Nurse Bryant peered through the counter, a bloated finger poking at the glass.
“Give us six of them ham rolls, and a black pudding, three kilos of lunch tongue and, ach, them pork pies with egg look wile lovely. Give us six of them and all.”
“Right ye are,” Dymphna said.
The sausages in her apron threatened to seep through the nylon as she wrapped the cold pig flesh as quickly as she could.
Being an unwed mother was disgrace enough, but to admit she had been at it with a Proddy? That her unborn child might be tainted with bastard Orange blood? Her mammy would beat seven shades of shite out of her! Especially as Fionnuala’s great-uncle was a bishop!
“Here ye are now, missus,” Dymphna said, hauling the load over the counter.
“Ta, love,” Nurse Bryant heaved.
“Ach, sure, not at all,” Dymphna mechanically replied.
Nurse Bryant shot the sniggering trio at the Spaghetti Hoops a disapproving glance as she struggled off towards the check-out lines.
Rory’s smirk blossomed into a sneer as he slouched closer to the counter.
“What’s the craic, hi?” he asked.
Dymphna shrugged, confused by the sneer.
“Me mates was just wondering, like...” Rory said. He struggled to suppress either tears or laughter.
“What?” she asked, feeling Fidelma’s eyes boring into the strings of her smock. The remnants of her well-gnawed fingernails tapped uncertainly atop the blood-stained counter top.
“Ye were one bleedin deadly shag the other week,” Rory said.
“Aye, and?” Dymphna said, lips taut and blood seeping into her face.
Her hand shot to her hip, eyes all defiance and Spice Girls girl power.
Their songs no longer debuted at number one on the pop charts, but sex was still power, as their videos had taught her.
“Ye wouldn’t mind spreading yer legs for me mates the night, sure?” he said.
She leaned over the greasy glass and hissed into his face: “I’ll kick ye in yer fecking bollacks, ye hateful gobshite! Shaggin you was like rolling around in a bag of sick!”
She grabbed a thick pork sausage and shoved it under his nose. “This is what I was hoping for, ye see.”
She flung the sausage into the deep freeze and grabbed a cocktail frank. “This is what I got, but!”
“Aye, and I’ve a serious dose of knob rot from the manky cunt butter of yer filthy greaseflaps!”
“Clear on off out of here now before I give ye a swipe in the snotter box and call the security on ye, ye mingin manky cunt ye!”
“Mingin swamp donkey slapper!”
Rory and his hooligans raced through the aisles, brays of laughter and scattered tins in their wake. Fidelma teleported to her side from the convenience cheeses.
“Ye must be mortified,” Fidelma said. “Bleedin Orange scum!”
“Ach, go on and feck yerself, ye clarty wee gee-bag! I'm away off to the break room!”
Off she stomped and flung herself into the break room, where she wrenched open her locker and shoved the sausages into her handbag. She delved into her hip pocket and tugged out a packet of unfiltered Rothman’s.
She puffed away, wondering if she were pregnant and, more importantly, if Rory were the father. But somehow she knew he was the one, the way a young woman does. To make it official, she would have to get one of those pregnancy tests. She knew exactly where they were, aisle 7A, bottom shelf. She had browsed that aisle during many a break for precisely this eventuality, feigning interest in the foot creams. She stabbed out her fag and headed out of the break room.
Shirley from the Youth Center was at the first cash register, and old Mrs. Heffernan from across the road was at the second. Too proud for shame, there was nothing else for it: Dymphna would just have to shoplift the pregnancy test.
She sidled down the book aisle where nobody, but nobody, ever shopped, slipped the kit into her smock, turned quickly—
And jumped at the sight of her Auntie Ursula staring at her from the birthday card rack, the idiot’s jaw sagging with disbelief. Dymphna’s granny Eda stood at Ursula’s side, staring intently at nothing. Dymphna swiftly pulled herself up to her full five feet ten inches, rearranged her soiled smock and the smirk she always reserved for the scabby toerag ever since those balls had clattered from their cage.
“Ursula,” she said with a dismissive nod.
“Dymphna,” Ursula said weakly.
Dymphna gave her granny an affectionate press of the arm, then flicked her curls and marched off towards the meat and cheese counter.
