All Our Hidden Gifts Read online

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  To my family, for being interesting.

  And to Harry Harris, for waking up the Housekeeper first.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE STORY OF HOW I ENDED UP WITH THE CHOKEY CARD Tarot Consultancy can be told in four detentions, three notes sent home, two bad report cards and one Tuesday afternoon that ended with me being locked in a cupboard.

  I’ll give you the short version.

  Miss Harris gave me in-school suspension after I threw a shoe at Mr Bernard. It was payback for him calling me stupid for not knowing my Italian verbs. To this, I responded that Italian was a ridiculous language to learn anyway, and that we should all be learning Spanish because globally, more people speak Spanish. Mr Bernard then said that if I really thought I was going to learn Spanish quicker than I am currently learning Italian, I was deluded. He turned back to the whiteboard.

  And then I threw my shoe.

  It didn’t hit him. I’d like to stress that. It merely hit the board next to him. But no one seems to care about that, except me. Maybe if I had a best friend – or really, any close friend at all – I’d have someone to vouch for me. To tell them that it was a joke, and that I would never knowingly hurt a teacher. Someone who could explain how it is with me: that sometimes frustration and rage surge through me, sparking out in ways I can’t predict or control.

  But that friend doesn’t exist, and I’m not sure I would deserve them if they did.

  In-school suspension starts on Tuesday morning, and Miss Harris meets me at her office and then leads me to the basement.

  In the four years I’ve been at St Bernadette’s, the sewage pipes have frozen and burst twice, not to mention the annual flooding. As a result, the two tiny classrooms down here are covered in grass-green mould, and a damp, mildewy smell permeates everything. Teachers try to avoid scheduling classes down here as much as they can, so naturally it gets used a lot for detention, exams and storing extraneous junk that no one can be bothered to throw away.

  The holy grail of this is the Chokey, a long, deep cupboard that makes everyone think of the Trunchbull’s torture room in Matilda.

  Miss Harris waves a dramatic arm at the cupboard. “Ta-da!”

  “You want me to clean out the Chokey?” I gasp. “That’s inhumane.”

  “More inhumane than throwing a shoe at someone, Maeve? Make sure to separate general waste from dry recyclables.”

  “It didn’t hit him,” I protest. “You can’t leave me to clean this out. Not by myself. Miss, there might be a dead rat in there.”

  She hands me a roll of black plastic bin bags. “Well, then, that would go in ‘general waste’.”

  And she leaves me there. Alone. In a creepy basement.

  It’s impossible to know where to start. I start picking at things, grumbling to myself that St Bernadette’s is like this. It’s not like normal schools. It was a big Victorian town house for a very long time, until at some point during the 1960s, Sister Assumpta inherited it. Well. We say ‘Sister’, but she’s not really one: she was a novice, like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, and dropped out of the nunnery, and started a school for “well-bred girls”. It probably seemed like a good idea when the number of “well-bred” girls in the city was about a dozen. But there’s about 400 of us now, all bursting out of this crumbling house, classes rotating between draughty prefabs and converted old attic bedrooms. It’s obscene how expensive it is to send your daughter to school here. I have to be careful about how much I complain in front of Mum and Dad. The other four didn’t have to go here, after all. They were bright enough to make it through free schools unaided.

  St Bernadette’s costs about two thousand euro a term, and wherever the money goes, it’s not on health and safety. I can’t even step into the Chokey at first because of all the broken old desks and chairs that are stacked up inside, blocking the entrance. A fresh waft of rot and dust hits my nose every time a piece of furniture comes free. I try to carry each piece out and make a neat pile in the corner of the classroom, but when chair legs start coming loose in my hand, smacking against my legs and laddering my tights, it gets less orderly. I throw my school jumper off and start hurling rubbish across the room like an Olympic javelin champion. It becomes cathartic after a while.

  Once all the furniture is gone, I’m amazed to see how much space there is in the Chokey. I had always thought it was just a big cupboard, but it’s clear it used to be some kind of kitchen pantry. You could fit three or four girls in here, no problem. It’s good information to have. There’s no such thing as too many hiding places. It needs a lightbulb or something, though. The door is so heavy that I have to prop it open with an old chair, and even then, I’m working in near darkness.

