Kala E-Book

Colin Walsh

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 592

Beschreibung

THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2023 'A gritty heartbreaker of a thriller... Part heartfelt coming-of-age tale, part brutal Irish noir, this is a spectacular read for Donna Tartt and Tana French fans' Kirkus In the seaside town of Kinlough, on Ireland's west coast, three old friends are thrown together for the first time in years. They - Helen, Joe and Mush - were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann as their group's white-hot centre. Soon after that summer's peak, Kala disappeared without a trace. Now it's fifteen years later. Human remains have been discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. As past and present begin to collide, the estranged friends are forced to confront their own complicity in the events that led to Kala's disappearance, and to try to stop Kinlough's violent patterns repeating themselves once again... Against the backdrop of a town suffocating on its own secrets, in a story that builds from a smoulder to a stunning climax, Kala brilliantly examines the sometimes brutal costs of belonging, as well as the battle in the human heart between vengeance and forgiveness, despair and redemption. 'Tana French fans will relish Kala' Guardian, Best Summer Reads 'The thriller of the moment' The i Paper, Best Summer Reads 'An addictive read with explosive revelation' Daily Telegraph 'A compulsive joy' Daily Mail 'Kala heralds an exciting new voice' Observer

Leseprobe

First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2023 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Colin Walsh, 2023

The moral right of Colin Walsh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, locations and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

Kala received financial assistance from the Arts Council of Ireland.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 83895 860 2

Trade Paperback ISBN: 978 1 83895 875 6

EBook ISBN: 978 1 83895 861 9

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books

An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

For my parents

You don’t look back along time but down through it,like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface,sometimes that, sometimes nothing.Nothing goes away.

Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

In Kyoto,hearing the cuckoo,I long for Kyoto.

Bashō

Index of main characters

The place:

Kinlough, a tourist town on the West Coast of Ireland

The gang:

Joe Brennan

Katherine ‘Kala’ Lanann

Helen Laughlin

Aidan Lyons

Mush

Aoife Reynolds

The Brennans (Joe’s family):

Dudley Brennan, Joe’s father

Margaret Brennan, Joe’s mother

The Lananns (Kala’s family):

The Mammy Lanann, Kala’s grandmother

The Laughlins (Helen’s family):

Rossie Laughlin, Helen’s father, soon to marry Pauline

Theresa Laughlin, Helen’s younger sister

The Lyons (Aidan’s family):

Ger Lyons, father of Aidan and the twins, Pauline’s ex-husband

Pauline, mother of Aidan and the twins, soon to marry Rossie Laughlin

Donna and Marie Lyons, Aidan’s younger sisters, ‘the twins’

Teabag Lyons, Lee Lyons and Boomerang Lyons, Aidan’s cousins, nephews of Ger

Lydia, Aidan’s aunt, Pauline’s sister, Mush’s mother

Mush, cousin of Aidan, Donna and Marie, nephew of Pauline

Kala

Summer 2003

WE’RE PERCHED ON our bikes at the top of the hill. There’s a turning melt of sky above us. The town’s glittering below. We’re fifteen and it’s the summer of our lives so Kinlough is gathering itself up into the moment with us – the whole town’s pure responsive to our energies. It races with us in the rhythms of the half-light, hums over the distant fields through the twisting flow of the River Purr, warms itself across the slated rooftops and ledges, climbs with us in the ticking turns of our bikes as we wheel them about the top of the hill, our sneakers scuffling the gravel as we turn to stare down the barrel of the evening, and tip our front wheels slowly, carefully, to the edge.

We are the girls: Kala, Aoife, Helen. We are the boys: Aidan, Joe, Mush.

Kala is between us. We’re close enough to see the freckles at the frayed collar of her shirt. Her smell is shea butter and incense, tea tree oil and tobacco. Her crooked eye is already elsewhere. But her other eye is fixed on our target, below.

The target’s a narrow gap at the bottom of the hill. It’s the slip in the wall where the bicycle path gushes out into the main road. Cars blip and flash inside it, from left and right. The idea is to go cycling down the hill and then pedal blind through the gap, cutting clean and unscathed across the road. It’ll be a test of ourselves, our willingness to meet the moment. It’s difficult to know whose idea it was, cos by now our group’s like a murmuration of birds, turning telepathically into ever new shapes. We all know that if we hit the bottom of the hill at the wrong time, the cars will come screaming at us from every direction.

Which is what makes it so exciting.

Kala wants to be the first to go. She’s called it. There’s an unspoken agreement that she won’t actually ride alone, we’ll all go together. This is how it works. We’re a crew. Still. We watch her grip flex on the handlebars, waiting for a sign. Her teeth tug on her bottom lip and we straighten on our bikes. Ratty Converses rise to the upper pedals. The sky draws breath. Kala’s front wheel noses its way over the edge and her bike tips into the fall and time dilates into something unstable once the rest of us pedal after her, turning the world beneath us, our bikes peeling off the top of the hill into the nothing, where immediately there’s no need to pedal any more, gravity’s taking care of everything now, coiling us through itself and tearing the path apart beneath our tyres as we go faster and faster, the cars growing louder, the gap getting larger, the lads yelping and shrieking, the bike chains beneath us screaming, when we see that Kala has begun to pedal furiously, all of us shouting and her leaning deeper and pulling out ahead of us, gathering herself into a surge, hair streaking back at us like dark lightning as the path suddenly runs into road, and the sounds become noise, and in the roar of that moment it feels like we’re foam becoming ocean.

www.missing.ie/missing_persons/katherine-lanann/

KATHERINE ‘KALA’ LANANN

Missing since 3 November 2003 from Kinlough

Born: 1988

Age: 15

Height: 5’ 4

Hair: Black

Eyes: Brown

Build:

Last seen wearing large hunting coat over army reserve shirt and black jeans. She also had a distinctive shoulder bag with the logo ‘RATM’ on it.

Katherine ‘Kala’ Lanann was 15 years of age at the time of her disappearance. She left her house on the evening of 3 November 2003. It is thought that Kala left her home for a pre arranged meeting with an unknown person.

