Ray sniffed. ‘It’s a bit musty all right.’ He went to the window and opened the small rectangle on top. ‘That’s as far as it goes.’
They had a quick, awkward hug goodbye. The door caught on the woolly carpet as she tried to close it—a heavy old beast that needed a fine push. She sat on the bare mattress and surveyed the room. It was perfect, everything you could want or need: the brick walls painted a fresh white, a chair and a stumpy brown desk, the shelves and wardrobe in the same unvarnished wood. There was a large sink at the foot of her bed and a square sheet of mirror pinned to the wall above it. She looked all right, actually—her long, centre-parted hair was in fashion these days and she’d lost weight over the summer, had cheekbones for the first time in her life. They made her dark eyes bigger, more interesting. Today they seemed strangely glittering. But she could not take it for long. This mirror, the oval mirror at Cranavon, the wing mirror of the Opel, any scrap of mirror at all, even her reflection in a window, it was always the same: behind her own face, the shadow of her sister, a permanent reminder of what was lost.
She leaned against the wall and tried to stop the familiar feeling of upset. All weekend she’d been dying to leave home, to get away from the farm—and from Tullow, after her summer working in the pottery shop. The owner was good fun but notoriously stingy. Kate had only made half what she’d made the summer of first year working for Peter. And no sign of a tan at all. She looked down at her pale chest and decided to wear a necklace if there were drinks about the place this evening. She hoped something would be going on. Aside from her family, the only person she’d seen all summer was Conor Doyle. He’d come into the shop one day looking for a teacup, but she hadn’t been able to close the sale in the end. Somehow they’d arranged to meet outside the blue door of the cinema in Carlow Shopping Centre to see the remake of The Omen. It had been a disappointment, actually, but they ended up going to another film the following Saturday, and another one the week after that, until it turned into a regular activity that she looked forward to. To be clear: he was not her boyfriend, they hadn’t even kissed. All the same she missed him, and hoped that he might make good on his promise to visit her in Dublin. Their summer friendship had been well timed in a way, coinciding with another of her mother’s depressions and the bitter freedom that came with them. But there had been war earlier today when Conor rang the house instead of Kate’s mobile. Her mother had accused her of being dishonest, of being a sly snake who’d end up pregnant with a commoner’s child if she didn’t watch herself. Kate had been so mad she’d almost choked on Peter’s roast chicken. She’d wanted to say that Conor Doyle hadn’t put a finger on her, but she knew if she said that, they’d all see how much she wanted him to, so she’d excused herself and run to the bathroom and spat the woolly chicken that was still in her mouth straight into the toilet. (And how did her mother know, how could she know, that after Children of Men last weekend, Conor and Kate had walked up to the fountain, joking about baby names, settling on Jack and Elaine, and Sheila if they had a third.)
All weekend dying to be back in Dublin, to get started again, to get going, and yet now that she was here, the thrill of it had left her. It felt wrong that Mammy and Peter would watch You’re a Star without her tonight. Maybe she should run after Ray, ask him if she could come over to their new place in Blackrock, a huge apartment that Liz had found through work, in a lemon-painted complex overlooking the sea. It seemed, right now, to be the very opposite of here. That feeling that she’d had for most of secondary school, of not being safe no matter where she was, came over her. The older she got, the younger she felt. She fought the urge to cry. ‘Grow up,’ she said out loud.
She got off the bed and opened the suitcase. She just needed to unpack, to make the room her own. She arranged her things in neat piles on the mattress. First the clothes, the tops, jeans, hoodies, her winter coats in black and navy, three pairs of Converse and the kitten heels her mother had given her as a surprise. Textbooks and folders were next. She sorted them in alternate pink and blue stacks, propping them up on the shelves in between the letter bookmarks K and E. She gave one corner of the desk to her Discman and CDs, assembled her make-up in the rickety holder by the sink, hung all her clothes and then finally arranged her photos on the windowsill, keeping the one of Daddy and Elaine and herself for her locker. Her mother would be hurt she wasn’t in it, but it was Kate’s favourite picture, the three of them happy on the farm the summer of sixth class. She tilted the sparkly glass photo frame towards her. It was a beautiful photo but sometimes it was hard to look at.
