Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Copyright © Cecelia Ahern 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover design by Heike Schüssler

Cecelia Ahern asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007501847

Ebook Edition © May 2016 ISBN: 9780007501830

Version: 2018-06-22

Dedication

For my Sonny Ray

I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free.

Michelangelo

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter 1: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 2: Pool Rules

Chapter 3: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 4: Pool Rules

Chapter 5: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 6: Pool Rules

Chapter 7: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 8: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 9: Pool Rules

Chapter 10: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 11: Pool Rules

Chapter 12: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 13: Pool Rules

Chapter 14: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 15: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 16: Pool Rules

Chapter 17: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 18: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 19: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 20: Pool Rules

Chapter 21: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 22: Pool Rules

Chapter 23: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 24: Pool Rules

Chapter 25: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 26: Pool Rules

Chapter 27: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 28: Pool Rules

Chapter 29: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 30: Pool Rules

Chapter 31: Playing with Marbles

Chapter 32: Pool Rules

Chapter 33: Playing with Marbles

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

Reading Group Questions

Q&A with Celia

About the Author

Also by Cecelia Ahern

About the Publisher

When it comes to my memory there are three categories: things I want to forget, things I can’t forget, and things I forgot I’d forgotten until I remember them.

My earliest memory is of my mum when I was three years old. We are in the kitchen, she picks up the teapot and launches it up at the ceiling. She holds it with two hands, one on the handle, one on the spout, and lobs it as though in a sheaf-toss competition, sending it up in the air where it cracks against the ceiling, and then falls straight back down to the table where it shatters into pieces, murky brown water and burst soggy teabags everywhere. I don’t know what preceded this act, or what came after, but I do know it was anger-motivated, and the anger was my-dad-motivated. This memory is not a good representation of my mum’s character; it doesn’t show her in a good light. To my knowledge she never behaved like that again, which I imagine is precisely the reason that I remember it.

As a six-year-old, I see my Aunt Anna being stopped at the door by Switzer’s security as we exit. The hairy-handed security guard goes through her shopping bag and retrieves a scarf with its price tags and a security tag still on it. I can’t remember what happened after that; Aunt Anna plied me with ice-cream sundaes in the Ilac Centre and watched with hope that every memory of the incident would die with each mouthful of sugar. The memory is vivid despite even to this day everyone believing I made it up.

I currently go to a dentist who I grew up with. We were never friends but we hung out in the same circles. He’s now a very serious man, a sensible man, a stern man. When he hovers above my open mouth, I see him as a fifteen-year-old pissing against the living room walls at a house party, shouting about Jesus being the original anarchist.

When I see my aged primary school teacher who was so softly spoken we almost couldn’t hear her, I see her throwing a banana at the class clown and shouting at him to leave me alone for God’s sake, just leave me alone, before bursting into tears and running from the classroom. I bumped into an old classmate recently and brought the incident up, but she didn’t remember.

It seems to me that when summoning up a person in my mind it is not the everyday person I think of, it is the more dramatic moments or the moments they showed a part of themselves that is usually hidden.

My mother says that I have a knack for remembering what others forget. Sometimes it’s a curse; nobody likes it when there’s somebody to remember what they’ve tried so hard to bury. I’m like the person who remembers everything after a drunken night out, who everyone wishes would keep their memories to themself.

I can only assume I remember these episodes because I have never behaved this way myself. I can’t think of a moment when I have broken form, become another version of myself that I want and need to forget. I am always the same. If you’ve met me you know me, there’s not much more to me. I follow the rules of who I know myself to be and can’t seem to be anything else, not even in moments of great stress when surely a meltdown would be acceptable. I think this is why I admire it so much in others and I remember what they choose to forget.

Out of character? No. I fully believe that even a sudden change in a person’s behaviour is within the confines of their nature. That part of us is present the whole time, lying dormant, just waiting for its moment to be revealed. Including me.

‘Fergus Boggs!’

These are the only two words I can understand through Father Murphy’s rage-filled rant at me, and that’s because those words are my name, the rest of what he says is in Irish. I’m five years old and I’ve been in the country for one month. I moved from Scotland with Mammy and my brothers, after Daddy died. It all happened so quickly, Daddy dying, us moving, and even though I’d been to Ireland before, on holidays during the summer to see Grandma, Granddad, Uncle, Aunty and all my cousins, it’s not the same now. I’ve never been here when it’s not the summer. It feels like a different place. It has rained every day we’ve been here. The ice-cream shop isn’t even open now, all boarded up like it never even existed, like I made it up in my head. The beach that we used to go to most days doesn’t look like the same place and the chip van is gone. The people look different too. They’re all wrapped up and dark.

Father Murphy stands over my desk and is tall and grey and wide. He spits as he shouts at me; I feel the spit land on my cheek but I’m afraid to wipe it away in case that makes him angrier. I try looking around at the other boys to see their reactions but he lashes out at me. A backhanded slap. It hurts. He is wearing a ring, a big one; I think it has cut my face but I daren’t reach up to feel it in case he hits me again. I need to go to the toilet all of a sudden. I have been hit before, but never by a priest.

He is shouting angry Irish words. He is angry that I don’t understand. In between the Irish words he says I should understand him by now but I just can’t. I don’t get to practise at home. Mammy is sad and I don’t like to bother her. She likes to sit and cuddle. I like when she does that. I don’t want to ruin the cuddles by talking. And anyway I don’t think she remembers the Irish words either. She moved away from Ireland a long time ago to be a nanny to a family in Scotland and she met Daddy. They never spoke the Irish words there.

The priest wants me to repeat the words after him but I can barely breathe. I can barely get the words out of my mouth.

‘Tá mé, tá tú, tá sé, tá sí …’

LOUDER!

‘Tá muid, tá sibh, tá siad.’

When he’s not shouting at me, the room is so quiet it reminds me it’s filled with boys my age, all listening. As I stammer through the words he is telling everybody how stupid I am. My whole body is shaking. I feel sick. I need to go to the toilet. I tell him so. His face goes a purple colour and that is when the leather strap comes out. He lashes my hand with leather, which I later learn has pennies sewn into the layers. He tells me he is going to give me ‘six of the best’ on each hand. I can’t take the pain. I need to go to the toilet. I go right there and then. I expect the boys to laugh but nobody does. They keep their heads down. Maybe they’ll laugh later, or maybe they’ll understand. Maybe they’re just happy it’s not happening to them. I’m embarrassed, and ashamed, as he tells me I should be. Then he pulls me out of the room, by my ear, and that hurts too, away from everyone, down the corridor, and he pushes me into a dark room. The door bangs closed behind me and he leaves me alone.

I don’t like the dark, I have never liked the dark, and I start to cry. My pants are wet, my wee has run down into my socks and shoes but I don’t know what to do. Mammy usually changes them for me. What do I do here? There is no window in the room and I can’t see anything. I hope he won’t keep me in here long. My eyes adjust to the darkness and the light that comes from under the door helps me to see. I’m in a storage room. I see a ladder, and a bucket and a mop with no stick, just the head. It smells rank. An old bicycle is hanging upside down, the chain missing. There’s two wellington boots but they don’t match and they’re both for the same foot. Nothing in here fits together. I don’t know why he put me in here and I don’t know how long it’ll be. Will Mammy be looking for me?

It feels like forever has passed. I close my eyes and sing to myself. The songs that Mammy sings with me. I don’t sing them too loud in case he hears me and thinks I’m having fun in here. That would make him angrier. In this place, fun and laughing makes them angry. We are not here to be leaders, we are here to serve. This is not what my daddy taught me, he said that I was a natural leader, that I can be anything I want to be. I used to go hunting with him, he taught me everything, he even let me walk first, he said I was the leader. He sang a song about it. ‘Following the leader, the leader, the leader, Fergus is the leader, da da da da da.’ I hum it to myself but I don’t say the words. The priest won’t like me saying I’m the leader. In this place we’re not allowed to be anybody we want to be, we have to be who they tell us to be. I sing the songs my daddy used to sing when I was allowed to stay up late and listen to the sing-songs. Daddy had a soft voice for a strong man, and he sometimes cried when he sang. My daddy never said crying was only for babies, not like the priest said, crying is for people who are sad. I sing it to myself now and try not to cry.

Suddenly the door opens and I move away, afraid that it will be him again, with that leather strap. It’s not him but it’s the younger one, the one who teaches the music class with the kind eyes. He closes the door behind him and crouches down.

‘Hi, Fergus.’

I try to say hi but nothing comes out of my mouth.

‘I brought you something. A box of bloodies.’

I flinch and he puts a hand out. ‘Don’t look so scared now, they’re marbles. Have you ever played with marbles?’

I shake my head. He opens his hand and I see them shining in his palm like treasures, four red rubies.

‘I used to love these as a boy,’ he says quietly. ‘My granddad gave them to me. “A box of bloodies,” he said, “just for you.” I don’t have the box now. Wish I had, could be worth something. Always remember to keep the packaging, Fergus, that’s one bit of advice I’ll give you. But I’ve kept the marbles.’

