No Filter

by Orlagh Collins

  ‘Good lad!’ Da shouts, without looking up from his plate.

  EMERALD

  The end of all my summers

  My eyes flash open. For a moment I can’t remember where I am or how I got here. I feel the cold phone screen against my face and lift my head to slide it out from under my cheek. Pressing the home button for the time, I read 20:07. To the left of that it says Vodafone IRL. Ireland!

  I’m on the bed in Grandma’s spare room. I stretch out and realise I feel good, which suddenly feels awful. I remember coming up here to unpack shortly after Dad and I arrived, but I must have fallen asleep. It’s not even a millisecond before all the grim recollections flood my heavy head.

  Dad’s mobile rings downstairs and I immediately regret wasting the last of my time with him up here asleep, but I might as well wait for him to finish his call. I reach for my phone again: three more missed calls from Kitty. The WhatsApp group for her party has gone mental. The fancy-dress theme is now ‘circus’; vintage, apparently, which just makes it sound better. I move on to Instagram whilst creaming my scaly knees and elbows with some lotion I find beside the bed. It’s a serious habit: Instagram that is, not my attention to dry skin.

  Kitty has regrammed Bryony’s #whoworeitbest post!

  148 likes

  0o_kittykatz_o0 @bryonibbgal

  bryonibbgal #MAJORsenseofhumourbypass

  view all nine comments – I have to do it

  0o_kittykatz_o0 seriously though, awks!

  bryonibbgal England v Spain 74% says put it away UK

  Rupertisnotabear2000

  bryonibbgal IKR @rupertisnotabear2000 LOLZ

  0o_kittykatz_o0 Btw party planning. Must.

  bryonibbgal YASSSS!!!

  0o_kittykatz_o0

  What?! I let the phone plummet on to my chest and close my eyes before they leak. Rupert has seen it. And commenting too. He never comments. Kitty? I expect this of Bryony, but Kitty? How can this hurt so much? I try to focus on the wallpaper but its furry swirls are making my head ache, so I scan the room until my eye lands on the crack in a tiny bar of soap sitting on a glass tray by the pea-green sink. I’m trying to distract myself with the whole sink-in-the-bedroom business when the stairs begin to creak with Dad’s slow and heavy footsteps.

  ‘Em?’ He moves slowly into the room. ‘Budge up there,’ he says, perching on the edge of the bed. ‘How you doing?’ His unshaven face looks crumpled. We’ve been in the country for all of three hours and he sounds more Dublin than he has for years.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I lie, hiding the phone and sitting up.

  I really don’t want to but looking at his face I suddenly hate Mum a little. I hate her for making me yet another problem Dad has to fix. I hate her for leaving me here alone for the summer. Most of all I hate not being able to talk to her. I look at Dad again. He’s waiting for me to say something but all I can think about is how angry I am with everybody in the world except him (and possibly Grandma). Hot stinging tears build behind my eyes but I refuse to let them out. ‘Couldn’t I stay with you?’ It flies out of my mouth. It’s a ridiculous thing to say considering he’s just flown all the way here to drop me off.

  He looks out into the orange sky, which has come alive again after the rain and slowly shakes his head. ‘Sweetheart, it’s this case. It’s taking all my time. You do understand?’

  Dad never talks about work but I’ve gathered from the scraps of overheard arguments with Mum that one of his companies is the throes of some major case.

  I nod.

  ‘I know it’s a blow,’ he says, folding me into his strong arms before pulling away and fixing me straight in the eye. ‘Magda will be at the house with me tomorrow. Email her a list of anything else you need and we’ll have it sent over. It may be hard to believe now, but you might even like it here,’ he says.

  There are several things I’d like to say now but I take the precaution of keeping my mouth shut.

  He kisses me on the forehead. ‘Well, it’s straight back to the airport for me. I’ve to catch the last Bristol flight, but I’ll call first thing tomorrow. Look at me,’ he says, cupping my chin in his hand. ‘I love you. Everything is going to be OK. I promise.’

  ‘Bye, Daddy.’ I gulp. I can’t get up. I don’t even care that I called him Daddy. Right now feels like the end of all my summers.

  ‘Goodbye, Scout,’ he calls out, his voice fading away down the stairs.

