at her, and frowning at the same time. It was a normal reaction, when people saw her first. It was the way she stood, a little lopsided, as if she was disjointed somehow.
‘Hi,’ said the boy. He was still scrutinising her. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine,’ said Jessie. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘She’s not fine at all,’ said her mother, and she smoothed Jessie’s hair out of her face. ‘She’s a terrible lump on her head.’ Panda jumped up at Jack, and the boy backed away in alarm.
‘He won’t hurt you,’ said Jessie. ‘Only a sheepdog, not a wolf, y’know.’ Jack laughed, a little nervously, Jessie thought.
‘We’ve got bigger ones back home,’ he said, recovering himself. ‘We’ve got wolfhounds, Irish wolfhounds, three of them.’
‘Well, one’s good enough for us,’ Jessie said. ‘He’s called Panda.’
‘On account of his eyes, I guess,’ said Jack.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Jessie, unwilling to hide her irritation.
‘We’ll be home in a few minutes, Jack,’ said Jessie’s father. ‘Nowhere’s far on Clare Island. Four miles end to end.’ He put the bags down, and flexed his fingers. ‘You can walk the whole island in a couple of hours. I’ve got Clatterbang down the end of the quay, by the castle there.’
Jessie felt the boy watching her walk. She looked up quickly to catch him at it. She was right. He was watching. ‘You play American football?’ she asked. It was just something to say.
‘Some.’
‘I’ve seen it on the telly. You any good at it?’
‘Not that good.’
‘Makes two of us then, doesn’t it?’ she said. She smiled at him and got a ghost of a smile back. Perhaps she liked him a little better now than she had at first, but she still wasn’t sure of him. She eyed him warily as he walked along beside her in his spongy trainers, shoulders hunched. His hair was cut close. It was so close and so fair she could see every contour of his head, and he had more freckles on him than Jessie had ever seen on anyone. He was thin too, so that his blue jeans and his New York Yankees pinstripe sweatshirt hung loose on him. He was pointing up at the castle now. ‘Who lives up there?’ he said. ‘Looks kind of old.’
‘It is. No one lives there, not any more.’
Jessie’s father had stopped by the car and was opening the door. ‘Jeez, that’s some car,’ Jack said, running his hand along the bonnet. ‘Diesel, right? Three-litre engine? Old, I guess.’
‘It goes,’ Jessie snapped. ‘And that’s all a car’s got to do, isn’t it?’ Now she had quite definitely made up her mind. She did not like this boy. She would not like this boy, she wouldn’t ever like this boy. This was going to be the longest month of her life. Her mother was giving her one of her pointed looks.
‘You two cousins getting on, are you?’ she said.
‘Perfect,’ said Jessie, and she got in the car and slammed the door, leaving Jack to walk round the other side.
Clatterbang spluttered a few times and then started up reluctantly. No one spoke until they were well along the coast road.
‘Miss me?’ said Jessie’s mother.
‘Missed you,’ her father replied. ‘We both did, didn’t we, Jess?’ He turned to her. ‘And how was Dublin?’
‘Don’t ask.’ She spoke so quietly that Jessie could hardly hear.
On the back seat, cousin Jack and cousin Jessie sat side by side in silence. Panda looked first at one and then the other. At supper, Jack hardly touched a thing. He chewed on a piece of bread and said it wasn’t the same as the bread ‘back home’. The water, he said, tasted ‘kind of funny’ and he screwed up his nose when Jessie’s father offered him some of his home-made sheep’s cheese.
‘You got peanut butter?’ Jack asked. ‘I usually have peanut butter sandwiches and a Coke.’
‘What, every meal?’ Jessie’s father said.
Jack nodded. ‘Except breakfast. I have cornflakes for breakfast, and Coke.’
‘I’ll get some peanut butter in tomorrow,’ Jessie’s mother said, patting his arm. ‘Now you’d better get yourself to bed. A good night’s sleep, that’s what you need. Got to be up early. School tomorrow.’
‘School?’
‘That’s what your father said,’ Jessie’s mother went on. ‘“Treat him no different,” he told me. “What Jessie does, he does.” Your dad’s my older brother, remember? I always did what he said when I was little – almost always anyway – and where you’re concerned, what your dad says goes. So it’s school for you tomorrow. Jess will be with you. You’ll look after him, won’t you, Jess? You need any help unpacking, Jack?’ Jack shook his head. Then, without saying a word, he stood up, pushed back his chair and went out. The three of them looked at each other, the clock ticking behind them in the silence of the kitchen. They heard Jack’s bedroom door shut at the end of the passage upstairs.
‘He’s got his troubles,’ Jessie’s mother said. ‘He’ll be fine, he’ll settle.’
‘What kind of troubles?’ Jessie asked.
‘Never you mind,’ and she tapped Jessie’s plate. ‘Waste not, want not. Eat. And by the way, Jess, will you tell me how come your trousers are all torn and covered in mud?’
‘I told you. I fell over, I tripped,’ Jessie said, suddenly busying herself with her eating so she didn’t have to look up.
‘In the garden,’ her father added, rather too hurriedly.
‘So you said, so you said.’ It was quite clear she didn’t believe a word of it.
Jessie’s bedroom was right above the kitchen. She could always hear what was being said downstairs, even if sometimes she didn’t want to. But tonight she did. She knew – everyone on the island knew – the real reason her mother had been over to the mainland. It wasn’t just to fetch cousin Jack from the airport. That was just part of it. She’d been a whole week in Dublin, trying to see the bigwigs in the Dáil, the parliament, about the Big Hill.
Her mother and father rarely talked about the Big Hill in front of her, and Jessie knew why. There wasn’t another thing in the world they ever argued about, just the Big Hill. They would tease one another from time to time, but they would never really argue – not in Jessie’s hearing anyway. They had spats of course, like anyone. Interrupt her father when he was making one of his ‘creatures’ in his shed and there was always trouble. But her mother never dug her heels in, never lost her temper, except when she was defending the Big Hill.
Catherine O’Malley – her mother’s name before she married – was without doubt the most beautiful woman on the island, and therefore the cause of much admiration and envy. She had a mass of shining dark hair and eyes to match. Jessie knew the story well, and she loved to think of it, often. There was hardly a man who hadn’t wanted