Somebody walks by the door; we can feel their boots as the floor shakes and creaks beneath us and he looks at the door. When the footsteps have passed he turns back to me, his voice quieter. ‘You have to shoot them. Or fulk them.’

I watch as he puts his knuckle on the ground and balances the marble in his bent forefinger. He puts his thumb behind and then gently pushes the marble; it rolls along the wooden floor at speed. A red bloodie, bold as anything, catching the light, shining and glistening. It stops at my foot. I’m afraid to pick it up. And my raw hands are paining me still, it’s hard to close them. He sees this and winces.

‘Go on, you try,’ he says.

I try it. I’m not very good at first because it’s hard to close my hands like he showed me, but I get the hang of it. Then he shows me other ways to shoot them. Another way called ‘knuckling down’. I prefer it that way and even though he says that’s more advanced I’m best at that one. He tells me so and I have to bite my lip to stop the smile.

‘Names given to marbles vary from place to place,’ he says, getting down and showing me again. ‘Some people call them a taw, or a shooter, or tolley, but me and my brothers called them allies.’

Allies. I like that. Even with me locked in this room on my own, I have allies. It makes me feel like a soldier. A prisoner of war.

He fixes me with a serious look. ‘When aiming, remember to look at the target with a steady eye. The eye directs the brain, the brain directs the hand. Don’t forget that. Always keep an eye on the target, Fergus, and your brain will make it happen.’

I nod.

The bell rings, class over.

‘Okay.’ He stands up, wipes down his dusty robe. ‘I’ve a class now. You sit tight here. It shouldn’t be much longer.’

I nod.

He’s right. It shouldn’t be much longer – but it is. Father Murphy doesn’t come to get me soon. He leaves me there all day. I even do another wee in my pants because I’m afraid to knock on the door to get someone, but I don’t care. I am a soldier, a prisoner of war, and I have my allies. I practise and practise in the small room, in my own little world, wanting my skill and accuracy to be the best in the school. I’m going to show the other boys and I’m going to be better than them all the time.

The next time Father Murphy puts me in here I have the marbles hidden in my pocket and I spend the day practising again. I also have an archboard in the dark room. I put it there myself between classes, just in case. It’s a piece of cardboard with seven arches cut in it. I made it myself from Mrs Lynch’s empty cornflakes box that I found in her bin after I saw some other boys with a fancy shop-bought one. The middle arch is number 0, the arches either side are 1, 2, 3. I put the archboard at the far wall and I shoot from a distance, close to the door. I don’t really know how to play it properly yet and I can’t play it on my own but I can practise my shooting. I will be better than my big brothers at something.

The nice priest doesn’t stay in the school long. They say that he kisses women and that he’s going to Hell, but I don’t care. I like him. He gave me my first marbles, my bloodies. In a dark time in my life, he gave me my allies.

Breathe.

Sometimes I have to remind myself to breathe. You would think it would be an innate human instinct but no, I inhale and then forget to exhale and so I find my body rigid, all tensed up, heart pounding, chest tight with an anxious head wondering what’s wrong.

I understand the theory of breathing. The air you breathe in through your nose should go all the way down to your belly, the diaphragm. Breathe relaxed. Breathe rhythmically. Breathe silently. We do this from the second we are born and yet we are never taught. Though I should have been. Driving, shopping, working, I catch myself holding my breath, nervous, fidgety, waiting for what exactly to happen, I don’t know. Whatever it is, it never comes. It is ironic that on dry ground I fail at this simple task when my job requires me to excel at it. I’m a lifeguard. Swimming comes easily to me, it feels natural, it doesn’t test me, it makes me feel free. With swimming, timing is everything. On land you breathe in for one and out for one, beneath the water I can achieve a three to one ratio, breathing every three strokes. Easy. I don’t even need to think about it.

I had to learn how to breathe above water when I was pregnant with my first child. It was necessary for labour, they told me, which it turns out it certainly is. Because childbirth is as natural as breathing, they go hand in hand, yet breathing, for me, has been anything but natural. All I ever want to do above water is hold my breath. A baby will not be born through holding your breath. Trust me, I tried. Knowing my aquatic ways, my husband encouraged a water birth. This seemed like a good idea to get me in my natural territory, at home, in water, only there is nothing natural about sitting in an oversized paddling pool in your living room, and it was the baby who got to experience the world from below the water and not me. I would have gladly switched places. The first birth ended in a dash to the hospital and an emergency caesarean and indeed the two subsequent babies came in the same way, though they weren’t emergencies. It seemed that the aquatic creature who preferred to stay under the water from the age of five could not embrace another of life’s most natural acts.

I’m a lifeguard in a nursing home. It is quite the exclusive nursing home, like a four-star hotel with round-the-clock care. I have worked here for seven years, give or take my maternity leave. I man the lifeguard chair five days a week from nine a.m. to two p.m. and watch as three people each hour take to the water for lengths. It is a steady stream of monotony and stillness. Nothing ever happens. Bodies appear from the changing rooms as walking displays of the reality of time: saggy skin, boobs, bottoms and thighs, some dry and flaking from diabetes, others from kidney or liver disease. Those confined to their beds or chairs for so long wear their painful-looking pressure ulcers and bedsores, others carry their brown patches of age spots as badges of the years they have lived. New skin growths appear and change by the day. I see them all, with the full understanding of what my body after three babies will face in the future. Those with one-on-one physiotherapy work with trainers in the water, I merely oversee; in case the therapist drowns, I suppose.

In the seven years I have rarely had to dive in. It is a quiet, slow swimming pool, certainly nothing like the local pool I bring my boys to on a Saturday where you leave with a headache from the shouts that echo from the filled-to-the-brim group classes.

I stifle a yawn as I watch the first swimmer in the early morning. Mary Kelly, the dredger, is doing her favourite move: the breaststroke. Slow and noisy, at five feet tall and weighing three hundred pounds she pushes out water as if she’s trying to empty the pool, and then attempts to glide. She manages this manoeuvre without once putting her face below the water and blowing out constantly as though she’s in below-zero conditions. It is always the same people at the same times. I know that Mr Daly will soon arrive, followed by Mr Kennedy aka the Butterfly King who fancies himself as a bit of an expert, then sisters Eliza and Audrey Jones who jog widths of the shallow end for twenty minutes. Non-swimmer Tony Dornan will cling to a float for dear life like he’s on the last life raft, and hover in the shallow end, near to the steps, near to the wall. I fiddle with a pair of goggles, unknotting the strap, reminding myself to breathe, pushing away the hard, tight feeling in my chest that only goes away when I remember to exhale.

Mr Daly steps out of the changing room andonto the tiles, 9.15 a.m. on the dot. He wears his budgie smugglers, an unforgiving light blue that reveal the minutiae when wet. His skin hangs loosely around his eyes, cheeks and jowls. His skin is so transparent I see almost every vein in his body and he’s covered in bruises from even the slightest bump, I’m sure. His yellow toenails curl painfully into his skin. He gives me a miserable look and adjusts his goggles over his eyes. He shuffles by me without a good morning greeting, ignoring me as he does every day, holding on to the metal railing as if at any moment he’ll go sliding on the slippery tiles that Mary Kelly is saturating with each stroke. I imagine him on the tiles, his bones snapping up through his tracing-paper-like skin, skin crackly like a roasted chicken.

I keep one eye on him and the other on Mary, who is letting out a loud grunting sound with each stroke like she is Maria Sharapova. Mr Daly reaches the steps, takes hold of the rail and lowers himself slowly into the water. His nostrils flare as the cold hits him. Once in the water he checks to see if I’m watching. On the days that I am, he floats on his back for long periods of time like he’s a dead goldfish. On days like today, when I’m not looking, he lowers his body and head under the water, hands gripping the top of the wall to hold himself down, and stays there. I see him, clear as day, practically on his knees in the shallow end, trying to drown himself. This is a daily occurrence.

‘Sabrina,’ my supervisor Eric warns from the office behind me.

‘I see him.’

I make my way to Mr Daly at the steps. I reach into the water and grab him under his arms and pull him up. He is so light he comes up easily, gasping for air, eyes wild behind his goggles, a big green snot bubble in his right nostril. He lifts his goggles off his head and empties them of water, grunting, grumbling, his body shaking with rage that I have once again foiled his dastardly plan. His face is purple and his chest heaves up and down as he tries to catch his breath. He reminds me of my three-year-old who always hides in the same place and then gets annoyed when I find him. I don’t say anything, just make my way back to the stool, my flip-flops splashing my calves with cold water. This happens every day. This is all that happens.

‘You took your time there,’ Eric says.

Did I? Maybe a second longer than usual. ‘Didn’t want to spoil his fun.’

