by Sienna Blake
“It wasn’t mine,” Saoirse muttered, a look of fury on her face.
“Whose was it?” I asked.
She pressed her lips tightly together.
I thought so. She wasn’t going to rat on her friends. Some friends they were though, leaving her behind. I’d heard about the two boys fleeing the scene when the Garda had arrived.
It was acknowledged that the graffiti was too high to have been made by Saoirse. I thought it was unfair that she was being charged with vandalism despite this, just because the backpack filled with cans was in her vicinity.
I knew why the Garda did this. They wanted to use it as leverage to get Saoirse to confess the two boys’ names. But she hadn’t. This offence was sticking to her even though she didn’t deserve it.
Sometimes I hated the way the system worked.
“What happens now?” Ms Quinn asked.
I faced her again. Her demeanour had softened, her eyes skimming over my shoulders and the ink on my forearms, as if she’d only just realised what I looked like. I was used to this kind of reaction from women. Usually my prickly attitude put them off.
“I’ll be monitoring Saoirse for the next twelve months that she’s assigned to me.” I turned to Saoirse. “Luckily the offence is your first one and it’s relatively minor. It’ll be wiped from your record when you turn eighteen, unless you reoffend another three times, or unless you commit a major felony. Then it’s permanent. It’ll stay on your adult record. For life. Do you understand what that means? Saoirse, look at me.”
She slowly turned her head and our gazes locked, those green fires of defiance boring into me.
“It means you won’t be looked at twice for most jobs. There’s a stigma, okay. It’ll be part of public record. I’m here to make sure this doesn’t happen to you.”
She snorted and looked away. “Whatever.”
“As part of the Young Offenders Program you’ll have to check in with me at least once a week for the next year. Got that?” I lied.
The job requirement was that it was a minimum of once a month, but I could tell already that Saoirse needed a more hands-on approach.
Ms Quinn let out a soft laugh. “At least once a week? You’ll be around a lot. You’ll have to have dinner here with us, you know? You’ll practically be family.”
“Ms Quinn—”
“Please, call me Patricia.” She bent over, squeezing her breasts with her arms and giving me a clear shot down her low top.
Unbelievable.
I wanted to grab Ms Quinn and shake her and scream at her until she understood that her priority should be about raising her kid right.
But I did no such thing.
I caught Saoirse looking at my fisted hands clenched at my sides. I forced them to uncurl. Her eyes shot up and for a moment we just watched each other, a silent song shared between us as thin and haunting as an Irish ballad. She could see my fury at the injustice of her home life, the one place where she should be safe and loved more than anything. No child should go without love. No child should be left behind.
In turn, I saw the flash of surprise in her eyes. She was surprised that I might care enough to be angry at her life. This made me furious, so furious my hands clenched again and my nostrils flared even though I fought not to show the tempest howling through my body. No child should be surprised that someone might care for them. It was their God-given birthright for every child to be loved.
“I won’t be coming here for dinner. I’ll be coming here to make sure that everything at home is going smoothly.” I leaned in to Ms Quinn and heard her gasp under her breath. “This means, Patricia, that she needs to be fed properly and this place needs to be clean, is that understood?”
“This place isn’t usually like this,” she began to defend herself. “If only I’d been given some warning of—”
“Do. You. Understand?” I repeated in a firmer voice.
Patricia nodded and smartly stayed silent.
I turned to the tiny blonde angel, the only bright spot in this filthy apartment. “Do you understand, Saoirse?”
She shrugged her tiny shoulders. “Whatever,” she said again.
The helplessness that crashed over me like a merciless wave threatened to drown me. If only I had enough time for every case that came across my desk. If only I was enough.
I pushed these thoughts aside. I did what I could. I was one man against an army of darkness. My single efforts were a mere flicker of starlight fighting against the nothingness of the universe. I fought anyway. I gave it my all anyway.
“Where’s Saoirse’s father?” I asked Patricia, my curiosity getting the better of me. I could read more about it on her file later. But I wanted answers now.
Her mother lifted up a lip. “That no-good bastard. He’s in jail, he is.”
“I see.”
Unfortunately, the statistics for Saoirse reoffending as an adult increased even more with a parent who was already in the system.
I gritted my teeth as I stared at this tiny girl sitting next to me, her tough, mature attitude hiding a vulnerability. Her battle-weary armour guarded a child inside who just wanted to be loved and accepted. For some reason, I wanted to make sure that she of all people got that love and affection.
I vowed then and there I’d do whatever I could to make sure she knew that there was a better way of life. I promised myself that she had a bright future ahead of her.
“It’s hard, you know, for a single mom. No man around.” Patricia laid her hand on my arm, her eyelashes, clumpy with mascara, fluttering.
I saw red. Her daughter was in trouble and all she could think to do was to flirt with the officer that brought her home.
I grabbed Patricia’s wrist and pulled her hand off me none too gently. “Make unwanted advances towards me again, Ms Quinn, and I will have you arrested for soliciting an officer and for neglecting the dependent in your care.”
