A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle

Author:Roddy Doyle
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Amulet Books
Published: 2012-04-27T16:00:00+00:00

hey sat in the kitchen.

“Do ghosts drink tea?”

“They don’t,” said Tansey. “But this ghost would love to see a cup of tea in front of her. It’d be lovely.”

Mary watched as Tansey looked up at the light. There was no shade over the bulb. Scarlett had taken it down once, to wash it, and it had never gone back up. It was on top of the fridge, with a lot of other stuff that was waiting to be put somewhere else. Tansey was staring straight up at the bulb, but she didn’t squint.

“That electric light is fierce,” she said. “We didn’t have it in my day.”

“They didn’t have it when I was a girl either,” said Scarlett.

“Did they not have the electric in Dublin?” said Tansey. “I thought they had all that kind of thing.”

“No,” said Scarlett. “I meant, on the farm.”

“Oh,” said Tansey. “It’s powerful stuff, but still and all, it might be a good idea to turn it off. It’s hard for me to stay looking solid under that bright light. I’d say it must be shining right through me.”

It was—or it seemed to be. It wasn’t frightening anymore, but Tansey definitely looked less alive in the house than she had outside. Her dress, under the light, looked like it had been washed far too many times. Tansey looked like a film of herself, projected onto a screen in a room that wasn’t dark enough; the sound was fine, but the picture was cloudy and annoying.

“Anyone walking in on us,” said Tansey, “might get a bit of a fright. And we wouldn’t want that.”

“Yes, we would,” said Mary. “But okay.”

She turned off the light. “There.”

“Thank you.”

Mary sat again, and looked across at Tansey.

Tansey couldn’t drink tea, and she couldn’t taste or smell. But she could see and she could tell when lights were too bright, although the brightness itself didn’t seem to bother her. Mary didn’t think Tansey could feel rain, or the cold. But she was cold. Mary could feel it coming from her. It was as if the cold was pulling at Tansey, breaking her up, trying to take her away from them, back somewhere. But that was weird too— weirder—because she looked quite relaxed.

Scarlett stood beside the kettle, waiting for it to start humming, so she’d have something to do, put the tea bags into cups, put the sugar onto the table—anything. The strangeness was catching up on her. She’d have started to shake if she’d let herself. There was a ghost in the kitchen, and she was supposed to behave as if it were normal. She knew, although she wasn’t sure how, that something important was going to happen, something to do with her mother.

They heard a thump from upstairs, something or someone falling.

“The boys,” Scarlett explained. “My sons.”

“Making the racket that only boys can make,” said Tansey.

“That’s right,” said Scarlett, and she smiled.

“Will I get to meet them?” Tansey asked.

“I think so,” said Scarlett.

She nodded at the fridge.

“That’s what will get them to come down,” she said.

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