Chapter Thirty-Three
Jules
Darren’s key is sitting on the ground inside the doorway, beneath the letterbox. Cillian picks it up, and I don’t comment. I’m still undecided about what to do about Darren. Part of me wants to report him. Part of me wants to wash my hands of him and forget he ever existed.
The rest of the apartment is how I left it.
Small but tidy, it’s a one-person apartment.
Two at a stretch. Three people and we’d be all on top of one another.
As soon as the thought enters my head, I think of the hut we left behind and marvel at how quickly my perspective has changed.
Compared to that, this place is downright luxurious.
Cillian makes me sit and sets about cleaning out the food that’s gone off, dumping everything straight into a bin bag and taking it outside so the smells don’t linger.
I power up my laptop and begin to catch up on weeks of missed communications and a mother lode of messages. It’s slow going with bandaged hands.
I seem to have been contacted by every person I’ve ever met.
One thread shows screenshots of what was on the news; pictures of everyone from our group, calls for funding for the rescue crew…
It’s a mess. Somewhere in my emails are likely responses from the jobs I applied to before the trip, but I’m not going to find them now.
Cillian comes around the kitchen island behind me. He rests his hands on either side of my laptop. “I’m going to the shop. What would you like for dinner?”
I lean into his chest.
“There’s a pizza place across the road. I’d love a pizza right now.
And a fizzy drink. Any kind.” The hospital would only let me drink water, and I was so queasy on the flight I didn’t even want that.
The feeling of the ground disappearing beneath my feet…
When I visit Mathieu in France, it’ll be by boat.
“What do you want on it?”
“Everything.”
Cillian grins. “Everything it is.” He kisses my temple and heads out.
I stare at the door after him and feel disquieted until he returns, food in one hand, phone in the other.
“Mathieu wants to describe what he’s eating to you.
Sit. I’ll plate this up.” He nods at the couch. I take the phone from him.
“You are home?” Mathieu asks.
“Home,” I confirm. “Exhausted. Hungry.”
“I have stuffed myself so much I won’t need to eat for a week.”
I smile. “Good.”
Cillian joins me with the pizza, then puts Mathieu on loudspeaker and sets the phone on the table. Mathieu only gets in another word before someone is calling him away.
“We’re just pulling up to the house… My friends are here to see me. I will call back in an hour!”
The pizza is the best thing I’ve eaten in my life, and the fizzy drink—Cillian got me Club Orange—is divine.
He’s equally engrossed in his meal. When all is said and done, I’m ready to pass out.
I have an appointment in the morning at the local hospital, and if I’m going to be awake for it, I need to get some rest.
“Let me show you where everything is.” I lead Cillian to the bathroom, which is so small he barely fits, and I dig out an extra toothbrush from the cabinet below the sink.
There’s something reassuring about seeing all my toiletries in a neat line.
The world hasn’t changed, but I feel different.
A psychologist had stopped by my room and discussed how I’m likely going to feel odd returning to society.
That things like anxiety and fear are normal, documented experiences, but not to worry because after a few weeks I’d adjust.
I was afraid on the plane, but not in this apartment.
Probably because Cillian’s in it with me, and Mathieu’s been in constant contact.
“Here’s the bedroom.” This room is different from how I left it.
All of Darren’s things are gone. The dresser is left open, gutted of his clothes, and the corner where all his GAA gear used to get thrown is barren.
There’s only my desk, stuffed in the corner, and a small bookcase, fighting for its life to contain all my college textbooks.
Cillian goes to the shelf, picking up the picture frame on top.
It’s from my ninth birthday. I’m smiling over a cake, bracketed by my parents.
For the first time, I realise how young they are, faces still untouched by wrinkles.
“I don’t remember that. I have a folder in here somewhere with a few more pictures of them, and an old Facebook profile that belonged to my mom has more.
I’m in most of the photos, but…” I shrug, and wince, because I shouldn’t be shrugging with a broken arm. “I barely remember my life with them.”
