Almost Love by Louise O'Neill

Author:Louise O'Neill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus Editions Ltd
Published: 2018-02-02T09:31:43+00:00

THEN

I blinked in the sunlight as I got off the bus, temporarily blinded. I heard his voice before I saw him.

‘Sarah.’

There was a large shape in front of me, solid. ‘You’re looking fierce thin,’ it said.

‘Thanks, Dad.’

‘It wasn’t a compliment.’

The bus driver opened the luggage hold, and I reached in to grab my bag.

‘Let’s go,’ I said.

‘Thank you very much, Cormac,’ my father said to the driver. ‘Sarah wanted me to tell you that on her behalf.’

‘I was just about to thank him, Dad.’ Was it possible to get on the bus again and head straight back to Dublin? ‘Thanks, Cormac,’ I said.

‘How was the journey?’ my father asked.

‘It was fine,’ I said.

Two and a half hours, the sun beating through the glass. The woman next to me peeling tinfoil away from her sandwich, the smell of tuna curdling the air. She was so close to me, her body clammy against mine. Excuse me, I kept saying, every time her arm touched me. Excuse me. A guy in his late teens, behind me, having a loud conversation on his phone: Yeah, man, we were fucked. I drank, like, ten pints; puked my ring when I got home. A mother and her teenage daughter, sitting in front, surrounded by shopping bags. I should never have allowed you to buy that top, the mother said. Your father will have a conniption when he sees it. The daughter sullenly kicking the seat in front of her, as if having a mother was a burden, something to be endured.

Fionn: Don’t text me again.

Fionn: I don’t care if you’re sorry. It’s done now.

‘Nice weather we’re having,’ my father said, pointing me in the direction of the jeep. ‘August can be a funny month, though; I hope it lasts for them, for tomorrow.’

‘I’m sure it will,’ I said. Never mind the Child of Prague, Ciara had probably sacrificed an entire village of virgins to pacify the sun gods on her wedding day.

‘No boyfriend with you?’ Dad asked as he put my suitcase into the boot.

‘What?’ I said, climbing into the front seat. ‘Ugh, it’s such a mess in here. When was the last time you got it cleaned?’

‘Not that long ago.’

‘Just get it valeted. Seriously.’

‘I’ll get it valeted when I want to get it valeted, Sarah. And I’ll thank you not to talk to me like I’m one of your students.’

A twist of a key in the ignition. Clonmel in the rear-view mirror, disappearing slowly. Driving through Dunfinnan. The road narrowing into a tiny boreen, tufts of grass sprouting in the middle, the jeep dipping into potholes that our local TD promised to fill before every election. (It’s a priority, Mr Fitzpatrick, he always said. I can assure you of that.) Driving down to our house, the lane lined on both sides with electric fences to keep the cattle out.

‘This is it,’ I’d told Fionn when I brought him to Dunfinnan for the first time. It was our second year of DAC, and he’d said he wanted to get out of the city for the weekend.

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