Eric smiles against his better judgement and shakes his head to show he disapproves. Before working here with me since the nursing home’s birth, Eric had a previous Mitch Buchannon lifeguard experience in Miami. His mother on her deathbed brought him back home to Ireland and then his mother surviving has made him stay. He jokes that she will outlive him, though I can sense a nervousness on his part that this will indeed be the case. I think he’s waiting for her to die so that he can begin living, and the fear as he nears fifty is that that will never happen. To cope with his self-imposed pause on his life, I think he pretends he’s still in Miami; though he’s delusional, I sometimes envy his ability to pretend he is in a place far more exotic than this. I think he walks to the sound of maracas in his head. He is one of the happiest people I know because of it. His hair is Sun-In orange, and his skin is a similar colour. He doesn’t go on any traditional ‘dates’ from one end of the year to the other, saving himself up for the month in January when he disappears to Thailand. He returns whistling, with the greatest smile on his face. I don’t want to know what he does there but I know that his hopes are that when his mother dies, every day will be like Thailand. I like him and I consider him my friend. Five days a week in this place has meant I’ve told him more than I’ve even told myself.

‘Doesn’t it strike you that the one person I save every day is a person who doesn’t even want to live? Doesn’t it make you feel completely redundant?’

‘There are plenty of things that do, but not that.’ He bends over to pick up a bunch of wet grey hair clogging the drains, which looks like a drowned rat, and he holds on to it, shaking the water out of it, not appearing to feel the repulsion that I do. ‘Is that how you’re feeling?’

Yes. Though it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t matter if the man I’m saving doesn’t want his life to be saved, shouldn’t the point be that I’m saving him? But I don’t reply. He’s my supervisor, not my therapist, I shouldn’t question saving people while on duty as a lifeguard. He may live in an alternative world in his head but he’s not stupid.

‘Why don’t you take a coffee break?’ he offers, and hands me my coffee mug, the other hand still holding the drowned rat ball of pubic hair.

I like my job very much but lately I’ve been antsy. I don’t know why and I don’t know what exactly I’m expecting to happen in my life, or what I’m hoping will happen. I have no particular dreams or goals. I wanted to get married and I did. I wanted to have children and I do. I want to be a lifeguard and I am. Though isn’t that the meaning of antsy? Thinking there are ants on you when there aren’t.

‘Eric, what does antsy mean?’

‘Um. Restless, I think, uneasy.’

‘Has it anything to do with ants?’

He frowns.

‘I thought it was when you think there are ants crawling all over you, so you start to feel like this.’ I shudder a bit. ‘But there aren’t any ants on you at all.’

He taps his lip. ‘You know what, I don’t know. Is it important?’

I think about it. It would mean that I think there is something wrong with my life because there actually is something wrong with my life or that there is something wrong with me. But it’s just a feeling, and there actually isn’t. There not being something wrong would be the preferred solution.

What’s wrong, Sabrina? Aidan’s been asking a lot lately. In the same way that constantly asking someone if they’re angry will eventually make them angry.

Nothing’s wrong. But is it nothing, or is it something? Or is it really that it is nothing, everything is just nothing? Is that the problem? Everything is nothing? I avoid Eric’s gaze and concentrate instead on the pool rules, which irritate me so I look away. You see, there it is, that antsy thing.

‘I can check it out,’ he says, studying me.

To escape his gaze I get a coffee from the machine in the corridor and pour it into my mug. I lean against the wall in the corridor and think about our conversation, think about my life. Coffee finished, no conclusions reached, I return to the pool and I am almost crushed in the corridor by a stretcher being wheeled by at top speed by two paramedics, with a wet Mary Kelly on top of it, her white and blue-veined bumpy legs like Stilton, an oxygen mask over her face.

I hear myself say ‘No way!’ as they push by me.

When I get into the small lifeguard office I see Eric, sitting down in complete shock, his shell tracksuit dripping wet, his orange Sun-In hair slicked back from the pool water.

‘What the hell?’

‘I think she had a … I mean, I don’t know, but, it might have been a heart attack. Jesus.’ Water drips from his orange pointy nose.

‘But I was only gone five minutes.’

‘I know, it happened the second you walked out. I jammed on the emergency cord, pulled her out, did mouth-to-mouth, and they were here before I knew it. They responded fast. I let them in the fire exit.’

I swallow, the jealousy rising. ‘You gave her mouth-to-mouth?’

‘Yeah. She wasn’t breathing. But then she did. Coughed up a load of water.’

I look at the clock. ‘It wasn’t even five minutes.’

He shrugs, still stunned.

I look at the pool, then at the clock. Mr Daly is sitting on the edge of the pool, looking after the ghost of the stretcher with envy. It was four and a half minutes.

‘You had to dive in? Pull her out? Do mouth-to-mouth?’

‘Yeah. Yeah. Look, don’t beat yourself up about it, Sabrina, you couldn’t have got to her any faster than I did.’

‘You had to pull the emergency cord?’

He looks at me in confusion over this.

I’ve never had to pull the cord. Never. Not even in trials. Eric did that. I feel jealousy and anger bubbling to the surface, which is quite an unusual feeling. This happens at home – an angry mother irritated with her boys has lost the plot plenty of times – but never in public. In public I suppress it, especially at work when it is directed at my supervisor. I’m a measured, rational human being; people like me don’t lose their temper in public. But I don’t suppress the anger now. I let it rise close to the surface. It would feel empowering to let myself go like this if I wasn’t so genuinely frustrated, so completely irritated.

To put it into perspective here is how I’m feeling: seven years working here. That’s two thousand three hundred and ten days. Eleven thousand five hundred and fifty hours. Minus nine months, six months and three months for maternity leave. In all of that time I’ve sat on the stool and watched the, often, empty pool. No mouth-to-mouth, no dramatic dives. Not once. Not counting Mr Daly. Not counting the assistance of leg or foot cramps. Nothing. I sit on the stool, sometimes I stand, and I watch the oversized ticking clock and the list of pool rules. No running, no jumping, no diving, no pushing, no shouting, no nothing … all the things you’re not allowed to do in this room, all negative, almost as though it’s mocking me. No life-saving. I’m always on alert, it’s what I’m trained to do, but nothing ever happens. And the very second I take an unplanned coffee break I miss a possible heart attack, a definite near-drowning and the emergency cord being pulled.

‘It’s not fair,’ I say.

‘Now come on, Sabrina, you were in there like a shot when Eliza stepped on the piece of glass.’

‘It wasn’t glass. Her varicose vein ruptured.’

‘Well. You got there fast.’

It is always above the water that I struggle, that I can’t breathe. It is above the water that I feel like I’m drowning.

I throw my coffee mug hard against the wall.

My neck is being squeezed so tightly I start to see black spots before my eyes. I’d tell him so but I can’t speak, his arm is wrapped tight around my throat. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I’m small for my age and they tease me for it. They call me Tick but Mammy says to use what I have. I’m small but I’m smart. With a burst of energy, I start to shake myself around, and my older brother Angus has to fight hard to hold on.

‘Jesus, Tick,’ Angus says, and he grips me tighter.

Can’t breathe, can’t breathe.

‘Let him go, Angus,’ Hamish says. ‘Get back to the game.’

‘The little fucker’s a cheat, I’m not playing with him.’

‘I’m not a cheat!’ I want to shout, but I can’t. I can’t breathe.

‘He’s not a cheat,’ Hamish says on my behalf. ‘He’s just better than you.’ Hamish is the eldest, at sixteen. He’s watching from the front steps of our house. This statement is a lot, coming from him. He’s cool as fuck. He’s smoking a cigarette. If Mammy knew this she’d slap the head off him, but she can’t see him now, she’s inside the house with the midwife, which is why we’ve all been turfed out here for the day until it’s over.

‘Say that again,’ Angus challenges Hamish.

‘Or what?’

Or nothing. Angus wouldn’t touch Hamish, older than him by only two years but infinitely cooler. None of us would. He’s tough and everyone knows it and he’s even started hanging out with Eddie Sullivan, nicknamed The Barber, and his gang at the barbershop. They’re the ones giving him the cigarettes. And money too, but I don’t know what for. Mammy’s worried about him but she needs the money so doesn’t ask questions. Hamish likes me the most. Some nights he wakes me up and I’ve to get dressed and we sneak out to the streets we’re not allowed to play on. I’m not allowed to tell Mammy. We play marbles. I’m ten but I look younger; you wouldn’t think I play as well as I do, most people don’t, so Hamish hustles them. He’s winning a packet and he gives me caramels on the way home so I don’t tell. He doesn’t need to buy me off but I don’t tell him that, I like the caramels.

I play marbles in my sleep, I play when I should be doing homework, I play when Father Fuckface puts me in the dark room, I play it in my head when Mammy is giving out to me, so I don’t have to listen. My fingers are moving all the time as if I’m shooting and I’ve built up a good collection. I have to hide them from my brothers though, my best ones anyway. They’re nowhere near as good at playing as me, and they’d lose my marbles.

