3:AM Magazine

By Michael Keenaghan.

After leaving school in ‘89 I went to college for a while, but soon dropped out. As for my future I hadn’t a clue, and almost surprised myself at not being too bothered either. I’d had a small group of friends, but after school they all disappeared. I was very much a loner. I lived with my mother in a terraced house on the borders of Tottenham and Harringay. My mother was sick - had stiff legs, a bad back, various other ailments that through the years had only got worse - but I tended to her as any son would. She’d had me at almost forty, and my dad had walked out on us very early; so early in fact that I couldn’t remember him. My mother wasn’t without her faults, but I felt a very close bond to her. I loved her dearly.

In all my years at school I never brought friends around. Maybe once or twice but that was all; quickly ushering them upstairs so they wouldn’t have an inkling of the family set up. My mother was based downstairs in the back room, never opened her curtains, and rarely left the house. She’d sit in front of the TV until the early hours, then move to the bed that I’d positioned in the same room for ease. She often drank too much, and some days she’d rant and rave - long embittered tirades that I’d close my ears to. Other days we’d sit and talk as if nothing had happened. She’d never remember a thing and, relieved that she was sober, nor would I mention it.

With alcohol her only respite, I felt sorry for her. She had relatives back in Ireland, but we never saw them. Perhaps once a year her sister Bridie would come down from Manchester, and we’d tidy the house, present things differently. But to be honest, it was something we both quite dreaded. Mostly we were left alone.

The recession at the time meant jobs were scarce, but after putting up adverts in shops and through doors I’d get the occasional bit of gardening work - mainly from old people who sometimes needed bits and bobs done around the house as well. I got friendly with one or two, and sometimes I’d drink tea with them, listening to what the area had been like years ago; air raid shelters, bombs falling. They’d tell me stories and show me photographs; they liked the company.

In early ‘91 I got a job shelf-stacking at night in Sainsbury’s. I wasn’t thinking long term, but it was mindless and easy, offering plenty time to dream, to forget I was even there, and for that reason I quite liked it. My mother never encouraged me to work at all, in fact to do anything other than keep her company, but the money did come in handy. So did the food and alcohol that I’d steal.

Despite my lack of social contact, I was a normal eighteen-year-old like any other, and with money in my pocket I decided it was time I lost my virginity. I planned to visit a prostitute. There was really no other choice. I’d always been shy around girls, and previous sexual experiences - if they could be called that - were disastrous.

In my third year at secondary school, bored during a lesson, the boy next to me started speculating on who were the most ‘fuckable’ girls in the class. Of one thing, though, he was certain. The most ugly, most un-fuckable, had to be Amy. Amy was Chinese, quiet. I’d hardly looked at her before, but from that moment on I started fancying her. I’d find myself watching her in class, secretly staring at her. One day passing her in the empty corridor, I stopped to ask her the time. As she looked at her watch I saw one of my hands reach into her blazer to touch her chest. “What are you doing?” she said. “Get off me!” I tried it again and she pushed me away, ran off down the hall. It was a moment of madness, and I stood there confused, my heart thumping in my chest. Later at hometime when I saw her again, I said I was sorry, it was a mistake. She kept walking. “You’re sick,” she said.

My heart never stopped all day. That evening I bought a magazine, Oriental Heat, from the top shelf of a newsagents. Embarrassed, I asked the Indian for a bag. He shouted over his shoulder, then during the wait, folded his arms and stared at me with a knowing smile. I went back to my bedroom and, in between my mother’s incessant demands - tea, dinner, fetch me another bottle of sherry - I masturbated furiously, in awe at the crude, shocking displays of flesh, writing AMY in thick marker pen above the various girls that bore her resemblance. By midnight, spent and guilty, I brought the magazine to the bottom of the garden and burned it. Maybe Amy was right. Maybe I really was sick. For the next few days, looking at the back of Amy’s head in the classroom, I felt I had truly soiled her in every way possible.