She made a phonecall from a phonebox in Carthy, a neighbouring town, near 8 o’clock that evening. A short time later a girl answering Kala’s description was seen leaning in the back door of a dark coloured Hyundai Accent type car. There were further sightings of a girl similar to Kala in Kinlough at around mid night. When she did not return home, her grandmother became concerned and reported her missing to the Gardai.

Despite an extensive investigation by the Gardai and widespread publicity at the time, Kala has never been found.

If you know of her whereabouts or have any information to offer please contact any Garda Station or phone the Garda Confidential Phoneline on 1800 666111.

This information has been placed here with the permission of Kala’s grandmother.

See the missingkids.ie website for an age progressed photo.

For more photos please visit www.helpfindkala.bebo.com Email: [email protected]

Summer 2018

Friday

Mush

I’M THE WRONG side of thirty and I still love it when summer bursts over this town. That school holiday vibe. First hint of suncream or cut grass hits the air, and I get the tingly bellyflut feeling. It’s always a surprise, like. As if every year I forget those smells exist, and bam! The world’s young again. Then it’s the stretch in the evenings, the drone of the bees, all that good shite.

After close-up I sit by the window of the caf with a six-pack of Tuborg on the counter. I knock the cans back as I watch Kinlough melt into a glisten, parading itself up and down Fox Street, being pure fabulous. People look the most alive they’ve been all year, like. Their smiles that bit wider. This type of heat makes shite out of everyone – people are lobster red and delirious by the end of the first week of it – but no one gives a fuck, cos Kinlough’s being a giddy carnival of itself, all saturated colours. Mams with prams, pizza-faced young bucks messing, young wans smoking, all shimmering and exaggerated movements. For a few weeks a year, Kinlough gets to be the place it really wants to be.

Last summer, when I still smoked, I used to duck out the caf every couple of hours, telling Mam I was out for a rollie. But what I really wanted was a few minutes’ peace to let summer flow over myself, and I could linger and merge with it.

No chance of that this year. I glance out the window whenever I can, but there’s no let-up. Town’s surging. You can smell the money. People come into the caf and make their orders in hysterical voices, sweat beading off them the second they hit the air conditioning. It’s a pain in the hoop. Mam loves it, of course. She has the chats with the punters, shouting over the scream of the bean grinder, handing out compliments with every coffee. I keep my back to her and the punters as I prepare the orders, throwing an eye to the madness of town outside. I’m like a dog in a hot car. Hard to even daydream when it’s this busy.

All the while, the queue’s getting longer, but Mam coos at babies, tells young fellas they’re filling out nicely – ‘Oh, you’ll break a few hearts!’ that sort of bollocks – and she knocks a bit of craic out of little kids too. Leans over the counter and they look up at her, all moon-eyed next to their mothers. Mam insists on calling me away from my jobs to offer them some of the crumbled bits of brownie that we keep in a little basket by the till. I hold the basket out like some sort of medieval beggar. Mam gets all excited about the exchange, like it’s a real moment. She says, ‘That’s Mush’s Brilliant Brownie! Mush makes that every week, for good girls and boys like you!’ The kids just paw at their mouths with the cake, in a world of pure chocolate. Then the mothers say stuff like, ‘What do you say to the nice man?’ and the kids thank me in that vacant, haunted way kids have. I keep my face turned from them. Some mothers make a big hoo-ha of how grateful they are for Mush’s Brilliant Brownie, eager to show that my face doesn’t bother them. Others look uncomfortable, alarm in their eyes, despite themselves, and I can respect the honesty in that, even if it does send red blotches pattering up my neck. I mumble some thanks and get back to making the coffees with a towel thrown over my shoulder, head low, glancing out the window, counting down the hours till closing, when everyone will finally fuck off and I can crank up the sound system and have my few cans at the window, watch town do its thing for a bit, float into the beer buzz like a kite cutting its own strings.

It’s not easy. People are hyped. You’d like to think it’s cos of the Races, and the Festival with the parade, all that. Well, it’s not. There was a body found down the woods last week. By the lake. Human remains, that’s what they’re calling it. No one knows who it is. Was. Punters look around as they mutter about it. Human remains, they go, whispering loud enough to be heard, desperate to appear like they might have secret information.

Mam’s as bad as any of them. When Auntie Pauline came in earlier, I assumed it was to talk about her upcoming wedding. But the chat immediately swerved off the road into the ditch of human remains. Human remains, the pair of them said, eating each other’s words, delighted something’s happening, something you might read about in the paper.

People are as ghoulish, like.

Everyone’s got a theory about it. Even me. Some dark part of me immediately thought it’d be Kala. I didn’t want to think that, but sure you can spend your life wanting your brain to work one way and not another, walking around trying to control your thoughts like some fucking Rain Man. No use. The brain does what it wants. People mention human remains and a switch gets flicked in my skull and I see limbs lying in the mulch of the lake like the severed hands in Jaws, spilling with claw-clicking crabs. Only suddenly it’s not limbs, it’s Kala and she’s my friend and we’re still fifteen and she’s looking at me like I can still help, and it’s horrible.

So I kept quiet today, even as Mam and Auntie Pauline gossiped about it. Then they started going at me about getting my hair cut for the wedding. Mam said I’d a head on me like something dragged through a hedge. She wouldn’t leave me alone till I agreed to get a clip, just so they’d give me a bit of peace. Turned away from them and focused on things to look forward to.

My few cans of Tuborg. I’ve had them cooling in the fridge all day.

And now it’s only me and the sound system. I’ve counted the register, mopped the floor, wiped down the tables. I’m almost at the point where I can take my spot at the window.

I’m stacking the last of the chairs when the bell on the door tinkles and the twins come in doing their imperious little march to their favourite booth. Auntie Pauline named the twins Donna and Marie, after the Osmonds. Donna has her hair rowed into these knackery braids, and she’s wearing her I’m-sixteen-and-this-world’s-brutal puss face. Marie’s hair is bunched up in two little balls on her head, like Minnie Mouse. She smiles and gives me the finger as they take a booth.

I give her the finger back.

They used to call in to me for a hot chocolate after closing when they were kids, but that’s slacked off a fair bit since the eyeliner and fake tan came in.

