Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
CLOVER
I tried to avoid looking at the decor in Odie’s nursery as I placed him in his crib. In fact, I tried to avoid going into that room as much as possible. It wasn’t that I disliked Sheila’s coastal-chic theme—although the vintage fishing nets hanging from the ceiling did make my skin crawl, for personal reasons; it was what those decorations signified that was so hard to stomach. Every starfish and seashell reminded me that Odie had a mother who loved him very much.
And I didn’t.
As soon as he was settled, I practically sprinted back down the hall, thankful that my bedroom door was shut so that I wouldn’t have to see the faded field of green and purple lining the room. My ma had painted a garden of clover and bluebells along the bottom of my walls before I was born, knowing that she was going to name me after a quote from her favorite poem, but now, the sight of them made my chest ache. Those chipped, cracked leaves and flowers were the only things left in the house that still looked like her .
Other than me. A fact that had made me the target of my father’s rage since the day she’d died.
In the sitting room, Sheila clutched a crab-shaped pillow to her chest and stared at the news in horror while Oliver continued his diatribe about how this new Russian threat was “just made up by the BBC to scare all of us because they’re still fucked off about us taking Northern Ireland back.” Neither of them gave me so much as a glance as I bolted through the room and out the back door, which was a relief because my tears had already begun to fall.
By the time I pulled the door closed behind me, I could feel the sob climbing its way out of my throat. I ran to the shed and barely made it inside before I sank to my knees and let it all out. I hated that he made me feel that way. I hated that I was too weak to stand up to him. But mostly, I hated how much I wanted him to love me. It only made it hurt that much more when he reminded me that he didn’t.
With a deep, shaky sigh, I wiped my eyes on my sleeve, pulled myself off the ground, grabbed a net big enough to hold a few lobsters—God willing—and tucked a handful of rubber bands into my pocket.
Then, I shoved my feet into my ma’s old yellow wellies and headed off toward the cliff trail.
Scanning the sea, the sky, and Ireland’s Eye, I was surprised to find that the cruise ship was the only vessel in the water. After that news report, I’d expected to see Russian warships closing in from all sides and fighter jets zooming overhead—we were that close to Dublin. Our house was on the northern side of Howth Head peninsula, the sea side, but the southern side bordered Dublin Bay, which funneled right into the heart of the city.
Maybe Da was right , I thought, feeling the tiniest bit of relief. Maybe the news really is full of shite .
The cliff path meandered around the edge of the peninsula, flanked on both sides by wispy purple heather and waist-high yellow gorse bushes. I usually had to duck and weave through the photo-taking tourists this time of year, but the trail was eerily empty. Just as I began to appreciate having it all to myself again, a swell of familiar voices came rolling over the next hill.
Unfortunately, those voices were followed by the arseholes they belonged to—Liv, Sophie, Caiden, and Cash. They lived near the golf course and didn’t have chores or jobs … or a single redeeming quality among the four of them. As soon as they saw me, their voices dropped to a whisper, but I could hear everything they said, thanks to the sea winds barreling up the path.
“Ah, look. It’s Crazy Clover.”
“Where the hell do ya s’pose she’s goin’?”
“We’re under evacuation orders, and she’s out here, takin’ her imaginary friend for a walk.”
They all burst out laughing.
Crazy Clover. I’d had that nickname since second class. And they were right; I did have an imaginary friend. At least, I had back then. He was the main character from one of the books Ma used to read to me at night—a handsome young fairy prince who could be found in the forest of Glenshire, a small farming village where the author lived. The author’s descriptions had been so vivid that I could practically feel the velvety fuzz of the moss covering every tree trunk, the tickle of the bluebells against my bare legs. I could taste the sour burst of blackberries on my tongue. And I could definitely picture the boy.
He didn’t have wings or pointy ears, but he looked special nonetheless, both because of his beauty and because he was completely colorless—wild black hair; pale, porcelain skin; and eyes the color of smoke, if you were lucky enough to see them. He never spoke, but he liked to play. The author said she often found him playing in the ruins of an old stone cottage out in the woods, and although it was a very serious offense for a fairy to allow themselves to be seen by a human, for a few vanilla custard creams, he could be persuaded to let her play with him.
After Ma died, I’d needed a friend so badly that I began imagining that the fairy boy was with me , in my world, all the time. I told myself that he had to stay hidden so that he wouldn’t get in trouble, but I knew he was there. I could feel him.
But between my unpredictable crying fits, my insistence that my mother was actually a selkie, and my imaginary fairy friend, it wasn’t long before the whole town began calling me Crazy Clover. Including my da.
