No Filter

by Orlagh Collins

  ‘Take off those work things. Your da will be home any minute,’ Mum says, without looking at me.

  ‘But –’

  ‘We’re having dinner.’

  I’m not sure I can do this over a meal. I can’t face sitting opposite Da with all the dangerous stuff in my head unsaid. I’ll wait till he’s eaten. It’s self-preservation. ‘I’m not really hungry, Mam.’

  ‘We’re having dinner,’ she repeats. ‘All of us!’ There’s no arguing with her when she’s like this. ‘Go on!’ she says, shooing me out.

  I shunt myself up off the chair and stagger towards the door.

  I skulk back down the stairs minutes later to find the kitchen door closed. The kitchen door is never closed. Da opens it just as I’m about to knock. He says nothing so I stand there not quite sure what to do, when he pulls it wider, allowing me in. He doesn’t look at me as I squeeze past. Laura traipses in a few seconds later, but still, nobody says anything. Mam clinks crockery by the sink while me and Da rearrange our place mats, wondering what these are doing out of the drawer; staring at anything but each other.

  I get up and fill Evie’s plastic cup from the glass jug for something to do. Mam plonks the large dish in the centre of the table but just as I think she’s about to sit down she goes to the fridge and grabs a beer. Laura and I share a look; Da never drinks with his dinner.

  ‘Now,’ she says, hooshing her chair in under the table. ‘Before we eat your da has something he wants to say.’ She leans across to open Da’s beer and shoots him one of her don’t-forget-who’s-really-boss looks.

  We all watch as Da pours the fizzy golden liquid to a thick white head at the top of the glass. ‘We’ve all done stupid things, son. You were blindsided, I get that,’ he says, setting the bottle down, still without looking at me. Gulp! Laura seems to take this as a sign that my lecture is over and she’s up, poking at the large dish of food with her fork.

  ‘What is this?’ She prods it like it’s roadkill. ‘Mam?’

  ‘Fish pie,’ Mam says, still glaring at Da.

  Laura gives a desperate sigh. ‘Eh, hello! I’m vegetarian now!’

  Mam slams the stainless steel serving slice on the table. ‘That’s enough, Laura!’ she snaps.

  Laura settles back into her chair, only mildly humbled and Mam starts dishing out folds of creamy-looking pie on to each plate. ‘What your da meant to say, Liam, is that he forgives you, about the boat business and you know, the other matter. We both do. Isn’t that right, Donal?’

  OK, this is not what I was expecting.

  Da takes a slow swig of his beer and grunts.

  ‘And,’ she says, ‘he’s arranged for you to go up to John-Joe’s at the weekend, to take a look at a car.’ Good Jesus, I’m totally wrong-footed here. ‘He’s got a new one with low mileage in. It sounds good, doesn’t it, Donal?’

  Da nods on Mam’s prodding. ‘Over the budget though,’ he announces. ‘But I’ve got another shift at the depot so I suppose we’ll be able to manage,’ he says, turning back to Mam.

  Mam places her hand over her mouth before letting it rest on Da’s giant hairy fingers. I watch her squeeze them, smiling at him. ‘John-Joe said it’s just the one for running you up and down the motorway to Dundalk,’ she says, looking across at me.

  This couldn’t be any worse. My head is spinning and I’ve to shut my eyes to focus, but when I do all I see is Em: arms outstretched, twirling around the lamp post under the moonlight. ‘If you could be anything in the world, Liam Flynn?’ I’ll never forget those words or the surprising anger and excitement that mixed together in my belly as she said them it. It’s now or never.

  ‘I want to defer,’ I whisper it into my plate.

  Nobody says anything so I look up and say it again, louder now. ‘Dundalk, I want to defer my place.’

  Da puts his fork down and cranes his chin up from his plate. ‘But you’ve only just got in. How –’

  ‘There’s this music production course.’ My eyes flit between him and Mam, both their jaws hanging in disbelief. I take a sip of water, trying to grasp hold of my thoughts, which are swimming around my head like slippery eels.

  ‘Explains all the sneaky web searching,’ Da says, picking at his teeth now with his fingernail. ‘Galway, England and everywhere, I saw them.’

  ‘This one’s in Dublin. I’ve got the points. I’ll need to show a demo portfolio, but I’ve got the material. And I’ll have to get an interview first of course, but please! I’d just like to … follow my dream.’ Holy shit. Did I say that?

