Angel Kiss - Laura Jane Cassidy [2]
The caravan was a poor replacement for our suburban terraced house, but Mum had assured me that soon we would have a beautifully refurbished cottage, a home unblemished by memories, a fresh start. I missed Dublin so much that I couldn’t really appreciate this. I was still coming to terms with the fact that I would have to move to a new school in September, make new friends, find a new band, basically rebuild all these vital parts of my life. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to that. I was looking forward to moving into the house though. The caravan was unbelievably cramped, which didn’t make things easy between me and Mum when we both needed our own space.
I’d thought living in a caravan would be great fun, kind of like living on a tour bus. And it had been fun … for about ten minutes. Mum had rented it online and somehow it looked massive in the images, but in reality it was more like one from an episode of Father Ted – except nobody was laughing when it was delivered and we saw how tiny it was. My head almost reached the roof, and I’m only five foot five. At one end there were two single couch beds with some very compact storage space underneath, and there was a table in between them that you could have either up or down. At the other end of the caravan there was a counter top with a hob and a kettle and two cupboards underneath. And in the middle, beside the tiny space that joined the ‘bedroom and kitchen’ (as the website had put it), was an even tinier bathroom. My bed was the most uncomfortable thing on the planet and I dreaded getting into it.
The night of Jim Cullen’s funeral I slept uneasily and awoke from the strangest dream with the scene still vivid in my mind: a drunken man stumbled up a lane, struggling to stay upright. A car pulled up beside him, almost knocking him to the ground. The window rolled down. A hand emerged, clutching a brown leather handbag.
‘Here. Take this and burn it. Do you hear me? Burn it! This and everything in it.’ The hand was trembling but the voice was steady.
‘Why the … why the hell should I?’
‘Because if you don’t I’ll tell everyone what you did. Do you really want me to tell them about –’
‘Fine … I’ll burn the bloody bag. Whose is it anyway?’
He got no response. The car reversed out, leaving tyre marks in the earth. The drunken man continued up the dark lane, the bag dangling from his right hand.
Once was unsettling enough, but I’d had the same dream nearly every night that week. The way it was so clear in my mind was starting to scare me, and there was one particular thing about it that really freaked me out. I recognized the lane. It was the one that led to our new house. I didn’t recognize the men though. I’d never seen them before and I certainly had no desire to. Particularly not the one sitting in the car. His pale eyes held a vicious manic stare that I couldn’t forget.
As I tried to get back to sleep, the image of the bag kept coming into my mind. It was a satchel made of chocolate-brown leather, with a little handle as well as a longer strap, and it swung back and forth as the drunken man moved hesitantly along, the moonlight glinting off its gold buckles. The bag looked familiar, like something I’d see when I was searching through vintage shops for clothes.
I hate it when I’m trying to get back to sleep in the middle of the night and my mind won’t stop racing. I tried hard to think about something else. Maybe I was so fixated on the dream because I didn’t have anything more exciting to distract me. Clearly my anxiety over the move to Avarna had created a recurring nightmare composed of random memories. Once I felt settled I was sure it would go away. I should spend more time exploring the village, I thought. I’m sure there were interesting little corners I hadn’t yet discovered. Places like that café and the garden by the river, and that cute little clothes shop. It looked expensive but maybe I’d call in anyway … Eventually, after the