My sister thinks about it, and she nods. ‘You have yourself a sexy, sexy deal.’
Catlin and me decide to do some re-potting and planting in the greenhouse, smoky glass in a green-tinged frame. It looks like a massive jewellery box from the outside. Spanish moss trails from the roof like lace.
I keep finding little grey-brown woodlice in the corners, some whole and others worn to almost dust. Mam calls them ‘pigs’, those little tank-like insects. You see them teeming underneath dead wood. There is something tomb-like about this place. It’s too big for one man, and for four people it is still too big. And all the little deaths inside the corners, heaped up neatly, like they died polite.
My two hands are flat on the ground, feeling for the best place to put this little sapling. It’s a baby sycamore. I grew it in a yoghurt pot at first, from a helicopter. Mam says I have green fingers, like my dad. It’s not that hard – you read up what they need and just do that. I am quite good at knowing when plants are a little unhappy though. Takes one to know one. Probably I just like healing things. Plants are my version of mindfulness or yoga, all that other stuff they demand you do at school to reduce your stress, as though they haven’t stressed you with that stress, at least in part. It’s soothing to help a green life out. And a lot of stuff is just like us. They need to eat, they need the space to grow, the air to breathe. To not be hurt.
Catlin’s sorting peace lilies. They take over when they’re in the pots, like mint. She rips them apart, a vulture at a carcass. I put my hand on her arm.
‘Let me do it.’
‘You’ll take ages,’ she says. ‘I want to unpack more and go exploring.’
‘I know, but Catlin …’
‘Hmmm?’ She quirks a lip that way she has, like when a cat shows you one of its teeth, just so you know they’re there and don’t get notions. My fingers rummage softly through the soil and gently tease the networked roots apart. Catlin’s face is focused on her phone, the shine of the screen. I can see it reflected in the whites of her eyes, as the light dims in the garden. She almost looks like an alien. Not of this world. A beautiful anomaly. She smiles, and her teeth glint soft. Like little pearls. Our big teeth look like baby teeth. Everything about us is tiny. When you complain about it, people tell you to shut up. To eat a sandwich. Which is fair enough, but I would like to need less help with shelves.
The greenhouse is lit with strings of LED lights. It’s adorable. Like somewhere you’d get married. If Mam and Brian hadn’t had their small ‘big day’ already.
‘I bet this place would be amazing for parties,’ Catlin says. ‘We could get all our friends from Cork. Invite them down. Not right away – I know Brian doesn’t like guests he doesn’t know. But, in a while, I think we could convince him.’
Catlin says we when she means I, and sometimes when she means you. I sigh. I hate parties. They always end with people puking in bins. I hold their hair, and tell them that it wasn’t the tequila. That they’ll be fine. That I won’t tell their mum/dad/sister/cousin Joan. I don’t really mind though, looking after drunk people. Calmly helping them puke different colours. Offering pints of water. Doctor practice. Better than hanging round in corners not being as good as Catlin.
I see a face, staring from the garden. Mamó approaches, like a mean shark. I mean, I assume it must be her. Her salt-and-pepper hair is in a long, tight braid down her back. She’s wearing the sort of brown smock that screams, ‘I am your new herbalist step-relative.’ I like brown, but I don’t like the way she wears it. Or her in general. Reminding us that our home was her home first with her walk and smock. I roll my eyes. Catlin sees her too.
‘Mamó,’ she says, like she has just crossed something off on the official Ballyfrann scavenger-hunt card. She waves enthusiastically. I groan. Mamó’s eyes are dark grey-blue, and she doesn’t look friendly. She might bite us. Or worse, make loads of small talk.
‘Don’t wave at her. She might want chats.’
‘She won’t,’ my sister says. ‘She clearly hates people – look at that glare.’
‘Why take the chance?’ I ask, confident in my rightness. ‘She’s a creep. The face on her.’
The old woman stomps into the greenhouse. Not an annoyed stomp but the confident stomp of someone whose house this is. Her stomp tells us it’s her land and we’re trespassing. And she’s allowing it, but just for now. She has a very eloquent stomp, I think. Most people’s legs are just like, ‘Hey! I’m walking from this place to this place and not threatening anyone while I do it.’
I miss the sound legs of our old home.
Meanwhile, a massive raven swoops down and perches on the edge of the greenhouse roof. It looks like she paid it to follow her. To amplify the creepery. Its dark beak is open as it stares at us.
As they both do.
‘Hello, Mamó,’ says Catlin. ‘Love the smock.’
I try to kick her in the shins but she dodges me.
‘Twins,’ she says. As though that was our name. She’s such a douchebag. Outdated and unnecessary. Vaginas are self-cleaning. I know this because Catlin once yelled it at me across the room at a house party. For no reason. It’s not a memory I treasure much.
Mamó gathers several tools inside a thick black bucket. Looks at one trowel, growls and puts it down. She’s lucky trowels don’t have feelings or she would have made a very blunt enemy. The raven walks overhead, along the greenhouse frame. I can almost feel the scrape of claw on wood. The two of us stay silent as the grave while she goes about her business. It feels like Mass, like speaking would be rude. It’s quite oppressive. I pull a leaf from off a nearby bay tree. A little one. A bay-be. I crush it till it cracks and put it to my nostrils, close my eyes.
When I open them, she’s staring at me.
I hold her gaze until she turns to leave. Before she reaches the door, her hand darts very quickly to the corner, and when she brings it back, she’s holding something. I see the flicker of a string – a tail? – before she strides away.
‘That was awkward,’ I say to my sister, hoping she can sense the confusion and dislike behind the words. ‘I hope she’s not around all the time.’
‘Madeline,’ my sister says, tearing leaves off, folding them, ‘we’re here for at least two years. We’ll need lifts into the village. Give her a chance. Have you seen how good she is at holding mice and striding?’
‘Was that what she was doing?’ I ask, but she doesn’t answer, too busy staring after our new relative. The raven spreads his (or her – I’m not sure how to tell when nothing dangles) wings and takes off across the garden after Mamó, the dark wings darker than the dimming sky.
Catlin’s impressed lips shape the word fierce.
Was that what it was? I snort, and press my hands into the chocolatey, rich compost. Place the plants inside. It’s winter, but I think they will survive here. I think that I can make that happen, with care. If you have the right tools, the right information, then the outlook improves. At least in general.
Catlin holds up a fat leaf folded over. ‘It’s a swan,’ she says. ‘Like meeeeeeee.’ She stretches her neck and tosses her hair. My sister’s always known that she was lovely. At least one of us is. She’s going to have, like, eleven friends in Ballyfrann from tomorrow, probably. So, basically the entire population of the place. Perhaps she will be elected mayor.
The light has dimmed away to almost nothing. We work in the greenhouse, surrounded by carnivorous plants and succulents, labelled neatly in a cramped black hand. It must be Mamó’s writing; it’s not Brian’s. She’s sneaking around at the edges of our lives, I think. Or maybe it’s the other way around.