In fairness though, I would rather see Catlin happy than lonely, and she shines around Lon recently. Like a pregnant woman or a bride. Just glowing. His hand on the small of her back, helping her off the bus, as though she were a princess or a child. I’m trying to be happy for my sister. She likes to be adored. I have no frame of reference for that.
At five to nine she’s still out at the bus stop. I stomp out, to bring her in before the start of class. I hate to be the sex police, but I don’t want her to get in trouble either. Not so early into our time here.
‘You OK, Mad?’ she asks.
I nod my head. ‘Just wrecked. Come on.’
‘It was a long, weird night,’ she says, ignoring my hurry-up eyebrows.
Lon reaches out and actually ruffles my hair. ‘Cheer up, Madeline. It might never happen.’
‘What, finding a tortured fox corpse in the woods and not getting any sleep?’
Lon’s face falls a little, then rises again. Like a villain in a computer game who just. Won’t. Die.
‘Welcome to the country, girls. It’s dog-eat-fox.’
Catlin laughs. I glare. He smiles again. ‘You need to learn to take a joke, Madeline. It’s fine.’
It isn’t fine, but I make the corners of my mouth turn up at him. Oona comes up behind me, links my arm. Her hair is still a little wet from her morning swim. I can see droplets suspended in the strands, as small and perfect as beads of rain on spider webs, shimmering in the ice-white winter sunshine. I wonder what she uses in her hair.
‘The driver really bombed it today,’ I tell her. ‘I could hear every part of the bus clinking.’
‘We survived,’ she says, ‘and that’s the main thing.’ I feel the warmth of her arm on mine, right through my coat and jumper. ‘Do not worry, Madeline.’ She says my name as though it were a pastry. Ma-deh-len. She makes it sound so soft.
‘How was your swim this morning?’ I ask her, and she looks up at me, and she says: ‘Beautiful.’
A thud inside my insides at the word.
Swimming is like breathing for Oona. It isn’t exercise. She really needs it. She’s always coming in with soaking hair and she never catches cold.
Some of us are fridge magnets and some of us are food.
What does that mean?
It doesn’t make any sense.
We catch up with the others. Oona grins at them widely. She has this kind of smile that’s down and sideways but really, really big. Like a fat half-moon is climbing up her face. Like it could crack in two from all the happy. It shouldn’t be attractive but it is. I wonder if she wanted to catch up with them. If I was being boring. I scroll down through my brain for something interesting. There is the fox, but I don’t want to talk about the fox. It’s weird and creepy. I don’t want to be corpse-girl. Know a witch. In the dark it seemed so utterly possible, but now, in the daytime, reality feels far more firm and solid. I need to have a good chat with Mamó, I think. Gather data, establish all the facts.
School passes quickly, and lunchtime isn’t half as dragged-out awkward. Catlin doesn’t mention the fox either. Which is weird, because she’s normally the one to make small things more dramatic than they are. Maybe she’s too busy being happy with Lon. She hops the fence and goes off with him for almost all of break, and when they come back her hair’s a little mussed and she widens her eyes at me in a way that screams ‘NEWS’.
She pulls down the collar of her school shirt a little, and there’s a bright red mark on her neck, about the size of a leech. Of course. Of course he would, like, brand her. She looks all proud. My stomach dips a little. I don’t know why I feel so weird about this thing. It’s not like I am jealous. Or that he’s done anything I can put my finger on. I just have a sense of … I don’t know what. Like doom, but not quite doom. So maybe douche? The niggle lives in the same part of me that needs to put salt under people’s beds. The stupid part. The part I’d like to quash.
‘We went to the stock room in Donoghue’s and … he kissed me. Also hand stuff. It was just like my dream, only he wasn’t a fireman or a rock star or a corrupt policeman …’ (Wait, what?!!) Catlin murmurs to me. I look to see if anybody heard. I swallow down bile. I can see it though, through a vintage filter in her head. A sepia romance. Catlin really likes the look of things. The sound of them. The story. The details and the trappings matter a lot.