When she’d her new purple duvet on the bed, she switched on Elaine’s lamp and lay down for a rest. She looked at the ceiling, so white and boring. She thought to text her friend Jenny just in case she’d gotten an earlier flight from Norwich, but no, best not to seem needy. She would meet her outside the coffee dock before Economics tomorrow. It would be an easy enough week: six hours of Economics, but only two History lectures and no dreaded tutorials. She reached over to the windowsill for the photo of herself and Elaine at their sixteenth birthday party. Matching baby blue flares and belly tops. It had been the best of nights.
Someone knocked on her door.
‘Hello?’ Kate said.
‘Hi, oh, hi!’ said a voice outside.
She smoothed her cardigan and went to the door.
‘Hi there!’ The girl was wearing a dark slip dress over a long-sleeved white top. ‘I’m George.’ She had a southside Dublin accent. ‘Your neighbour?’ She pointed to an orange door across the hall. ‘We’re having drinks in the kitchen. You coming?’
‘I’m Kate,’ she said, but George was already zigzagging her way down the corridor, knocking on doors.
‘Super,’ George shouted back. ‘It’s going to be the best year!’ Her short blonde hair looked like a swim cap from a distance.
Kate followed after her, forgetting her keys until the door shut behind her. She ran back, pushed it a few times and then gave up. No doubt someone would have a master key and she could be the idiot who needed it in the first half hour of moving into halls. She followed a smell of melted cheese to the kitchen and was surprised to see at least ten people crowded around a communal table. The look of the room was wrong, full of strange dimensions and duplications. There were four identical cookers, one for each worktop. Already the hobs seemed stained, or in use—a sweaty silver pot boiling on the one nearest her—and she realized she was probably the last to arrive. She smiled at the group and said hello. All of them were women except for a tanned, hulkish guy in a college rugby shirt.
‘This is Kate.’ George came in behind her, ‘I think that’s everyone.’ She kissed the guy on the lips, a long smacker in front of them all. ‘Freddie doesn’t live here by the way,’ she said. ‘Well, not officially, anyway.’
A girl in a sheer blouse wolf-whistled. Someone offered Kate a crisp. The pot on the hob started to boil over and two of her new flatmates rushed to contain it.
The second week of October, the city centre sun the hottest it had been since the start of term at Trinity. Three-quarters of the cricket pitch was a bright lime green, the last bit in the shadow of the austere sciences institute. Kate saw Jenny stand and wave from the far side of the Pav. They were on the softer grass near the cricket pitch but not close enough to the lawn to get kicked off. A big group, she could see, some of them lying down. She wondered who else was with them. It could be anyone—Jenny and the girls had skipped Investment Analysis and gone drinking after lunch. A lazy afternoon at the Pav was a good place for making new friends. All around her people were chatting; a loud, discordant noise without music to absorb it. She felt happy and full of energy. It had been like this for weeks, something inside her spinning faster and faster. There was barely a need for sleep. She put her bag of cans on the grass while she took off her wind-breaker and tied it around her waist, regretting the beaded necklace she’d decided to wear last minute over a perfectly innocent white T-shirt. Jewellery didn’t suit her, it was always t
oo dangly or too much. Nail polish was the same—insipid or vampish, it was off again by the end of the day.
Kate pushed her way through the crowds, past a group of engineers that were in the same year as George. They were playing a drinking game with a dirty funnel and a bottle of rum. She said a quick hello to the guy nearest her then moved on. Her cans of Bud Light were already losing their coolness. She avoided the steps in front of the Pav and went wide onto the pitch to get to her friends. The lawn had a chemical smell, not like the grass at Cranavon. Sizing up the group on her approach, she could see that the three girls were spread out: Jenny at the edge of the circle, talking to strangers, her high ponytail moving from side to side; Aoife pink-faced and uncomfortable in one of her cheesecloth dresses; Miranda lying down with her head on Bill’s stomach.
‘Look who it is,’ said Miranda, who liked to announce things. She was the class rep for Economics, famous around college for chaining herself to a tree outside the Provost’s house in nothing but a bin bag.
‘Hey, Kate,’ Bill said sleepily.
She vaguely recognized the guys behind him, his mates from English. One of them shielded his eyes from the sun and nodded.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘How was IA?’ said Aoife.
‘Thrilling. He did systematic pricing failures.’
‘Were we missed?’
