DON’T GO OUT WITH SOMEONE WHO IS OLD ENOUGH TO BE YOUR FATHER.
Sixteen years is the maximum age difference allowable when you are both adults, but it is lower than that for teenagers. They have to be in secondary school if you are also in secondary school, or a maximum of three years older. Otherwise there is something a little bit off. A little bit ‘stranger danger’.
I don’t know if Mum regretted her relationship with my father. She was angry at him for a long time and if it hadn’t been for me they would probably not have stayed in touch after what passed between them had fizzled roughly out. It is weird, though, that I have a tendency to fancy older boys, like Felix and He Who Must Not Be Named (the other one, not Voldemort). Maybe I get that from Mum.
IF SOMEONE TEXTS YOU TWENTY TIMES IN ONE DAY, EVEN THOUGH HE IS A GROWN-UP MAN, HIS NAME IS PROBABLY ANDREW AND YOU SHOULD NOT AGREE TO LET HIM TAKE YOU TO DINNER OUT OF PITY.
‘No dinner is worth listening to Andrew,’ Mum said to me when she came back, brandishing a bottle of wine and a packet of Custard Creams.
IF YOU LIKE SOMEONE ENOUGH YOU WON’T HAVE TO ‘WORK ON BEING ME RIGHT NOW’.
BAD BOYPRIENDS MAKE POR GOOD STORIES.
And Mum was great at spinning yarns. For example, were she alive to tell the story of Andrew today, he would probably have texted fifty times in one day even though he was a grown-up man. For comic effect.
Sorrel is another one who has had some crazy relationships. She once dated a blacksmith and found it really hard to break up with him because no matter how often he cancelled plans, he was still a blacksmith. A blacksmith!
DON’T STAY WITH SOMEONE JUST BECAUSE THEY HAVE A RIDICULOUSLY COOL JOB/CAR/BAND/GROUP OF PRIENDS.
Unless they are a blacksmith, in which case give it six weeks so you can boast about it.
IF YOU DON’T WANT TO STAY WITH SOMEONE, BUT STILL WANT TO BE PRIENDS, BE REALLY NICE TO THEM AND GIVE THEM LOADS OF SPACE FOR A WHILE.
This is how Mum dealt with Hairy Dave who gave me Roderick. She used to say that Roderick and I saved their friendship because when they ran into each other they always had something neutral to talk about.
IF YOU HAVE A DAUGHTER AND SHE DOES NOT LIKE THE MAN THAT YOU ARE SEEING, YOU SHOULD PROBABLY BREAK UP WITH HIM BECAUSE DAUGHTERS ARE WISE AND ALSO YOU CANNOT BREAK UP WITH THEM.
Mum really listened to me and trusted my opinion because it was just the two of us and if someone was around a lot, I was going to have to be in their company as well.
I think that’s why Dad’s lack of disclosure with the Hedda thing annoyed me so much at first. Mum always analysed everything with me. Or everything that was suitable for my childish ears to analyse anyway. I imagine she did edit.
MEN WHO PICK ON YOUR APPEARANCE AND COMPLIMENT YOUR FRIENDS IN A FLIRTY MAY MUST BE DESTROYED.
This is something I did not need Mum to teach me, but she still did. Méadhbh was going out with a horrible man before her husband, Iain. Mum and Sorrel used to worry that he was a domestic-violence case waiting to happen. He broke up with Méadhbh on her birthday and she stayed in our house for a week and a half, sobbing on the sofa.
IF A MAN BREEDS RATS, HE IS PROBABLY LOVELY, BUT YOUR RELATIONSHIP WILL NOT LAST.
In retrospect, I kind of wish it had. Dave was one of my favourites out of all Mum’s boyfriends.
THINGS COME TO THIS, LIKE RUSHES OF BLOOD (1, 4)
Dad is taking the day off work today. And I am not allowed to go to school. He is calling it a mental health day. Hedda broke up with him, very nicely, last night. She said she was happy spending time with him once or twice a week but she was not looking for anything serious and he was, so it was not fair to keep stringing him along.
