“They ignore everything I say.” He shrugs. “They keep talking about ‘minimizing my trauma’, as if that’s something you can just … decide.”
“It must be really lonely for you at home right now,” I say, and the urge to touch him on the arm is so strong that I have to pinch my right hand to stop it from happening. “Have your parents gone crazy strict, like everyone else’s?”
“The opposite. Weirdly enough, it’s like they’ve stopped seeing me entirely,” he says. “The funny thing is that they used to be so strict. Family dinners every night, no hanging around town after school. Homework done before TV. All that. Now, it’s like they’ve realized that none of it … mattered.”
Roe stops walking and scoops his hand in the dirt. He picks up a stone and smooths it between his thumb and forefinger. It’s so small and black that it almost looks like the necklace Dad got me from Portugal.
“I think they’re still in shock. Like they’ve forgotten they have another kid. Last night, I just walked out of the house at 10 p.m. and didn’t come back until after one. I don’t think they even noticed. My mum was just sitting in her armchair, staring at nothing.”
Turning to face the river, he unleashes the stone and lets it skim on the water’s surface. It bounces once, twice, then sinks.
“And where were you?”
“Just walking. I actually went down to the Salvation Army to see if they knew anything about CoB. They didn’t. Then I just walked around for a bit. Listened to music.”
“If you really think there’s something to this CoB story, you should join their Facebook group. That seems to be where they do most of their organizing. Fiona and I tried to join it, but as far as I know they haven’t replied. I think they’re … choosy.”
I show it to him on my phone. He pulls out his own, finds the group and clicks “join group”.
“I’m going to go to one of their meetings,” he says. “I’ll play the vulnerable artsy teen card. Make them think I need help or whatever. Maybe it’ll get me closer to Lily. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s at some Jesus Camp somewhere, wearing a sack dress and picking beans.”
“Sure,” I reply. “Finding the Virgin Mary’s face in a carrot. I can see it.”
We laugh, and it feels good. Good to imagine a different outcome for Lily. Good to think of this as a story that could be funny some day, a thing we all look back on and laugh about together.
And that’s how we spend the evening. Walking the length of the river until we’re on the outskirts of the city centre, talking about who we are, and who we were when we first knew each other, as sibling-of-friend, as friend-of-sibling. We dig out isolated moments from our adjacent childhoods. Snatches of time where we were briefly aware of each other, our lives like planets whose orbits could only briefly synch with one another.
I get two texts, one from each parent. Both of them are frantic, as if suddenly conscious that they haven’t seen me in a few hours. I message back, and tell them I’m on a dog walk with Fiona.
DON’T BE LATE, Mum messages back.
“There was a birthday party,” Roe says. “Lily was going through some kind of Enid Blyton phase and she’d read about that stupid game. That reverse hide ‘n’ seek English kids played.”
“Ah, how charmingly Protestant of her,” I nudge.
“Hey,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I get enough of that in a Catholic boys’ school.”
He wrinkles his brow. “Anyway, what was that game called again?”
“Sardines?”
“Yes!
“I remember.”
“We were under my parents’ bed.”
And then, suddenly, I really do remember it. Lying stiff under a cast-iron bed, my limbs rigid, lolling my head sideways to look at him. Him. Shrimpy and black-haired. Buck-toothed, with his pointer finger on top of his closed mouth. “Ciúnas!” he whispered. “Ciúnas.”
“You told me to shut-up in Irish,” I tell him. “You told me, ‘Ciúnas!’ Like you were my teacher. I hated you so much for that.”
“Oh my God, I was such a prissy little kid,” he says, rolling his eyes at the memory. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be. It was great that there was someone to feel cooler than.”
“Y’know, sometimes I forget what a cow you are, but there you go and remind me.”
Mum phones to ask where I am. I reply that I’m still out with the dog and she says, “Still?” in a suspicious way, so we turn back.
We have to walk through the tunnel underpass again, a place so devoid of light that I can’t even see my hands when I wave them in front of my face. It’s narrow: about the width of a wardrobe. Tutu charges through it, preferring to sniff at the riverbank on the other side. Roe and I have to plod. It’s too narrow for both of us to walk through comfortably side by side, so I fall in behind him. I try to keep my pace up to match his, but my foot catches on a beer bottle left rolling on its side.
I stumble forwards, arms flailing in front of me, crashing into Roe’s shoulder in the darkness.
“Hey, hey!” he says, catching me. He puts his arm around my shoulder to steady me.
He leaves it there.
We stand, for a moment, in total darkness. My left side against the clammy stone wall. My right side wedged into his warm frame. I can feel his ribcage softly, silently moving with his breath.
I don’t move. I don’t think.
A lie.
I do think.
I think: if he were going to kiss me, now would be the moment. All he would need to do is turn his head slightly, to angle his body just a couple of inches, and we would be nose to nose, lip to lip. A movement that, if you rounded it down, would be hardly a movement at all, but would change everything.
I feel his