The teasing got so bad that I stopped talking to everyone, including the boy. I had nightmares about car crashes and freshly dug graves, walls closing in and waves pulling me under, cruel children and crueler adults. I picked at my lips and cuticles until they bled. I pulled out my eyebrows and eyelashes completely. I withdrew into my fairy-tale books, and whenever I did emerge, I wished that I hadn’t. Life was just easier once everyone forgot that I existed.
But by secondary school, everything had changed. My eyelashes and eyebrows had grown back in. My auburn hair was nearly down to my waist, thanks to Oliver never bothering to get it cut. And my scrawny body had filled out in new places. Suddenly, I wasn’t invisible anymore.
Quite the opposite.
Boys who’d once tripped me in the hallway began cornering me at my locker. They’d ask me out on dates, take me places alone. They’d kiss me and touch me and tell me nice things when no one was around, but in front of other people, they pretended like they didn’t know me. It hurt, so much, but it felt better than being invisible all the time , so I let them do it.
I’d let them do anything they wanted.
A fact that Cash McNalley had taken full advantage of the summer before sixth year. When he’d driven me to the Baily lighthouse after dark, I assumed that he had romantic intentions. Maybe we’d look at the stars, I thought, tell each other our deepest, darkest secrets. Instead, he invited me to sit in the backseat with him, where he took my virginity in seven minutes or less. As soon as it was over, he tossed the condom out the window and drove me home. I cried myself to sleep that night. Quietly. Oliver hated crying.
And because I was no longer invisible to the boys, I was no longer invisible to the girls either. They’d glare at me and chat shite about me and laugh whenever I walked by. I’d thought it would end when I finished secondary school, but … no such luck.
Sophie held up a rose-gold phone, which glimmered almost as brightly as her cruel eyes and icy-blonde hair. “Forty-seven notifications to evacuate, and Clover here decides to”—her gaze flicked down to the lobster net in my hand—“go fishin’ with her invisible boyfriend.”
“Very on brand ,” Liv added with a smirk while the two boys looked around uncomfortably.
I stepped off the trail to give them enough room to pass, careful not to trample the heather, and stood facing the water so that my red, swollen cheek would be out of view.
The cruise ship was still there, and that gave me hope. They probably had all kinds of technology that would tell them about other ships nearby. If they weren’t worried about the Russians, then I decided I wouldn’t be either.
“Seriously? Yer just gonna stand there, staring at the water, and not say anything?” Sophie rolled her eyes as they approached, but Cash’s gaze locked on to mine and held it.
There was an apology in his stare, but he’d never say it out loud. Not in front of them.
“She’s so weird,” Liv whispered, loud enough for me to hear.
“And she smells like fish.” Sophie giggled, causing both girls to erupt into a fit of laughter.
“Maybe that’s just her gee. Cash would know, wouldn’t ya?” Caiden gave his brother a playful shove.
Cash immediately shoved him back much harder. “Fuck off, arsehole.”
For one brief moment, I thought he might be defending me, but I knew better. Cash was defending himself . God forbid anyone find out that he’d stooped so low as to sleep with Crazy Clover Doyle.
The second they passed, I turned and walked in the opposite direction, the aching knot in my stomach throbbing in time with my bruised cheek and battered ego.
A few more meters down the trail, hidden between two yellow gorse bushes, was where my trail began. I had to be careful not to let anyone see me take it. If the tourists discovered a path leading from the cliff to the sea with a charming little cave at the bottom, it would be all over the travel sites in a heartbeat. And then we’d be done for. That cave and the lobster I caught inside were the only things that kept us afloat in the summer.
The cliff was steep, but there were enough jutting rocks and grassy patches to form a skinny trail down. Climbing back up with a few kilos of wet lobster thrown over your shoulder … now, that was trickier.
In fact, Oliver couldn’t take my trail at all—he was far too big. He could only access the cave by anchoring his boat outside the entrance and either swimming in or taking a small, inflatable raft. It was a pain in the arse, which was why he insisted on making me do it.
I’d never admit it to him, but I actually loved checking the traps. That cave was my favorite place in the entire world.
As a kid, I’d read that in ancient Ireland, caves were thought to be portals to the otherworld—the magical realm where fairies and other mythical creatures lived. So, when Oliver began making me check the lobster traps on my own, I was elated. I’d scour every inch of that cave, looking for a secret passage, a hidden door, a symbol, a code, anything that might take me away from there and deliver me to the world of my silver-eyed friend. I never found it, of course, but I never gave up. Every time I went down there, I did a lap around the cave, exploring the farthest, darkest corners, pressing on stones and feeling for cracks. I’d kept searching long after I stopped believing in fairies.