When Friday came around, I noticed three Chinese boys from another school following me home. I ran, but after a while it seemed pointless; I let them get to me. They punched and kicked me to the ground. One of them demanded I kiss his shoes. As I went to do so, he kicked me in the face. “You ever touch my cousin again and I’ll kill you.” On Monday, passing Amy in the corridor with my face bruised, she gave a tiny smirk. “I deserved it,” I told her. Later when I saw her looking at me, I thought I could detect a flicker of sorrow.

Another episode happened a couple of years later, when I was fifteen. It was a hot Saturday afternoon, and I’d stopped my homework to spy from my window on the girl next door who was sunbathing in the garden with two friends. The girls were scantily dressed and I could hear them discussing boys. I was crouched on my knees, masturbating. One of them spotted me and pointed me out. I froze. “Oh him, the resident creep,” the girl next door said, but the other two carried on smiling and calling up to me. One of them, a plump girl, flashed her breasts and laughed. I darted away from the window; the room now airless, roasting hot. When I returned a minute later, only the plump girl remained. I stood there by the window, my trousers around my ankles. Looking up, she stared almost in confusion, then she got up and walked back inside. Horrified, I snapped the curtains closed and curled up on my bed, waiting for the inevitable. “Pervert!” they shouted. The girl next door saying, “I told you he was a fucking weirdo.” Three months later when the family moved away, I felt a weight lift.

I looked back at these episodes with embarrassment. But all in all, they were youthful misdemeanours; I’d matured since then. Importantly, if I wanted to lose my virginity while still a teenager, I needed to do it now. I chose a place above the busy shops on Green Lanes. As the woman removed her clothes revealing lacy underwear I felt like running back down the stairs. I felt like a little boy again - felt as though I was somehow betraying my mother. In her rants she’d always warned me off women; from having a girlfriend. They’d only use me, she’d say, just like my father had used her. But I wanted a girlfriend more than anything. Nervously I told the woman it was my first time. “I’ll make it special then,” she said. We had an hour. Good job, because on my first attempt I finished within seconds.

I visited several times more, building up my confidence, until in October ‘91 I was sacked from my job after being caught stealing. Back to square one.

But maybe this was the kick I needed. I could go back to college, take my A-levels, do English Lit at Uni. Back at school that had more or less been my plan before I’d allowed myself to sink into inertia. I could do it! But as the weeks went by, and I settled back into the routine of home life, such hopes seemed more vague.

I’d sign on, go to the shops, take books and CDs out of the library, read the music papers - it was all very mundane. I was eating too much and, though never exactly thin, I really started to pile on the pounds. Meeting an old teacher on the street one day, it took her seconds to recognise me. Afterwards, I stood in front of the mirror and hated myself. Somewhere out there the world was turning, things happening, exciting things, while I hid myself away getting fat and ugly. At night I’d sit in my room re-reading some of the authors I had done at school – Orwell, Hardy, Lawrence. Then I explored Camus and Sartre. I delved into Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky. I was interested in the ideas, but the endless dialogue did my head in. Did I really have that many hours to waste? I suppose I did, but even so. Maybe I just wasn’t clever enough. My self-esteem was at rock bottom.

One evening walking back from a gardening job near Manor House, I passed two casuals sitting on a wall. “Oi, wanker.” I ignored them, kept walking. “Fucking cunt, are you deaf?” They were right behind me. I ran, cut through some flats, but they caught up and jumped me. “Fat cunt. Fat fucking cunt.” The kicks seemed to go on forever. I got home with cuts and bruises to my face, my whole body aching from the kicks. My mother seemed particularly tender to me that night. We drank brandy and stayed up talking until dawn. At times like that I felt so close to her. Several times I broke down and sobbed on her shoulder as she held me. “I love you,” I said. “I love you so much.”

