Angel Kiss (5 page)

We went in through the back door. Mum tidied up some plates and cutlery that the builders had left. The kitchen units had all been ripped out and the space they once occupied was now a blank grey canvas. The linoleum had been taken away and the wooden floorboards were being restored to their original glory. Mum was excited about our new kitchen arriving in a couple of days.

‘Jacki,’ she said, ‘remember you have to pick out a colour for your room.’

‘I think I’ll go for purple,’ I said as we stood in the centre of my new bedroom with Mum shining the torch against the bare wall in front of us. As an only child I was used to having space to myself, but this was amazing. Or maybe it seemed huge because it was completely empty. I began to imagine where my bed would go. I’d definitely like it to face the bay window that looked out on to the front garden.

My new room had been Alf’s old living room and a marble fireplace still stood against one wall.

‘I thought it would be a shame to rip this out. Maybe you could keep it, put candles in it or something,’ said Mum, resting her hand on one of the cream marble corners. ‘It’s obviously as old as the house, but strange … it looks almost new.’ Mum was right. Like everything else in this house the fireplace was covered in dirt and dust from a lifetime of neglect. It was clear that housework had not been one of Alf’s priorities. But this fireplace looked like it had never been used.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep it.’

I loved my new room. I’d already bought some stuff for it, including a multicoloured plastic chandelier, a zebra-print noticeboard and a black and white framed photo of Bob Dylan. The chandelier lay in the corner, waiting to be installed. And I’d need to get a big wardrobe for all my clothes. I looked around the room trying to decide where that would go … One of my favourite pastimes was rooting through charity shops, so I’d accumulated a lot of stuff over the years. I loved owning stuff that other people didn’t have, instead of just buying everything in the high street. Of course I loved shopping there too – I didn’t say no to any kind of shopping! But I always found such great stuff in unexpected places. My top five finds so far had been a rare Thin Lizzy T-shirt, an old typewriter that someone had painted pink, an 80s tartan miniskirt, a vintage microphone and a gorgeous black lace dress. You had to root
around to find the really good stuff, so I was proud of my unearthed treasures.

Mum walked around the room, smiling. Unlike me, she was particularly excited about her new life, her fresh start. Dad’s death had been very hard for her. Up until last Christmas all of my dad’s clothes had still hung in his half of the wardrobe, untouched for six years. Then one night Mum bundled them all into black plastic bags. They lay at the foot of her bed for three days before she carried them out to the car and took them to a charity shop on the other side of the city. I was sort of glad to see them go. I knew Mum still loved my dad very much, but I didn’t think it was healthy to be living in a bedroom with all his stuff untouched, as if he was going to walk in and climb into bed any second. He was never going to do that. It was heartbreaking. But it was true.

‘Wait till Des sees this!’ said Mum, lifting up the chandelier so that it dangled in front of our faces. ‘He’ll think we’ve gone mad.’

I ran my fingers across the plastic droplets of the chandelier, collecting grey dust on my fingertip.

I tried to smile, and then walked back towards the door so she wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes. Excited as I was about the new house, moving on was clearly going to be more painful than I’d anticipated.

When I woke up the next morning I felt as if I had scalded the inside of my skull. My head throbbed horribly from the moment I opened my eyelids and saw the cream ceiling of the caravan. But I was glad to be awake when being asleep these days meant having to endure the strange nightmare. I scrunched up my eyes and fiercely massaged the bridge of my nose. It felt like a tight rubber band was digging into the sides of my skull and at intervals someone was pulling it back and letting it snap against my temples.

When I shut my eyes, fragmented scenes from my nightmare would spin about in front of me, my mind twisting in a kaleidoscopic chaos. I would experience the anger and fear of those two men. I would see every single detail. The previous night I was so close to that brown bag that I could almost smell the leather and could see the cracks underneath the buckle. It felt like the man in the car was shouting directly into my ear and I could feel his breath against my cheek. ‘
Take this and burn it. Do you hear me? Burn it!
’ I shuddered as I remembered.

