*
The pair fell on to the grass beside Minnie, chatting and teasing each other, as she continued with her planting. Daniel had changed out of his school clothes. Carol-Ann screamed as Daniel tickled her, and Minnie looked over at them both, smiling. They flopped back on to the grass. Carol-Ann rolled over and then threw her leg over Daniel. She leaned over his face, pinning each of his wrists to the grass.
‘Prisoner?’ he asked.
‘That’s right,’ she said, trying to tickle him as he glued his arms to his sides and swatted her hands away.
A white butterfly floated, blind and charming, over Daniel’s face. He watched its dizzy flight.
‘Hold still,’ cried Carol-Ann, suddenly. ‘It’s on your hair. I want to catch it. I’ll give it to you as a present.’
Daniel lay still, watching as Carol-Ann reached above his head and cupped her hands around the butterfly.
‘Enough!’ Minnie was standing above them, her voice raised.
Daniel was confused. He raised himself up on his elbows, and Carol-Ann, still astride him with her hands cupped around the butterfly, turned.
‘Let it go right now,’ said Minnie.
Carol-Ann opened her hands immediately. She climbed to her feet and put a hand on Minnie’s arm.
‘I’m sorry, Min’,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean to upset you, like.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ said Minnie, turning away, a hand on her forehead. ‘It’s just if you hold them, you can take the powder off their wings. They won’t be able to fly and they’ll die.’
Carol-Ann rubbed breadcrumbs on to the haddock, while Daniel cut the potatoes into thick chips, dropped them into the wire sieve and lowered them into the deep fat fryer. Minnie fed the animals and then they sat at the kitchen table, three spaces cleared amid the old newspapers and spaghetti jars. Daniel had just turned sixteen.
Carol-Ann would stay for dinner two or three nights a week. It was time for their GCSEs and Minnie had been fraught for weeks: asking him if he shouldn’t study first before going out to play football, buying him a new desk for his bedroom and telling him to take long baths to relax and go to bed early.
‘You don’t realise it and it won’t feel like it,’ she kept saying to him, biting her top lip between sentences, ‘but this is an important time. You’re at the doorway between one life and another. It’s your choice what you do, but I want you to go to university. I want you to have choices. I want you to see just what’s on offer.’
She helped him with his biology and chemistry and told him to eat more because it would feed his brain.
‘This is good, Minnie,’ said Carol-Ann, squeezing a spot of ketchup on to the corner of her plate. Blitz watched them intently, a thin string of saliva stretching from his lower jaw towards the floor.
‘Eat up then, love.’ She passed a chip to Blitz, who snapped it from her fingers, hungrily.
Daniel was eating with one elbow on the table and the fingers of his right hand in his hair.
‘So, basically, what you’re telling me is that it was no problem. There was nothing that you couldn’t do, and you had time to check it all through before you left?’
‘Aye, it were fine,’ he said, his mouth full and his gaze on the fresh flakes of fish on his fork.
‘What’s that, love?’ she said, brushing the hair out of his eyes with her left hand.
He sat up and pulled away from her gently. He didn’t like it when she touched him like that when his friends were here. When they were on their own, he would allow it.
‘I said it were fine,’ he said, not loud, but meeting her eyes this time.
‘Don’t look at me like that with your baby browns.’ She raised her eyes at Carol-Ann. ‘I was only asking, so I was.’ She smiled at him defiantly and gave another chip to the dog.
Later, after Carol-Ann had gone home, he got his books out again and sat at the big oak desk she had bought for him. She brought him hot chocolate and home-made treacle scones thick with butter for his supper.
‘Don’t work too much longer, love,’ she said, rubbing the space between his shoulder blades. ‘You don’t want to get overtired.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Will I run your bath now? Get a good soak and then come and talk to me.’
‘All right.’
‘I know you did well today.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I just know. My Irish sixth sense. This is going to be the start of something great for you. You had some rough luck when you were little but this is you on your way.’ She made a fist and held it up to her face, smiling. ‘I can see you in a sharp suit one day. Maybe you’ll be in London, or maybe Paris or something, earning the big bucks. And I’ll come and visit you … Will you take me out for lunch?’
‘Aye, I suppose so. A slap-up lunch, anything you fancy.’
Minnie threw back her head and laughed. He liked her laugh. It bubbled up from her stomach. She put a hand on the desk to steady herself.
‘You’re a card, so you are, but I’ll hold you to it.’
Again she wiped the hair back from his face and planted a wet kiss on his forehead. He smiled and pulled away from her again.
‘Your bath’ll be ready in ten minutes. You be sure and get finished by then, or it’ll get cold.’
Daniel listened as she made her way downstairs, the floorboards and banister protesting under her weight. Blitz barked once as she neared the foot of the stairs, irked that she should think to leave him for so long. He heard the living-room door creak shut and the muffled sound of the television making its way up through the floorboards. Outside it was still light and early summer birds were springing from tree to tree. A part of him still felt out of place: wanted the city with all its distrust and unassuming freedom. But at the same time, he felt at home with her.
It had been over three years since she had adopted him, and yes, he did feel different. He felt looked-after. It was this which was perhaps most strange to him. When he stopped fighting her, she had lavished him with care and attention. Even when she embarrassed him, kissing him in front of Carol-Ann or praising him to the other stallholders at the market, he felt warmed by her. She told him that she loved him, and he believed her.
In the bath, he let himself sink down so that his shoulders were under water. He was now five feet ten and a half, over half a foot taller than Minnie. He could no longer stretch out in the bath. He was too thin, though. He made a fist and pulled his forearm towards his face, so that he could inspect his bicep. In addition to his football training, he had started to do weights. The television became louder when the living-room door opened. He heard Minnie pad back and forth to the kitchen. The bathroom was steamy, although he had the window open three inches – enough for him to see out into the yard. The rowan was like a tendonous, skeletal hand stretching out of the earth against the night sky.
On the shelf in the bathroom was the butterfly, placed just to the side the way Minnie liked it. He wiped sweat off his face and watched the butterfly, imagining the small child placing it on the shelf. Daniel swallowed and then looked away.
He dried himself and dressed in tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt. He towelled his hair dry and pushed it off his face. It was getting long at the front. He wiped a hand across his jaw, inspecting it for signs of a beard. It was smooth and clean and hairless.
In the kitchen he made himself toast and poured a glass of milk, then went into the living room to sit with her.
‘Do you want some toast? I’ll make you some.’
‘No, love, I’m grand. Are you hungry again? You have a bottomless pit for a stomach, so you do. I wish I could eat like you.’
She tried to put her elbow on the edge of the armchair but missed and spilled some of her drink on to the floor.