Tom Breen is usually the man to rely on to get from Cahirciveen to home. He’s the local taxi but he plays a lot of golf and isn’t always helpful when he answers the phone from the fourth hole on Kinsale and asks if you can wait a few hours. And he’s slow. As much as Pops’ driving terrorises me, Tom Breen’s driving makes me feel murderous.
I survey the train station car park. Pops isn’t here.
I ring him.
Allegra my love, he says, I’m at the house, I couldn’t drive to you.
Are you okay, I ask.
I’m fine, but the car is not.
I look around the car park and wonder what my options are. Buses to Cahirciveen don’t run on a Saturday and even if they did, I’d have to call Tom Breen and oh God, I think I’d walk home faster. And when did this car trouble happen. He could have told me earlier. It would have taken him an hour to get here, he should have left the house an hour ago. Why didn’t he call or text, why am I finding out now by ringing him.
I fight my irritation while weaving through the cars and trying to figure out how to get out of Killarney.
But don’t you be worrying, he says, I’ve arranged a lift for you.
My stomach drops. I see a familiar car enter the car park and hope to God it’s not here for me. Tom Breen’s car.
Pops, you didn’t call Tom Breen, did you.
It’s not Tom, he says.
Good, he must be here for someone else I think with relief, but then wonder who Pops has arranged to meet me. My uncle Mossie perhaps, or my aunt Pauline, though she’d be busy with her B&B and wouldn’t have time to collect me. She won’t be happy at a last-minute request such as this, much as she loves me.
Tom’s car is creeping through the car park. I turn away and walk in the other direction just in case he accosts me and insists I share with someone else. It drives slowly towards me and crawls after me like a stalker.
Tom wasn’t available, Pops says, at such short notice, he was out golfing but he said he’d send his son Jamie.
His son Jamie, as if I’ve never heard of Jamie in my life. Jamie who was my boyfriend for three years. On my list of five. I just wrote it on the train, I can’t deny it. But he was the one I wasn’t looking forward to seeing quite so much.
Jamie. Fuck.
I stop walking and the car stops. I look in, Jamie looks back at me. Neither of us smile. I left Valentia Island behind, I left Jamie behind. Not on good terms. And now I’ll be stuck in a car for an hour and twenty minutes with him.
He gets out of the car and opens the boot for my luggage but I tell him I’d prefer to keep it with me and he slams it closed and gets back into the car. I take a deep breath and briefly wonder if I have any other options, but I know I don’t, and avoiding this could make things even worse, so I sit inside, in the back, behind the passenger seat, which feels odd as he and I would always sit side by side.
I hope you drive faster than your dad, I joke. We all know his dad crawls, we both laughed about it, it drove Jamie insane. But maybe I forget to add warmth to my voice and he doesn’t realise it was supposed to be playful. Or he does and he doesn’t want to pretend everything’s okay when it’s not, because he looks at me in the mirror and says, I hope you’re not a perv like your dad.
He locks the door, turns the radio up loud and drives.
Faster than his dad.
Eleven
Your dad is a perv.
I’d heard it before. When I was in secondary school. I must have been twelve years old.
She came out with it one day, Katie Sullivan, after I’d tackled her in camogie training and then went on to score. She’d always been a bad sport, hot-tempered and vicious. Mostly it came out in kicks, scratches, pulls and even a bite. Not me. Opposing teams usually. I wasn’t expecting her to say it. I laughed at first. It seemed like such an odd, random insult to choose and her anger was funny. Flared nostrils, red face, a vein down the centre of her forehead, cartoon character angry. She had issues. This is the same girl who wrote hate mail to her mam for cheating on her dad. I heard a rumour she’d flirted dangerously with her mam’s new boyfriend and then accused him of coming on to her. She was twisted. Made of anger.
My image of a pervert didn’t match up to my Pops. Some dirty-haired old greaseball in a soiled trench coat flashing people in parks. That’s what made the accusation so funny. But nobody else laughed. I remember that. That was almost worse. They didn’t know that she was just making it up to embarrass me, to hurt me in the same way as me tackling her, and winning, had made her feel.