Still Life with Strings (5 page)

“I bet you do. And
yeah, both of my parents are white. They lived in Beijing for several years in
the eighties where my dad was working for the Irish embassy. While they were
over there they tried for a baby, but something wasn’t working. In the end they
found out that Mum was infertile, so they hired a surrogate.”

“Say what?” I exclaim
humorously. Shane shoots me a narrow-eyed look. “No, seriously,” I go on. “I
thought only crazy celebrities and millionaires hired surrogates.”

“It’s actually more
common than you’d think. So anyway, they paid this nice Chinese woman to have a
child for them. Basically, they used my dad’s sperm, and the surrogate got
pregnant through artificial insemination. So I’m my dad’s biological son, but
not my mum’s.”

“Wow. And have you ever
met your birth mother?”

“No. Mum thought it
would be best to sever all the ties. When I was five we moved back to Ireland.”

“What age are you now?”

“Twenty-nine. I’ll be
thirty next month. You?”

“Twenty-six going on
fifty.”

He laughs. “You don’t
look fifty.”

“I feel it sometimes,”
I sigh.

He gives me a
sympathetic expression and reaches out to softly squeeze my hand. He doesn’t
keep doing it for long, but it’s nice while it lasts.

We stay locked in a
moment as he drags his tongue over his bottom lip, wetting it. I stare at his
mouth, half mesmerised.

The moment is broken
when a car horn beeps loudly from outside, signalling Barry’s arrival. “Ah,
there’s your ride home, and the conversation had just gotten interesting,” I
announce with amusement.

Shane stands and gulps
down the last of his tea. “Well, we can continue it tomorrow if you’d like. Are
you working?”

“Yep. Eleven o’clock
until seven.”

“I have a rehearsal
until four. Can I stop by the bar and see you?”

“Sure. You’ll be bored
out of your tits watching me work, but I’ll try my best to fit in some talking
time.” I smile and stand up, ushering him out to the front door.

“It’s a good thing I
don’t have tits, then, isn’t it? See you, Jade,” he calls, blowing me a cheeky
kiss and making his way over to Barry’s taxi.

I make a show of
catching it with my hand, like a big fat nerd. Standing on the step, I watch
him go until the car disappears out of sight. A second later, my sister April
and her best friend Chloe saunter up to me, wearing outfits that almost match.
They’ve both got some variation of a white cotton top on with similar denim
miniskirts and fake UGG boots.

“Hey, Jado,” Chloe
calls to me as they approach. She’s got this annoying habit of making up
nicknames for everyone, normally ending with an “O.” She calls April “Apro.”
You get the picture.

“Eh,
who
was
that?” April asks, her voice booming halfway around the street.

“A friend.”

“Your friend is a
fucking
ride
,” Chloe puts in, fanning her face theatrically. For those
not in the know, “a ride” is Dublin slang for “hot.”

“Yep. That he is,” I
reply to her, deadpan. “Where have you two been?”

“Nowhere,” says April,
tight-lipped, which might as well be slang for “up to no good.”

“Okay. Have you seen
Pete around?”

“Nope.”

“You’re a fountain of
knowledge tonight, April, really you are. Here, I’ve got a proposition for you,”
I say.

Chloe snickers at my
use of the word “proposition.” I’m dealing with a future Nobel Prize winner in
this girl. April looks at me appraisingly.

“What is it?”

“Lara’s looking for a
babysitter for little Mia. What do you think? It’ll earn you some money until
you can find a full-time job.”

“Yes, I’ll do it! How
much is she paying?” April asks enthusiastically, while Chloe’s eyes
simultaneously light up as she mouths the words
free house
at April.

“I saw that, Chloe, and
there’ll be no free house.” I wag my finger at her. “If April’s going to do
this, she’s going to do it properly. You can’t have boys over if you’re going
to be responsible for a three-year-old. Do you hear me?”

“Yeah, I know. Don’t
snap at me — it was Chloe who said it. I know I have to take it seriously. I’m
not stupid.”

“Good to know. Now, are
you coming in or what?”

She rolls her eyes at
me and walks into the house, she and Chloe heading straight for the living room
so that they can flirt with Alec’s friends. I spend the next half an hour
trying to get a hold of Pete, but he’s not answering his phone. Eventually he
arrives home, giving me the silent treatment after our argument last night. He
shuffles up the stairs to his room, shutting himself inside with a slam of the
door.

I really don’t know
what to do about him anymore. In my room I fall onto my mattress, exhausted.
This is what I mean about teenagers being a handful. To be honest, I’d much
prefer two wailing babies.

Reaching for my
handbag, I pull out my phone and check my messages, of which there aren’t many.
The rap music is still thumping from downstairs, so I grab my headphones and
stick them into the phone, scrolling through my music. Nothing tickles my
fancy, so on a whim I go onto iTunes and search for the Bohemia Quartet. Their
albums immediately pop up, and I download the most popular, titled
Songs for
Her
.

I know I shouldn’t, but
I immediately wonder who “Her” is. There’s a picture of the group on the cover,
and all of them are equally good-looking guys, so it could be any one of their
girlfriends or even a relative. Anyway, seeing the picture makes me understand
why they were so popular. I’m sure they had a
huge
female following.

I hit “play” on the
first song, and the opening notes hit me right in my soul like a soothing balm.
All remnants of the rap music below float away as I get lost in the beauty of
the strings.

When I wake up the next morning, I
realise I fell asleep with my earphones on, Shane’s music having lulled me into
a slumber. Later that day at work, he shows up at the bar at a quarter past
four, looking invigorated.

“Whatever you’ve been
taking, can I have some?” I ask him jokingly.

