Ted and Kat watched their cousin Salim get on board the London Eye – he turned and waved before getting on. But when it lands and everyone troops off, Salim is missing. How on earth could he have disappeared into thin air?

Since the police are having no luck finding him, Ted and Kat become sleuthing partners. Despite their prickly relationship, they overcome their differences to follow a trail of clues across London in a desperate bid to find their cousin. And ultimately it comes down to Ted, whose brain works in its own very unique way, to find the key to the mystery.

‘Dowd transforms disability in to a gift’ The Times

‘Compulsive reading’ Independent

Contents

Cover

About the Book

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Part I: Spring

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Part II: Autumn

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Part III: Winter

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Siobhan Dowd

Copyright

About the Book

Life has been hard for Shell since the death of her mam. Her dad has given up work and turned his back on reality, leaving Shell to care for her brother and sister. When she can, she spends time with her best friend Bridie and the charming, persuasive Declan, sharing cigarettes and irreverent jokes.

Shell is drawn to the kindness of Father Rose, a young priest, but soon finds herself the centre of an escalating scandal that rocks the small Irish community to its foundations.

This magnificent debut novel was inspired by a true story.

About the Author

Before she became an author, Siobhan Dowd campaigned to defend the rights of writers and readers whose freedom of expression was at risk.

She went on to write four remarkable novels, achieving critical and popular acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.

Siobhan died from cancer aged only forty-seven. In the very last days before her death, Siobhan set up The Siobhan Dowd Trust, an organisation devoted to bringing books and reading to disadvantaged young people.

For further information, please see www.siobhandowdtrust.com

To G. with love

It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained  . . .

James Joyce, Ulysses

The South of Ireland
1984

Part I

SPRING

One

THE PLACE BROUGHT to mind a sinking ship. Wood creaked on the floor, across the pews, up in the gallery. Around the walls, a fierce March wind chased itself.

The congregation launched into the Our Father as if every last soul was going down. Heaven. Bread. Trespass. Temptation. The words whisked past Shell’s ears like rabbits vanishing into their holes. She tried wriggling her nose to make it slimmer. Evil. Mrs McGrath’s hat lurched in front of her, its feather looking drunk: three-to-one odds it would fall off. Declan Ronan, today’s altar boy, was examining the tabernacle, licking his lips with half-shut eyes. Whatever he was thinking, it wasn’t holy.

Trix and Jimmy sat on either side of her, swinging their legs in their falling-down socks. They were in a competition to see who could go higher and faster.

‘Whisht,’ Shell hissed, poking Jimmy in the ribs.

‘Whisht yourself,’ said Jimmy aloud.

Thankfully, Dad didn’t hear. By now he was up at the microphone, reading the lesson like a demented prophet. His sideburns gleamed grey. The lines on his massive forehead rose and fell. This past year, he’d gone religion-mad. He’d become worshipper extraordinaire, handing out the hymn books, going round with the collection boxes every offertory. Most days he went into nearby Castlerock and walked the streets, collecting for the Church’s causes. On Sunday mornings, she’d often glimpse him practising the reading in his bedroom. He’d sit upright in front of the three panelled mirrors of Mam’s old dressing table, spitting out the words like bad grapes.

Shell, on the other hand, had no time for church: not since Mam’s death, over a year back. She remembered how, when she was small, Mam had made her, Jimmy and Trix dress up clean and bright and coaxed them through Mass with colouring pencils and paper. ‘Draw me an angel, Shell, playing hurling in the rain’; ‘Do me a cat, Jimmy, parachuting off a plane.’ Mam had liked the priests, the candles and the rosaries. Most of all, she’d loved the Virgin Mary. She’d said ‘Sweet Mary this and that’ all day long. Sweet Mary if the potatoes boiled over, if the dog caught a crow. Sweet Mary if the scones came out good and soft.

Then she died.

Shell remembered standing by Mam’s bed as she floated off. Dr Fallon, Mrs Duggan and Mrs McGrath had been there, with Father Carroll leading a round of the rosary. Her dad had stood off to the side, like a minor character in a film, mouthing the words rather than saying them. Now and at the hour of our  . . . On the word ‘death’ Shell had frozen. Death. The word was a bad breath. The closer you got the more you wanted it to go away. She’d realized then she didn’t believe in heaven any more. Mam wasn’t going anywhere. She was going to nowhere, to nothing. Her face had fallen in, puckered and ash-white. Her thin fingers kneaded the sheets, working over them methodically. In Shell’s mind, Jesus got off the cross and walked off to the nearest bar. Mam’s face scrunched up, like a baby’s that’s about to cry. Then she died. Jesus drained off his glass of beer and went clean out of Shell’s life. Mrs McGrath put the mirror Mam had used for plucking her eyebrows up to her mouth and said, ‘She’s gone.’ It was quiet. Dad didn’t move. He just kept on mouthing the prayers, a fish out of water.

