It’s so beautiful here, they’ll say. There’s such a sense of community. People look out for each other.
It’s true, I guess.
Within minutes we’re at Connolly Gardens. There is a square of grass with a narrow ribbon of concrete path looping around it, and a marble fountain in the middle. A curved terrace of large Georgian houses surrounds the square, all painted pastel shades. We park outside Maggie’s house, a pale azure colour with cream window frames, a black cast-iron knocker in the shape of a lion’s head on the cream door.
‘Aren’t you going to come in?’ Maggie asks as she pushes the front door open and only Jamie follows her. Ali sneaks a look at me, waiting until I shake my head before saying, ‘No, I’m good, Mags. I’ll wait here with Em.’
‘And will you get suncream?’ I call after them. I don’t want to have to talk to Maggie’s mother. The last time I called, she disappeared into her ‘client space’ to get a ‘book that I think will really speak to you, Emma’. Hannah had caused quite a stir when the Bennetts moved here from North Cork five years ago. She was heavily pregnant with Maggie’s baby sister, Alice Eve, her bump bulging underneath tight T-shirts, and she didn’t seem to care that old ladies tutted and averted their eyes when they saw a flash of swollen belly. Everyone whispered about the new arrivals, about how the mother was ‘a play-therapist, whatever that means’, and the father was ‘an accountant, and must be doing well for himself if they can afford that house – you should have seen the price of it’, and that the other daughter was twelve or thirteen, and really pretty. I had been worried when I heard that until I saw Maggie and realized that, yes, she was pretty. But she wasn’t prettier than me.
‘I hear the wife is very attractive,’ Mam said to Dad the night they arrived, passing him the mashed potatoes at dinner. ‘And I do think it’s brave of her to allow herself to go grey so early.’
‘Ready?’ Maggie says when she opens the front door again.
‘Oh, you look so cool,’ Ali says. Maggie is wearing that men’s checked shirt she bought in a charity shop as a dress and her metallic silver Doc Martens. She has a paisley scarf holding her curls back, wrapped twice around her head and tied in an oversized bow on top, almost the size of her head, and multiple silver rings on her fingers.
‘Jesus,’ I say. ‘You look like you’re Amish or something.’
Maggie takes a look at herself in the oval mirror hanging above the spindly-legged hall table. I hate that stupid mirror, with the affirmation ‘You are beautiful on the inside’ scored into it in silver cursive script. I always want to scratch it out.
‘Savage,’ she says happily. ‘I love the Amish look.’
*
Connolly Gardens is quiet at this time of day. There are three women sitting on a bench at the other side of the green, all wearing black Lycra leggings, skintight vest tops and Birkenstocks, rolled up yoga mats and brown paper bags from the Health Hut at their feet. Another woman in cropped combat trousers and a baggy T-shirt is chasing after two toddlers, holding out suncream and wide-brimmed hats; some older children in swimming togs are running around the fountain, barefoot and shrieking.
‘Hey, sexy.’ A boy in a baseball cap leans out of the window of a car parked at the entrance to the gardens, his friend in the passenger seat throwing his head back in laughter. We keep walking, pretending we didn’t hear. I look back over my shoulder, and of course he’s pointing at me.
‘What’s wrong?’ he calls.
‘Nothing’s wrong.’
‘Then smile a little. I bet you’re even more beautiful when you smile.’
‘Christ,’ I say, when there is enough distance between us. ‘Why is it always me?’
‘Maybe because you were the only one who looked back and made eye contact with them?’ Jamie says, and Maggie starts laughing.
‘Come on, J, don’t be so hard on her. Maybe she fancies one of them.’ Maggie presses her lips together to stop herself from giggling. ‘The guy in the white tracksuit was a total ride. Just your type, right, Em?’
‘Ha ha,’ I say as she and Jamie laugh. ‘Very funny.’
Ali doesn’t join in, turning her face away from us. ‘It’s so hard being your friend,’ she told me at one of Dylan Walsh’s parties last year. She was wasted, slumped over the toilet bowl. ‘It’s like I don’t exist when you’re around.’ She retched again, and I checked my phone to see if anyone had texted me. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘And sometimes –’ she took a deep breath – ‘I think that’s why you like being my friend.’
