Freckles(14)

He slides the parking ticket from the plastic slip and proceeds to rip it up into pieces. They flutter to the ground, a confetti storm. He takes the steps in twos back into his office and slams the door.

My heart is pounding. It’s in my actual ears. Like there’s been an explosion and my ears are ringing.

Jesus Christ, Paddy says, giving a wheezy nervous laugh and moving to me as quickly as his chafing legs will allow him. The inner legs of his trousers have risen to the line of his socks and are all bunched and gathered around his crotch.

I look at the bits of paper on the ground. The parking fine in smithereens.

It takes a while for the blood to rush out of my head and back around my body, for my heartbeat to calm, for the panicky feeling to subside, and when it does my body is left shaking.

She’s still standing out there, I hear somebody say loudly, followed with a laugh. A mocking laugh. It has drifted out of a window from the office where a few of them have gathered to watch me, smiles on their faces. The two familiar lads and a few new faces. When I look at them, they disperse.

I’m going to avoid this terrace for the time being, Paddy says. You take St Margaret’s and everything west. Okay, he asks, when I don’t respond.

I nod.

I wouldn’t let him get away with that, Paddy says, or he’ll think he can rip up every fine he gets and he won’t have to pay, but we’ll leave it for the time being. Let him cool down. I’ll come back later and check on it. I’ll ticket him if he hasn’t learned his lesson.

I still can’t move my feet. My legs are shaking.

You didn’t take him to heart did you, he asks, watching me.

No, I finally speak, and it comes out all croaky and choked. I didn’t even know what he was talking about.

And that’s true.

When he was saying it, none of it made sense. Just a bunch of angry words too ridiculous and drawn out to be an insult. But that’s why I had to think about it more, I had to re-hear his words over and over in my head for the rest of the day, and well into the night, to make sense of them.

His insult was like a song that you don’t like when you hear it first, but grows on you the more you hear it. It’s an insult that didn’t really hurt the first time I heard it. The words were too complicated to be powerful. Not an easy F you. But the more I hear his words, the more they grow on me. And they hurt more each time. Like the wooden horse of Troy, his words innocently passed through my boundaries, and then bam, deceived, all the troops jumped out, hitting me hard, one after the other, spearing me again and again and again.

The cleverest kind of insult.

And so that’s how he leaves me. A slushy, mushed snail, crushed by the sole of his trainer, by the strength of his words. Shattered. Flattened. Forcefield down. Antennae up.





Eight


I have a turbulent night’s sleep. The same dream on a loop. It’s exhausting. I’m doing the same thing over and over, trying to solve the same problem. I keep finding myself in a toilet cubicle with no walls or door, everyone can see me. So very busy in my dreams that I wake late on Tuesday morning.

It’s 7.34 a.m. My iPhone shows that I turned the alarm off at 7 a.m. but I don’t remember. This has never happened to me before. In shock, and feeling shaky from being knocked off my usual routine, I shower quickly. The water barely washes over me and the soapy shower gel sits on my skin when I step out of the shower. I’m still damp when I dress. I’m feeling panicked and hassled. It’s thirty minutes of a difference and the day feels off. The light is different, as are the sounds. The birds are quieter. I’ve missed their performance. I’ve lost my time to do what I usually do. I’m a few steps behind. In a contradictory twist I stop moving for a second to try and catch up with myself. I’m out of sync.

There was such order in boarding school, everything accounted for, no minute wasted: 7.30 a.m. rising followed by breakfast and study; 9 a.m. school; 1.05 p.m. lunch; 1.50 p.m. school; 3.40 p.m. games/other activities/cuppa; 4.30–6.30 p.m. dinner; 6.30–7.30 p.m. recreation; 7–9 p.m. study; 8.55 p.m. night prayer; 9–9.30 p.m. night cuppa and recreation; 9.30–10.15 p.m. lights out. Freckles. Constellations. A regimental life was the very opposite to living with Pops, a free spirit who seemed to exist on his own time, who made the world bend around him. I thought life was normal with Pops, but something clicked in me when I reached boarding school. The routine, the discipline, the knowing what was around the next corner settled me. Never bored or suffocated me, the way it did some of the other girls.

I leave home late. Head down, I ignore the action in the house. Once in Malahide Castle grounds I pass by the man in the suit with the headphones. He’s far further than he’d usually be. I’m way behind. I walk faster. I don’t pass the leaning jogger, and I expect to at some stage. The man walking the Great Dane is nowhere in sight. How could that be, did he take another route. Where is the old man and his son, and did the earth fall off its axis this morning. It’s Wednesday. No. It’s Tuesday. I’m confused. What kind of hex has Ferrari fella put on me.

I arrive at the bakery at 8.15, by which time it’s crowded and I can’t get inside the door. Spanner doesn’t even see me because I’m faced with a line of backs. I’m late. My shift may have begun but I have a routine to keep to. I feel shut out of the party, staring in at the steamed-up windows like a child who hasn’t been invited. I walk away, unsure of where to go. I’ve been there every morning for three months. Where to now.