They’d waked her in the house over three days. Mam’s face turned waxen. Her fingers went blue and stiff, then yellow and loose again. They threaded them with her milk-white rosary beads. Then they buried her. It was a drama, the whole village bowing, the men doffing their hats. There were processions and candles, solemn stares, prayers, and callers night and day. I’m sorry for your trouble, they’d say. A feed of drink was drunk. Shell didn’t cry. Not at first. Not until a whole year passed. Then she’d cried long and hard as she planted the grave up with daffodils on a November day, the first anniversary.

The less religious Shell got, the more Dad became. Before Mam died, he’d only ever gone through the motions, standing in the church’s back porch, muttering with the other men about the latest cattlemart or hurling match. Mam hadn’t minded. She’d joked that men fell into two categories: they were either ardent about God and indifferent to women, or ardent about women and indifferent to God. If she’d been alive now, she wouldn’t have known him. He was piety personified. He’d sold the television, saying it was a vehicle of the devil. He’d taken over Mam’s old role and led Shell, Jimmy and Trix in a decade of the rosary every night, except Wednesdays and Saturdays, when he went straight down to Stack’s pub after his day of collecting. He’d given up his job on Duggans’ farm. He said he was devoting his life to the Lord.

Today, he was almost yelling. Avenging angels, crashing temples and false gods resounded in the small church, hurting the ear. Mrs McGrath’s hat slid off when the shock of the word thunder set the microphone off in a high-pitched whine. Dad’s eyes flickered. He was momentarily distracted. He looked up at the congregation, staring into the middle distance, seeing nobody. He clenched the lectern’s sides. Shell held her breath. Had he lost his place? No. He continued, but the steam had gone out of it. Jimmy punched the bench, making it boom, just as Dad faltered to the end.

‘This – is – the – word – of – the – Lord,’ he trailed.

‘Thanks be to God,’ the congregation chorused. Shell for one meant it. He’d done. Jimmy smirked. He made the hymn sheet into a spyglass and twisted to inspect the people in the gallery. Trix curled up on the floor, with her head on the kneeler. Dad came down from the altar. Everybody stood up. Shell averted her eyes from Dad as he shuffled up beside her. Bridie Quinn, her friend from school, caught her eye. She had two fingers up to her temple and was twizzling them round as if to say, Your dad is mad. Shell shrugged as if to reply, It’s nothing to do with me. Everybody was waiting for Father Carroll to do the Gospel. He was stooped and old, with a soft, sing-song voice. You could go off into a sweet, peaceful dream as he pattered out the words.

There was a long pause.

The wind outside died down. Crows cawed.

It wasn’t Father Carroll who approached the microphone but the new curate, Father Rose. He was fresh from the seminary, people said, up in the Midlands. He’d never spoken in public before. Shell had only seen him perform the rites in silence, at Father Carroll’s side. There was a quickening interest all around.

He stood at the lectern, eyes down, and turned the pages of the book with a slight frown of concentration. He was young, with a full head of hair that sprang upwards like bracken. He held his head to one side, as if considering a finer point of theology. When he found the place, he straightened up and smiled. It was the kind of smile that radiated out to everyone, everywhere at once. Shell felt he’d smiled at her alone. She heard him draw his breath.

‘“The next day, as they were leaving Bethany  . . .”’ he began.

His voice was even, expressive. The words had a new tune in them, an accent from another place, a richer county. He read the words as if he’d written them himself, telling the story about Jesus throwing over the tables of the moneylenders outside the temple. Jesus raged with righteous anger and Father Rose’s mouth moved in solemn tandem. The air around him vibrated with shining picture bubbles. Shell could hear the caged birds under the arches, the clink of Roman coins. She could see the gorgeous colours of the Israelites’ robes, the light shafting through the temple columns. The images and sounds cascaded out from the pulpit, hanging in the air, turning over like angels in the spring light.