Cillian sets the photo down. “Sorry. I’m sure Mathieu would know what to say, but as for me…”
“You can tell me something about you,” I suggest. “To distract me while I get this shirt off.”
Cillian helps me. There’s something resigned in his voice when he speaks.
“Mine are likely in a pub right this second, delighted to have something to talk about with people. They’ve probably been doing that the entire time I’ve been missing.
Living it up, thinking all the attention is great, not realising that everyone’s disgusted at them for going off drinking while their son is missing. They’ll be acting nonchalant.”
He carefully guides my cast through the sleeve.
“Is that why you don’t like your partners drinking?”
Cillian is slow to answer. “Even when I objectively know they don’t drink much, and it’s not an addiction…
instinctively, my body recoils from it. I get a visceral reaction.
” He sits on the edge of the bed. “After Seán’s family took me in and I became close with him, I used to get upset whenever he drank.
I try to remove myself from situations where I know someone close to me will be drunk because I haven’t ever got over that… reaction.”
I sit next to him.
“I’m not telling you not to drink,” Cillian continues. “Or Mathieu. Do whatever you like, that’s not up to me. But I’d appreciate a heads-up first. If I know the plan, I can make sure I’m not around to see it.” He winces as if he’s asking for the world.
“That sounds reasonable. I’d like to suggest something equally reasonable.”
“What?”
“Stop eyeing up the couch like that’s where you’re sleeping.”
Cillian’s eyes widen. A chuckle rumbles from deep in his chest. “Alright. Fair.”
When we’re lying in bed, I can’t sleep. There’s a tight ball of anxiety in my chest, and tiredness isn’t softening it. I shouldn’t have dismissed that psychologist at the hospital so quickly. I know from the sound of Cillian’s breaths that he isn’t sleeping either.
His phone buzzes, and he rolls away, fishing it from the bedside table.
His breath huffs out of him, and he mutters, “Thank God.”
“What is it?”
“Mathieu’s getting on a plane. He’ll be landing in Dublin in a few hours.” Cillian rolls out of bed and flicks on the bedside light. He pulls on the clothes he peeled off only an hour ago. “I’ll go get him.”
Relief washes through me. I sit up, the tension sinking from my body. Cillian hesitates in the doorway, glancing over his shoulder.
“He can stay here?”
I give him a look. He smiles. “Thought so. Be back soon.”
Cillian goes, and though I’m relieved that Mathieu’s on his way, the same tension I felt when Cillian went across the road for food fills me. I pace the apartment several times, and my chest is tight even when I attempt to take deep breaths.
“They’re coming,” I tell myself.
I march to the laptop and open it. All that hubbub about my phone surviving the crash and just needing a charge—that little bit of satisfaction I had at saving it—went to waste in the end. It burnt up with the rest of our things. So did the window I risked my life for.
I can’t get a hold of anyone with the phone company over the internet at this hour, but I put in a request for a replacement phone and SIM and ask for next-day delivery.
Then I start planning. Cillian works in Wicklow.
Mathieu lives in France. I have jobs I applied and interviewed for all across the country.
Cork, Limerick, Galway and Dublin were the ones I had earmarked.
I had fully intended to jump into work the moment I was back from the trip and start building that safety net I wanted so badly. But I think I might have stumbled upon it already, and I don’t mean just Cillian and Mathieu. Friends from as far back as primary school have reached out.
I check my bank balance. I have a healthy savings account. There’s breathing room here. There’s time to take it slow. When I had to delay starting college, I catastrophised for months. I already know I won’t feel like that this time.
Cillian and Mathieu arrive hours later.
Mathieu kisses me on the mouth, hugs me very carefully, and says, “Bed, right now.”
The urgency has nothing to do with anything sexual.
We get into bed, and I stay awake long enough to hear Cillian and Mathieu pass out.
Mathieu makes Cillian lie in the middle—because of my arm, it’s more comfortable for me to be on the edge—and he’s solid and warm next to me.
Mathieu’s arm is thrown over Cillian’s waist, his fingers hooked into my shorts.
I lay my bandaged hand over his.
I sleep.