We hear Mammy bellow like an animal upstairs and Angus loosens his grip on me a bit. Enough for wriggle room. Everyone tenses up at the sound of Mammy. It’s not new to us but no one likes it. It’s not natural to hear anyone sound like that. Mattie opens the door and steps out even whiter than usual.

He looks at Angus. ‘Let him go.’

Angus does and I can finally breathe. I start coughing. There’s only one other person Angus doesn’t mess with and that’s our stepdad, Mattie. Mattie Doyle always means business.

Mattie glares at Hamish smoking. I get ready for Mattie to punch him – those two are always at it – but he doesn’t.

Instead he says, ‘Got one spare?’

Hamish smiles, the one that goes all the way to his green eyes. Daddy’s green eyes. But he doesn’t answer.

Mattie doesn’t like the pause. ‘Fuck you.’ He slaps him over the head, and Hamish laughs at him, liking that he made him lose his temper. He won. ‘I’m going to the pub. One of you come get me when it’s out.’

‘You’ll probably hear it from there,’ Duncan says.

Mattie laughs, but looks a bit scared.

‘Are none of you keeping an eye on him?’ He gestures to the toddler crouched in the dirt. We all look at Bobby. He’s the youngest, at two. He’s sitting in the muck, covered in it, even his mouth, and he’s eating grass.

‘He always eats grass,’ Tommy says. ‘Nothing we can do about it.’

‘Are you a cow or wha’?’ Mattie asks.

‘Quack quack,’ Bobby says, and we all laugh.

‘Fuck sake, will someone ever teach him his animal sounds?’ Mattie says, smiling. ‘Right, Da’s off to the pub, be good, Bobby.’ Mattie rustles Tommy’s head. ‘Keep an eye on him, son.’

‘Bye, Mattie,’ Bobby says.

‘It’s Da, to you,’ Mattie says, face going a bit red with anger.

It drives Mattie mad when Bobby calls him Mattie, but it’s not Bobby’s fault, he’s used to us all calling Mattie by his name; he’s not our da, but Bobby doesn’t understand, he thinks we’re all the same. Only Mattie’s first boy, Tommy, calls him Da. There’s Doyles and Boggs in this family and we all know the difference.

‘Let’s get back to the game,’ Duncan says as Mammy screams again.

‘He’s not allowed to play unless he takes his turn again,’ Angus says angrily.

‘Fine, he will, calm down,’ Hamish says.

‘Hey!’ I protest. ‘I didn’t cheat.’

Hamish winks at me. ‘You can show them.’

I sigh. I’m ten, Duncan is twelve, Angus is fourteen and Hamish is sixteen. The two Doyle boys, Tommy and Bobby, are five and two. With three older brothers I’m always having to prove myself, and even when I’m better than them, which I am at marbles and they can’t stand it, then I have to work even harder because they think I’m a cheat. I’m the one who teaches them the new games I’ve read about in my books. I’m better than them. They all hate it but it drives Angus mental. He hits me whenever he loses. Hamish hates losing too but he’s figured out how to use me.

We’re playing Conqueror, me, Duncan and Angus. Angus wouldn’t let Tommy play because he’s the worst, he’s so bad he just ruins the game. When my older brothers aren’t around I teach Tommy how to play; I like doing that, even though he’s diabolical. That’s the word Hamish uses for everything. I use my worst marbles, just the clearies for him, because he chips them and everything. Tommy’s sitting on the steps away from Hamish. He’s afraid of Hamish. Tommy knows that Hamish and his da don’t get along so he thinks he has to defend his da when he’s not there. He’s only five but he’s a tough little shit, scrawny and pale like his da too. The lads call him Bottle-washer because he’s so skinny and wiry.

What happened to put me in the headlock was that Angus threw the first marble, then Duncan shot his marble at Angus’s. It hit and that’s why Angus got mad in the first place. Duncan captured Angus’s marble then threw another to restart the game. I hit Duncan’s, captured his then threw another to restart.

Angus threw his taw and missed mine.

Duncan aimed at Angus’s corkscrew, not because it was closer but because I know he could tell Angus was already getting angry and wanted to wind him up. Anyway he missed and it was my turn. I had two targets; I could have chosen Duncan’s opaque, which I don’t much want because everyone has them – that’s marbles that are just one colour – or Angus’s Popeye corkscrew, which I’ve had my eye on for a long time. Angus says he won it in a game but I think he must have stolen it from Francis’s corner shop. I’ve never seen anyone with one like that. I’ve only ever seen a picture of one in my marble book, so I know that his is a three-colour special called a snake corkscrew. It’s a double-twist and has a green-and-transparent clear with filaments of opaque white. It has tiny clear bubbles inside. I found it in his drawer a few days ago and he caught me snooping and kicked me in the balls to let it go. I didn’t drop it though, I know better than to let it get scratched, but watching him play with it hurts more than the kick in the goonies did. He should be keeping it in a box, safe so it doesn’t get ruined.

I decided to do a move I’d been working on and impress them all by putting a spin on my marble and hitting both marbles in the one throw. I threw my taw and it hit Duncan’s opaque first like I planned, then Tommy shouted and they all looked at Bobby who had a snail in his mouth, shell and all. Angus rushed over to grab it from him and chucked it across the road. He opened Bobby’s mouth wide.

‘The snail is missing from the shell. Did you eat it, Bobby?’

Bobby didn’t answer, just waited for a clatter, his big blue eyes wide. Bobby’s the only blond. He gets away with murder because of those blue eyes and blond hair. Even Hamish doesn’t hit him half as much as he wants to. But anyway when they were all busy wondering about where the slug part of the snail went, nobody was looking when my taw hit Angus’s marble as well, which meant that I could capture both marbles in the one throw. They looked back at me to see me holding two of them in my hand, and that’s when Angus accused me of cheating and wrapped me in a headlock.

Free now of the headlock I have to respond to the cheating allegations by trying to repeat the move, which should be fine, I know I can do it, but I can’t when they think that I’m a cheat. If I can’t do it again it proves to them that I cheated. Hamish winks at me. I know he knows that I can do it, but if I don’t win he might not take me out tonight. My hands start to sweat.

Mammy screams again and Tommy’s eyes widen.

‘Baby?’ Bobby asks.

‘Nearly there, pal, nearly there,’ Hamish says, rolling up another cigarette, cool as fuck. Seriously, when I grow up I want to be just like him.

Mrs Lynch’s door opens – she’s our next-door neighbour – and she comes out with her daughter, Lucy. Lucy’s face is already scarlet when she sees Hamish. Lucy is holding a tray with a mountain of sandwiches all piled up, I can see strawberry jam, and Mrs Lynch has diluted orange in a jug.

We all pile on top of the food.

‘Thanks, Mrs Lynch,’ we all say, mouths full and devouring the sandwiches. With Mammy in the throes of it we haven’t eaten since dinner yesterday.

Hamish winks at Lucy and she kind of giggles and runs inside. I saw them together late one night, Hamish had one hand up her top and the other up her skirt, and she’d one leg wrapped around him like a baby monkey, her thick white thigh practically glowing in the dark.

‘That mammy of yours will keep going till she gets that girl of hers, won’t she?’ Mrs Lynch says, sitting down on the step.

‘I’ve a feeling it’s a girl this time,’ Hamish says. ‘Her bump’s different.’

Hamish is serious; for all his trouble he notices things, sees things that none of the rest of us do.

‘I think you’re right,’ Mrs Lynch agrees. ‘It’s high up all right.’

‘It’ll be nice to have a girl around,’ Hamish says. ‘No more of these smelly bastards to annoy me.’

‘Ah, she’ll be the boss of you all, wait’ll you see,’ says Mrs Lynch. ‘Like my Lucy.’

‘She sure is the boss of Hamish,’ Angus mutters, and gets a boot in the stomach from Hamish. Chewed-up jam sandwich fires out of his mouth and he’s momentarily winded and I’m glad: payback for my headlock.

Hamish’s green eyes are glowing, he really does look like he wants a girl. He looks like a big softy thinking about it.

Mammy wails again.

‘Won’t be long now,’ Hamish says.

‘She’s doing a fine job,’ Mrs Lynch says, and she looks like she’s in pain just listening. Maybe she’s remembering and I feel sick thinking of a baby coming out of her.

The midwife starts chanting, as if Mammy’s in a boxing match and she’s the coach. Mammy’s squealing like she’s a pig being chased around with a carving knife.

‘Final push,’ Hamish says.

Mrs Lynch looks impressed with Hamish’s knowledge. As the eldest he’s sat through this five times; whether he remembers them all or not, he’s definitely learned the way.

‘Okay, let’s finish this before she comes out,’ Angus says, jumping up and wiping his jam face on his sleeve.

I know Angus wants to prove me wrong in front of everyone. He knows Hamish likes me and just because he’s too weak to hit Hamish, he uses me to get at him instead. Hurting me is like hurting Hamish. And Hamish feels that way too. It’s good for me but bad for the person who treats me bad: last week Hamish punched out a fella’s front tooth for not picking me for his football team. I didn’t even want to play football.