‘Please be seated,’ Father Rose said at the end of the reading. The congregation sat. Only Shell remained standing, her mouth open. The tables of the moneymen turned into hissing snakes. The multitudes fell silent. Jesus became a man, sad and real, smiling upon Shell as she stood in a daze.

‘Be seated,’ Father Rose repeated gently.

There was a rustle around her and Shell remembered where she was. God. Everyone’s staring. She plumped down. Trix tittered. Jimmy dug his spyglass in her side.

Father Rose came down the altar steps and stood before the congregation, arms folded, grinning, as if welcoming guests over for dinner. There was a mutter at this departure from practice. Father Carroll always went to the pulpit for his sermon. Father Rose began to speak.

‘Well. We’ve had some real gloom and doom today,’ he said. ‘Blasted temples, God being angry. But’ – he put his two palms upwards and looked piercingly into the congregation’s heart – ‘has it ever occurred to you that where there is no anger, there is also no love?’ The sentences fitted and sparkled like precious gems in a necklace. His raiment glittered as he gestured. His thick hair spangled with blonds and browns. He spoke of choices and temptations. He spoke of new beginnings. He described how he’d just given up the fags. He’d jumped on the packet, he said, and ground it into the earth to expel the nicotine curse from his marrow. Maybe that was like the tables going over in the gospel story. He spoke of angels and rebirth. Shell leaned forward, her hands clasped tight. A miracle happened. Jesus came out of the bar and got right back up on the high cross. Mam danced in heaven, waltzing with the spirits.

When Father Rose finished, everyone got to their feet and sang, ‘Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven’. Between the notes was a hum of gossip. Nora Canterville nudged Mrs Fallon, the doctor’s wife, with a grimace. Mrs McGrath fanned her face with her hat, as if the devil had passed by. Dad’s eyebrows pulled together, dark as beetles.

‘Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven  . . .’ Shell sang at the top of her voice. She hadn’t the voice of her mother but she could carry a tune. She caught Declan Ronan imitating her, shutting and opening his mouth like an anguished fish. ‘Praise the everlasting King’. She scrunched her nose up at him and looked away. Even when she remembered she’d to cook the mutton dinner, with Trix and Jimmy plaguing the kitchen like flies, and recalled the schoolwork that she wouldn’t do, and the dark, heavy future of her life, nothing mattered. Jesus Christ had come back to earth in the shape of Father Rose. He was walking among them, the congregation of the church, in the village of Coolbar, County Cork.

Two

SHE FLOATED ON a cloud of Father Rose the rest of the day. His face – or was it Jesus’s? – floated in the potato peelings in the washing bowl. It shimmered in the mirror as the light failed and floated in the dark as she drifted off to sleep.

The next day, they were up early to pick up the stones in the back field. Dad had been making them do it since the winter. He never gave a reason. If he was planning to plough it over, he gave no sign. By now, she, Jimmy and Trix had a great cairn growing in the north-east corner. Most mornings, they’d be three silent sentinels going up the hill in the half-light, stooped over with their loads.

Today, Shell picked up the old holdall they used to carry the stones. She was cold and hungry. It was spitting rain.

‘Dad,’ she said. He was sitting in his usual chair by the fire, with the poker resting loosely in his hand. He was staring into the flames as if they contained the answer to life’s riddle. ‘Why do we have to pick up the stones?’

He glanced up. ‘What’s that?’

‘Why do we have to pick up the stones, Dad?’

He frowned. ‘Because I say so. Isn’t that enough?’

‘It’s raining today, Dad. We’ll be wet through all day at school.’

‘Beat it, Shell. Go on. Double-quick.’

‘Only—’

He dropped the poker and came towards her, his hand up, making as if to strike. ‘Scram.’

‘I’m off,’ she said, scooting through the door.

Trix and Jimmy were already huddled over the soil. Shell joined them as they trudged up the hill. The stones always seemed to reappear overnight. However many they picked up, there were always more. Halfway up, Shell doubled right over and stared at the world upside down through the triangle of her white, thin legs. If anger and love went together, like Father Rose had said, it must mean that she loved her dad. She knew she had done once, long ago, when he’d swung her in his arms and let her climb up him like a tree. She could dimly recall it. She imagined all the hate pouring out of her brain, trickling out through her ears. Perhaps it worked, because when she stood up, she felt lighter. She looked over the field to the rusty gate, across the road, up the slope and into the yellow soup of sky.