After the beating I made an effort to lose weight. In a way, you could say they beat it out of me. By the spring of ‘92 I’d started going out to clubs on my own. I’d hardly ever done this before. After drinking myself into another state - which was cheap and easy; a quarter bottle of vodka normally did the trick - I found I could chat quite easily to almost anybody. I’d go to places like the Catacomb or the Powerhaus on a Friday, or the Dome in Tufnell Park on a Saturday: studenty indie nights full of people my own age.

One night at the Dome I bumped into an old friend, Miquel. He had come over from Spain at twelve, and on his first day at school I’d befriended him, brought him into my little circle. Greeting cheerfully, we both agreed it was terrible we’d lost contact. Miquel was doing physics at college and was sad to hear I’d dropped out. He was full of compliments, saying I had been a ‘genius’ at Art and English, and should definitely take it further. I told him I planned to, but not quite yet; my mother was ill and I was looking after her.

Miquel introduced me to all his new friends - both boys and girls - and suddenly I wasn’t on my own any more. On a Saturday night I could walk into the club actually knowing people, talking to people. I developed a kind of weekend confidence, almost a swagger, which was quite a breakthrough for me. I was finally comfortable in my own skin. Being around people, it became evident just what I was missing by not doing college or Uni. Still a virtual recluse during the week, I envied all these bright colourful people, apparently carefree, who lived it up at the weekend but spent their weekdays quietly chipping away doing something of worth. I knew I was wasting myself, but still hadn’t quite the impetus to do anything about it. Perhaps I feared failure. Or maybe it was something else that inhibited me. Guilt.

Getting home from a night out, my mother would still be up, glum-faced in front of the television. “Look at you, off galavanting while I’m stuck here hardly able to get off this chair - leaving me here to rot.” I’d try to appease her but she’d sulk and refuse to speak to me - something she knew I couldn’t bear. I’d been in the house full-time for so long now, I wondered how I’d ever be able to pull myself away. “You’ll see,” she said. “One night you’ll come home to find me dead on that floor. I’ll do it you know.” This wasn’t a threat I took lightly. She’d overdosed twice several years before, but both times managed to convince the doctors it had been an accident. I was worried for her. But I didn’t stop going out.

One Sunday afternoon in the summer I went to an Anti-Nazi League demo with Miquel’s crowd. The camaraderie of chanting slogans and shouting at the fascists was great fun; I enjoyed it. A couple of days later, out of the blue, I got a phone call. It was Catherine, a mutual friend of Miquel’s who I’d spent much of the demo casually chatting to - but as everything with Miquel’s friends was so platonic, I’d thought nothing of it. But now I got the feeling she wanted to meet; just us, together - she seemed to be dropping hints, prompting me to ask her out. Suddenly I was nervous. There were brief silences and giggles, but after a while it became obvious the moment had passed. “What’s all that racket?” she asked, colder now. “Oh that’s just the TV,” I lied - my mother raving incoherently in the background. “Okay, I’ll see you around then,” she said. And that was it. I went upstairs and punched the wall. I’d had a chance and blown it. A couple of weeks later when I saw her again, she virtually ignored me.

In September Miquel went off to Edinburgh University, and most of his friends seemed to disappear overnight. But it didn’t matter. I soon met someone who was to change everything. Her name was Hannah.

I met Hannah one night at the Dome. She had dark hair and glasses, was wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt under a black cardigan, and was painfully shy. I really fancied her. For the first few weeks we’d end up snogging on the street after the club, before she’d get her cab home. Finally she asked me over to her house during the week. She’d never had a boyfriend before, but was somehow under the impression I wasn’t so inexperienced. I found this funny because, though perhaps sordidly true, I was as naive to relationships as she was. Hannah was doing her A-levels. She lived with her parents in St John’s Wood.

