we enter the house. Jake closes the door of his music room with unnecessary firmness. I go into my home office. After a short search I find a photo album in a bottom drawer of my desk. My mother was conscientious when it came to dating photographs. The albums she filled tell the story of my childhood. I’ve been tempted over the years to remove the photographs of Karin Moylan but that would break the link of who I am today. And, so, she stays in her allotted slot.
One of the photographs is larger than the others. A day in summer. Rocks and coarse golden sand, a gouged cliff face where kittiwakes fly high above us, swirling and scattered as black flakes of ash. Four weeks of blistering sunshine and frayed tempers. I’m wearing a pink bikini and leaning back on my hands, my face raised to the sun. My hair is tangled, my shoulders sunburned. Karin, in a blue bikini, sits between me and her father. She hugs her knees, taut shoulder blades raised like slender wings. He’s wearing swimming trunks, his long legs sprawled before him. Someone else must have taken the photograph because Joan Moylan is also in it. Maybe it was Jake who snapped us. Unlike the rest of us, Joan is fully dressed in jeans and a flowery blouse, a sunhat shading her face.
Fifteen years of age was a time for dreaming, and, oh, how I dreamed those days away. I walked that long, curving beach in a lovesick haze, imagining a future that was never going to happen. The tide was far out, stretched to its limits before it turned and flowed back over the hot sands, obliterating my footprints in one fluid swell.
Jenny is wrong. The past does matter. That’s the trouble with it. Like elastic, it can only be stretched so far before it recoils and slaps one in the face. Twack .
PART TWO
Chapter 8
Gracehills – twenty-seven years earlier
I fell in love with Karin Moylan when I was thirteen. This was a platonic love. I was not about to enter or emerge from any closet and my love for her was akin to that reserved for a precious item like a treasured doll or a delicate piece of jewellery. And even if I had loved her in that way, the physical differences between us could well have been a deterrent. She was small-boned and dainty. I was tall and angular, awkward elbows, knees as gangly as a colt, cheekbones too pronounced for my long, thin face. As for my hair, those unruly curls. I felt like a scarecrow who’d been left out for far too long in the rain.
We met in the fitting room of a department store. A summer heatwave had arrived and Dublin sweltered beneath it. I, too, was hot and surly, stooped with self-pity as I stood in the fitting room and tried on my new school uniform. The skirt was too long, the jumper too wide and the sleeves of the blazer hung over my hands. A smaller size would have been perfect but my mother believed I’d grow out of it within months. The fact that she was right added to my misery. In those days, I had the growing momentum of a beanstalk. The colours, maroon, cream and charcoal grey, drained my complexion and I was convinced I’d look like a corpse for the next six years. I twisted the lobes of my ears and stuck my tongue out at my reflection… in out… in out… in out. My five-year-old self came effortlessly to the surface on certain occasions and this was one of them. The fitting room curtains opened slightly and Karin’s reflection appeared behind me in the long mirror.
‘Can I try on my uniform when you’ve finished admiring your tongue?’ she asked.
I snapped my mouth closed as she pressed her fist against her lips to stifle a giggle. Her heart-shaped face in the mirror, her blue eyes bright with laughter; this was a frozen moment, never forgotten.
‘I’m sorry…’ Colour flushed across my cheeks, spread down my neck.
‘I’m sorry too,’ she said. ‘I thought the fitting room was empty.’ She shook out the school uniform she’d draped over her arm. ‘God! It’s hideous, isn’t it?’
‘Hideous.’ I
One of the photographs is larger than the others. A day in summer. Rocks and coarse golden sand, a gouged cliff face where kittiwakes fly high above us, swirling and scattered as black flakes of ash. Four weeks of blistering sunshine and frayed tempers. I’m wearing a pink bikini and leaning back on my hands, my face raised to the sun. My hair is tangled, my shoulders sunburned. Karin, in a blue bikini, sits between me and her father. She hugs her knees, taut shoulder blades raised like slender wings. He’s wearing swimming trunks, his long legs sprawled before him. Someone else must have taken the photograph because Joan Moylan is also in it. Maybe it was Jake who snapped us. Unlike the rest of us, Joan is fully dressed in jeans and a flowery blouse, a sunhat shading her face.
Fifteen years of age was a time for dreaming, and, oh, how I dreamed those days away. I walked that long, curving beach in a lovesick haze, imagining a future that was never going to happen. The tide was far out, stretched to its limits before it turned and flowed back over the hot sands, obliterating my footprints in one fluid swell.
Jenny is wrong. The past does matter. That’s the trouble with it. Like elastic, it can only be stretched so far before it recoils and slaps one in the face. Twack .
PART TWO
Chapter 8
Gracehills – twenty-seven years earlier
I fell in love with Karin Moylan when I was thirteen. This was a platonic love. I was not about to enter or emerge from any closet and my love for her was akin to that reserved for a precious item like a treasured doll or a delicate piece of jewellery. And even if I had loved her in that way, the physical differences between us could well have been a deterrent. She was small-boned and dainty. I was tall and angular, awkward elbows, knees as gangly as a colt, cheekbones too pronounced for my long, thin face. As for my hair, those unruly curls. I felt like a scarecrow who’d been left out for far too long in the rain.
We met in the fitting room of a department store. A summer heatwave had arrived and Dublin sweltered beneath it. I, too, was hot and surly, stooped with self-pity as I stood in the fitting room and tried on my new school uniform. The skirt was too long, the jumper too wide and the sleeves of the blazer hung over my hands. A smaller size would have been perfect but my mother believed I’d grow out of it within months. The fact that she was right added to my misery. In those days, I had the growing momentum of a beanstalk. The colours, maroon, cream and charcoal grey, drained my complexion and I was convinced I’d look like a corpse for the next six years. I twisted the lobes of my ears and stuck my tongue out at my reflection… in out… in out… in out. My five-year-old self came effortlessly to the surface on certain occasions and this was one of them. The fitting room curtains opened slightly and Karin’s reflection appeared behind me in the long mirror.
‘Can I try on my uniform when you’ve finished admiring your tongue?’ she asked.
I snapped my mouth closed as she pressed her fist against her lips to stifle a giggle. Her heart-shaped face in the mirror, her blue eyes bright with laughter; this was a frozen moment, never forgotten.
‘I’m sorry…’ Colour flushed across my cheeks, spread down my neck.
‘I’m sorry too,’ she said. ‘I thought the fitting room was empty.’ She shook out the school uniform she’d draped over her arm. ‘God! It’s hideous, isn’t it?’
‘Hideous.’ I
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