The Changeling (2 page)

‘Some chance of that.’

‘Will you stop. Sit over in front of the mirror and do your foundation while I stick on some decent music.’ Aoife knocked off One Direction, scrolled through Carla’s iPod for Lana Del Rey, and stuck it back in the dock.
Born to Die
. One day she hoped to write a song like that. She’d written hundreds already, but none she felt were any good; maybe a few that were passable. She chose a white eye-liner. ‘Tilt your head back. Keep your eyes open.’

Carla said, straining not to blink: ‘I’m loving the necklace. Is it new?’

‘No . . .’ Aoife drew the point of the pencil along the inner edge of Carla’s eye. ‘I found it in Declan Sweeney’s field, the one behind our house. I must have lost it years ago. I don’t even remember owning it.’

‘Then how do you know it’s yours?’

‘It has my name on it – I’ll show you in a sec.
Don’t blink!
Mam and Dad’s picture is in it and me as a baby.’ She glanced towards the window, towards the distant mountains, hazy in the summer heat. ‘Do you remember the fairy road?’

‘Do I or what! All that sheep shite and thistles!’

‘Ah, it was fun!’

‘I’ll never forget that time you got nearly to the top of the bank and I had to run back for your mam, I was so sure you’d get into the next field and be trampled by a bull, and she went pure mental—’

‘
Anyway.
Do you remember me wearing this locket ever?’

Carla sighed, and tilted her head back again. ‘No. Is it in any of the early photos?’

A hundred Blu-tacked memories of their childhood selves gazed down on them from all four walls. As Aoife worked on Carla’s face, she kept pausing to look around but she couldn’t see the necklace anywhere, though she did spot the fairy wings. As a little girl, she had been a lot smaller than Carla and appeared to have been in a constant state of surprise – her blue-green eyes wide open, her short red hair a tangled mess. Later, the wings had become school uniforms, and by the time they had donned huge amounts of make-up and started pouting at their own camera phones, Aoife was the taller of the two by several centimetres. She fired the blusher and mascara back into the drawer.

‘Now – you’re lovely. Just let me get changed, I won’t be a sec.’ She stripped off her trackies and T-shirt, and took her favourite dress out of Carla’s wardrobe – a pale green A-line. She pulled it over her head, slipped on her navy Converse, fixed her hair – now very long and a deep red-gold – into a ponytail, grabbed one of Carla’s many shoulder bags for her phone and purse, then checked herself in the mirror. ‘Aaargh! Way too short! What else have you got?’

‘No point – all my dresses will be like that on you now. Like on me they’re too tight. At least you’ve got taller. I’ve just grown
out
.’

‘You have not. I’ll change back into my trackies.’

‘You will not! Your legs are amazing: let everyone see them. Sinead will be sick – serve her right.’

‘Nice of her to bring us all to the cinema, though.’

‘Whatever.
Don’t take off that dress.
’

Downstairs in the kitchen, Carla’s mother, Dianne, was putting ten euros into a birthday card for Sinead. ‘I hope ten’s enough – I don’t have a twenty.’

Zoe, Carla’s four-year-old sister, plump with light brown hair and freckles (the image of Carla in the early photos), looked round from the television. ‘Can I come?’

Carla ignored her. ‘Ten’s plenty, Mam: no one puts twenty in the cards any more, no one has the money.’

Dianne Heffernan sighed. ‘I suppose. It seems so little.’

Aoife said, ‘No, Carla’s right, everyone gives a tenner now . . . Oh, for—’

Carla said, ‘’S up?’

‘Left my card at home.’ All she had in her purse was one euro twenty.

Dianne offered, ‘You want to add your name to Carla’s?’

‘No, you’re grand. I’ll give it her in school on Monday.’

Zoe said again, louder: ‘Can I come?’

Aoife smiled at her. ‘I’ll bring you back something.’

‘Chocolate chip ice cream?’

‘No, it’ll only melt. I’ll get you a bar.’

Even though Carla’s house was only half a kilometre from the town, the journey back to Kilduff took over ten minutes. Carla’s bike was rusted, and stuck in a low gear. The green dress kept riding up, and Aoife kept having to pause to tug it down, worried her pants were on show to passing drivers – it was true what Carla said: nothing fitted them any more. The day was getting hotter, and flies bombed them every time they stopped. Finally they crested the hill and cruised down past the school, a long white one-storey building with high glittering windows, then the field of cows. As they passed the builder’s wrought-iron double gates, Killian Doherty swung out on a clean, mean, electric-blue racing bike and overtook them in a spurt of gravel; a great pumping of legs and narrow arms. He shouted over his shoulder as he raced ahead of them: ‘Love your dress!’