I’d never been over that way before, but coming out of the tube and walking towards her house, it was clearly quite a posh area. I was nervous. He dad let me in, and her mum made me coffee. Hannah took ages coming downstairs. Her parents seemed cordial enough, but did ask a lot of questions, and I found myself lying ridiculously. When Hannah finally appeared I noticed she seemed quite sulky with her parents, but I still got the feeling she was showing me off. Whisking me upstairs, I was relieved. A few weeks later, she laughingly told me that when she’d said I was from Tottenham, they’d been “horrified”.

I’d come around perhaps once a week and we’d listen to music and kiss on her bed. She had lots of vinyl, tapes and CDs and we’d listen to stuff like Suede, PJ Harvey, Lush, The Smiths, Cocteau Twins. We shared a lot of the same taste, and introduced each other to new stuff also. Sometimes with the music playing we’d just lie holding each other for hours not saying anything. Hannah had a quiet, pensive, almost secretive side that I found really attractive. It seemed as if there were so many layers yet to be explored, but all the time in the world to do so.

Her wall was covered in cut-outs from the NME and Melody Maker. There were quite a few pictures of Richey from the Manics - a blow-up of the ‘razored arm shot’ - though she did admit the Manic Street Preachers’ music was pretty crap. A large poster of Joy Division hung opposite the bed. In black and white, the four members climbed a subway stairs; a quietly paranoid Ian Curtis glancing over his shoulder to face the camera. I’d only heard a couple of their songs before, but Hannah played me their albums. She told me Curtis hanged himself in his kitchen, and was discovered by his wife. ‘I Remember Nothing’ was the most chilling song I’d ever heard.

Hannah spent a lot of time studying, and we’d sometimes meet at Swiss Cottage library. I was reading Hermann Hesse at the time, his early novels: Gertrude, Peter Camenzind, Demain. They were melancholy, yet radiant and uplifting. I’d read passages over and over, basking in the beauty of the words, feeling light and summery with the winter rain blurring the library windows. Hannah read Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Dickinson. She was reading to pass exams, I was reading for pleasure. I was the happiest I had ever been.

One Saturday night after we went out, I brought her back to mine. I figured sneaking Hannah up the stairs would be easy, but when we got in my mother was standing in the hallway in her dressing gown. “Oh, so what do we have here then?” But I was surprised to see her smiling quite good-naturedly. “Are you not going to introduce me to your little girlfriend then?” She seemed in quite a good mood, and I was relieved. She shook Hannah’s hand and after a few minutes chat said, “You two go on upstairs, don’t let me stop you. It’s time I was off to bed too.”

In bed Hannah kept her clothes on, she still wasn’t ready to take things further, but we kissed and did what we normally did, which by now was everything apart from the actual thing. I still hadn’t seen Hannah in the flesh; but in the dark she’d sometimes let me touch her under her clothes. I didn’t mind, understood there was no rush, but still it seemed very one sided.

In the morning I woke to see Hannah up on her elbow next to me, and my mother’s drunken screams coming through the floorboards. “She’s been doing that for hours,” Hannah casually said. I was horrified. I got up and threw on some clothes. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. Closing the front door behind us, I grasped the incoherent roar that my mother was screaming over and over. “WHORE… WHOORE… WHOOORE…”

We went for a walk through Finsbury Park, and sat by the lake. “When you said your mother was ill I never realised you meant… mentally,” Hannah said. “She’s damaged. What happened to her?”

“She’s an alcoholic,” I said. “She sometimes screams, sometimes talks rubbish. It’s not her fault.”

“It must be hard for you,” she said. “Living with a double personality.”

“It isn’t,” I said with finality. Hannah lived in a nice area, came from a nice normal family. Things were different for her. I didn’t want to talk about it.

One evening kissing on her bed, as she slid down to undo my belt, I said no. “I don’t want to do it like that anymore. I want us to do it properly - together.” She turned away, sat on the edge of the bed. It was a Sunday evening and we’d spent the day walking along Regent’s Canal and drinking cider on Primrose Hill. I felt so close to her, felt it had been one of the best days of my life.

