No Way to Say Goodbye - Anna McPartlin [23]
A year later Sam’s granny died and he mourned her a second time, but since she had left his home, life had moved on, and although he missed her he was used to her not being there now – he had really lost her two years before on the day of her stroke. He’d also found a girlfriend. Hilarie was a strange-looking punk with green hair, a pierced nose and cherub tits. Like him, she was an outsider. They had met when he auditioned for a garage band. She was the only girl. The other guys were noncommittal but she had wanted him from the moment he’d walked through the door. Luckily she had the deciding vote. She liked it that he was insular, speaking only when necessary. It made a nice change from the shit she had to listen to from the other guys.
She also liked it that he didn’t come on to her every chance he got, and especially when it became clear that she would have to make the first move. She waited until the night of their first gig when even her solitary new band-mate had reached a level of exhilaration that opened him up a little. She spotted the chink and before he knew it he was leaning against a tiled toilet wall, with a bass player on her knees sucking so hard that his knees threatened to give way. Afterwards, when she kissed him, he could taste himself. He missed his granny, and sometimes still ached for her, but he had a window of opportunity to become a person deemed normal – until the bullying started again. This time it was more menacing. In the end it took just one night to destroy any chance he had of ever being OK.
*
Ivan was a funny fish – at least, that was what his mother always said. He loved the sea, learned to swim as soon as he was dropped into water and spent his childhood and early teens sitting at the end of a fishing-rod, pondering his existence while awaiting a tug at the pole. His older twin brothers, Séamus and Barry, and younger brother Fintan were more interested in GAA – Fintan and Séamus being the footballers and Barry an avid hurler, which ensured that he’d lost most of his teeth by the age of eighteen. His parents paid for caps, while cursing the cost of dentistry, so Barry had what his twin would describe as a movie-star mouth. Throughout their childhood, Ivan’s brothers would win the medals but Ivan would bring home the tea. He was born relaxed and never changed. No terrible twos. No challenging teenage years. He just got on with it, and as long as he could fish for a few hours a day, he was as content as an old man sitting out on a warm day.
He was always popular with the girls, even as a kid when he was supposed to dislike the opposite sex. The fact that he was a year older than his cousin Mary never seemed to affect their relationship: from cradle to adulthood they were drawn to one another. He found he had more in common with her than he did with his older brothers. His mother had deliberately left a five-year gap between the twins and her second pregnancy, despite what the Church thought. Unfortunately for her the contraceptive method that had worked so beautifully for the five years preceding Ivan’s birth failed miserably in the months after, and Fintan was conceived all too quickly.
Ivan was the archetypal middle child, happy to blend in with whatever was going on. He experienced his first love at twelve with a fair-haired, blue-eyed whippet of a thing called Noreen. They kissed behind the dressing rooms on the football field, holding their lips together