Chapter 4
I worked weekends at Dad’s office in town, doing a week's worth of paperwork that he kept just for me to ‘earn my keep,’ as he put it. I hated asking my parents for handouts, so it was a perfect way to earn my own money, and the office was empty on the weekends so I had the place to myself.
A loud thumping on the door startled me, and I jumped up to open it for Niamh before skipping back into the office.
I always loved Saturdays. Mam and I had gone down to Inchydoney for a morning dip that nearly stripped a layer of skin off.
Mam did her sea swim religiously three times a week, and I liked to join her at the weekends - at least before it got to a level of cold I wouldn’t dip a toe into.
I still went with her on those dark winter mornings and waited for the crazy woman to come out, a hot coffee in hand for our catch-up time before I headed to work.
Niamh always joined me on Saturdays during her lunch break from the hairdressers while Ella worked her shift as a housekeeper at the local hotel.
“Well girl, what’s the craic?” she shouted into the office, with cartons of our lunch stacked in front of her.
She always did the Saturday deli run on the way here because she was too particular on any given day to let me pick it up, she needed to SEE the options.
Even though the options at Bella’s Deli never changed; they hadn’t changed in the ten years we’d been going there since starting secondary school.
Neither had Niamh’s chicken roll order, but it saved me the trip down there, so I let her at it.
I shrugged as I leaned over for my roll.
“There was a pod of dolphins just beyond the cliffs when Mam and I had our swim this morning.”
“Ah, class! I’m down there nearly every day of the week walking those cliffs to get my steps up and the most I see are half-mangy seagulls and the odd one-legged pigeon.
” I started laughing as she shrugged. Niamh wasn’t exactly known for her patience, so if there wasn’t a welcome committee of marine animals doing acrobatics as soon as she looked out to sea, she was unlikely to spare the view a second glance.
Normally, she was on the phone to her cousin Fiadh in Oz for those walks, so distracted would be one word to describe her.
“So, what’s the plan for tonight?” I mumbled with my mouth stuffed.
Niamh, Ella, and I always tried to spend as much time as we could manage together at the weekends, so the nights we were too broke to go out we tended to have a girly night at Niamh’s with a 90s rom-com.
Tonight was my pick and Matthew McConaughey was calling my name for How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
“Come over to mine around six and we’ll order Chinese - I’ll make us some cocktails,” she grinned as she clocked my dubious expression. Her cocktails tended to have the same effect as paint stripper.
“Maybe go easy on your measures tonight, Niamh. I’ve to work in the morning and to quote Dad ‘I’ll drag you out that bed by your feet and kick your arse the whole way down the road if you even think of missing tomorrow’. And he meant it, Niamh…”
She laughed me off and soon regaled me with gossip from the town that, as a hairdresser, she was up to her tits in. I choked with laughter at the story of 69-year-old Ita Cavanagh with a blue rinse perm asking her for hair extensions she saw on the “Tik Tak.”
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“Would you give me and Ella a spin to Niamh’s?” I leaned my head in the door asking Shea, who was lounging in the armchair in front of the flatscreen, engrossed in the Man United match on TV.
“I’ll drop ye,” Fionn offered from the couch.
“No thanks, shithead. I asked my nice brother over you for a reason,” I replied without looking in his direction.
“Ah Róis, it was just a joke! And I needed it for my costume of Lady Gaga, you need to lighten up. Doesn’t she, Shea?
” he threw at our older brother. Shea pointedly ignored him, cheering on Rashford while he ran around in circles with the ball (or at least that’s how it looked to me, having never really gotten on board the soccer train).
“That was my favourite dress,” I spat at him. “And now it’s all stretched, and I can never wear it again.”
Shea winced. “Fionn, that was bad form, even for you.” Fionn stifled his laugh in the cushion, trying to keep a straight face while Shea looked at me with pity.
“Are you dropping me or not?” I huffed at him. Ella was waiting for me to pick her up, and I was more than ready for a break from all the testosterone that lived in my house.
He sighed as the whistle blew for half time (perfect timing out of me) and fished his car keys from his pocket.
“Come on, I want to be back before the second half,” I threw him a smile as I headed for the door.
“Tell Ella I was asking for her!” Fionn shouted from the sitting room.
