Prima Donna (44 page)

She met her mother’s gaze and smiled – apologetically, encouragingly, willing her to believe that she wouldn’t run again.

The ref – her father, dressed in his customary top-to-toe black – blew the half-time whistle shrilly. Fifteen–nine to the visitors. He was notorious for his by-the-book
refereeing and everyone knew not to bother trying to get anything past him. The man had eyes in the back of his head.

All thirty players dropped to the ground like dead ducks, thankful for a reprieve, and Sophie tittered as she watched the collective green-and-red-clad beer bellies heave up and down on the
grass.

Esther ran on with the orange quarters and they wearily rolled themselves back up to sitting, plastering the segments to their teeth like gum shields and sucking the juice frantically. Finn
stuck one in his mouth and gave her a great orange grin.

Sophie rolled her eyes and he motioned for her to come over. Tom, Joe and Tony lay scattered like shrapnel around him.

‘Hi,’ she said, standing over them all. ‘You look like you’ve got your work cut out for you today. They’re thrashing y’all. What’ve you been doing all
match? Painting your toenails?’

‘Whisht! You’ve no idea,’ Joe panted. ‘It’s man’s work.’

‘Is it ’cos you forgot to strap your bellies on? Is that it?’ she teased, settling herself into a gangly cross-legged heap. ‘Because the old boys are doing a better job
than you lot. Y’ought to be ashamed of yourselves!’

‘It’s your fault, actually,’ Finn grinned. ‘Keeping us in the pub till all hours. You city girls with your twenty-four-seven living. You forget that we country boys go to
bed with the sun.’

‘Well, it’s certainly all you go to bed with,’ Tom teased, ducking out the way as Finn skimmed his wizened orange quarter at him.

Sophie slid her eyes over to Tony. He was lying on his back enjoying the sun, one arm thrown carelessly over his face, and, judging by the slow rise and fall of his stomach, he’d got his
breath back.

‘Age sure isn’t mellowing your father,’ Finn said.

You’re telling me, Sophie thought to herself. She just smiled.

‘Did you see how he picked me up on that five-step? Sure, I was only a step over. You’d think he’d have just let it go. Anyone would think he didn’t want Fennor to win
the league. Aglish are all over us now. You’re going to have to have a word with him for us, Soph. The man’s a tartar.’

She shrugged and began making a daisy chain. ‘I’m the last person who’s got any kind of influence over him,’ she said mildly.

Tony, picking up the finality in her voice, stared at her from beneath his elbow. ‘What does that mean?’ he asked, breaking his customary silence.

‘Nothing more than that. He’s just his own man, that’s all. He would never be swayed by what I think.’

‘What? Not his newly returned prodigal daughter? I’d have thought he’d be treading on eggshells in his desire to keep you happy and stop you from running again.’ She
couldn’t miss the sarcastic note in his voice.

Sophie swallowed. ‘If I go again, it won’t be because I’m running.’

‘Why did you run?’ Tom asked cheekily, sucking on a blade of grass.

‘To get away from fellas like you,’ she retorted, managing a half-smile.

Tony sighed and obscured his face again, and she felt belittled by the gesture. He clearly didn’t want her there. She took a deep breath of defiance. Well tough. These were her
friends.

‘I can’t believe how big your brother’s grown, Finn,’ she said, changing the subject, as a lanky half-forward jogged past. ‘I scarcely recognized him when I got
here. How old’s he now?’

‘Fifteen.’

Sophie shook her head. ‘God! And to think I used to babysit for him.’

‘He’s not my only baby brother now, either. Stephen’s nearly six – he was born soon after you left.’

‘Really? So – what? You’re one of . . .’ she counted in her head. ‘Seven now?’

‘Ay. Da’s got his seven-a-side team, after all.’

‘Your poor mam! Seven burly boys to cook and feed and clean up after. It’s beyond imagination what your bathroom must be like in the mornings.’

‘She loves it, really,’ he chuckled. ‘Family’s what it’s all about at the end of the day, isn’t it?’

‘Ach, don’t talk such rot,’ Tony mumbled, his eyes still closed.

Sophie arched her eyebrows and looked back at Finn. He shrugged, nonplussed, and she looked away, watching the way all the families intertwined with each other, the bigger children looking after
the little ones, the mothers burping each other’s babies, pulling spare rattles and biscuits out of their bags.

