I started to get a pretty good idea of her schedule. She worked at a vet’s in Ladybrook. She was always taking animals back and forth to the surgery. Maybe she was trying to save them from getting put down, who knows, I couldn’t give a shite, because after all, Hitler loved his animals and we all know what he got up to in his spare time.

Most nights I would split from the shop, if I was on the rota, and sit outside her house, sunk down in the front seat of the car, and spy what she was up to. Mostly she stayed in. I saw her da, he was on one of them portable oxygen tanks. Sometimes he would come out onto the step and smoke a fag, standing there double-fisting the oxygen mask and the bifter; fucking chronic.

It was the same warm summer, those beautiful evenings in Belfast where it never goes dark except for the sky goes blue, dark blue, and then purple, and then back to blue again, like it isn’t even the sky but the sea up above. One time I watched them having this pathetic barbecue in their front garden, the three of them, the da on the oxygen, the ma in her wheelchair and Arlene sitting there between them, cooking sausages on an old rancid grill. It was probably the fucking dogs from the clinic they were eating. It sticks in my mind, that night. These sad old horrors, slumped in their chairs, in this fucking dump of a garden, not even speaking to each other but eating hot dogs off paper plates and fucking sitting round this white plastic table and fucking … staring into themselves in silence, beneath this deep fucking purple sea that was right there up above them. All they needed was a couple of party hats and it would’ve been a full-blown tragedy. Not that I gave a toss. My intention was that all three of them would be dragging around medical equipment till the end of their days. That is, if they weren’t burying Arlene first.

And sometimes I would sit there, outside their house, and watch them before I was due to meet Kathy at the Europa. I was counting my blessings then, the equivalent of staring at a picture of starving Biafrans with flies crawling over their faces and then going to a party in the fucking Hilton. But I kept it up, night after night, and if you were to ask me why, I’d tell you that I did it in order to keep my hatred sharp.

*

Paddy from Ireland goes to

the doctor’s

complaining of stomach

pains.

Sure, I can’t find anything

wrong with you,

the doctor says,

I’m thinking

it must be

the drinking.

Ah, no worries

doctor,

Paddy says to him,

I’ll come back again

when yr sober.

*