Here is a selection of my own short fiction.
Skinwritten
I bump the trolley along the supermarket aisles with my hips. Every light thud of bone against metal reminds me I’m not like my mother. I fill the trolley with the pale, doughy foods she needs – cakes, bread rolls, pastries. It looks as though I am preparing meals for someone who lives on a diet of white. And then, in the frozen pizza section, I think I see him.
Immediately, the skin on my left arm prickles into his name. If only he would turn and recognise me, I could shake off the years and we would be carried back to that day in college, when he noticed the red marks on my collarbone, and then noticed me. I must have been scratching my neck, as I still do when I’m nervous, and the welts had risen. Dermographism, I explained to him, a tremor in my voice. It means skin writing. Any pressure on my flesh makes the fiery marks appear. He was fascinated. He took my wrist in his hand, and lightly scratched his name, Simon, on the inside of my left arm. It flared there instantly and he smiled at me in a hidden sort of way.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked, taking my other arm.
‘Tabitha,’ I told him. Named after my mother’s favourite childhood cat, but I thought better of mentioning that. Simon wrote my name on my right arm, opposite his. He spelt it wrong, with an ‘a’ where the ‘i’ should have been, but I didn’t care. He had green eyes that made me think he knew everyone’s secrets, and I wanted to look at them forever.
The man in the supermarket vanishes around the corner, but now I’m sure it is Simon. I rattle my trolley to the end of the frozen aisle, and by the time I reach the peas I feel certain he’d been watching me and had turned his head quickly when I looked up. He can’t know how my life turned out. At school I was studious and quietly pretty, the sort who was admired in a hushed way, I imagine. Perhaps he is shy about approaching me now. My eyes rake the queues at the tills, my breath ragged, and I ignore the mobile phone vibrating against my hip. Although I can’t see Simon, I know that I have been given a sign. When I was a little girl, my father told me that although there was no such thing as fate, there were no accidents, either.
The sun sears through a gap in the living room curtains, baking the dust on the television and striping Jeremy Kyle’s face with light. My mother doesn’t seem to mind.
‘These people,’ she tuts, patting her puff of blonde hair carefully, as though feeling for a hairline crack in a piece of china. Trapped in the heavy folds of her own body, my mother can barely stand, let alone go outdoors (and of course nobody visits), yet she sprays her hair compulsively, stashing cans of Elnett around the house like an alcoholic hiding bottles of vodka. I think she is keeping it in the sixties style she had when she first met my father. Just in case. She swivels her gaze at me.
‘Where have you been?’ she asks.
‘I’m sorry I was gone a while,’ I say, hefting the bags through the living room to the kitchen. I don’t offer any explanation, knowing she wants apologies, not reasons. ‘I’ll put a pizza on, ok? I just need to pop upstairs while it’s cooking. And after that I’ll do your feet.’
Of course, I have looked him up on Facebook before. He has one of those profiles that’s set tightly private, and no profile picture (I understand this; it is the sign of a discreet man. I myself have a photo of an obscure 90s film star). But I know it’s him. I am friends, as it were, with several other people from school and college. To them, I must seem one of those enigmatic social networkers, only dropping in occasionally, when my busy, rich life affords me time. I stare at Simon’s blank Facebook profile until my eyes water. I roll up my sleeve, and with a fingernail, trace his name on my inner arm. As the blood bristles to fill the letters, I know what I must do. I click ‘add as a friend’.
I try not to check my email too many times, but I look again at eleven, and go to bed hollow with disappointment. When I wake the next morning, I know immediately that it has rained overnight; the air feels fresh, almost laundered. This seems promising. I creep across the room to my desk, relieved to hear my mother’s snores drifting through the wall. My heart knocks against my chest as the computer shudders into life. I’m amazed to see Simon’s name still in faded letters on my inner arm, as though someone has tried, but, crucially, failed to rub it out. My dermographism symptoms never persist this long, and it seems a further sign, which gives me a blaze of confidence. Perhaps he hasn’t seen my friend request. I type out a message, reminding him of me, the girl with the strange condition, and the day, all those years ago, he wrote on my arm. I whittle it down from six paragraphs to three, and press ‘send’.