“We’ve been together for months now,” I continued. “Are you worried it’ll hurt, is that what it is?”

She didn’t answer.

“You’re always covered up,” I went on. “You’ve never shown yourself to me. I don’t get it. Why? It’ll be beautiful. I’ll make sure everything’s fine.”

She turned to me over her shoulder, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m not a virgin,” she said.

I was shocked. She told me she had done it loads of times, hundreds of times, her step-brother had abused her from as far back as she could remember.

It had gone on until she was fourteen, until he moved out. He’d made her do all sorts of thing, and for years she’d thought it was normal, thought it was love, something siblings simply did. She’d been cutting herself ever since. She pulled up her top, revealing thick lacerations on her skin. She’d once told her parents but they’d refused to listen, told her to grow up, told her she was lying.

“Where is this bastard? Where does he live? I’m going to kill him.” I was serious. I was going to take a knife to his throat.

“He’s dead,” she said. “He drove a motorbike over a mountain road in Portugal. The coroner gave an open verdict, said it could have been an accident, but I know it was suicide. And I know it was because of me.” She broke down. “I loved him. I didn’t want him to die. It was all my fault. He must have hated what he did to me.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said angrily. “I’m glad he’s dead. He deserved to die.”

“You can’t say that,” she said. “No matter what he did, he was my brother. We grew up together. We did normal things. We were close.” She pulled a pack of photos from her bedside drawer, spread them across the bed. “I killed him,” she sobbed. “It was me.”

I picked one up. He looked normal; smiling, happy. “Fucking bastard.” I tore it in two. “You should bin these, every single one of them.”

“Get out!” she suddenly screamed. “You don’t understand a thing. Get out!” She dragged me to the door, pushed me out of the room. I was banging to get back in when I saw her dad flying up the stairs. “What’s going on?” he said - Hannah crying in the background. He walked up to me. “You leave this house right now,” he said. “You’re not welcome here.”

I walked the seven miles home in a state of shock. I bought a quarter bottle of whisky, swigging it angrily as I went. Along towards Finsbury Park I noticed a face outside a chip shop. I recognised him instantly. It was Roberts, a bully from school. He was standing with a portion of chips, biting into a saveloy. I stopped and stared at him. “What, mate?” he said, not recognising me. “What are you looking at?” Back at school he’d seemed menacing and scary, but now I saw him for the streak of shit he actually was. I felt the hate swell. Head-first I ran at him. No wonder I had done nothing with my life; no wonder so many people were held back, confidence ruined, lives destroyed. It was because of people like this.

I connected and his chips went flying. I wanted to ram him out onto the road, let the cars and lorries deal with him. I wanted to kill him. We were rolling about in the middle of the empty one-way road, traffic waiting to gush from the lights. “You fucking freak,” he shouted, as we tried to hit each other. The traffic came forward, cars beeping in front of us. Two muscled-up Greek blokes shot out of a BMW: “What the fuck’s going on?” and Roberts freed himself and ran. One of the blokes pulled me up ready to hit me. “He raped my girlfriend,” I said, and he suddenly released his hand. As we watched Roberts run, I realised what they said was true - bullies really were cowards.

Over the next few days, every time I phoned Hannah her mum said she was out. I knew she was lying. Finally her dad answered. “She hasn’t gone to college,” he said, “hasn’t left her room in days, what the hell have you done to her?” He slammed down the phone on me. Immediately I called back, but it had been taken off.

I got the tube straight to St John’s Wood. Hannah’s light was on. I threw stones up at her window. She looked down at me, stared for a moment, then pulled the curtains closed. I rang the bell. Her dad answered. He tried to close the door on me, but I pushed past him and ran up the stairs. As I pounded on Hannah’s door he appeared behind me, told me the police were on their way. “Get them,” I said. “They should have been called years ago.”

