Sylvia’s carer, Irene, would have tucked her up in bed hours ago, and Vee would be locked away in the study, drinking herself into oblivion like she did every night. Her alcoholism had always been apparent, even when Dad was alive, but these days she didn’t even bother trying to hide it.
Dad had tried in little ways to help her, but he was taken before he succeeded. He’d been such a kind, soft man. A hopeless romantic. Ripe for the picking by the likes of Vee.
Still, in a strange way I felt like she had loved him. What she didn’t love was his daughter. It was tragically comic I was the one she’d gotten stuck with in the end.
I cleaned the guest room from top to bottom, hoovering every nook and cranny and putting new sheets on the bed. As I worked, I thought about Vee’s brother, and what he might be like. She said Sylvia had him late. Did that mean he was a lot younger than Vee? I imagined a male version of her and barely held back the shudder that crept through me.
Yes, no matter his age, I had a feeling I’d be keeping my distance from Vee’s sibling.
***
“Eww, somebody’s on their period. I can smell period,” Sally O’Hare crowed as I stepped inside the classroom for English the following afternoon.
“The fact that you know what a period smells like indicates you suffer the same monthly fate,” Sister Dorothy commented dryly, her tortoiseshell glasses hanging off the tip of her nose. “So have a little empathy for the girl who’s currently bleeding from the womb.”
I wrinkled my nose at her graphic description as I took my seat next to my best friend, Aoife. Sister Dorothy had always been a straight talker, especially for a nun, but I thought this time she might have taken things a little too far. Sally looked like she was about to vomit up the pickle sandwich she ate for lunch.
“The womb, Sister? Really? Are you trying to make me ill?”
“If it means I don’t have to listen to your obnoxious prattling, then yes, perhaps I am.”
A few students chuckled. Sally O’Hare gaped at her.
“I’m reporting you to Principal Hawkins. You can’t talk to me like that.”
“Yeah, you can’t talk to her like that,” Claire McBride added, who was Sally’s best friend and constant sidekick.
“I’ll talk whatever way I like,” Sister Dorothy replied, and she was right. She would and could talk whatever way she liked to us students. The all-girls Loreto Convent school I attended was probably one hundred years old, and I was sure Sister Dorothy had been around for at least fifty of them. She was an institution in her own right. Nobody was going to fire her, and if they did, I imagined she’d sail on out of the place in a blaze of glory, her arm hanging out the window of her red Ford Focus as she gave us all the middle finger, a seventy-year-old bad arse.
“Now, everyone, please open your textbooks to page fifty. Today we’re going to learn all about Medieval poetry.”
Several groans sounded. Sister Dorothy’s lips curled at the edges, and I wondered if she didn’t have a little bit of a sadistic streak.
Later that day, I walked home along the beach, collecting a few interesting seashells that caught my eye. The shiny, pearlescent ones were my favourite. Sometimes when I was bored, I’d make jewellery and other knick-knacks from them. And given I was an eighteen-year-old living in an almost two-hundred-year-old house with no mobile phone and no internet, that was often. I had quite an impressive array of creations.
Something else shiny glinted in the mild evening sun at the front of the house, snagging my attention. Usually, I went in through the back door, but today curiosity had me walking around to the front. There, by the entrance, right next to Vee’s seldom used blue sedan, was a shiny black motorbike. I took my time perusing it, spotting the name Yamaha on the side.
Holding onto the straps of my school bag, I turned to go inside and was assaulted by a plume of smoke. A young man leaned against the house, one booted foot resting on the brick as he watched me.
I swallowed and took him in. He was dressed head to toe in black, which showcased his startlingly green eyes. His hair was dark, his expression inscrutable. He was undoubtedly an interesting specimen to appear in my world. I’d never been particularly confident around boys, or men for that matter, and in that moment, I just about lost the ability to speak. I was blushing, too, just because he was looking at me.
“So, you’re the ward,” he said, lifting his cigarette to his mouth and taking a drag.
I stared at him for several seconds before finally finding some words. Well, one word. “Ward?”