hurry the other night.”
“Yeah, well, we had places to be.”
“I’m glad,” he beams. “Date night?”
There’s something mildly sarcastic in the way he says “date night”, as though Roe and I were two children playing restaurant. Fi is fiddling with her phone, barely paying attention.
“Maybe you could come back,” he offers grandly. “By yourself this time.”
I can’t take all this faux-friendliness. I cut right to the point.
“Sure, except … I would rather die?”
It’s not the most elegant thing I’ve ever said, but it gets my message across.
He raises his eyebrows briefly, and then moves on to Fiona. “You’re Fiona, aren’t you?” he says.
“Um … yes?”
It’s clear she doesn’t remember Aaron from our day in Basement, but I’m amazed as to why he remembers her, and why he knows her name. He studies her for a moment, and then, in a voice as soft as honey, speaks.
“You’re used to people expecting rather a lot from you, aren’t you?”
It is the exact way I heard him talk to the girls at the CoB meeting. The affection, the sympathy, the sense of immediate understanding. And Fiona, who still hasn’t put two and two together, is completely captivated by it.
“Well,” she says, raising a shoulder to her chin. “I usually deliver.”
God, to have her confidence. I remember, briefly, the older boyfriend. Is this what she was like with him?
“Stop it,” I say, my teeth gritted. “Stop talking to her.”
Fiona looks at me, confused. “Maeve, what’s going on?”
“You need to learn to be less possessive, Maeve,” Aaron says, with a smile. “You can’t own people.”
He narrows his eyes at me, his irises darkening. “And you can’t throw them away, either.”
And just like that, he leaves. He walks out of Bridey’s with his hoodie and his takeaway coffees, like any normal twenty-something man. I feel like I’m about to vomit.
You can’t throw them away, either.
“Maeve,” Fiona says, tapping my shoulder. “Maeve, are you OK? You’re shaking. Who was that?”
The light in the cafe suddenly feels too strong, like a fire burning behind my eyeballs. I close them, balling my fists into my sockets, covering my face with the crook of my arm.
“Who was it, Maeve?”
I say nothing, my breath coming short. He knows everything. Everything about what happened with Lily, and somehow, everything about Fiona. He can see inside people. Whatever dark magic went into creating the Housekeeper, a shred of that exists in Aaron, too. And if it lives in him, it must live countless other places. Suddenly, the world feels too big, and I’m too small in it.
“Come on, I’m taking you outside.”
The cold street air hits me in the lungs like a throwing star.
“Sit down,” Fiona orders, pointing at a window ledge. “Put your head between your knees and take deep breaths.”
“I don’t need…”
“Do it.”
I do as she says, and as I start to speak, she stops me.
“Ah. No. Breathe first. I’m going to count your breaths. In, one – two – three. Out, one – two – three. Keep your head between your legs. That’s a girl. In, one – two – three.”
She makes me do this eight times before she eventually lets me sit up and speak. I do feel better, though, strangely. It must be a nursing tip she learned from her mum and aunts.
“Now. Who was that, and what did he do to you?”
It’s her emphasis on the word “do” that knocks the life back into me. She thinks that Aaron is some kind of ex-boyfriend, some guy I went on a date with.
“Aaron, Fiona. Didn’t you recognize him? He was part of the moral mob in Basement.”
She slaps her hand to her forehead. “Crap. OK. Agh, sorry, I just assumed he was one of your brother’s friends or something.”
She pauses. “Did you tell him about me, or something? Why did he know my name?”
“I never mentioned you to him. He has something. I don’t know. Some kind of power where he’s able to see the cracks in people. He knew about Lily. Did you hear that? He said I threw people away.”
“So what, he has magic, too?”
“I don’t know,” I say again, my voice cracking. “Maybe I’m going insane.”
“The month you’ve had?” Fiona says, sitting on the window ledge and draping her arm around my shoulder. “I wouldn’t blame you.”
Roe is walking back towards us, still on the phone. His jaw is tight, and he’s clearly immersed in a battle of his own.
“I’m sure … I’m sure it’s not related, Mum,” Roe says, his voice tense. “It’s nothing. Well, no, not nothing, obviously, but you know what I mean…”
He hangs up and joins us on the window ledge. Fiona and I shuffle along to fit him in.
“What was that?”
“I made the mistake of telling my mother about my Children of Brigid theory from before. She set up a Google Alert on them.”
“And?”
“And it seems that kids actually are leaving home to join them.”
“No!” Fi and I say in unison. And then: “We just saw him!”
“Who? Aaron?”
I nod. “He knew things about us, Roe. He knows about my relationship with Lily—”
“And he knows about…” interrupts Fiona, who then stops herself short. “He knows about me.”
The three of us walk to the riverbank, oddly silent.
Fiona kicks a rock into the river.
“Look,” she points at the reeds. “Frogspawn.”
