Grounded Read online

  7.

  I click my seatbelt. I can’t stop shivering so Cam turns the heating up.

  ‘Stupid,’ I say. ‘It’s not even cold.’

  ‘Shock,’ Cam says.

  ‘And horror.’

  ‘God, yes. You read about these things, but …’ She shakes her head. ‘I wouldn’t like to be cleaning out that barn.’

  We don’t say anything for a bit. Cam changes gear for the hill that’s always such a slog when I’m cycling up it.

  ‘Will they let us – me – go and see them?’ I ask.

  ‘Declan, they probably won’t make it,’ Cam says. ‘You’ve done your bit, finding them. It’s maybe best to put them out of your mind.’

  ‘But …’ I can’t believe Cam. She loves horses. Her whole life is horses. How can she just say forget about them? Does she not feel the same as me, that we’re kind of responsible for them now? ‘But Cam, that wee foal. It was so pathetic. Do you not wish you could take them home and look after them?’

  ‘You can’t rescue every neglected horse, Declan! Let the USPCA do their job.’

  ‘They put them down after a week!’

  ‘I think that’s dogs.’

  ‘But you heard that fat guy – he says they’re running out of room. You have empty stables!’ The image of that scabby, ribby foal walking into one of Cam’s big stables, all fluffy clean deep shavings banked round the walls, and bulging nets of sweet haylage, is so delicious. If it was my yard, I’d do it.

  ‘I run a livery yard and give lessons,’ Cam says. ‘I can just about afford to feed the horses I have.’

  ‘You could put them in the bottom field. They’d love it. Oh, Cam.’ I can’t understand why it’s not obvious to her.

  Cam sighs. ‘It’s a lovely idea. But you have to be practical. Those horses are traumatised. They need intensive care. Specialist care. Not to speak of what they could be carrying. Anyway, you’re going away.’

  For a moment I don’t know what she’s on about. I haven’t thought about Germany all evening. Or about Seaneen being pregnant.

  ‘I’ll stay! I’ll stay and look after them.’

  ‘Declan. Don’t be daft.’

  And maybe because I don’t want her to know how daft I’ve already been I miss another chance to tell her that I am staying anyway.

  Cam’s phone beeps. ‘That’ll be Pippa. She’ll be worried. She wanted to come but I knew she’d be too upset. I’ll call her when I drop you off.’

  When Cam drops me at the end of Tirconnell Parade, I see her lift her phone to her ear and her face breaks into a tired smile when she starts talking to Pippa. It makes me want Seaneen.

  I’ll go home and text her. I need a bath. Can’t get the stench of filth and death out of my nostrils. I’m glad Mum’s out; I don’t want to talk about the barn. If Seaneen comes round we can actually get a bit of privacy for once. And even if she wants to talk about the baby, it’ll be better than thinking about those horses. Are they at that Rosevale place now? Maybe they died on the way. Where did they come from? Would the USPCA give them to me? I could get round Cam. I could work for their keep; she wouldn’t need to pay me as well.

  Yeah. With a pregnant girlfriend? I can see myself telling the Brogans that I can’t provide for their grandchild because I have two half-dead horses to care for.

  I push my key into the lock, hoping there’ll be hot water. In the hall I pull my boots off. I realise, too late, that they’re stinking from all the crap I walked on in the barn – no wonder I could still smell it. Then, with one boot half-off, I freeze.

  The house isn’t empty.

  There’s no TV or anything, just a feeling.

  Don’t tell me Mum’s started sitting in the dark again? Not that as well as everything. Is it because of the baby? But no, sure she’s happy as Larry about the baby now. And she’s at Stacey’s. I’m imagining things.

  I switch on the living room light and, just in case, shout out, ‘Hello? Mum?’

  A fustle from the kitchen. Then a crash. What the …? One time Mum left the window open and next door’s cat came in and wrecked the place.

  I dash to the door and yank it open. It’s not a cat. It’s a skanky little urban fox on the rob.