  Da sits back. ‘Dreams?’ he says, rolling his eyes. I wish I couldn’t see his anger boiling so close to the surface. ‘Oh, we’ve all had those, son,’ he says, taking another long, slow slug of beer.

  Mam sits forward in her chair. ‘In Dublin?’

  I nod.

  Da shoots her a look. ‘Hold on there now!’ He sighs shakily and his eyes meet mine but only for a split second before they dart down again. ‘Don’t be getting ahead of yourselves,’ he adds, before stabbing his fork into the pie so fiercely it crashes against the plate underneath. He forks another mouthful of pie into him. ‘I was prepared to chalk the other matter up as a mistake. You weren’t to know about the Byrne girl, I know that, but –’

  Mam taps lightly on Da’s forearm. ‘It was a terrible shock, that’s all,’ she says before he can finish.

  Da’s fork shoots into the air. ‘I won’t be steamrollered into some notion about a music career.’ I swallow the lump in my throat and set my still-clean cutlery back down. ‘Not without –’

  I don’t let him finish. ‘She wasn’t a mistake, Da.’

  All heads roll around to mine, even Evie’s. Their disbelief, mixed with the new silence is unbearable. I push my untouched plate out in front. The colour of Da’s face changes. Redness is rising up from his neck, making his whole face florid and I’m starting to imagine molten lava bubbling up from his insides. Laura pipes up from the end of the table. ‘Seriously, Liam?’

  I don’t look at her; I keep my eyes on him. ‘I wish I could say she was, Da, but she wasn’t.’ My knees are knocking under the table and I clamp them together to stop the quakes vibrating through the rest of me.

  Da closes his eyes and pushes himself out from the table. His chair scrapes against the floor like chalk on a blackboard. He grips the table edge, like he’s about to get up, but he doesn’t. His eyes snap open. ‘Help me out here, Liam. What exactly are you saying?’

  I suck in some air, gripping it in my lungs and then I release it slowly, the way Kenny does with his inhaler. ‘I’m saying she wasn’t a mistake. She isn’t.’

  Mam winces as each of my words clout her from the far side of the table. She can’t believe I’m doing this, after everything she’s just done to get Da onside. I can’t believe it either, but I keep going. ‘She’s not her father, Da. In the same way that I’m not you and to be honest, right now, I’m really hoping there’s a chance of her still being my girlfriend.’

  He’s staring at me, shaking his head. Mam’s elbow thuds on to the table, shielding her eyes from mine, from his too maybe. This is so not what she’d planned, but the fact is I’m in love with Emerald and I’ll do whatever I need to to be with her. Surely they, of all people, can understand how this feels?

  Dad pushes himself up out of his seat. ‘I’ve tried, Maeve,’ he shouts, storming out of the door in a gust of fury. This undoes Mam entirely and she leans back in her chair, eyes closed.

  Desperate to do something, anything, I get up and start clearing away the uneaten food. Laura pulls her phone out of her pocket and starts texting. Mam, statue-like, apart from her trembling breaths, raises her glass to her lips and takes a slow sip, without opening her eyes. I walk around and place my hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Mam.’

  I wish I could make it better. I’m thinking what I could say to her to make it right when she reaches up and takes my hand in hers.

  ‘I know you are, love,’ she says, squeezing my
hand before twisting her neck and silently kissing the back of my palm.

  My heart swells and I grip hers tightly, willing the extraordinary rush of love to flow from me into her. I suddenly remember the conversation I had with Em on our first night on the island and how, when she asked whether I get on with my mam like I do with my da, I said she was just me mam.

  She’s not just anything. She pats my hand again and gets up, reaching for Laura’s untouched plate.

  I get there first. ‘I’ve got it.’

  Her arm falls away and she tucks her chair back in under the table, nodding to herself before walking through the open door. As soon as she’s gone, Laura drops her phone and squeezes herself out of her seat. She snatches our four glasses together with one hand and dumps them noisily in the sink before hoisting herself on to the countertop. ‘What was all that about?’ she asks, casually swinging her legs and crashing them against the cupboard doors.

  I watch her arm contort and disappear into the shelf behind her. Seconds later it reappears brandishing a packet of Jaffa Cakes.

