Chapter 60
Chapter Sixty
W hen Una pulled up outside Anickuna Cottage the sky had turned from milky pink to bruised blue and I could barely keep my eyes open. Not because I was drunk, I’d not drunk a drop of alcohol at my parents’ house, but I was so tired that I felt like I had.
By the time I’d checked the whole house, and the toilet (to see if Niall had done a poo or not (he hadn’t) and also if he’d cleaned the splashback that he swore blind he hadn’t left (he hadn’t), Una was well and truly ready to leave and go home.
‘Just go to bed and don’t think about it,’ she said at my front door.
‘I will once I’ve finished.’
‘Finished what, though? No one has been here, apart from Niall, and everything is switched off.’
I kept my eyes on the cooker nobs.
‘No one has used the cooker since you last checked so you don’t need to do that.’
‘Please don’t,’ I said. ‘It’s worse if you try and intervene. I just want to get this done because I’m knackered and it’s always more intense when I’m tired.’
‘Could it get any more intense?’
‘Yes.’
‘What more do you need to do?’
‘Just the woodlice.’
‘Let me check them on my way out.’
‘No way.’
‘Why not?’
‘I want to do it.’
‘Did you miss them?’ Una asked sarcastically.
‘I did as a matter of fact.’
‘What if one has died?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What if there are eleven not twelve?’
‘That’s nature.’
‘I don’t get it.’ Una shook her head.
‘What?’
‘I don’t get how you can be so relaxed and casual but at the same time so obsessive about things?’
‘You don’t have to get it,’ I said to my best friend. ‘Thank you for picking me up and bringing me home.’
‘I still can’t believe you went to New Zealand.’
‘Me neither.’
‘It’s so weird.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you want to meet for lunch tomorrow?’
‘In the graveyard?’
‘Where else?’
‘See you there.’
Una reached in for another hug and I let her squeeze me tight because I knew I’d have a shower once she’d gone and I’d locked up. I followed her out and waved her off and then made my way with my torch to my gate and the woodlice.
I didn’t see it straight away because my eyes were on Una’s car until it went out of sight. I always did that – waved someone off until they disappeared. It was how I was brought up. My mother did it to me, and my grandmother had done it to her, and so on. It was a family trait. In fact, if I left someone’s house and they said goodbye and then shut the door, I found it rude.
Anyway, it was a box or something, the thing I was staring at, made out of wood, no bigger than my hand, attached to the side of my gate. It sat right by the latch. My first thought was annoyance, it was completely in the way of the woodlice, actually nailed in, and I had no idea how I would brush them off or even get to them or even if they would ever be able to get back to their spot again. My second thought was what the hell was it?
I squinted my eyes, tilted my head, shone my torch inside the small hole drilled into its side. I could see bits of old, rotten, damp wood poking out. It couldn’t have been a bird’s nest because the hole was too small. It couldn’t have been a mouse’s nest because even a mouse wouldn’t be able to fit in that. But it was definitely a nest of some sort.
And then I saw them, in a cluster, amongst the moss and rotten wood, and I actually cried. I cried with sheer joy because I realised what it was, the small wooden, square box that had a hole drilled into its side no bigger than my fingernail.
It was a house. It was a woodlouse house.