Scarlett - Cathy Cassidy [10]
I didn’t need him. Not even when I got into trouble at school, not even when Mum packed me off to Nan’s in Milton Keynes for the very first fresh start. Not even when Nan said she couldn’t cope and sent me on to Uncle Jon’s, or when he said I was a spoilt little brat with violent tendencies and packed me off back to Mum. Families, hey? Don’t you just love ‘em?
My dad pulled my life to bits and trampled all over it with his size-ten boots. I need him like I need a hole in the head, or maybe even less.
The journey to Kilimoor is hell on wheels. The Morris Traveller cruises at forty-five miles an hour, and pretty soon there’s a mile-long queue of traffic behind us, waiting to overtake. I wouldn’t be surprised to see small children on tricycles whooshing past us.
‘It’s a bit of a drive,’ Dad says. ‘I thought it’d give us a chance to catch up.’
I don’t think so. We drive through open countryside, past dozens of smart ranch-style bungalows fronted by pillars and tall gateposts topped with stone eagles and lions. I maintain a gloomy silence.
I do a double-take when we pass gateposts topped with stone cats, lop-eared rabbits and, finally, what looks very much like penguins.
‘Different, isn’t it?’ Dad smirks.
It’s different, all right. It’s a foreign country, and a crazy one. As well as the loony gateposts, I spot several garden shrines with brightly painted statues of the Virgin Mary, and one swish modern bungalow with a trio of ancient, rusting tractors arranged decoratively on the lawn. There are endless ruined cottages overgrown with ivy, green post-office vans and alarming yellow signposts written in some kind of foreign language. Even the car number plates are weird.
‘The Irish have their own unique style,’ Dad says as we chug past a pink-and-orange painted building that seems to be half pub, half petrol station, with a sideline in hanging baskets and sacks of coal. An old man in a flat cap and a tweedy waistcoat is snoozing on a deckchair by the elderly petrol pumps, while a tethered goat chomps through one of the hanging baskets. I peer back over my shoulder to get a better look, and see that the building has only half a roof.
‘Interesting, huh?’ Dad grins.
I pretend I am a million miles away, somewhere quiet and sane and peaceful where there is no crazy landscape, no smell of leather and Polo Mints, no stupid questions.
‘You have to talk to me sometime, y’know,’ Dad says.
‘Wanna bet?’ I retort, then wince because he’s tricked me into answering. Typical.
The car journey takes forever and then some. I close my eyes to discourage further conversation, and when I open them, the landscape is different, wilder. We’ve turned off the main road. We’re clattering through small, twisty lanes edged with tall hedges, starry with purple-pink flowers. At some places we have to slow down because there are chickens on the road, and all around us hills and mountains rise up, big, silent, spooky.
‘This is Kilimoor,’ Dad says as the Morris Traveller wheezes through a sleepy village tucked into a fold in the mountains. There’s a teeny school, a church and a bunch of time-warp type shops that look like they’ve been painted by a colourblind toddler with a palette of violently clashing colours.
The main street is strung out along the most desolate stretch of coastline I’ve ever seen in my life. A huge, grey ocean rolls away into the distance, brooding beneath a sullen sky.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ Dad grins. ‘It’s like being on the edge of the world.’
It looks like the back of beyond to me, but slightly less exciting.
‘The cottage isn’t actually in the village,’ Dad says as we head back into the open countryside. ‘It’s about seven miles on, near Lough Choill, woods and fields and hills all around. Very peaceful.’
Peaceful? I want to scream.
We drive past