Ursula stared after her, resisting an uneasy glance at the New Arrivals rack.
“I'm away off for me dinner break,” Dymphna announced over the counter to a startled Fidelma.
“Ye’re only after coming back from yer fag break, sure!”
“I'm away off, I’ve said.”
Dymphna glared menacingly. Fidelma shrank against the cheddar slices.
“The roster, but...” Fidelma managed weakly.
“Ye can shove that bleedin roster up yer arse!” Dymphna announced and whipped down the aisle. She just couldn’t do the test in the staff loos of Top-Yer-Trolly. Even she wasn’t that tacky.
CHAPTER TWO
THE TOILET DOOR SHUDDERED.
“Outta that loo now, you!” Eoin barked from the landing.
Dymphna pulled the chain and shoved the pregnancy kit into the pocket of her work smock. She patted the bulge quickly, then tugged open the door and glared into her 17-year-old brother’s face, which looked, as usual lately, ravaged from drink.
“Ye kyanny wait two bloody seconds, ye narky cunt, ye?” she seethed, clattering him around the head.
“Eff off, you,” Eoin said, his shock of ginger hair and praying mantis limbs slipping into the bog.
The door slammed behind him.
“The shite’s fairly falling from me after them manky sausingers of yers last night,” he yelled from inside.
“After too many pints of beer, more like,” she hollered back.
Brow creased with worry, Dymphna thudded down the stairs. In the sitting room, she stared unseeing at the telly screen. Her lips tugged in desperation on a fag. She ran her fingers slowly over her as-yet-still taut stomach. A wee baby, a wane, was growing there. A wane with Orange bastard blood flowing through its tiny veins.
Eoin swaggered into the room, his sallow eyes bright with malice. Dymphna placed a throw pillow over her stomach and clenched it with apprehension. Did Eoin somehow know of her predicament? Impossible.
“Any bars, hi?” He flopped beside her on the settee, reaching over and teasing her curls.
“Get off of me, you!”
She snapped his hand away from her pink barrettes.
“How’s Liam, hi?”
Dymphna stiffened at the mention of her ex-fella’s name, and a chill of unease crept up her spine; it was as if somehow Eoin knew.
“Ach, sure I mind now,” Eoin said with mock innocence. “Ye caught him with his hand down that slapper Siobhan Feeney’s knickers in the car park of the Top-Yer-Trolly, so ye did. So maybe ye’ve got yerself another fella, like?”
“Are ye simple, you? Shut yer cake-hole!”
He reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out the pregnancy test instructions and brandished the paper with a flourish and a taunt.
“Look what I'm after finding in the bin of the loo. Looks like someone in the house’s been getting her hole filled.”
Dymphna gaped down in horror, her heart plummeting.
“Give it to me now!” she begged, snatching at the paper.
Eoin leaped from the settee and bounced up and down behind their daddy’s armchair, flapping the damning document and roaring with cruel glee. He ducked as the zapper whizzed by his ear.
“Eoin! Don’t tell me mammy!” Dymphna implored, tears abruptly erupting from her eyes and lashing down her cheeks.
She shot across the sitting room and grabbed
at his jersey, missed, and wound her fingers in desperation through his belt loop.
“Give it to me! Give it to me!”
She dragged his guffawing body across the carpeting. Eoin tugged away, jumping up and waving the paper towards the ceiling.
“Teenaged mum! Pregnant slapper!”
Dymphna’s free hand scrabbled up his arm. She grunted as her fingers scratched again and again for the paper. She scuffled and he shoved, they spilled over the coffee table. Something clattered to the floor. Eoin fell on his back and Dymphna pounced with a snarl, pinning him to the floor, screaming into his laughing face and tearing the paper free. Eoin threw her off.
“Ye hateful pig, ye!” Dymphna sobbed, ripping the instructions into tiny pieces and—
—staring down at a sea of pills scattered all over the carpeting. Pink and blue, round and heart-shaped, each with a logo stamped into them, anchors and dolphins, shamrocks and doves. Eoin choked on his own laughter and scrabbled after them.
Well! This explained how he could afford to get blootered every hour God sent. And his new trainers. And mobile phone. Wingers! Or bangers! In other words...
