Page 19 of To Hell With It
‘I was saving it for Dublin, but why not start the adventure here.’ He winked and at the same time he unscrewed the lid and poured me more than a measure.
‘I have some orange juice,’ I said as I turned to the fridge.
‘Orange juice?’
‘For the whisky.’
‘Nah, you drink it straight. You should know that!’
‘You don’t dilute it?’
‘Why would I ruin a perfectly good whisky?’
He chinked my glass and downed his in one and with one eyebrow raised waited for me to drink mine. I held my breath – Una had taught me that, she said it stopped the taste. It was what she used to do withShaun did everythingbutwhen she swallowed, except it didn’t work when I did it (with the whisky, not Jack’s cum).
I could barely see the clock by the time we’d finished the bottle but I knew it was late because the birds had started to sing and the sky had turned from black to dusky blue. Jack had gone to bed, and I was stood in my kitchen trying to work out the best way to get everything done in the quickest way possible.
I started with the windows. I pushed the handles with my index finger (three times) then stood back and did my best to line them up with my eyes so that I could be sure they were clicked shut. Then I did it all again.
I moved the mat at the bottom of my stairs so that it was centre to the bottom step. It wasn’t there for decoration; it was there to make sure I didn’t hit my head on the tiled floor if I were to ever fall down them while sleepwalking. I scanned the oven knobs. I hadn’t used it all day and the switch was off at the wall but that didn’t stop me.
‘Off, off, off, off,’ I whispered as I pointed to each one. I had to say it out loud; it helped connect my eyes and my brain.
Jack and I had stayed in the kitchen. I’d found out all the things I should have known before I’d offered him a room in my house. The basic stuff like how old he was (twenty-nine), where he was from (a town in the North Island called Te Puke – pronounced teh-pook-eh, not puke, as in sick), he had a sister, Emily, who was three years younger than him, and his parents were divorced. He didn’t speak to his dad anymore for various reasons and his mum was his best friend. I liked the sound of that – that his mum was his best friend – it somehow made him feel safer, like he couldn’t be a murderer because he loved his mum. Oh, and he didn’t smoke, thank Jesus for that because I don’t think I could have coped with the butt ends and where I might have found them.
I didn’t bother going outside to check the gate – Mairéad would have been pleased – because what was the point when she’d already probably squashed them all? I checked the latch on the porch, bolted it from the top and bottom and yanked the handle of the front door five times, which had made my hand ache.
When everything was done and I was as satisfied as I could be in the state that I was in, I stood at the bottom of the stairs with my eyes fixed on the top. All I had to do was get up them as fast as I could, without thinking about anything that would stop me.
Five seconds, that’s all it should have taken, five seconds to get to where I needed to be. My bedroom. My bed. Five seconds of my life that I wouldn’t have given much thought to had I been a normal person with a normal fucking mind.
The only problem was I wasn’t and 3,600 seconds later (one hour), I was still stood at the bottom of them.
ChapterEleven
It’s like I don’t trust my own eyes. I can stare at something and see that it is off or closed or level or woodlice-free, but still question if it is. I still have to go back and check it over and over again.
When I lock a door, for example, and hear the lock click shut, I will pull and tug and unlock and lock that door until my hand hurts. Most of the handles in my house are loose. The irony is that I am the one that makes them less secure. That is why I count. It’s a form of control, a way to keep myself focused and calm.
I’ve often thought about what I must look like to other people. I remember the first time Una caught me at it. I was fifteen; I’d kept it a secret from her for a whole year.
She’d stayed over and walked in on me flicking my bedroom light switch on and off, while I counted repetitively to number ten. When she’d asked me why, I told her it was my safe number. And although I could tell she thought I was totally crazy, she never pushed me on it, and instead accepted me as me and I loved her for it.
Most people in the village know I have some quirks. They don’t know exactly what – I think my parents liked to keep it private when I was growing up – but they make life easy for me in ways that I will always love them for. Like Mr Dutson, who would always come out to fill my car for me when I was learning to drive with my dad (I still don’t have my licence) because he knew I hated holding the pump.
It began when he saw me trying to grip it with tissue and then completely freak out when I’d realised I’d left my antibacterial wipes at home and the shop was shut.
Ellie from the bakery is just as lovely. She always drops my change into my wallet so that I don’t have to touch it myself. It fell to the floor once and she actually came around from the side of the till and picked it up for me. Sally, the farmer’s wife up the lane, leaves a small bottle of sanitiser in her egg box because she knows I like to get them on my way home from the shop.
O’Callaghan’s sells eggs but I prefer themfresh from the chicken’s bottom, as my grandmother used to say. And I loved eating them until Una told me that eggs were actually chickens’ periods and that they came out of the same hole as their poo. It took me a whole year to start eating them again after that.
Sally has a cow in her field called Girl. She named her that because her and her husband bought it from Galway so Girl just seemed to fit. She is tame (I can rub her nose and between her ears for a few seconds before she runs off).
I used to take a shortcut through her field to the lane on my walk to school and hide my wellies in the hedge for the way back because the grass was so long my feet would get soaked. My mum would walk with me and we’d name all the different cars along the way depending on how fast they drove. For example,diarrhoeawas for the boy racers (believe it or not, the odd one did pass through). I never did think about how that must have sounded, with me and my mum shouting diarrhoea as loud as we could.
But I enjoyed following the line of the hedge, sniffing at the wild honeysuckle that stuck out in random places, and daydreaming about what my life would have been like outside of Drangan.
When I was younger, I was convinced the white stripe around Girl’s belly glowed in the dark; at least that’s what my dad used to tell me and I was happy to believe him. Imagination was key, especially because I lived in the middle of nowhere, with only cows and honeysuckle for company.
