JP

I wasn’t blessed with the best of the genetics in our little family. I might have left school early for other reasons, but I don’t think I was any great loss to the world of education. I was always street smart, but I didn’t have the attention span for books – one of those lads better at learning through doing. Give me electrical parts or a tool set, and I can build or fix anything. But I can’t read a novel or follow an instruction manual to save my life. I guess, had I gone to school in more recent years, they’d have diagnosed dyslexia or attention defecit disorder and maybe they could have helped me.

Charlie was the cleverer of the two of us, by a long stretch.

‘You could be a barrister, a surgeon, anything you want,’ the headmistress wrote in her report card in Charlie’s final exam year. ‘You have brains to burn, Charlene.’

Charlie had the world at her feet. She could get a student grant with ease and could choose any course she wanted to do in college – the first person in our family to go. I was that proud of her, I thought I’d burst.

What did Charlie put on her college application form?

Fucking nursing.

She didn’t even want to be a doctor. Nursing.

I spoke to her about it, and it went like this.

‘Charlie, you’ll be on a government wage, twenty-five thousand fucking euros a year if you’re lucky, and wiping other people’s arses! Don’t you want more?’

‘More than this palace?’ she laughed, throwing her hands out at the room. We’d come up the property ladder and had a two-bedroom apartment in Clontarf at that stage, facing the north side of Dublin Bay.

I sighed.

‘I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with nursing.’

‘It certainly sounds like you are.’

‘I’m not, really. I’m only saying, you’re so brainy. Why not a proper medical degree? Jesus, you could be a shagging brain surgeon.’

But she didn’t have the confidence for it.

‘I like taking care of people,’ she said, to explain her choice. ‘It’s a job I’ll be good at. You should be happy for me, JP.’

‘Right. I am. I just thought you’d want more.’

She flushed red, embarrassed. I immediately felt ashamed. Who was I to push her when I did nothing for myself?

‘Well, I can always train up once I start,’ she said, staring at the floor. ‘I’m still going to college, JP.’

‘I know. Sorry, Charlie. I just want the world for you. At least promise me you’ll marry a bloody doctor.’

‘Ha! Whatever makes you happy. Please don’t be disappointed. I’m looking forward to this, and I’m happy. You know I’m very grateful for everything you’ve done for me, don’t you?’

I did. She told me all the time, even though I didn’t need or want her to.

‘You’re all I have,’ she’d say. And then give me a lecture about lifestyle choices.

‘You need to quit that job in the garage and quit dealing, JP. You’re risking going to jail for the sake of a few extra quid a week that we don’t even need any more. And I don’t like it when you smoke blow. It doesn’t make you relaxed. It makes you … stupid.’

‘Oh, well, I’m awfully sorry to be such a disappointment to you with my big, thick head.’

‘Oh, shut up. You’re the smartest person I know, which is why you smoking blow is all the more ridiculous.’

As sensible as she was, I was still convinced somebody would fuck it all up for her – get her pregnant and lead her down a bad path. The problem was, Charlie was a people pleaser. Whatever my problems with our parents, my sister had been more or less completely overlooked. Seamie and Betty had little time for her and she spent her life trying to make others like her, not realizing she didn’t have to try. Like all attractive people, everybody came to her, whether or not she was trying to impress them. Especially blokes.

I tried to keep tabs on her – a habit formed when she’d first come to live with me so young. But it was the one area of her life where, bizarrely, she didn’t think she owed me anything.

‘Who are you out with this weekend?’ I’d say.

‘Well, as you ask,’ she’d answer, ‘we’re going to hit a club on Friday and then, apparently, we’re going to an orgy. I mean, I’m a bit nervous, JP, but my mates tell me the heroin will calm me right down. You should be happy, now I’m planning to take some recreational drugs.’

‘That’s not funny, Charlie.’

‘It really is. Seriously, JP, nothing is going to happen to me. You’re going to worry yourself into an early grave, old woman.’

I did worry. It was inbuilt in me. I skirted around happiness, examining it from every angle, looking for the cracks. Being happy made me unhappy. I wondered when it would end. If I worried, I thought I could keep trouble at bay. And it made it very hard to enjoy life, no matter what my sister wanted. We weren’t the same.

*   *   *

Charlie organized a party in our apartment one New Year’s Eve – gave me no warning, of course. I heard the music out in the hallway and landed in the door to a disco in the living room.

I was gobsmacked. I grabbed her as she emerged from the loo.

‘What the fuck, Charlie?’ I said, loud enough to be heard over the music, but not for the twenty-odd people there to notice.

‘Oh, shit. Ah, look, JP – what were your plans tonight? To be in bed by eleven? Come on, let your hair down. I’ve ordered pizza. Do you have any money, by the way?’

One of her girlfriends had propped herself up against the wall outside the bathroom. She clutched a West Coast Cooler. Pink, the same colour as her hair.

‘Charlie Andrews, your brother is a ride. If I shagged him, we could be like sisters.’

‘Fucking hell,’ Charlie groaned, as I blushed to the roots of my hair. All her friends were girls in their early twenties, but I saw them as kids.

The girl kept smiling at me as Charlie escaped back into the open-plan area.

‘At least have a drink with me?’

‘I don’t drink,’ I said.

She broke her heart laughing.

‘What the actual fuck? The two of you are throwing a party and neither of you drink?’

‘It’s not my party, that’s for sure,’ I said, but I’d lost her attention.

I was going to kill Charlie when this lot left. The doorbell rang, and I went to pay for the pizzas. I was stung for €100 and never saw a cent of it back.

We got everybody out the door sometime before two (apparently telling people to shove off home at five past midnight on New Year’s Eve is not the done thing) and started the clean-up.

‘Sorry, JP,’ Charlie said, waving a dishcloth at me. ‘If I’d told you I was throwing a party, you’d have told me not to or just stayed out. You’re like the anti-fun police.’

I took the cloth and started drying the cups and glasses.

‘I’m not anti-fun, Charlie. I just don’t feel the need to be the life and soul of the party, like you. I’m happy for things to be quiet.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s not it.’

‘What are you on about?’

‘Yeah, we’re different. I do get that. I like having people around me and you … well, you’re a misanthrope. You’re so wound up all the time. I know you took on a lot when I moved in, but you can stop worrying now. I’m grown up.’

‘I have no idea what “misanthrope” means, but it sounds like an insult, and also, have you ever thought that you might be the one with the problem? Would it kill you to not have so many friends, to not need company all the time?’

‘I don’t need it, JP. I want it. I enjoy it. You had fun tonight, didn’t you?’

‘Absolutely. I loved coming in the door to find my gaff colonized by raging sex maniacs—’

‘My friends.’

‘Yeah, them. Then leaving myself broke for the weekend so you could all stuff your faces with Domino’s—’

‘That’s a yes, then? You had a ball. And if you come out with me next week, I won’t have to bring the party here. Let’s start the year as we mean to go on.’

‘I’m getting a restraining order for next week,’ I said.

‘Mm-hm. And I thought we could go travelling a bit this summer, when I finish my exams. See a bit of the world before I settle into studying.’

‘I’ve no interest in foam parties in Ibiza.’

‘Well, you’d better get interested, you boring sod. I’m making this happen.’

‘That sounds more like a threat than a promise.’

I laughed, despite myself. She was infecting me. Nursing me to happiness, you could say.