Page 42 of To Hell With It

Then Mairéad gave me some coping mechanisms.

Trees, trees, trees(when I needed to break the intrusive thoughts).

Breathe, relieve, relax(when I needed to calm down).

Rafts and rivers(when I needed to let a thought go and watch it float away).

Don’t get on the bus(when I needed to stop a thought from taking over, I had to imagine myself at the bus stop watching the bus drive away full of whatever was bothering me).

Press the bell(when I was already on the bus and the thought had taken over, I had to visualise myself pressing the bell and getting off the bus).

When we’d established the list and gone through it all, Mairéad took me by both hands.

‘Why are you really going, Pearl?’ she asked, and the question threw me.

‘To see Jack,’ I said with a frown.

‘Yes, butwhy?Why him? Why now?’ she pushed.

I thought about this for a moment. I could have just told Mairéad it was to see if I could really do it, to see if I could challenge myself, how far I could venture outside of my quiet village life without anyone else in tow – which was what she was probably expecting – but the real reason had been locked inside my head for most of my life.

‘To free the butterflies,’ I said.

* * *

After Mairéad left, I spent the rest of the day packing, which was difficult when I pretty much wore the same thing every day. I packed my salmon-pink jumper, and my salmon-pink polo neck, my work jeans and swimming costume, and then stared into the mostly empty bag. There would be plenty of room for extra wipes (there was no limit on them because they weren’t classed as liquid) and some plastic bags for anything sneezed on but what about more clothes?

I opened my wardrobe. Clothes I hadn’t ever worn hung on hangers, colour coordinated, brand new (although I had washed them because I couldn’t have anything from the shop unwashed in my wardrobe). What would Jack like? What hadn’t he had a chance to see me in? All of it. I picked out a mustard-yellow dress that fanned out from the waist – I’d bought it when Una made me go shopping for new clothes – a black cardigan to go with it, an oversized blue jumper Una had bought me that I’d never even tried on, some black leggings and another pair of jeans, a couple of T-shirts, lemon-yellow and white, and a pair of denim shorts. I shoved it all in. My bag was only half full, but it would have to do. I’d fill the rest of it with books.

I packed one tube of toothpaste, a bar of soap, a small pot of my favourite moisturising cream and some deodorant. Then I loaded two 50ml bottles of antibacterial gel – one for my back pocket and one for my bag (that way I’d have two, in case one went missing).

And finally, I placed the Polaroid photo that Una had taken of Jack kissing me in The Tally on top.

ChapterTwenty-Five

Niall’s house was set back off the road, but you could still see it from the pavement if you peered through the trees along the wall. If it were mine, I’d have cut them back. I’d want to be able to see if anyone was walking by, especially at night where someone could hide and not be seen.

Drangan wasn’t a hotspot for burglaries, for obvious reasons, but I do remember when O’Callaghan’s was broken into when they were asleep upstairs. The whole shop was a tip and Mrs O’Callaghan wouldn’t sleep there for a week. In fact, she went off to some retreat in Kilkenny because she was so shaken up by it all.

The burglars took some food, a whole heap of alcohol, and Mr O’Callaghan’s video camera that he’d left downstairs. It was the talk of the village for months afterwards because an inmate at Co Laois prison had escaped the week before. He’d been involved in some kind of government hacking and blackmailing scam, and everyone thought it must have been him.

I couldn’t work out what a high-end criminal would want with Mr O’Callaghan’s video camera. Una was convinced Mr O’Callaghan must have been a secret agent for MI5, but either way, it made the National newspapers and I was pretty sure there was talk of it being added to the Visit Drangan noticeboard (that nobody outside of the village actually read because nobody ever visited).

There was a little green wooden gate at the bottom of Niall’s overgrown garden. It was so rotten it barely opened so I had to lift it up to get through. Niall had said he wouldn’t replace it until it had fallen down because it was food for the beetles.

Niall opened his porch door in a pair of ivy-green shorts that matched the gate and windows and I stared at them for longer than I meant to because I’d never seen his legs before. He had on a T-shirt that looked slightly too small for him and I was surprised at how muscly his arms were because he didn’t strike me as the sort of person who worked out.

‘I just came to give you these.’ I reached out my hand with the shop keys dangling from my fingers.

‘Thanks,’ he said as he took them from me. ‘You’re really going then?’

‘Yep.’

‘When’s your flight?’

‘Tomorrow afternoon.’

‘How are you getting to the airport?’

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