The Story of Before (27 page)

‘So?’ he asked.

I breathed in hard, giving myself a few more seconds to figure out if I was doing the right thing. What good would telling him about the letter actually do? Maybe it’d be better to leave
it and not say anything at all. He leaned his head to one side and started chewing on a yellow jelly he’d pulled from his pocket. I let the bag of groceries I’d bought for Mam slip to
the ground.

‘I got a letter from David,’ I blurted, the words tumbling out before they’d even formed in my head.

He chewed for a while before he spoke. ‘Oh yeah? Nice of him. Never bothered writin’ to me, the spa.’

‘I didn’t ask him to. I mean, I wasn’t expecting him to write.’

‘All excited, were ye?’

‘No. I’m just saying I was . . . you know . . . surprised.’

Aidan Farrell came belting into the lane from Hillcourt Rise, slapping his thigh and yelling, ‘Giddy up! Giddy up!’ He shut up when he saw us, walking past with his head down,
embarrassed that we’d seen his little display.

‘So. What was O’Dea sayin’?’ Shayne asked when he’d gone. ‘Bet he hates the place.’

‘No, he likes it. Made loads of friends and all, he said.’

‘Ha ha, sure. Ye wouldn’t want to believe anythin’ he says. Probably shittin’ himself every night, bawlin’ his eyes out for his mammy.’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. But . . . well . . . he did tell me something that I don’t believe . . .’

‘Yeah? What was that?’

‘That you pushed him out of the tree.’

He turned his head and spat, leaving a line of yellow-tinged phlegm on the ground. ‘Fuck’s sake! Ye know why he’s doin’ this, don’t ye? Just loves stirrin’
shit.’

‘He said you got mad because he climbed the tree quicker than you, and you pushed him.’

‘Fuckin’ O’Dea. I’ll bleedin’ burst him when I see him, I will.’

‘Please don’t say anything. Just leave it. I wasn’t supposed to tell you.’

‘Bet he knew right fuckin’ well ye’d go and tell me. Loves pissin’ me off, so he does.’

‘What really happened that day?’

‘I dunno, do I? I wasn’t as high up as him. Maybe he fell, maybe he threw himself, I dunno! I don’t fuckin’ care, OK!’

He kicked at the wheels of his bike then bent to pick a few pebbles from the ground, twisting his face up and firing them over the wall.

‘I better go,’ I said. ‘I’m not even meant to be talking to you.’

‘Who said?’

‘My dad. After you threw the can at our car. He said I wasn’t to be hanging around with you.’

‘That’s the reason he gave ye, is it?’

‘What do you mean?’

He flung more pebbles into the air, trying to clear the telephone wires that criss-crossed over the lane above our heads.

‘Ye know why he told ye to stay away from me, don’t ye?’

I shook my head.

‘He’s mad ’cos he knows I seen him and me ma again and he’s afraid I’ll be rattin’ on him. They’re at it, ye know, the two of them.’

The ground felt hard and cold under my feet. ‘At it?’

‘Yeah. At it. Ye know . . . I seen them.’

I put my hands on my hips, trying hard to ignore how I felt inside. ‘What exactly did you see?’

‘What do ye think?’

‘I don’t believe you. My dad’s not even around here much now, anyway, so he wouldn’t have the time. He’s working way down the country. He’s gone before we get
up and it takes him ages to get home. He doesn’t even have dinner with us any more he gets home so late. You’re making it all up.’

He laughed out loud and pushed his face close to mine. ‘Keep tellin’ yerself that, why don’t ye? Takes him ages to get home, does it? Takes his time down the woods around
Westgorman, ye mean. Yeah. That’s where they go. I seen them. I seen them all the time. Where do ye think I go on me bike when I’m mitchin’ from school? He’d be home for his
din dins a lot earlier if me ma wasn’t waitin’ for him up the back roads every evenin’.’

For a second, I thought he’d punched me in the chest. I could hardly breathe and I felt all woozy, the way I did when I went too high on a swing, or slid head first down the stairs so fast
I got carpet burn on my stomach.

It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t.

While we were eating our macaroni cheese or our beans on toast, was Dad really ‘at it’ with Liz Lawless in the woods in Westgorman?

This was the something bad. I knew it.

It was like a wave. I could see it. Rolling towards us in the distance, gathering speed and strength as it approached. Coming closer and closer. Very soon it would rise up over us and come
crashing down, washing everything away for good.