I’ve already cleaned the machine, I tell them, and continue stacking the chairs. They don’t even say hello, just murmur. Marie taps on her phone while Donna tears sachets of sugar onto the table I’ve only just wiped down. I hesitate. ‘I’m only after wiping that down,’ I say. Donna rolls her eyes so theatrically I have to dip my head or she’ll catch me smiling.

I suck on my mouth a moment, tap on the counter. I can picture the beads of glisten on the cans, tucked in the back of the fridge. This is my little moment of the day, like. To myself. The twins are sitting in their booth, not paying any mind. This is the way it’s been with them for a while. They impose themselves on you, this pure moody silence, and make you ask them questions just to break the silence they’re after fucking creating. Teenagers.

‘So, what have ye been at today, then?’

‘Ah,’ Marie shrugs, staring at her phone. ‘Nothing, like.’

She holds the phone out to Donna, and Donna starts laughing, hand over her mouth.

‘Oh my God,’ Donna says, and they giggle together. ‘Oh my God.’

I sigh. ‘Hot chocolate, is it?’

Donna shrugs. ‘Yeah, whatever.’

‘Make mine a flat white, actually, Mush,’ Marie says, yawning. I raise an eyebrow at that – flat white, is it? – and she raises one back, big mocking shit-eater of a grin on her. Again, I’ve to dip my head or I’ll give the game away. Smile and it encourages them.

So I get to work, grinding the beans, frothing the milk, and over my shoulder I hear them huddled and giggling at whatever’s happening on Marie’s phone.

Some stupid part of me still thinks of them as kids. And they’d been lovely kids. Always a bit of a handful, like, but you wouldn’t change them for anything. I’d been the cool cousin they always wanted to sleep over. I used to build forts for them, extending the duvets over the gap between their two beds so they could pretend they were trapped in the dungeon of a witch. I introduced them to movies every kid should see – Princess Bride, The Goonies, stuff like that. Looking after them made me feel useful, good for something other than working in Mam’s café. Donna and Marie both asked me to be their sponsor when they made their Confirmation, and made me escort them to the little party held for their class at the Fitz Hotel. There was a disco with coloured lights and a mirror ball. All these twelve-year-old girls on the dance floor together, demented on sugar, on each other. Auntie Pauline was still married to Uncle Ger at the time. I was sitting quietly with them and Mam, nursing a pint, when the twins came over and took me by both hands and insisted I get up and dance with them. I was mortified. I had my head dipped the whole time. But the girls were delighted – they whooped and shouted, ‘Mush! Mush!’ – showing me off to their friends like I was a trophy.

When I bring them their drinks, Marie’s rolling two cigarettes.

‘Your mother was in earlier.’

Marie doesn’t look up. ‘Pauline,’ she says. She sings her mam’s name like Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’.

‘Was she crooning?’ Donna says. ‘Mam’s always crooning these days. Wedding jitters. Going about cleaning the house, laughing to herself.’

‘Sure that’s nice, isn’t it?’ I say.

‘She’s being a dope,’ Donna says.

‘Ah,’ I go. ‘She’s only happy.’

‘She’s. Being. A dope,’ Donna says. Christ, she’s got some sulk on her today. When she’s on form like this, she gets this furrow between her eyes. It’s always been lovely to me.

‘Well,’ I say, ‘not long now till the big day and then everything’ll be back to normal.’

There’s an awkward pause. In fairness, it was a stupid thing to say. Obviously things won’t be back to normal – their mother’s getting married. Herself and Rossie Laughlin, making a go of it in the town hall on Monday. When they moved into Rossie’s house last year, it was Brady Bunch style for a while, two families under one roof: Pauline and the twins along with Rossie and Rossie’s daughter, Theresa. Mam and Auntie Pauline were talking about Theresa earlier: ‘How old would she be now? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?’ ‘She’s one of them vegans, so she is.’ That’s how Mam said it, ‘One of them vegans,’ like she was talking about something from outer space. Mam got me to help Theresa move into a flat of her own a few months ago. I was all antsy at first, being out of the caf and all that. But it ended up being really good craic hanging out with Theresa. Like, I’d still been thinking of her as Helen’s baby sister, but here was this pure sound grown woman giving me hippie tea, telling me funny backpacking stories, talking about her art practice like I’d have a notion what that was. I couldn’t resist asking Theresa if she thought Helen might come back for the wedding. Theresa just shrugged and made a ‘who knows’ flick of the hands.

‘Are ye set for Auntie Pauline’s shindig tomorrow?’ I say.

‘Can’t wait,’ Donna mumbles.

‘She’s calling it her bachelorette party,’ Marie says.

‘Her hen party,’ Donna says.

‘We’re bringing willy straws,’ Marie says.

Donna snorts. I hope they’re not bringing willy straws.

‘Still off the smokes?’ Marie says.

‘I am.’

‘D’you not get bored, like? Maybe you should vape,’ Marie says. The idea seems to excite her. ‘Oh my God, he should vape.’

‘Vapers are cunt wands,’ Donna snaps.

Jesus. She’s in such a mood, like.

Donna’s always been more volatile than Marie. Less fluent with words, always confusing signals, getting it slightly wrong, getting angry at herself for getting it wrong, taking it out on whoever’s there. This one evening, when the twins were only young, I was in their kitchen and they were stuffing their skulls with pepperoni pizza. They were giddy cos I was there to babysit. They kept shouting, ‘Food in face! Food in faaaace!’ as they ate. Auntie Pauline was doing Uncle Ger’s tie and giving me pointers on bathtimes, bedtimes, all that, when Donna called out, ‘Look at me!’ She had a slice of pizza held next to her cheek like a monstrous melt of scar tissue. I knew she didn’t mean any harm, but I still felt my stomach drop as she put on a deep voice and said, ‘I’m Mush! I’m Mush!’

Auntie Pauline looked mortified. ‘Love!’ she said, her eyes glancing automatically at my scars. ‘That’s not very nice.’

Uncle Ger said nothing. He just walked over to Donna and wrenched her hair tight in his fist. She squealed. I didn’t know where to look. It was awful. ‘What do you say to your cousin?’ Uncle Ger said in a calm voice. ‘Sorrysorrysorrysorry,’ Donna cried.