I stand up and take my place. Concentrating hard, my heart beating in my chest, my palms sweaty. I want that corkscrew.

The midwife is screaming about seeing the baby’s head. Mammy’s sounds are terrifying now. The piggy’s being slashed.

‘Good girl, good girl,’ Mrs Lynch says, chewing on her nail and rocking back and forth on the step, as if Mammy can hear her. ‘Nearly over, love. You’re there. You’re there.’

I throw the taw. It hits Duncan’s marble just like I planned and it heads to Angus’s. I want that corkscrew.

‘A girl!’ the midwife calls out.

Hamish stands up, about to punch the air but he stops himself.

My marble travels to Angus’s corkscrew. It misses but nobody’s looking, nobody’s seen it happen. Everyone is frozen in place, Mrs Lynch goes still. Waiting; they’re all waiting for the baby to cry.

Hamish puts his head in his hands. I check again. Nobody is looking at me, or my taw, which went straight past Angus’s, it didn’t even touch it.

I take a tiny step to the right but they’re still not looking. I reach out my foot and push my marble back a bit so that it’s touching Angus’s Popeye corkscrew. My heart is beating wildly, I can’t believe I’m doing it, but if I get away with it then I’ll have the corkscrew, it’ll actually be mine.

All of a sudden there’s a wail, but it’s not the baby, it’s Mammy.

Hamish runs inside, Duncan follows. Tommy grabs Bobby from the dirt and carries him into the house. Angus looks down at the ground and sees his marble and my marble, touching.

His face is deadly serious. ‘Okay. You win.’ Then he follows the boys inside.

I pick up the green corkscrew and examine it, finally happy to have it in my hand, part of my collection. These are incredibly rare. My happiness is short-lived though as my adrenaline begins to wear off and it sinks in.

There’s no baby girl. There’s no baby at all. And I’m a cheat.

‘Sabrina, are you okay?’ Eric asks me from across his desk.

‘Yes,’ I say, keeping my voice measured while feeling anything but. I have just fired my mug at the concrete wall because I missed a near-drowning. ‘I thought there would be more pieces.’ We both look at the mug sitting on his desk. The handle has come off and the rim is chipped, but that’s it. ‘My mum fired a teapot up at the ceiling once. There were definitely more pieces.’

Eric looks at it, studies it. ‘I suppose it’s the way it hit the wall. The angle or something.’

We consider that in silence.

‘I think you should go home,’ he says suddenly. ‘Take the day off. Enjoy the solar eclipse everybody’s talking about. Come back in on Monday.’

‘Okay.’

Home for me is a three-bed end of terrace, where I live with my husband, Aidan, and our three boys. Aidan works in Eircom broadband support, though it never seems to work in our house. We’ve been married for seven years. We met in Ibiza when we were contestants in a competition that took place on the bar counter of a nightclub to see who could lick cream off a complete stranger’s torso the quickest. He was the torso, I was the licker. We won. Don’t for a moment think that was out of character for me. I was nineteen, and fourteen people took part in front of an audience of thousands, and we won a free bottle of tequila, which we subsequently drank on the beach, while we had sex. It would have been out of character not to. Aidan was a stranger to me then, but he’s a stranger to that man now, unrecognisable from that cocky teenager with the pierced ear and the shaved eyebrow. I suppose we both changed. Aidan doesn’t even like the beach now, says the sand gets everywhere. And I’m trying to stay off dairy.

It is rare that I find myself alone in the house; in fact I can’t remember the last time that happened, no kids around asking me to do something every two seconds. I don’t know what to do with myself so I sit in the empty, silent kitchen looking around. It’s ten a.m. and the day has barely started. I make myself a cup of tea, just for something to do, but don’t drink it. I stop myself just in time from putting the teabags in the fridge. I’m always doing things like this. I look at the pile of washing and ironing but can’t be bothered. I realise I’ve been holding my breath and I exhale.

There are things that I need to do all the time. Things that I never have the time for in my carefully ordered daily routine. Now I have some time – the whole day – but I don’t know where to start.

My mobile rings, saving me from indecision, and it’s my dad’s hospital.

‘Hello?’ I say, feeling the tightness in my chest.

‘Hi, Sabrina, it’s Lea.’ My dad’s favourite nurse. ‘We just got a delivery of five boxes for Fergus. Did you arrange it?’

‘No,’ I frown.

‘Oh. Well, I haven’t shown them to him yet, they’re sitting in reception, I wanted to wait to speak with you first, just in case, you know, there’s something in there that might confuse him.’

‘Yes, you’re right, thanks. Don’t worry. I’ll come get them now, I’m free.’

And that’s what always seems to happen. Whenever I get a minute to myself away from work and the kids, Dad is the other person who fills it. I arrive at the hospital thirty minutes later and see the boxes piled in the corner of reception. Upon seeing them I know immediately where they’ve come from and I’m raging. These are the boxes of Dad’s belongings that I packed after Dad’s home was sold. Mum had been storing them, but she’s obviously chosen not to any more. I don’t understand why she sent them here and not to me.

Last year my dad suffered a severe stroke, which has led to his living in a long-term care facility, giving him the kind of skilled care that I know I could not have given with three young boys – Charlie at seven, Fergus at five and Alfie at three years old – and a job. Mum certainly wouldn’t have taken on the role either as she and Dad are divorced, and have been separated since I was fifteen. Though right now they’re getting along better than they ever have, and I even think Mum enjoys her fortnightly visits with him.

There are those who insist that stress does not cause strokes, but it happened during a time when Dad was the most stressed in his life, coping with the fallout of the financial crisis. He worked for a venture capital company. He scrambled for a while, trying to find new clients, trying to win old ones back, and all the while watching lives fall apart and feeling responsible for that, but it wasn’t sustainable. Eventually he found a new job, in car sales, was trying to move on, but his blood pressure was high, his weight had ballooned, he smoked heavily, didn’t exercise, and drank too much. I’m no doctor, but he did all of these things because he was stressed, and then he had a stroke.

His speech isn’t easy to understand and he’s in a wheelchair, though he’s working on his walking. He’s lost an enormous amount of weight, and seems like a completely different man to the man he was in the years leading up to his stroke. The stroke caused some memory problems, which enrages Mum. He seems to forget all the hurt he caused her. He has been able to wipe the slate clean of all of their problems and arguments, their heartache and his misdemeanours – of which there were many – throughout their marriage. He comes out of it smelling of roses.

‘He gets to live like none of it happened, like he doesn’t have to feel guilty or apologise for anything,’ Mum regularly rants. She was obviously planning on him feeling bad for the rest of his life and he went and ruined it. He went and forgot it all. But even though she rants about the Fergus before the stroke, she visits him regularly and they talk like the couple they both wish they’d been. About what’s happening in the news, about the garden, the seasons, the weather. It’s comforting chat. I think what angers her most is the fact that she likes him now. This sweet, caring, gentle, patient man is a man she could have remained married to.

What has happened to Dad has been difficult, but we haven’t lost him. He is still alive and in fact what we lost was the other side of him, the distant, detached, sometimes prickly side of him that was harder to love. The one that pushed people away. The one that wanted to be alone, but have us at the end of his fingertips, just in case, for when he wanted us. He is quite content where he is now; he gets along with the nurses, has made friends, and I spend more time with him now than I ever have, visiting him with Aidan and the boys on Sundays.

I never know what exactly Dad has forgotten until I bring something up and I watch that now all too familiar fog pass over his eyes, that vacant look as he tries to process what I’ve just said with his collection of memories and experiences, only to find it coming back empty, as if they don’t tally. I understand why Nurse Lea didn’t bring the boxes directly to him; an overload of too many things that he can’t remember would surely upset him. There are ways to deal with those moments. I gently sidestep them, move on from them quickly as though they never happened, or pretend that I’ve gotten the details wrong myself. It’s not because it upsets him – most of the time it goes by without drama, as if he’s oblivious to it – but it upsets me.

There are more boxes than I remember and, too impatient to wait until I get home, I stand there in the corridor and use a key to pierce through the tape on the top of one of the boxes and slice it open. I fold back the box, curious to see what’s inside. I expect photo albums, or wedding cards. Something sentimental that, far from conjuring beautiful memories, starts Mum spouting about everything that was taken from her by her own husband. The dreams that were shattered, the promises that were broken.

Instead I find a folder containing pages covered in handwriting: my dad’s looping, swirling letters, that remind me of school sick notes and birthday cards. At the top of the page it says Marbles Inventory. Beneath the folder are tins, pouches and boxes, some in bubble wrap, others in tissue paper.

I open some of the lids. Inside each tin or box are deliciously colourful candy-like balls of shining glass. I look at them in utter shock and amazement. I had no idea my dad liked marbles. I had no idea my dad knew the slightest thing about marbles. If it wasn’t for his handwriting in the inventory, I would have thought there was a mistake. It is as if I have opened a box to somebody else’s life.

