It’s cold in the flat. So cold that Declan really doesn’t want to get out of bed, even though his bladder is fit to burst. Through bleary, bloodshot eyes he looks at his phone to see what time it is. The darkness in the room, coupled with the time of year, means it could be any time at all in the day. He hopes it’s close to afternoon – that he has slept away a large portion of the day.
His head hurts. Self-inflicted. Too much to drink last night, followed by a few joints. He’d felt good last night, for a while. But now the self-hate has come crashing in, and as he finally gives in to the desperate need to pee and climbs out of his warm bed into the icy coolness of his bedroom, he shudders.
He’ll ask his ma to sub him some money for the electric. Again. At least he can put a heater on, for an hour. Take the chill off.
His bladder emptied, he walks to his kitchen – around which lies the detritus of the night before – and opens the cupboard, looking for something to eat. There isn’t much to whet his appetite and he wonders if he should go up and see his ma early. Try to cadge a Sunday dinner off her. There’s not a Sunday goes by that she doesn’t have a roast dinner of some description on the go and she always cooks extra. Besides, he really does need to try to get some money to top up the electricity before the power goes off altogether and he can’t even charge his phone.
If he gets to his ma’s early enough, while his da is still at Mass, he might be able to score a bacon sandwich for breakfast too. If he’s lucky he’ll get to eat it without his da chiming in about how spoiled he is and how he needs to get his life together.
It takes too much of his mental energy to challenge his da, to tell him he’s one to talk. And he’s not in the mood for a row.
Declan throws some clothes into a bag, along with his razor and deodorant. Timing it properly, he’ll be able to make use of her hot water while he’s there to have a long soak in the bath. It will be much more enjoyable than standing under the pathetic trickle of never-quite-hot-enough water that passes for a shower in his flat.
He feels better for it. For getting up and getting out of the house. It would be pushing his luck, he surmises, if he showed up with a bag of washing, too. Although his ma would do it for him. She never says no. She might complain, roll her eyes, but secretly, he thinks she’s delighted to help out. She’s guarded with her public displays of affection, aware that she will be accused of being ‘too soft’ on him, but she has other ways to show her love.
She takes care of him, still. She’ll lend him the money for the electricity, which she never wants back. She’ll also drop a few items into a bag for him to take home and fill his cupboards. He used to feel a bit ashamed when she did that – that he wasn’t able to provide fully for his own needs – but now he sees it for what it is.
It’s love.
Or that’s what he tells himself.
His mood dips, however, when he turns into his street and sees Niall’s car – a shiny 4x4 with all the latest auto gadgetry – parked outside. Niall, the only person in the world who can make him feel worse about his life than his da can. He’s tempted to turn and go back home, but he’s come this far now and his stomach is grumbling, anxious to be fed. The lure of a warm bath is also too strong to ignore, especially walking in the icy-cold rain with the wind blowing a gale. He’ll offer up his time with Niall for the holy souls, he thinks – not sure if he believes that souls exist, holy or otherwise, or if they go anywhere after a person dies.
An image of Kelly Doherty, on the banks of the reservoir, comes back into his mind. Her eyes wide and glassy when they turned her over. Her mouth open just a little. Mud and blood. Filthy water trickling out between her once pale pink lips. They weren’t pink any more. She was translucent. Except for the places where decomposition had already begun.
He pushes the image from his head. Wishes there was a way he could push it from his mind permanently. This bloody anniversary is stirring up too much. He pauses at the end of his mother’s garden path and wonders does Niall think about it much. Does it keep him awake at nights? Does he have to self-medicate to try to forget? Probably not. He’s too happy. Too successful for that. He self-medicates maybe with his designer clothes and his fancy car.
The sight of smoke curling from the chimney and the promise of a warm fire are what finally persuade him not to turn round, after all. He doesn’t have to talk to Niall. Not much, anyway.
Washed and shaved. In clean clothes that his mother pressed for him before slipping a twenty-pound note in the back pocket of his jeans. Declan is sitting in the same seat at the kitchen table that he sat at as a child. Niall is directly opposite him, as it always was. His parents fill the remaining two chairs, and Snoopy, his mother’s beloved mutt, is asleep at his feet.
The table is laden with a good Sunday dinner with all the trimmings. Roast chicken, mashed potato, roasties, carrots and broccoli. Gravy so thick you could stand a spoon up in it is sitting in a measuring jug. There’s no need for a gravy boat here. The jug does the job. A tall glass of cold milk sits in front of Declan and it’s all he can do not to shovel the food into him like a savage. He has long passed ‘hungry’ and moved on to ravenous, despite the bacon sandwich he devoured not two hours before.
He feels the gentle pat of his mother’s hand on his, a signal that he can start eating.
‘No potatoes for me,’ Niall says. ‘I’m shredding at the moment, so chicken and veg will be fine. I’ll avoid the gravy, too.’
‘Christ, Niall. That’s no dinner at all. You need more than that!’ Declan hears his ma proclaim.
He himself has two reactions. The first that it means there is more food for him and that’s no bad thing, and the second that his brother really has become a self-important prick recently. ‘Shredding.’ For fuck’s sake. Why? To compete in the primary school teachers’ Olympics? He bites back a smile at his own joke, spears an especially crunchy-looking roast potato on his fork and takes it for a swim around the gravy on his plate before eating it in one bite.
‘I’m not getting any younger, Ma,’ Niall says. ‘I’m just trying to look after myself. No one ever died from going easy on the spuds now, did they?’
‘Apart from all those people in the Potato Famine,’ Declan quips.
His brother glares at him. Niall Heaney doesn’t like being bested by anyone. Declan allows himself to enjoy the warm feeling of smugness at making his brother look stupid.