  Eventually the chatter downstairs stops and after his final goodbye to Grandma the front door closes. It’s just Grandma and me now.

  I lie back and watch my chest pound up and down inside my T-shirt. My dad has left and my mum has gone. I start to doubt whether she’ll ever come back. I try not to think about how Mum could want to leave me, or what I could have done to stop her.

  The whole idea of summer is now just a cruel mirage. The school-free weeks that once glistened in the distance like unopened treasure are now a deluded fantasy: Kitty’s summer party and the endless wild nights we’d spend, raving by the lake and laughing under the stars. Not to mention my meticulously crafted plans to get Ru to actually fall in love with me. All those daydreams feel pitiful now; an illusion vanishing before my eyes like a photograph from the Polaroid camera I bought in Urban Outfitters, only in reverse. I desperately want to shake it back to life but it’s fading rapidly to black.

  I drag myself up and trudge down the stairs.

  ‘Emerald,’ Grandma calls from somewhere I can’t see. I catch a glimpse of myself in the hallway mirror: greasy hair piled on to my head, bare freckled skin and lip gloss long gone. Without make up I look like I’m twelve. I don’t want Grandma or anyone else to see me like this. When I turn around she’s appeared in the sitting room doorway. I freeze.

  ‘There you are,’ she says brightly, but her soft eyes don’t look right. Her delicate face is full of stuff needing to be said but her lips let none of it out.

  ‘Thought I’d get some air.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says, her mouth falling. ‘I was thinking we’d have some tea.’

  I’m about to change my mind when I feel her arms clasp tightly around me like one of those metal bulldog clips. It’s the hug I was waiting for; the one I skirted around when we walked in the door from the airport. I wasn’t able for it then. I wonder, am I now?

  I’m the taller one, which I don’t think either of us is prepared for. I don’t know when this happened. It’s been too long. How did I not realise how much I missed her?

  ‘When you get back then, eh?’ she says, taking both my hands in hers. I nod enthusiastically. Then, spotting an old coat to hide myself in, I grab it from the stand and make for the door with a new urgency.

  ‘’Twas your grandad’s; the overcoat. I keep it there for the burglars,’ she calls after me. I look back to find her staring at the carpet.

  ‘Right.’ It’s all I can manage. ‘I won’t be long.’

  As I step out on to the drive the drizzle dabbles my scorched cheeks. I suck the cool air deep into my lungs. I cross the road and head towards the beach, which magnetises me as though I never left. I scan the length of the dark shore that stretches for miles ahead before looking back at the houses peppered in patchwork pockets on either side of the SPAR newsagent. Square white homes, all with long gardens to the front and further up, a row of golden-bricked terraces built closer to the road. One now appears to be a Chinese restaurant.

  Grandma’s is one of only two properly old, Georgian-style houses that flank the run-down looking hotel beyond. You can’t actually see her house from here, just the entrance gate. It’s set well back from the road and the tall trees at the bottom of the drive do a good job screening even its beautiful garden from view. The heavy iron railings and long, dark drive make it seem a bit creepy from here.

  Suddenly I’m dialling Kitty, desperate to rage. I take cover under a little ice-cream kiosk as it rings.

  ‘Pick up, pick up!’ I swish around underneath the red-and-white-striped roof, peering inside at the
old-fashioned looking ice cream machine and the buckets and spades that hang from the ceiling.

  ‘Boo! You know what to do.’

  It’s a new greeting; they change each week. Even when they’re utter rubbish, Kitty still sounds effortless, every time. I think it’s timing, or some confidence thing I totally suck at. I consider what to say to her. Of course I want to go off about her regramming Bryony’s post but then I might not even get to Mum, or the fact that I’m stranded in this miserable place for the next eight weeks.

  Suddenly I’m hanging up and walking down towards the sand. What am I doing? I need to rehearse this call. For once in my life I’d like to say what it is I actually feel.

  I’m unable not to stare at the extraordinary view of the sea. The beach goes on forever and tiny stick figures dot the sand in the distance. There is a boat with a tall sail too. Everything looks so still. I stare out across the water and see an island I never noticed before silhouetted against the lilac and pink horizon. I stand in the delicate trickle of rain and take it in. I think about posting a picture. I’m composing the caption in my head when something stops me. I want to feel this instead. It’s literally pulling me closer.

