Page 44 of To Hell With It
‘I just mean it’s good to look back sometimes,’ Niall concluded.
‘I’m too excited about my future to be thinking about my past.’
‘So you’re happy then?’ Niall held my stare.
‘That’s a weird thing to ask me, of course I’m happy,’ I said, even more confused. Although I’d never actually asked myself that question – if I was happy? ‘Why are you asking me this stuff?’ I narrowed my eyes in the hope that Niall might talk some sense instead of in riddles, because I hated riddles.
‘Hold on,’ Niall said as he disappeared out of sight and then reappeared with a small, wrapped parcel in his hand, no bigger than the length of my thumb. ‘Something for your travels.’ He passed it to me.
‘What is it?’
‘Open it at the airport,’ he said and before I could thank him he shut his ivy-green door.
* * *
It was a short walk to my parents’ house from Niall’s. They live in a bungalow around the corner from Ellie’s bakery, which was a sin in itself because my father used to stop in and buy pasties on his way home from the office and my mother would get mad when he was too full to eat his supper.
My dad worked in the centre of Drangan. When I say centre, I mean his office was between the shop and Una’s salon. It wasn’t a big office, just him and his receptionist, Mona, who worked for him until he retired, even though she was long past retirement age herself. Mona died two months after that and everyone said it was the boredom that killed her. She left behind two sausage dogs (Enid and Blyton) that Ellie from the bakery adopted because nobody could bear to see them taken away and re-homed.
Like Niall’s, my parent’s house is set back from the road, but the garden is pristine and the house can be seen clearly from all angles. Growing up, I likened it to a goldfish bowl. There was no privacy, not really, which wasn’t great for someone like me, who needed her privacy.
My parents spend most of their time in the garden since my dad retired, which sounds like a cliché but it is true. My mum has developed an obsession with feeding the birds. In the winter she’ll be out there twice a day, topping them up with tubs of breadcrumbs, seeds, and sultanas soaked in milk. In the summer, she’ll do it once a day. The birds eat better than my mum and dad do.
During the autumn months, she’ll wait for hours to see a breeze of swallows (that’s what they’re called when they fly together in large numbers) leave for Africa. She’ll sit with a blanket and a cup of tea in the summerhouse my dad bought for her, just to get a glimpse of them passing.
My dad has a different obsession. He will spend the entire time trying to find the mole that digs up the garden. He’s spent more money on traps than on the garden itself and none of them actually work. I think he secretly enjoys the mole humps popping up in different spots every morning. I think he would miss them if they disappeared.
My parents were in the garden when I arrived. Neither of them noticed me at first and I watched them for a moment, in their own little worlds, happy. And then the thought of leaving hit me like a thump in the night. What the hell was I doing? How the hell was I going to get on a plane and fly to the other side of the world when I couldn’t even get to the other side of the village without going back and starting all over again?
I hadn’t opened Niall’s gift, it was on my passenger seat next to my wipes. I’d already wiped it down and made the paper it was wrapped in soggy. But if I couldn’t even take a package from someone I knew, how would I manage the airport?
‘Hello, love.’ My mum looked up from her birdseed tray. ‘Everything OK?’ She always knew when something was wrong.
‘I’ve come to say goodbye as I’ll be leaving early in the morning,’ I said, even though I had already begun to talk myself out of it.
‘Isn’t your flight in the afternoon?’
‘I want to get there nice and early.’
‘Your father and I think you’re being very brave.’ She smiled, half-heartedly. ‘But we are worried about you going, love,’ she added.
‘Why?’ I said even though I knew why. But I felt defensive all of a sudden. I was twenty-seven not seventeen.
‘Does this Jock even know you’re coming?’ my dad quipped up.
‘It’s Jack, Dad.’
‘We’re just a bit concerned, love,’ my mother interrupted. ‘It’s a huge thing to do when you don’t really know him.’
‘I’m not moving out there, Mum,’ I said defiantly.
‘We just want you to be careful. Could you not invite him back over sometime or just keep in touch for a while?’
‘You’re the one always saying I should go on holiday.’
‘I meant with Una.’
‘This will be one of those once-in-a-lifetime trips that I can finally say I’ve done.’