I shift in my seat. ‘How’s your dad getting on?’

‘Oh, brilliant,’ Marie says. ‘Probably shitfaced in his kitchen right now.’

‘Wish I was shitfaced right now,’ Donna says.

‘He’s pathetic,’ Marie says.

‘He’s just sad,’ Donna says.

‘He’s pathetic,’ Marie says in a firm voice. ‘Sitting up on that farm, feeling sorry for himself. I wouldn’t live up there if you paid me. State of him.’

I know it sounds bad, but I’m glad Marie talks about her father that way. Donna still has this kind of confused loyalty to him but, fact is, Uncle Ger’s no one’s idea of a good time. He’s been living with his nephew Teabag on the big farm out in the Warren ever since the divorce a few years back. Mam was delighted when Auntie Pauline finally left him.

‘Sure ye’ll be off to college soon enough,’ I say, foot tapping. I’d murder a can. ‘Only two more years. Then ye won’t have to live with any of your stupid family ever again.’

‘You’re our family,’ Donna says. ‘You’re not stupid.’

They both look at me now. There’s a kind of brittle energy about them. Something’s about to happen. I don’t know what it is, but I suddenly see they’ve been working up to it.

Donna stands up – ‘I’m bursting for a piss’– and climbs out the booth. This has been planned. Marie exchanges a look with Donna over my shoulder as she walks to the jacks.

‘Yeah. It’s funny you bring it up,’ Marie says. ‘Like, the whole where-we-live situation. I mean, it’s sort of a thing right now. Cos, like, we wouldn’t need to worry about Mam or Dad at all,’ she says, ‘if you gave us a loan and we moved into a flat of our own.’

I make a noise somewhere between a laugh and a cough. ‘If what?’

‘Exactly,’ Marie nods, as though I’m the one who’s just suggested something. ‘We kind of thought we could talk to you about that. Like, wouldn’t it be cool if me and Donna had our own place?’

She gives this expectant look. I should be skulling my second can by now.

‘What’s wrong with living with your mam and Rossie? Don’t you like Rossie?’

‘Mam likes Rossie,’ Marie says. ‘Mam likes Rossie so much it’s as if no one else exists. Couldn’t we arrange something with you and your mam? Just to cover a deposit?’

I tug at my mouth. ‘What’s Uncle Ger say about this?’

‘Dad’s got nothing to say about nothing. He’s a pisshead.’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘And you know your mam will help out if you suggest it.’

‘If I suggest it?’

‘Yeah. I mean, why not? Don’t you want to help us?’

‘What? No, it’s not… of course, like. It’s not that I think it’s a bad idea or anything.’

‘Then what?’

I scramble around for a minute. ‘Well… Ye’re a bit young, like. How would ye cover rent? Groceries?’

‘That’s where your loan would help.’

I rub my forehead. ‘Ah, now… think of the hassle it’d cause. Like, for your mam.’

Marie exhales sharply through her nose. ‘Hassle for you, more like.’

‘No, no. It’s not like that. I just—’

‘If you don’t want to help, just say it.’

‘No, you’re not listening to me. I just think—’

‘You know what?’ Marie says, tucking her cigarettes behind her ears. ‘Forget about it. We just thought maybe you would understand.’ She begins to gather her things.

‘Ah, Marie,’ I say, as she stands up and Donna arrives back from the jacks.

‘He said no,’ Marie says.

‘See?’ Donna says. ‘Told you he would. Can we go already?’

‘Girls,’ I say, trying to get out of the booth.

‘Don’t worry yourself, Mush,’ Marie calls out as they walk to the door. ‘We’ll take care of ourselves. We always do.’

‘Ah, Jaysus,’ I say. ‘Girls—’

The bell on the door chimes as Marie shoves her way out and shouts back through the glass, ‘Enjoy your cans.’

I’m about to say something, I don’t know what, even, when Donna looks back at me through the window as they walk off. And it shocks me. Her face in the glass. She isn’t even angry. She just looks sad. I open my mouth to call after them, but it doesn’t matter. They’re already gone.

Helen

THE WINDOW OF the bus. My forehead, rattling against the window of the bus. Beyond the glass, the world already turning into Kinlough. I know this, because of the weird evening light threading the sky, the sudden strangeness of the trees, the hot churn in my viscera. Soon I will have to get off the bus. Soon I will arrive where I already am. Kinlough.

The bus veers off the motorway and we sink into the arterial maze of roads that fringe the town. Trees arc overhead and splinter the light across the sleeves of the other passengers. Bunched hedges seething about the windows as the road gets narrower and darker and thickens with branches. Witch’s fingers scraping against the glass. I am already in the veins of the place. Kala was the first person I heard call this place, these roads, the Warren.

I take my phone.

just at the warren now

I add an exclamation mark and hit send before I can delete it.

Everyone else on the bus is sleeping. Pretending to be sleeping. They could be dead, for all I know. There is a woman drooling next to me. She looks drowned. I wonder if I should bother applying some make-up and decide I cannot be bothered. Though I am doing it, so I can be bothered.

Theresa has seen my message but she has not replied. I add some emojis of excitement. I messaged her a couple of days ago to confirm I was finally coming. There was no excuse good enough to miss our father’s wedding, though I have not been back here for more than ten years. Facebook was how we kept in touch, for a while. Gradually the fake-casual online chats died down, and we politely liked one another’s photos. This illusion of communication. People have always relied on certain excuses to explain why they lose contact – lost addresses, incorrect phone numbers. The internet simply removes those old justifications. Eventually I deleted my social media. Since then my relationship with Dad and Theresa has been a couple of emails per year. Which is fine by me. Last night Theresa and I arranged to meet at the bus station. She said she was looking forward to seeing me. That was kind of her. I said, me too. That was kind of me.

The Warren coils around the bus. Trees that have always been here. Twisted limbs and deformed faces, watching, waiting. The roads still stubbled with stones and potholes.

I have always avoided coming back.