I open the folder and read through the list, which is not as sentimental as it first seemed. It is almost scientific.

The pouches – some velvet, others mesh – and the tin boxes are colour-coded and numbered with stickers, to save confusion, and adhere to the colours on the inventory.

The first on the list is a small velvet pouch of four marbles. The inventory lists them as Bloodies and, beside that, (Allies, Fr. Noel Doyle). Opening the pouch, the marbles are smaller than any others I can see offhand and have varying red swirls, but Dad has gone into detail describing them:

Rare Christensen Agate ‘Bloodies’ have transparent red swirls edged with translucent brown on an opaque white base.

There is a cube box of more bloodies, dating back to 1935 from the Peltier Glass Company. These are appropriately colour-coded red and are listed together with the velvet pouch. I scoop a few marbles into my hands and roll them around, enjoying the sound of them clicking together, while my mind races at what I’ve discovered. Pouches, tins, boxes, all containing the most beautiful colours, swirls and spirals, glistening as they catch the light. I lift some out and hold them up to the window, examining the detail inside, the bubbles, the light, utterly enchanted by the complexity within something so small. I flick through the pages quickly:

… latticinia core swirls, divided core swirls, solid core swirls, ribbon core swirls, joseph’s coat swirls, banded/coreless swirls, peppermint swirls, clambroths, banded opaques, indian, banded lutz, onionskin lutz, ribbon lutz …

A myriad of marbles, all of them alien to me. What is even more astonishing is that in other pages of his handwritten documents he has included a table charting each marble’s value depending upon how it measures up in terms of size, mint, near mint, good, collectable. It seems that his humble box of bloodies are worth $150–$250.

All of the prices are listed in US dollars. Some are valued at fifty dollars or one hundred, while the two-inch ribbon lutz has been priced at $4,500 in mint condition, $2,250 in near mint, $1,250 in good condition and collectable is $750. I know next to nothing about their condition – all of them appear perfect to me, nothing cracked or chipped – but there are hundreds of them packed away, and pages and pages of inventory. What Dad appears to have here are thousands of dollars’ worth of marbles.

I stop and think. All around me are the sounds and smells of the care home and it transports me from the parallel marble world back to reality. I was worried about him being able to pay for his hospital costs but if his pricing is correct, then he has his nest egg right here. I’m always worried about those bills. We have no way of knowing when he might need another operation or new medicine, or a new physio. It’s always changing, the bills are always climbing and the proceeds from the sale of his apartment didn’t go far after paying his mortgage and numerous debts. None of us had known that he was in such a bad financial state.

His writing is impeccable, a beautiful flowing script; he hasn’t made one mistake and if he did I imagine he started the page over. It is written with love, it has taken great time and dedication, research and knowledge. That’s it: it’s written by an expert. It’s the writing of another man, not the one who now grasps the pen with great difficulty, but neither does it fit with the father I knew, whose only hobby seemed to be watching and talking about football. Wanting to take my time to go through the boxes at home, I pack everything away again and Gerry, the porter, helps me carry them to my car. But before locking them in the boot, I hesitate and take out the small bag of red marbles.

Dad is sitting in the lounge, drinking a cup of tea and watching Bargain Hunt. He watches the show every day: people searching for items at markets and then trying to auction them for as much as possible. Maybe there have been hints of his passion all the way along and I missed them. I think of the inventory and wonder if I should go back for it. As I watch him staring intently at the pricing of these old objects, I wonder if in fact he does remember exactly what is in those boxes after all. He sees me before I have time to think about it any further and so I go to him, to his smiling face. It breaks my heart how happy he is to receive visitors, not because he’s lonely but because he could often be so irritated by others before, unless it was to convince them to buy something from him, and he now can’t get enough of people’s company, for nothing in return.

‘Good morning.’

‘Ah, to what do I owe this pleasure?’ he asks. ‘No work today?’

‘Eric let me off early,’ I explain diplomatically. ‘And Lea called me. She said it was an emergency, that you were revving up the inmates, trying to organise a breakout again.’

He laughs, then he looks down at my hands and his laughter stops immediately. I’m holding the bag of red marbles. Something passes on his face. A look I’ve never seen before. As quickly as it arrived, it’s gone again and he’s smiling at me, the confusion back.

‘What’s that you’ve got there?’

I open my hand, reveal the red marbles in the mesh bag.

He just stares at them. I wait for him to say something but nothing comes. He barely blinks.

‘Dad?’

Nothing.

‘Dad?’ I put my free hand on his arm gently.

‘Yes.’ He looks at me, troubled.

I loosen the drawstrings on the mesh purse and roll them into the palm of my hand. As I move the marbles in my hand they roll and click together. ‘Do you want to hold them?’

He stares at them again, intently, as though trying to figure them out. I want to know what’s going on inside his head. Too much? Everything? Nothing? I know that feeling. I watch for that sliver of recognition again. It doesn’t come. Just bother and irritation, perhaps that he can’t remember what he wants to remember. I stuff the marbles in my pocket quickly and change the subject, trying to hide my disappointment from him.

But I saw it. Like a flicker of a flame. The ruffle of a feather. The flash of the sea as the sun hits it. Something brief and then gone, but there. When he saw the marbles first, he was a different man, with a face I’ve never seen.

I’m home from school, a fever, the first and only day of school I’ve ever missed. I hate school; I would have wanted this any day at all in the whole entire year. Any day but today. The funeral was yesterday – well, it wasn’t a proper one with a priest, but Mattie’s pal is an undertaker and he found out where they were burying our baby sister, in the same coffin as an old woman who had just died in the hospital. When we got to the graveyard, the old woman’s family were finishing up their funeral so we had to wait around. Ma was happy it was an old woman she was being buried with and not an old man, or any man. The old woman was a mother, and a grandmother. Mammy spoke to one of her daughters who said that her ma would look after the baby. Uncle Joseph and Aunty Sheila said all the prayers at our ceremony. Mattie doesn’t say prayers, I don’t think he knows any, and Mammy couldn’t speak.

The priest called round to the house beforehand and tried to talk Mammy out of making a show of herself by going to the grave. Mammy had a shouting match with him and Mattie grabbed the brandy from the priest’s hand and told him to get the fuck out of his house. Hamish helped Mattie get rid of him, the only time I’ve seen them on the same side. I saw the way everyone looked at Mammy as we walked down the street to the graveyard, all dressed in black. They looked at her like she was crazy, like our baby sister was never really a baby at all, just because she didn’t take a breath when she came out. Even though they’re not supposed to, the midwife had let Mammy hold her baby after she was born. She held her for an hour, then when the midwife started to get a bit angry and tried to take her from Mammy, Hamish stepped in. Mattie wasn’t there and he took over, he lifted the baby out of Mammy’s arms and carried her down the stairs. He kissed her before he gave her back to the midwife, who took her away forever.

‘She was alive inside of me,’ I heard Mammy say to the priest, but I don’t think he liked hearing her say that. He looked like it was a bit disgusting for him to think of things living inside of her. But she did it anyway, made up her own funeral at the graveyard, and it was cold and grey and it rained the whole time. My shoes got so wet, my socks and feet were soaking and numb. I sneezed all day, couldn’t breathe out of my nose last night, the lads kept thumping me to stop me snoring and I spent the whole night going from hot to cold, shivering then sweating, feeling cold when I was sweating, feeling hot when I was cold. Crazy dreams: Da and Mattie fighting, and Father Murphy shouting at me about dead babies and hitting me, and my brothers stealing my marbles, and Mammy in black howling with grief. But that part was real.

Even though I feel like my skin is on fire and everything around me is swirling, I don’t call Mammy. I stay in bed, tossing and turning, sometimes crying because I’m so confused and my skin is sore. Mammy brought me a boiled egg this morning and put a cold cloth on my head. She sat beside me, dressed in black, still with a big tummy looking like she has a baby in there, staring into space but not saying anything. It’s kind of like when Da died but this is different; she was angry at Da, this time she’s sad.

Usually Mammy never stops moving. She’s always cleaning, cleaning Bobby’s nappies, the house, banging sheets and rugs, cooking, preparing food. She never stops, always banging around the place, us always in her way and her moving us out of the way with her legs and feet, pushing us aside like she’s in a field and we’re long grass. Now and then she stops moving to straighten her back and groan, before going back to it again. But today the house is silent and I’m not used to that. Usually we’re all shouting, fighting, laughing, talking; even at night there’s a child crying, or Mammy singing to it, or Mattie bumping into things when he comes home drunk and swearing. I hear things that I’ve never heard before like creaks and moaning pipes, but there’s no sound from Mammy. This worries me.