I have a difficult morning with my mother. Her cellulitis is back, and the skin on her calves is taut and shiny. She weeps as I dab at it with a flannel, and in the end I call the doctor, then carry a bowl of Angel Delight to her bedroom – extreme sugar is the only measure that will soothe her. Sweetness and infection clot the air, and I open a window. I stand there for a moment, the breeze wisping against my face, and for the first time I notice the houses opposite are in some disrepair, with broken windows and blackened bricks, giving the cul-de-sac a caved-in, toothless look. I wonder why I haven’t registered the street’s decay until now, and I know I don’t belong here. I flip my thoughts to Simon, and picture his green eyes with fever-sharp clarity, as though we are pressed together in a tiny room.
Over the next few days my mother’s demands intensify. The doctor has prescribed antibiotics, which, to her, is a licence to stay in bed and bleat for drinks (although her temperature has dropped and the flush on her legs has softened to a mottle). When I go into her room, she gathers the sheet around her bulk and glares at me with raw, rabbity eyes. I have known for many years that when she is not eating or watching television, she is crying. But I don’t want the squirmish intimacy that acknowledgement of this would bring, so I pretend not to notice.
My mother, however, sees things about me.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asks on Thursday evening, when I come to take her tray. ‘You’re very jumpy this week. You should go to bed earlier. You can’t get away with under-eye bags at your age.’
‘Thanks.’ I can feel her stare burning into my back as I leave the room.
My mother is right – I’m not sleeping. At night, in my childhood bedroom, muffled in heat and darkness, I dream about Simon. I see us walking together, as though I’m watching from above, and as I gaze down, I realise I don’t look like myself. I take some hope from the ‘awaiting friend confirmation’ message that confronts me every time I open his Facebook profile. It may mean he still hasn’t seen my request, and my message. I might not have been rejected. In truth, for most of the week, I have felt more frustrated than disheartened. Some things are meant to be.
But then, on Saturday, a full week after we were reunited in the supermarket, I break. I open another new message and type, making sure my note fizzes with spontaneity and humour (the previous email was, I feel now, a little stodgy and earnest). With a rush of blood that makes me dizzy, I suggest we get together, for old times’ sake. Why not that very evening, in the pub by the common? I imagine the sky streaked with sunset and stars: the end of the day and the start of the night spun together.
This time, I linger by the computer, finding jobs to do in my bedroom but watching the screen. Just before it’s time for my mother’s lunch, a new message flashes in my Facebook inbox. It is, as it had to be, from him. I take in its brevity with a lurch of disappointment. But then I inhale, as though my next breath depends on the content of the email, and read:
Dear Tabitha
Nice to hear from you. I must admit, when I saw your friend request and your first message, I thought you must have the wrong bloke. But when I got your second message I looked again at your photo, and I think you do look familiar. Sorry, but it must be at least 18 years ago. I’m in town tonight, so yes, why not meet this evening for a quick drink? Hell, you only live once. We must have lots of friends in common. See you at 8.
Simon
My heart jolts. Every cell in my flesh swells with anticipation. I realise I am walking around my bedroom in circles, and make myself stop. My mother’s voice cracks along the landing.
‘Tabitha. Tabitha. Be a dear and get me my sandwich, will you?’
I must have taken food through to her, because there is satisfied silence from her room, but I don’t even recall going to the kitchen. I don’t know how I will fill the next six hours and ten minutes. I must I have been scratching my neck. Spiky welts claw across the skin.
At five, I start to prepare myself.
I choose a dress I bought in a post-Christmas sale several years ago (the price tag is still attached to the label). Its sequins rasp at my legs and I realise it was not the best choice for someone with my condition. My flesh prickles a warning, but I ignore it. I retrieve my court shoes, filmed with dust, from the back of the wardrobe. I can already feel the places where the blisters will appear.
I had hoped to leave the house without my mother seeing, but she calls for me as I creep down the stairs, and I have to turn back. I put my head around the door. She’s been eating a yoghurt, and is running her little finger around the pot for the last traces. For some reason, this irritates me.
‘Where are you going?’ she asks, not looking up.
‘Out to meet an old friend.’
Now she squints at me.
‘You’re wearing makeup.’ It sounds like an accusation.
‘A bit.’
She doesn’t respond, and I wilt a little, sensing the weight of the blusher on my cheeks. Rouge, my mother would call it. It’s too late to wipe it off.
‘Well, I won’t be long,’ I say.
Outside on the pavement, my heels feel much higher than they are, and I stagger a little, clutching my bag against my body like a shield. Five boys on bikes are clustered on the corner of the road. They fall silent as I approach, and then one of them wolf whistles. The others laugh. I keep my eyes fixed to the ground, pretending I’m watching for cracks. The sun is staining the sky pink now, but the air is still heavy with heat. It has never before occurred to me that sequins are made of plastic; inside the dress, my body sweats gently. I fasten my thoughts onto Simon. It’s seven-forty – I will be at the pub in ten minutes.