She spluttered and yanked her hand from me.
I stood, cutting the conversation off there. “We’re done here. Walk me out, Saoirse.”
The young girl was silent as she led me down the grey concrete stairs to the ground floor. She might have looked like a tiny doll but her soul was old, already hardened and calloused. At thirteen this girl already knew how unfair and cruel life could be. It made me want to rage and scream at the world she’d been born into.
We stopped at my car.
Saoirse turned to me, annoyance clear on her face. “I don’t need you to fight my battles for me.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Never said you couldn’t. I was just making sure that your mother made my job easier.”
Saoirse snorted and dropped her eyes, toeing a crack on the concrete with her scuffed sneakers, a hole peeling back from one toe.
I couldn’t go seven more days without checking in on her.
“You start school tomorrow, yeah?”
She lifted her intelligent eyes to meet mine. “Yeah.”
“What time do you start school?”
“Eight fifteen.”
“I’ll be here tomorrow morning at seven fifteen on the dot to take you to school. Be ready.”
Her eyes grew wide for a second before they narrowed, suspicion clearly rolling off her. “Why?”
Why indeed, Diarmuid?
“Part of the program,” I lied.
This was not part of the program. In fact, there was a line I wasn’t supposed to cross in terms of getting too personal with any assignment or their family.
But for some reason, Saoirse blew apart that line for me.
5
____________
Saoirse
Now—Dublin, Ireland
Graduation day. I stood in the row of students from my year. Claire stood at my elbow, giggling and chatting away.
“Jess’s parents are letting her have people over at their holiday house in Wexford. They’ve got, like, eight bedrooms or something. We can all stay the night. It’s going to be awesome.” She leaned in clos
er and whispered, “I overheard Luke tell Anna that he could get some gear for the party.”
I didn’t mind Claire. But I wouldn’t call her a friend. She wasn’t someone I could tell my secrets to or rely on if I were in trouble. We just had a lot of classes together.
“Sounds great,” I said, no enthusiasm in my voice.
Since my first run-in with pot when I was thirteen I’d not touched the stuff—or anything harder—despite everyone around me experimenting with it. I never felt like I needed to. I’d seen well enough what it did to my ma.
On evenings or weekends I choose instead to work shifts at the corner shop, something I’d been doing since I turned fifteen two years ago, or hide away in Moina’s apartment, a blanket around my slim shoulders and curled around a book.
I glanced over the heads of the crowd. I found myself looking for a familiar tall figure, his dark, messy shoulder-length hair tied back in a short ponytail.
Diarmuid Brennan.
Three years and I was still looking for him. Still hoping for him to show up. But like always he was never there. He’d broken his promise. He’d left. And he’d never come back.
The principal finished his speech and the parents and siblings cheered for their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters in the rows of graduating students.
But no one cheered for me.
6
____________
Diarmuid
The one good thing about moving back to Limerick from Dublin was getting to see Brian every Sunday for lunch.
I pushed back from the table and patted my belly. “Jesus, B, you really know how to spoil me.”
Brian O’Connell had been a JLO, Juvenile Liaison Officer, since the program began in 2001. He’d been a cop even longer.
And he had changed my life for the better.
I would have ended up in jail or dead if not for this man.
Brian snorted, his eyes roaming over the roast chicken carcass and scraps of leftover roast veg on the table. “Still amazes me, boy, how much ye can put away.”
I may have been a twenty-eight-year-old man, but he still called me “boy”.
“Your fault for making a roast as tasty as that.”
His eyes roamed over my muscular figure with a spot of envy in them. “Where the hell do you put it all, is what I want to know.”
I shrugged. “I work it off. I don’t sit around watching reruns of Father Ted all day.”
He pointed a fork at me, a piece of potato on the end of it. “Careful, boy. You might be older now but I can still give ye a whopping if need be.”
I laughed, snatching the potato off the end and popping it into my mouth.
Damn that was good. Soft and buttery. The only other person who’d ever cooked anything as nice as this for me was…
Saoirse Quinn.
My mind threw up an image of her young face. God, I still regretted the way I’d left things with her. I’d never told her where I’d moved to. I thought it best after…what had happened. It was all my fault.
I thought about her often. Too often, if I was honest with myself. As sad as it may seem, she’d been my best friend at one point. I missed her. I missed that I had been the one she came to. I missed the way she used to look at me as if I hung the sun.
I often thought about contacting her again. Then all I’d have to do was to remember what’d happened the last day I saw her and it would squash that urge. She was better off hearing nothing from me. She probably hated me. If she even thought of me.
Regret was a dancer. Day and night, I sighed for her, she spun and twisted for me.
My phone buzzed on the table. Ava’s name flashed up on the phone. I gritted my teeth, leaned over to put it on silent, then turned the phone over.
By the look on Brian’s face I knew he had seen who had been calling.
He narrowed his eyes at me, glancing to the traitorous phone. “Apparently Ethan kicked her out of his place.”
It always amazed me how fast news travelled around here.
“So I’d heard,” I said.
