‘Did I hear twincest?’ He smiles.
‘No, Lon,’ I say, with what I hope is a neutral expression on my face that hates him very much. ‘Just plain old-fashioned incest.’
He grins a toothy grin, pleased at having made me feel uncomfortable. The kind of grin a weasel would grin. If it had perfectly straight human-sized teeth. And if I hated weasels.
I look at Lon. I wonder. I reach into the compartment, slowly. Take out some of the feeling in my bones. Push it through my eyes. Just a little hint. To not mess with us. A Mamó glare.
I would rather ingest a maggot than kiss you on the mouth.
His smile freezes.
I change my expression, bat my eyes, like an innocent forest creature. Catlin looks at me.
‘What’s going on, you two?’
We both say, ‘Nothing,’ at the selfsame time.
Her voice is high, and loud across the room. ‘So, Charley, Layla was telling us you’re going to get arranged married. How do you feel about that?’
I close my eyes. I hate it when she does this.
Charley walks across the room. Says, ‘Yup.’
‘Does it ever bother you?’ asks Catlin. ‘That it could be an old guy, or a creep?’
Charley starts to speak, ‘Look who’s bloody …’ but Lon murmurs, ‘Catalina, be nicer.’
She mutters a sorry and she shuts her mouth.
I look at Lon. He smiles at me. Does that thing where he uses the small of Catlin’s back as though it were a steering wheel. He ushers her up the stairs, so they can ‘talk’, in his apartment.
I look at Charley.
Charley glares at Layla.
Layla shuffles.
‘I’d rather be arranged married than go out with Lon,’ I offer. It only breaks the tension just a little.
Charley snorts. ‘True.’
‘He’d call you Madelina?’ Layla offers, and I laugh.
‘Urrgh. He would and all.’
Layla turns to Charley. ‘I’m sorry I’m a gabby drunk. I didn’t mean to tell people your stuff. I just think it and all of a sudden I say it, and sometimes I think, Don’t say this thing, Layla, but it’s already out. Like a greyhound, or a pony. My mam loves gambling. I’m worried about her. There I go again.’
She sinks into a chair, still looking like a graceful ballerina but one who is utterly, utterly ashamed of herself.
Charley cuddles in beside her. ‘It’s fine. I mean, it’s the truth. It’s just my truth. And I don’t always like it. The idea. I’d like to, like, “play the field”, and stuff.’
They curl together, having a best-friend moment. I sit on a stool, wondering how much they know about this place, and what it would take for them to tell me. This makes me feel like a crap spy, so I head up to the bar and order a lemonade. Awkwardly. I might build up to cider later on. Like, I have no issue with underage drinking, it’s just it feels weird being in a pub and that being OK. Like, it’s all a bit sanctioned. When I get back to the table, Eddie has joined the girls, looking scandalised.
‘I only went up there to get my coat,’ he says, ‘and I saw a lot more of your sister than I wanted to see.’
I gasp. ‘Is she all right?’
‘Yeah, she’s grand. Laughed at me.’ He turns bright red at the thought of it. ‘I felt really creepy and awkward though. Like, what they do is none of my business … But the way Lon smiled – I think he liked me seeing them like that.’
Ugh. That is the worst thing I ever heard. I resist the urge to storm up there and pull him off my sister. She’d never speak to me again.
‘Why are ye even friends with him?’ I ask, typing a quick ‘u ok?’ into my phone.
‘He has a pub?’ he offers.
‘Fair enough.’
Catlin sends me back a lot of aubergines. She is the worst, but definitely grand. We spend the next few hours chatting and drinking, while Lon and Catlin stay in his apartment. It’s not like Catlin to miss this much of a thing. I drink a pint of cider, and feel the sugar harsh on the top of my stomach. I need to pace myself, seeing as she’s left me here alone.
‘C’mere,’ I say to Layla. ‘What’s the story with his crazy ex-girlfriends?’
She shrugs at me. ‘Dunno.’
Fiachra cracks open a can, his face dark. ‘Who – Helen?’
‘Like Helen Groarke?’
‘Exactly like Helen Groarke.’ He opens his mouth, and starts to speak again, but Charley shushes him, and clears her throat.
‘I don’t really like that word. Crazy. It usually means girls who ask boys questions.’
‘Or message them twenty-five times in an evening.’
‘Shut up, Fiachra.’
The conversation shifts. I’m still no wiser. I listen to the hum and dip of talk, and think, I know so little about these people. Their motivation, history. It’s new to me, but it is far from new.
And there are secrets, big and small, they’re keeping.
Her name was Helen.
What did Fiachra mean with his exactly? They might have known her, Helen Groarke. Who moved away and came back as a corpse. I suddenly feel cold. Lon is only nineteen. He would have been fifteen. When she was found. A little younger than she was. But still … it’s the same age difference between him and Catlin, pretty much. It could be, could have been. I try to slow my heart and parse my thoughts.
There are things you should be wary of …
I think of the first time we met Layla, when Catlin brought up the corpses in the hills. I look at the bodies of my classmates, hearts beating, eyes blinking, muscles tensing and relaxing, and scroll through my phone and start to type a message. How to put it …?
‘Did u know …’
‘Lon’s ex-girlf …’
‘We need …’
But nothing that I want to say is right. I feel a sickness creeping up my throat. A dull sick ache that’s creeping like a vine through me. There is ivy on the walls of the castle and it ferrets through the rock and brick, it curls in everywhere, invading space and causing problems, cracks. Brian says it shouldn’t have been planted there, not in the first place. Once it’s introduced, it’s hard to kill.
I close my eyes.
I blink.
The room is loud.
The voices, rising, falling. I feel like I am watching on a screen. I amn’t one of them. I don’t belong here. I wish that I could leave. I cannot go.
I take a breath. My hands inside my pockets, fingering at lavender and bark.
‘Where’s Oona?’ Charley asks. ‘I thought that she was coming?’
‘She will.’ Eddie blushes. ‘She’ll be a little late. Her dad was being grumpy about lifts.’
I look at him. His face is red, and smiling. I don’t like it.
‘I … er … messaged her to ask.’ A little grin. I’ve never noticed before how much his face needs smacking. Those cheeks and eyes.
I bite down on my lip and check my phone. Three messages.
I smile.
And something crystallises here, inside this room, looking at the boy who likes the girl that I might be in love with.
As close as I have come to love, at least.
Eddie is still saying things. I take a break, and venture down the stairs to the grimy little bathroom. The walls are old and once white, and covered with writing. Scraps of poems, and people’s names entwined in marker hearts. I scan the wall for names I recognise. I don’t see Lon, but Helen’s there. The second name scraped out, gouged through the paint.
I put my hand over the writing, close my eyes and try to do the thing I did with Lon. The hard stare. It doesn’t work. I’m just a girl, leaning on a wall.