3

‘Well, this is exciting!’ James beams as he hurries along beside me through the crowds towards the VIP platform. Majella insisted he take her place after Pablo arrived into the pub traumatised by his brief stint as a security guard. Apparently Mad Tom, who, after losing his licence recently, had attached a makeshift engine to a pushbike, was threatening to do a stunt leap over the pump in the village square and Pablo was tasked with stopping him. Majella is back in Maguire’s now comforting him and James was only too delighted to be my plus-one instead. He’s had a few drinks with the lads and his arm kept snaking around my midsection in the pub, his breath warm in my ear. Carol and Sharon nearly nudged each other onto the floor. Those chocolate-brown eyes, the curls just touching his ears, that three-day stubble. He really is very attractive. I mean, alarmingly so. The smell of him has made me understand why so many of Mammy’s books I read as a teenager described men as ‘intoxicating’. All the same, I had to keep fighting off the urge to push him away, mortified, while reflexively sucking in my tummy every time he touched me. I haven’t so much as thrown an eye to my Weight Watchers bible in months. And as for going to a class … I’m surprised my leader, Maura, hasn’t put up posters looking for me. Bless me, Maura, for I have sinned. I haven’t calculated a single Point all summer.

It’s fine when it’s just me and James alone in his place, although I’m like a whippet getting under the duvet. Out in public, something just feels … not right. The excitement and all-consuming nature of the fling is all well and good, but I feel it’s because I know he’s going. He’s such a dote to me, though. I always wanted a lad who’d buy me flowers and get me thoughtful presents and replace his socks regularly and want to get married someday. James brought flowers into the café for me last Tuesday when Tessie Daly was in getting a quiche and the eyes nearly fell out of her head. The story made it back to Mammy, who has such a soft spot for James that she’s close to starting a fan club. She asked me right out if he’s my boyfriend and I had to stick my head in the breadbin and mutter that it’s not serious and remind her that he’s only in BGB short term. I think it’s the posh accent and his general handiness that gets her. She definitely has a crush on him. All the local ladies do. He carried Sumira Singh’s shopping to the car for her last week and I swear there was an emergency meeting of the Active Retiree’s Book Club to discuss it. Sumira runs the nursing home so she had ten litre-bottles of prune juice in each bag. Apparently, he didn’t even wince picking them up.

Mammy is also turning a blind eye to my nightly absence from the house. She’s relaxed a lot since the early days of mine and John’s relationship when she’d pointedly leave the spare-room door open and a pair of Daddy’s pyjamas on the single bed for him if we got a taxi back together after the pub – a practice John’s God-mad mother, Fran, kept up in reverse at her house right up until we broke up for good.

I grab James’s hand as we push through the crowds and he laces his fingers through mine. My heart gives a little ping. Mortification aside, I will miss him when he’s gone. Sadhbh got into my head earlier about it, and Colette Green posted ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’ on Instagram last night after her Gucci belt was robbed from the gym and I couldn’t like it fast enough. It all feels a bit romantic and tragic, although I know I’m not in love with James – I’ve only been in love once, and I know what it feels like.

News that the team’s arrival is imminent has spread through BGB and everyone has now taken to Main Street for a gawk. We squeeze past Cyclops, John’s friend and dependable Knock Rangers centre back. He’s also Sharon’s boyfriend and is headed to Maguire’s to get her. He had his eye on her from the day she arrived in BGB with her freshly signed lease and a suitcase of hairdryers. They’re absolutely dotey together and he’s already moved into her flat above the salon. Maj teased her about moving fast but Sharon just shrugged and said, ‘I’m thirty-two – what am I waiting for?’

James and I crab-walk along the side of an ice-cream van pumping out the 99s and head for the VIP section, which is really just a raised platform guarded by Tessie Daly in a high-vis vest. Already the crowds are clamouring for the attention of guest-of-honour Devon Dempsey, who was recently featured bouncing on a trampoline in a Bord Bia ad. He’s only five but was just brilliant on that trampoline – a real star. He’s waving from the platform and posing for snaps and I debate for a second making an excuse and sloping away so James and I won’t be on display for the whole town, but Tessie catches sight of me and roars my name.

‘Hiya, Tessie,’ I call up to her over the din and the music. Jesus, she has a clipboard and all. I go to inch past her up the steps and she stops me.