I get out of bed, my legs shaking and feeling weak like I have never walked before, and I hang on tight to the bannister as I go downstairs, every floorboard creaking beneath my bare feet. I go into the living room, joined on to the kitchen, tiny at the back of the house like they forgot it and added it on, and it’s empty. She’s not here. Not in the kitchen, not in the garden, not in the living room. I’m about to leave when I suddenly see her in black sitting in an armchair in the corner of the living room that only Mattie ever sits in; so still I nearly missed her. She’s staring into space, her eyes red like she hasn’t stopped crying since yesterday. I’ve never seen her so still. I don’t remember it ever being just me and her before, just the two of us. I’ve never had Mammy to myself. Thinking about it makes me nervous: what do I say to Mammy when there’s nobody around to hear me, to see me, to react, to tease, to goad, to impress? What do I say to Mammy when I’m not using her to get a rise out of someone else, to tell on someone, or know if what I’m saying is right or wrong because of their reactions?

I’m about to leave the room when I think of something, something I want to ask, that I would only ask if it was just me and her, with no one else around.

‘Hi,’ I say.

She looks over at me, surprised, like she’s had a fright, then she smiles. ‘Hi, love. How’s your head? Do you need more water?’

‘No thanks.’

She smiles.

‘I want to ask you a question. If you don’t mind.’

She beckons me in and I come closer and stand before her, fidgeting with my fingers.

‘What is it?’ she asks gently.

‘Do you … do you think she’s with Da?’

This seems to take her by surprise. Her eyes fill and she struggles to talk. I think if the others were here I wouldn’t have asked such a stupid question. I’ve gone and upset her, the very thing Mattie told us not to do. I need to get myself out of it before she yells or, worse, cries.

‘I know he’s not her da, but he loved you, and you’re her mammy. And he loved children. I don’t remember loads about him but I remember that. Green eyes and he always played with us. Chased us. Wrestled us. I remember him laughing. He was skinny but he had huge hands. Some other das never did that, so I know he liked us. I think she’s in heaven and that he’s minding her and so I don’t think you need to worry about her.’

‘Oh, Fergus, love,’ she says, opening her arms as tears run down her face. ‘Come here to me.’

I go into her arms and she hugs me so tight I nearly can’t breathe but am afraid to say. She rocks me, saying, ‘My boy, my boy,’ over and over again, and I think I might have said the right thing after all.

When she pulls away I say, ‘Can I ask you another question?’

She nods.

‘Why did you call her Victoria?’

Her face creases again, in pain, but she composes herself and even smiles. ‘I haven’t told anyone why.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’

‘No, pet, it’s just that nobody asked. Come here and I’ll tell you,’ she says, and even though I’m too old, I squeeze onto her lap, half on the armchair, half on her. ‘I felt different with her. A different kind of bump. I said to Mattie, “I feel like a plum.” Says he, “We’ll call her Plum, so.”’

‘Plum!’ I laugh.

She nods and wipes her tears again. ‘It got me thinking about my grandma’s house. We used to visit her: me, Sheila and Paddy. She had apple trees, pears, blackberries, and she had two plum trees. I loved those plum trees because they were all she talked about, I think they were all she thought about – she wouldn’t let those trees beat her.’ She gives a little laugh and even though I don’t get the joke, I laugh too. ‘I think she thought it was exotic, that growing plums made her exotic, when really she was plain, plain as can be, like any of us. She’d make plum pies and I loved baking them with her. We stayed with her on my birthday every year, so every year my birthday cake was a plum pie.’

‘Mmm,’ I say, licking my lips. ‘I’ve never had plum pie.’

‘No,’ she says, surprised. ‘I’ve never baked it for you. She grew Opal plums, but they weren’t reliable because the bullfinches ate the fruit buds in winter. They used to strip those branches clean and Nana would be crazy, running around the garden swatting them with her tea cloth. Sometimes she’d get us to stand by the tree all day just scaring them away; me, Sheila and Paddy, standing around like scarecrows.’

I laugh at that image of them.

‘She gave the Opal more attention because it tasted better and it grew larger, almost twice the size of the other tree’s plums, but the Opal made her angrier and didn’t deliver every year. My favourite plum tree was the other tree, the Victoria plum. It was smaller but it always delivered and the bullfinches stayed away from that one more. To me, it was the sweetest …’ Her smile fades again and she looks away. ‘Well, now.’

‘I know a marble game called Picking Plums,’ I say.

‘Do you now?’ she asks. ‘Don’t you have a marble game for every occasion?’ She prods at me with her finger in my tickly bits and I laugh.

‘Do you want to play?’

‘Why not!’ she says, surprised at herself.

I’m in such shock I run up the stairs faster than I ever have to get the marbles. Once downstairs she’s still in the chair, daydreaming. I set up the game, explaining as I go.

I can’t draw on the floor so I use a shoelace to mark a line and I place a row of marbles with a gap the width of two marbles in between. I use a skipping rope to mark a line on the other side of the room. The idea is to stand behind the line and take it in turns to shoot at the line of marbles.

‘So these are the plums,’ I say to her, pointing at the line of marbles, feeling such excitement that I have her attention, that she’s all mine, that she’s listening to me talking about marbles, that she’s possibly going to play marbles, that nobody else can steal her attention away. All aches and pains from my fever are gone in the distraction and hopefully hers are too. ‘You have to shoot your marble at the plums and if you hit it out of line you get the plum.’

She laughs. ‘This is so silly, Fergus.’ But she does it and she has fun, scowling when she misses and celebrating when she wins. I’ve never seen Mammy play like this, or punch the air in victory when she wins. It’s the best moment I’ve ever spent with her in my whole life. We play the game until all the plums are picked and for once I’m hoping I miss, because I don’t want it to end. When we hear voices at the door, the shouting and name-calling as my brothers return from school, I scurry for the marbles on the floor.

‘Back to bed, you!’ She ruffles my hair and returns to the kitchen.

I don’t tell the others what me and Mammy talked about and I don’t tell them we played marbles together. I want it to be between me and her.

And in the week that Mammy stops wearing black and bakes us plum pie for dessert, I don’t tell anybody why. One thing I learned about carrying marbles in my pockets in case Father Murphy locked me in the dark room, and going out with Hamish and pretending to other kids that I’ve never played marbles before, is that keeping secrets makes me feel powerful.

Mid-morning and back home, I lug Dad’s boxes into the middle of the living room floor and separate two I already know, boxes of sentimental and important items that we had to keep. I move them aside to make way for the three that are new to me. I’m mystified. Mum and I packed up his entire apartment, but I did not pack these boxes. I make myself a fresh cup of tea and begin emptying the same box I opened earlier, wanting to pick up where I left off. It is peculiar to have time to myself. Taking care and time, I start to go through Dad’s inventory.

Latticino core swirls, divided core swirls, ribbon core swirls, Joseph’s coat swirls. I take them out and line them up beside their boxes, crouched on the floor like one of my sons with their cars. I push my face up to them, examining the interiors, trying to compare and contrast. I marvel at the colours and detail; some are cloudy, some are clear, some appear to have trapped rainbows inside, while others have mini tornadoes frozen in a moment. Some have a base glass colour and nothing else. Despite being grouped together under these various alien titles I can’t tell the difference no matter how hard I try. Absolutely every single one of them is unique and I have to be careful not to mix them up.

The description of each marble boggles my mind too as I try to identify which of the core swirls is the gooseberry, caramel or custard. Which is the ‘beach ball’ peppermint swirl, which is the one with mica. But I’ve no doubt Dad knew, he knew them all. Micas, slags, opaques and clearies, some so complex it’s as though they house entire galaxies inside, others one single solid colour. Dark, bright, eerie and hypnotic, he has them all.

And then I come across a box that makes me laugh. Dad, who hated animals, who refused every plea for me to get a pet, has an entire collection of what are called ‘Sulphides’. Transparent marbles with animal figures inside, like he has his own farmyard within his tiny marbles. Dogs, cats, squirrels and birds. He even has an elephant. The one which stands out the most to me is a clear marble with an angel inside. It’s this that I hold and study for some time, straightening my aching back, trying to grasp what I’ve found, wondering when, what part of his life did this all occur. When we left the house did he watch us drive off and disappear to his ‘farmyard animals’? Tend to them privately in his own world. Was it before I was born? Or was it after he and Mum divorced, filling his solitude with a new hobby?

There is a little empty box, an Akro Agate Company retailer stock box, to be precise, which Dad has valued at a surprising $400–$700. There’s even a glass bottle with a marble inside, listed as a Codd bottle and valued at $2,100. It seems he didn’t just collect marbles, he also collected their presentation boxes, probably hoping to find the missing pieces of the jigsaw as the years went by. I feel a wave of sadness for him that that won’t happen now, that these marbles have been sitting in boxes for a year and he never knew to ask for them because he forgot that they were there.

I line them up, I watch them roll, the movement of colours inside like kaleidoscopes. And then when every inch of my carpet is covered, I sit up, straighten my spine till it clicks. I’m not sure what else to do, but I don’t want to put them away again. They look so beautiful lining my floor, like a candy army.

I pick up the inventory and try once more to see if I can identify them myself, playing my own little marble game, and as I do so, I notice that not everything written on the list is on my floor.

