Look what happened last time. Yeah, quite.
Maybe it was me who owed Aidan my life. If it had been my number on Allie’s speed dial, it might have been me jerking on the ground in a puddle of my own blood.
I think that had occurred to Orla, too. This made it all the more amazing that one year on I was sitting in the musty darkness of the local cinema, my forearm warm against hers where we’d come to some unspoken agreement about personal space after a little awkward elbowing. The film might have been tedious or it might not; I wouldn’t know, because I’d spent the first half-hour watching Orla’s face out of the corner of my eye. I liked seeing the blue shadows move across her skin, liked seeing her muscles tighten into tiny smiles and frowns; I even liked watching them settle into rigid boredom. I liked the way her fingers slid popcorn in her mouth, liked watching her lips part a little as she chewed.
‘Good show?’ she murmured after a bit.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
The corner of her mouth twitched up into a knowing smile and she nudged the carton of popcorn in my direction.
‘No thanks.’ I nudged it back and it tipped and tumbled to the ground, spilling popcorn round her feet like a shower of dull gold. Chewing her last piece, she slanted her eyes at me.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
Her face flickered with the shadows of the screen as she watched me, her mouth curving in a broad smile. ‘Nice one.’
Yeah, well, it had got the stupid popcorn out of the way. Leaning down half-heartedly, I scrabbled for the bits that weren’t in contact with the grubby floor. Nobody had been allowed to smoke in here for years, so how come the floor still smelt like an unwashed ashtray?
‘Forget it,’ she murmured. ‘I’m not eating that.’
In front of us a lady shifted in her seat and cleared her throat. It silenced me, because for a moment there I’d forgotten we were in a public place.
Dropping a few retrieved nuggets of popcorn back to the floor, I uncurled, stretched lazily and rather obviously, and laid my arm across Orla’s shoulders. I tensed my jaw for a slap, and my balls shrank a bit in expectation.
She didn’t hit them or me. Her body sagged against mine, and I gave a silent sigh of relief while my heart bounced against my lungs. It made it hard to breathe but I managed, even though her hand now lay lightly against my inner thigh.
My breathing sounded kind of squeaky, so I tried not to think about where Orla’s hand was, and watched the screen instead. I wondered why those people there were doing that, and what they were talking about, and why they were now running like the clappers, and why I hadn’t paid attention for the first half-hour.
No, I knew that bit.
‘Who’s that?’ I hissed at Orla, nodding at the face now filling the screen.
She gave me a disbelieving look. ‘Matt Damon.’
‘No, I mean who is he?’
‘Haven’t you watched this at all?’
I gave her my best sheepish smile, and she laughed through her nose. I liked the way that made her whole face crinkle up.
The woman in front heaved her shoulders and gave a loud exasperated sigh. I was looking at a neat woollen jacket collar, a tightly-sprayed hairdo and a row of pearls. I wondered if I could throttle her with the pearls. I made practice motions with my hands, twisting my face into a demented scowl, and got an elbow in the ribs from Orla.
‘Nick!’ she whispered, and frowned at me.
‘Well, I mean …’
The elegant dame’s tolerance must have been strained beyond bearing, because she turned in her seat and eyed me like a professional hitman. She had pearls in her ears, too. She looked like the Queen or something.
‘Excuse me.’ Her voice rang out, clear and genteel. ‘But I’d be awfully grateful if you two would shut the feck up.’
Except she didn’t say ‘feck’.
‘Sorry!’ The word came out of Orla’s throat all strangled. Grabbing my hand, she hauled me out of my seat. It banged up on its spring, and our feet crunched on popcorn, and I was bashing my thighs on every seat in the row as she tugged me along. I felt terribly guilty about the noise now but at least we were leaving. Yep, we obviously were. Orla dragged me out into the foyer like some rampaging cavewoman; she’d have had me by the hair if I’d had enough of it. I was quite enjoying being manhandled.
In the foyer she shoved me against the Coke machine. ‘I am never,’ she snarled, ‘never going to the movies with you ever again.’
‘Oh,’ I said lamely.
‘I hate people that talk over films.’
She must have been really mad at me because her body was pressed against mine. It was turning my bones to porridge and at the same time it was all that was propping me up. I smiled at her. I couldn’t help it.
‘I like you, though,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘Buy me a coffee.’
It wasn’t a request, it was an order. I didn’t take orders. ‘You can kiss my …’
Her mouth closed on my mouth and I forgot what I was going to say. I never knew I liked popcorn so much. I took her face in my hands and held it still so that I could taste her better. Salted popcorn, the best kind. Salted popcorn and lipgloss.
The woman in the ticket kiosk cleared her throat, but I didn’t want to take my tongue out of Orla’s mouth where it was getting acquainted with hers. I didn’t want to let go of her head, because my thumbs were stroking the contours and hollows of her ears and I hadn’t finished yet; there was a little fold in the skin at the top of each ear and it was fascinating. Ticket Woman cleared her throat more violently and threw us a glare. I drew away from Orla and sighed. The sigh came out in a rush because it was the first time I’d breathed for a while.