  Cian tries to make a run for it out the back door, two packets of cigarettes falling out of his hands, but I’m faster. I throw myself at the door in front of him.

  ‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ I push him against the door and hold him by one shoulder. I’m not that tall but I’m far stronger than him.

  ‘I’m not … I wasn’t … I was only …Your mum –’

  For a second I think, oh God, I’ve made a mistake. Mum’s over at his house; maybe she asked him to come and get her cigarettes for her.

  But his face is pure guilt. And the pockets of his hoody are bulging.

  ‘What’ve you got in there?’

  ‘Nothing.’ His hands cross over his front but I grab them and force them away. He reeks of drink. A bottle of pills rattles on the floor. Mum’s anti-depressants.

  ‘What else have you nicked?’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you!’ His eyes flash with sudden spirit. ‘Lay off!’

  I delve into his pocket and pull out a box of strong codeine painkillers that have been hanging around the house ever since I came off Flight last year and wrecked my back. Then a wad of notes. Wrapped in a blue elastic band.

  I throw Cian back against the door as hard as I can, ramming my knee into his groin. He starts whimpering. ‘You wee bastard, you’ve been in my room.’ I shake him hard. I haven’t been this close to a fight since I broke Emmet McCann’s nose at school.

  Cian jukes away and scrabbles at the door, but I lock it and put the key in my back pocket. I shove him down on to a chair at the table. I set the pills and the money down in front of him. ‘Right, what else?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Then he says, ‘Well …’ and pulls out a bent packet of Silk Cut from an inside pocket. He sits there, head down, snivelling.

  I stand against the door into the living room and take out my phone. ‘Right, I’m phoning the police.’

  He looks at me with narrow eyes. ‘Wise up. You know you won’t.’ But his voice has gone high-pitched the way mine used to when I was scared and trying to hide it.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I? Didn’t I catch you red-handed?’

  ‘Aye, and they’ll believe you?’

  ‘Why not?’

  He gives a sneer. ‘Your ma’s told mine all about you. Sure you were put away when you were younger than me. So don’t think you can go all holy Joe with me. It was only a few stupid fags.’

  ‘And the rest.’ I ignore what he says about me.

  ‘Youse hadn’t even any drink.’

  He sounds so disgusted, like we should have provided better stuff for him to nick, that I nearly laugh, but the sight of the wad of tenners on the table stops me.

  ‘You break in here –’

  ‘I never! The door was open.’ His hand creeps towards the pills. I remember the way he downed the beers the other night. ‘Your ma’s round at our house. I heard her saying she forgot to lock the back door. I just’ – he shrugs – ‘thought I’d chance it. Don’t tell me you never.’

  ‘State of you – scrounging drink off me the other night, stealing off me and my mum now. There’s people round here could get you sorted out for that – know what I mean? I’d only have to say the word.’

  This is crap – I don’t have those kinds of contacts. Emmet McCann and his mates are meant to have bashed some wee hood’s head in with a baseball bat for robbing houses at the other end of the estate, but I stay clear of all that. But Cian doesn’t know that.

  ‘Would you fuck.’ But his face is tight with fear, the freckles standing out, his eyes as huge and black and terrified as the ghost horse’s. Only that’s bollocks – it’s only cause the horses are filling my head.

  ‘Is that why you had to get out of whatever hole you’ve come from?’

  He flinc
hes. ‘Piss off. You know nothing about me.’

  ‘And you know nothing about me. So don’t you dare sit there in my house and tell me you’ve only done what I’ve done. Cause that’s crap. You’re just a thieving wee hood.’

  He tries to make another run for it but I pull out a chair and sit opposite him, blocking him. Under the alcohol his sweat reeks. His hand still fidgets along the table. He’s like Mum when she used to be going mad for a drink.

  ‘Look,’ I say. ‘You’re right in a way. When I was your age I was a wee shite. And I ended up getting locked up in Bankside.’

  He looks up. ‘What was it like?’

  ‘You’ll be finding out soon enough if you keep on like this.’ I never think about Bankside now. ‘Horrible. Like school only you can’t get away. And full of bastards. And I mean bastards. So maybe you’d be right at home.’