When school is over Catlin stays behind. ‘I’m going to hang out with Lon for a bit,’ she says. ‘I’ll tell you everything later.’
‘Does Mam know?’ I ask.
‘She’ll be grand. She wants us to make friends.’ This much is true.
I tell her to have fun and tell me everything.
I’m not so sure I want to hear it though.
Beside Oona, I watch my twin’s body curl into Lon’s. He crooks a smile of ownership at her. The two of them get smaller. Her body melts to his and fades from sight.
18
Creeping Savory
(for lust, digestion)
Mamó’s been away a lot since that long night. We’ve had some people come, and knock and wait, and sigh and leave. Their faces resigned. I still don’t know what sort of help she offers. But I want to. I walked back to the crossroads one evening last week, just to look at it. It felt like there had not been anything there. No menace at all. Just calm.
Catlin and I are heading into the village – Catlin’s meeting Lon (of course she is) and Oona messaged me to go for a walk. Mam drops us halfway there, and, as soon as she’s gone, Catlin turns to me, eyes wide.
‘There’s going to be a youth-club lock-in soon,’ she says. ‘Lon lets them drink in his pub, and nobody says anything because it’s probably safer than the alternative.’
‘What, not drinking?’
‘No, like going up to the mountains where they found all those dead women and drinking there.’
‘Jesus,’ I say slowly. ‘You’re not wrong.’
‘Yup,’ she says. ‘Even murder clouds have silver linings.’
We traipse past the butchers and the shop that has a post office inside it. The squat, dark church is there, behind black wrought-iron railings.
Catlin turns in. ‘I want to light a candle.’ She’s halfway to the door by the time I roll my eyes and follow.
‘Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?’ I moan at her. I am not gone on churches – they’re too close to weapons for my liking.
This church is small and fat. It has thick dark walls with stripes of bright white marble. I think they’re fossils. Things that lived before there was a church. I head in after her. It smells of Mr Sheen and fresh-cut flowers. The pews are honey dark and shining. The stained-glass windows filter out the light so it’s really dim. I trail my hand along them as I look for Catlin. She’s huddled to the left of the altar, crouched towards a table covered in dripping candles, red and white and trailing wax like tears.
Above the candles, in a little alcove, is a squat white thing. A motto is mosaiced over its head.
‘Our Lady of Ballyfrann,’ I read.
‘They say that she’ll protect you if you need it.’ Catlin’s face is grave. Her eyes are focused on the lump of wood. I can make out the curve of face and head.
‘Who says that?’
‘The priest. Father Byrne.’
I nod my head. Our Lady of Ballyfrann looks like a maggot with a human head. There’s something strange about her, but a power too. I breathe in the waxy air, thick with frankincense, and wonder what my twin is thinking. Why would she need protection, and from what?
‘She didn’t do a great job with all those other girls that got murdered,’ I comment, shrugging.
‘Maybe they didn’t ask,’ my sister says. Her eyes are staring up, shining with reflected candle flame. Suddenly I shiver.
‘Madeline,’ she says, ‘this place. Do you feel … scared here ever?’
‘All the time.’
She reaches out to hold my hand. ‘Me too. I don’t know why … I have so many reasons to be happy …�
�
‘It could be the mutilated fox?’ I suggest.
‘It totally could be that.’ She smiles her Catlin smile at me. ‘I’ll just say one quick Hail Mary and we can get out of here.’ I see her lips trace the familiar words. The wood of the statue is dappled with shadows moving in the candlelight.
Something here is wrong.
I feel it too.
The daylight, when it comes, is a relief.
‘It was really dark in there. Even for a church,’ I say to Catlin.
‘Yup. It’s beautiful though, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ I say. It’s what she wants to hear.
Catlin checks her phone.
‘Shit. Eight messages from Lon. He’ll be raging I’m late.’
‘You’re, like, five seconds late. He’ll get over it,’ I tell her.
‘I don’t know. I don’t want him to think I’m rude,’ she says. ‘He treats me like such a laaaaaaaady.’
