Page 123 of To Hell With It
Una reached in for another hug and I let her squeeze me tight because I knew I’d have a shower once she’d gone and I’d locked up. I followed her out and waved her off and then made my way with my torch to my gate and the woodlice.
I didn’t see it straight away because my eyes were on Una’s car until it went out of sight. I always did that – waved someone off until they disappeared. It was how I was brought up. My mother did it to me, and my grandmother had done it to her, and so on. It was a family trait. In fact, if I left someone’s house and they said goodbye and then shut the door, I found it rude.
Anyway, it was a box or something, the thing I was staring at, made out of wood, no bigger than my hand, attached to the side of my gate. It sat right by the latch. My first thought was annoyance, it was completely in the way of the woodlice, actually nailed in, and I had no idea how I would brush them off or even get to them or even if they would ever be able to get back to their spot again. My second thought waswhat the hell was it?
I squinted my eyes, tilted my head, shone my torch inside the small hole drilled into its side. I could see bits of old, rotten, damp wood poking out. It couldn’t have been a bird’s nest because the hole was too small. It couldn’t have been a mouse’s nest because even a mouse wouldn’t be able to fit in that. But it was definitely a nest of some sort.
And then I saw them, in a cluster, amongst the moss and rotten wood, and I actually cried. I cried with sheer joy because I realised what it was, the small wooden, square box that had a hole drilled into its side no bigger than my fingernail.
It was a house. It was a woodlouse house.
ChapterSixty-One
Ipicked up my phone, but it felt strange texting Niall when I was in the same country as him. So instead, I pulled on my coat and put on my boots and made my way up the New Line to his house.
Niall had made a quick exit from my welcome-home party, if that’s what you’d call it. When I say, a quick exit, I mean I saw him when I got there and then I didn’t see him again. I didn’t even see him leave, but I suppose that was what he had wanted. To slip out unnoticed.
I passed the phone box – it wasn’t working anymore but people left things inside, like old books and bric-a-brac, and plant pots, and Maggie Ryan’s discreet conversations cards. There was an honesty box, but I wasn’t sure if anyone ever bought anything from it because every time I passed there seemed to be more stuff inside than before.
I thought of Maggie Ryan’s cards, whether or not she sat by her phone all day waiting for it to ring, if she had two phones (she must have done, surely?) and if she answered it with a sultry voice or her own? And what happened if she answered it and a woman was on the other end? Would she still do it then? Have phone sex with a woman?
When I reached Niall’s house, I saw it straight away. It stuck out sandwiched between the overgrown hedge and wild garden – a new gate, painted ocean blue – and a butterfly fluttered in my tummy instead of my head.
Niall’s porch door was open so I walked in and tapped on the inside door.
‘Hello? Niall?’ I called out, not too loudly because it felt a little intrusive to be there uninvited. Perhaps because Niall had always come to the porch door and I’d never actually been inside (not since I used to break in, anyway). The thought of Una drunk in Niall’s house jumped into my head, of them kissing in his kitchen, and whether or not it was as passionate as she said it was.
I thought about if Niall had got an erection, because that often happened if someone was pressed up against a man in a passionate embrace. Una hadn’t said he had but that didn’t mean he hadn’t. Maybe they’d done more than just kiss? Maybe she had felt it or held it in her hand for a bit? Maybe she just hadn’t told me?
The first time I had ever touched a penis was when I lost my virginity. Before the sex, which happened on a bathroom floor, I’d put my hand down the boy’s trousers, because that was what I assumed I was meant to do, and I’d jiggled it around a few times in the hope that he would like it. The actual sex wasn’t as awkward as when I did that. It hadn’t hurt like I’d expected it to. I didn’t bleed everywhere, like Una had said I would when I lost my virginity.
There was no reply, but I knew Niall must have been in because he’d not have left his house unlocked; he was far too sensible to do that.
‘Helloooo?’ I said the same time I stepped inside.
Una was right. It wasn’t dark. It wasn’t dingy or cold or damp like it had been all those years ago. There was a mahogany dresser in the hallway, not something I would have expected Niall to have at all, although I didn’t really know what I would have expected Niall to have.
I could see the large fireplace with exposed stone in the front room. It was the same fireplace that was there before, but the stonework around it wasn’t soot-stained like it used to be. There were two brown leather sofas with throws on and a sheepskin rug that dominated the room, in a good way, and olive-green floor-length curtains that went with the ivy-green windows. And in that moment, I couldn’t imagine them ocean blue anymore. I’d go as far as saying I didn’t want to. I quite liked the green.
In the middle of the dresser were two tiny, china figurines of gnomes holding garden gear. One with a wheelbarrow, balanced so perfectly on its side like it was actually steering. The other had a garden rake in one hand and a mini china dog next to its feet. They looked as though they’d been hand-painted – had Niall painted them?
I reached forwards to pick the wheelbarrow gnome up but as I did so I knocked the dog over (it wasn’t attached like I’d first thought), which toppled into the gnome with the rake and it fell to the stone floor with a smash. There was no saving him. I stared at the little fragments of china scattered across Niall’s hallway.
Just as quickly, I dropped down to my knees and started to scoop what I could up, even though I knew it was pointless because I’d never get it all with my bare hands. I heard the creak of floorboards above my head and Niall, with only a bath towel around his waist, appeared.
I wasn’t sure if it was the sight of Niall with next to nothing on (Una was right, he was far more toned than I realised underneath those woolly jumpers), or the fact that I’d just broken something clearly sentimental. But I jumped up so fast, I misjudged the end of the mahogany dresser and hit my head so hard, I fell back down to my knees again.
‘Pearl!’ Niall was down the stairs and by my side before I had a chance to recover myself. ‘Are you OK? Let me help you up.’
He reached his arm around my waist, taking my weight as he did so. And that would have been fine had it not meant that his hand was no longer holding his towel in place. It dropped to the floor silently but somehow made my ears thud.
In that moment, I wished I’d just not let myself in like a normal person (who did that, who just walked into someone else’s house uninvited?) because when I looked up, there it was, in my face, so close to my mouth my breath must have tickled it.
Niall’s penis.
It was one of those moments when I should have turned away or pretended I hadn’t seen it, or just apologised and run off, but I didn’t, did I. No. I knelt there with my mouth open, staring straight at it.
I sized it up in those small, fast seconds. I think I even tilted my head. I thought about how it was the perfect size – not turbo like Jack’s. I could get it into my arse and I’d probably be OK with it. I could suck it. Fuck it – what? Jesus. What? I didn’t want to suck it or have it in my arse. But those were the thoughts that went through my head, the ones that I said lingered because of my OCD, instead of just passing through and disappearing.