‘You given up the fags?’ I asked.
‘Trying.’
‘Nice,’ I said, licking my lips.
Orla cast a dagger glare at Ticket Woman. ‘Throat-clearing is passive-aggressive behaviour. I liked the Pearly Queen a lot better.’
I nodded, smiling stupidly at her. I don’t think I’ve ever done as much smiling-like-an-idiot in my life, and my face was aching with the unaccustomed exercise.
‘We’re behaving antisocially,’ she added loudly. ‘We’d better go deal some drugs and break some windows.’
‘OK,’ I said. By this point I thought I should take a bit of initiative instead of getting shoved around like a happy punchbag. Gripping Orla’s hand, I led her out into a world that felt different, the way the world always does when you come out of the cinema after you’ve watched a good film. I never realised before that you get the effect even if you’ve hardly watched the film and you’ve run out before you get thrown out.
Or maybe, tonight, it was nothing to do with the film.
The sky was darkening to denim blue, the horizon dip-dyed a ghostly yellow where you could see it between shops and through closes. It was still warm; August was gone but it was shaping up to be one of those amazing, late-developing September summers.
‘I could still get you a coffee,’ I said hopefully.
‘Nah.’ She turned to me with a look that made my heart plummet into my intestines. ‘I’d better go home.’
My lungs wouldn’t work, my heart being lost in my guts and all. ‘What d’you mean? Why? I thought we had all night?’
‘Hardly,’ she said with a roll of her eyes, but she must have seen the stricken look on my face because she said, ‘Oh, give us a break. I mean, I just like to get home early. I’m going to my dad’s at the weekend and Mum starts to panic, ’cause she hates having me out of her sight and everything. So I like to get home earlier the last few days. Before I go to Dad’s, you know?’
‘I thought I was going to see you at the weekend.’
‘Well, you aren’t.’
Shrugging, I let her go and stuffed my hands in my pockets. ‘Fine.’
‘Stop playing with yourself.’ She pulled out my hand again and used it to tug me into a shop doorway. With a sinking sense of doom I saw we were opposite her bus stop. ‘Look, I’m not making this up. I’ll see you at school and I’ll see you the week after.’ She hesitated, not quite looking at me. ‘If that’s OK.’
Orla Mahon was asking me if it was OK. Hah! My heart surged up from my looping intestines and floated free. I ought to discuss my bizarre physiology with my Biology teacher.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, that’d be fine.’ I was so relieved I remembered I wasn’t the only human being in the world. ‘How’s your dad?’
‘Fine. Sort of.’ She put her arms around my neck and pressed her face against my skin. I felt her inhaling the smell of it, which made me very happy. Her warm breath sighed out against my neck. ‘A year’s such a long time but it isn’t. There’s a lot can happen in a year and you turn round and it’s gone.’
I shivered. Years weren’t supposed to spin by like that. I hated how my mind couldn’t think of anything any more without thinking how soon I’d be dead and how fast it was all going to be over. I was seventeen, for God’s sake. ‘Why did he leave?’ I blurted.
‘Dad? ’Cause he had to.’ She shrugged. ‘Him and Mum couldn’t live together any more. Aidan kept getting in the way. I think it started out that they kept going over all the things they could have done different so it wouldn’t have happened. And then that changed a bit, so they were each wondering what the other could have done different. And I don’t think they could get past that. I mean, once you thought it you wouldn’t. Would you?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘And Mum didn’t go to the trial. That didn’t help. Especially with the way it went and all.’ Pushing me away she tottered, folded her arms, looked at her watch, searched the road for her bus. ‘I keep thinking all those things you always hear people say. You know? How he’s never going to get married and he’s never going to graduate and that. And I’m never going to have nieces and nephews and stuff. And my kids aren’t going to have an uncle.’ She stood on tiptoe and creased her eyes as if that would help her see the bus sooner. ‘All those banal things.’
‘It’s only banal ’cause that’s how it’s meant to be,’ I said. ‘It’s meant to be how things are. People are meant to do those things. And most people do and most people are good. Like, he was a good person.’ A furious blush burned my cheekbones as Orla turned to examine my face.
‘People always say that too, don’t they?’ she said. ‘That’s banal as well. But he was. He was a good person.’
I looked up for her bus. Not that I wanted it to come.
‘I do want to see you again.’ Unfolding her arms she rested them on my shoulders. Her fingertips touched the back of my skull, a light whisper of a touch.
‘OK,’ I said. I took her silver forelock between my thumb and forefinger and stroked it, because I’d been dying to do that all night.
She smiled and kissed me again. ‘Here’s my bus,’ she said.