“I sometimes get like
this after playing,” he explains. “Could I have an ice water?”

“You can indeed,” I
say, pouring him a glass. He knocks it back in three long gulps and then asks
for another.

There’s a writers’ talk
going on in the main auditorium at the moment. It just started, so the bar is
empty. I decide to take a break, grabbing myself an orange juice and a gin for
Shane before walking around to take the seat beside him.

He eyes my orange
juice. “No drinking alcohol on the job, eh?”

“No drinking at all,
actually,” I reply, pulling up my sleeve to show him the five small blue
sparrows tattooed onto my inner forearm. “One for each year I’ve been sober,” I
explain.

“You were an
alcoholic?” he asks softly in surprise, eyes tracing up and down my tattoos.
One of the best artists in the city did them, and the blue has the effect of
looking like watercolour paints.

I give him a grave nod.

“But you work in a bar.
Isn’t that kind of tempting fate?”

“For some, maybe, but
not for me. I find being around alcohol is like working a muscle, so the more I
do it, the stronger I become. The sparrows represent freedom from my addiction
and my commitment to staying free of it. There’s nothing more committed than
ink permanently under your skin.”

Shane reaches out and
traces his fingers over the birds, his head tilted as he studies them. “They’re
very pretty. Are you going to keep getting a new one each year?”

“Probably not. I mean,
I only have so much real estate,” I joke. “They start at my wrist, so I guess
once they reach the top of my arm I’ll stop. If I get ten years under my belt,
I don’t think there’ll be anything that could ever drive me back to drinking.”

Shane looks at his gin
now, like he feels guilty for having it in front of me.

“Oh, don’t be silly.
Drink up. I know that most people can enjoy alcohol responsibly. I’m just not
one of them.”

“When did you start
drinking?” he asks, giving in and taking a sip.

“You probably don’t
want to know the answer to that.”

He arches an eyebrow
but doesn’t say anything.

I let out a sigh.
“Eleven when I had my first taste, fifteen when I began drinking properly.”

“Fifteen, shit.”

I pick up a cardboard
coaster and begin picking at it. “I had a few…issues when I was younger. I
guess drowning them in a bottle of vodka was the only thing that worked for me
back then. I got my stomach pumped several times, almost died from kidney
failure once.”

Shane moves his stool
closer to mine. “Is that what made you quit?”

I’m lost in my own
thoughts for a second, and I don’t hear his question. “Sorry, what was that?”

“The kidney failure. Is
that why you quit?”

“Oh. No, actually. My
head could have been falling off and I wouldn’t have given up drinking. Didn’t
care enough about myself, I suppose. It was my mum getting sick that gave me
the final push. I suddenly realised that she was never getting better and that
my family needed me. Pete and April were still just kids at the time, and there
would be no one to look after them, not their waster of a dad, anyway. I
couldn’t stand the idea of them being put into foster care, so I had no other
choice but to step up.”

I look down at my hand,
at my healthy skin tone, remembering a time when I was so ill it had almost
turned yellow. I shake myself out of the memory. “God, I’m being really
depressing now, aren’t I?”

“I think you’re
fascinating,” he breathes, and then winces. “Did I just say that out loud?” he
asks, shaking his head at himself.

I laugh. “Yep. Don’t
regret it. It’s a good feeling to be fascinating to another person.”

He knocks back a gulp
of his drink and turns to me properly, his eyes searing. “I really like making
you feel good, Jade.”

His expression grows heated
as he prolongs our stare. “Well, mission accomplished,” I tell him, a touch
uncomfortable under his attention. “So, how about we trade one depressing story
for another? You still have to tell me about why you left your string quartet.”

“Ah, can we not? It’s
an awful story.”

“Surely not as awful as
mine.”

“Want to bet?”

“Okay, no big deal. You
don’t have to tell me.”

He looks sadly into his
almost empty glass. “How about I tell you something else, something equally
depressing?”

“Go ahead. I’m all ears.”

“I have no friends,” he
states, deadly serious.

Resting my elbow on the
bar, I stare at him quizzically. Our faces are inches apart now as we conduct
our intimate little conversation. “What you do mean?”

“I mean I have no
friends. I have acquaintances, yes, but not friends. The only proper friends I
did have were the three guys from my string quartet group: Leo, Justin, and
Bryn. I don’t talk to any of them anymore, so now I have no friends.”

“Surely you have some.
What about your childhood pals? You could reconnect with them now that you
aren’t travelling all over the place any longer.”

He gives me an
embarrassed look and then glances away shyly.

“What? You don’t have
any childhood friends, either?” I ask in a surprised voice.

“Maybe when I was under
five. At six my mum decided to bring me to have piano lessons. You know, at the
music school on Westland Row?”

“Yeah, I know it. You
can always hear the sound of instruments drifting up onto the street from down
in the basement.”

He smiles fondly.
“That’s the one. So, anyway, Mum had an old friend called Jill who worked there
as a music teacher and brought me for my first lesson. She tried teaching me
‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ on the piano, but I had no interest. Then when Mum
came to collect me, she and Jill were having tea and left me to my own devices
in the music room. I picked up a violin, began messing around with it, and
within a half an hour I had ‘Mary had a Little Lamb’ down pat. I don’t remember
all the details, but I do have a very distinct memory of it being like I’d
found an extension of myself in that one small instrument. All of the strings
made sense, and I knew exactly how to create the melody I wanted.”

“Wow,” I breathe,
enthralled by his story.

Shane smiles and
continues, “I was proclaimed a child prodigy after that. Mum began having me
home-schooled by a private tutor so that I could spend more time focusing on
the violin. So basically, I was isolated and rarely met other kids my age,
hence the ‘no childhood friends’ bit.”