‘You are a laaaaaaaady,’ I tell her, as she runs towards the pub, almost knocking over a bin. This is the good thing about Ballyfrann. Everywhere is runnable. Except the castle.
Oona waves. She’s wearing a navy pea coat, standing beside the old petrol station. Her face looks fresh. A sort of glisten-blush. She asks me where my sister is. I tell her that Catlin’s off to see Lon. She makes a little motion with her mouth.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘I don’t like Lon,’ she tells me. ‘I’ve heard some things. Your sister should be careful. I feel he is a … how to put it … prick.’ She pronounces it preek. It sounds so classy.
‘He is a preek,’ I tell her. We have so much in common, me and Oona. It’s kind of amazing. ‘He is probably the worst man who even lived. Bar none. Why do you hate him? Is it because of his smug face? What have you heard?’
‘No. Not exactly. Just things about him being, uh, obnoxious. And things.’
‘What things?’ I ask, remembering what Layla said before, up in the mountains. About not wanting to worry him. The grim twist of her mouth. I wish that there was something concrete. A reason I could put my finger on. She told me to tell Brian about the two of them. Maybe I should. I need to talk to him when I get a chance.
‘I’m not sure. I don’t know.’
I try to meet her eye, to press her further, but she looks away, eyes up to the white sky. Neither of us wants to go to Donoghue’s in case we’d run into Lon and Catlin. I don’t think he’s working, but his flat is right above it. Catlin’s never been there, but she thinks that today might be the day. Which creeps me out a little and I don’t want front-row seats. Oona takes me to a little bakery with tables in the back. It’s called ‘Collinses’ and is, unsurprisingly, run by the Collinses. There are about a hundred of them living here, apparently. Five generations.
‘Wow!’ I say, thinking of how little we know about my dad’s family. Once he died, they left us to ourselves. ‘That must be something.’
‘It is hard to make friends with a Collins, I think,’ Oona tells me. ‘They value family so much. We are outsiders. I went to Charley’s house the other day, and even though she invited me and everything, I didn’t feel like I was welcome there. They glared at me, you know?’
‘That’s terrible,’ I tell her. Then say, ‘Mamó glares at me all the time.’
‘That’s different,’ she says. ‘She glares at everyone. It’s fairer.’
‘What do you think she …?’ I start to ask, but I don’t know what I’m asking, how to put it. The woman plonks the teapot and mugs down, and we go quiet. Wait for her to go.
Oona takes her tea black with a little spoon of honey stirred into it. She makes a happy sound at the first sip. I smile at her, and she smiles back.
There is a pause.
‘We went inside the church,’ I say, for something to say. ‘Myself and Catlin. She wanted to light a candle.’
‘To Our Lady of Ballyfrann?’
‘Yes. What’s the story with that thing? It’s so strange-looking.’
‘My dad grew up here, and he said to me that it was older than the town. The story is that there was a farmer with a withered hand who lived here and he went out cutting turf and found that thing, and when he touched it, his hand healed up, so he took it to the priest and he decided it must be the Virgin Mary. Apparently there were a few more miracles as well.’
‘Why haven’t I heard of it so? You’d think it’s be all over the Internet, or at least on postcards and things, like Knock or Ballinspittle.’
‘My father says people here like their secrets kept,’ Oona says.
Do you have secrets, Oona? I wonder. I flinch a little as she reaches out to pick a bit of something off my shoulder. It’s unexpected. Why would her lovely hands want to touch me?
We leave the shop and walk out past the pub, over the roads towards the mountains, and talk and talk. After a while, she links her arm through mine and rests her head a little on my shoulder. I can feel her soft hair against my cheek. It’s still a little damp. But she is warm. A pleasant sort of moisture. She smells like lavender, fresh water. So easy to breathe deep. I’m hyper-aware of her, the movement of her body. Her warmth beside my own. Her little face. Underneath my skin is almost humming. Like I’m about to start collecting things, but not so worried-nervous. Leaves crunch and shine beneath our feet as we walk on. It must have rained while we were drinking tea.
