12

Chloe lived at the end of a cul-de-sac. It was one of those quiet, suburban semicircles where every car was eyed with suspicion. Curtains shifted aside. Old eyes peered out, committing the registration to memory. Ben had rented a room somewhere similar before. The long-term residents distrusted the blow-ins because they were too loud, too modern, and too young. And these new additions to the street were none too pleased that their lives were under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Whenever they came and went, somebody was watching, clocking their movements. One cul-de-sac, two factions locked in a silent, passive-aggressive war that no one elsewhere either knew or cared about.

Like any outmoded estate, it wasn’t difficult to pick out the rented properties. Driveways cracked. Recesses blackened with grime until they were, quite simply, black. Scratches on wood became dents and in some places split. Net curtains were eternally fashionable. Gardens were grass or nothing at all. Without a fresh coat or a few flower beds, their colours drained over time, looking even more neglected when set between the more privileged homes with their brightly painted doors and window boxes. They were the ugly, less-favoured siblings in the housing family.

It was already after five o’clock. Their odyssey across acres of bog-land had been laboured and slow, and the final hurdle of back-to-back traffic hadn’t reclaimed any lost time. The city seemed darker than its hour. Swarthy clouds had devoured the daylight too soon like a hungry dog. A delicate drizzle tinkled on the car’s roof after Ben killed the engine. His senses had accustomed to its hum and the vibrations of the gearstick in the ball of his palm. Without the engine’s drone, the silence felt hollow and carried with it a sense of loneliness when it should have instead brought peace.

The day seemed to pass so quickly. Without some event to punctuate the idle hours of travel they all melded into a single, expendable memory. Years spent in Tír Mallacht must gather in a similarly indistinguishable heap, with no variety or event to identify one from another. No past that they want to speak of and no future unlike the present.

Chloe lived with one other housemate and he was out of town until the end of the week. It was she who proposed to use her home as their base of operations. It was by far the better of two options. Ben’s poky apartment came with two deadbeat housemates who occupied the sitting room like taxidermy. The furniture and carpet were leavened with the funk of weed. They smoked day and night, indifferent to either.