“I wondered how long it’d take her to start calling you again.”
“I’m not getting back with her.”
Not after what she did, hopping into the arms of an old mutual school friend only days after we separated. Ava and I had history. But I’d gotten over the habit of letting her back in. Finally.
I wanted more. I wanted to be…someone’s sun. The rising of their day and the centre of their thoughts. I wanted to shine into their life as they moved through mine.
Saoirse and the way she used to look at me flashed into my head. I flicked that away before I could dwell on it or why I had thought of her in this moment.
“I should bloody hope not.” Brian threw down his napkin and crossed his beefy arms. He was always thickset, but after he retired from the force he’d put on a few more pounds. It was all this excellent food he cooked. His secret wifey skills, as he liked to joke, even though he was the perennial bachelor. “I never liked her.”
Him and everyone else.
“I know,” I said, tensing, feeling a lecture coming on.
“You didn’t need to marry her, you know? It’s not the bloody fifties anymore.”
“Brian,” I said as a warning.
A warning that he didn’t heed. “You stayed too long with her, even after she—”
“Brian!”
“Alright. Alright.” He raised his hands. “I’ll let it go. For now…”
I let out a breath. “Thank you.”
The phone began to ring again. Dear God.
“Don’t say anything more,” I warned. I stabbed my phone, turning it off this time, praying that Ava would get the hint.
Brian raised his hands, but the look he gave me was a weary warning. That girl is trouble.
7
____________
Saoirse
Graduated. I thought I’d feel elated. Excited, maybe. I thought I’d feel something. Except I just felt…hollow. Lost.
I sat at our small kitchen table, staring off into nothing, my mind a whirr, my future a blank landscape. What do I do now? What the hell do I do with my life?
If Diarmuid was here, he’d know. My chest squeezed as I allowed myself to miss him more than usual. God, would it ever get any less painful?
A banging on the door jolted me. I whipped my head to the front door. Then to the clock. Ten past nine in the morning on a Sunday.
“Who the fuck is that?” my ma called from her bedroom.
Who the fuck was it, indeed?
The piece of toast I’d been clutching dropped back onto my plate, and I pushed back from the table with a scrape of the chair legs. I brushed my hands of crumbs as I tiptoed to the door. Debt collectors? One of my ma’s boyfriends? Neither prospect felt good to me at all.
The door banged again, this time harder.
“Saoirse? Open up,” a male voice called from the other side of the door.
Me? Whoever was on the other side of that door wanted me.
For a split second, I thought it might be Diarmuid, finally returned to take me away from this place. As soon as that hope was lit, it was extinguished.
Stupid girl. He doesn’t sound anything like Diarmuid. Diarmuid’s voice was deep but almost lyrical. This man on the other side of the door, whoever he was, sounded rough and jagged. He sounded older than the few male friends I made in school. Well, not friends really, more guys who occasionally pestered me to “come over”.
Who else would it be?
My ma stumbled out of her room, tugging a ratty bathrobe over her underwear. “Don’t open it.”
I rolled my eyes. They were after me, not her. In an act of defiance, or perhaps I was just so damn bored with life as it was that I’d stopped caring about being cautious, I unlocked the door and flung it open.
Standing there was a man who seemed familiar. Or perhaps he just seemed that way because he looked like almost every other forty-something-year-old Irish man. He h
ad a shaved head, tats peeking up from his leather jacket collar, his fist raised to knock again.
He lowered his fist, his eyes roaming over me, but not in a way that made me uncomfortable. He grinned as his eyes found mine, blue and rimmed with wrinkles when he smiled.
“Saoirse fockin’ Quinn, in the fockin’ flesh, Jesus Christ, all grown up, like.”
I blinked at him. I frowned at this intruder, his face tickling my memory.
My ma gasped from behind me. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
He knew my name. My ma knew him. Which meant… “How do I know you?” I asked.
He held his arm out to the side. “Jase O’Malley. Yer pa’s best mate.”
The memories slotted into place. I nodded. That’s right. My pa and he were as thick as thieves when we lived back in Limerick before my da was locked up and my ma fled with me to Dublin. But he had a thick head of dirty blonde hair back then.
“Uncle Jase,” I said.
He grinned wider, revealing a silver-capped canine among crooked teeth. “That’s right.” His eyes rolled over me again. “Jesus, lass, you’ve grown up nice, like. I remember when you were crawling around in nappies.”
Behind me my ma was hissing. “Go away, Jase.” She grabbed at the door, trying to shut it in his face.
Jase stuck out a beefy hand to stop her. He shot her a glare. “Still being a bitch, I see, Patricia.”
“Fuck you.”
“No fockin’ thanks, love. The years have not been kind to ye.” My ma spluttered and howled behind me. Jase ignored her and turned towards me, an affectionate smile stretching across his face. “Get your shit, Saoirse. You’re coming with me.”
“No, she is not,” said my ma. “She’s not going anywhere with you.”
Jase ignored her. “Pack a bag, quick as ye can, girl. We gotta go.”