  I’ve got to touch the water.

  LIAM

  Sitting on our cold arses in the half-dark

  And here we are, strolling along Strand Road, gearing up for more cracking Friday-night action. Taking the evening at a steady pace, we saunter along, enjoying the sights and the sounds of our patch in full swing. Kenny is jabbering away in my right ear. He’s still on Game of Thrones but mercifully the noise of passing traffic does a fine job of drowning out most of the harm. Mid-sentence, he stops by the Martello Tower to light a fag. It’s then I spot someone far out on the rocks below.

  Dressed in a long coat, the figure idly flicks something into the water and it skims over the waves in tiny little leaps, impressively far out. The coat spins around and I see it’s a girl, slowly ambling back over the rocks towards us. Then she stops, kneels down and dips her hand into the pool at her feet and fishes for rocks. Suddenly she’s up again, taking giant strides back towards the sea edge. Extending her right arm out and then her left, she hurls a smattering of pebbles into the waves. I watch her stand there, arms now by her side, still and silent, her face lifted straight to the sky. Even from here I can tell I haven’t seen this girl before. Everything about her shape and how she moves seems new and different.

  Kenny is digging my arm. ‘Bet you feel like that with me, eh, Flynn? What with the peril of my nobility and all that?’

  He’s in full flight but I’ve lost his thread entirely, so I just whip back without answering, scanning each of the jagged black rocks by the tower. She’s gone.

  Kenny’s voice carries us the rest of the way to the shelters – that lair of urban lawlessness beloved of Portstrand’s lost youth. Like old-timers we pass through the concrete colonnade and settle into our usual spot on the stone bench, just up from Murph and Turbo. All of us staring out to sea, sucking on our cans and watching the watery darkness fall.

  ‘D’you know, I’ve reached a point where I am grateful for the hurt,’ Kenny announces with an unnaturally serious look on his face. ‘I mean, I’m still in love with her, obviously, but I’m stronger now.’

  It takes me a minute to register he’s moved on from fantasy drama. ‘And how does Fiona feel about you still being in love with Ashling?’

  ‘You know, she’s all right, man. Think she appreciates my honesty.’

  ‘Me hole she does, Kenny.’ I turn my head. ‘You didn’t seriously tell her that?’

  ‘Fiona’s an intuitive woman. I can’t lie to her.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Looking back, all the pain with Ashling … it was a privilege.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Kenny!’

  ‘Wha–?’

  ‘D’you read that in a book?’ I have to ask. Kenny admitted reading his ma’s self-help books after he was dumped. ‘It’s not a line that’s come out of you. I know that much.’

  ‘Cheers, Flynn,’ he says, rolling his eyes the exact way Laura did to me earlier. He looks dejected. He starts squirming beside me, his busy fingers sparking his lighter and flicking at the ring pull on his can.

  Murph and Turbo move on with a wave. Now it’s just the two of us, not including mad McDara, the shelter’s mascot, who is sitting alone further up the bench. A couple years older than us, McDara has the look of a fella you’d see on those police photofits: scribble thin, with demented eyes, greasy spiked hair and fists permanently jammed into his pockets. He’s examining his phone and twitching. Angry drum ’n’ bass leaks out from under his hood and he looks ready to punch someone. It’s his usual look though, to be fair.

  The sun’s beginning to set and what heat there was in it has long left. I stare at the sea and I’m resenting the waves; I’m in that kind of mood. I’m suddenly grumpy about everything and nothing at the same time. I’m pissed off that I’ve pissed Kenny off. I’m pissed off on Fiona’s behalf. But most of all I’m pissed off we’re pissing away what was to be an epic summer, sitting here on our cold arses on this half-bench in the half-dark, waiting for something exciting to happen.

  Kenny lifts my arm to check my watch. ‘Nine forty-three!’ He announces it like it means something and he stands up and looks down the beach.

  To his left, in the distance, I spot the coat approaching from the rocks. Her figure moves lightly before disappearing into the shadow of the wall. I stare into the murky light until she reappears and her silhouette becomes clearer, bit by bit. She walks slowly along the long concrete passage towards us. Her face is hidden as she floats past McDara but even he looks up. His eyes follow her until she stops just past him and then he returns to his phone.