‘Nah.’ Kate sat on the grass near Jenny, hoping she’d turn around soon.
‘On the hard stuff already?’ Miranda pointed at Kate’s cans. She was always making jokes.
‘Don’t encourage her,’ said Aoife. ‘Or we’ll have Rag Doll before you know it.’
Kate laughed, but she was mortified that they were using her nickname in front of strangers.
‘Who’s Rag Doll?’ said a guy with ginger hair.
‘You know Superman,’ Miranda said. ‘Right? Like Clark Kent. Telephone box?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, Rag Doll is Kate’s alter ego.’
‘Her superhero,’ Aoife laughed.
‘Serious student by day, absolute mentalist by night.’ Miranda held up her Smirnoff Ice. ‘Cheers to that.’
The whole group did a ‘cheers’ and Kate felt herself relax. Good old Rag Doll.
‘It’s true,’ she said, opening a can. ‘I don’t know how it happens. But it’s a blast.’
Jenny hugged the guys goodbye and moved in beside her.
‘Do you’ve a match?’ said Kate, pointing at her green-and-black hockey kit.
Her friend held up a naggin. ‘It’s only training.’
Kate laughed.
A topless guy ran onto the cricket pitch and did two and a half cartwheels as his friends cheered.
‘Look at that tosser,’ said Miranda. ‘He’ll ruin it for everyone.’
But she was wrong. Moments later a wiry-looking security guard raced after him, and the whole place seemed to rise and follow the chase, lifting the afternoon to another level entirely, spinning them all into an early evening and night and the blue-lit morning hours that would follow. It was clear to everyone, as the guy made it right to the end of the pitch before the guard got his hands on him, that the time had come to party. The hooting and cheering grew louder. She joined in, wanting so much for the guy to escape. His courage astounded her. Beneath the glass windows of the Ussher Library, he was dragged away with his arms behind his back.
All the time she’d been in college, one thing loomed over the first month back, and each year when it arrived it was almost a relief—Halloween. Tomorrow Kate would go home to Cranavon for the anniversary, her sister’s fourth anniversary, but right now she was under her purple duvet wishing herself to sleep. She’d drunk a bottle of Calpol after her lectures and her mind was in and out of consciousness, full of moving images: Elaine the human haystack jumping out at Peter in the field. Elaine smoking a cigar on the roof of the extension. Elaine locked inside their mother’s wardrobe. Elaine crying over sludgy Weetabix, like liquid clay it was, plopping off the spoon. Kate couldn’t tell reality from nightmare. Her head was so heavy and the rest of her barely there.
‘You missed dinner.’
Kate thought she was definitely dreaming now, until she felt the sag at the end of her bed. She sat up with a jolt. It was only George. The light from the hallway shone dusty on her bookshelves.
‘You left your door on the latch,’ George said. ‘I robbed you blind.’
Kate gave a faint laugh. She switched on the polka-dot lamp, blinked against its brightness.
‘There’s shepherd’s pie left over. Will I bring you in some?’
‘I ate already,’ said Kate.
‘Yeah?’
‘In the Buttery.’
George looked around the room. She pointed to the cough bottle on the locker. ‘Are you sick?’ Her narrow blue eyes were full of concern.
Kate burst into tears.
‘Oh, God,’ said George. ‘What’s wrong?’
This was so embarrassing. They’d only known each other six weeks, and Kate hadn’t told her yet. She hadn’t told any of her new halls friends. It was such an impossible thing to tell these people you met in college, wondering if you knew them well enough to confide in, wondering whether they’d be gone again in a few months and you’d have been better off not telling them at all. Death depressed people, and it changed their opinion of you. Kate had seen that with her Economics crew, even though they’d been lovely to her about it—the news had brought them down. She took the photo of their sixteenth birthday from the locker and passed it to George.
‘Wow,’ said her friend, not getting it at all. ‘You’re a twin! Where—’
Kate made a sharp gulping noise. The words were stuck inside her.
‘Oh,’ said George. ‘Oh. I’m so sorry.’
Kate nodded. George squeezed tighter on her calf, tight enough to bruise.
‘It’s her fourth anniversary tomorrow,’ said Kate. ‘My brother’s picking me up at lunchtime.’
‘And tonight?’
Kate shrugged, unsure if she could deal with more kindness.