  ‘You know perfectly well what it was about.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says, taking a bite. ‘But I don’t get why you couldn’t just say what he wanted you to say?’

  I scrape the scraps into the bin. ‘It’s not like that, Laura.’

  ‘Why not?’ she mumbles through a mouthful of biscuit.

  ‘Da refuses to get that I’m not him.’ I say this for me. I don’t honestly expect her to understand.

  ‘I didn’t mean to land you in it –’

  ‘Well, you made a fine job of it.’

  ‘C’mon, Liam, please?’ she says, thumping my arm before rummaging further into the packet.

  Despite my best efforts, I’m almost smiling at her. I’ll never admit it, but I feel a little better. I never thought I could talk to Da like that and I guess I’ve Laura to thank for stirring up the whole shitfest.

  She shoves another biscuit into her mouth and pushes my shoulder again, ‘Liam! I’m sorry.’

  ‘Go on. I’ll do this,’ I say, nodding towards the dirty dishes in the sink.

  She gives me this squinty look, as though to ask ‘you feeling all right?

  ‘Go!’

  ‘Nice one,’ she says, hopping down off the counter, grabbing another Jaffa for the road.

  I take out my phone. I scroll back through all of the texts Em sent since last Wednesday morning and, for the first time, I take in how they’ve become shorter and shorter: the last being a simple SORRY on Monday night, after I’d shut the hall door in her face hours earlier. What mad arrogance made me check my phone on the hour these past few days, hoping she’d be in touch to wish me luck or ask about my results when I’ve responded to not one of her texts. I’ve left her there, hanging …

  Where on earth do I begin?

  My thumbs hover over the letters and then I start to type …

  EMERALD

  And that’s just the way it is

  meet me

  tomorrow night, after work

  10

  please

  These four single texts allowed me a full breath for the first time in days. I didn’t stop to think.

  I typed back immediately.

  I’ll be there.

  No kiss. Can’t kiss back when there was no kiss to start with.

  Liam didn’t say where. I didn’t ask either. I’m on the wall with the stripy kiosk shielding the traffic sounds from the road behind me, watching as small pockets of beach nightlife play out in the new darkness. I look out to the silhouette of the island and think of our little tent there, flooded with sunlight, and knowing, despite how much I want it, we’ll never get back to the promise of that first morning.

  Suddenly I feel hands squeeze my shoulders and I yank my headphones off and stand. Liam takes me in his arms, folding me inside his jacket and holds me there. It’s such a relief. It’s all I can do not to cry.

  ‘I had no idea, Liam,’ I muffle it into his chest. He just pulls me closer. ‘About any of it.’

  He gently pushes me back and shakes out his hair, which I can’t help notice is so much longer than when we first stood here so many weeks ago. He looks pale and his face looks leaner. I swear he’s an inch taller too. Can that even happen in a week? There’s a distance. I can feel it. Everything feels different. I want to take his face in my hands and examine all of the changes.

  I’m wondering whether we can ever forget all that we now know when a small gang of girls skips past in a fog of cigarette smoke and perfume: Marc Jacobs’ Daisy, the same one Kitty wears. Two of the girls twist back bouncily in our direction. ‘Hey, Liam,’ they say in stereo.

  He calls out a hearty ‘howrya’ and my heart seizes. It’s not jealousy. It’s so much deeper. ‘Laura’s pals,’ he explains. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ He grasps my hand.

  We’re walking along Strand Road. I’m on the outside of the path when a bus rumbles past on my right. Without a word Liam moves to stand between me and the road, which is exactly what he did the first night we walked like this to Fiona’s house. I want to say something; not to remind him exactly, but take him back there, take us back there, but we just amble ahead in silence. Somehow we both seem to know where we’re going.

  Eventually he stops at a familiar dune further up the beach, settling himself down sufficiently far away from the Friday- night shelters crowd.

  ‘I haven’t spoken to him yet – my dad,’ I say, joining Liam on the sand.

  The wind blows his hair about but his face is completely still, like a piece of sculpture. ‘Serious?’

  ‘When you … left, on Wednesday morning, Grandma wouldn’t tell me anything. She clammed up like a shell, insisting I spoke with Dad. I’d no idea what had happened, and after everything –’ I stop here. The way he looks away from me now, I don’t need to explain.