She’s right. Bubbles of translucent, foamy spawn are floating on the water’s surface. Hundreds of them. Each dotted with a black speck, like a cartoon eye.
“I’ve never seen so much of it,” I say, trying to suppress the urge to poke at it with a stick. No, Maeve, you have a boyfriend now, resist the urge to act like an eight-year-old.
We stare at it for a moment, dumbfounded how something so calmly natural can exist at a time like this.
“It’s weird,” Roe says, finally, “that the river hasn’t frozen over.”
“Huh,” I reply slowly. “How cold does it have to be for that to happen?”
He shrugs. We go back to staring.
“Look!” Fiona says again, triumphant. “A fish!”
There is a quick gleam of radiant purple as a fish briefly bobs above the surface of the water and ducks back in again.
“Jesus,” Roe says. “And another!”
We stand and count the fish bobbing. None of us knows enough about fish to know whether it’s unusual for them t
o come so close to the surface in cold weather.
“They’re called rainbow trout,” says Fiona, reading from her phone. “And they … uh, they live in Australia and America.”
“Shut up. No, they don’t.”
“Look!” she says, brandishing her phone. “Is this or is this not the fish we just saw?”
I look at the picture of the fish with the purple stripe on its side. “It is.”
“So what are they doing here?” Roe asks. “The water will be way too cold for them.”
We stare at the river and I begin to notice wisps of steam coming off the water’s surface. Like fog from a mouth on a cold day.
Fiona must see it, too, because she crouches down, her long black hair almost touching the water. She dips her fingers in. Then, her entire hand.
“Jesus Christ, Fi, what are you doing?”
She swivels around to face us. Her eyes are wide and excited, like an owl’s. “Guys, it’s warm.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“THE RIVER IS PART OF IT. I KNOW IT.” EVEN AS I SAY THE words, I know how ridiculous it sounds.
“How?” Fiona and Roe say, together.
“How anything at this point?” I say, cracking my knuckles nervously. “It’s the common thread, isn’t it? All our dreams. Strange phenomena. Where Lily was last seen alive. It all revolves around the river. It’s the common denominator.”
We are in Deasy’s now, the three of us gathered around a single large chips and a pot of curry sauce. Lily and I used to come here on Saturdays, taking one of the diner booths, piling salt on the table and making patterns with our fingertips.
“The Australian fish. The water. The frogspawn.” Fiona ticks off her fingers. “Something is happening in there.”
“There’s something Sylvia said,” I say slowly. “Something about the physical world and the emotional world being more closely linked than people think.”
“Go on.”
“Look,” I say, grabbing the salt and pepper shakers.
“This –” I hold up the salt shaker – “this is emotional suffering. Say, being forced to leave your family.”
They peer at me, then look at each other.
“Salt is emotional suffering, Maeve,” Roe says patiently. “Sure.”
“And this –” I hold up the pepper shaker – “this is a physical landmark. Say, the Kilbeg river.”
“Uh-huh.”
I turn both upside down, and the salt and the pepper pool in one spot together, creating an ashy mountain on the table.
“Don’t you SEE?” I say, after a few moments of silence.
Fiona chews the end of her hair, trying desperately to understand. “The … pepper is the river, you say.”
“Jesus Christ, how is it that people who get as good marks as you two can be so dense? It’s a flippin’ metaphor.”
“Roe doesn’t get metaphors because he’s a Protestant.”
“Wow, harsh.”
“I feel like you’re both missing the point,” I say huffily.
“Sorry, Maeve … what’s the point?”
“The Beg is this place where thousands of people experienced the most traumatic moments of their lives. You know, it’s where thousands of people were forced to emigrate and say goodbye to their families for ever,” I explain. “And Roe, it’s where I saw … your … traumatic memory.”
He nods and Fiona looks confused, but says nothing.
“If the spiritual world is the thing that makes up the gap between the physical and the emotional, then I think the river … is where that world begins. I think it’s a door. Or a key. Or both. I don’t know.”
I am suddenly very embarrassed, but I press on. “And Lily … I think Lily is in that world. I think she’s trapped in there. Maybe the Housekeeper took her there.”
Fiona casts a glance at me, raising her eyebrows in a “we’re still playing that game, are we?” expression. Roe just nods, urging me to go on.
“Because she was sad and mad at me, and I think … maybe the Housekeeper couldn’t … couldn’t…”
“Kill you for her?” Fiona says brightly.
“Right. She couldn’t finish the job she came to do.”
Another silence.
Two pink spots form in Roe’s cheeks. “And how … how do we get her back?”
He believes me. He thinks my theory is right. A wave of confidence surges through me. I open my school bag and slam my new book in front of me.
“With this.”
Fiona takes one look at it. “Made-up name,” she repeats.
We start looking through The Beginner’s Guide to Spellcraft by Alwyn Prair-Felten until it is time for us to go home.
Roe walks me to the end of my driveway.
“It’s lucky your family is so rich and have a long driveway,” he says. “It means I can kiss you without the prying eyes of the gentry.”