‘Thank you, Jesus, for the stones,’ she said.

Jimmy threw one at her. ‘Hate the stones,’ he said. ‘Hate Jesus. Hate you.’

The stone hit her right in the belly. Shell rubbed where it hit, and then looked Jimmy in the eye. His face was twisted up. The whiteness around the freckles stood out. She’d been sharp with him of late, she knew. Just the other day, she’d slapped him when she’d caught him stealing one of her new-baked scones from the cooling rack. Then when he’d asked to go to the funfair last Saturday she’d snapped a no. She’d have liked to go herself but there’d been no money. No mon, no fun, she said, and he’d stopped talking to her ever since.

She stretched out her arms. ‘Throw another,’ she said.

Jimmy looked at Trix, Trix looked at Jimmy. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Both of you. For the love of God.’

They picked up two stones and threw them. One missed, the other grazed Shell’s cheek.

‘Go on. Don’t be afraid.’ Scones, she thought, smiling. Not stones. Imagine them as soft, light scones.

They threw again. On the road, Shell heard a car trawling up the hill. On the third throw, she yelped despite herself.

‘Go on,’ she squeaked.

‘No,’ said Trix. ‘’S boring.’ She ran off down the field, singing something. But Jimmy picked up a big stone, the size of three scones in one. He squinted, as if the devil was sneaking a peek out of his eye.

‘This’ll hurt,’ he said.

‘That’s right, Jimmy. Fine man. Throw it.’

He heaved it up to his shoulder with both hands, a miniature Superman. He grunted.

‘Ready,’ said Shell. ‘Do it.’

‘Stop.’ A voice, dark and deep, like an underground earthquake, called over to them.

Shell closed her eyes. ‘Do it,’ she whispered. A breeze fanned her fringe. Inside her eyelids, yellow rockets burst.

‘Drop it, boy.’ It was a command, urgent but not harsh.

She opened her eyes. The devil catapulted out of Jimmy in two shakes. She turned round. Father Rose had pulled up by the gate. She could hardly see him or the car in the strong early light that broke through the heavy clouds. He’d wound down the window.

‘We were only messing,’ Jimmy hollered, dropping the stone. He ran off down the hill.

Father Rose looked towards Shell. ‘What was that about?’ he asked.

Shell shrugged.

‘You’re the Talent girl, aren’t you?’

She nodded.

‘What’s your first name?’

‘Michelle. But everyone calls me Shell.’

He nodded back and started up his car. ‘So long, Shell.’ She thought he was going to add something, but he sighed instead. He let down the handbrake and took off up the hill. She blinked. The car flashed purple as he rounded the bend.

Shell sat down on the damp earth and breathed out hard. She stroked the lumpen stones of the Pharisees that had glanced off her mortal body. ‘He who has not sinned,’ she murmured, ‘let him cast the first stone.’ She took up the last stone, the one Jimmy hadn’t dared to throw, and cooled her cheek with it. She lay back on the ground and was still. The cold spring morning went deep into her bones.

Three

SHE SAW FATHER Rose again soon afterwards.

Dad had been collecting for the starving nations of Africa. One week it was flood victims of a sub-continent, the next it was refugees from a minor theatre of war, but when each week ended, he’d seal the money in an envelope and tell Shell to take it to the priests’ house. It was the one job she liked: first, because she’d steal a few pence for herself and buy some gums at McGraths’, and second, because if Nora Canterville, the priests’ housekeeper, answered, she’d get a wedge of coffee and walnut cake.

Before she left, Dad grabbed her arm. ‘If you steal it, even a penny of it, I’ll know. Father Carroll’ll tell me and all hell will be let loose.’

‘Yes, Dad. I know.’

And she did know. The money he collected was always more than the money he sent in. She might be a thief, but he was a worse one. She’d seen him filching the larger coins, even notes, and dropping them into his pockets. The man was as mean as a blood-sucking midge. When he gave her the money for the shopping each week, he’d grab her wrist and tell her to bring him back the change down to the last penny and every last receipt. There was no such thing as pocket money in their house. And since Mam died, he’d made herself, Jimmy and Trix wear the same school uniforms three sizes too big, so as to save on having to buy new ones when they’d grown out of the old. They were the scarecrow pupils, the laughs of the townland. Shell’s school had a song for her, courtesy of Declan Ronan, Coolbar’s unholiest altar boy, and the cleverest boy in the Leaving Certificate year:

Shell looks worse than brambles

Or empty tins of Campbell’s.