The high street rumbles with the noises of Saturday evening – the shouts of drunken teenagers, the impatient hooting of cars, the boom of music as pub doors swing open. I feel as though I’m in a film playing at a different speed, and slow my walk even more, until I come to a complete halt. People rush by me like water around a rock. My skin itches, and I long to strip off the dress and scratch at my body, scratch and scratch until layers curl away like apple peel. A man glares at me. And in that moment I know I am not going to meet Simon in the pub by the common.
My shoes seem to pinch less on the way back home. I wonder whether Simon will email to ask where I was, but I doubt it. I shouldn’t have tried to force this. There are no accidents. Some things are written, and flesh is more substantial than stars. I don’t know why I am crying.
The Old Ways
This story was originally published in Northwords Now
One sleet-dank February day, someone moved in next door to Niall O’Malley. He was indignant. The noises of another person’s life – the hiss of taps, the creak of floorboards, the clank of saucepans – were unfamiliar and unexpected. The landlord had kept the other bedsit empty for over a decade, using it to store damp cardboard boxes of books that didn’t yet have a place in the shop downstairs. But perhaps old Tom needed the money (Niall had always thought of his landlord as very elderly, but, despite his white hair and hesitant stoop, Tom was probably a good five years younger than him).
Niall could hear this new person moving around. He wished they would settle into a chair, far from the door, so he didn’t have to worry about them springing out and wanting to chat when he ventured out for his morning walk. Niall sloshed whisky into a glass. By the time the flat next door settled into silence, it was past noon, and he felt irritated that his routine had been disrupted so. Still wary of accidentally meeting his new neighbour, Niall left by the iron staircase at the back of the building, his fingers catching on flakes of rusty paint on the handrail.
Salt air whipped his face as he trudged past the dormant funfair onto the shingle. Carousel horses, gold manes peeling and faded, quivered on their poles in the wind, and waves slapped at the fishing boats anchored in the bay. Niall looked out to sea and thought, as he often did these days, about those chilly childhood strolls on the shores of Achill. His brother Patrick had always insisted on bringing the homemade kite that, even at its best, would only stream out behind them if they ran very, very fast, before it gave up and plummeted onto the wet sand. Niall had thought at the time they’d all been fairly happy, but when he looked back, he pictured his mother’s face red and scuffed from crying. He was now twenty-seven years older than she had ever been. His mother had died one morning while peeling potatoes, the knife clattering to the floor beside her body (which had not been found for two days as her sons were both on London building sites and her husband in Galway, drinking).
An empty carrier bag puffed across the pebbles ahead of Niall, leading the way to Jackson’s Bakery, his daily post-walk port of call. It was not a very good bakery – Colin Jackson, the son of the original Jackson, was an unfriendly man with no interest in either being polite to customers or bringing his pasties and buns into the twenty-first century. The window still bore a 1970s ‘Naughty But Nice’ advertisement for cream cakes. The new bakery in the Old Town, with its artisan bread and fancy cupcakes, the things even ordinary people seemed to want these days, attracted more customers, but it wasn’t the sort of place in which Niall felt comfortable. There, the staff were certain to be bright young women with pierced noses, who would smile and make polite, breezy conversation while they slid his cream slice into a bag. They would twist the corners, making jolly little paper ears, and hand it to him, telling him to enjoy his day. He didn’t want any of that.
‘Next, please.’ Jackson never showed a flicker of recognition.
‘Cream slice, please,’ replied Niall, usually the first and last words he uttered on any given day. Talking to himself didn’t count.
Clutching a paper bag containing the cream slice, Niall climbed the iron staircase back to his flat. His knees crunched as though crystals of salt ground between the joints. He was so distracted by the discomfort and effort of climbing the stairs, he completely forgot about the new neighbour, and as he reached the landing he let out an uninhibited huff. Then, with dismay, he registered a presence. The door next to his was open, and a boy, perhaps around 18, leaned against it, watching him silently. He was very thin, underdressed in a holey T-shirt, and his eyes were weighed down with tired smudges, as though he had rubbed inky thumbprints beneath them. He looked like one of these effeminate types, thought Niall.
‘Hello,’ said the boy. ‘I’m Marvin.’
Niall nodded at the boy and took a step towards his door.