Everything we owned. Everything we loved. Everything we were.

I started walking fast down the lane. Shayne followed and caught up, pedalling slowly beside me until we reached the estate. I kept my head down and didn’t say a word.

‘Ye needn’t be blamin’ me,’ he said.

‘Just shut up and leave me alone.’ I started running across the green.

‘I was only tellin’ ye!’ he shouted after me. ‘I thought ye should know. Isn’t it better ye know the truth? Isn’t that why ye told me what O’Dea said in
the letter?’

I stopped dead, almost toppling over myself. I swung around.

‘Is it?’ I yelled, not caring if anyone else could hear. ‘Is it really?’

He was cycling on the road now, sailing along with his hands swinging down by his sides and his hair waving out from his head. He grinned over at me and I ran towards him, standing on the edge
of the green as he swerved over and pulled the brakes. ‘Well, that’s what everyone says, isn’t it?’ he snarled, showing his teeth. He reached over and grabbed my arm,
pressing his fingers into my flesh. ‘Ye know I’m tellin’ the truth. And ye know I was right to tell ye, don’t ye?’

‘Let go of me!’

He gripped even tighter and laughed as I tried to free myself. It was only when I stopped resisting that his fingers relaxed their hold and I broke away. I rubbed at my arm as I galloped across
the green, feeling the row of half-moon-shaped marks his nails had left in my skin.

When I got home, Dad was out in the back garden with Kev, clipping dead bits from the creeper that grew up one side of the tree. Kev stood close beside him, trying to imitate every move Dad
made. I watched them through the kitchen window while Mam rummaged in cupboards and clattered around in the cutlery drawer. Dad lifted Kev up and sat him on a branch of the tree, holding his body
tight in his big hands to make sure he wouldn’t fall. Kev kicked his legs and his wellies fell off and he laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. Dad turned around and saw me
looking, and he pointed at Kev and grinned, as if to show me what a great time they were having and what a truly wonderful dad he was. When he took Kev in his arms and began swinging him up in the
air, I had to turn away. A horrible taste came into my mouth and I thought I was going to get sick.

‘Have you got those eggs, Ruth?’ Mam asked me as she poured a mound of sugar into a glass bowl of melted margarine.

‘Eggs?’

‘Yes. Eggs. They did have some in Mealy’s?’

Only then I remembered I’d left the bag of groceries in the lane.

‘I . . . um . . . I don’t know what I did with them.’

‘You what? What are you talking about? Where did you put them?’

‘I . . . I must’ve lost them.’

‘Lost them? Sure how could you lose half a dozen eggs?’

The back door opened. Kev pushed his way in through Dad’s legs.

‘I . . . I don’t feel well, Mam,’ I said, watching Dad wipe his feet. ‘I think I’ll have to go up to bed.’

‘But what about this cake? I can’t make it without eggs.’

‘Ask . . . ask Bridie for some. She always has loads.’ I made my way out to the hall.

‘What’s up with her at all, at all?’ I heard Mam say to Dad.

‘Ah, just let her lie down,’ he said, wiping his feet. ‘She doesn’t look the best. Like a ghost, she was, looking out the window. Fierce pale altogether. Fierce
pale.’

When I heard Dad leaving the house the next morning, I lay in bed and prayed that he’d surprise us all and be home in time for dinner. I imagined him coming in the door
and Mam being all delighted he was home so early, and fussing about when she realized she’d have to hurry up and get his chops under the grill. But that evening his chair sat empty at the top
of the table and I watched the others stuffing their food in their mouths while I picked at mine and tried to force it down. I didn’t care how delicious macaroni cheese was; if Dad could only
be home to eat dinner with us, I’d gladly have put up with liver.

I started watching out the sitting room window in the afternoons, to see if I could spot Liz making her way out of the estate and down the hill to wait for the bus to Westgorman. I saw her once,
belted into a shiny black ‘wet-look’ mac that made her look like one of the sea lions in the zoo. She wore her knee-high boots and wiggled her bum as she trotted alongside the green,
but she was too far away for me to see if her face was dolled up like she was going on a date.

I knew deep down I wouldn’t be able to keep the stuff about Dad and Liz inside for ever, no matter how hard I tried. It was bad enough hearing about The Kiss and seeing them in The
Ramblers together and knowing the real reason behind Dad’s ‘breath of air’ on Christmas night and all. But this news about them being ‘at it’ in the woods was another
thing entirely. The something bad was coming closer, and even though I couldn’t stop it crashing down, I felt I should at least send some sort of signal that it was on its way.