Dad’s mind is kind of blown. I think, deep down in his stupid little heart, he imagined ALL women EVERYWHERE were only DYING to get married, especially to a man as wealthy and powerful as himself.
‘I don’t understand it, Prim. What did I do wrong?’
He moans constantly, in between bites of the sausage sandwiches and cups of tea I make for him.
‘Um … you tried to get her pregnant without her consent.’
‘Only for about a week, before you stopped me. And I don’t think she even knows about that.’
‘She probably does. Women can sense these things.’
‘Oh, Christ.’
‘Prim?’
‘Yes, Dad?’
‘Can women really sense these things?’
‘No.’
‘Then what did I do wrong?’
He does not understand, this father of mine, that wrongdoing does not hinge on being caught. If someone tries to get a tree secretly pregnant in the woods without anyone else around to see or hear it, it is still wrong. And more than a little stupid.
I did try to make him understand, I really did. But there’s not much I can say that doesn’t begin with the phrase ‘Women can sense desperation, Fintan, and they don’t like it.’ That is not a productive thing to say to the Moustachioed One right now.
I tried to get him to delete her number from his phone. Mum used to do this sometimes. We would write the number on a piece of paper and seal it away in an envelope, which she would give to a third party, usually me or Méadhbh. (Sorrel would always give it back to her too quickly because she is a romantic and easily swayed.) Mum was not allowed access to the envelope until she could give a good reason for wanting it.
Dad did not like the envelope idea. He has not texted her today but he keeps looking at his phone intently. I have texted him five times today.
Not from Hedda.
Still not Hedda.
Hi, this is your daughter, Prim. You are a wonderful father and Hedda is too good for the likes of you.
Hi, this is Hedda. I was so wrong to break up with you. Let’s get back together. Meet me at nine in our special place.
(This one was a bit mean, especially because he didn’t realise it was from me right away.)
I know you said you didn’t want to be disturbed but do you want a cup of tea? Also, maybe you can take up the zither again. Silver lining!
He did want a cup of tea. Hedda has messed with his head immeasurably. He is usually a coffee drinker.
It is very strange taking care of my father after his heart has been broken into smithereens by a lady I was always pretty sure was too good for him.
We have listened to a LOT of a band called Joy Division today. Joy Division are not particularly joyful. But they make a good sausage-sandwich-eating-and-com-plaining-about-Hedda soundtrack.
‘She never loved me like I loved her,’ he said at one point today.
And that’s the whole crux of the situation. I would like to live in a world where you could easily gauge how into you someone was at any given point and, if your levels didn’t balance, go to some sort of shop in which you could get them adjusted to avoid heartbreak and/or stalking.
I’d tell him she wasn’t worth it but, to be honest, she probably is. Poor Dad.
I am trying to go to sleep but am being constantly disturbed by the sad little strains of a terribly played zither. At least he listens, this father of mine. At least he listens.
A HEAD
Mary rang me this evening. She didn’t want to talk to me in the house in case Ella accused her of snooping. Ella would have been perfectly right to accuse her of snooping. Snooping is exactly what she was doing.
‘What is the story with this Caleb fella?’ she asked, pronouncing his name as though it was some sort of horrible insult.
‘What has Ella told you?’ I asked, trying to buy time.
Mary was putting me in kind of a tough position, because, while I am a firm believer in Ella’s business being Ella’s business, Mary is all nice and mammyish and worried and I didn’t want to lie to her. But Ella is my friend and so that is exactly what I did.
‘I’m pretty sure they’re just friends, Mary.’
‘They’ve been spending a lot of time together, love.’
She ca
lls me ‘love’. This is how much of a mammy she is. It is very hard to tell a lie to someone who brings you tea and buttered biscuits when you ‘have a face like a wet Wednesday’.
‘Well, she really likes his ferret’
‘That’s not all she likes. They’ve been signing their text messages with Xs and sometimes Os. What does an O at the end of a text message mean?’
‘It’s a hug. A friendly hug. The kind that friends give friends. She often puts them at the end of texts to me.’