  He twists his mouth.

  I take the money from the table and shake it at him. ‘See this? D’you know how long it took me to earn this? And save it?’

  He gawks at me like I’m speaking a foreign language. ‘So?’

  ‘So …’ I can’t be bothered talking to him any more. He hasn’t a clue and he never will. ‘Get your arse out of this house and if you take anything belonging to me or my family ever again, I swear you’ll regret it.’

  ‘Are you going to tell my ma?’ His eyes are wide and dark.

  ‘Why? Afraid of her, are you?’

  ‘No!’

  I jab my finger at him. ‘You get in my way one more time and I’ll tell everybody. Starting with your ma. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Right, piss off.’ I take my time unlocking the back door. He scuttles away into the night.

  8.

  I lean back against the humped-up pillows and Seaneen wriggles herself up the bed so she can lean on my shoulder. I stroke her hair.

  ‘I hate the thought that he was in here, poking through my stuff,’ I say, for about the tenth time. I look round at the posters of horses on the wall, the few rosettes, the piled-up magazines, my certificate from college, Flight’s name plate. I can’t bear to think of that thieving wee toerag in here, laughing at all this. Then again, he probably just went straight for where he knew he’d have a good chance of finding money. Probably didn’t even notice anything else. At least he didn’t wreck the place.

  ‘I know,’ Seaneen says. She squeezes my hand.

  It’s after eleven and neither Seaneen nor I want to move. I’m so tired I could fall asleep right now, just snuggled up like this. As soon as Seaneen got here she knew something bad had happened. She cried when I told her about the foal and the dead mare. She said Cam should take them, I should take them, she would help me pay for their keep. She said when the foal grew up it would probably end up winning the Grand National and they’d make a film about it because of its terrible start in life. ‘That wee foal,’ she kept saying, and her tears wet my neck.

  ‘Do you not feel sorry for him?’ she asks now.

  ‘The foal?’

  ‘Cian.’

  ‘No. Don’t tell me you do.’

  ‘Just … his ma doesn’t seem to know what to do with him. She has those two wee girls done up like princesses, but she treats him like some kind of wild animal.’

  ‘Well, he shouldn’t act like one.’ But wild animal makes me think of the ghost horse.

  ‘When you came out of Bankside,’ she says, tracing her finger down the front of my T-shirt, ‘you were like that.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘You were, Declan. Not wild but … aloof. That’s what made me want you. The challenge.’ She gives one of her sudden grins just before things get too heavy and nuzzles into me and says, ‘Can I stay over?’

  ‘What’ll your mum say?’

  ‘Well …’ She turns over and lies on her back, nearly breaking my arm. ‘Sorry, love. What can she say? Sure I’m pregnant now anyway.’

  ‘We’ve never slept together. I mean – actually slept.’

  ‘I know. Do you want to?’ She sounds shy.

  ‘I don’t want you to go,’ I say. I’m scared that when I close my eyes the ghost horse is going to be waiting.

  ‘Will Theresa mind?’ she asks.

  ‘Nah, sure she loves you. She said …’ But I don’t want to tell her that Mum said she could move in here, because even though just at this minute when it’s all cosy and nice I think there’d be worse things in the world than living with Seaneen, living with Seaneen and my mum and a baby would be pretty crap.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, you know – you’re a nice wee girl. All that.’

  She giggles. ‘I bet she wasn’t calling me a nice wee girl when you told her I was pregnant.’

  ‘Um … well, I think she blamed me more.’

  ‘She won’t look in on you when she gets back, will she?’

  ‘Wise up.’

  ‘Well, then, I will stay.’ She reaches for her phone which she’s left on the bedside cabinet and texts her mum. Then switches off the phone so Mairéad can’t ring her back.

  We lie for a bit and then I think, well, we can’t go to sleep in our clothes, so I start taking mine off and she does too, and then I find I’m not as tired as I thought I was.

  ‘Is this OK?’ I ask before it gets too late for us to change our minds. ‘It won’t hurt you or the … the baby?’

