by Esme Devlin
This isn’t the same though. This isn’t real.
He won’t break my heart. I’d have to give him it first, and I’m not going to. This is just pretend. Yet another one of his games.
But when I nod, she continues anyway.
“They get inside your head. They make you believe you’re the girl who’s going to change them, fix them, the only girl who can. They lay it on so thick that you believe it. And the worse they treat you, the harder you fall. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I know. I’m not going to. I know what I’m doing, trust me,” I tell her, pulling her in for a quick hug before we split for classes. “I’ll phone you tonight?”
She gives me a half smile and walks down the corridor.
That reminds me. I need to get my phone back.
“I need my phone.”
He’s still a few meters away from the car, strolling over like he owns the ground beneath his feet. The cool autumn sun is fading in the sky, casting yet more shadows over the only fleshy parts of his body.
“I see we’re still working on remembering our manners, princess.”
He opens the door for me and gestures for me to get in the car. I wait for him to slide into his own seat before I reply. “I figure manners are a bit like respect, you need to earn them.”
“I figure phones are a bit like privileges, you need to earn them.”
He starts the car and I look out of the window. I can’t afford another phone. And I need it. I feel panicky without it, like I’m on edge. Does he enjoy this? Is this how it’s going to be, him finding new ways every day to make my life hell?
“You don’t own me, Malachy. You can get your dick hard thinking that you do all you want, but it’s not real.”
He chuckles. “Neither is porn darlin, but it does the job well enough.”
I don’t speak to him again for the rest of the journey home. We get about half way and he turns some music on. I know fuck-all about music but I’d hazard a guess it’s like Slipknot or Korn or something. Either way, it’s fucking melting my brain.
He stops the car outside my house and I glance over at him, but he’s looking out the front window. Bye then.
I open the door and I get out, not even bothering to look back while his tyres screech away.
It’s only when I get to the door do I realize that my house key is attached to my car key, the same set of keys Malachy posted through the letterbox.
Fuck.
And I can’t phone my mum, or Scott.
I sit my arse down on the doorstep and rest my chin on my hands. I’m tired, exhausted. I just want to go to bed and forget about the steaming hot pile of shit I’ve found myself in.
I want to close my eyes and drift off and not have to think about him, how much of a cunt he is, how much I didn’t give two fucks about that fact last night.
When he was lying on top of me naked in his bed.
The image of him standing in front of me taking off his clothes forces its way into my mind. As much as try to cast it away, it won’t shift.
So I try hard to think about something else.
I think about his mind instead. I think about the little boy who I barely even knew, but who somehow managed to change my life forever. I guess I changed his life forever, too.
Was he telling the truth? It’s possible. Probable, in fact. Probably more probable than Jamie’s story. Fuck, that was a lot of probs. But still, I can see how a nine-year-old boys idea of resuscitation could have looked like he was touching me, kissing me, doing other shit to me.
But why didn’t he just tell people what he was doing? If I’m believing him now, as a grown up, then surely the adults at the time would have believed it?
An hour or so goes by like this while I look at little pieces of mud and dirt and weeds and mull things over in my head. If what he told me was true, then I feel awful for that little boy.
My mum’s car pulls up outside and I thank the fucking stars because I was starting to get seriously cold. It’s almost dark now, and lunch feels like forever ago.
She gets out, slamming the door quickly behind her and marching down the path towards me.
“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been up to high doe! Worried sick!”
Shit. I didn’t think of an excuse.
I swallow and try to act like I’m not about to tell a lie. I hate lying. “I’m sorry, I stayed at Kate’s last night and couldn’t find my phone.”
“Oh and you didn’t think to pop your head around the door this morning? I’ve been up all night!” She’s fumbling with the keys. Fretting. Worrying. You’d think I was seven again, but she’s been like this for ten years now. I think I’d accept it better if I thought it was ever going to change.
But it won’t.
I’ll be twenty-seven and she’ll still be acting like this.
“It was early, and I didn’t want to wake you. I assumed you’d see the car was back and realize I was fine.”
She opens the door and I sit on my step looking up at her. “How is Gran?”
Subject change.
Her face softens just a fraction, and she gestures her head for me to come in.
“She’s doing better. They said she can move to a care home just as soon as they find a room for her.”
“That’s good,” I say, helping her with one of the bags she was carrying. “You sit down, I’ll make us a cuppa.”
She nods absentmindedly and sits down at the kitchen table. It’s piled high with unfolded washing, letters, bills, catalogues. She can’t help it, and this is the way it’s always been.
I put the tins away in the cupboards while I’m waiting on the kettle to boil and think about the best way to broach the subject.
It’ll be better if she has a cup of tea in her hand.
After making it just the way she likes it, I rest it on top of a stained magazine and take the chair opposite her, pushing the pile of clothes to the side so I can see her face.
“I wanted to ask you something.”
“Oh?”