She wondered what they would have thought about her self-imposed exile in the big cities – first London, then Chicago – where she lived anonymously, not knowing the faces, much less
the names of her neighbours in the apartments above and below hers (Greg didn’t count; he was more like a stalker than a neighbour). Here, the families could trace their ancestors back for
generations, and crumbling old bothies and strips of land that had long since been abandoned were still known as ‘Maggie’s house’ or ‘Paddy’s field’, and they
all knew and told each other’s family stories as well as their own.

Fennor nurtured and protected its sense of community as its most valuable asset, and if she tried to describe what it had been like to live as one among millions in a big city, the people here
would have felt only horror and pity. They wouldn’t understand that there’s a certain comfort in being anonymous; in living where no one knows your secrets but you; in being taken at
face value and not with the burden of reputation and village standing and heritage on your shoulders. Getting lost had been the only way she knew to find herself and it had been exactly what she
needed. It was how she had learnt to live with her ghosts.

But now that she had returned, back to the bosom of her family, she wasn’t sure she had come home. Her father’s silent anger threw a glass wall around everyone and everything. She
felt she occupied a purgatory, hovering between two worlds, and she had no idea which she belonged to any more.

‘So which is your family, Tony?’ she asked, looking around. She knew all the older faces here. Only the babies and small children were strangers to her.

‘I don’t have one,’ he said curtly. ‘Thank God.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, shocked.

‘What – that I don’t have a family?’

‘The “thank God” bit. How can you say that?’

‘Quite easily actually,’ he said, rolling himself up and resting his elbows on his knees. His voice was calm but his eyes were blazing. He looked straight at her, and she shrank a
little beneath his gaze. ‘You’re making the classic mistake of assuming everyone grew up in a perfect family like yours.’

‘My family’s
not
perfect,’ she retorted.

‘Yeah, right,’ Tony snorted.

‘You’ve got no right to assume anything about my family. You don’t know anything about me.’

‘I don’t know you, no. But I know them and I know that, compared to my family, they come pretty damn close to being perfect.’

Only because I left, Sophie fumed silently. If I’d stayed, it would have been a different matter entirely.

‘So what was so terrible about them, then? Why is life so much better without them?’

He shrugged and watched some of the players begin to get up. ‘My pa was okay. Strict, but . . . I couldn’t blame him after what he had to put up with from my mother.’

‘What? She had an affair?’ she asked casually, her ever-so-slightly mocking tone betraying the world-weariness that came from city living. It might not happen much here, but all the
rest of the world was at it, and it would hardly classify his family as the house of horrors he was insistent upon.

He looked directly at her, stung by her nonchalance. ‘She was a drug addict and she abandoned us,’ he said peremptorily.

There was a horrified silence. Sophie noticed the other guys were looking away, their bodies stiff.

‘Oh,’ she said in a tiny voice, her cheeks burning from his scorn. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I’m not,’ he said tersely. ‘It’s been a valuable lesson. Life is better lived alone, without ties or attachments.’

‘By which you mean . . . family? You want to be
all alone
? Forever?’

Tony nodded.

‘You don’t seriously mean that,’ she scoffed.

He raised his eyebrows at her as her father marched briskly past, the Pied Piper of Fennor, with all the players in his wake.

‘You want me to believe that you
never
want to settle down and have a family of your own?’

’That’s right.’

‘All because of your mother?’

He nodded, looking away. His jaw was set.

‘But if she was an addict, then—’

‘Don’t tell me addiction’s a disease. She was no victim and there are no excuses for it,’ he said, cutting her off as he got to his feet. ‘She doesn’t deserve
explanations. And I’m not sure why you should be so keen to find one for her. I’d have thought you’d have understood more than anybody.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well, you walked out on your family, abandoned them. You know as well as I do how easily people can turn their backs on the ones they love.’

‘There’s nothing
easy
about it!’ How dare he judge her! He knew nothing about her reasons for leaving or how she’d suffered out there on her own – a
fifteen-year-old girl with no money and no contacts, but just a talent and a desire to hide.

‘Well, you could have fooled everyone here,’ he said, picking up his hurley stick and jogging off, taking his position in the midfield.

