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

mottled with confusion. Revulsion? I can’t tell. Oh God, somebody speak, somebody please speak.

“That’s why you wanted to leave the CoB meeting,” I say, finally. “You knew that Lily would never join a group that was that homophobic.”

Roe nods.

“I’m sorry your parents were rubbish,” I say. “About the … the queer stuff.”

“Thanks,” he says, his voice limp. “Sorry, Maeve. I don’t know if what just happened to you happens all the time, whether that’s a side effect of your tarot readings or whatever, but I’m going to need a bloody minute.”

“Sure. Of course,” I reply hurriedly. “Only, that’s never happened before. Ever. Brand new. I have never lived in anyone else’s head before. I didn’t plan it! Oh God, do you think I planned it?”

“I don’t know what I think.”

Roe turns away from me. I scoop the cards up from the ground, the edges wilting. I brush them off on my coat, still protective of them despite all the drama they get me into. I chase after the final card in the reading as it tries to blow away down the tunnel, finally snatching it in my hands. This, the troublemaker.

The Lovers.

Oh Jesus.

I tuck the card back into the pack.

I am somehow extremely clear on what has just happened, but flummoxed as to how. I sat inside Roe’s mind like a guest, and lived his memories as though they were my own. His hands were mine. His reactions were mine. Yet at the same time, I could feel present-day Roe living through past Roe with me. We were all an orchestra: me, him and him in his bedroom.

We duck out of the underpass, the snow still falling heavily.

“Ever since I got the cards back, I’ve felt this strange … connection with them. Like there’s an invisible chain between me and them. And when you started touching them, I started feeling weird. It was like the chain grew another link, and you were it.”

“So you think this has to do with … her? The Housekeeper?”

“Maybe? Maybe it’s the cards in general. They’re haunted or something. Cursed.”

“Haunted. Cursed. Jesus Christ, what TV show are we on?”

“I don’t know,” I say miserably. “A hidden camera one?”

“You were in my memories, Maeve. You were inside my head.”

“I didn’t mean to be!”

“I have to go,” he says, massaging his temples and pacing in circles. “I have to go home.”

“Don’t!” I plead. “I mean … do, if you want to. But don’t stop talking to me over this. Please. It’s silly. And also, I don’t care that you’re bi. Like, at all. So if that’s a concern…”

“Jesus Maeve, will you shut up? For one minute will you just stop fecking talking?”

I nod, my eyes filling up with tears. I turn away and look at my phone. A message from Dad pops up.

Everything OK?

I stare at the screen. It’s only been twenty minutes since I texted Dad to say I was on my way home. We were only unconscious for a couple of minutes. Possibly seconds.

Yep. 5 mins away.

“I’ll walk you back,” Roe finally says.

“You don’t have to.”

“No. I do.”

Silently, we make our way to my house, the cosiness between us evaporated. I stare at the glistening leaves and frosted hedges miserably. This might be the most romantic Kilbeg has ever looked, and I am being punished by the boy I like for psychically occupying his brain. No way did those old Bunty annuals have this in their problem pages.

When we get to the driveway, I’m fully prepared to rush indoors and end this horrible awkwardness between us.

“Bye,” I say, turning away.

“Maeve, wait. We need to talk about this.”

Oh, now we need to talk?

“Look … I don’t know what’s happening. With us, with Lily, with your … cards. But I know that we’re linked to all of this, Maeve. I’m positive.”

“I think you’re probably right. And whenever I see … her, the Housekeeper, I mean, she’s always by the river. Always. Maybe some combination of you, me and the river made our brains come together in this weird way.”

Roe nods, so I keep talking, keen to build out the theory. “The memory we just … uh, shared … maybe these are breadcrumbs we’re meant to be following. And at the end, we’ll find Lily.”

Roe allows himself a small smile of relief. “That must be it,” he says. “You know, for someone who’s always beating herself up about being stupid, you’re pretty sharp, Maeve.”

“What do you mean always? I don’t go around wearing a dunce cap, or anything.”

“Get away out of that. You’ve got this big chip about your so-called brilliant siblings. You really think you’re that hard to read?”

“Yes,” I say, sulkily.

“I’m just saying, you don’t need to compare yourself or beat yourself up. You’re pretty good as you are.”

And he smiles at me, and my chest feels like it’s about to burst open.

“Will you meet me tomorrow? Same place again?”

“Of course.”

“OK.” He smiles thinly. “Maybe we can grab the bus together, too.”

“Yeah. Sounds good.”

“I’ll text you?”

I’m so relieved that we’re still talking – that we’re still in this – that I throw my arms around his neck and hug him as tightly as my body will allow.

“Easy, woman!” He laughs, taken aback. “You’ll break me.”

I don’t care. I breathe in.

Sure for Men, and Chanel No. 5.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THERE’S TALK THE NEXT MORNING OVER WHETHER SCHOOL should be cancelled due to the snow, which is still falling in thin, misty drifts. Mum drives me to the bus stop and I wait in the car with her, warming my fingers off the heater.

“Let’s give it ten minutes,” she says. “If there’s a bus within ten, then it’s safe for you to get to school.”

“But I could slip on the ice and break my neck.”

“A chance I’m willing to take,” she says, tuning in the radio. Alan Maguire’s show is on, and the weather is his guest of honour. He cannot stop effusing about the snow: the unlikeliness of it, the weight of it, the trouble it’s