‘Name?’

‘Tessie. It’s me, Aisling. You’ve just called me over. And you’ve known me since I was born.’

‘Security is very tight here today, Aisling. Now, name?’

James stifles a laugh and she glares at him as I sigh. ‘It’s Aisling.’

She studiously runs her finger down the list. It’s a small platform. The list can’t be that long.

‘Ah yes, here we are. Aisling, plus one. Off you go.’

James flashes her a smile as we push past and she visibly swoons. ‘Tell your mother I’ll be in this evening to collect my loaf tins, good girl,’ she calls after me hoarsely.

Mercifully, the seats on the platforms are in rows, and I resist the urge to rush Devon for a selfie and instead pull James onto a fold-out chair at the back. All the other local VIPs are on the platform, including Marty Boland, the town’s prize-winning butcher and Carol’s bully ex. I try to catch his eye to give him a filthy look but he avoids my gaze. Skippy Boland from Solas FM is there too and Imelda Patricks, winner of this year’s Pride of BGB. Her talent was playing ‘Riverdance’ on the glockenspiel and it went briefly viral on YouTube.

‘What would it be like if they’d actually won?’ James asks in an amused tone, resting his hand lightly on my knee.

‘Honestly, I don’t want to even think about it. Carnage.’

‘There’s been so many kids around all day. They didn’t …?’

‘Oh, they did. They closed the school.’

He chuckles. ‘I mean, I’m not complaining – I can think of worse ways to spend a Monday evening. But it’s just a bit … mad.’

‘Do you not have community spirit over in England?’ I ask, genuinely interested.

James and I haven’t talked a huge amount about his background because there just doesn’t seem to be much point, and he doesn’t offer a lot of information. I know he’s in the building trade, obviously, and it’s a big-bucks family business. But other than that he’s a bit of a closed book.

‘Of course we have community spirit,’ he retorts, slightly indignant. ‘Buckleton’s annual village fête is always very well attended. It’s the highlight of the cricket club’s social calendar, and the cricket club is Dad’s pride and joy!’

‘Buckleton sounds like a name you made up,’ I tease.

‘You’re one to talk. Ballygobbard. BallyGoBackwards, BGB.’ He elbows me in the ribs and I have to nod and concede that he has a point.

‘Okay, so what’s Buckleton like then? Do you have your own town pump? Is there a Mad Tom?’ I jerk my head towards our own Tom, who has now scaled Marty Boland’s butcher’s shop and is threatening to stage-dive from the roof into the assembled roaring crowd, a can of Guinness in each hand. Marty, true to form, is puce with rage, shouting at him to get down.

James regards all this with amusement and says thoughtfully, ‘I don’t know that we have a Mad Tom, but there is a village green and a school and I believe Mrs Simmons still runs the post office.’

‘And what happens at the village fête?’

‘Well, I haven’t been in a few years, but I’m guessing they still have the Morris dancing, a tombola, cream tea, that sort of thing. All very civilised.’

Cream tea sounds like something I’d be very interested in, to be fair. The rest sounds straight out of an Enid Blyton book. ‘And what was school in Buckleton like?’

James shifts in his seat. ‘I didn’t go to school in Buckleton.’

I know James went to boarding school as a teenager because his brother Harry was in the same class as Ben Hatton, brother of Niamh Hatton and member of the overbearing Protestant family who have lived across the road from us all my life. Niamh from Across the Road has been a source of great envy and pain-in-the-arsery since childhood. I was never more envious than when Niamh got a Chernobyl child when we were fourteen. Sent from the Ukraine for a summer’s worth of Irish fresh air, Natasia’s arrival was truly the most glamorous thing to ever happen in BGB. They used to say that the months spent in Ireland would add another ten years onto their lives, and Natasia is a pilot now and looks like a model so I think we can definitely take credit for some of that. And, of course, the world is so small that Harry Matthews is now going out with Natasia.

‘Primary school, though? Did you not go to primary school in Buckleton?’

James just shakes his head and squints into the low evening sun. ‘They must be nearly here, surely?’

