“I’m getting there. I still have some other shit to sort out in my head, but I’m not unhappy.”
“I’m glad you have your music, and you know we’ll support you with your move to the city, but you’ve got to promise to ring me regularly, and I’ll expect you at Sunday dinner at least once a month.”
“I can do that.”
Before I know it, our exams are finished and I walk out of CCA for the last time feeling like a convict walking out of jail. We stick around Kilcoole during the summer while we apartment hunt in town. I want to ensure Ash gets her place in Trinity before we leave home. The Leaving Cert results come out, and miracle of miracles, I actually pass. I give my sister all the credit. Ash is the one who forced me to do homework and study with her. My sister gets five hundred and twenty points, and I’m so fucking proud of her. She’s in the top twenty percent for the entire country, and it’s a massive achievement. She’s gone through a lot in the past eighteen months, and she deserves all the good things coming her way.
Her offer comes in from Trinity, and we’re all happy for Ash, though it doesn’t extend to Ma and Da letting her apply for one of the dorms. They are still worried about her mental state, so they make a deal with her. She will live in Kilcoole and commute to and from college each day for first year, and then they’ll contribute to her getting her own place next year. It’s a fair compromise, and she agrees. I’m not the only one trying to make things up to our folks.
Jamie surprises everyone by getting offered a place in Trinity too. I knew he’d applied for the CAO, but I didn’t think he was serious about college. The course he’s doing is only twenty hours a week, so he’ll still have time to study and participate fully in the band. And, of course, any gigs we manage to land in town will be at night, so it’s doable.
We find a three-bed place in Temple Bar, put down the deposit, and prepare to move in two weeks’ time. I buy a secondhand black and silver Kawasaki EN500. It’s an older model German import, but it has low mileage, I got it for a steal, and it’s a pillion bike. I wanted to ensure I had a seat so Ash can stay over sometimes and I can drive her back home the next day. Ma hasn’t stopped crossing herself any time I get on the bike. She hates it, but I’m an adult now, and she can’t stop me.
Texts from Simon are still frequent, but I just treat them like I do any other spam text. They go unread, deleted, and blocked.
Stalking the Lancasters online has become my new obsession. I need ammunition for revenge, and I need to keep tabs on both men if I’m to devise a viable plan. Many nights are spent trawling the internet for information on the dickhead and my loathsome twin.
Simon Lancaster attends a lot of movie premieres, always with a different woman on his arm. The devil in my ear whispers I seem to be a lot like him, but I punt that meddling voice away. I amnothinglike my prick of a sperm donor. I refuse to acceptany similarities except for the physical ones I can’t deny. Apart from pics at premieres, there is the odd interview or quote he gives about an up-and-coming production and a few pics of him playing golf with the director Jonathon Mills, but that’s it.
There is a lot more content available on my twin, though there are no personal pics on his socials. All his posts are movie related. Many of them show that slut Saffron Roberts draped all over him. She looks like trouble in a pint-sized package. I can see why some guys might be into her, but she does nothing for me. Everything about her turns me off. She’s fake with a capital F and trying way too hard. From the way she’s clinging to Reeve and looking at him in the pics, it seems like she’s set her sights on him.
Wonder what his girlfriend thinks about that?
There is very little about Vivien Mills online, apart from some photos of her with Reeve when they were kids attending movie premieres with their famous parents. I found her Insta account, but there are no pics of Reeve, which seems weird when they grew up together and, apparently, they’re a couple. Their parents are best friends, and they live beside one another in a wealthy part of L.A. So why is there no evidence of them on either of their socials? It makes no sense. I found some threads for the movie where fans were speculating on the nature of their relationship. A few girls who profess to be Vivien and Reeve’s classmates say they’ve been a couple for years and they are very much still together.
Vivien Mills is absolutely stunning. Drop-dead gorgeous. The most beautiful girl I’ve ever laid eyes on, and now I hate my brother even more. If he deserves any bird, it’s that Roberts slut. She seems like karma. Reeve Lancaster does not deserve a girl like Vivien. She’s far too good for him.
My finger traces over the image of Vivien’s gorgeous face on her most recent post. She’s laughing alongside a pretty girl withlong red hair and vibrant green eyes. Vivien doesn’t appear to be wearing much makeup, and she’s dressed in skinny ripped jeans and an off-the-shoulder shirt. Glossy dark hair tumbles over her shoulders and down her back. She seems rather unassuming for a Hollywood princess. Her eyes are magnetic. Big and wide, they are framed by thick black lashes with golden flecks shimmering amidst warm honey-colored irises. They draw me in and steal all the breath from my lungs. I stare at her picture for way too long, noting every detail of her perfection and hating my twin with every molecule of my being.
Outwardly, Vivien looks happy, but behind her smile and laughing eyes I detect a hint of pain. Perhaps it’s because I can relate to it so well, but all is not as perfect as it first seems. It intrigues me—sheintrigues me—and I spend hours searching through her posts and everything I can find about her online.
When I fall asleep that night, I’m not dreaming about the voluptuous blonde I banged earlier, I’m dreaming about the fresh-faced L.A. beauty who seems to have captured my twin’s heart.
17
AGE 19 TO 20
“That’s the last box,” I say, dumping it on the counter in Ash’s compact studio flat. The gaff is freshly painted and clean, but the furniture is dated, and the olive-green bathroom and blue kitchen cupboards look like a throwback to the eighties. My sister is on a tight budget, and she’s lucky she found this place. It’s cheap and only a few minutes’ walk from our place, so that’s all that matters.
“Thanks for helping me move in.” She wraps her arms around me, and I lean into her embrace. Her head doesn’t even reach my chest these days, and it only makes me more protective of her.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Aisling?” Ma asks from her perch on the sofa. Her hands are curled around a mug, and there’s a plate of biscuits on the coffee table in front of her.
Da borrowed a van from his brother to transport Ash’s stuff from home. Ma traveled with Da while Ash came with me on the bike.
“For the umpteenth time, yes. Stop worrying, Ma.” Ash releases me and moves over to sit beside our mother.
“That’s an impossibility. I’ll never stop worrying even when you’re married with your own kids or when you’re old and gray. You’ll always be my babies.” She hugs Ash while smiling at me.
She often says that, and I know she means it. Ma loves something fierce. The usual knot tightens in my gut as my chest swarms with love. I wish I could tell her how much she means to me, but I’m still all twisted up on the inside and still battling the same demons I’ve been fighting for most of my life.
“We should make tracks, Cath,” Da says over his shoulder as he washes his hands in the kitchen sink. “I’d like to make it back before we hit rush-hour traffic.”
“I’m not sure I can leave you.” Ma’s eyes fill with tears as she clings to Ash. “I only have one baby at home now, and he can’t wait to leave either.”
“Don’t take it too personally. It’s just hard for Ro to still be in school and not living with the rest of the band,” I say.
Aaron moved abroad with his family a few months ago. His sister is very ill, and she’s getting treatment overseas. He didn’t want to leave the band, especially now we are establishing a name for ourselves on the Dublin indie scene, but given the circumstances, he didn’t want to be thousands of miles away should anything happen. It was understandable, and we didn’t mind too much because Ro has been bending my ear for years about joining Toxic Gods and we knew we had a fully trained replacement already waiting in the wings.
