Chapter 5
Present
Siggy Carney had learned early in life that it was easier to go along with things than to strike out on your own, especially where her mother was concerned.
She knew her friends had regular screaming matches with their parents about everything from the length of their school uniform skirt, to being allowed to go to the youth club disco on the mainland.
For her part, Siggy had no interest in wearing anything but school trousers, and even they had to be especially ordered because she was taller than the other girls at school.
Skirts were a disaster. She had her father’s legs – great if you’re a rugby full back but best kept covered if you don’t want to be called thunder thighs.
Thankfully, they hadn’t called her that in a while, she hoped if she stuck to pants, they might forget about it.
As to the idea of going to the mainland for what seemed to her like a sort of prolonged cattle mart, well, it was an easy pass.
Crowded places made her feel panicky and music that was too loud loosened something in her brain, so her balance veered off on a course that made her feel trippy – and not in a good way.
Her mother truly believed that Siggy was simply pliable.
Blythe Carney had no time for things like being overcome in crowded places.
She could barely abide friends who had gluten intolerances.
Vegans were a pet hate. She called them faddy eaters.
Her friends, girls she hung out with at school at least, had no idea that Siggy was relieved not to be joining them on nights out.
Not that she’d admit it to her mother or to the other girls, but in some ways, it was a relief to be molly coddled when it came to avoiding the monthly club nights the other girls seemed to live for.
She told Rae, though, because she knew her aunt would not judge.
‘You could stay here, if you wanted, you know, for a sleep over?’ Rae said. She had overheard some of the other girls in the corner shop, discussing what they would wear to Girls Night.
‘I suspect even that would be a red flag to my mother.’ Siggy laughed.
‘She’s just afraid for you…’ Rae said then and she switched on the coffee machine.
The hotel, as usual, was empty, just the two of them.
It was hard to believe that they’d lived on the small island for seventeen years, but it was only in the last eighteen months she’d begun to really get to know her aunt.
‘It’s crazy, you know she basically picked out all my friends for me in primary school.
’ It was true. Her mother had set about designing a circle around Siggy that consisted of only the right sort of girls.
Daughters of shopkeepers, well-to-do farmers and the local school principal were in.
Anyone who lived in a council house or whose parents claimed a social welfare payment was frozen out with cool distance and tidy remarks that somehow always contained a ‘but’ at the end.
The fact that the ‘chosen few’ were level one bitches seemed to be completely lost on her mother.
‘You know, she still warns me about the mainland kids on a weekly basis.’ Siggy rolled her eyes.
The mainland kids were a bunch of girls and boys sent across to attend school on the island.
On school nights, they stayed with local Irish speaking families – because their parents wanted them to get extra Irish language tuition in classrooms with a third of the numbers of any school on the mainland.
‘Seriously though, how far astray does she think I could go? Pin Hill is hardly a “den of iniquity”.’ She put that into air quotes.
It was one of those phrases her mother had used when she was talking about some scandal she’d read in the Sunday paper.
‘It’s not like she can stop me growing up, even if it feels like that’s what she wants; to keep me as this perfect little girl forever. ’
‘You can probably blame me for that.’ Rae shook her head and handed Siggy a cup of steaming black coffee.
This was their secret guilty pleasure. Her mother certainly wouldn’t approve.
Double shot espressos with biscotti on the side – more than two and Siggy got the jitters.
Rae confessed that if they drank them after five, she wouldn’t sleep for the night.
‘I don’t see how it’s your fault,’ Siggy said, sipping the coffee. Rae was the mildest, kindest, most non-judgemental person she knew.
‘Oh, you think I’m chilled now, but when I was your age, I was the handful.
’ Rae laughed now and so did Siggy. Nothing seemed less likely than her sensible, ugly-shoe-wearing aunt being a wild teenager.
‘Still, though, it’s good to get out and have friends, you know, shoot the breeze,’ she said this as if she was trying out the phrase.
Maybe she was right, but Siggy would far prefer to come here than hang out with a bunch of girls who spoke non-stop about things that made Siggy feel like an outsider.