The pain in my head wouldn’t go away so I made my way over to the sink, poured a glass of water and took two painkillers.
The sun wasn’t shining like it had on previous days but it was still very warm: I could feel humid air come in through the open window. The backs of my eyes burned as I rested my forehead in my hands and waited.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ asked Mum as she came back inside, carrying cards of paint samples.

‘I have a headache,’ I muttered. It was out of my mouth before I had time to think, and Mum had grabbed her phone and gone out the door before I’d even looked up. I knew that as soon as she’d walked far enough to get coverage, she’d call the doctor. You didn’t say the word ‘headache’ to Mum. Because my dad had died of a brain tumour, she insisted that you couldn’t be too careful when it came to investigating any sort of head pain. Once I’d come back from a gig with a throbbing headache, probably from standing too close to the speakers, and she’d made me go see the doctor the next morning even though I was fine. It was so annoying.

‘It’s nothing!’ I shouted when Mum came back, raging that she was sending me to the doctor again.

‘Well, the doctor will be able to –’

‘Mum, it’s just a headache!’ I went to storm out past her but the two of us got jammed in the tiny space. I tried to move by but we both went the same way and my bum bashed off hers.

‘Stop laughing!’ I screeched as I tried again to push her out of the way. But Mum couldn’t stop, and soon her giggles turned into giant belly laughs and I was trying so hard not to laugh that my eyes were watering.

‘Fine, I’ll go to the bloody doctor!’ I said when I’d eventually broken free, unable to contain my smile any longer.

Mum was busy organizing stuff for the house so I spent the
rest of the day alone, playing my guitar. I sounded pretty good as I’d been practising so much lately. At least there was one advantage to being totally bored.

It was warm in the caravan that night. I lay on top of my blanket in my white string top and pink pyjama shorts, staring at the ceiling. The road was eerily quiet. Not one car had passed in the last hour. The only sound was Mum’s slow steady breathing. I reached for my phone to check the time. It was 2.15 a.m. and sure enough Emergency Use Only shone out from the corner of the screen.

I tried to sleep but was too warm to get comfortable. I sat up, slipped my feet into my pink Converse trainers, and tiptoed over to the door. Mum shuffled a bit in the bed but didn’t wake. I shut the door softly behind me.

It was a lot cooler outside. I walked across the grass towards the house, sat down on the damp ground and stretched my legs out in front of me. I’d customized my trainers with little silver studs and they sparkled in the moonlight. It was a relief to breathe in the cooler night air. The caravan’s ability to lock in the summer heat was really something. I ran my hands through the long tufts of grass and shut my eyes. I took in a deep breath of fresh air and gradually exhaled. And that’s when I heard it. A sound that made me jerk upright.

I stood up and listened closely. It was coming from round the back of the house. Slowly I walked towards the noise, suspecting it was some sort of animal. I tiptoed so as not to scare it. The sound seemed to grow quieter as I got closer and the scraping became a soft scratch. I turned the corner into the back garden and scanned the darkness but I couldn’t see
anything. I listened more closely. It sounded like digging. It was coming from the far left-hand corner. I crept past the cement mixer and stepped over the pile of slates. Standing in the corner of the garden, I listened to the slow, steady digging sound. I no longer thought it was an animal. It was unmistakably the sound of a shovel digging into the ground. I looked around the garden, but there was nobody there. I checked behind the hedge but there was nothing there either. The sound definitely seemed to be coming from the back left corner, but there was nobody about.
My heart started to beat loudly in my chest.

Horribly confused, I took one more look around, then decided to make my way back to the caravan. All of a sudden the stillness of the night seemed scary rather than peaceful. I managed to take a few steps but then a sick feeling suddenly struck the base of my stomach. The feeling crept up my throat, forcing the air out so that it was difficult to breathe. Terrified that I was about to faint, I sat down on the ground and put my trembling hands round my bare knees. I bowed my head and tried to take slow deep breaths, but sitting on the ground just made me feel worse. My body was weak and I couldn’t see properly. I’d never felt like that before. I was so frightened that I tried to call out to Mum, but I could hardly breathe, let alone shout. I crawled into the centre of the garden. The further away I got from that back corner, the better I felt. Stones pierced the palms of my hands, but I barely noticed. A stale taste filled my mouth as I
tried to gasp for air and tears streamed down my cheeks.