She smells of eggy-scrambles,

Her greasy hair’s a shambles.

Whatever about his charity collecting, her dad had a black shrivelled walnut for a heart.

The meanest thing she’d ever seen him do was steal Mam’s ring off her corpse. Mam had only the one, the gold band on her left hand that meant she was his wife. When married women die, Shell knew, they get buried with their wedding rings on, so that they can take their loving and faithfulness to the grave. There the rings stay until time ends, surviving the flesh and even the bone.

But her dad couldn’t bear to see a good bit of yellow gold go to waste. The ring had loosened up in her final wasting. Before they put the coffin lid on, he’d said, ‘Please: one last prayer, one last goodbye, on my own.’ Everyone had left him to it. Everyone but Shell. She’d stopped outside the room behind the door that had been left ajar and peeked in through the crack. She saw him unravelling a portion of the milky white rosary from her mam’s hand. She glimpsed a yellow flash dropping into his top waistcoat pocket. Then he fiddled with the rosary again.

‘You can cover her over now,’ he’d called to the undertaker. ‘I’m ready.’

What he’d done with the ring, Shell didn’t know. It wasn’t in with his socks – she’d checked. He’d probably sold it when he was next in town.

Dad and his demented readings. Dad and the stones in the back field. Dad and the rattle of the collection tins. She trudged up the back field with the envelope of small change tucked underarm. The sun was out, strong and pale. The lambs had arrived. One skipped up to her and baa-ed, then darted off again, its legs like airy springs. This is the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. The thought of Dad faded. She reached the top of the hill. The clouds might have been lamb-cousins in their fluffiness. The trees brimmed with white blossom. She felt like a bride as she passed below them. Two fields on and Coolbar appeared before her in a fold of slope. She sat on a bank of grass and peeled the envelope flap open with a steady hand, watching the strands of gum stretch and shrivel as she tugged. She took out five pieces of silver and hurled them into the air for the poor of the parish to find in their hour of need.

‘So there, Dad,’ she shouted.

The coins sparkled, scattering to earth. She laughed and resealed the envelope, then walked down through the last pasture to human habitation.

She meandered along the village pavement. At McGraths’ shop the sweet aroma of newspapers and cigarettes made her linger. They sold postcards and beach balls all year round, liquorice, ice-cream cones, plastic buckets and spades. She felt the money calling to her from inside the envelope and wished she’d kept the pieces of silver for herself. She didn’t dare take any more. A ball of longing itched her belly. She’d only had an egg all day.

Mr McGrath saw her from within the shop. He beckoned, his bright red cheeks and big forehead wagging like a toy dog. Shell shrugged her shoulders, as if to say, If only. He came out with a handful of bubblegums. He gave them to her, putting a finger to his mouth.

‘Our secret, Shell. Don’t be going telling, or I’ll have all Coolbar on to me.’

‘No, Mr McGrath. I won’t. Promise.’ She blushed as pink as the bubblegum wrappers and went on down the street rejoicing. Jesus had surely rewarded her for the money she’d sprinkled earlier for the parish poor.

The priests’ house was a little way up the street, beyond the church. Father Carroll had lived there ever since Shell could remember with his housekeeper, Nora Canterville. The curates came and went, but they two stayed. Nora, it was proclaimed, was the best cook in the whole of County Cork, famed for a consommé soup as clear as a newborn baby’s soul. Dad always said that if you were invited for a meal, you’d leave half a stone heavier than you’d come.

Shell wasn’t expecting to encounter Father Rose. She thought he’d be out on the parish rounds, up at the community hospital or out on Goat Island, the nearby peninsula, saying the mid-week Mass. She rang the bell, thinking of coffee cake, not him.

There was a long wait before anybody answered. She was about to go, when she heard steps on the stairs, then an approaching tread, sure and measured: too firm for Nora; too swift for Father Carroll. She held her breath. Her stomach fluttered.

The door opened. Father Rose looked upon Shell, an eyebrow raised, but said nothing.

‘My dad,’ she said, holding the envelope forward, ‘said to give this to you.’

He took the envelope by its top, so that the money slid to the bottom. Her cheeks burned at the vulgar clink of change. Money and the Word of the Lord were far from fast friends, as he’d said last Sunday. He was surely thinking of the tables of the moneylenders.

