Catlin deftly rolls a cigarette and then another. Her nails are longer, filed into a curve. The way Lon likes. It’s pretty, I suppose, but unhygienic. I rest my head on her shoulder and look at all the landscape. Dead things wait in stasis till the spring.
‘I feel like I’m in rehab here,’ she says. ‘Or on a reality show or something. Being watched.’
I nod. Catlin is exactly the kind of person who would have done a stint in rehab. Not boring, real-person rehab. The fancy celebrity-filled ones where you fall in love with expensive men who buy you things like islands.
‘We should ask Mam to drive us into Galway to get supplies,’ I suggest. Catlin nods. She is not thinking about the same supplies that I am thinking of. (Jelly beans and Tipp-Ex.)
‘Good plan.’ She pulls out her phone. ‘I hate living in a village. Even if I were friends with everyone I’d met here, I’d still only have, like, nine friends. Including you. It’s not enough.’ She sighs.
‘I know,’ I tell her, counting all my friends, including Mam. Four. Five if I had more self-esteem. Three and a half, realistically. I’m still not sure about Oona.
Layla bounds towards us, looking flushed. She twists sweat out of her long ponytail, and winds it in a knot on top of her head. Her face is lightly feathered with sweat. She’s wearing shorts, in spite of the cold.
‘I had the best run,’ she says, plonking herself down and staring at the mountain. ‘Do either of you run?’
‘I do a bit,’ I say. She smiles at me.
Catlin looks at Layla. ‘I’m not big into exercise,’ she tells her. ‘Maybe if there was something to run from …’
‘Like Lon,’ Layla says, and Catlin laughs.
‘I wouldn’t run from Lon. Not yet at least. I kind of really like him.’ Her face is happy, but she’s almost shy. She’s giving Layla a piece of something real, something important.
But Layla’s face is grim. ‘And he likes you,’ she tells her. Her face is strange, expressionless. A mask. There is a pause.
‘Do you want some whiskey and Coke?’ asks Catlin.
‘I’m good, thanks,’ Layla says. ‘My life is weird enough without the drink.’
She waggles her eyebrows as if we know what she means. We do not know what she means at all.
‘Weird, how?’ says Catlin.
‘Ballyfrann is … Actually I will have a drop. Thanks, Catlin.’ Layla takes a gulp and passes the bottle back.
‘Ballyfrann is what?’ I ask her.
‘Ballyfrann is very … Ballyfrann. It’s not like the real world, is it?’ she says. ‘I mean, not that I have much experience of the real world, but I have seen it on TV, and I feel that we get a pretty raw deal here.’
‘The Internet is terrible,’ I tell her. ‘Oona sent me a gif last night and it did not load for fifteen minutes. That’s too long to wait for any gif.’
‘I don’t know though,’ Catlin says. ‘Like, there’s loads of nature and stuff. And we get to live in a castle.’
A wolf-whistle emerges from Catlin’s bag.
‘Lon?’ Layla asks.
I nod at her.
‘It would be. Jesus Christ.’
Catlin moves a little bit away, angling her phone to get reception.
Layla turns to me. ‘Does Brian know?’ she asks.
‘About what?’
‘Herself and Lon.’ She gestures to Catlin’s back.
‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s none of his business who she’s seeing.’
‘Might be worth telling him,’ she tells me. ‘Just a thought.’
I take a swig from the bottle of whiskey and Coke. It’s sweet and sharp and earthy. I’m not sure if I like it, but I find I want more.
‘So,’ Layla says, her smile a shepherd’s crook, ‘Oona, eh?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Nothing,’ she says, her grin widening. ‘Yet.’
She’s very full of questions, I think. But I suppose that’s how you make friends. And I would be curious as well, if I’d grown up with a small bank of people and suddenly someone made a lodgement of more people in the bank of people.
When Catlin comes back, Layla takes us up the mountains to a little ledge where people meet up in summer.
‘When I say “people”, I mainly mean me and my brothers and possibly a Collins or two,’ she says.
‘It’s cool,’ I say, looking out at the darkening trees below us. ‘It almost looks like the top of them’s an ocean.’
‘Careful where you swim,’ she says, and laughs.
‘How was Lon?’ I ask Catlin.
‘Fine,’ she says. ‘He just wanted to check I got home safe. I told him I was back at the castle, in case he got worried.’
‘Good,’ Layla says. Catlin looks at her. ‘You wouldn’t want to worry Lon too much.’
‘No.’ Catlin’s voice is slower, careful. ‘It’s early days yet.’
‘Early days,’ says Layla. Crooks her mouth.
I wonder if she has a thing for Lon.
We talk about that later, walking home in the approaching darkness.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised at all,’ says Catlin. ‘There’s a very small pool of tappable men in Ballyfrann.’
‘This is true. And she’s related to two of them. Like, it’s Eddie or Lon, basically. Unless she’s bi. I hope it doesn’t make things weird for ye.’
‘Do you know what? I actually don’t care. Because he likes me.’ Catlin’s smile is bright and full of hope.
‘Of course he does,’ I say to her. ‘You’re magic.’
‘I kind of am,’ she says, high-fiving a tree. ‘But that doesn’t mean everybody fancies me. There’s free will and things. It’s a sort of sex lottery.’
‘Can I point out that I don’t find Lon attractive at all?’ I say. I could go on, but I don’t want to ruin this. She’s just so happy, thinking about him.
And then we turn a corner and we stop.
A dead thing in the road, splayed valley wide, red on grey and green, and blue and purple.
I had never seen a fox in real life before, only in books. In photographs. On screens. It is bright orange. Sunset. Autumn leaves. The feet are black, the tip of the tail white. Its fur is only soaked in blood in patches. No flies buzz. The ribcage has been forced apart, the insides scooped and tangled. It looks fresh.
Catlin’s frozen. I crouch low beside it, sniffing, looking. Running torchlight up and down, across, for details.
I don’t know what compels me to do that. I need to find out more. There is something off about the fox, and not just that it has been tortured, killed.
Our father, charred to flakes upon the earth.
‘Madeline,’ Catlin says. She says my name again. ‘Maddy?’
I kneel down and put my ear beside the fox’s mouth. I feel the heat emanating from it. This is recent. It will leach out soon. It will be cold, as dead things always are.
A matter of minutes, I think. While Layla told us gossip about Lon, somebody was tearing this apart.
‘There’s something wrong,’ I say. ‘About this fox.’
I can feel her eyes on me, as mine scan the forest floor, the leaves, the trees for clues. The blood paint-bright and all the woods a canvas. I look at her.