Hannah opened her door, her face red from tears. “It’s okay,” she said. “Let him stay.” We went inside and I held her close. Her body was wooden in my arms. I saw a small knife on her desk, caked in blood. “Please,” I said. “You must stop doing that. I’ll help you. You can get over this. I love you.”

Minutes later the police arrived. They knocked on her bedroom door saying if I didn’t leave the house I’d be arrested. “You better go,” Hannah said. Two officers led me downstairs. “Are you sure you don’t want to press charges?” they asked her dad. He shook his head. “I just never want to see him again.” They told me I was lucky to get a warning, but if I ever came near the house again I’d be in big trouble. Later that night Hannah killed herself.

I found out when the police hauled me in at 8 a.m. for questioning. I was in a daze, the whole world felt unreal. They asked me question after question - if I’d ever threatened her, If we’d cut each other, discussed suicide, planned a suicide pact, reading me surreal entries from her diary, wanting to clear things up. I told them if I hadn’t been dragged away from her she would still be alive. I told them about the abuse and broke down like a baby. They put me in a cell for a while to calm down, then they let me go.

Hannah had hanged herself in her wardrobe. She was cremated on 19th February 1993. The family didn’t invite me to the service. I don’t think I could have handled it anyway.

I was in a bad way, but my mother showed me little sympathy. There was something about that girl, she said, something not right, and she’d warned me but I didn’t listen. She also started taunting me about getting a job - probably because she knew it was the last thing I could possibly handle now. With red wine and kaolin and morphine caked around her mouth, she’d rant that I was lazy, doing nothing, a lazy fucking slug. Why aren’t you out there working like every other young lad your age? What’s the matter with you anyway?

I ignored her, still told myself it was the sickness, not her fault. After all, some days when she’d be semi-sober we’d be fine. But sometimes when her tirades became too much, I crushed sleeping tablets into her food - a first for me. I also started punishing her by refusing to run down to the shops for her alcohol or Night Nurse or endless prescriptions. But she knew how to soften me, and in the end I’d always give in. I still loved her, but perhaps a little less devotedly these days.

One night walking to the shop at the corner, a man jumped out from nowhere and threw me up against the wall. Holding a knife to my neck he told me to hand over all I had or he’d cut me. He was black and his eyes were crazed, and the contrast of his smirking mate in the background somehow made it all the more menacing. I did what he said, then he knocked me to the floor. His mate stepped forward, kicked me in the stomach and said next time they’d fucking kill me. They walked away, and I picked myself up and staggered home.

The hot Summer months brought darkness all around me. More and more muggings were going on. A near-fatal rape happened in some garages at the end of the road, and an old woman I had done some gardening for was attacked in her own home. She gave them forty pounds she had stashed in a tin, but still they beat her about the face and broke her hip. I visited her a few weeks later when she was sent home from hospital. Her resilience impressed me, but she’d become gaunt and thin, seemed to have aged years. I brought her some biscuits and twenty quid from my dole. She refused to take it but I insisted. Six weeks later she died.

I’d always been tolerant, always refused to live with hate, but now I questioned all that. The area was changing, but so was I. It seemed as if I’d lost all my hopes and dreams, and now there was nothing left but reality.

In October I got a surprise call from Miquel. He knew nothing of Hannah, never knew she existed, and I didn’t mention it. He was back in London for a week, meeting up with friends, and asked if I wanted to go out. Six of us, a crowd I’d never met before, pub crawled around Camden Town, then got a bus up to the Dome. Though I tried my best playing the person Miquel had previously known, I felt awkward and self-conscious all night. I was downing extra shorts to get in the mood, but by the time we reached the club I was slurring my words and could hardly walk straight. Standing to the side watching everybody sing along on the dancefloor, I realised I may as well have been alone in my room, staring at the wall. At one point Miquel passed me on his way to the bar. “What’s wrong with you?” he said. “You seem different.” I was irritating him. I soon slipped away.