I told her not to be silly. I told her she was wrong.
‘To be honest, Al, I’m sick of being harassed,’ I told her.
‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘it must be so difficult being told you’re gorgeous all the time.’
‘It’s superficial,’ I said, because that’s what you’re supposed to say when people tell you you’re beautiful. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
Ali stops suddenly, Jamie slamming into the back of her. ‘Shit.’
‘Jesus, Ali. Watch it, will you?’ Jamie says, taking a step back.
‘Shhh,’ Ali says, then lowers her voice. ‘Look who’s over there.’
Sean Casey and Jack Dineen are in a corner of the park, hidden behind the fountain. They’ve taken their shirts off and are throwing a rugby ball between them, their bodies lean and tight.
‘Sean is gorgeous,’ Ali sighs.
‘Sean needs some suncream,’ I say.
He looks up at this, his face going even redder when he sees me.
‘Hey, Emma.’ He waves at me, and I wiggle my fingers at him in return.
‘You shouldn’t encourage Sean,’ Maggie told me on Skype last week. ‘You know how Ali feels about him.’
‘I’m not encouraging him,’ I answered in exasperation, ‘but what am I supposed to do? Ignore him? I don’t want to hurt his feelings.’
(I don’t want him to think I’m a bitch.)
‘I’ll check us in on Facebook,’ Ali says when we find an empty bench. I sit at one end, Jamie next to me, both of us using the shade of a small oak tree behind us to block out the sun. Ali takes off her blazer to use as a blanket on the grass, Maggie borrowing mine to do the same. She gives me the fair-trade, fragrance-free, chemical-free suncream Hannah uses, and I pour some between my palms, rubbing it into my legs. I look up to see if Jack Dineen has noticed, but he’s tackling Sean to the ground, trying to wrestle the ball off him.
‘Eh, I think that’s rubbed in at this stage, Emma.’
‘What?’
Jamie squirts some suncream on to her legs and starts to massage it into her skin. ‘Oh yes, yes, yes,’ she says. ‘That feels so good.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ I say. I close my eyes, the world around me fading into sound. I can hear the cars driving past, a horn blasting. ‘Do you think he likes me?’ Ali asks Maggie. ‘Has Eli ever said anything to you? Did he say if Sean ever mentions me?’ Maggie’s reply in soothing tones, breaking off mid-sentence every time her phone beeps, a fly buzzing near me that I’m too lazy to swat away, one of the mothers calling, ‘Fionn, come here right now, it’s time to go home.’ I’m only half listening as Ali tells a story about some girl in the States who had her webcam hacked while she was touching herself and she took an overdose.
‘Ugh,’ I say, screwing my nose up. ‘That is so gross.’
‘Hannah says that masturbation is a normal thing for people to do, men and women,’ Maggie says as she checks her phone again.
‘What, so you do it, do you?’ I wink at her. ‘When I rang you last night and you said you were “in the shower” you were actually rubbing one out?’
‘No!’ Maggie’s face is turning red. ‘Of course not.’
‘Hmm-mmm.’
‘I don’t,’ Maggie says. ‘I don’t. Hello, I have Eli, don’t I?’
‘Anyway, back to the story,’ Ali says. She hates it when we interrupt her like this. ‘The hacker sent this girl the video of herself and told
her if she didn’t, I don’t know, give him a blow job or something, he’d post the video on Twitter and send a link to everyone at her school. So she killed herself.’
‘How did she do it?’ Jamie asks, leaning forward on the bench until her belly touches her thighs, but Ali just shrugs.
‘It’s a pity it wasn’t Sarah Swallows.’ I stretch my arms out over my head. ‘She would have been only too delighted to help, the dirty slut.’
‘Who’s a dirty slut?’ a boy’s voice asks. It’s Eli, Conor and Fitzy behind him.
‘Hi, Eli.’ I push my sunglasses back into my hair and smile at him. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m good—’ he begins, but Maggie screams as if she hasn’t seen him in years, and jumps up into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. He manages to sit down with her still like that, murmuring hello to her through kisses. He doesn’t finish his sentence to me. Conor sits beside me, of course.
