4

‘I don’t trust him,’ Orla said to her father after one of the men had escorted the Traveller out. ‘Them gypsies are all the same. They’d thieve the breath from you if you let them.’

‘Trust’s got nothing to do with it,’ the Bull said.

The visitor gone, he shrank back into the chair, grew somehow smaller.

It still tore at her. He’d seemed a giant when she was a child, whether his hard hands were gathering her to him or slapping her around the ears. While other men seemed to diminish in size as she grew up, her father remained as big. It wasn’t just the height and breadth of him, though they were impressive. His size came from within; he was a giant of the soul, the boss of everything. But now he was smaller, like someone had sucked the giant out of him and left only the skin and bones behind.

That someone was Gerry Fegan, and even to think his name forced hate to swell in her breast. But she was a practical woman, always had been. While her brothers pissed away their youth living off their father’s name, she had strived to make herself worthy of it.

‘Do you want back into bed?’ she asked.

‘Aye, love,’ he said. ‘I’m tired.’

Orla went to him, slipped her arms under his. He linked his hands behind her neck, and they grunted together as she hoisted him up.

‘Easy, now,’ she said as he lowered his damaged leg, the blanket spilling away. He hissed as his foot settled on the floor.

Only a few months before, the very idea of lifting him would have been absurd, even as broad and strong as she was. But with the giant hollowed out of him, she could manage it, barely.

Orla back-pedalled, letting him take tiny baby steps as he followed her momentum. She felt the edge of the bed against her thighs and turned him. He sagged onto the mattress, and the bed groaned. She scooped up his legs and swung them up and over the blankets. He gasped and cursed.

‘There, now,’ she said. ‘Lie back.’

He did as he was told and settled into the mound of pillows. Sweat glistened on his blotched forehead. She fetched a cup of water and held it to his lips, then dabbed at the dribbles on his chin with a tissue. The softness of the flesh made tears climb up from her throat. She swallowed them.

‘I don’t like him,’ she said.

‘He’s the best,’ her father said. ‘Doesn’t matter if you like him or not. I’m paying him to do a job, not to be your friend.’

‘You don’t need him for Toner and the rest of them.’ She dropped the cup and the tissue into the wastepaper bin. ‘Any fucker could do them.’

‘Don’t swear, love,’ the Bull said. ‘It doesn’t suit a girl to swear.’

She took his big hand in hers. ‘Oh, don’t be such an old nag. Point is, you could get anyone who knows how to do the job to go after them boys.’

Her father sighed, the breath leaking out of him until his massive chest seemed to sink back into itself. ‘It’s not them I need him for. It’s Fegan.’

Orla studied the broken veins criss-crossing his face, the tufts of his eyebrows, the dark circles beneath them. ‘You could let Fegan go. No one’s heard of him since. He’ll stay away. He’s no reason to come back.’

His hand loosened in hers. ‘I’m sick of talking about this. You’ll not turn me.’

‘The dreams won’t stop if you kill him,’ she said, renewing her grip on his thick fingers. ‘You think you’ll be well again if he’s dead, but you won’t. There’s no—’

‘Go on, now, love.’ He pulled his hand away from hers. ‘I’m tired.’

‘All right,’ she said. She leaned in and placed a kiss on his damp forehead, holding her lips there until he turned his head away.

The door closed softly behind Orla as she let herself out into the corridor. She sat in the chair facing her father’s room. Fat ugly sobs bubbled up from her middle as she buried her face in her hands. Once again she imagined putting a pillow over the old man’s face and saving him from whatever it was that festered inside his mind.