“Eoin! Ye’ve not been dealing bloody Ecstasy?!”
“Eff off, ye slapper,” he scowled. But there was fear in his eyes.
He scooped up all the tablets and shoved them back into the baggy, slipping it into his pocket with a reddening face.
Dymphna eyed him with a mixture of victory and contempt and, most of all, disappointment. Eoin couldn’t meet her eyes.
“Ye were a fecking altar boy three years ago, you! What in the name of feck are ye up to?”
“Dymphna, ye kyanny tell a soul, so ye kyanny,” he said. “I'm dead serious. Them McDaid brothers what is me suppliers is a right hard pack of stokes.”
“The McDaids!”
Dymphna stared in horror. The trio of drug-supplying brothers from Creggan Heights were even worse than her mother’s lot, the Heggartys! “Them McDaids is ex-Provos, ex-IRA members, who would sooner tar and feather ye than have a pint down the pub with ye, and afterwards would put yer kneecaps out just for the craic of it. Ye’re a right bloody headbin!”
“Not a bleeding word of this to anyone, ye hear?” he begged.
“How long have ye been at it?”
“Three weeks now.”
Her older brother Lorcan had always been a headcase, a lunatic. Dymphna thought the sentence at Her Majesty’s Magilligan Prison suited him. Eoin, however, had always been the meek, mild one with the soft voice and altar boy history. The sensible one. She couldn’t fathom what turn of events, what desperation, had led him to such stupidity. Well, she was one to talk... She placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Eoin, if ye—”
He shook her off.
“I don’t wanny talk about it,” he snapped. “Just don’t you be telling wer daddy about me drugs, and I won’t be telling wer mother about yer wane. Deal?”
“Aye, deal,” Dymphna said reluctantly.
She left the house to finish her shift at the Top-Yer-Trolly, dazed and terribly alone, scouring the streets for suitable places to dump an unwanted wane.
£ £ £ £
“What does God be?” Ursula asked, giving Siofra a critical once over.
Honestly, the way Fionnuala dressed the poor wee critter!
“God’s a spirit,” Siofra recited like an automaton. “He hasn’t a body like other men.”
“And where does He live?”
Decked out like a right wee slapper, hem up to her navel, tarty halter top of pink and purple!
“Everywhere.”
It was no wonder her sister was nicking pregnancy tests.
“Can ye see Him?”
Siofra stared at the row of gargoyles.
“Naw, I kyanny, but He can always see me.”
Siofra wriggled on the settee. She didn’t know why she was sat here, prisoner in Ursula’s perplexing new house.
“Does God know all things?”
The sitting room had no carpeting, and those drapes hanging from the ceiling were terrible daft!
“Aye, He’s terrible clever; nothing can be hid from Him. Auntie Ursula?”
Ursula clicked her tongue impatiently.
“What is it, wee girl?”
“What’s all this palaver to do with me first communion? I already learned it in school, sure.”
Ursula looked down, clearly at a loss herself.
“Let’s have a wee look at the frocks,” she decided, pulling out a catalog of First Holy Communion gowns and spreading it open on the refectory crate that the interior designer had insisted would be a perfect addition to the Neo-Gothic-style of the front room and had cost more than Ursula now cared to admit.
At the first sight of the flowing tresses, Siofra clambered up eagerly, bright eyes drinking in the fairy tale finery, bypassing the pound signs and the alarming numbers that followed them.
“Ach, they’re lovely, sure,” Siofra gasped. “Effin class! I want this wan...and this wan...Are you gonny get one for me, Ursula?”
Ursula had told Jed she was going to buy her goddaughter’s gown, but Jed had swiftly put an end to that expense. Ursula had exploded, but now the sight of the girl beaming up, the glint of her mother’s pound- grabbing greed in her eyes, made her think she had been too hard on him.
“Sure, that’s yer mammy and daddy’s job, so it is.”
Ursula slipped the catalog away.
“Now we’re gonny practice yer First Communion,” Ursula said breezily. “That’ll be a right wee laugh, aye?”
“Are ye to be the priest, Ursula?” her goddaughter asked, giggling into her little hand. “Father Ursula? Bleeding deadly!”