Carla wobbled. ‘Did he mean me or you?’

‘You – he was looking at you.’

‘Oh God . . . Are my boobs falling out?’

‘Course not – don’t mind him, he’s an eejit.’

‘Don’t
mind
him? You think he was being sarcastic?’

‘
No!
’

‘Maybe you were right, maybe it is OK to have big boobs.’

‘Trust me, I’m right.’ Aoife pedalled on at Carla’s side, except where the potholes were too deep to allow it.

There was a bevy of lads piling out of the GAA clubhouse, still pink from running non-stop for seventy minutes, though their short haircuts were spiky from cold showers. A couple of them were in Aoife’s school. She slowed as she overtook them. ‘Hey, Ciaran, how’d it go?’

‘Crushed them in the last minute – they were one point ahead, eleven–twelve to them, but then we scored a goal.’

‘Who got the goal?’

‘That lad from your year. Shay Foley. He’s pure fast. Burned them off. Zinger of a goal. He’ll be scouted for Mayo when he’s sixteen, I’d say.’ He nodded ahead, to where a tall, black-haired, sun-browned boy walked on alone, long-legged in faded jeans, his Gaelic football kit slung over one shoulder.

‘Really? I didn’t know he was that good.’ The sight of Shay Foley walking by himself vaguely annoyed her. Anyone else would have been in the thick of it, celebrating, but he was such a typical lad from back the bog: silent as the mountains he lived among; utterly unconcerned with social goings on. He’d turned up at Kilduff Secondary only last September, after his school in the Gaeltacht got shut down. In three terms, Aoife had never heard him say one word except in answer to a direct question from a teacher.

As they cycled past him, Carla called out: ‘Well done! Coming to the cinema?’

Shay glanced at her, and kept on walking.

‘I’ll get him to talk to me one day,’ said Carla.

‘Good luck with that. Why bother? He’s pure anti-social.’

‘Gorgeous looking, though. You know both his parents are dead?’

‘Seriously?’ Now Aoife felt bad for having bitched about him. She glanced over her shoulder; he had turned into the path behind the shop, taking the short cut to the square. ‘You never told me that.’

‘Sorry – only found out last week. It was my granddad’s birthday and we were putting flowers on his grave, and my nan pointed out the Foley grave behind. Both in the same year, when Shay was five.’

‘Oh God . . . Car crash?’

‘Don’t think so. Nan said the mam died in an accident all right, but his dad died later of something fatal.’

‘Bad. Does he live with his grandparents or something?’

‘No – still on the parents’ farm. He has a much older brother. Come into the shop – I’m busting for a Coke, you can share it.’

‘Sure, I need to get that bar for Zoe.’

There was a queue for the till and the twenty-seater from the community centre had its engine running when they came out. Sinead was sitting near the front with Lois; she rolled her pale green eyes when Aoife apologized for forgetting the card. ‘Sure, if you’re that skint, don’t worry about it . . .’

‘I’m not. I have it at home, I’ll give it you Monday.’

‘Like I said, don’t worry about it. Find a seat. There aren’t any left together. Pity you didn’t get here sooner.’

Lois grinned fakely at Aoife, all apple-red cheeks and frizzy black hair. Aoife grinned hugely back again. After the school talent show, Lois had accused Aoife of being an attention-seeking anorexic who wrote crap songs. Lois was a lot more direct in her insults than Sinead.

Annoyingly, Sinead was telling the truth – there were only two seats left: one across the aisle beside Killian, and the other near the back beside . . . For a moment Aoife was so surprised she just stood staring blankly up the coach. Then someone tugged at her dress and the blond, silver-eyed builder’s son was smiling up at her, patting the seat beside him.

She kicked him lightly in the leg. ‘Come on, gorgeous, move your arse up there next to Shay Foley. Me and Carla want to sit together.’

He scowled, making a big show of rubbing his shin. ‘I wasn’t asking
you
, Ginger. I was saving this seat for the girl in the sexy orange dress.’ He tossed his floppy hair, and turned his boy-band smile on Carla.

‘Oh . . .’ And Carla spectacularly disintegrated before Aoife’s eyes, grinning like a psycho, soft brown hair standing out like an electric charge had been shot through it.