I could still hear the digging sound. It was getting louder now, filling my head so much that I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts. I turned round but my vision was so blurred I couldn’t
make out anything in the darkness. Desperate to get back to the caravan I tried to get up but stumbled and fell back down to the ground. The digging was getting louder and louder and louder, a heavy shovel scraping against the earth, as though it were grating against the sides of my brain. I lay huddled on the ground, feeling as if I was waiting for my own grave to be dug, to be buried alive by this invisible suffocating presence. I covered my ears with my hands and tried to let out a scream, but it was so weak that nobody would be able to hear it. I pushed my palms against my ears and let out another desperate cry for help.

Then it stopped.

The sound just stopped, suddenly, as if someone had pushed the pause button on an iPod. My vision returned to normal and I frantically looked around the garden. There was nobody there. Even Mum hadn’t heard my scream.

Eventually I felt strong enough to stand. I wiped my face and hurried back to the caravan. When I was safely inside I poured a glass of water and tried to wash the stale taste from my mouth.

‘Are you OK, love?’ asked Mum, sitting up in the bed and rubbing her tired eyes.

‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘I was just in the bathroom.’ She didn’t notice that I was shaking. I held on to the edge of the counter for a moment, trying to understand what had just happened. Maybe something was wrong with me. The headaches, the nightmares … and now this. I couldn’t explain it. I put my head in my hands and tried to make some sense of the incident. It was as if that desolate part of the garden had wiped all my energy. Maybe I’d imagined that noise. Lack of sleep had kicked my
imagination into overdrive. I tried to convince myself that was it, but I knew I hadn’t imagined it. I knew something very strange and very real had just happened.

I gulped down the water and took off my trainers, then got into bed and pulled up the covers. I had been too warm before, but now felt an icy chill. Maybe I was really sick after all. I tried to push the thought out of my head but it kept coming back. An hour later I finally drifted off to sleep, exhausted, and for once I was actually glad that Mum had made an appointment for me to visit a doctor.

There was an emergency at the house, something to do with pipes, so Mum couldn’t go with me to the clinic. I was secretly pleased about it as I could do without her fretting. I was still very creeped out by what had happened in the garden last night, but I tried not to think about it. I sat on the stone wall beside the bus stop, listening to Paramore on my iPod. The bus was late and my headache was still painful. My left eye throbbed as though it had a pulse of its own. I turned up the volume and tried to drown out the pain by concentrating on the words of the song. That helped whenever I was angry or nervous or frustrated. It was comforting to know that other people have similar problems, similar fears, similar desires. Sometimes it isn’t comforting at all though. After I broke up with Cian I couldn’t listen to any songs that mentioned love for at least a month. That rules out a lot of songs, trust me.

I heard my phone beep. It was a text from Ross.

I immediately felt jealous. We used to spend most Thursday mornings during summer sitting on the steps in Temple Bar
Square, waiting for Hannah to finish her acting class. We’d eat ice cream and listen to buskers and wander around Urban Outfitters looking at stuff we couldn’t afford. I wished I was there now. But I had to stop torturing myself. I wasn’t in Dublin, I was in Avarna, whether I liked it or not. I had to concentrate on making new friends.

I could see Sarah walking down the path towards me. I took out my earphones and smiled at her. ‘Hey, Sarah, how are you?’

‘Oh … hi,’ she said, as if she didn’t have a clue who I was. She gave me a really fake smile and kept walking.

Great, back to the torture chamber so
. I put in my earphones and turned the music up even louder. It was probably for the best anyway. If she was actually nice to me, I’d feel even worse about fancying her boyfriend.

A few minutes later I felt someone tap my shoulder and looked up to see Colin. He looked very nice in dark denims and a red and blue striped T-shirt.

‘What’s up?’ he said.

‘I’m just waiting for the bus,’ I replied, winding my earphones round my iPod and putting it in my bag. ‘I have to go to the doctor in Drumshanbo.’