‘I bet if you talked to them both – I mean, your dad isn’t like that, is he? ’
‘No, my dad isn’t like that, but he agrees with her on everything. I think if it was left to my dad, I could do just about anything. He’d been off playing in South Africa when he was my age – imagine, South Africa back then – how cool was that?’
‘Your dad was always the coolest,’ Rae giggled as if remembering something that brought her right back to being seventeen as well. And Siggy wondered, why on earth they hadn’t spent more time together over the years, why it was only now they were really beginning to bond.
‘Yeah, but that was like a gazillion years ago.’ Siggy rolled her eyes, she couldn’t imagine her dad ever being cool.
These days, he lived in Snickers pants and the mullet hair he’d had in his heyday was cut within a millimetre of a buzz.
‘He’s like a properly old man now, in his fifties.
Urgh,’ she said distractedly, because out on the square, she noticed a boy she’d never seen on the island before and there was something about him, she found it hard to take her gaze away.
‘Well, no matter, I’m sure they’ll come to terms with you getting a bit of independence before you collect your old age pension,’ Rae joked, following her gaze, and they both laughed, because sometimes, it felt as if they were on the same page, without a single word being spoken.
The boy was hot, good looking in a way that you couldn’t miss, no matter what your age.
Rae was so different to Siggy’s mother. God, they were two opposite sides of the coin and yet, somehow, she looked at them and she envied them each other.
They should be close, fused together tighter than Siggy was to any of her so-called friends, and yet, here they were – sisters divided in some strangely unspoken way over something Siggy couldn’t fully understand.
It was something to do with the hotel and her mother’s decision to turn their home into a guest house.
Still Water House was way busier than the hotel these days, although, Siggy had a feeling that Rae didn’t give a hoot about things like that.
In fact, sometimes Siggy wondered, if Rae cared about anything much at all, apart from the legion of cats she fed at the back door of the hotel and of course, she cared about Siggy.
There was no question about that. And in return, Siggy adored Rae, there was something about her aunt, a connection that ran deep.
A few months earlier, Rae had offered her a part-time job.
Just a few evenings a week after school.
Blythe had agreed, through slightly gritted teeth, that she could take up the offer.
The fact was, there was little or nothing to be done when she arrived in for her shift in the afternoons.
Instead of changing beds and cleaning showers, as she would have had to do if she was working under her mother, they sat with coffee and biscuits and chatted happily about everything under the sun.
There were no limits with Rae, she felt as if she could say anything and it would be okay.
Instead of going back home tired, Siggy felt almost relieved – she could talk without a filter, laugh at things only the pair of them found funny and for those few hours, she felt as if the pressure was off.
For a brief respite, there was no end of year exams, no book that her mother expected her to read, no guests in room nine that she needed to think of when she craved a long hot bath but instead had to ration the water, just in case.
‘Everything alright? You look worn out.’ Because she did, she looked positively worn out today. Siggy only noticed it now that the boy had moved away and she really looked at her aunt.
‘Ara, I’m grand, don’t heed me. I’m just tired, that’s all, I didn’t sleep very well, must have drunk too much coffee yesterday,’ she smiled, but Siggy had a feeling that there was something more worrying her.
‘So, no more coffee today.’ Siggy flicked on the kettle for a refill. ‘Green tea?’
‘I know, I know, I’m a glutton for punishment, but I need coffee.’
‘On your head be it,’ Siggy said, and she rinsed their two darling old china cups and set about grinding up the beans for fresh coffee. ‘It’s quiet here.’
‘I’m sort of glad of it, if I’m honest. I think I need to do a reset.’
‘Okay,’ Siggy said, and she hunted around the coffee machine to find the stash of biscotti that usually sat on the saucer if she was serving a customer.
‘There’s a packet of ginger nuts there somewhere; we’ve had the last of the others,’ Rae said, reading her mind. She took a gaily patterned spiral notebook from the sideboard and sat again at the table with large banquet chairs around it, just a little away from the window.