Bright Burning Things(44)

The drive back home is stretched and strained and the view is shit ugly: long expanses of three-lane motorways, both directions, flanked by industrial warehouses selling electrical appliances and second-hand cars, giant traffic lights looming overhead, pointing in seemingly endless different directions. All I want to do is run back to Sister Anne and beg to be reinstated in my nylon bedroom.

It doesn’t help that my father seems as bewildered as I am. For once we share the same fogged-up outlook. The grey sky starts to spit. The kitten meows, her little body tense, as if she might pounce.

‘Shut that thing up,’ my father snaps. ‘Having a hard enough time concentrating here as it is.’

‘I’m trying my best,’ I say, sounding pathetic to my own ears. I try to soothe the distressed kitten by holding her close to my beating heart. Boom boom boom, Yaya.

My father turns Lyric FM up even higher and a modern, discordant tune fills the spaces in the car, climbing inside me, aggravating my restless, slumbering creatures.

‘Dad, that’s dreadful,’ I say as I reach across to turn down the dial.

He doesn’t disagree, just lets the silence ring out, until the kitten’s bleating interrupts.

‘I hope that thing will be ok,’ he says. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Sonya.’

Soon the car is cruising, or doddering, alongside the canal-bank path that leads directly to the stretch of Sandymount Strand closest to home. The view opens up to include huge numbers of city swans, gliding proprietarily over the oily black slick of the canal. For a moment, there is white. Stop them, Yaya, they’re hurting her. The incident at the duck pond flashes in my mind. The cat jumps free of my grasp and throws itself at the window, hissing.

‘Fuck’s sake, Sonya.’

Did my father just curse? A first. And all it took was a kitten and a gaggle of swans.

‘Sorry, Dad.’ Another first. ‘I have her now.’

At the top of the road we turn right, and the slate-grey body of water reveals itself. The canal becomes the edge of the sea. I long to roll down the window and inhale the salty air but think better of it with the bucking bundle between my palms. The sea is flat and serene, the sky too, as they merge and blur into one. A ten-minute drive along the seafront, then a turn to the right, to the left, to the left.

‘Here we are, Sonya,’ he says as we pull up outside the shocking-pink door. ‘Must be nice to be home.’

Home. He lifts my case from the boot and opens the front door with his own key. Inside everything is shining, clean and ordered, smelling of polish and bleach and camphor. ‘We had to blitz. There was a bit of a moth problem when you were away.’ What a sickening picture: dark flying particles of dust alighting on my life. I place the wriggling kitten on the carpet, where she proceeds to piddle immediately. I lift her, trailing pee through the living room and kitchen as I struggle to open the back door.

‘Maybe should’ve put it outside first. Semi-feral, by the looks of things.’

I check the parameters of the yard. Is it a safe, enclosed space? I didn’t have to worry about Herbie as he never ventured more than a pace behind Tommy.

Father has turned on the kettle, taken down two tea bags, two mugs, and goes to pour milk in mine. I hold a hand up. No milk in this house. Shit, I can’t put the kitten’s health in peril because of my personal beliefs. What about Tommy? Maybe Mrs O’Malley was right; maybe I did put him at risk of rickets because of my own skewed relationship with food. Anxiety mounts, the whispers start. That fucking fridge. I think of one of Sister Anne’s nuggets: ‘Contemplative eating and drinking. A way to interrupt the mindless devouring mentality of the addict.’ Cradling the cup of tea in my hands, I consider the shifting liquid, the way it slides up the sides of the enamel and down my throat, the aroma, the texture, all its own thing.

‘You look well, Sonya.’

‘Thanks.’

I watch the kitten running in circles, sniffing, pawing the ground. This is good, this sitting with my father, sipping tea, a frolicking kitten in the kitchen. Maybe ‘good’ is all I need.

‘Right, Sonya, better get going…’

Of course this moment was coming. I gather my reserves of strength and dignity and say, ‘Sure.’

‘We brought in all the basics, except cat food. Didn’t reckon on that one.’

Who’s this ‘we’? Mrs O’Malley, or Lara? Neither option fills me with much pleasure.

‘Thanks, Dad. Chat tomorrow?’

He lifts his heavy grey overcoat from the back of the chair, lumbers towards the door, one hand pushing into the sleeve, the other dangling awkwardly.

‘You going to be ok?’ he says.

I nod; a trooper. Just as he’s turning to go, he hands me a card. ‘Tommy’s social worker’s number. Maureen Brennan. She’s expecting a call from you in the morning.’

‘Thanks.’ Then I ask in as casual a tone as possible, ‘Do you have the contact details for the one who’s actively minding Tommy? Clare, or something? She might be very glad to hear from me. He could be being a handful.’

‘Sonya, that’s not how this works. This Maureen Brennan is your contact.’

The torture of having to get through a night here without either Tommy or Herbie.

My father kisses me lightly on the cheek. ‘You did it, daughter.’