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“Don’t worry, Aoife, love,” Mam offered then. “Dad didn’t have to pay Joey too much to go out with you.”
More eruptions of laughter unfolded.
“Ah, don’t you take any notice of them, pet,” Dad crooned, through fits of laughter. “It only cost me a fiver.”
“I hate you all,” I announced dramatically, and then waved a finger in Joey’s amused face. “Especially you, turncoat.”
SIXTH YEAR
HOME BY NOW
AUGUST 31ST 2004
JOEY
“You need to do something,”Shannon all but begged when I stepped through the front door on Tuesday evening after an extra-long training session with the minors in the city. “Please, Joe, please, you have to do something!” With tear-filled eyes, she clung onto my arm like it was a life jacket. “There’s so much blood.”
“Jesus Christ, calm down,” I snapped, dropping my hurley and gear bag on the hallway tiles. “What’s after happening?” I demanded, flustered, as I glanced around wildly. “Who’s bleeding?”
Hiccupping out a sob, Shannon dragged me up the staircase, stumbling over her own legs, until we were on the landing.
“In there,” she choked out, pointing to the bathroom. “In there, Joe.”
“Mam,” I strangled out, chest-heaving, as I threw the bathroom door open and barreled inside. “Mam!”
“It’s not Mam,” Shannon cried out. “It’s—“
“It’s okay,” a small voice said, and my legs gave way beneath me.
“No.”
“It’s okay, Joe.”
No, no, no.
“Really, I’m okay.”
Please God no.
Sinking to my knees on the blood encrusted floor, I just stared helplessly at the small child leaning over the side of the toilet, and the steady flow of blood coming from his nose.
Completely fucking reeling, I felt my head grow light as memories from what felt like a lifetime ago bombarded me.
“It’s okay, Dar,”I wheezed, leaning heavily over the toilet bowl, as a mixture of vomit and blood continued to heave from my black and blue stomach. “I’m okay.”
“Joey,” Darren croaked out, as he knelt beside me and kept a steadying hand to my back. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. I had training.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I strangled out, as the pain of having my seven-year-old nose broken threatened to consume me. “I don’t care,” I continued to say over and over, hoping that if I said it enough times, it might come true.
“It’s not asbad as it looks,” Tadhg tried to comfort me by saying, as he spat a mouthful of clotted blood into the toilet bowl. He pressed a fresh wad of tissue to his clearly broken nose as the skin under his eyes already started turning a yellowish brown. “Really, Joe, it doesn’t even hurt.”
“He’s gone,” Shannon hurried to fill in. “I think he left because he knew you would be home soon.”
“Home soon,” I mumbled, shaking my head.
“Yeah,” she replied softly. “You’re usually home by now.”
“I’m sorry that I wasn’t here to protect you,” I heard myself whisper, numb to the bone, as I watched him churn in pain. “I had…training.”