I was fourteen when Dad first broke the news about moving to Kinlough. He got Theresa and me to sit side by side on the bed we shared in the Drogheda flat. He must have read somewhere that this is what you were supposed to do when you give your kids big news. Make them sit on a bed. I had been watching him for a while, nodding to himself, pacing about our flat and making decisions like a moron. There had been knocks on the door he would not answer and lots of phone calls late into the night. I knew he was planning another move. Theresa and I sat on the bed listening to him say how what we really needed was a change. Theresa kept trying to scoop Misty into her arms and Misty kept wriggling onto the floor. She lay like a sad-eyed rug at our feet. Every now and then I gave her a nudge with my foot and she glanced up at me, her tail drumming off the carpet. Misty’s eyes were gorgeous wet black pools. They made me feel better about what was happening and I was glad she was there.

Dad was going through his greatest hits: Change of Scene. Lease of Life. New Beginning. I had heard it all before. But when he said, ‘…which is why… we’re moving… to Kinlough,’ his voice rising on the last syllable, stretching it out over us in a tightrope of mad optimism, I did not know how to respond. My eyes snapped up at him and he was already looking at me, waiting for my reaction. I mean, it was a ridiculous idea. Kinlough was a place for visiting, not for living. We used to go there for two weeks every summer when Mam was intact. Race Week, followed by Festival Week. Games of hide-and-seek in Caille Woods. Candyfloss on the edges of Fox Street, watching the parade. Mam called our yearly visits ‘a nice little anchor’ – which I think meant Kinlough was a place she could use to gather breath before moving on with real life, which was always elsewhere. No matter where we actually were, real life for Mam – as with all interesting people – was always elsewhere. But Dad was forever keen to get back to Kinlough. Despite the fact that both his parents were long dead, he was a home bird. Mam used to describe this as the symptom of a disordered brain. At the end of every trip, I would help Mam pack up the van, just so I did not have to see Dad sulk about leaving. Mam would chirp at me, ‘Two weeks a year is more than enough, isn’t it?’

But as Theresa and I sat on our bed, I could see that Dad was excited to be moving to Kinlough, and that he was convinced we would be, too. Even then I knew there was something depressing about the excitement of grown men. The expectation that the world is really meeting them halfway. I suppose it often is. He had sorted himself a job and he had sorted us a house, he said. A real actual house, where Theresa and I could have separate beds, in separate rooms. And he was delighted with himself. Proud as anything. ‘It’s all taken care of,’ he said, rubbing the back of his neck, squinting, stammering. ‘This will be a f-f-f-fresh start, like.’

Theresa squealed and leapt off the bed to hug him, which made Misty give nervous yaps, standing on her hind legs and pawing at Theresa, which changed the whole atmosphere of the moment into something of celebration, which was what Dad had wanted, of course – a big swell of violins – and he kissed Theresa on the head and took her up in his arms like she was a smaller child than she really was, and he ruffled Misty’s ears with his free hand and they had their big Kodak moment. I stayed sitting on the bed, staring at them. I wanted to hit them both very hard in the face.

‘What about my school?’ I said. ‘It’s May. I literally have exams in a month.’

Theresa was swinging out of Dad’s neck and he was smiling at her. ‘Sure can’t you do exams in your new s-s-school?’ He ruffled my hair like I was the dog. ‘A b-b-b-brain like yours? You’ll dazzle them.’

Theresa said this was the best news ever, and Dad was happy because she was happy, but Theresa was only happy because she was still ten.

I was not happy about anything. I was fourteen.

The bus station has changed. It used to be a giant shed with rotten pigeons surveying everything from the rusted beams, shitting on the tiled floor. Young guys in hoodies phlegming into the puddles between their runners and a rickety kiosk where they would sell fags without asking how old you were.

Now it is a fluorescent dream of glass. Over every gate there are screens announcing the departure times. It is like any other terminus. The same benches you see everywhere, with spokes between the seats to stop homeless people from sleeping.

My roller case clickclacks at my heels, till I see a poster for an upcoming concert and stop. Jungle Heart: Bringing It All Back Home. It is a photo of Joe, still a wide-eyed teenager, looking up into the camera like Bob Dylan on the Bringing It All Back Home cover. I wonder if Kala took the picture. I check the date of the concert and realize it is this week. My first time back here in years, and Joe is back in town, too. Great. Fucking great.

Outside it is like an oven. Kinlough in summer. A thick feeling, a sweet note to the air.

I message Theresa: just landed!

Bus stations, unlike airports, are never happy places. Just down the street, on the corner that leads into town, there is a person wearing a heavy black hoodie with the hood pulled tight around his skull, despite the heat, or because of the heat. He is standing like he has been struck by lightning. A petrified shadow. This is the natural citizen of the bus station. A hovering lunatic.

Theresa messages me:

traffic brutal

can u walk to hogans sq?

To get to Hogan’s Square from this side of the road, I need to walk past the hovering shadow man who, I have noticed, is looking at me. I hold his gaze for a moment and then look back at my phone. I cross the road so I do not have to walk around him.

My roller case claps its wheels, strained hinges nipping at the backs of my feet, people rushing into me, late for their buses.

I am gathering speed when I notice that the hovering shadow man has crossed the road too and is now standing on the corner to which I am walking. There is something wrong with how he is standing. He holds his arms rigid at his sides. Even at this distance I can see how his fingers are curled and tense. I check my phone.

will pick u up near the burrito place

its up the top of the square

I feel him looking at me again. I do the usual calculations. I tell myself I am being paranoid as I cross back to the other side. But then, at the edge of my vision, I see him mirror me. He is crossing the road, again.

More calculations. Are his hands in his pockets? No, they are by his sides, he is not masturbating. Is he holding anything? A bottle? A knife? No. His hands are empty. Tensed, claw-like fingers.

I will walk past him. I will not let this place get to me so soon. Kala taught me this: always walk like you mean it. I hold my shoulders back and pick up speed, to show confidence, then slow down a little, to show I do not need to show confidence. I do not look at him. Not directly. He is a dark blur in my peripheral vision. A shadow. Nothing to be afraid of. I am getting closer. My nails teeth at my palms. White bones of my knuckles. I will have to lean in to the wall so I can pass without brushing against him. He is filling the path now. Close enough to touch me. Spit at me. I wait for the move. The muttered word. Bitch. Slut. Cunt.