I check the box again and it’s empty, apart from some mesh bags and boxes which are collectable for their condition alone, despite there being no marbles inside them. I flip the top of the third box open and peer inside, but it’s just a load of old newspapers and brochures, nothing like the Aladdin’s cave of the first two boxes.

After my thorough search, which I repeat two more times, I can confirm that there are two missing items from the inventory. Allocated turquoise and yellow circular stickers, one is described as an Akro Agate Company box, circa 1930, the original sample case carried by salesmen as they made their calls. Dad has priced it at $7,500–$12,500. The other is what’s called World’s Best Moons. A Christensen Agate Company original box of twenty-five marbles, listed between $4,000–$7,000. His two most valuable items are gone.

I sit in a kind of stunned silence, until I realise I’m holding my breath and need to exhale.

Dad could have sold them. He went to the trouble of having them valued, so it would make sense for him to have sold them, and the most expensive ones too. He was having money troubles, we know that; perhaps he had to sell his beloved marbles just to get by. But it seems unlikely. Everything has been so well documented and catalogued, he would have made a note of their sale, probably even included the receipt. The two missing collections are written proudly and boldly on the inventory, as present as everything else in the inventory that sits on the floor.

First I’m baffled. Then I’m annoyed that Mum never told me about this collection. That objects held in such regard were packed away and forgotten. I don’t have any memory of Dad and marbles, but that’s not to say it didn’t happen. I know he liked his secrets. I cast my mind back to the man before the stroke and I see pinstripe suits, cigarette smoke. Talk about stock markets and economics, shares up and down, the news or football always on the radio and television, and more recently car-talk. Nothing in my memory bank tells me anything about marbles, and I’m struggling to square this collection – this careful passion – with the man I recall from when I was growing up.

A new thought occurs. I wonder if in fact they’re Dad’s marbles at all. Perhaps he inherited them. His dad died when he was young, and he had a stepfather, Mattie. But from what I know about Mattie it seems unlikely that he was interested in marbles, or in such careful cataloguing as this. Perhaps they were his father’s, or his Uncle Joseph’s, and Dad took the time to get them valued and catalogue them. The only thing I am sure of is the inventory being his writing; anything beyond that is a mystery.

There’s one person who can help me. I stretch my legs and reach for the phone and call Mum.

‘I didn’t know Dad had a marble collection,’ I say straight away, trying to hide my accusatory tone.

Silence. ‘Pardon me?’

‘Why did I never know that?’

She laughs a little. ‘He has a marble collection now? How sweet. Well, as long as it’s making him happy, Sabrina.’

‘No. He’s not collecting them now. I found them in the boxes that you had delivered to the hospital today.’ Also an accusatory tone.

‘Oh.’ A heavy sigh.

‘We agreed that you would store them for him. Why did you send them to the hospital?’

Though I didn’t recognise the marbles, I do recognise some of the other boxes’ contents as items we packed away from Dad’s apartment before putting it on the market. I still feel guilty that we had to do this, but we needed to raise as much money as possible for his rehabilitation. We tried to keep all the precious memories safe, like his lucky football shirt, his photographs and mementos, which I have in our shed in the back garden, the only place I could store them. I didn’t have room for the rest, so Mum took them.

‘Sabrina, I was going to store his boxes, but then Mickey Flanagan offered to take them and so I sent him everything.’

‘Mickey Flanagan, the solicitor, had Dad’s private things?’ I say, annoyed.

‘He’s not exactly a random stranger. He’s a kind of friend. He was Fergus’s solicitor for years. Handled our divorce too. You know, he pushed for Fergus to get sole custody of you. You were fifteen – what the hell would Fergus have done with you at fifteen? Not to mention the fact you didn’t even want to live with me at fifteen. You could barely live with yourself. Anyway, Mickey was handling the insurance and hospital bills, and he said he’d store Fergus’s things, he had plenty of space.’

A bubble of anger rises in me. ‘If I’d known his solicitor was taking his personal things, I would have had them, Mum.’

‘I know. But you said you had no space for anything more.’

Which I didn’t and I don’t. I barely have space for my shoes. Aidan jokes that he has to step outside of the house in order to change his mind.

‘So why did Mickey send the boxes to the hospital this morning?’

‘Because Mickey had to get rid of them and I told him that was the best place for them. I didn’t want to clutter you with them. It’s a sad story really: Mickey’s son lost his house and he and his wife and kids have to move in with Mickey and his wife. They’re bringing all their furniture, which has to be stored in Mickey’s garage, and he said he couldn’t keep Fergus’s things any more. Which is understandable. So I told him to send them to the hospital. They’re Fergus’s things. He can decide what to do with them. He’s perfectly capable of that, you know. I thought he might enjoy it,’ she adds gently, as I’m sure she can sense my frustration. ‘Imagine the time it will pass for him, going down memory lane.’

I realise I’m holding my breath. I exhale.

‘Did you discuss this walk down memory lane with his doctors first?’

‘Oh,’ she says suddenly, realising. ‘No. I didn’t, I … oh dear. Is he okay, love?’

I sense her sincere concern. ‘Yes, I got to them before he did.’

‘I’m sorry, I never thought of that. Sabrina, I didn’t tell you because you would have insisted on taking everything and cluttering your house with things you don’t need and taking too much on like you always do when it’s not necessary. You’ve enough on your plate.’

Which is also true.

I can’t blame her for wanting to rid herself of Dad’s baggage, he’s not her problem any more and ceased being so seventeen years ago. And I believe that she was doing it for my own good, not wanting to weigh me down.

‘So did you know he had a marble collection?’ I ask.

‘Oh, that man!’ Her resentment for the other Fergus returns. The past Fergus. The old Fergus. ‘Found among other pointless collections, I’m sure. Honestly, that man was a hoarder – remember how full the skip was when we sold the apartment? He used to bring those sachets of mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise home every day from whenever he ate out. I had to tell him to stop. I think he was addicted. You know they say that people who hoard have emotional issues. That they’re holding on to all of those things because they’re afraid of letting go.’

It goes on and I allow 90 per cent of it to wash over me, including the habit of referring to Dad in the past tense as though he’s dead. To her, the man she knew is dead. She quite likes the man she visits in the hospital every fortnight.

‘We had an argument about a marble once,’ she says bitterly.

I think they had a fight about just about everything at least once in their lives.

‘How did that come about?’

‘I can’t remember,’ she says too quickly.

‘But you never knew he had a marble collection?’

‘How would I know?’

‘Because you were married to him. And because I didn’t pack them up, so you must have.’

‘Oh please, I can’t be called to account for anything he has done since we separated, nor during our marriage for that matter,’ she spouts.

I’m baffled.

‘Some of the items are missing,’ I say, looking at them all laid out on the floor. The more I think about it, and hearing that they were in the possession of his solicitor, the more suspicious I am becoming. ‘I’m not suggesting Mickey Flanagan stole them,’ I say. ‘I mean, Dad could have lost them.’

‘What’s missing?’ she asks, with genuine concern. The man she divorced was an imbecile, but the nice man in rehabilitation must not be wronged.

‘Part of his marble collection.’

‘He’s lost his marbles?’ She laughs. I don’t. She finally catches her breath. ‘Well, I don’t think your dad ever had anything to do with marbles, dear. Perhaps it’s a mistake, perhaps they’re not your father’s, or Mickey delivered the wrong boxes. Do you want me to call him?’

‘No,’ I say, confused. I look on the floor and see pages and pages covered in Dad’s handwriting, cataloguing these marbles, and yet Mum seems to genuinely know nothing.

‘The marbles are definitely his and the missing items were valuable.’

‘By his own estimation, I’m guessing.’

‘I don’t know who valued them, but there are certificates to show they’re authentic. The certs for the missing marbles aren’t here. The inventory says one item was worth up to twelve thousand dollars.’

‘What?’ she gasps. ‘Twelve thousand for marbles!’

‘One box of marbles.’ I smile.

‘Well, no wonder he almost went bankrupt. They weren’t mentioned as assets in the divorce.’

‘He mightn’t have had them then,’ I say quietly.

Mum talks like I haven’t spoken at all, the conspiracy theories building in her head, but there’s one question she’s failed to ask. I didn’t pack them and she didn’t know about them, but somehow they found their way to the rest of Dad’s belongings.

I take Mickey’s office details from her and end the call.

The marble collection covers the entire floor. They are beautiful, twinkling from the carpet like a midnight sky.

The house is quiet but my head is now buzzing. I pick up the first batch of marbles on the list. The box of bloodies that I showed to Dad, listed as ‘Allies’.

I start to polish them. Kind of like an apology for not ever knowing about them before.

I have a knack for remembering things that people forget and I now know something important about Dad that he kept to himself, which he has forgotten. Things we want to forget, things we can’t forget, things we forgot we’d forgotten until we remember them. There is a new category. We all have things we never want to forget. We all need a person to remember them just in case.

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