‘It’s charity money,’ she said. ‘For the starving of Africa.’

‘That campaign ended last month,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s for St Vincent de Paul? That’s who we’re collecting for now.’

Shell shook her head as if to say she didn’t know.

‘Your dad. He collects it in his spare time, doesn’t he?’ The money kept jingling. In devastation, Shell stared down at Father Rose’s feet. With a shock, she saw they were bare. His dark priest’s pants stopped short just above his white, long toes.

‘His whole time is spare, Father,’ she stammered. ‘He’s no job.’

‘No job?’

‘Not since Mam died. He left off the farm work over at Duggans’ on account of his bad back.’ That was what Dad gave out anyway.

‘He’s the job of keeping house and being mother and father to you and your brother and your sister, hasn’t he?’

‘S’pose.’ She could have said it was herself did most of that.

‘He’s a religious man, your father. So Father Carroll tells me.’

Shell shrugged. ‘S’pose.’

‘Do you want to come in for a glass of something? Nora’s shopping in town, but I can rustle up something for you.’

Shell nodded. He didn’t move to one side. Instead he made a tall bridge of his arm, so that she could walk under him, through the open door. As she passed beneath, she took care not to tread on his bare feet by accident. The smell of the woven wool carpet and the heavy velvet tick of the big wall clock made her feel the size of an infant.

‘This way, Shell,’ he said.

The way he said her name was like a blessing.

He opened a door to the best room, at the front, where Shell had never been before. He waved her onto a huge chair of dimpled leather. Then he got a cut glass from a cabinet, and took a small bottle of bitter lemon from a drinks trolley.

Shell had never liked bitter lemon until then. But as she sipped it now, it fizzed like sherbet on her nose and lip and slipped over her tongue, sweet and sour at the same time. He leaned against the arm of the matching leather sofa as she drank. He folded his arms and watched. He smiled. A slow warmth filled the room.

‘I’m glad you called when you did,’ he said.

‘Why’s that, Father?’

‘I’d been having a struggle.’

‘A struggle?’

‘With myself. A terrible craving for the fags.’

Shell chortled, remembering his sermon. ‘You’re still off them?’

‘For all Lent, I hope. Please God I last till Easter.’

‘Will you go back on them then?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ He shook his head. ‘Desperate things, the fags. The hold they have on you. Don’t you ever go on them, will you?’

She didn’t like to say she’d already had a few. Declan Ronan shared one around at school sometimes, swapping it between herself and Bridie Quinn: a token of honour, he’d quip, for the founding members of his harem.

‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ Father Rose said, as if he’d read her thoughts, ‘but shouldn’t you be at school?’

Shell held up the glass to her face. She peered through the diamond ridges. ‘School?’ she said. ‘’S nearly over. We break up soon.’

‘I see.’ He got up and walked the length of the room. He stopped at the casement window and stood for a long moment.

‘The other morning,’ he said with his back to her. ‘In the field. Why were you letting your brother and sister throw stones at you like that?’

Shell almost drank the fizzing lemon the wrong way.

‘As I came up the hill,’ he continued, ‘I saw you, standing with your arms outstretched.’ He turned to face her.

Her eyes slanted over to the vase of silk flowers inside the fireplace. She finished the drink.

‘For a moment I thought I was seeing things,’ he said. ‘A vision from the gospel.’

‘We were only messing.’

‘It seemed an odd game, Shell.’

There was something in the way he said the words that drew her eyes to his. A soft bowl of light sat in his look, so she told him the truth. ‘I was praying, Father. I was making them hurt me so that I could feel the praying. Really feel it. Strong and hard.’

He got up and took the glass from her. ‘Would you like another?’

‘No, Father.’

‘Well, on you go, so.’

‘Yes, Father.’

He showed her to the door, but as she stepped back out onto the front path, he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. She felt it there, a firm, kind touch.

‘Shell,’ he said. ‘Prayer doesn’t have to be painful. Trust me.’

She looked up. The wisdom of ages was in his eyes.

‘I do, Father,’ she said.

He let her go. She hurried down the path, through the gate and up the road. She knew he was watching her as she departed, for she did not hear the sound of the front door closing after her.