But he says nothing.

I am around the corner and do not look back until I have reached the traffic lights, where I turn and see that he is looking at me from the corner, arms still out, and I rush into the road to get away from him and cars blow their horns because I do not have the right to move where my body needs to move, and I keep walking with my eyes to the ground to get away from the station and when I look up there are suddenly faces and noises twisting through the air around me, people are swarming on the grass, drinking cans, eating ice creams, a group of students are shouting and playing Frisbee and being loud near the tourists who huddle around one another looking at their phones, completely blind to the danger of the shirtless lads with see-sawing shoulders who criss-cross Hogan’s Square with medallions flashing in the sun past the dead-eyed office workers slouched with open shirt collars and loosened ties over cans of Dutch Gold on the benches and I am caught in it, I am in this now, Kinlough is a sudden sea foaming up around me, and I am islanded in the grinning churn of Hogan’s Square.

Joe

HOGAN’S SQUARE IS pure buzz as you walk towards Flanagan’s. It’s Friday. People are coiled like a spring. They wanna dance, they wanna sweat, they wanna fuck. They want. You provide. The contours of the Square shape themselves towards you. You’re a new focal point. Faces turn to you like flowers seeking the sun. Feel their energy, the rush of recognition. Is that Joe Brennan? Phones rise to take photos, and you pretend not to notice, gliding above the world, in the Other Place.

Tonight’s your first night without your arm in the sling. Elbow was still tender as you cut off the cast in the kitchen, the skin around it a bruised corsage. But you’ll be able to play guitar again by tomorrow, if you keep it rested. You’re sure of it. Haven’t been able to do any workouts with this elbow on you, but when you glance at a group of young wans you catch their eyes running over your chest, your tatts.

You catch the noise from Flanagan’s before you cross the road – music throbbing under the sound of drills, nails being hammered. You wanted it this way. The venue officially launches next week, but you want to build the buzz already, so you’ve the doors wide open, allowing the music to pour out, giving people a glimpse behind the curtain into a magic you’re bringing to Kinlough. There’s a front-facing window with a small bar, already serving takeaway pints. Flanagan’s was a legendary spot before the recession. Now you’ve swooped in with the money to relaunch the place. Home-town boy made good. Posters for your residency on the windows – solo acoustic shows starting tomorrow night. Bringing It All Back Home. You want people to know this is happening. Tonight’s about making an appearance, meet and greet the staff, take a few pictures for their socials, your socials.

Pause for a second to let a gaggle of girls take a selfie with you. Ohmygod Ohmygod Ohmygod. Tell them to be good and cut through the road between stalled traffic, feeling eyes widen as they watch from their cars.

Inside Flanagan’s it’s a hive. Stand in the door frame. Inhale the moment. The sawdust scattered on the ground. The unvarnished wood tables. Lads with hipster beards are attaching an old bike high over the bar. Several projectors are in place, ’70s exploitation movies patterning up the walls. Tattooed girls at the bar stuffing empty wine bottles with candles. Guys dressed like Oliver Twist painting a mural of Bosco and The Morbegs in the corner where the board games are kept. Someone’s inside the photo booth, polishing the seat. Duggan is behind the bar with a notebook, taking stock. Chin your hello to him and walk to the stage, slip into the DJ booth by the PA. Slowly turn the volume down so people don’t even notice it’s happening. There’s a microphone. Turn it on and the speakers groan. Every face turns to you. The ripple of recognition moving through the place. Laugh into the mic. ‘Evening, guys. Just wanted to drop in and say hi. You’re doing fantastic work. This is gonna be fucking awesome. I’m gonna spin a few tunes up here for a bit and say hello to each of you. I hope you’re all as excited about this new adventure as I am. All right? All right.’

There’s a scattered applause as you connect your laptop to the PA, open Spotify, and start the playlist you’ve been working on all afternoon.

Start things slow. Cook things up into a smoulder. ‘Our Theme’ by Barry White and Glodean. The synths ripple slow and the bottles on the bar quiver when Barry’s vowels shudder through the speakers. People are working with more urgency now. The air’s more charged. The place is a universe in the scoop of your palm. Feel the staff glancing over. Affect a faraway look, like you’re seeing something on the horizon, like you’re the music. Bob Dylan expression. Visionary, staring into the mystic. Early evening and it’s a sweet one. The air crackling. Take a photo of the view from the DJ booth. A blur of bottles and bodies glows warm in the background. Fiddle with the filters then stick the photo on Instagram with the tag Our Theme x. Theresa likes it within about ten seconds. So does Mush. Stare at the phone till you hit 100 likes. Less than thirty seconds. Good.

‘Lonely Disco Dancer’ by Dee Dee Bridgewater. People are still at their tasks, but their heads are bopping. The tattooed girls are smiling at you as they move their hips. This is the vibe you want when the interviewer arrives next week. A Rolling Stone profile to mark the ten-year anniversary of The Other Place. You want the profile to happen in a variety of spots around Kinlough. Portrait of the Artist as a Local Man. You’ve lived in LA for five years, snatching visits back every six months or so. But you’re on home turf now. Can feel it, in your gut. You’ve landed. You’re here.

At the bar, Duggan’s polishing glasses.

‘Some talent in here tonight,’ he goes, looking at the girls. ‘What’ll you be having? Still on the Granny beer?’

You nod and he takes a non-alcoholic Paulaner from the fridge, shaking his head to the cluck and gasp of the bottle as it opens. ‘It’s a sad day when a Kinlough man won’t have himself a proper drink during Race Week.’

‘I suppose you’ll have to live with that.’

Duggan is one of these lads who’s never left Kinlough and can only understand himself in terms of the town. He’s a big deal here – he’s managed several bars over the years – which makes him think he can talk to you as an equal. ‘That stuff’s like beer with a condom on,’ he says.

Ignore him. You’ve already explained about your elbow, the bruising, the pain medication. Can’t drink alcohol till you’re healed up. That’s not even a lie. But Kinlough isn’t LA, people here see you not drinking and they get suspicious. Something behind their eyes closes up.

