Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

‘What if I go home? Back to my mam and dad’s. It’s in the middle of nowhere, Ryan. No one’ll ever see me again. I won’t ever come to the city, I swear it!’

‘Only now you’re thinking of going home, girl? You couldn’t go home before you fucked my life up, no? Fuck you. You’re going. You’re gone.’

Georgie crumples.

‘You’re not saving me, Ryan. You’re killing me.’

‘I’m counting on it,’ he says. ‘And if you come back here, fucking ever, ever Georgie, you’ll find me a lot less cowardly about putting one in your brain. And your daughter’s. And your mam and dad in Millstreet. D’you hear me?’

She holds a hand over her mouth and the tears fall onto it and over her knuckles and slide onto the brown cloth over her wrist.

‘I will do it,’ he says. ‘The only thing wrong with me can be fixed by growing up a bit. You’re just damn lucky you caught me when I was too stupid to pull the trigger. You’re just damn lucky Jimmy Phelan got me to do the job.’

‘I’m not lucky,’ she cries. ‘This isn’t fair—’

‘I know it’s not fair, girl. But that’s the way of things in this rotten city. I barely know what this fuck-up is about, but it’s going to take someone. And it’s gonna have to be you.’

Ryan has to contact his father afterwards for Jimmy Phelan’s number, and he can only do so via text; he realises, up in his old estate, parked thirty feet from his old driveway, that he doesn’t want to talk to Tony.

When the reply comes through he puts his hand back on the key in the ignition and freezes.

He’s not sure why he didn’t notice it — perhaps because he’s not been around enough for the alternative to become the norm — but there are lights on in Tara Duane’s house, and Tara hasn’t been there in ages. She took off the Christmas before last. Someone said she was seeing this Indian guy so she probably ran off to become a Hindu. Tara was flighty that way, and she’s done shit like that before, so even her daughter Linda can’t call bullshit on the theory.

For a moment he thinks: She’s back .

After a while the facts begin to settle. The car in the driveway isn’t Tara’s. There are no curtains or blinds up in the front room, and he can see people, none of whom he recognises, walking past the window. He realises that someone’s moving in.

It’s been months since Joseph’s friend Izzy recommended he seek answers from Tara.

He’s conducted the conversation in his head a dozen times but it’s made a poor substitute. In fairness, he hasn’t cheated on Karine since that neon-lit conversation in the living woods, so it hasn’t escaped him that Izzy was right. He’s been trying to own it, trying hard, reclassifying it as an indulgent mistake made by a new man driven temporarily mad with the possibilities.

He tells himself, sitting in his car down from his father’s house with worse deeds now to his name, that what happened in Tara Duane’s house five years ago doesn’t matter, not in the grand, fucking dark scheme of things.

He imagines it now again anyway, seeing as she’s never coming back.

In her sitting room she hands him a mug of tea and sits there with her vacant smile as he tells her Hey, I fucked you. I did it. I wanted to. That’s what happened, OK?

It kills him, though. He knows it shouldn’t but he feels it like a kick to the gut now that he realises she’s gone and his chance for making sense of it’s gone with her.

I just want her to confirm it , he thinks; his lips move with it. Tell me I went for it, that I wanted it, let me have this one, oh God, please, give me this one .

He starts the car. He has Jimmy Phelan to lie to yet.

Georgie finds her feet. She doesn’t know how. It just kind of happens.

She just kind of happens now. From one end of the street to the next. She exists.

London is a massive place and she’s frequently lost, and even thinking of it as a collection of towns all jumbled together doesn’t help. She is lucky, in that she’s happened upon almost straight away by an Irish couple who offer to help her find where she’s going. Of course she has no destination. She tells them, tearing up, that she had to leave Cork because of an abusive boyfriend. She tells the Irish couple that she has friends in London but she hasn’t seen them in years and claims that the address she has for them is out of date, oh, what is she to do? They find her a guesthouse. She thinks that’s about it but the next day the woman from the couple comes to the guesthouse to see her. She gives her the name of a friend in Islington who’s got a downstairs flat to rent. It turns out to be no great shakes but no one pays any attention, least of all Georgie. Her desperation is a potent scent and though she never sees the Irish do-gooders again, just that stroke of luck is enough.

She finds an agency. It’s not difficult; her ground-floor flat is surrounded by the domiciles of shuffling addicts and weird bachelors, and they know where the action is. She meets a bright-eyed Russian woman in a cafe on Holloway Road. She tells her she’s older than is usually asked for, unless she goes into specialised stuff. More lucrative, she says. Georgie shakes her head. Whoring isn’t her calling, for fuck’s sake. The woman gives her the number of another agency, which provides much cheaper lays.

She has found a place in which to exist, outside of reality, as a glitch in someone else’s world.

She thinks about exacting her revenge, but it’s too soon, and she’s not sure where to direct it. Concocting plans around Jimmy Phelan strikes her as futile, like marching on Heaven and demanding God’s resignation.

She thinks about Ryan, and one day making him see what he did to her.

One day , she thinks, God willing .

She might die in the meantime. She hasn’t made up her mind yet.

While she’s waiting she posts the scapular back to whatever’s left standing on Bachelor’s Quay. She addresses the envelope to Robbie O’Donovan.

Young Ryan is out on the back wall. Tara spots him from her kitchen window. It’s a quarter to eleven and it’s a Sunday night. He really shouldn’t be there at this hour. She figures he’s been driven out again. She determines to offer her sympathies. No harm; Melinda’s away. Her dad has taken her to Dublin for a few days, to see the sights. Tara would like to be lonely without her, but she’s glad of the peace and quiet. Melinda is very demanding.

Boys are demanding too. Ryan, like all boys, is usually cheeky and funny but tonight he’s quiet as a mouse. There’s a nasty bruise around his left eye. ‘Oh, darling,’ Tara says. She sits beside him on the wall and presses up against him; he’s shivering. No one in their right mind would sit out in the cold without good reason. The night is damp to its very breath. Ryan has problems with his father. Tara knows because she hears the boor’s convulsions. There’s no privacy on this terrace. Quite rightly. If there was then the poor boy would have to suffer alone.

‘Come inside,’ she coaxes, ‘and we’ll have a lovely cup of tea.’

At first he resists because he doesn’t want to trouble her. She assures him that she wants to look after him. She rests a friendly hand on his knee and when he doesn’t flinch she skims gently up to his thigh and squeezes. ‘You don’t have to go through this alone,’ she says.

If he was any other boy on this terrace she wouldn’t be so insistent because some of them are only brutes in the making. They follow her down the street and whoop obscenities. They make loud remarks on the bus. Ryan is different. He has grown up very fast, the one positive from his father’s cruelty. He has wrested some independence by doing a little bit of dealing to his friends. It’s naughty, but sometimes Tara enjoys smoking with him. He’s getting taller and broader by the day. He’s almost sixteen.