‘Hey, Emmie,’ he says. I raise an eyebrow at him. ‘Emma, I mean.’
‘Hey.’ I lower my voice so none of the others can hear me. ‘How’s your mam?’
‘She’s fine. Still very tired, but I guess that’s to be expected. Thanks though.’
‘For what?’
‘For asking.’ He looks at me intently, his left shoulder grazing off mine.
‘Lads, would ye get a room?’ Fitzy says to Maggie and Eli as he sits next to Jamie.
‘Sorry.’ Maggie breaks away, but only barely, their faces inches away from one another. She brushes a hand over Eli’s tightly cropped Afro. ‘I can’t resist him.’
My phone beeps. Ali has checked us in again, this time including the boys. I roll my eyes and stretch out my legs, only half listening as the heat melts through my bones.
‘It’s roasting, isn’t it . . .’
‘Suncream . . . factor fifty . . . fair trade . . .’
‘Fair what?’
Laughter. A patch of sun breaking through the trees, the sky moving. The buzzing fly is back, landing on my legs, tickling my skin.
‘. . . and I can’t get the exact right shade of blue. I want it to look exactly like . . .’
‘. . . yes, I loved that piece, even though Mr Shanahan said he thinks the Turner Prize is worthless these days.’
‘Mr Shanahan is basically mentally unstable.’
Fitzy and Maggie have become really good friends since Fitzy had to get a special dispensation to come to St Brigid’s so he could take art for his Leaving Cert. ‘She’s cool,’ he told me at his last birthday party. ‘She’s pretty, but she’s still smart and funny. Let’s face it, you can’t say that about too many girls in Ballinatoom, can you?’ I couldn’t think of a response for a second, and he looked triumphant. ‘Maggie’s the best,’ I said at last. ‘Although I’m surprised to hear you think she’s pretty. I didn’t think you were into . . .’ He stopped, fear freezing his features, and I felt a grubby joy. ‘Never mind.’ I smiled, and took another slice of birthday cake. ‘You don’t mind if I have some more, do you?’ I looked around at the nearly empty room. ‘I’m sure there’s plenty left.’
There is a screech of brakes, tyres against concrete. A blast of heavy metal music, a girl’s voice screaming over it, ‘I’m warning you, if you . . .’ A car door slamming, a horn blaring. ‘Fuck off, you stupid cunt,’ a boy’s voice yells as the car speeds off.
‘Dylan and Julie?’ Ali says, without even sitting up to check.
‘Yup.’
‘God,’ Maggie sighs, reaching to give Eli a kiss on the neck. ‘I’m so glad we’re not like that, baby, aren’t you?’
‘Aw, baby,’ Fitzy does a perfect imitation of Maggie’s voice before a rugby ball whizzes past his face, almost hitting him. He fumbles over Conor’s outstretched legs, Jamie snapping, ‘Hey, watch it,’ as he falls against her. He apologizes, shaking his hair out of his eyes, and gets to his feet, brushing grass off his rolled-up chinos.
Dylan runs towards us, Jack and Sean close behind him. He rescues the ball, tossing it from one hand to the other. He doesn’t even look at me, just stares at Jamie.
‘Hey, Jamie,’ he says. ‘How’re things with you?’
She ignores him, slumping down in her seat, tucking her chin into her chest.
‘I said, “Hello, Jamie,”’ he says again. ‘No need to be ignorant about it.’
‘Take it easy, Dylan.’ Maggie pushes her round John Lennon glasses up into that mane of unruly hair and squints at him.
‘Who asked you?’
Eli stands up, his six-foot-four frame dwarfing Dylan. Eli used to get into a lot of fights before, whenever some kid decided that calling him the N-word seemed like a good idea, but he promised Maggie that he’d learn to control his temper. ‘He says that he’d do anything for me, that he’s never felt like this about anyone else before,’ she told us when they first started hooking up, almost three years ago now. I wanted to tell her that boys always say that, in the beginning.