Tell him you’re gonna nip out for some air. The 12-inch cut of Isaac Hayes’s ‘Walk On By’ booms about the walls.

‘Good man,’ Duggan says, staring at a tattooed girl as she leans over the bar to adjust the frame of a photo by the mirror. The picture is of your first band. It’s you and Mush and Aidan, skinny and ruddy-cheeked, guitar cases at your sides. Ye’re trying to look cool, arms folded, squinting into the camera, engulfed by the sunlight blaring through the fountain at the top of Hogan’s Square.

Someone had always put Fairy Liquid in the fountain by the time ye got there on Fridays after school. Ye’d stand about Hogan’s Square, waiting for the bus, pretending not to notice all the girls. Ye were fourteen now, so ye’d gone half your lives without speaking to a girl your own age. Ye’d all been mixed together – fellas and girls – in the same primary school, until ye were seven and made your Communion. Then all the lads got turfed into St Jude’s, which was the all-boys school down the road but might as well have been another planet. Boys’ school was a new place with new rules and ye’d had to learn them all overnight. How to curse, and spit, and scrap. How to stare someone down, how to kick someone without them grabbing your foot, how to knock the shit out of someone on their birthday without hurting them. Ye got tighter then, yourself and Aidan and Mush, like sticks binding so none of ye would snap under pressure. In primary school you were a king. You didn’t need to fight to prove yourself, like everyone else, cos you were the best at football and the smartest in the class. Now you were fourteen, and in St Simon’s Secondary School for Boys, with hair around your dangly bits and a new voice after dropping on you. You’d heard that girls loved lads that went to St Simon’s, cos it was the one secondary in Kinlough that made you take an entrance exam. ‘Only the cream go to St Simon’s,’ Dad often said. Yourself and Mush had been shocked that all-boys secondary school was nothing like Saved by the Bell or Buffy or Dawson’s Creek. It was just another load of smelly lads.

So after school on Fridays, ye’d walk up to Hogan’s Square and try and look cool for the beors from St Anne’s. Mam said you were handsome. And you knew Mush was handsome too – all the mams commented on it. He had curly hair and what Mam called ‘boy-band features’. Ye’d be leaning against the railings at Hogan’s Square trying to look cool and Aidan would catch scoops of foam from the fountain and try to mash it into Mush’s hair, and Mush and him would get each other in headlocks and everyone in the Square would look at them, and you, and you’d laugh and pull them by their schoolbags till they fell over, and if the girls from St Anne’s were looking at ye then ye’d fight a bit louder, and knock each other about like that all the way onto the bus to your house where ye’d fling the schoolbags under the stairs and get out of your uniforms into your trackies, swallowing whatever snack Mam had made – scorching your tongues, fanning your mouths, panting like dogs – heading out to play headers and volleys at the old goalposts in Taylor’s school yard. Until recently enough, ye’d still play the Gun Game, where ye’d run around the school grounds and duck behind prefabs, killing each other. Mush did a brilliant line in getting machine-gunned to death, he could make his body thunder about before he hit the ground. Ye were too old for that now, though. When ye got back to the house from playing football, the minute ye’d get in the door, Mam would be serving up the Friday Classic: chicken nuggets and chips drowned in her special sauce. ‘How d’you always know the exact moment we’re gonna be back?’ Aidan would ask, and Mam would laugh and tell him it was a woman’s intuition. ‘And that’s a wonderful thing, Margaret,’ Aidan would say, arms folded like he was one of the grown-ups. He loved saying things like that to your mam, to annoy you. After the Classic, there’d be a giant mess-fight in the sitting room till ye felt sick, then multiplayer GoldenEye marathons on the Nintendo, eating Tayto and chocolate and shouting abuse at each other. Dad would come in from work with a box of almond Magnums and he’d fake arm-wrestle each of ye before handing them over. When he’d lose, he’d say, ‘This is police brutality,’ which the lads found funny, every week, cos Dad was still in his Garda uniform. Then he’d sit in his chair, crackling the newspaper and falling asleep. At around ten o’clock, he’d drop Aidan home.

This was when yourself and Mush would head upstairs and chat.

Whenever ye did this – chatting – there was something secretive to it. Unknown country. Chatting was a girl thing, something boys weren’t supposed to do. But Mush was different. He liked conversation. He knew loads about films – way more than you. His mam let him watch anything. He’d tape mad stuff off the TV which ye’d watch at sleepovers above his mam’s café. Stuff with boobs in it and everything. Half the time ye didn’t understand the films at all. But ye’d watch them and know that ye were reaching out to something bigger than Kinlough – touching the Other Place, a world that was realer and more romantic than life – and sometimes the movie would linger in the room afterwards like an echo of the future and ye’d sit by the window of his mam’s flat and stare out over Fox Street saying nothing.

That’s where ye were sitting the first night you told him about the girl.

You’d first seen her at the bus stop in Hogan’s Square. Spotted her the odd time on Fox Street, too. She stood and stared like she was being soundtracked. The thick storm of dark hair, the lazy shadow at her mouth. Her eyebrows – pure Hollywood. The Other Place. Mush knew who you were talking about straight away. Said she sometimes came into his mam’s café with her friend, a loud blonde wan. You spent a whole Saturday sitting there pretending to read a book and she never showed.

The quivery feeling inside you after school every Friday as you walked to the bus stop, hoping she’d be there. The time you worked up the nerve to stand near her when she was leaning against the railings, listening to her Discman. The day you almost sat next to her on the bus.

You made her vivid in poems, lyrics, daydreamed scenarios copied off TV and music videos. You’d write things in your diary like, ‘Everywhere I stand is a shore she is washing over’, and then you’d read that to Mush and he’d close his eyes and shake his head with a pained look on his face and say, ‘It’s the thunderbolt, man. Like when Michael Corleone meets Apollonia in Sicily when he has to run away after killing McCluskey and Sollozzo but she gets blown up by the Barzini family and Michael never gets over it, but he becomes the Godfather.’ Mush’s brain was wired backwards. But that’s why he was someone you could chat to – he had something of the Other Place in him too.