When I got home my mother was yelling my name. She was drunk on the floor by her chair, hand raised, imploring for help. I stood viewing the scene as if for the first time. Empty bottles surrounded her table; her shelf lined in various tranquillizers, sleeping tablets, painkillers, inhalers, cough medicines - all the medication that for years she’d mixed with alcohol to incapacitate herself with. I stood staring at her as she shrieked up at me. Then turning, I closed the door and went up to bed.

All night long she roared and screamed, and several times I heard the neighbours banging. As I lay staring at the ceiling I realised this was my life - I was destined to be alone, with no friends, no girlfriend, no happiness, ever. ‘Just wait until you get out into the real world,’ the teachers had warned. They were right. My forays in the outside world had been disastrous. All I did was spread seeds of discord wherever I went. If I had never met Hannah, never entered her life, she would most probably still be alive.

I woke up around noon and my mum was on her seat, fresh faced and sober, telling me about a terrible dream she’d had. In her dream I had died - horribly. I’d been abducted off the street and beaten to death; she’d been glad to wake out of it. She’d heard me getting up so had made me a cup of tea. She’d made boiled eggs and toast and had even given the kitchen a clean. She was sitting on her chair smiling up at me. I ate my food then got my jacket and walked out of the house. I sat in the park all day, staring across the green.

When I got home, again she was off her head. She was ranting that she’d ran out of kaolin and morphine and it was a Sunday, the fucking chemists were closed, and what the hell was I going to do about it? I stood there, her voice like a caterwaul, calling me every name under the sun. Suddenly I realised not only what I had been brooding over for hours, but denying throughout my whole life. There was no love here at all. I was living in a madhouse.

I took a bottle of kaolin and morphine from the stash I kept under the stairs, and crushed into the chalky mixture as many Lorazepam and Tramadol as I could find. I brought it in with a bottle of brandy that had been saved for her birthday, and put both down in front of her. “You’re a saint,” she said, gripping my hand with both of hers. Then I went upstairs, laid on my bed and listened to Nirvana’s In Utero. Four hours later when I came down, she was dead.

I spent the next week or so dissociated from reality. Aunt Bridie came down from Manchester and made all the arrangements while I sat in the back room, completely numb. The days passed fast around me as Bridie made me meals and tidied the house. Uncle Paddy soon followed down. “Leave the poor lad alone, don’t be fussing around him,” he said. I quite liked having the two of them around. It somehow felt normal. As things always should have been. The night before the burial I remember silent tears on my face as we all had a few whiskies in front of the TV.

After the funeral a small crowd gathered back at a local pub. Mainly distant relatives and friends of the family from before I was born. People offering their condolences, shaking my hand. We stayed in the pub drinking all day. At one point Uncle Paddy sat me aside and said there were a few things I should probably know - to help get my head around things. Two decades before I was born, my mother had had a child taken away from her, and was put in a laundry run by nuns. It mustn’t have been easy. These things never leave you, he said. I hadn’t known any of that. But what difference did it make now anyway? Later I noticed Bridie shedding tears over her brandy, people comforting her. “Suicide,” I heard someone remark. “An awful thing.”

The next day Bridie suggested staying behind for a while, but I insisted I’d be fine, just needed to move on. I wasn’t lying. I’d woken up early, surprisingly un-hungover, with a new frame of mind entirely. In the afternoon I waved them off in their car. I was alone now, completely. But I’d been thinking - perhaps aloneness was only a concept in the head anyway. As I closed the door on the world outside, I felt strangely optimistic, inspired even. What happened in the months and years that followed are chapters for another time. But in many ways, my story hadn’t even begun.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Keenaghan hails from Wood Green, North London, where he was (mis)educated at St Thomas More RC Secondary School. His short stories have appeared on various sites across the net including Scarecrow, Dogmatika, The Beat and Dissolution Word. He currently writes furiously. Visit him here.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Tuesday, September 14th, 2010.