‘I know, right? My parents were soul fans.’ He had a metallic southern English whine. Niall had never liked the accent. Never got used to it, even after all these years. ‘You must be Mr O’Reilly. Tom mentioned you.’
‘O’Malley.’
‘What?’
Niall cleared his throat.
‘It’s Mr O’Malley. Not O’Reilly,’ he said, greatly displeased both by the fact of having a neighbour, and by this neighbour being a young man who would probably keep him up late with parties and music. He looked like a druggie. Niall put his hand in his pocket, relieved to feel the chill jangle of keys there.
‘Well.’ The boy flapped his hands against his sides. ‘We’re neighbours, then. Maybe not for long. Just until they have me back.’ He looked back at Niall, a defiant jut to his chin, eyes glittering. Niall sensed the danger of dialogue opening between them if he answered in the wrong way.
‘Right.’ He gave the boy a nod and stepped towards his front door, already imagining the cosiness of whisky seeping down his throat.
‘My mate’s granddad owns this place,’ Marvin said. Reluctantly, Niall slid his eyes back to the boy. ‘Tom Mullins? He’s letting me stay for a while. Thirty quid a week. Room’s a dump but I haven’t got much choice.’ His voice sounded pale.
‘Well, I won’t get in your way.’ Niall lifted a hand to his forehead as though to tip his cap at Marvin, a formal gesture that seemed to have dropped in from a much earlier part of his life. He pushed his door open, gave Marvin a nod, and went inside. He had taken off his coat and poured a drink before he heard the door of the other flat close.
Sticking to his routine seemed the best way to shake off the prickle of discomfort. Niall switched on the electric fire and shuffled over to the little counter by the stove, where he slid the cream slice onto a cracked plate and poured another whisky. He took both to the table by the armchair and put on the television, ready for the afternoon’s western. Then he went to the window and opened it a few inches, and a moment later John Wayne squeezed through the gap and thudded to the floor. Niall had no idea who, if anyone, owned the cat. He liked to think that John Wayne made his own way in the world, relying on no one in particular. For the last three years he had appeared most afternoons and the two of them had settled into a routine together. John Wayne disliked being stroked, but sometimes extended one battered paw onto Niall’s foot. When he grew restless, or hungry, he would stand, stretch, and wait, without looking at Niall, for the window to be opened.
‘Shane’ was on this afternoon. Niall remembered seeing it with Patrick in a Camden Town cinema not long after they’d arrived in England. He thought, briefly, of Patrick’s daughter Colleen, whom he remembered as an eight-year-old with freckle-smattered cheeks. About a decade ago, a letter from her had found its way to Niall, scribbled with news and memories. He had not replied, but had buried the note in his bottom drawer, with his mother’s jewellery and Patrick’s cap. Colleen would now be in her forties, perhaps with children of her own.
Now the film started and Niall didn’t have to think about those things anymore. He settled back into the worn chair. The springs dug into his spine like fists. He was used to it. Perhaps at some point he would ask Tom if he had another chair hanging around somewhere.
He had just started on his cream slice when the boy next door began to shout. There was a pause, then more shouting – he must be on the phone. His voice was heaving in a strange way, and Niall realised with embarrassment that Marvin was crying. He tutted, took a dab of whipped cream onto his finger and held it down for John Wayne, who licked cautiously. No doubt the boy was crying over a love affair gone wrong. What a carry-on.
Niall had loved, properly, once. He was 39 then, hunched up against the world, expecting nothing. But when Jennifer smiled at him that afternoon in the pub, some new thing had flowered inside him. She had, she explained later, been celebrating the all-clear from the cancer that had shadowed most of her youth. Niall could not equate illness with Jennifer – he had never met anyone so steeped in life. She threw her head back when she laughed and always looked happy when she came into his drab flat. But, despite Jennifer, the dark stormy moods continued to sweep in and engulf him, making Niall feel as though he were in a dream in which he could neither move nor speak. When Jennifer said she loved him, words clogged at the back of his throat. As the months passed, he noticed her begin to wilt, and it was no surprise when she told him she was leaving.
‘If that’s what you want,’ he had mumbled, continuing to bleed the radiator.
A crash from next door shook the room. Niall bolted upright in his armchair, and John Wayne shot onto the windowsill.
‘For the love of God,’ Niall muttered, pushing himself up with some effort. He set the television volume to mute, and stood for a moment, staring at Alan Ladd’s black and white figure on the screen, his thoughts blurring. Silence rang through the building now. Niall considered ignoring the crash and assuming the boy had knocked something over. But his conscience tugged at him. He went to the wall and banged on it.
