Shauna lives in a detached Victorian house near Dalkey village, barely three miles from our estate. I’ve been along this road before but I’ve never seen beyond the gates and tall trees that guard every entrance. You could build ten of our houses along her gravel driveway and still have space for the three cars that line up at the end of it. Granite steps lead to a scarlet door and, beyond it, the sparkle of a low-hanging chandelier. In a distant room, Cilla Black introduces tonight’s Blind Date and I relax at the thought that behind every front door, we all watch the same shit telly.
Either Shauna has spent hours tidying or she lives a life as ordered as her facade suggests. There is no clutter in her room, no evidence of teenage chaos within the sparse and elegant walls. Across the plush beige carpet, on the other side of a large bay window, is a wall of fitted wardrobes and shelves, the artifacts of her life confined behind sliding glass doors. Painted dolls, love-worn teddies and soft toys line up along the top shelf, with medals and trophies on display underneath. Even the books on the bottom shelf are from childhood—The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, The Famous Five. It’s only the desk inside the door, the piles of books and tapes and the music center beside it that give any outward display of an inner life.
“What do you want to listen to?” she asks.
“Whatcha got?”
She chews her lip as she looks through the cassettes on her desk and scrunches her nose as she picks one up.
“I have the Housemartins’ album.”
Her hesitance puts me at ease, and I take off my coat and lean back onto her double bed.
“I love The Housemartins.”
She smiles as she puts the tape in the deck and kicks off the night with “Happy Hour.”
“Your house is amazing,” I say. “I can’t believe you have all this space for four people.”
Shauna sits cross-legged at the end of the perfectly made bed, leggings tucked into soft, woolly socks and a baggy sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder.
“Yeah, I suppose.”
I take off my Docs and mirror her pose, my neon-orange mini riding up over my own black leggings.
“I did have a younger sister,” she says.
“Oh. I didn’t know that.”
“She died when she was ten days old.”
“God, I’m sorry,” I say. “That’s awful.”
I don’t know what else to say and I reach to touch her hand, but she folds her arms.
“Yeah. I don’t remember it. I was only one. Mum had a nervous breakdown after and Dad … I dunno. Mum says he was a different person before, but we’ve never been close.”
“I’ve never met my dad.”
“Really? Do you know who he is?”
Now it’s my turn to fold my arms.
“Well, he was my mam’s boyfriend for two years so yeah, she did get his name.”
Her cheeks flush with heat but she still tries to cover her tracks. It’s the Highfield way.
“All I meant was, like, have you…”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I made a lot of assumptions about you too.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’d have a pole up your arse. And you’d have really crap taste in music.”
She gasps, grabs a pillow and laughs as she hits me on the arm. I pretend to be hurt as I reach behind me and then lash the other pillow at her.
“Stereotypes work both ways, you know,” I say as I take my pillow back. “And there are a lot more of us than there are of you.”
She lands a blow to the side of my head and then stops, as if she’s considering my perspective for the first time. I seize the advantage and knock her sideways onto the bed.
“You’re the freak, not me,” I say, laughing as I collapse breathless beside her.
“Fuck off,” she says, but she’s smiling too, her face just inches away from mine.
Her breath is shallow and quick, and I draw it in, taste the floral sweetness of her perfume. It fills my lungs like nicotine, the chemical rush of it rocketing through my veins. Inside, I’m buzzing, but on the surface I’m frozen, unable to disturb the universe no matter how much I want to reach out and run my fingers through her hair.
Shauna makes the first move, breaking the trance as she pushes herself up onto her elbow. Her hair is loose, hanging across her face as she looks down at me.
“Tell me something else I don’t know about you,” she says.
I don’t know where to begin, how to broach the many conversations I want to have with her, so I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.
“Um, it’s my birthday tomorrow.”
“No way. How come you never said?”
“I dunno.” I grimace apologetically. “I don’t like any fuss.”
“But it’s your eighteenth, right?” she says, sitting upright. “You have to celebrate.”
I don’t have to do anything, but I love that she is excited for me and, right now, I’ll follow wherever she leads.
“Wait there,” she says, and she’s gone, skipping down the stairs.
I walk to the window and pull a gap in the heavy velvet curtains. Beyond the wrought-iron front gates, past the slate rooftops with their ornate gable ends, I see the purple-gray shades of the horizon lit only by the slivers of moonlight that sneak through the clouds.
Shauna returns with a bottle of champagne and two glasses.
“Where did you get that?” I say.
“In the wine cellar. There are loads of them. They won’t notice if one is missing.”
“You have a wine cellar?”
“It’s just an old coal bunker in the basement.”
“You have a basement.”
I want to get out of this place where she is queen and drink champagne on neutral ground. Somewhere we can be equal partners in the conversation that’s ahead.
“Let’s go there.”
“Where?”
I point through the curtains to the mottled light over the sea. “The seafront. Down to the rocks you were telling me about.”
“You want to get drunk and climb out onto the rocks?”
“We can climb first, drink after. Then we only need to worry about getting back.”
Shauna laughs.
“You’re crazy,” she says.
“I’m probably the sanest person you know.”
Maybe if I say it enough, she’ll believe it’s true.
THE SEA IS STILL AND silent, its sedative spell broken only by the gentle lap of it against the rocks. The streaks of moonlight that glimmer on its surface highlight the blackness of what lies beneath and I pull my heavy overcoat tight against the reflective chill. Just a few hundred yards across the water is the silhouette of Dalkey Island, its Martello tower rising out of the somber shadows.
“Did you ever swim out to it?” I ask Shauna.
“Yeah, once. It was for a fundraiser though, so we had boats watching us in case anyone got into trouble. You can get pretty strong currents out here.”
I shiver at the thought of it, the silent grip of the sea, and I wonder if Shauna would come after me if I slipped and fell. We’re elbow to elbow on a rugged rock formation that slopes down to the water with only the warm buzz of champagne for protection.
“Were you really not going to celebrate your birthday?” she asks.
“Mam probably has something planned, but I kinda got out of the habit of celebrating.”
“Why?”
Her eyes are daring me to tell, and I will. I want her to know.
“I was really fucked up after Tina … after she killed herself. I still am, really. I’d only be pretending to have fun.”
“Are you pretending now?”
“No.”
My heart skitters and I can taste the tension between us.
“It’s different with you,” I say. “You get it.”
“I think about Tina all the time,” says Shauna.
“You do?” I want to tell her everything. But not yet; I’m not ready to let him come between us.
“I wish I could have saved her,” she says. “I mean, I could have, but…”
I take her hand and we hold on tight, breath coming in short, urgent bursts.
“You just didn’t know how,” I say.
Our eyes lock, and we know. That we’re telling the truth and lying to ourselves at the same time. That the weight of the guilt is going nowhere and there’s nothing we can do but share it.
I don’t remember who moves first, if she tilts her shoulder toward mine or I slide my thigh next to hers. We lean into each other, breath hot against icy skin, soft lips drawn together like magnets, hands on faces, fingers laced through hair and the crash of glass as a champagne flute kicks off the foot of the rock and splinters into the sea.