Aoife couldn’t resist kicking Killian again – not so lightly.

‘
Oi, bog off!
’

‘Sorry, Carla, bad luck – looks like he’s superglued to the seat. You’ll have to put up with him.’

‘Sit down, everyone!’ Sinead’s father was backing in alarming fits and starts across the potholed square. ‘Oh, for . . . Where’s first gear on this crate?’ He stalled and restarted, with a hideous scraping of the gears and a stink of burning clutch. ‘Everyone, sit down!’

Shay Foley was plugged into his phone, earphones in, eyes closed. He was occupying the aisle seat, and showed no sign of moving over. His knees almost touched the seat in front, and Aoife had to clamber over them, tugging down the short pale green dress. The bus kangarooed forwards, and she nearly fell on top of him. In a quick reaction, without even opening his eyes, he grasped her arm and steadied her.

She murmured, vaguely mortified, ‘Thanks.’

He didn’t answer but remained with his head tilted back, listening to his music. A thread of song drifted from his earphones.
Little Lion Man
 . . . Mumford and Sons – cool London folk. She glanced back down towards the front. Carla had turned to see was she all right – anxious but still looking like the cat that’s got the cream. Aoife smiled back; a reassuring wave of her hand. Then sat down and pressed her forehead to the glass.

The bus lurched off down the Clonbarra road, past the garage, then the turning to Aoife’s own boreen. Fields of yellow irises juddered by. She tried to retreat to that place in her head where she created her songs, but couldn’t stop thinking about her first day in junior infants. A little boy with white-blond curls had been chasing a plump girl with a worm, and Aoife had taken it off him and stuffed it down his shorts, sending Killian in pant-wetting hysterics to the teacher. That’s when her and Carla’s friendship had started, and it had just gone on and on, no reason to change it. She swallowed and the tight gold chain pressed against her throat – she pushed a finger under it, running it back and forth, looking towards the hazy mountains. A faint pale line wriggled across their slopes – a distant dusty track. She thought of the fairy road, and herself and Carla in their wings, when the games they had played were so simple.

A light touch on her arm.

She moved her elbow away.

Another touch – this time, definitely deliberate. Slowly Aoife turned her head. Shay was looking straight at her. ‘Don’t worry about your friend,’ he said, in the soft rain-washed accent of the mountains. ‘Killian’s only a gobshite but she’s well able for him, more than you think.’

Aoife stared. He smiled suddenly. The deep curve in his upper lip flattened out when he smiled.

‘You see, I do talk,’ he said. ‘If there’s something needs saying.’

It was Aoife who couldn’t speak. She just kept on staring at Shay. How had she never looked at him before? Properly looked at him, that is? Apparently unperturbed by her scrutiny, he continued to gaze back at her, still with that same smile. His jaw was slanted, and his cheekbones strong and slightly flushed under his sun-browned skin. His eyes were dark green mottled with chestnut – the colour of woodland growth; his eyelashes were as black as his thick close-cropped hair. He had a single silver earring, worn near the top of his ear. He was wearing the Mayo jersey, and a well-worn leather belt slotted through his faded jeans.

The bus lurched wildly, and Aoife managed to drag her eyes away from him. Sinead’s father had taken a sudden right turn, swinging the bus up a steep, narrow road towards the mountains.

‘
Dad, where are you going?
’

‘Settle down, Sinead. There’s a short cut up here to the back road – we’ll get there faster this way.’ The bus climbed steeply between dry-stone walls, brambles squealing painfully along the paintwork.

Shay said under his breath, ‘We won’t be getting anywhere this way.’

Aoife turned to him again, frowning. ‘Are you sure?’

‘This here is an old bog road – it’ll take us straight west into the mountains.’

‘Crap. Go up front and tell him, before he goes any further.’

He shrugged. ‘Sure, there’s no talking to the likes of Tom Ferguson when he gets a notion in his head. Whatever wild thing led him astray, he’ll have to come to his senses by himself.’ He stuck his earphones back in and closed his eyes.

Aoife stared out of the window, annoyed and not knowing what to do. How could Shay Foley so casually predict disaster and then just wash his hands of the whole problem? She was right about him, he was anti-social. He had no reason to think Thomas Ferguson wouldn’t listen – it was just a lame excuse not to get involved.

Sinead was on her feet, strawberry-blonde ponytail trembling with indignation. ‘Dad, are you sure about this?’