All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’donoghue (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

of Brigid, it says in big, proud letters. There are photographs of teenagers being baptized in picturesque outdoor lakes.

“Vomit,” I say, breaking the silence that had fallen between me and Fiona. I pass it to her.

“Gross,” she replies, her voice still faintly shaken. “Still, at least the blond one was good-looking.”

“They all kind of looked the same to me.”

“Let’s go run those lines,” she says. “This wedding dress is giving me a rash.”

“Yeah,” I agree, the fun of dressing up now strangely deflated.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WE END UP IN BRIDEY’S, A STICKY OLD CAFE WHERE A POT OF tea for two people is only a euro, and a slice of apple tart is two. It only has two kinds of customer: old people, and arty types who are on the dole. We sit on a musty green sofa, the tinned apples sliding across my tongue. I read Othello and Fiona does Desdemona. It doesn’t seem that great a part, if I’m honest: a lot of her thrashing around and saying that she would never be unfaithful. There’s no denying it, though: Fiona is good. She does something with her voice, making it tremble in some places, making it strident in others. I hear her giddy voice.

“Yet I fear you, for you are fatal then!” she says, grasping my hand. “When your eyes roll so: why I should fear I know not, since…”

She pinches the bridge of her nose again. “Give me the line.”

“Since guiltiness…”

“Since guiltiness I know not; but yet…”

Another nose pinch.

“But yet I feel…” I prompt her. “C’mon, you know this.”

“But yet I feel love?”

“No.”

“Come on, just give me the whole line.”

“Fine,” I say, standing up and gesturing with the sheets of paper. I put on a crazy theatrical voice, like a drunk Ian McKellen. “Since guiltiness I know not, but yet I feel I fear!”

“Maeve,” a voice comes from behind me. A voice that’s all too recognizable. I turn around.

“Roe.”

We stare at each other wordlessly for a moment. He isn’t in his school uniform either. He’s wearing a scarlet bomber jacket that would almost look sporty if the collar wasn’t leopard print.

“Hey,” I say. “How are you?”

Roe doesn’t respond. He just blinks at me. It isn’t until Fiona jumps up to shake his hand that he makes any move at all.

“Hi, you’re Roe, right? I’m Fiona. I’m so sorry about what’s going on with your sister. I’m sure you must be having a terrible time.”

Everything she’s saying is technically correct and totally polite, but the way she’s saying it is so rushed and manic that it’s only adding to the mounting pressure between us.

But it does its job. It snaps Roe out of his shock at seeing me. He takes Fiona’s hand for a quick shake, then drops it and turns back to me.

“Hey. Not good, actually,” he says. “I’m not exactly sleeping very well, as you can probably imagine, and Mum spends her evenings crying so loudly that I’ve started doing my homework in here. But I see you’ve taken this, too. Should have seen that coming.”

“Roe, I’m so sorry about Lily. But you have to believe me, that tarot reading I gave her—”

“Jesus, Maeve –” he runs his hands through his dark curls, and scrunches them tightly in his fist at the crown of his head – “you think this is about your fecking tarot cards? You abandoned her. You were her only friend and you knew she was vulnerable and you left her wide open. Now there’s some weirdo…”

His voice cracks at this. There are purple lines under his eyes, a spiderweb of anxiety on his pale skin.

“Now there’s some weirdo who probably has my sister bundled into a van somewhere, doing God knows what to her. Do you know the stuff I’ve had to hear about, in the last week? Have you ever had a total stranger in your house, talking to your parents about sex trafficking? They went through her things, Maeve. Her sketchbooks. Her fantasy novels. Trying to make out like she … like she’s the freak, just because she likes drawing. Because she likes making stuff up.”

I suddenly remember Lily’s sketchbooks. Giant mechanical birds. Steam-punk piglets, with cogs for noses. The most startling, creative stuff you can think of, and I haven’t even seen them in a year. I can’t imagine how amazing they are now.

“I’m sorry, Roe. I don’t know what to say, except I’m sorry.”

“I’m only her brother. What the hell was I supposed to do? You’re not meant to be close to your sister. Not at this age. I always thought we’d come back together when we were older. That’s how it’s supposed to go. But now I’m never going to see her again. Because you … because you had better people you wanted to be friends with.”

“You will see her again, Roe. You will,” I protest, my eyes filling with tears. What in the hell have I been playing at? Running around town with Fiona Buttersfield while Lily’s life is in danger?

“But worse than that,” he says, his voice harsh again, “is that I thought we were friends, Maeve. I could have really used a friend. But I didn’t hear a peep out of you.”

“The school told me not to get in touch,” I protest. “My parents, too. They said not to talk to you. That you were going through enough. I wanted to call you, Roe, honestly. I’ve been going out of my mind.”

“Whatever, Maeve. I have to go find somewhere else to study,” he says. “Believe it or not, I still have a Leaving Cert this year. It was nice to meet you, Fiona.”

And with that, he’s gone.

I sit back down, staring straight ahead.

“Maeve,” Fiona says tentatively. “He’s just mad. He didn’t mean that.”

“No, he does,” I say. “He really, really does.” I drop my face into my hands, and start to cry.

Fiona puts an arm around me, rubbing my back with her hand. She doesn’t say much, which I’m grateful for. A new