  Seaneen laughs and kisses me. She seems so much happier than in the park yesterday. ‘You won’t hurt me or it. You can’t even make me pregnant.’

  ‘Better make the most of it then.’

  * * *

  I’m trapped in the barn. The space gets smaller and the air gets thinner and every time I try to move I’m stumbling over bits of dead horse.

  I wake up choking, burning, and squashed against the wall. Seaneen’s still asleep, turned away from me, her curls half-covering her face and her cheek resting on her elbow. I half sit up but she doesn’t stir even when I accidentally catch a bit of her hair. Looking down at her asleep I feel this weird mix of stuff.

  I love her.

  I resent her.

  And I’m scared of what’s inside her.

  She looks cute and sort of young, her cheeks pink with sleep. I reach down and touch her face lightly. She wrinkles her nose, opens her eyes and looks amazed to see me for a moment before realising where she is.

  ‘Declan,’ she murmurs. She rubs her face on the pillow, eyes screwed shut again. Then she moans, launches herself off the bed and stumbles out of the room towards the bathroom. Two seconds later I hear her throwing up. I don’t know what to do. I try not to listen. There’s silence for a bit and I think, oh God, what’s happened her, and I don’t know if I should go in the bathroom, which I don’t really want to, or just leave her to it. Then the loo flushes, there’s the whoosh of water into the sink and next minute she comes back into the room looking like shite.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I ask. Stupid question.

  She sits on the bed and hugs herself. I’m scared she might do it again but I make myself sit beside her and put my arm round her. She takes my hand and hides her face in my neck. Her hand is freezing. I rub her back with my free hand and suddenly remember the first morning we met Cian.

  ‘I’m OK,’ she says. ‘I got up too quick. Don’t worry, it’s normally just once. I’ll be OK in a minute.’

  ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘Mum gives me ginger. And a couple of cream crackers.’

  ‘I don’t think we have those. There might be some custard creams.’

  She suppresses a retch and shakes her hand at me. ‘Uggh.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘OK. I’m fine. I have to go home and get ready for work anyway.’

  ‘You can’t go to work.’

  ‘Course I can. I’ll be fine.’ She pulls away and starts putting on her clothes slowly. Her tits are bursting out of her pink bra but her jeans don’t look any tighter than usual. ‘Declan,’ she says, like I’m an eejit, ‘stop looking at me like I’m going
to die.’

  ‘You should go back to bed.’

  ‘I can’t spend the next seven months in bed. Anyway, this is only meant to last another few weeks.’

  I shudder, remembering the way I felt on Saturday morning. Imagine feeling like that every single day for weeks. ‘I’m glad men don’t get pregnant,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, just as well. Declan, you’re sitting on my sock.’

  When she’s gone, I go and get washed. There’s no smell in the bathroom; she’s opened the window. I wouldn’t have thought of that.

  9.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: job

  Dear Anneliese

  I am sorry but I won’t be able to come and work for Mr Hilgenberg. My circumstances have changed.

  I am sorry for any inconvenience.

  Declan Kelly

  IV. Hiding

  1.

  If I’m going to stop going back to that barn every time I fall asleep I need to see the foal again.

  I force the bike up the last punishing stretch of hill before Rosevale. I can see the sign at the end of the drive – Rosevale Horse Sanctuary. I got their number and address from the phone book. The woman on the phone said she didn’t normally let members of the public in, but since I had found the horses she would make an exception. She sounded a right bossy cow, with one of those foghorn Englishy voices, but I want to see the foal again, so I wrote down her directions and here I am.

  It’s an old higgledy piggledy place, not derelict like the death barn, but not smart and painted like Cam’s. A jumble of stables and sheds huddle at one end; scruffy, saggy-fenced paddocks and pens tucked into every space. As I wheel my bike up the drive, a donkey with the longest ears I’ve ever seen looks up from pulling at a hay net tied to a fence and lifts up its head in a loud Eey-aw-aw-aw! Its neck is covered in scars.