“Seeing… Malachy Hunter in the shop the other day. Well, I’ve been thinking more and more about what happened.”
“The accident.” She says the word like it’s offensive. Dirty. And I nod my head.
“What happened? I know what happened before, but what happened after?”
“Grace… it’s…” She looks to the side and I watch her every move. She’s uncomfortable. I need to know what she knows, what she thinks. I never wanted to before now, I was happy in my bubble. Wrapped up in cotton wool and comfortable.
But Malachy ripped that off me and set it on fire.
And now I need to know everything.
She looks into her teacup like she’s trying to see the future in the leaves. We don’t use tea leaves, we’re common as fuck and use tea bags, but either way she’s trying to find her answers there.
“Mum, please. I’ve never asked before but I need to understand it now.”
She looks up at me and smiles, her fingers coming up to her five-pointed star necklace and twisting it around on the chain. “You’re not a baby anymore, are you? When did that happen?”
I give her a half-laugh and return her smile, letting her have her moment.
“I remember you used to be so fearless. Always climbing trees and giving me heart attacks. You were tiny from the moment you were born, but there was a spirit inside you that could match any giant.”
“I was premature, I remember you saying that.”
She nods and takes a sip of her tea. “Far too early. Couldn’t wait to get into this world. You shouldn’t have survived, but you did.”
“You said that about the accident, too,” I reply, trying to push the conversation back to where I needed it to go.
“I still remember what I was doing that day,” she tells me. “I was making you a coat, sewing little pieces of offcuts together. It was going to be perfect. Unique. Colorful. Just like you. And then the knock on the door. I igno
red it at first, thought I was imagining it. But then it got louder, more desperate.”
“Jamie?”
“Aye. He had a face like he’d just been caught stealing sweeties off a baby. Come quick, he said. He was tugging on my arm and I knew then that something had happened. So I ran. Didn’t even shut the front door. I kept asking him what was wrong but he couldn’t speak, looked like he’d seen a ghost.”
“And you found me with Scott? Was Malachy there?”
She narrows her eyes. “Malachy was nowhere to be seen. There were kids everywhere, standing around in a circle. Scott had you cradled in his arms like a baby. Blood all over him, all over you. You were out cold and I thought I’d lost you.”
“And then what happened?”
“I checked you had a pulse, you were still breathing. I didn’t have a phone, but I didn’t want to leave you, I knew you needed an ambulance. We were closer to Mr Hunter’s than we were ours. So I picked you up, and I ran all the way there, Scott and Jamie and the rest of them trailing along behind you.”
She stops and takes another long drink of her tea, and when she puts it down, I notice her eyes are watery.
“I rattled the door and his mum opened it, tears streaming down her eyes. I barged right past her, not putting two and two together and screaming at her to call an ambulance. And that’s when I saw him. Malachy. Standing in his hall covered head to toe in blood. His lip was burst open and running down his chin and there was a cut around his eyebrow, but I knew in my heart the rest of it was yours.”
“I didn’t know any of this,” I tell her. How did that happen? I hadn’t hit him? But if his mum was crying, I’m assuming it could have been his dad? And even as I look at my mum now with tears in her eyes, it’s not her or me I’m feeling sorry for. It’s him.
“He was practically snarling at you. Scott and Jamie came rushing in the door a few seconds after us and Mr Hunter — Robert — had to hold him back, kicking and thrashing like a wild animal.”
Why did he hate Scott and Jamie then? I assumed his anger and hatred came after, because he thought they started the rumors… but there wouldn’t have been any rumors at that point.
Unless it was Scott or Jamie who hit him?
“And what about the police reports? Why did everyone say he’d hit me and… worse things than that? What did Scott and Jamie tell them?”
She shifts uncomfortably and her chair scrapes back against the vinyl flooring. “Mum?”
“I… I can’t talk about this anymore, Grace. It’s too painful.”
“Mum? Please. I need to understand.”
She glances at me and swallows, but doesn’t take her seat again. “Jamie and Scott’s stories matched up. They said he was… I mean they were kids, so they didn’t exactly know. But I knew. They gave the police their statements and later that night I had a visit from Mr Hunter.”
“And?”
She pauses so long I can barely stand it. Mr Hunter. He’s been a part of our life for as long as I can remember. But when I think about it properly, that’s not true. She opened up the shop not long after I got home from hospital — before that she had worked from home, doing wedding dress alterations and commissions and shit. Robert Hunter wasn’t a client until after my accident. And he's been our best client ever since.
“He bought you? Bribed you?” Even as I say the words, I don’t think I believe it.
“I’m sorry. Grace, I’m so sorry. If I could go back, I would have refused but at the time it was just me. I was on my own with two kids, struggling to put food on the table.”
“We struggle to put food on the table now?”
“Well you have inflation to thank for that,” she says. “What was a decent amount of money ten years ago, changes over time.”
“And what was a decent amount of money? What was this deal you made?”
