‘I went to see Mummy,’ I tell him, resisting the urge to lower the volume on the TV. I’m allowing my life to make sounds again, getting ready.
‘I’ll go see her tomorrow,’ he says. ‘What time will he have left?’ He means Father.
‘After two,’ I say.
They have yet to set eyes on each other since Brooks showed up at mine last month.
Brooks has exhausted the friends he can call on, and he needs to avoid them if he wants to keep his sobriety. I’m his last port of call. Addam is cold and uppity with him when their visits overlap. I’m not the only one who is lucky to have sisters.
‘Wasn’t it the inquest today?’ Brooks asks. ‘So, what did the coroner say about the boy’s stepdad?’
‘Accidental overdose,’ I tell him. ‘Raymond was taking chloral hydrate to get to sleep, amphetamines in the morning to wake him up, antidepressants to quell the storm, and Librium for his anxiety. But it was the Nembutal that finished him off. It was all too much.’
‘Did he buy it on the internet?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘It’s so easy to get stuff online. It’s the new street corner.’
‘The coroner said that chloral hydrate affects short-term memory, so Raymond may have forgotten that he’d taken the barbiturates and took a double dose, judging by the high levels in his bloodstream.’
‘It happens,’ says Brooks. ‘Did he rule the death accidental?’
‘Yeah.’
Brooks holds my scans in his hand. ‘I got your voicemail. Twins, huh?’
‘Yep.’
‘You’re sorted, then – one for you, one for this ex of yours.’
‘Now there’s an idea!’ I say. ‘Are you coming to the next scan?’
‘Wouldn’t miss it.’
‘Ha!’
I go to my bedroom where I hide my gun and purse in the safe. It’s also where I keep my jewellery and everything else that has any monetary value. It’s standard practice when living with a junkie; they’re the gifts that keep on taking. I had somehow forgotten that part.
The neighbours above are getting ready for a night out. I hear their music, the beat of their feet on my ceiling. In the kitchen I see that Brooks has made me a plate of food. I lift it, sit down at the table and take in the view out over the Lagan.
It doesn’t occur to me to look down at the bridge.
Acknowledgements
There are many people I want to thank for their support and friendship: Claire Savage, Sharon Dempsey, Jane Talbot, Jo Zebedee, Catriona King, Roisin Coleman, Wilma Kenny, Kate Burns, and Paula Matthews.
I owe much gratitude to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Irish Writers’ Centre, John Hewitt Society, Ards and North Down Borough Council, Belfast Book Festival, Aspects Festival, all the staff at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Paul Maddern at the River Mill Writing Retreat, Damian Smyth at ACNI, David Torrens at No Alibis bookshop, and the amazing members of Women Aloud NI.
Thank you to Valerie, Maddie, Jude, Jonah and Martha.
Most of all: Ryan. You never stop encouraging me to write. Thank you for that.
About the author
Kelly Creighton facilitates creative writing classes for community groups and schools. In 2014, she founded The Incubator literary journal, showcasing the contemporary Irish short story. Her published books include: Three Primes (2013, poetry); The Bones of It (San Diego Book Review’s 2015 Novel of the Year); and Bank Holiday Hurricane (shortlisted in the Saboteur Award’s Best Short Story Collection category and longlisted for the 2017 Edge Hill Prize). Her work is featured in Salt Publishing’s Best British Short Stories 2018 and has been noted in the following prizes: Michael McLaverty Short Story Award, the inaugural Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, Cúirt New Writing Prize for Fiction, Fish Short Story Prize, Abroad Writers’ Conference Short-Short Story Award and the Gregory O’Donoghue Poetry Prize. She was the recipient of a 2017/18 ACES Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Kelly lives with her family in Newtownards, County Down.
kellycreighton.com
@KellyCreighto16
‘Creighton has a poet’s eye for imagery and a novelist’s understanding of the value of a good plot.’
The Irish Times
‘Creighton [is] a writer to reckon with.’
The Irish Examiner
Also by Kelly Creighton
The Bones of It (2015)
Thrown out of university, green-tea-drinking, meditation-loving Scott McAuley has no place to go but home: County Down, Northern Ireland. The only problem is, his father is there now too.
Duke wasn’t around when Scott was growing up. He was in prison for stabbing two Catholic kids in an alley. But thanks to the Good Friday Agreement, big Duke is out now, reformed, a counsellor.
Squeezed together into a small house, with too little work and too much time to think about what happened to Scott’s dead mother, the tension grows between these two men, who seem to have so little in common.
Penning diary entries from prison, Scott recalls what happened that year. He writes about Jasmine, his girlfriend at university. He writes about Klaudia, back home in County Down, who he and Duke both admired. He weaves a tale of lies, rage and paranoia.
Out now in paperback and ebook.
Praise for The Bones of It
‘A brilliant crime debut, chilling, compulsive and beautifully written.’
Brian McGilloway
‘Blackly comic in tone, The Bones of It is a Bildungsroman that evolves into a slow-burning psychological exploration of the mind … an engrossing tale of the consequences of living a life steeped in a culture of violence.’
The Irish Times
‘… true discovered masterpiece of fiction. If she keeps this up, Kelly Creighton can be that Next Great Writer. The Bones of It is not just a novel to read, it is a novel to experience.’
San Diego Book Review
‘Compelling, compulsive, compassionate.’
Books Ireland
‘Scott’s is an authentic voice, and Creighton a writer to reckon with.’
The Irish Examiner
Bank Holiday Hurricane (2017)
A woman picks up what is left of her life after her release from prison. A young couple are about to set off for Australia when a leaving party changes everyone’s fate. Lifelong friends keep deep secrets that could fracture each other’s lives. In Manchester, paths cross for two people who have not seen each other since the genocide in Rwanda.
Bank Holiday Hurricane is a collection about dislocation, disenchantment and second chances, told through linked stories set in and around a Northern Irish town, and further afield.
Out now in paperback at doirepress.com.
Praise for Bank Holiday Hurricane
‘The 16 stories are by turns gritty and moving.’
The Irish Times
‘Kelly Creighton’s collection floored me. Distinctive, powerful and filled, at times, with an electric high-wire tension, they contain a lyricism that comes at you sideways and will knock the wind right out of you.’
Bernie McGill
‘Often dark and unsettling, excavating relationships that are in tatters, looking at patterns of behaviour that make for dysfunction and unhappiness … a wonderfully written collection about love, loss and cruelty.’
The Irish Examiner
‘It’s a compelling collection that you will read quickly – and then want to immediately read again, to savour the language and to reconsider the lives laid bare before you.’
Claire Savage
class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
The Sleeping Season Page 22
