Peggy pulls at my dress. How long has she been trying to get my attention? There are tears in her eyes. Bending down, I take her hands in mine.
‘What’s wrong, pet?’
She takes a ruffled breath in, about to spill into crying. And then she puts her arms around me. Something she only ever does with Jack.
He is so close to Teresa Doyle that they might as well be one person. So close to Teresa Doyle that he has made Peggy cry. And although she is a world apart from you, right now, Teresa Doyle is filling the space you left. I peel Peggy off me, needing fresh air. Needing anything but Jack and Teresa in my eyeline. I leave Peggy behind, shivering; I have to put myself first. That’s what everybody else is doing, isn’t it?
Jack
THE NIGHT PASSES. I COULDN’Ttell Teresa what I wanted to tell her. About you, and about how I want to move along and feel real love again. I tried, but my throat tightened, my words dissolved. And still, she stood with me. Talking and laughing. Giving me a good time.
The last of them left after midnight. The house is a mess. It will get cleaned tomorrow, please god. For now, we are lying down to sleep. Across the floor, still. Teresa under my eyelids, standing firmly in the dark.
My girl – could she be my girl, really? Will I ever have the capacity to have a girl again? She mentioned going away somewhere together. That if I wasn’t settling into Ballycrea, we could go away somewhere else. How bold she is. Her cousins have a farm in Clare, and she said I could work there. Imagine that.
And it isn’t that I want to run away and start a new life with Teresa, but I really wouldn’t mind running away and starting a new life, with Teresa. To take her and Peggy away somewhere and pretend that none of this ever happened. Sure I’ll never be my old self again anyway. I’ll never get back the life I once had. So I might as well be somewhere new. With her. It’s a funny little feeling that pulls at me. It’s hope. Carrying me off to sleep.
In the small hours, stretching across the first darkness of morning, I stir.
Still half in a dream, I turn onto my side, and I’m shocked awake by two eyes, staring into the distance just past me. Anna’s marsh-coloured eyes, deep and unending. Wide and unblinking. For a moment, I am drawn into the marsh. I want to walk into her eyes, lie down among the reeds and know what she is thinking. To get wet from the ground, wet from her thoughts, and know my sister again. Is she awake or asleep?
She is cold, and smells of outside. As though she has just come in. But she has been sleeping beside me all night, hasn’t she?
Afraid to startle her, I am scarcely breathing. It could be a state of sleepwalking that she is trapped in.
But then something flickers in her eyes. She doesn’t move or break her gaze, but she is somehow aware of me now. I feel it.
I put my hand on her forehead, sweating cold. Maybe she has a fever. Maybe she has always had a fever. That would explain her.
‘Are you alright, Anna?’
I whisper, barely louder than Peggy’s exhaling next to me. But she doesn’t answer.
‘You’re sweating.’
I tell her. Her eyebrows raise, like she is intrigued. Like it’s a good thing.
‘Go back to sleep, Jack.’
She mutters, in a low-down tone. And like a machine, like a child, I do what I am told.
I turn away from her, and feel her eyes burning through me. Pretending to drift off, I consider how scary Anna can be, but how I am rarely actually scared of her. For all of her strange ways, her swinging temper and unpredictability, for all she is capable of, only once was I ever afraid of Anna. The night you died.
I’ll never forget it. All of us drinking across in Finbarr Hayes’s house, racing over the road home after Anna burst in screaming. Thepanic was radiating off her. Honest to god, I felt it as heat coming off her skin. But it wasn’t her energy that scared me. It wasn’t the drying blood on her dress. It wasn’t what Tom told me had happened. It was her eyes. Nothing like tonight’s glassy, focused eyes. Jesus no, those were wild, wild eyes. Darting. Flaming. Fixing on something or someone that wasn’t there.
The marsh colour of them, illuminated to a shade I’ve never seen before. As though lightning had struck and set all her reeds on fire. As though a storm was erupting within her. Maybe that’s how she felt. Like her eyes were on fire. That’s how she was acting.
Yes, for a moment, on that evening, I was afraid of Anna. It hasn’t ever come back. But I’ll say this: if I ever did see that colour come over her eyes again, I’d throw Peggy over my shoulder and run as far as my legs would take me.
Betty
BILL HAS SPENT THE DAYnursing his hangover. I wanted to leave Tom’s party after the first hour, but he would have stayed on all night. I suppose his relationship to the O’Learys is very different from mine.
An hour ago, he finally roused himself up and out to get a few messages in town. It started to rain ten minutes after he left. Good enough for him.
A small knocking on the door. And it’s going to be Anna O’Leary. I know it is. Suddenly I realise I don’t know how far away Bill is. I’m all on my own. She’s going to invite herself in and sit in my kitchen for hours, taunting me. I feel a little panic pricking the back of my neck as I open the door. I’m not annoyed at Bill anymore. I want him to come home.
‘Peggy!’