‘Tonight,’ George passed her a tissue from the box by her CDs, ‘I’m looking after you. And it starts with shepherd’s pie.’
It was nice of her, Kate knew, but there was no way she was having dinner this evening. Hunger was the only thing keeping her going.
‘Maybe a drink,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘I’ve a bottle of vodka under the bed.’
A little tiny stress fracture in the second week of November, a bad month for a bone break, the piercing cold weather still new and so unfriendly. Kate’s foot throbbed as she sat at a table near the coffee dock, waiting for Jenny. It was early, the Arts Block quiet, the shutters still down on the soft drinks and juices in the café. The teller was busy setting up the chrome canisters. Tall and shiny, they reflected the shapes and sizes of the people in the queue.
The tables around Kate were empty, except for the far corner one where an ageless man was stacking newspapers in front of him like a fort. Everyone said he was Japanese but no one knew for sure. Maybe he was from Korea, or from Cobh. A few students trailed by on their way to the photocopier machines. Headphones and woolly scarves and long quilted jackets. Kate rubbed the arms of her black coat and went to put her bobble hat back on. Her crutches slipped as she reached for it, clattering against the small square tiles. The old man looked at her in alarm and then went back to his fort.
She retrieved the crutches and leaned them against a chair. Horrid things, so cumbersome. Ray had made her go for the X-ray, had driven her to Vincent’s last weekend and waited with her in A&E for four and a half hours. Her foot had been sore since Halloween but it wasn’t that bad before the diagnosis, not really. Bone pain, everyone kept saying now, there’s nothing like it. She couldn’t understand what had happened. All she had done was take up exercise, trying to be healthy like Jenny. She’d done barely anything in comparison with her friend, who trained three days a week with her hockey crew and then did
a 10k at weekends up and down the canal.
Historically, Kate was not a runner, had never done athletics or camogie in the Community. So she’d started small, safe, just like Jenny suggested, a few minutes’ run built into her Dodder walk. The first time she’d only managed thirty seconds before her lungs nearly exploded. And yes, things had improved the more she’d practised, but her running was certainly not at the level that caused fractures. That’s what the world’s most unhelpful doctor had told her at half two in the morning, shortly after a man with a gouged eye had vomited over Ray’s runners.
How she had gotten to be here, with her foot in a fibreglass cast, had not been explained at all. (And Kate didn’t think to mention the anniversary, or the bottle of vodka she’d consumed with George on Halloween eve before getting up for a run.)
The queue for the coffee dock was growing. She longed to shout at someone to bring her a tea but she would wait for Jenny or one of the others to arrive. They had Less Developed Countries at nine and someone she knew would be along soon. It was not so urgent, anyway. She’d had two coffees with a still drunk George in the kitchen earlier that morning. They’d almost had a fight when George opened Kate’s locker by mistake. Where’s your cereal, Kate? she’d said, banging the door of locker six. Why don’t you have cornflakes? Why don’t you ever do any shopping? Well. George clearly didn’t know what they put in cornflakes, how they were full of sugar and awful for gut health. And she didn’t know that Kate actually spent hours in supermarkets since coming to college, overwhelmed by the rows and rows of products, that she always seemed to be at her most tired and hungry when she did the shop, and deciding on what was fattening, filling, healthy, healing was too much for her brain. The problem was, she didn’t trust her own appetite. It was easier to eliminate things, and it was addictive too. First red meat, then non-organic white meat, then farmed fish, then egg yolks, then eggs. No white carbs, pasta, rice, certainly no bread. No potatoes, sweet potatoes—no carbs. No dairy either, no dairy substitutes, nothing creamy, nothing thick, no smoothies. No rich soups, no blended soups, she had narrowed it down to soups of boiled water and chunky vegetables and a scattering of chilli flakes. Easy. Safe. But Kate couldn’t share this information with her friend. She knew how strange it sounded. Was it possible to be a bit mad in one small aspect of life and still be normal? It was not a question you could ask someone as cool and together as George. Instead she had to agree with her: the locker was empty. Then she’d left her coffee, hobbled to the bus stop and spent twenty-five minutes waiting for the 14A. And everything was OK now. She was here, early for lectures, watching the random people come and go. She was OK. A little tiny stress fracture was only three weeks in a cast. It could have been worse.
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