“That’d be a no, loser,” I shouted back as I slammed the door on my way out to the car.
Fionn and I tended to get into an argument at least every other weekend I was home; I felt like I could objectively pin eighty-five percent of the blame on him given his immature and inconsiderate ways.
It never lasted long though. He might have been extremely annoying, but he made me laugh my hole off and was one of my best friends.
Shea and I were super close too, but the relationship was totally different.
Shea embodied the typical role of a big brother.
Protective, judgy, and full of a smothering nurturing love that I adored.
He was the same with Fionn, and while we acted like his carry-on was excessive, we both secretly loved the security Shea provided.
He was only three years older than me, but Mam had always called him her old soul.
She said that when she brought me home from the hospital, Shea started screaming and crying while hugging me because he was so happy he had a baby sister.
Apparently, Santa had missed out delivering the sibling that had been in his letter to the North Pole the year before, and he hadn’t quite recovered.
Then Fionn came along, and Shea just acted like he was our dad and we were the two wayward kids that needed controlling, which there was some truth in as we exuberantly stepped into the role of troublemakers in the house.
Luckily, I didn’t suffer from the typical middle child syndrome.
Being the only girl, I was doted on by all of them (maybe not Fionn), and I reminded the boys all the time that if the house was on fire, both Mam and Dad would come to save me first because I was their favourite.
Both our parents always vehemently denied this when I jokingly brought it up, but when everyone else was looking the other way, Dad always threw me a wink, so I knew there was some truth to my conviction.
I texted Ella that we’d be there in five and to be ready.
I knew she’d be rushing since her shift at The Spanish Landing, a five-star hotel near Inchydoney Strand, had only finished half an hour ago.
I was looking forward to her updates on what weird and disturbing things she’d come across in today’s shift cleaning the rooms, the stuff she saw was enough to write a book.
“Thanks for this, how’s Sorcha doing?” I asked as I put my phone away.
We hadn’t seen much of Shea’s girlfriend Sorcha lately since she’d started a new job in events management up in Dublin and had to spend some weekends up there, and I knew Shea found it tough when she was away.
They’d been together since they were sixteen and fell into the typical best friends turned childhood sweetheart’s cliché.
I was so glad they had though, as much as I loved my brothers, I always envied Sara and Ella their sisters and the bond they seemed to have. And while we weren’t blood related, Sorcha felt like a sister to me.
“Yeah, she’s doing good, had some schmoozy event last night for RTE she was organising, so she was up most of the night keeping the train on the tracks. She’ll be down Monday and have a few days off,” Shea said as he indicated toward Ella’s house, just a few minutes down the road from ours.
We were both culchies living outside Kiltee town in Clon Na Dara, but I’d always loved being in the country - our childhood had consisted of summers spent daring each other to grab the electric fence, jumping on hay bales and then getting cursed to high heavens for it, chasing escaped cows out the garden while Mam screamed her lawns were ruined.
That one was two weeks ago, and Farmer Lynch had the ear burnt off him when Mam rang him about his cows “barging into her house.” She’d threatened to withhold Shea’s help in calving season if he didn’t come down and sort her lawn out.
“Hello hello, Tierney family!” Ella sang as she jumped into the backseat. I threw her a smile as Shea answered.
“Ella, you haven’t called down all weekend. Dad said he’ll be disowning you if you don’t show your face soon.”
“Jesus, don’t I know it. He told Daddy at the pub last Sunday I had until this weekend to show my face, or I wasn’t his adopted child anymore,” she rolled her eyes.
“If he was giving out to Daddy I can only imagine the lecture I’ll be getting.
I’ll come back with you for breakfast in the morning Róis, catch him after mass when he’s in a great mood from all his praying. ”
Shea and I snorted at her very accurate assessment. Dad was likely to be in flying form after Fr Buckley warbled through the mass, and he got to gossip with all the other old men in the carpark afterward before heading home for a full Irish fry-up.
Ella and I had been best friends since primary school, so our parents had a bit of a claim on each of us and we always spent time with each other's families. I’d often come home from work at the weekends to find Ella pucking around outside with Fionn and Dad or having a cup of tea with Mam and Shea, watching Judge Judy repeats.