The Friday we got our Easter holidays, I expected Dad might try and be home early and that I’d bring Kev down to meet him at the bottom of the hill and I could at least
pretend everything was normal. But when Mam told me there was no need to lay a place for him at the table, a wave of dread rose up from my stomach and down again, and I had to hold on to the back
of a chair. ‘Is Dad not coming home early? It’s Friday,’ I said, trying to keep my voice as steady as I could.

‘I know, but he’s not able to manage it this evening,’ Mam said. ‘He has another job to look at when he finishes up today. Strange on a Friday evening. But sure if
someone wants a price for a job they need doing, you don’t tell them you have to be home for your dinner, do you?’

‘So what time will he be home at then?’

‘God knows. It’s some place even further out he has to go to, he said. So it could be all hours by the time he gets back.’ She saw the look on my face. ‘I know you miss
Dad. I do too, love. But he has to take the work where he can get it. This job he’s pricing, he said it’s a big one. He said he might even have to take someone on if he gets it.’
She wiped her hands down her apron. ‘But I have a little treat for you all.’ She smiled. ‘Fish fingers. And chips. And Angel Delight for after.’

I was puzzled. ‘I thought you said fish fingers were muck?’

‘Did I? Sure what harm can they do once in a blue moon?’

‘You did. You said they were the sort of thing Liz Lawless would have.’

‘Well . . . maybe I did. But there’s a difference in having them the odd time and having them every day of the week.’

‘But how do you know how often she makes them? How do you know anything about her?’

‘Well . . . I know what I see. I have eyes. That woman spends more time on her face than she does standing at a stove, that’s for certain. And sure you’d only have to look at
young Shayne to know he’s not fed properly. All pasty and hollow-eyed, he is. I’m surprised he even has the strength to be riding that bike around the place day in and day out. Chips
for breakfast, dinner and tea, no doubt. And as for school, sure Mel says he’s forever skipping off after lunch and going off on his bike. God knows what he gets up to. But sure it’s
not as if she cares. I mean . . .’

She babbled on and on while she took the fish fingers out from under the grill and turned them over. I laid out the knives and forks, but my mind sort of switched off and I didn’t even
check if I’d put them down the right way. I couldn’t think straight. He was watching me. The man in the tree. I knew it. Waiting to see how far I’d go, if I’d say the words
that were in my head. He could tell exactly what I was thinking.

He knew all about the something bad.

I watched Mam arrange the fish fingers on the plates. She gave us three each and spread them out in a fan shape, tipping a mound of crispy chips beside them. She told me to call the others and
they came running, Sandra with Kev in her arms and Mel with a moan on his face because Mam hadn’t timed the dinner in line with the programme he was in the middle of watching. He attacked his
food, cramming a whole fish finger in his mouth in one go. Mam had to tell him to slow down, that it didn’t matter how quickly he ate his dinner, she wasn’t going to allow him back in
to watch telly until everyone else was finished too. He groaned, looking at my plate and wailing that if he had to wait for me, he wouldn’t get to watch anything all evening.

I’d hardly touched my food. It wasn’t that I didn’t like what Mam had made, it was just that I kept thinking about the reason we were having fish fingers and chips in the first
place. It was because Dad wasn’t here. And Dad wasn’t here because he was, at that very moment, probably ‘at it’ with Liz Lawless. How could I sit here munching and
crunching when all that was going on up in the dark woods?

While Mam was busy making sure Kev got his chips into his mouth instead of on the floor, I signalled to Mel that he could help himself to my dinner if he wanted. His eyes lit up and he slid my
food onto his plate, demolishing it in seconds, delighted that he’d managed to get two dinners
and
speed up his return to the telly. He begged to be allowed to bring his dessert in
with him and when Mam said, ‘All right then, go on’, he ran off, with Sandra close behind him carrying their bowls of Angel Delight.

‘The Lord save us!’ Mam said with a jump when we heard the sitting room door slam. ‘Could they be any louder? Thank God your father isn’t here. They’d know all
about it then.’

I swallowed hard. ‘Mam,’ I said, feeling the man’s eyes on my back. ‘I . . . I don’t think Dad’s off pricing a job.’