“Aye,” Ursula said with a grim smile.
She reached into the carrier bag, avoiding the box of Cadbury’s chocolate Roses which she had bought for her hairdresser Molly’s birthday, and pulled out a package of Jelly Babies. Siofra’s eyes lit up. How she loved these baby-shaped gummy sweeties!
“These Jelly Babies is gonny be the communion wafers,” Ursula said. “Ye kyanny forget, but, that the body of Christ is terrible delicate and terrible holy. Yer wee mouth has never had something as important inside it before. Do ye understand me, wee girl?”
Siofra looked up.
“Under no circumstances,” Ursula warned, “is it to get anywhere near yer teeth. That’s why we’re meant to practice.”
“Why, auntie Ursula? What’s to happen if the body of Christ gets near me teeth?”
“Then,” Ursula explained gravely, “ye’ll spend all eternity in Hell.”
Siofra suddenly felt as if her mouth were overflowing with teeth. Her lower lip trembled.
“How am I meant to chew em, but, without the use of me teeth?”
Ursula felt a throbbing in her skull. She attempted a patient smile.
“The wafers won’t be real Jelly Babies. They’re more like...thin biscuits, like...papadum. Ye’ll have no need to chew them.”
“I need me teeth to eat papadum as well, but!” The tears started to well. “I don’t wanny go to Hell, Ursula.”
“No need to worry, wee girl,” Ursula said in slight alarm. “Once ye receive the Lord, ye’ll understand what I mean. Ye sort of...let it melt on yer tongue, like. It disappears as you be’s walking back to yer place in the pew, praying.”
“What am I to pray for, Ursula? For it to not touch me teeth?”
Ursula ran a harried hand through her bob and frowned down at the simpering wane. She was relieved to hear the phone ring and scuttled into the foyer, lunging for the receiver.
“Ursula?”
“Aye?”
“Roisin here.”
Ursula tensed. Why would her older sister be phoning from her Yank husband’s beach house in Hawaii?
“Aye?” Ursula asked.
“I'm just ringing to let ye know I'm gonny be in Derry in three days.”
“Oh.”
Ursula reeled, while in the lounge a sec
ret smile played on Siofra’s lips.
She would have a right wee laugh with Dymphna about it after.
Terrified of her teeth touching communion wafers? As if! It was a quare aul craic, winding Auntie Ursula up!
“I’ve not been home for ages,” Roisin was saying, “and it’s about time I checked out me pension and seen how much money them Brits owe me.”
“Well, ye’re gonny stay with us,” Ursula decided.
“Ach, naw, I’ll be grand at me mammy’s at 5 Murphy, sure.”
“Catch yerself on, Roisin,” Ursula snorted. “Ye’ll put yer back out tossing and turning on that lumpy aul bed in the back room. Sure, the springs is fairly shooting out of the mattress. We’ve a grand new Queen- sized bed in wer Blue Room, so we do. Never been slept in.”
“...yer Blue Room?” Roisin snorted.
“Ye’ve not yet seen wer new house,” Ursula explained. Siofra fidgeted on the settee and heaved impatient sighs. “Up in Gleneagles. It’s grand and lovely, so it is, a sight for sore eyes. All mod cons. Not like that damp and dingy 5 Murphy.”
“Naw,” Roisin announced flatly.
“And we’re right next to the shopping down the town,” Ursula tried to explain, watching as Siofra delved into the sweetie bag and chewed with wild abandon.
“No need to put yerself out, Ursula,” Roisin insisted. “I wanny go back to the Derry I know, the Moorside I love, and watch the telly in the sitting room where I grew up, sure.”
“Ye’re quare and soft,” Ursula said with a tsk of contempt. “Ye’d need a microscope to see that manky aul telly in that boggin sitting room, so ye would.”
“So me mother’s house is damp, the beds is all lumpy, the sitting room boggin and the telly too wee?”
“Aye, aye, aye!” Ursula said eagerly. Precisely why Roisin should stay with her!
“And all that didn’t stop ye from racing down to the city council to snatch the house from under wer noses the second ye won the lotto, ye hateful bitch!”
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 4