Sophie watched him go, stunned by the verbal attack, tears pricking her eyes.

‘Don’t let him upset you,’ Finn said awkwardly. ‘It’s a prickly subject at the best of times.’

‘Best of times?’ she muttered, her voice thick.

‘Well, he was unnecessarily harsh with you. He’s not usually so aggressive.’

‘He despises me. He thinks I’m too big for my boots, coming back here.’

He stood up and held his hand out for her. ‘Well,
I
’m glad you’re back. Don’t take it too bad. He’s all right when you get to know him.’

She let him pull her up to standing. ‘I don’t think I’ll bother, thanks,’ she said sulkily, watching Tony jog on the spot, his cheeks swarthy and stubbled. ‘Seems
more effort than it’s worth.’

Finn shrugged and ran back onto the pitch, just as the whistle blew and the ball flew through the air towards Tom. He went to hit it, but missed, whacking Joe on the shins instead.

‘Ow! Ya basta’d!’ Joe hollered, hopping around on one foot, before a great smile broke out across his face as Esther ran towards him with the ice bucket.

Sophie let the elderly couple get off the bus before her, worried she might hold them up with her wide load. She climbed down the steps sideways, hoisting the bags under her
arms, but one got jammed as the doors closed.

She gave it a pull. Nothing happened. ‘Excuse me! Driver!’ she called out. But he couldn’t hear her. She tugged it forcefully again and this time it came free, but not before
the bag ripped and the contents flew out all over the pavement.

‘Bugger,’ she hissed as the bus pulled away and its wheels left tyre tracks on a new T-shirt. She fell to her knees to start picking it all up.

‘I see you’re single-handedly reviving the Irish economy,’ said a deadpan voice across the way. ‘What’s your plan? To shop us out of bankruptcy?’

Sophie looked up. Tony was standing outside the newsagent’s on the other side of the street. He was wearing jeans and a faded red T-shirt that had ripped slightly at the neck.

Oh great.

‘I’ve got no clothes,’ she shrugged, embarrassed by the bulging bags all around her. They’d no doubt confirm the rich-city-girl image he’d formed of her.

He crossed the road and picked up a six-pack of knickers. ‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ he said, handing them to her.

She took them, wishing he’d just go. Instead, he bent down and helped her. ‘It looks like you’re intending to stay for a bit, at least,’ he said, as he gathered up stray
tights, jeans and pyjamas.

‘Looks like it,’ she said tersely, reaching to grab a T-shirt that was threatening to blow away.

He picked up a primrose-yellow bra. ‘Well,’ he grinned, ‘apparently you really
don’t
have any clothes.’ He handed the bra back to her and stood up.

Sophie stuffed the bra to the bottom of a bag and stood up too.

His eyes glittered. ‘It raises the question:
why
’ve you got no clothes?’

Sophie paused. ‘I just left in a bit of a hurry.’

He nodded, staring at her intently. ‘So having run
away
from here, something sent you running
back
again. What could that have been, I wonder?’ he mused.

She didn’t bother to answer. It was none of his damned business. ‘Thanks for the help,’ she said, starting to walk away.

Tony watched her go for a moment, her satiny hair swinging around her shoulders.

‘I wanted to apologize, by the way,’ he said, catching her up.

‘For what? You don’t owe me an apology,’ she said shortly, not stopping.

‘But I do. I was very rude to you the other day. Making all sorts of assumptions about you and your family.’ God, she was walking fast, her eyes dead ahead. He grabbed her by the
elbow and forced her to stop. ‘Finn gave me a right bollocking after the match. And he was right. I shouldn’t have said what I said to you.’

She stared at him for a moment. ‘Fine,’ she said finally. ‘Apology accepted.’

She turned and went to walk away again.

‘Wait,’ he said, holding her by the arm again, chuckling at her determination to leave. ‘I want to make it up to you. Let me give you a ride home,’ he said.

‘My house is two hundred yards down the road,’ she said drily. ‘I’m fine.’

‘No, you’re not,’ he said, with a conviction that had nothing to do with her bag-carrying ability.

She stared at him, at that beautiful face with its dancing green eyes and contoured cheekbones, and she suddenly felt like he could see right inside her and read all her secrets. She swallowed
hard. Esther must have told Joe, who’d told him all about Adam.