Because hope was the only drug I could afford.
I descended the cliff with sure-footed steps, grasping at stones and bushes on the trickier parts. The trail ended on a flat patch of rock, maybe two meters above sea level, which, to most people, would seem like the final destination. But I knew there was more under that stone. So much more.
Scaling the slope on the far side of the landing, I ducked under the capstone and made my way in. The left side of the cave entrance had a narrow ledge I could walk on, just a few centimeters below sea level, but the ceiling was so low that I had to crouch to keep from bumping my head. The right side of the cave entrance was a narrow channel of deep seawater—the perfect little hiding place for lobsters trying to avoid predators.
With every wave that crashed against the rocks outside, a burst of salty mist peppered my back, and a swell of cold seawater swirled around my ankles, chilling my feet, even through my rubber boots.
Soon, the entryway opened up, and I was finally able to stand upright again. The light coming in through the cave entrance bounced off the water, casting glittery sparkles and shimmering shadows on every stone surface inside. The narrow ledge I’d been walking on expanded into a pebbled beach that curled around the left side of the cavern, stretched across the back, and ended in a dramatic spray of jagged boulders on the right. And behind those rocks was where I stored my most precious belongings in the whole entire world.
As I worked my way around the edge of the cave, sliding my hand along the stone wall out of habit, I made sure to watch my step. Radiating out from the edge of the water was a web of red ropes, each anchored to a heavy rock. There were twelve in total, and I hoped that on the other end of at least half of them, I’d find an unsuspecting lobster trapped in a cage.
But first, I had to check on my babies.
Once I made it to the farthest, darkest corner of the cave, I squatted next to a boulder and reached around behind it. Groping the cool stone wall until I found a crevice, I shoved my hand in and pulled out a simple black backpack.
In fifth class, I was mortified by my own backpack—a pink and purple nightmare that I’d been carrying since I was a little kid. Oliver refused to buy me a new one, no matter how much I begged, so after seeing that jet black backpack on the lost-and-found table at school every day for a month, my desire got the better of me, and I stole it. I realized on the way home that Oliver would beat me black and blue if he caught me with something that didn’t belong to me, so I hid it in the cave.
And eventually, I’d filled it with other things that I wanted to hide from Oliver—things I loved, things I’d stolen, things I would need if I ever found a portal to the otherworld and decided to run away.
Sitting on my favorite boulder—the one with a chunk broken off, forming a seat—I placed the canvas bag on the ground and unzipped it with a flutter in my chest that made me forget all about arseholes like Cash and his friends and my da and the Russians. None of them could hurt me in the cave. In here, it was just me, the sound of the waves, the shimmer on the water, and all my favorite things—stored in clear plastic resealable bags to keep them dry and mildew-free.
The first bag I pulled out of the backpack contained a pack of matches from The Bloody Stream pub and four of Oliver’s cheap cigars. I’d taken them one at a time so that he wouldn’t notice.
After making a hole in the end of one cigar with my thumbnail, I toasted the other end with a match and placed it between my lips. I’d learned how to light them from watching Oliver. Puff, rotate, puff, rotate. The smoke tasted gross and made my head spin, but the smell? The smell was intoxicating. Powerful men smoked cigars, and there, in my secret hideaway, I could pretend like I was powerful too.
Balancing the lit cigar on the edge of the boulder, I dug through the rest of my belongings—a framed picture of Ma, extra clothes, a few bottles of water, and some long-expired snacks—until I finally reached the heart of my trove. There, at the bottom of the bag, was the entirety of my book collection—the Legend Has It series by Darby Donovan.
My mother had been gone thirteen years, but I still got misty-eyed every time I saw those books. I pulled them out one by one, running my fingers over the gilded titles through the plastic bags I kept them in. They had dark green linen hardcovers, like vintage books, with gold foiled titles and haunting hand-drawn illustrations inside. They were my most prized possessions, and between those pages, in the forest of Glenshire, I felt more at home than I did in my own house.
I wished I could stay out there all night, reading and smoking and avoiding my father, but it was getting late, and those traps weren’t going to empty themselves.
After placing everything back in its designated spot, I gave the backpack a firm hug and returned it to its secret hidey-hole.
Then, with Oliver’s cigar between my teeth and one eye squeezed shut to keep out the smoke, I knelt down at the water’s edge and used both hands to reel in the first of the traps. It felt heavy, which gave me hope, but when I peered into the water to see what was inside, it was the reflection of the sky on the surface that caught my attention.
Or rather the streaks of fire shooting across it.