  He shakes his head like he might understand.

  ‘It was only when I googled him after leaving your house on Monday that I found out. All the horrid detail spewing back at me in countless search results.’

  ‘Jaysus, that’s rough.’ He puts his arm around me, staring ahead. ‘And you still haven’t called him?’

  ‘He’s left messages, but I can’t. I’m so angry, Liam. I’ve never felt this kind of rage before.’

  ‘He’s your da, Em.’

  ‘Not the dad I thought he was. Besides, what I’ve got to say to him has to be said in person. If we speak on the phone first, he may never come over.’ I shiver involuntarily and Liam takes his arm from his jacket and wraps it around me. ‘He’s been having an affair too. I’m certain of it. I should have seen it ages ago, so on top of everything else I feel like a fool. So much has fallen into place lately. It’s an awful picture, but I can’t deny all the pieces fit.’

  Liam makes an ouch kind of sound and we huddle in closer. ‘Quite the lad,’ he says, hooking a piece of my out-grown fringe behind my ear. ‘He had the glad-eye for my mam once. Bet Google didn’t tell you that?’

  Have I lost track? ‘Who?’

  ‘Ah, it was twenty years ago now,’ he says. ‘But it wasn’t just business between him and Da –’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’

  Liam’s whole body judders. ‘Seems your aul fella has always had the glint and the swagger. Jaysus, I’d laugh if I hadn’t spent the past ten days in pieces. The whole thing, it’s been tearing me apart, Em. When I saw the HORIZON Post-it in O’Flaherty’s hand, I thought I was gonna puke on your grandma’s carpet. I swear to God. In my worst nightmares I could never have envisaged anything this bad.’

  ‘Laura was right.’ I mumble it to myself.

  ‘Laura?’

  ‘I didn’t choose my dad. Nor did you. She said it to me out of the window as I left your house. I’m not sure when I would have found out if she hadn’t.’

  Liam shakes his head in some kind of disbelief before starting to rub his hands together. ‘Let’s do something fun.’

  ‘Fun?’

&n
bsp; ‘You up for a swim?’ he asks, gazing at me. His thumb points towards the sea, but his eyebrows tilt in such a way that I’m guessing this has got to be a joke.

  I back away into the long grass, without breaking his stare. ‘You can feck off, Liam Flynn, I am not getting in there.’

  He creeps towards me, swinging his arms out until I fall backwards and collapse in a heap further up the soft sand. I’m laughing now. I can’t help it.

  ‘Listen to the dirty Dublin mouth on you. Course you are,’ he says, already undoing his shoes. He peers up at me through his dark fringe; he’s serious.

  I gaze back into his eyes, which now look black and wild. ‘But it’s freezing!’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘Well, I’m freezing sitting here, with my clothes on, NOT in the water. So …’

  His belt is off and he’s opening his jeans.

  ‘Hold on. You mean that kind of swimming?’

  ‘Let’s see, shall we?’ he says, pushing me further back on to the sand. I can feel the wonderful weight of him on me as he leans into my chest. Our cheeks touch. The cold smell of his skin and the steady determination of his breath. His hips fall into mine and I want to cry out with happiness. I throw my head back and shudder as the relief of his hungry hands on my skin takes hold. With our noses touching, he places one hand behind my back and starts pulling my boots off with the other.

  ‘Liam! Liam, I’m serious!’ I say, and I am serious, but about so much more than swimming. I want to swallow him up in kisses, right here.

  ‘And so am I, Lady Emerald of Bath,’ he says. ‘I’m terrifyingly serious right now. Get your clothes off!’ With that he scoops me into his arms, pulling my dress from under me, wrestling it above my head and throwing it into the wind as we run down the dunes.

  ‘Hey! Agghhhhhh …’

  ‘Don’t scream,’ he whispers. ‘Shhhh.’ He’s laughing again now. ‘No one can see us from here but they’ll hear us if you’re not careful –’

  I throw my arms around his neck and he stops. I turn to watch my dress drift away behind us as he carries me in my underwear towards the water. My skin looks even more milky in the moonlight and I try not to think of how heavy I feel in his arms. As we near the shimmering water the far off voices from the shelters recede to the lapping waves. The tide is out; everything around us is still and it’s like we’re the only things moving on earth. We are nothing; we are everything.