I look down at my hands. The cuticles are rough, the nails are chipped. Nothing about me is good enough for anyone. When Oona sits, she crosses her legs twice, around and around again, curling in on herself like an ampersand. She’s different to every other person that I’ve met. There’s just … this thing about her. This warmth, this depth. I want more and more.
We walk until the stars are in the sky. Until Mam rings to ask me where I am.
19
Ragged Robin
(muscle strain and love spells)
Oona’s mother drops me home. She looks like an older version of Oona, but taller, more angular. She asks how I am settling in to the village. I ask her the same. We both say grand. She has some paint on her jeans, and I remember she’s an artist, ask her about painting. She loves the landscape here, the colours, she says. So stark. Oona has less to say to me when her mother is there. They speak in English to each other though, for my benefit, I assume.
When I get off at the driveway, Elodie Noone tells me to ‘be careful’.
I laugh and thank her, but her face is still. Oona is in the passenger seat, so I can’t tell if she waves goodbye to me as the car pulls off. I hope she did. I waved to her. Awkwardly, like everything I do.
Catlin and Mam are already at the kitchen table. I feel the heat against my night-cold cheeks. We must have walked for miles and miles. I try to keep the smile off my face. The warmth in my heart is just for me right now. I’m not ready to voice it.
‘I think she met a boy, but she won’t tell me anything,’ Mam says. Her voice is high. Mam gets all excited when she suspects there’s gossip. It’s annoying and adorable.
‘Did she now?’ I put the kettle on and get some biscuits.
Mam rests her hands on her chin and looks between the two of us. Catlin tells her little bits of what happened. She doesn’t say Lon’s name. Or that he’s older. Just that they met, he showed her places in the village he likes and then he bought her tea. They held hands walking all day long, she says. He didn’t once let go.
Her voice is low and strangely sweet. The top button of her blouse is undone now, and she’s rolled up her sleeves. Just a bit of artful disarray. She laughs a bit, when she is telling the story. Looks out the window. Says, ‘I feel all special.’
As if she wasn’t special all along. I never think of Catlin doubting that about herself. But maybe lately, with all of this change, she needed this. If I didn’t know who he was, if I hadn’t met him yet, I think I’d like the idea of Lon. The way she sees him. Quiet and sound and tall and dark and kind. A proper human being, and not a creep who’s mostly mad
e of things that look cool from the outside.
‘He held me so tightly, Maddy. Like he was never going to let me go. It felt like in my dreams,’ she says to us. ‘It’s so romantic. Like, he is literally the man of my dreams.’
I roll my eyes. Mam tells me to ‘lighten up’, that ‘my turn will come soon’. As if love were a turn on one of those little rides for kids outside a supermarket. She doesn’t understand me, not at all.
I think about the fox between two roads. Someone asked for something. And could that something be my lovely sister? I don’t like the weight of secrets on me. I haven’t been able to articulate what happened between me and Mamó that night. Not properly. Not even to myself.
But it was something. The law of conservation of energy states that it can be neither created nor destroyed. The charge I felt – it had to come from somewhere. And was that heat the little fox’s life?
Nora Ginn.
Helen Groarke.
Bridget Hora.
Amanda Shale.
I think of Lon. His dull, copper-penny eyes. His wide, white smile. The smattering of stubble he contrives. He looks so bland, so normal. I don’t get it. Though Catlin doesn’t either. Me and Oona. Our ‘friendship’ – it isn’t just a friendship. I think that we both know that, but it is up to me to say the words, and I can’t. No more than magic. Some things are too big to let be true.
Mam and Catlin, with me joining in, of course talk about Lon until bedtime. Catlin goes through every interaction since we moved to Ballyfrann, framing them so differently to me that it’s hard to know who’s telling the truth. It’s all one picture; we’re probably just using very different filters. Or something.
He texts her goodnight kisses before bed. She kisses her phone, and I call her a fool and she laughs at me.
‘I feel like a fool,’ she says. ‘I feel like I’m losing brain cells every time I’m near him. It’s like he’s kicking out the stuff that normally lives inside my head and replacing it with all of this new happy.’
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