Page 3 of To Hell With It
‘Deliveries and stocktaking.’
‘I can do both.’
‘I don’t mind helping.’
‘Don’t you want to go and see your dad?’
I had always found Niall’s relationship with Mr O’Callaghan to be strange. They don’t really speak much, it's as if they are colleagues not father and son. I didn’t notice it so much when we were younger. Only that Mr O’Callaghan was strict on Niall but I’d assumed that was just his old school ways. I had asked Niall once if they’d fallen out but he’d brushed it off by changing the subject, which is what he always did when he didn’t want to talk about something.
But I suppose it had always been like that between them. Mr O’Callaghan isn’t particularly affectionate and when I think about it, he is the same with Mrs O’Callaghan too. I can’t imagine them having sex, although they must have done it, at least once, to have Niall.
He shrugged. ‘He’ll be home soon enough. Have you stocked the shelves?’
‘I was just about to make a start.’ I tapped the box under my hand.
‘Do you need some help?’
‘No, thank you, Niall I’ll be fine.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, thank you, Niall,’ I said curtly.
I knew why he had asked me. The last time I stacked the shelves after a delivery he had walked in right at the moment I was on my knees saying The Lord’s Prayer – doing the cross motion and everything – over and over again. I had no idea how long he had been watching me on my knees chantingOur Father, who art in heaven …on repeat, but it was one of those moments when the only thing I could do was pretend it hadn’t happened.
He hadn’t said anything to me, either; he never once asked me what I was doing, or why. But I could see in his green eyes that he thought I was totally crazy. And he was probably right. I probably am.
I’ve never been religious, even though we went to the village church when we were younger. I hated Sunday school – why would anyone want to go to school on a Sunday? I loathed it, especially when Father Michael used to make me say The Lord’s Prayer twice – once when I arrived and once when I left. It seemed silly to ask the Lord toforgive me my trespasseswhen I’d never bloody trespassed (apart from Niall’s house when it was empty, but that didn’t count).
The thing is, I had to say it all without having an intrusive thought, which was impossible when I constantly had intrusive thoughts. And they aren’t all sexual. Sometimes it will just be a number I don’t like or a shape or colour that represents something bad – like black triangles, for some reason they mean death. Don’t ask me why. I don’t have anything against triangles personally and I don’t mind the colour black.
My OCD stretches far and wide. I can’t shut my gate for example, without checking that I haven’t squashed the woodlice that gather between the latch and the catch they sit in. And I have to count them too. (There are always twelve). Every night I use my phone light to brush them off before I can close it. It doesn’t make a difference that I probably squash a hundred of them when I walk from my house to the gate.
I can’t sit on public toilets seats and if I have to – like if I need a poo – I have to put toilet paper around the entire seat, flush it with my foot (another reason for spraying my shoes) and open the handle with my elbow going in and a sheet of loo roll coming out. If any bit of my clothes touches anything in there, they go straight into the wash when I get home, and I go straight into the shower.
The other stuff is harder to hide. The intrusive thoughts and compulsive urges. I have to be really careful no one sees me doing that stuff.
But how do you hide the fact you’re kissing a tree in a park full of kids because if you don’t then one of them will fall into the river? How do you explain something like that to a mum that’s just walked by and seen you do it?
I don’t know where my fear of dying comes from, or my fear of intrusive thoughts, or my fear of penises or why I can’t just allow myself to think and feel it all and carry on. Or why my life has to go on hold until I grasp control of it by counting or washing or visualising trees or rafts and rivers.
I made my way to the back of the shop in the hope that Niall wouldn’t follow me. I’d already decided I would move the Vaseline down a shelf so I didn’t have to help Mr Keele reach it – and after that I’d check every shelf to make sure all the products were faced forwards and tidy. It was the perfect job for me really. Left alone to put everything in its place, I would end my shift feeling like I’d had a therapy session.
Like I didn’t really need Mairéad at all.
ChapterThree
My mum always comes over on a Thursday. I leave a pump of antibacterial gel by the front door and a bag in the porch for her shoes, just in case she forgets her shoe protectors, but she never does. If my father joins her, he brings his slippers. They bring their own mugs for tea, and only use the toilet if they are desperate.
I was close to both my parents growing up. They wanted the best for me, like all parents do, and I think they would have been happy with whoever I ended up with, as long as that person accepted me wholeheartedly because let’s face it, there is a bloody lot to accept.
My mum’s biggest fear is that I will end up alone. They’d chosen not to have any more children and I think with that came a lot of guilt because, in their eyes, it meant I’d have lived an entire life alone. Of course, that’s not how I saw it at all. I didn’t feel alone.
Growing up, my mother was a stay-at-home mum and my father was an accountant, well respected in the area because he ‘adjusted’ everyone’s books. I didn’t want a sibling – I had Una, who lived up the road from me and was pretty much my sister anyway.
I looked down at my mother’s electric blue shoe protectors as she sipped her tea on the end of my grandmother’s old floral-print sofa. She looked like some kind of 1950s wife, too conscious to slouch, back straight, head up. It was as if she’d come to visit the queen not her highly-strung daughter. But I supposed that was why: she was too afraid to relax in fear of upsetting me.
‘I saw Niall earlier,’ she said. ‘Lovely lad. Did you know he’s studying to be a doctor?’