(No, she doesn’t.)
‘A hug, eh? That’s a relief. I was worried it was some kind of sexting thing.’
SEXTING: Texting about you-know-what. I would not like to be sexting anybody because I have no interest in taking pictures of my naked body or seeing pictures of anybody else’s just yet. And also, what if they showed it to someone? Eek!
PETERED OUT: Faded away, wore out, waned, died in the way that fires die as opposed to the way that people die. Words can peter out too; for example, this one day, I was talking with Ciara about Siobhán’s new hairdo, which was hideous, and Siobhán came over to us, big orange head and all, and the conversation kind of petered out. Because Siobhán is friends with the Devil, but she isn’t actually the Devil and we didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
‘No. No. Nothing like that.’ (Who told her about sexting?)
And on that awkward note the conversation petered out.
Ella and Caleb are totally a couple, though. They hold hands in the hallway sometimes and he occasionally kisses her on the cheek. He has met and been well liked by Mr Cat. He still carves his name into things but he would never carve his name into Ella, so it is all good, at least for the moment.
Why shouldn’t Ella have a boyfriend? If she is mature enough to be in school and go out and have friends and do the dishes after dinner three times a week, then surely she is mature enough to do other normal teenage girl things like have a boyfriend, even if he used to be an idiot man-bride of Satan and occasionally spat on people in his spare time. His ferret seems to have rehabilitated him, though. That and not being with Karen any more. And Ella seems to really like him, so I’m kind of giving him the benefit of the please-never-spit-on-me-again doubt.
Also, I want to do normal teenage girl things like have a boyfriend and I’m kind of hoping that it is catching and that soon we will all be happily skipping about the place two by two, like an ark full of animals in love.
It could happen.
It totally could.
It probably won’t.
I rang Ella almost as soon as I got off the phone with Mary to tell her. Then I had to explain to her that she couldn’t get angry at Mary right away because then Mary would know that it came from me.
‘I’m still angry, though,’ she said.
‘I know. You should be.’
‘It is none of her business.’
‘She’s only doing it because she loves you and is worried about you.’
‘Why would she be worried?’
‘In case you are going down a bad road, one that leads to cigarette-smoking and baby-making and spitting on people for fun.’
‘Oh, he’ll never spit on anyone ever again. I’d break up with him. Unless it was on someone who was cruel to animals.’
‘Or Karen.’
‘Not “or Karen”, Primrose. She is not the Devil.’
‘Yes she is. She is bright red and has horns and a tail.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘What you doing?’
‘I am texting Caleb to see if he wants to smoke cigarettes and have babies together.’
‘Ella! You are not!’
‘I am. Mum will be incredibly relieved when she reads his reply.’
‘What did he reply?’
‘“No. Ewww.”’
‘Oh. Good. You’re lucky he didn’t take you up on that.’
‘Luck has nothing to do with it. Everyone knows that babies are disgusting.’
‘They certainly are.’
And then she was gone. Ella is kind of amazing. She gets things done.
I rang Ciara after I rang Ella. She only came back to school yesterday and she was all pale and worried and checking her phone constantly for Grandma Lily updates. It looks like she will pull through, only she mightn’t.
Mac was in the hospital too. Apparently his granny is also sick. I wish his granny wasn’t sick. I wish it was his dad.
Ciara met him at the café/newsagenty bit of the hospital, where they both kept getting sent for things for grown-ups who had forgotten how to work their legs. I told her not to talk to me about him and she was all, ‘Why not? It’s not like it was his fault that his dad killed your mum,’ and then I think she realised how cold that sounded because she did a bit of a pause and said, ‘Sorry.’
I told her it was OK, even though it wasn’t. It was tactless. But people say tactless stuff when they’re sad and people like me say tactless stuff even when they’re not, so I think I was right to let it go. Ciara is my friend.
I wonder, though, if she would be so concerned about things not being Mac’s fault if he were less easy on the eye. She is a biteen shallow when it comes to boys. But then again, so is almost everyone.