‘Are you alright in there?’ Niall called. He suspected his hearing had declined of late, so he put his ear against the cold wallpaper. John Wayne watched with a blank yellow gaze. Niall thought he could hear a thin groaning sound. It stopped. Was it the wind? He listened again, and, once more, a strained moan. This time there was no doubting it.
Reluctantly, Niall shuffled out onto the landing, cursing under his breath, and banged on the door of Marvin’s flat. He called the boy’s name, feeling ridiculous, and rattled the handle. Now the groaning seemed to have stopped. Niall bent and squinted through the keyhole. He registered a hand, motionless on the carpet, next to a smashed lightbulb. That was all he could see.
‘Marvin!’ he shouted again through the keyhole. He thought he saw the hand flinch. Niall straightened up, too fast for his aching back, and pushed his shoulder against the door. He had been strong, in his labourer days, and he couldn’t believe all that physical power had slackened to nothing. He shoved, and a combination of his effort and the shoddiness of the lock meant the door caved away easily.
It took Niall a moment to understand the scene before him. Marvin lay sprawled on the floor, twitching and gasping like a floundering fish in the fading daylight. A belt was looped around his neck and had pressed ugly purple stains into his flesh. By his head lay a light fitting, its wiry entrails spilling around it. Niall brushed away broken glass with his foot and knelt next to Marvin.
‘What have you done, amadan?’ He grabbed the boy’s chin and pulled his face around towards the window. Marvin blinked at him, his breathing laboured. But he was breathing. Niall felt a thump of anger.
‘What have you done, idiot?’ he asked again, shaking the boy roughly by the shoulders and trying to pull him into a sitting position. Marvin promptly vomited down his chest.
‘Jesus,’ the boy whispered.
‘Wait.’ Niall heaved himself up and reached for a roll of kitchen paper on the side. He pulled off a few sheets and bent over Marvin to wipe his face. The boy lolled against him.
‘Are you hurt?’ Niall unknotted the belt around Marvin’s neck. It was tight enough, alright, but the light fitting would never have held his weight, skinny as he was. No damage done.
‘I’m sorry,’ Marvin croaked. ‘I called my dad. I shouldn’t have. He said I was a disgrace. That’s what did it. That broke me, it did. I couldn’t take it anymore.’
‘None of your generation can take much, I don’t think.’ Niall spoke more sharply than he’d intended. He looked around the bedsit, already muffled in gloom. Tom had a nerve charging anyone to stay here, he thought, noticing the mattress on the bare floorboards. He went to the sink and streamed tap water into one of the empty vodka bottles. The boy slumped against him, accepting the bottle like a newborn. Some of it spilled around his mouth and onto his T-shirt, but Niall thought this was no bad thing.
‘Keep drinking,’ he said. ‘Just water, mind. You’ve had enough of the other. Ah well, we’ve all made that mistake.’ He added the last words in a jovial tone, but Marvin just continued to gulp, staring at the floor between his legs.
‘What about your mother?’ Niall asked, feeling he had to fill the silence. He regretted that, as Marvin began to sob.
‘She said she loves me anyway. To go back. Dad’ll come round, she said. But he won’t.’
By now, Niall had worked out the scenario and didn’t want any further details. He looked down at the boy. Something about the muss of dark hair reminded him of Patrick. Another one, always so unhappy. Niall had a sudden memory of punching one of the boys who was bullying his brother, feeling the crunch of cartilage beneath his knuckles. Those boys never touched Patrick again. But Patrick didn’t speak to Niall for two weeks.
Marvin pushed the bottle away.
‘Thanks, Mr O’Reilly,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I’ve bothered you.’
‘It’s no bother,’ said Niall, in what he hoped was a soothing voice. He gently set the boy to lean against the wall. ‘I’ll call an ambulance. You’d better get checked out.’
Later, after the ambulance had taken Marvin away, Niall went back to his flat. The television, still on with its volume muted, flickered Coronation Street onto the armchair, where John Wayne was curled in a ball.
Niall went over to his chest of drawers. He bent down carefully, his knees creaking. He had to rummage for a few minutes before he found Colleen’s letter. The paper felt crackly, as though it had got damp and dried out again, and the blue biro was smudged. But the words were still clear enough. He took it over to the table, where he kept a pad of paper and a pen, and there, he began to write a reply to his niece.
The Story Space 