  Pulling the swathes of coat around her, she lowers herself into the damp stone seat where Murph and Turbo just sat.

  Kenny opens a fresh can and clears his throat in way too obvious a fashion. I can’t look at him and I can’t look at her, so I gawp straight ahead. Nobody talks. The only sounds are the waves and the distant din from McDara’s headphones. Then she starts to speak quietly into her phone, clearly thinking we can’t hear. Noise travels within these grey walls, everyone knows that, but you can even tell by how she sits she doesn’t know this place at all.

  ‘Hey, it’s me. Yeah, I’m fine,’ she says, not sounding remotely as she claims. She’s clearly rattled about something. There’s a long pause and I strain my neck in her direction to hear more. ‘Actually, Kitty, I’m not fine …’ she says. I’m admiring her honesty, waiting for the raspy, English-sounding voice to start again when she puts it back up to her ear and takes another deep breath. ‘We need to talk –’

  I’m listening away when I notice the usual stench of piss has lifted and I slowly fill my lungs with the new salty air. I’m just thinking how the shelters might look different with her in them when the phone starts to ring in her hand! She hasn’t been on a call at all; she’s been pretending!

  I’ve never seen someone do this for real and I’m hooked. I sneak a glance out of the corner of my eye as the ringing phone lights up her face.

  ‘Hey!’ she drawls into the handset. ‘Hello? Kitty?’

  ‘C’mere, c’mere!’ Kenny blathers in my ear. I know he thinks he’s whispering, but he’s not. ‘Sansa Stark or your one, Hello Kitty, over there? Quick fidget, no strings? G’wan, I’m counting …’

  I give him a dig. ‘Shut up, Kenny!’

  ‘Shit!’ The girl mutters to herself. I can just about see the phone, dead in her palm: all lights out. She looks down at it hopelessly.

  ‘C’mon!’ says Kenny.

  He keeps talking but his voice has morphed into white noise now. I put my can down and, without thinking, don’t I get up and start strolling towards her. I’ve no idea what I’m gonna say when I get there, but I figure at the very least she can borrow my phone.

  Next thing I’m standing at her feet, staring down at her. I’m totally unprepared for the huge eyes that fl
ash back at me, scrutinising me, and in the shortest second they’ve swallowed me up, just like that. My heart leaps like a trout. She yanks her coat even tighter around her as though unsure of what she sees and as the jaws of the coat snap tight, I get a waft of something chocolatey. It stops me in my tracks. I stand there, silently holding out my phone.

  Her dainty fingers reach slowly to mine and I reckon she might be about to say something when we both spot the car driving up the empty beach towards us. A car on the beach, on the actual sand!

  ‘What the fu–?’ cries Kenny, reading my mind from ten feet away.

  Instinctively, we all turn towards McDara, who, under his hood, is oblivious to the unfolding drama.

  The dark car pulls up right in front of the shelters and turns its headlights on, at which point McDara clocks it and rises up like a phoenix from the ashes. He laser-beams in both directions before he pelts past us at surprising speed. As he’s running he flings something on the ground and it lands at the feet of the girl. Three Gardai get out of the unmarked car. Two of them give chase and the remaining one, our lad, jumps nimbly up from the sand and approaches us, his short dark figure framed by the graffitied pillars on either side. If I weren’t crapping myself quite so much I’d probably admit how cool it all looks.

  ‘Stand up!’ the Garda orders, all official in his culchie accent.

  I’m already standing but I edge back into the middle. The others push up off the bench and Hello Kitty gently places her flip-flop over the baggie on the filthy wet ground.

  ‘Empty your pockets,’ he adds gruffly with a quick scratch of his chin. Kenny roots in his jeans and pulls out his phone, his fags, his inhaler and half a Twix. I fish out some cash, along with my keys and squint over to see she’s got nothing but her dead phone.

  ‘Anyone got anything they’d like to declare?’ he asks, eyeing each of us in turn. I can see him better now, including the feeble moustache above his lip and the greying hair that sits a good inch and a half off his scalp, still sporting the well oiled course of an earlier comb.