Erin Kaye - Always You

To my big brother, Jim

Cover

Title page ERIN KAYE Always You

Dedication To my big brother, Jim

Chapter 1 1992

Chapter 2 2012

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Backads

About the Author

Also by Erin Kaye

Copyright

About the Publisher

‘So, have you told your father about us yet?’ Cahal lay on his back, head propped up by two pillows, staring at a patch of green mould on the ceiling. A chipped saucer, full of ash, balanced precariously on his athletic chest.

‘Have you told yours?’ said Sarah, tracing her finger around the whorl of thick, black hair that surrounded his left nipple. The room smelt of cigarette smoke, stale beer and sex – the smell of sin. Golden February sunshine filtered through the thin floral curtains and ‘Goodnight Girl’ by Wet Wet Wet played quietly on the radio. The laughter of high school kids on their lunch break floated up from the street below.

‘Yep.’ He brought the stub of a roll-up to his lips, pinched between nicotine-yellow finger and thumb. His chest rose as he inhaled, stilled, then deflated slowly as a plume of grey smoke escaped from the corner of his mouth.

Sarah propped herself up on her elbow, and pulled the slightly musty duvet around her naked, shivering shoulders. She tucked a lock of long, blonde hair behind her ear. ‘What did they say?’

He stubbed the cigarette out on the saucer with a faint fizzing sound and carefully placed the saucer atop the bedside table. ‘Not much.’

‘Oh,’ she said, disappointed, and sank back down on the bed again.

He rolled onto his side and the well-defined muscles beneath his pale skin flexed. ‘Don’t take it personally. They aren’t that interested in anything I do.’ But though he smiled, his eyes, the same blue-green colour of the sea in Portstewart bay outside, were sad.

Sarah frowned. ‘Not like my Dad. He rang the flat the other day, you know, asking me what mark I got in that psychology paper. He’s always ringing me. Or if not him, Aunt Vi. I wish we didn’t have that phone. You manage perfectly well here without one. He insists that I come home every weekend. You’d think I was twelve, not a grown adult.’

He cocked his head in reply and was quiet for a few moments. Sarah waited, used to the way he always thought before he spoke, a trait that lent everything he said an air of authority. ‘I wouldn’t knock it. At least he cares about you.’

‘He cares too much,’ grumbled Sarah. ‘He didn’t want me to leave Ballyfergus. He wanted me to go to Queen’s in Belfast and live at home.’

A pause. ‘So why didn’t you?’

‘I had to get away. Living in that house was suffocating. I had to attend church twice on a Sunday and my father always had to know exactly where I was, and who I was with. My aunt was even worse. And if I was ever late, oh, what a carry-on. You’d have thought Jack the Ripper was on the loose.’

He grinned lopsidedly, a dimple appearing in his left cheek, and revealed the crooked tooth in his lower left jaw that would’ve been an imperfection in anyone else. He placed a hand, rough and hot, on her hip. ‘So you escaped?’

‘Something like that.’

The smile faded from his face. ‘I did too.’

‘What were you escaping from?’

He stared at the wall for a few moments and said at last, ‘My family have lived in Ballyfergus and worked on the docks for three generations. I’m not knocking the town, or them, but I wanted something more out of life. It wouldn’t have been possible before for people like me to go to university but the grant system’s changed all that. So long as I work every holiday and keep my job in The Anchor bar, I should be all right.’ He smiled and looked at Sarah. ‘You should’ve seen my Ma and Da’s faces when I told them I was going to university.’

‘They must’ve been pleased.’

‘They were astonished. No one in my family has ever got past O levels, Sarah, never mind gone on to uni.’

Sarah stared at him thoughtfully. ‘There’s far more to you than meets the eye, Cahal Mulvenna.’

‘You think so?’ he laughed, his dark eyes twinkling.

She knitted her eyebrows together. ‘You give the impression of being one of the lads. You act like all you want to do is get pissed and have a good time.’

He grinned. ‘Well I do want to have a good time. You’re only young once. And sure there’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘But you’re not the pisshead you pretend to be. Beneath that exterior, you’re actually quite determined and focused, aren’t you?’

‘This is my chance to make something of my life. I’m not going to screw it up.’ He paused and twirled a lock of her hair around his index finger. ‘You know I’ve never met a girl like you before.’

‘But there have been other girls?’ she teased, looking at him from under her eyelashes. Beneath the covers she found his leg and rubbed his hairy calf with her foot.

‘A few,’ he acknowledged, letting go of her hair and slipping his hand under the covers.

‘Tell me about them.’

‘Ach, now, you don’t want to know that.’ His hand made contact with her ribcage, then moved swiftly down her smooth, boyish hip. ‘You must’ve had your fair share of boyfriends,’ he said, looking up at her questioningly from under long lashes. ‘I bet I’m just one of many.’

She stopped rubbing his leg and stared at him. Didn’t he realise what he meant to her? She’d dated a few boys, but she’d never loved any of them. ‘I’ve had boyfriends,’ she said, looking at his chest, and feeling her face colour. Her voice dropped. ‘But I never slept with any of them.’

His hand stilled and his voice softened. ‘What?’

She raised her eyes to meet his. ‘I never loved any of them, Cahal. Not the way I love you.’

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘You never told me.’

‘You never asked.’

He gathered her to him in his hard arms, and pressed his lips to her temple. Coarse dark stubble rasped against her face with painful, exquisite discomfort. ‘Sarah, Sarah, Sarah,’ he intoned like a prayer, his voice breaking up like static on the radio. ‘I love you too.’

Sarah’s heart swelled with happiness and with the sense of power and protection that his love instilled in her. Every breath was in time with his as if they were one, and in that moment her world contracted. Everything she’d ever wanted, everything she would ever want, was in that small square room, with the tired wallpaper, the wardrobe with one door missing, the creeping mould on the ceiling.

‘If you’d loved someone before me,’ he said into her hair after a long silence, ‘I’d be jealous, you know.’

She laughed. ‘How can you be jealous of someone who happened in the past?’