Also, Ciara thinks I was totally right to lie to Ella’s mum about the whole Caleb thing. Because that is what friends do. Ciara has caught her mum reading her text messages quite a few times now. It is nosy and very wrong.
‘We are lucky our lives are so boring,’ she said.
But I don’t think my life is boring. It is just filled with so much sadness. You know in equations the way what’s on one side has to balance out with what is on the other side? If my life were a happy/sad equation, it would so not balance. The sad side would always be bigger.
BITEEN: Hiberno-English for a little bit (not to be confused with a little bite). For example: “Have you even been paying the least biteen of attention?” is a thing that people who should be more interesting often ask.
I have maths homework to do, but first I am going to ring Joel. I have custody of Dad’s phone for the evening and I intend to exploit the hell out of it.
Dad is on the sofa watching cowboy films on some weird cowboy film channel he has only just discovered. He changed into his pyjamas and took up residence there as soon as he came home from work. I made beans on toast with melted cheese on top for dinner because it is comforting and delicious. I don’t know how comforted by it he was, though. He’s barely said a word to me all night.
I don’t like having a sad dad. There is something really pathetic about him, all grey-haired and moping and gazing at John Wayne as if he had the secret of getting Hedda’s hand in marriage and was going to tell Fintan what it was, just as soon as he was done shooting up those pesky Native Americans. Injuns, he calls them. I don’t like that. It sounds like a robot.
Speaking of robots, I wonder if Marcus would like to come LARPing with Joel and me on Saturday? They’re staying with us for the weekend, the two of them, and I’m not sure he will be safe in Fintan’s tragic, wedding-ringless hands.
A SERIOUS RESTING PLACE (5)
I didn’t go to school today. I pretended I was sick and stayed in bed. Fintan was not suspicious because I never do this. He has forgotten about the whole counselling thing because of Hedda breaking up with him, which is the silver lining to the cloud of how boring and mopey and hard to respect he is.
I didn’t have much respect for him before, Diary. But what little respect for him I did have has diminished. And diminished considerably. I did think for a while this morning that I might have actually been sick or something. Only I wasn’t, so I decided to ‘make the most of the day’ and go on a little adventure, which somehow led to taking the bus and then changing to another bus and then, suddenly, as if by accident, ending up outside Brian McAllister’s house, which was unexpected. I knew where he lived because he is in the phone book. What a normal thing to be in — the phone book. You don’t think of criminals being in there at all. I probab
ly shouldn’t have committed his address to memory like a big old freak. It’s just … I can’t forget it, what he did to Mum. And everyone else seems to have forgotten and it’s not right.
We didn’t even bother to visit Mum’s grave last week. And that’s such a little thing to do, to remember someone properly, to honour who they were just once a week and I couldn’t even manage it with all the stupid unimportant drama that creeps in and takes up residence and tries to push my memories of Mum out. And there’s so much I don’t remember, days from when I was too young to have memories or just stuff that didn’t seem important at the time. And if I had known, I would have honoured her every day.
Because I was twelve when she died, and that means I had about 4700 days with her, give or take a few where she had to go off somewhere or something. That’s not a lot of days, is it? That tiny number doesn’t seem enough. You would think your parents have MILLIONS of days with you, because they are your parents and their whole existence revolves around you, at least until you’re old enough to be left alone and things. Even after.
Sometimes I still feel like I’m not old enough to be left alone. I mean, the things that I’ve been doing … It isn’t normal. And I don’t know what it is or what it means. Maybe I’m going mad.
I feel like crying all the time. Only I can’t. I’ve stopped myself from crying around people and in school for so, so long because I didn’t want to be the sad girl, and I think I might have dried up all my tears. And the secret things I do — they feel like a kind of crying. Or like crying should be: private and secret and kind of a relief. Because when you are crying, crying is all you think about; there’s nothing else coming in. It is just you and what you are sad about. At least if you do it properly.
I went to Mum’s grave first. That was seriously the only place I meant to go. But then I kind of took a notion. I have no idea why. Probably because I’m weird and can’t get over this fascination I have with the fact that he killed my mum and he still gets to live a normal life.
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