He kisses me in the soft space below my ear and a shiver runs down my spine.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I say, slightly breathless. “I am not rich.”
“Maeve. Come on.”
And suddenly, we’re fighting. Roe keeps trying to get me to admit that my parents are wealthy, pointing at the size of our house, and I keep getting defensive by telling him that I have a bigger family than he does. He screws up his face a bit, as if only rich people can afford to have five kids. Neither of us want to have this fight, but neither of us can seem to find a way out, either.
“Come on,” he says, “you have to have noticed that there’s a difference between me and you. Between you and Fi.”
“Me and Fi are at the same school.”
“She’s on scholarship. And so am I.”
For a second, I hate him. I know he’s just trying to get me to admit to having money, but he’s going at it by pushing on my weakest, sorest spots. Sore spots that he doesn’t know are there, because ultimately, Roe and I still don’t know each other very well. If Lily were around, she would let him know. She would get it.
“Lily wasn’t on scholarship,” I say, and then correct myself. “Isn’t, I mean.”
“No, but Mum and Dad thought she would need more attention, and that she would get it in a school like Bernie’s. Also, they wanted her to be with you.”
“Oh, great. Load the guilt on.”
“I’m not trying to make you guilty. I’m just telling you…”
Roe and Fiona worked hard to get into private school, and here’s me, the rich idiot whose parents had to buy her way in. The way they didn’t have to with any of their other children. Abbie, Cillian, Pat and Jo all went to non-fee-paying schools and all got over 500 points in their Leaving Cert. It was only me, the person who got 33% on her entrance exam, who was gently pushed into private education.
He’s here with you, Maeve. Not Fiona. He fancies you, not Fiona.
A dark voice emerges from the pit of my stomach. Would he still fancy you if he knew that you wished Lily would disappear, Maeve?
“Hey,” I say. “Do you have time for a quick tarot reading?”
“Huh? You want to read my tarot? Now?”
“I don’t know. I thought we could read them together. To see … to see what’s going on with this river stuff. The water turning warm. All that.”
“Sure,” he says, suspicious. We have, after all, been talking about this all afternoon.
“Let’s find somewhere quiet.”
There’s a bit of green near my house where boys play football on warm evenings. We trudge through it, snow crunching underneath our feet. I don’t say anything as we walk, holding his hand firmly and in silence. We find a bit of wild hedgerow that has a space you can crouch under. I tried my first cigarette in here. Lily and I found a box on the bus and took them into this bush to examine them. We decided they weren’t worth the hassle.
Roe and I settle under the bush, crouching in the dirt.
“Cosy,” he says, still confused.
“OK,” I say, taking out my cards. I feel the familiar, s
tomach-churning pull as I pass them over to him. But the nausea of the cards doesn’t even compare to the crunching anxiety that Roe might leave me for Fiona. That I’ll be on the outside again, looking in.
I hear a faint rustle as Roe shuffles, and at the corner of my vision, I’m certain I see a sweep of white linen dragging in the dirt. Oh God, she’s not here again, is she?
I blink hard. It’s just a bit of toilet paper, trapped in the undergrowth.
He shuffles and splits the cards.
“All right, do you want to pick them together, or…?”
“You pick the first.”
My head starts beading with nausea again, but I know what to expect now. I breathe, counting my breaths in like Fiona taught me. I try to control it. If I can get in his head again, I can know for sure whether he likes me.
He picks one.
Three of Cups. Three women dancing together with cups in the air.
“That looks like a nice one,” he says vaguely.
“It is nice. It’s all about friendship and unity.”
“Then why do you look so worried?”
“I’m not.”
“Do you want to pick the next one?” he asks gently.
I pick and leave it face down on the earth. Another lurch in my stomach. Keep it together, Maeve. Keep it together.
“I guess … I guess I’ll turn it over then.”
Roe touches the card and the world falls away. Yellow and red spots dot across my vision, and I can feel my body fall away from me.
It is happening again.
It is happening again.
Ladies, meet the Housekeeper card. Keeper, meet the Houseladies card. Hades, meet the Lousekeeper card.
I open my eyes, but I’m not in Roe’s head. I’m in my own. I’m in St Bernadette’s, in the toilets. The same toilets where Fiona and I sit on the exposed pipe for warmth. Lily is there. Lily is crying. Lily is crying and yelling, yelling at me, and people are watching. Make them stop watching.
It is thirteen months ago and it is the day before Christmas break. We have had, this term, no less than three talks about groups, peer pressure and the danger of not mixing with one another. We are known as a “cliquey” year. I gather that some girls have felt excluded or terrorized by the rigid hierarchies of St Bernadette’s. There are the blonde sporty girls who play hockey and go to the rugby matches of their older boyfriends, right up at the top. Then the rich girls, who go to New York on the holidays and come back with brown bags that say “Little Brown Bag” on them.
All Our Hidden Gifts Page 18