She shifts uncomfortably and wrings her hands together. “The boys would retract their statements, and he’d buy four suits every month from us from that day until your eighteenth birthday.”
“That’s next month,” I tell her.
She gives me a half-smile. “I know. And look at you. You have your own business now. I couldn’t have helped you without him.”
Now I’m the one staring into my teacup looking for leaves and shit. She’s right, at the end of the day. Everything we have — the roof over our heads, the business, even the battered old Honda on the drive. That was because of the Hunters.
Where would we be if we didn’t have that guaranteed income every day?
But the payment for all of this was that there never was an investigation. The police never put the issue to bed once and for all. They interviewed me months later, but I didn’t give them anything useful — because I couldn’t remember — so Malachy never got to defend himself.
He never got the chance to tell people what he was doing.
It all starts to make sense.
Except the part where he swung for Scott and Jamie.
I’ll ask him about that when I next see him.
And then a thought crosses my mind. His little deal with the devil only worked because he said he’d pull his dad’s custom and ruin our business in the process.
I’m eighteen in October.
There won’t be a business to threaten me with.
I don’t have to do what he says anymore.
But I’m not going to tell him why.
Chapter 20
Malachy
I park the car around the corner and switch the engine off, lighting up a cigarette.
It’s middle of the night cold, and a minute later the windows are steamed up with condensation, filling the car up with a dim orange glow from the streetlights.
I want to know everything. How long was she sitting there before her mum got home from work? What did Scott say to her? More importantly, what did she say to Scott?
It’s all I’ve thought about all fucking night. I wasn’t planning on driving over here. I kept the key, that was planned.
But I was going to wait until the perfect moment to use it.
I was going to wait until she’d broken the deal — because she will break that deal — and I was going to sneak into her room in the middle of the night and fuck her until her insides mashed up.
But I can’t fucking help myself. I can’t spend a minute alone without thinking about her, which means no work, no sleep, nothing that you’d normally do alone. And I fucking like being alone.
I inhale a deep breath and watch the end of the snout light up and glow and burn. That’s what I wanted for Grace. I wanted to suck the soul right out of her. But I didn’t expect her to fight. When I had her legs pinned down with my thighs and her wrists locked easily beside her head, I didn’t expect her to turn around and bite me.
When she did that, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to fuck a girl so much in my life. Which is exactly why I didn’t fuck her. When I fuck her it’s not going to be some heat of the moment, animalistic mistake that feels good at the time but leaves you sickened the next day. When I fuck her, it’s going to be perfect.
At least, for me anyway.
With that, I get out of the car, dropping the half-smoked cigarette into the wet gutter and crushing it under my foot for good measure.
Her house is around the corner. I’m taking my car’s life into my own hands by leaving it sat there in the middle of the night in a place like this, but I’ve never been one to give too many fucks about material shit.
The house is cloaked in darkness, the whole fucking street is. I stroll up the garden path like I own the place, because I probably will one day, and I don’t fanny about getting the door unlocked.
Poking my head around the door to the living room, I can see from the shadows it’s cramped and messy. But I don’t waste time before continuing up the stairs.
Four doors face me.
Toilet, Scott, old Ma’ McCormack, and my Grace. But which one is hers? I open the first door quietly and confirm it’s the
bathroom. Hers’ll be the smallest, I’m guessing, so I ignore the other door on that wall and shoot for the one directly opposite.
Bingo.
She has a single bed? That’s the first thing I notice. That won’t do at all.
I’ve not fit into a single bed since I was fucking twelve.
But I shut the door behind me anyway.
The blinds are open so I can make out her shape and her features. She sleeps with her mouth open, curled into a ball with her fist tucked under her chin.
I look around the room. It’s clean and tidy, and bare. On the wall there are a few pictures pinned onto a notice board — her and Kate I’m assuming, too dark to be sure. No TV. A small dresser. A single window.
The mattress shifts under my weight as I sit down on her bed beside her. She stirs but doesn’t wake, so I clamp the flat of my hand over her mouth before giving her a push.
Her eyes fly open in shock and she spins around so fast that my thumb almost takes her nose out the game.
I shush her, pressing the finger of my free hand to her lips. She’s breathing heavy as fuck but I don’t move my hand away — not until she understands that making a noise will only make things worse.
“You good?” I whisper.
She takes another few breaths and blinks, trying to nod her head. I let my hand fall down to her neck.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she angry-whispers.
I take her house key out of my pocket and hold it up in front of her face, letting it jingle in the light. I had a spare one cut so she can have this one back now.
“Missed your face,” I tell her, keeping my voice low.
She pushes herself up in bed, looking around as if she’s still a bit dazed.
“What happened with Scott?”
She blinks again and turns around to face me.
“I told him I made a mistake and promised him I’d never see you again. The deal’s off.”
No she did not.
What the fuck?
I knew she’d break the deal, eventually. But I’d expected it to come when the consequences for breaking it seemed like the lesser of two evils. Not right now.