Lifesaving for Beginners

When you didn’t phone. And I couldn’t get through to your mobile or landline. And you didn’t respond to any of my emails.’
    I look at Nicolas and I giggle and I say, ‘I’m fine. There’s no need to worry. I’m having a lovely time, so I am.’
    For a moment, nobody says anything and it gets pretty quiet in the apartment, and I’d say, if I were sober, it’d be a damned awkward type of silence.
    Then Thomas says, ‘I’m going to go.’
    ‘But you just got here,’ I laugh after I say that, as if I happen to think that’s pretty funny.
    Thomas doesn’t think it’s funny because he just looks at me like he has no idea who I am. Then he looks at Nicolas, who stands up and holds out his hands as if he’s expecting Thomas to slap cuffs on him. Nicolas opens his mouth as if he’s going to recite a poem and that’s when Thomas says, ‘Goodbye,’ in a very serious, final sort of a voice and, before I can think of anything funny to add to that, he’s gone. Just like that.
    Gone.
    It’s as if he was never here.
    I look at Nicolas and snigger, the way drunk people do when they can’t think of anything to say.
    Nicolas says, ‘I should split.’
    Split. The state of him.
    He doesn’t try to kiss me or anything. I think he may have kissed me at one stage during the afternoon. I remember thinking: Christ, that’s a long tongue. But I have no recollection of an actual kiss.
    It doesn’t matter now.
    It doesn’t matter anymore.

Three months later . . .

 
    I check the calendar. It’s the sixteenth of October, which means it’s ten weeks exactly till my tenth birthday, which is also Christmas Day and, who knows, it might even end up being the new baby’s birthday, if it comes three days late.
    That’s a lot of things for one day.
    I wasn’t supposed to come until the twenty-fifth of January. Mam says I was the best Christmas present she ever got. I got a dog for Christmas when I was a kid. I taught him to jump through Faith’s hula hoop. His name was Setanta, after Fionn MacCumhaill’s dog. He died about six months after Dad went to Scotland. The vet said it was something to do with his kidneys but I think Setanta’s heart was sort of broken, because Dad was the one who took him for walks and fed him and let him sit on his lap, even though Setanta was a really big dog who moulted a lot and was a bit smelly, to be honest. For ages after Dad left, Setanta sat in the porch every day at half six, waiting for him to come home.
    I was mad about Fionn MacCumhaill and the Fianna stories when I was a kid. The Fianna were this cool band of Irish warriors and Fionn was the leader. They were always fighting with other gangs but the Fianna mostly won. They were pretty legend. Mam read the stories to me. Sometimes Faith did, if Mam had to work late at the Funky Banana or go to her book club or something. Faith was pretty good at reading them but she wasn’t as good as Mam at the voices. And she kept stopping at the exciting bits to play her violin. She said every story needs a soundtrack but I prefer just getting on with things.
    My favourite story is the one with Fionn and the Scottish giant. Mam took me to the Giant’s Causeway when I was a kid. I saw the stepping stones the Scottish giant used to cross the sea to Ireland. I held Mam’s hand when I saw them but I wasn’t scared. Sometimes adults make up stories and they’re not true. Like Santa. He’s not true. Sully told me and Damo. Sully is Damo’s big brother. He’s in the army and he tells me and Damo loads of stuff.
    Sully isn’t his real name. His real name is Jacob, I think, but everyone calls him Sully, on account of his surname which happens to be Sullivan.
    It’s Sunday, which means we have to go to the graveyard. Faith likes going there on Sundays. I don’t know why. I don’t like going. It’s always really cold there, even if it’s warm everywhere else. Faith says, ‘Wear an extra jumper.’ She’s in the attic, looking for Mam’s rosary beads. She says she wants to put them on the grave. Mam got the rosary beads from her grandmother, who lived to be a hundred and one. I swear to God. She got a hundred pounds from the President of Ireland because she was so old.
    I don’t think the beads are in the attic but Faith says she’s looked everywhere else.
    I asked Mam if Santa would still come to you if you didn’t believe in him. She said she thought he might. She said even if you didn’t believe in him, he’d still believe