You’d tell him you’d written another song about her and he’d get excited and urge you to play it. After pretending you didn’t want to, you always played it in the end. Ye were going to be famous together one day. Biographers would include photos of your handwritten lyrics and you and the girl would be one of them legendary couples that become synonymous with true love. John and Yoko, Sid and Nancy.

Mush started elbowing you every Friday to go up to her and ask what she was listening to. But you were too nervous. There was one time you thought she was looking your direction and you felt yourself burning up under her stare while Aidan ran about like a fool trying to nuggy Mush’s skull. Mush was distracting Aidan on purpose, to keep him busy so you could just talk to her, pure casual. But you chickened out. No balls. Mush never slagged you for it – he just made eye contact to show he understood. That was one of the best things about Mush. Sometimes ye’d hear a particular tune, or see a scene in a particular movie, and ye’d look at each other and know that ye were both thinking the same thing. You only get one friend in life like that. And Mush was yours.

well man

what’s the craic?

you done at the caf?

yo manbusy busy lol

Fancy calling up to flanagans?

I’m out the front, it’s very chill

Mush doesn’t answer. Been trying to get him to meet up ever since you came back. Three weeks, now. Look at the message again. Very chill. You sound like someone who lives in LA. You can picture Mush rolling his eyes.

Usual craziness across the road in Hogan’s Square. People drinking cans, relaxing in the grass, getting the last of the full sun. And you having a drink outside Flanagan’s is nothing at all, it’s no big deal. It’s a non-alcoholic beer, so you’re not even really drinking. You only do it because you choose to and if you ever did drink again and it was an alcoholic beer, so what? You’re a grown man. It’s Race Week. You don’t need permission. You’re working. You can have a drink when you’re working, you’re a rock star, for Christ’s sake.

Take a picture of your pint and Instagram it when a voice shouts from the Square: ‘Howya, sexy!’ The twins are shouting at you as they cross the green. ‘Any chance of a lush of your drink?’ Marie calls. Donna walks next to her like a glum shadow.

Marie’s a pure flirt. She was a chatty kid, but now her jokes have got a charge and she expects you to hit the ball back, hard. You’re about to shout a comeback, the voice already in your throat, when a feeling like cold birds flutters from your heart and down through your arms. If you looked quickly you’d say it was Theresa, walking through Hogan’s Square, past the twins. It could almost be her, something of her essence is there. But everything’s slightly off. The posture, the haircut, the vibe. It’s Theresa in a fun-house mirror. Her back is ramrod straight and she glares around herself, all forward energy, dragging a roller case.

It’s Helen.

You almost duck back into Flanagan’s in case she sees you.

Marie hugs you gently. ‘Are you well?’ She has been doing this every time she sees you, ever since you came back. Donna hangs back, as usual, looking suspicious. ‘How’s the elbow?’

‘Grand.’ Look over your shoulder, to the Square. Helen’s still there. Phone in her hand, looking around. You need to get inside.

‘Is it not difficult to play guitar like that?’ Marie says, touching your bruises. She’s standing close to you. ‘It’s like a gorgeous armband, isn’t it? It could be one of your tattoos.’

She looks up at you with dangerous eyes, and you hear Donna snort behind her: ‘God.’

Mush once told you he was convinced that, one day, Donna would literally be bored to death.

Marie takes a selfie with you for her Instagram. You smile reflexively. Your head’s full of noise. The Square, the brassy blare of Isaac Hayes from inside Flanagan’s, the loud chatter of the people around you.

Helen’s still there, standing. Helen in Kinlough.

Helen

HOGAN’S SQUARE IS somehow larger and smaller than I remember. The green is better kept. The path that slashes diagonally through the grass is now that rubbery playground surface instead of gravelled dust. I pull my case past the bust of JFK, walking towards the fountain as it sprays its fan of rainbow-fringed light skywards. Someone has put Fairy Liquid into the fountain, a monster of foam sending torn suds gliding across the pavement. Everyone is laughing.

I walk through the Square, spine straight, eyes forward. This place will not get to me.

I am sweaty from the bus. This will make hugging Theresa more awkward. I go through the list of things we can talk about. How her art is going. How her life is going. How is everything going? I practise the words quietly to myself. How is everything going? How is everything going? How is everything going?

There are two girls walking towards me, and I do not want to embarrass myself because they look sulky and cool in that effortless teenage way that everyone ends up losing. Their scowls are sharp enough to tear my face off. It is oddly exciting. Their swagger. A sudden burst of pigeons from the grass next to them and they both shriek and laugh, their hands instinctively reaching for one another, and there is a sweetness there till one of them catches me looking and a hardness comes over her eyes, and I look away. As we pass one another on the path, I expect a comment. But their attention is already elsewhere. I hear one of them shouting, ‘Howya, sexy! Any chance of a lush of your drink?’ The other one mutters, ‘D’you’ve the photos on you?’ ‘What?’ ‘The photos, we have the photos.’ When they stride across the green towards Flanagan’s, I am relieved. I am old enough to stop being afraid of many things. I will never stop being afraid of teenage girls.

On my first day in St Anne’s I was boiling. The sun ran in scorching belts off the dark pinafore, the itchy shirt, the navy cardigan. Damp around my collar, under my arms. When I touched my hair, it felt like my skull was melting. The varnished wood gleamed from below and the white sun poured from above, and I was caught between two brightnesses, squinting. You have very little time in a new school to become whoever you are going to be for that place; I was already drifting into the role of the sweaty, squinty sap that people do not talk to.

The chats flowed about the classroom along well-established arteries. I was an obstacle around which they moved.

At the beginning of the first class, the English teacher made me stand and introduce myself.

‘Where are you from?’ she said. They always want to situate you. Where you are from. What your parents do. I never had neat answers to their questions.

‘Um, kind of all over,’ I said. ‘We sort of move around a lot.’

A scatter of giggles from the other girls. A voice whispering, ‘Fucking knacker.’

‘Well, where were you born?’

‘Um, France, actually. My mam was half French, so sometimes—’

‘Where d’you live in Kinlough?’ the teacher said.

I could not remember the name of the estate. We had moved in a few days ago. Dad’s friends had been leaning against the house, waiting to help us carry things.

‘Rossieeee!’

‘Rossie feckin’ Laughliiiin!’