Chapter 14 #2
Oh, she was one hundred percent lying to us.
That was far more shocking than Ella having someone on the scene for the first time in years.
She was normally more of a love ‘em and leave ‘em type of girl since Tommy had done a number on her. But she’d never ever lied to us before; the three of us told each other absolutely everything; the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly. I’d let Ella keep her secret for now, I was just delighted she had something positive to distract her from everything happening with Tommy, and God knew she deserved a bit of fun.
But I hoped she’d feel ready to tell us all about her mystery man soon enough.
As the girls drove off waving and I got into my own car, I felt a little lighter for the time we’d spent together. It took me a second to realise there was no sound coming from the car as I turned the key in the ignition and I frowned as I looked down, trying again before I realised my mistake.
Fuck, I’d left my lights on and the battery was dead.
I heaved a sigh as I looked around to see who else was in the car park, hoping someone would have a set of jump leads.
I really wanted to avoid ringing Dad or Fionn to come to my rescue if I could.
I jumped out of the car as I spotted Tadgh Byrne (or the Tosspot, as he was commonly known around the village), making his way to his Berlingo van with his sheepdog Patsy at his side.
Unfortunately, Tosspot had no jump leads but offered to give me a spin home.
I startled when he opened the boot door of the van and gestured for me to get in.
“Why can’t I sit in the front?” I asked in surprise. With anyone else, I would have thought they were joking, but Tosspot was as old stock as they came, so I knew to always expect the unexpected.
“Patsy sits in the front,” he shrugged. I stared at him with my mouth open.
“Well, surely the dog can sit in the back this one time and let the human have the seat,” I tried to reason with him, but he instantly shook his head.
“No can-do, love. Sure, she’d shit everywhere.”
And with that, I clambered in the back door for the bumpy drive home.
When I got home, I was relieved to find Dad had left to visit Uncle Murt.
I didn’t know how this grief thing was supposed to work, but seeing Mam and Dad curl in on themselves made it impossible not to panic.
I thought I’d be dealing with the ache of losing Shea and what that gaping hole in my life now meant.
Instead I regularly felt my breath shorten and my heart pound in anxiety as I had a front-row seat to all the ways my parents were falling apart and struggling to cope.
Fionn had been a lot more distant than I’d expected him to be.
While we normally fought like cats and dogs, we were still best friends.
And I felt him withdrawing from me. He was out of the house a lot and, when he was here, he seemed to spend a lot of time on his phone.
I tried not to let it sting that he was seeking comfort from his friends instead of me; it just amplified the loneliness I felt coursing through me as I walked through the house like a ghost. It was like we were all ghosts, but my family couldn’t see me as I watched them.
Each of us went through life's everyday motions completely alone; brushing our teeth, eating breakfast, making a cup of tea. All these innocuous things that no one ever thought about, but they were what consumed my thoughts as I went through these motions and monitored my family doing the same. No one seemed to be eating, so I had taken it upon myself to make sure everyone was getting three square meals a day. But with my poor skills in the kitchen, they were probably all better off going without. I wasn’t sure if the taste of ash from everything I ate was because I’d burned the food, or if that’s just how food tasted to me now without Shea in my life.
I headed straight into the sitting room and flicked on the TV, keen to avoid the sight of Mam staring out the kitchen window with a blank expression on her face and a cold cup of tea in front of her - again.
It was like she was keeping up a vigil of the back lawn, expecting to see Shea round the corner of the garage with his Hurley in hand, ready for a puck around.
I knew her projection of strength when we were losing him wouldn’t last, but I couldn’t have imagined things being this bad.
When I looked at her, I felt the panic claw at my throat.
The ghost of my mother moving through the motions of making her tea, but inside Mam was gone.
The thought made me hot with desperation that things were going to get worse.
As I flicked through Netflix to try to find something, anything, to occupy my mind, my phone pinged with a message from Sorcha.
She hadn’t replied to any of my messages since she’d skipped out on the funeral, and she was floating on my list of people to stress over, along with the rest of my family.
Sorcha: “Hi Róis, can you meet me in Inchydoney tomorrow morning for a coffee? Around 10am?”
I paused at the random and casual nature of the message.
Not like I wanted another ‘how are you?’ or ‘I’m thinking of you’ message, but she didn’t even mention Shea or any of the family.
I was desperate to see her though. Sorcha had been the most important person in Shea’s life, and the last few weeks it was like she’d dropped off the face of the earth, her Mam telling us she couldn’t face it.
Róisín: “Sounds good, I’ll see you there.”
I briefly considered asking Mam to maybe go for a swim, but I dismissed the idea. She hadn’t left the house in two weeks and gently refused every time I’d tried to coax her down to the beach. Fionn walked in as I finished replying and threw himself on the couch next to me.
“What are you watching?” he asked, flicking through his phone beside me.
“Hadn’t decided yet,” I replied, watching him. “Where’ve you been?”
“I was taking Bailey for a walk,” he shrugged in reply, still not looking up from his phone that was now vibrating with a message which had his lips twitching in a smile.
I made a note to check in on the dog. With everyone using her as an excuse to escape the bubble of pain that was now our house, Bailey’s legs had been walked off her over the past few weeks.
“Who’re you talking to?” I asked casually, nodding my head towards his phone as he typed out a message.
“Just the lads,” he answered after a second, sending his message and throwing his phone down beside him.
I cleared my throat. “You doing okay?” I asked awkwardly.
He shrugged again but looked at me. “Probably about as well as you’re doing, Rosie.”
I winced at the sharp stab of pain as he used Shea’s nickname for me.
“Well, you know you can talk to me,” I continued before he snorted.
“What’ll we talk about, Rosie? How our lives have just imploded?
How Dad cries when he’s brushing his teeth, how Mam is like a half-dead corpse outside there, not even realising the rest of us exist?
Or how about the fact there’s only two of us now and Shea’s gone forever, and we’ll never see him again?
” His voice kept getting higher, and his eyes shone with unshed tears as he finished.
I could feel my nose stinging and the burning in my eyes as my own welled up.
He went to get up from the couch, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him into my chest before he could leave, and he started to sob into my shoulder.
I let the tears silently course down my face.
We stayed like that for a long time, until both of our tears subsided.
He pulled back to look at me, and we gave each other a watery smile.
“At least we have each other, right?” he said through red-rimmed eyes.
“Always, Fionn.” I squeezed his shoulders.
“I was thinking about talking to someone, you know?” he muttered, looking away from me.
“I think that’s a good idea,” I said. I’d been thinking the same thing... but not anytime soon. Maybe one day the screaming pain inside me would ease enough that I could talk to a counsellor about coping with this grief.
“Ella said it’s really been helping her,” he said, almost to himself, and I registered what he’d said.
“Ella’s already started seeing a counsellor?” I asked. “She never mentioned that to me.”
“She’s probably just been preoccupied with checking in on you,” he answered casually, but avoiding my eyes.
“When were you even talking to her?” I asked. Ella and Fionn got on great, but Ella got on with all my family. She wasn’t exactly on confidante levels with them though, especially my younger brother.
“She just messaged to see how we all were, and it came up,” he answered shiftily, before grabbing the remote and switching on an episode of Top Gear.