Four

AFTER TEA THAT day, Dad led the usual decade of the rosary. They were on the first Sorrowful Mystery, the agony in the garden. Jesus was waiting in anguish of mind to be arrested. Jimmy had his tongue poked off to the side so that his left cheek was like a tent. He stared at the old piano longingly, and wiggled his fingers as if he was playing it. Trix sat back on her heels and stared up at the flypaper Dad had hung up earlier from the lampshade. The first trapped fly was stirring on it, dying. Shell closed her eyes. Dad’s voice drifted away. Instead Jesus joined her in his trouble of mind. She walked with him along the gravel path of the priests’ house garden. They approached the tall pampas grass, waiting for the soldiers to arrive, and sighed together to think of the coming cross and nails. Jesus, Shell said, I wish I could have the nails instead. He turned to her and took her arm. He had the face of Father Rose, but instead of priestly vestments he wore a long linen tunic of dazzling white. Beneath it, his feet were bare. His face was unshaven, his hair longer. Shell, he said in his dulcet Midlands tone, your sweet love is all the comfort I need on this dark day.

‘Shell!’ Dad’s voice, stern. ‘You’ve stopped praying.’

‘No, I haven’t,’ Shell said. ‘I was talking to Jesus in my head.’

‘That’s blasphemy,’ he snapped. He thrust the rosary at her. ‘You do the next five beads. And you, Jimmy, stop your wriggling, or I’ll put an axe to that piano.’

In bed that night, after the light was out, she returned to her visions. She found herself in a boat. Jesus was on the far side of the lake, walking on the water. When she climbed over the side, the surface was elastic, like a trampoline. She crossed over, bounding like a spaceman on the moon. He took her hand and they traversed the lake as the sun went down and the stars came out. As she drifted into sleep, he turned and said something to her. She leaned towards him to catch the words and suddenly the surface of the lake shifted. She was falling into the grey-green depths below. Silence, thick and heavy, was everywhere. Then from afar came the steady tick-tocking of a clock.

Five

ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, after they’d done the stones, Dad said there’d be no more mitching off from school. They were to go in, quick march.

‘I thought you said we could have the last week off,’ Jimmy moaned.

‘I don’t wanna go to school, Dadda,’ Trix said. She always called him ‘Dadda’ when she wanted her way but today it didn’t work.

‘You’ll be at school in two shakes or I’ll have the washing line down to the three of you,’ he said. ‘I’ll not have any more interfering phone calls.’

Shell’s ears pricked up. Somebody from school had been on to him again.

She helped Trix get ready and kept them both quiet with a bubblegum each she’d saved from yesterday. She hurried them over the field to the village and left them off at the national school. Then she caught the bus to Castlerock town for secondary school.

She arrived just on time. Bridie Quinn sauntered over to her before the bell went. She and Bridie were the only girls from Coolbar in their class. They were the two bad apples of the fourth year and fast friends, whenever they weren’t mitching. Bridie’s dad had vanished years back. She, her younger brothers and sisters and her mam lived in a mouldering three-room bungalow the other side of Coolbar, on the road to Goat Island. They’d a TV and calor gas, but no bathroom, and they washed in an outhouse. Nobody knew how they all squeezed in. Bridie had to share a bed with her mam, a fate worse than death. She’d a thistle for a tongue but was Shell’s only friend.

‘Shell Talent, you’re a sight,’ she announced.

Shell looked down at her grubby dress and around the playground. She was the only one in summer uniform, a maggot-green shapeless shift with a narrow belt, sleeves to the elbow and stripes of navy on the flat, wide collar. The weather was fine. She’d thought the whole school would have switched over from winter to summer by now.

‘I guessed wrong,’ she moaned.

‘’S not the dress,’ Bridie said, waving a hand. The dangers of the morning guessing game at the change of the season were well understood. ‘It’s the cut of you under it. You’ve no bra on.’

Shell wriggled. ‘So?’

‘In that dress, I can see them drooping.’

‘No!’

‘I can. They’re like two jellyfish.’

‘Shut it.’

‘’S true.’

Shell sighed. ‘I don’t have a bra.’

‘You should get one.’

‘Dad’d never give me the money for one.’

‘Will we pinch something from Meehans’ stores? They’d never notice. I could pick you out a nice one. Lacy blue. Underwired. Whatever you fancy.’

Shell giggled. ‘Would you?’

‘I would. You’d have to tell me your size, first.’

‘Dunno my size. I’ve never been measured.’

‘Not even the size of your cup?’

‘My cup?’

‘You know.’ Bridie clumped her two hands in front of her chest.