He ignores his da, who straightens in his chair. Declan knows this body language well. ‘No messing about at the table allowed.’ It was drummed into them from an early age. He decides not to make any more jokes.
‘How’s the hunt for work going?’ Niall asks him, knowing full well that Declan hasn’t been able to secure any work, despite his efforts.
Admittedly his efforts could be better, but there are days he can barely lift his head, never mind fill in some stupid application form that won’t even secure him an interview in the first place. His criminal record – petty crimes: drunk and disorderly, breaking and entering business premises – hasn’t endeared him to prospective employers.
‘Well, you know. Irons in the fire and all that,’ he says.
‘I’d think those irons would be well heated by now,’ Niall says, eyeballing him.
When, Declan wonders, did they drift apart? They were as thick as thieves as children – impossible to tell apart – and now he barely recognises his brother when he looks at him. He’s certainly nothing like the reflection Declan sees in his own mirror. And it’s not just because of his brother’s shiny suit and the moisturised skin. It’s the look in his eyes.
Contentment? No, he doesn’t think it’s that. Coldness, maybe? There is a bitter streak in his brother, buried below the surface but there all the same. Maybe it’s just smugness, he thinks. Niall Heaney certainly thinks he is better than the family he left behind in Derry. That much is obvious.
‘Here, Declan. I was talking to Paddy up at the shops and he told me he saw you talking to that Ingrid Devlin girl the other day,’ his ma says.
He notices how Niall’s eyes widen just a little.
‘What’s the great Ms Devlin doing slumming it back in Creggan?’ Niall asks. ‘Surely she didn’t come here just to see you?’
‘Niall, don’t be such a brat to your brother,’ his ma chimes in, and Declan feels all of fourteen years old again.
‘She was working, as it happens,’ he says. ‘What with Kelly Doherty’s anniversary coming up and Jamesy making noises about appealing his conviction.’
A silence descends on the room. Knives and forks stop clattering against plates. His da puts his cutlery down altogether, sips from his glass of milk before putting it down, a little too heavily, on the table. The room is silent now, apart from the ticking of the kitchen clock.
‘I don’t see the need to be dredging any of that horrible business back up again,’ his ma says, lifting the tea towel she had draped over her knee as a makeshift napkin and folding it before setting it on the table and getting up, her dinner barely touched.
‘You know, he’s saying he’s innocent,’ Declan said. ‘That he was set up. He has campaigners and all.’
‘Jesus, Mary and Saint Joseph,’ his da says. ‘He must have a death wish. Was it not proven in court? Is that not enough for him? He’d be best to keep his mouth shut.’
The volume of Declan’s da’s voice has increased just a fraction with every word. Declan notices the muscles tense in his da’s jawline.
‘Shame on him – putting that poor girl’s family through all this again. Have they not suffered enough?’ his ma says, her voice soft.
But she’s agitated. He can see that.
She gets up and walks to the sink to run herself a glass of water from the tap. She holds the glass to her forehead as if trying to cool herself down.
‘But if he didn’t do it?’ Declan says.
Just as his ma gives him a warning glance, Declan hears the thump of a fist on the table, feels the vibration of the impact, sees the plates and cutlery shift as if they are startled, too.
‘For Christ’s sake, Declan, the dogs on the street know he did it. He didn’t get put away for nothing,’ his da says.
Niall says nothing. Just lifts his glass of milk and takes a long drink from it.
‘I hope you’re not going to talk to her again,’ his ma says. ‘Don’t be stirring things up. There are a lot of painful memories there, son.’
‘Really?’ he asks, unable to keep the sarcastic tone from his voice. ‘Of everyone, I think I might be aware of that.’
‘Don’t you dare speak to your mother like that!’ his da barks. ‘Sauntering in here like the layabout you are, taking whatever your mother will give you – and don’t think I don’t notice. Because I do. I’m not stupid. And then talking back to her. You’ve a cheek, Declan.’
‘Frankie,’ his ma urges. ‘Don’t be getting upset. Your blood pressure.’
‘Then tell this buck eejit here he hasn’t the first notion. Talking to Ingrid bloody Devlin! She’d sell her granny for a good story. And who is it she works for again? The Chronicle, is it? That Ryan Murray is editor there … I thought he’d more sense. Stupid bastard.’
Declan watches as his ma rests her hand on his da’s shoulder. His heart is in his mouth because he knows this could go one of two ways. The soft touch of her hand will calm his father into submission, or it will enrage him further. He doesn’t want to feel responsible for what might happen.
‘Message heard,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t on purpose, you know. We just bumped into each other. It’s not like I can tell her anything, anyway. Not anything new.’
His father settles down, appeased by his response. Even if he hasn’t exactly told the truth. Yes, their meeting was accidental, but he does know things about that night, things he hasn’t dared to speak to anyone about. Not even Niall.
But he won’t antagonise things further. He’ll just finish his dinner and go home. He already has twenty pounds from his mother stashed in his pocket, thankfully. He doesn’t need to ask her now.
His father declares he has lost his appetite. Stands up and leaves his plate on the table for someone else to tidy away.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ he says, grabbing his coat.
They all want to ask him if he means he’s going to the pub. Declan hopes not. It’s been years since his da was drunk, but memories of those days have never left him.
‘I wonder if she wants to speak to me,’ Niall says eventually as the three remaining members of the Heaney family pick at their plates.
Their dinner is cold now. Nowhere near as appetising as it was.
Declan says nothing. He doesn’t want his brother anywhere near Ingrid. He has already decided that he isn’t going to tell Niall that he has her number saved in his phone, or that she did actually mention wanting to talk to him. He doesn’t lie, just gives a non-committal half nod and says no more.
‘I always liked her,’ Niall says, a wolfish look on his face.
Declan tries to remember when he started hating his brother.