His clenched jaw makes it fairly clear that he has no interest in talking about it any more, and I drop my next planned line of questioning about his Irish granny – I know for a fact his mother’s mother was born in Dublin. Luckily I don’t need a new topic of conversation because there’s an ear-splitting honk and a Ballygobbard Agri-Sales lorry comes into view around the corner. ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ is blaring from its speakers and the crowd goes absolutely wild as the lorry snakes its way up Main Street. The boys are indeed back in town, and I can’t help myself: I jump to my feet and push to the front of the platform, jostling with Devon Dempsey for space, the little shite. The lorry comes to a standstill right in front of the platform, with the six BGB and Knock players and their WAGs on the exposed trailer at the back, egged on by the crowd, jumping up and down and spraying cans of Budweiser at each other. All that’s missing, genuinely, is the trophy.

John is up there among them too, looking proud as punch in his snazzy county zip-up. ‘Put ’Em Under Pressure’ blares out over the speakers. It’s the wrong sport and the wrong decade but nothing gets a crowd going like an Italia ’90 anthem. James looks on in bemusement as the crowd roars along – ‘Olé olé olé olé, olé, óle. We’re all part of Johnny’s army.’ With that, John is shoved to the front of the gang on the lorry and jostled by the players. You’d swear he was the county manager, such is the reverence they show him. I feel a swell of pride for him. His commitment to training with the Rangers was sometimes an issue in the eight years we were together but look how it paid off for him. He helped pick a team that got to an All-Ireland final and even got to put some of his friends on the pitch too. What a moment for him.

Just then, Knock Rangers’ centre forward, Baby Chief Gittons, catches my eye and gives me a little wave. We’re almost level, him on the lorry, me on the platform. Without warning, he bends down and hops off the lorry bed. He runs over to the platform and calls up to me. ‘You should be up here with us!’ His face is flushed with excitement and probably a few pints. He gives James a half-wave. ‘Sorry to interrupt ye but …’ He turns back to me. ‘You should be up here with us, Missus BallyGoBrunch.’ He gestures at his jersey. ‘Hup now.’

Me? On the lorry? Christ, no. I’d never be able to scale it. ‘Ah no, Baby Chief, I couldn’t –’

‘’Mon outta that, Ais. Get up there!’

The lads on the truck behind him catch wind of what he’s at and start shouting my name and waving me on. I look down at Baby Chief’s face again and, with the gin inside me and the excitement of the occasion, I turn to James and pull an ‘I’m sorry’ face, and he just points me towards the platform steps and says, ‘Have fun.’ I jog down the steps, past Tessie Daly, and duck under the cordon along the side of Main Street just as she clocks me.

‘Security breach!’ she roars to nobody in particular, and then calls after me, ‘Don’t forget about the loaf tins.’

Baby Chief has already clambered back up onto the lorry, and he instructs me to put my foot on the back tyre so he and fellow Rangers player Titch Maguire can haul me up. Not my most graceful moment, and I wonder just how many people on the viewing platform catch a glimpse of my knickers. John helps me to my feet and we stand awkwardly together for a second until he turns around and pulls Megan through the gaggle on the lorry towards him. She lifts her hand shyly at me and I mouth ‘Hiya’ back and the lorry lurches forward and I catch sight of James just before he moves out of view. Titch hands me a plastic cup of something and roars, ‘Wave!’ And so I wave.

Half an hour and a pint and a half of fizzy wine later my ears are ringing as I wait my turn to exit the back of the lorry, arms sore from waving and feeling like maybe I played in Croke Park yesterday. A hand comes up to help me down and it’s John’s. I take it and give him a warm smile. ‘That was some craic. Thanks a million.’

‘Ah, thank you, Aisling. We couldn’t have done any of it without you, sure.’

And he’s reaching up again and manoeuvring me out of the way and Megan hops down behind me. He slings an arm around her shoulders and she gives a wave and they head towards Maguire’s.

I reach into my bag and pull out my phone, suddenly exhausted by the emotions of the day, the hectic past few weeks at BallyGoBrunch, and the late nights at James’s. There’s a text from him to say he’s gone home and to join him if I fancy it. There’s a photo from Majella from inside Maguire’s. Pablo’s wearing a sombrero in the county colours and Sharon is dancing on a chair. I debate following John and Megan in. I debate going to James’s. But, really, I just want a bit of peace and quiet so I go home, to my own single bed.