Through it all, Órla was cool. She didn’t ask me where I’d been, except once when she was staying over and I’d gone out for the night and gone off to work without answering any of her texts. We sorted that out. Even though I was a bit screwed up over the Daniel situation, I knew that I shouldn’t rush through anything – I needed to sort my head out, the time would come when it came, that sort of thing. Most of all I didn’t want her to feel any discomfort or discover my thoughts, so I was better after that. I got her flowers and chocolates. I asked her about her day and listened to the answer as much as I could. I began blinking and seeing black spots, which made it difficult to keep a straight face. I feigned a lot of extra work – stress from that could really cause all that had happened to me – so she accepted it like anyone would. She started asking if I was looking for another career. I told her I was built for media PR, that even if I didn’t like this job, I was going to start my own company one day soon and really learn to thrive. I just had to push myself a bit here. All nonsense. Don’t get down the road of lies next time, I told myself. It only makes it harder. Because of my lies I had to agree to go to the party at Mark’s place – Daniel knew Mark from childhood and it would be a ‘great networking opportunity’, Órla said. She would have been right, too. And I liked Mark – guiltily liked, knowing what I did, I was almost his employee, his gumshoe – and I liked old Mr MacAshfall, weird as he was.
Gifted
I finished reading the diary for the fourth time – there’s no point not savouring things, especially if you’re trying to understand them – in the greasy spoon café. I closed the back cover and it gave a satisfying creak. I finished strong, with the last sip of my tea, which wasn’t too cold either. But as soon as I’d done that, put the book down firmly on the table, I felt something slap me on the side of my head. I looked around – I looked down. There was a narrow, wrinkled leather thing at my feet. I picked it up – it was a shoe, but not like any kind of shoe I’d ever seen. It looked almost like a ballet shoe, but black and with a thicker sole. I thought it must be handmade for a man from the brogue-like design. For a man with smaller than average feet. Someone had thrown an antique shoe at me. I ran my hands over it – it was clean, and the leather wasn’t old. I looked around again, no likely culprits. Just the shoe. I wish I could hand it to you, that shoe, so that you could hold it in your hand, feel that it existed. I sighed, put it in my pocket, paid up and left.
In the course of the next six days I received, from the anonymous thrower: a second shoe; a pair of balled woollen socks; a long pair of patched brown breeches; a worn but clean white shirt and a malt-coloured tweedish jacket with a sagging collar. All came to me in various public places – all with no evident person behind their delivery – unwitnessed by anyone else. On the seventh day, a small knife with a bone hilt slid itself across the table of the café at me. I had returned to this particular spot in the hope of gaining more things. I felt wired, jolted awake. At the same time I didn’t feel like I should show the clothing to anyone I knew or mention them at all in any kind of context, even hypothetical. Did I think they didn’t exist? Did I know I was waiting for the whole set before I would act? Well, here it all was, with the final piece being the knife – I rubbed the grain of the bone handle with my finger and thumb while across the room, the same woman I always paid the bill to plunged a metal basket of battered fish into hot oil. I knew instinctively this was the last thing I would get. The knife blade was silver – I could tell from the fact it had tarnished. And I wondered about the significance of a silver knife, and I wondered if I was supposed to fend something off with it – or if none of this was real, if I could fend off madness with it. An imaginary knife is not nothing, I thought, putting it on the skin of my finger, poking it in and giving it a flick – gave me a small pain I sucked on – a real enough taste of my own blood against my tongue. Then I panicked