Eli starts to say something to Dylan when his phone beeps. He looks at the screen and frowns.
‘Who is it?’ Maggie asks.
‘Mum. She can see all of us out here.’ He turns towards a primrose-coloured house in Connolly Gardens, three doors down from Maggie’s, and waves at a shadowy figure in the front window. ‘I have to go home. Dad’s on nights this week and she needs me to mind Priscilla and Isaac.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
Eli helps her stand up, untangling her sunglasses from her hair and gently placing them back on her face. It falls silent once they’ve left, and I try and think of something to say. Emma O’Donovan is hot, I overheard a boy in my year say when we were fourteen and had just started going to the Attic Disco, but she’s as boring as fuck.
‘How are you guys feeling about the match tomorrow night?’ I direct the question at Jack, still standing at the edge of the group. His dark hair is spiky with gel, despite the heat, his navy T-shirt clinging to his torso. He’s a bit short for a boy, about five foot eight, but he’s built. ‘My dad told me there’s a rumour that a Cork selector is going to be at it.’
‘Well, he’s Ciarán O’Brien’s brother, so he’d be at the match anyway.’ Jack shrugs.
‘Still an opportunity though,’ Sean butts in. He comes closer to me, smelling of sweat and grass, and sits by my feet. ‘We had a team meeting about it yesterday.
‘Speaking of the match,’ he continues, ‘I’m going to have a party afterwards. My parents will be out of town.’ Ali sits up, but Sean’s eyes never leave mine. ‘What do you say, Emma? Are you up for it?’
I’ve told him that I’m not interested in him like that, that I’m never going to be interested, because Ali likes him. ‘But I don’t like Ali,’ he said that night when he cornered me outside Reilly’s pub. ‘I like you.’ I pushed him away. ‘I would, Sean. You know I would,’ I said. ‘But Ali’s one of my best friends. I couldn’t do that to her.’
‘It had better be a good show,’ Dylan says. ‘Especially after my last party. Am I right, Emma?’
‘Yeah, it was good.’
‘Just good?’ He raises an eyebrow at me. ‘That’s not what Kevin Brennan said.’
(Kevin, throwing me against a wall at the party, his teeth sharp.)
‘Why?’ I say. ‘What exactly did Kevin say?’
(. . . he is dragging me into a dimly lit bedroom that smells of Play-Doh. Tripping over a headless Barbie. A candy-pink duvet, people laughing outside. Let’s get back to the party, I kept saying.)
‘Oh –’ Dylan smirks – ‘just that you had fun.’
(Kevin’s hands on my shoulders, pushing me down, saying, Go on, come on, Emma. It seemed easiest to go along with it. Everyone is always saying how cute he is anyway.)
‘What kind of fun?’ My voice is tight.
(Afterwards I made him swear he wouldn’t tell anyone.)
‘Well, I don’t know what Kevin said, but nothing happened,’ I say.
‘That’s not what he told us.’ Dylan look
s to Jack for confirmation.
‘Then he’s a fucking liar.’ I stop. ‘Look, whatever,’ I say, making myself sound calm. ‘If he has to invent stories to make himself feel like more of a man, that’s not my problem.’
‘Girls are all the same,’ Dylan says, rolling his eyes. ‘Get wasted and get a bit slutty, then in the morning try and pretend it never happened because you regret it.’ He directs this at Jamie and I laugh, a little too loudly.
‘I have to go,’ Jamie says, grabbing her school bag. A notebook and a tin pencil case fall out and Ali jumps up to help her, but Jamie waves her off, shoving the stuff back into her bag. ‘I have to get to work.’
‘OK, hun,’ Ali says, sitting back down. ‘Call me later?’ Jamie doesn’t reply, just walks away alone. Dylan stares after her.
‘Come on,’ he says to Sean and Jack when she’s out of sight. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ And they leave, throwing the rugby ball between them. None of them looks back at me.
‘I think I’m going to head,’ I say. ‘Wait . . . shit. Maggie said she’d drop me home.’
‘Mom texted me ten minutes ago. She’s in town,’ Ali says. ‘We can go meet her in Mannequin? She’ll drive you home once she’s finished.’