  The furniture, however, is just the beginning. There are piles of papers, magazines and old schoolbooks. I find exam papers from 1991, Bunty annuals from the 1980s and a couple of copies of some magazine called Jackie. I spend a while flicking through them, reading the problem pages and the weird illustrated soap operas that play out over ten panels. They’re ridiculously dated. The stories are all called something like “Millie’s Big Catch!” and “A Date With Destiny!”

  I read “A Date With Destiny”. It turns out Destiny is a horse.

  When I reach the back, things start getting really interesting. A couple of cardboard boxes are stacked against the wall, covered in a thick, chalky dust. Pulling the top one down, I open it and find three Sony Walkmans, a packet of Superkings cigarettes, a half-empty bottle of crusty peach schnapps and a pack of playing cards.

  Contraband. This must have been where all the confiscated stuff ended up.

  There’s also a single hair slide with a little silver angel on it, looking very pure and holy next to the fags and booze. I try it on briefly and then get worried about nits, so throw it in a bin bag. Only one Walkman has a tape in it, so I stick the headphones on and press play. Amazingly, it still works. The cassette starts turning. Holy crap!

  A playful, plodding bass line thrums in my head. Dum-dum-dee-dum-de-dum. A woman’s voice whispers to me, childlike and sweet. She starts singing about a man she knows, with teeth as white as snow, which feels like a dumb line. What other colour would she expect them to be?<
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  I listen, clipping the Walkman to my skirt. Most of the songs I don’t recognize, but they all have a grungy, arty edge to them. Songs where you can hear the bad eyeshadow. I can’t remember the last time I listened to something and didn’t know exactly what it was. I’m not even sure I want to find out. It’s sort of cool not to know. I listen to it over and over. There are about eleven songs in all, all either by very high-pitched men or very low-voiced women. I pop open the cover to see that it’s a homemade mix. The only decoration is a white strip label that says, “SPRING 1990”.

  I try to lift another heavy box, but the damp cardboard splits at the bottom and comes crashing down on me, smacking me full force in the face. Something must hit against the door because the chair I was using to prop it open suddenly topples over, and the Chokey door slams shut.

  I’m plunged into stinking darkness. I grapple around for the doorknob, and realize that there isn’t one. Maybe it’s not a pantry after all. Maybe it’s just a closet.

  The music keeps playing in my ears. Now it doesn’t seem fun and bouncy. It’s creepy. Morrissey is singing about cemetery gates. The tape gets stuck as I pound on the door, a little hiccup at the end of the word “gates”.

  “HELLO?” I shout. “HELLO, HELLO! I’m STUCK in HERE. I’m STUCK IN THE CHOKEY!”

  “… cemetery gAtEs, cemetery gAtEs, cemetery gAtEs, cemetery gAtEs…”

  The cupboard, which had felt so roomy just minutes ago, now feels like a matchbox about to be set alight. I have never thought of myself as claustrophobic, but the closer the walls press in on me, the more I think about the air in the room, which already feels so thick and stale that it might choke me alive.

  I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry.

  I don’t cry. I never cry. What does happen is actually worse. Blood rushes to my head and, even though I’m in complete darkness, I see spots of purple in my vision and I think I’m about to faint. I grapple around for something to steady me, and my hand falls on something cool, heavy and rectangular. Something that feels like paper.

  The battery is starting to die on the Walkman. “… cemetery gAtEs, cemetery gAtEs, cemetery gAaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy…”

  And then nothing. Silence. Silence except me screaming for help and banging against the door.

  The door flings open, and it’s Miss Harris. I practically fall on top of her.

  “Maeve,” she says, her expression worried.

  Despite my panic, I still feel smug at how concerned she looks. Take that, bitch.

  “What happened? Are you OK?”

  “The door closed on me,” I say in a burble. “The door closed, and I was stuck and I…”

  “Sit down,” she orders. She fishes in her bag and brings out a bottle of water, unscrews the cap and hands it to me. “Take small sips. Don’t be sick. You’re panting, Maeve.”

  “I’m OK,” I say at last. “I just panicked. Is it lunch now?”

  She looks really worried now.

  “Maeve, it’s four o’clock.”

  “What?”

  “You mean to say you haven’t taken lunch? You’ve been here this whole time?”

  “Yes! You told me to stay here!”

  She shakes her head, as if I’m the magic porridge pot that keeps spewing porridge relentlessly until you say the magic word for it to stop.

  “Do you know,” she says, walking into the cupboard (I briefly consider closing the door on her), “it’s amazing what you can do when you apply yourself. I had no idea there was so much space in there. You’re a magician. Well done.”

  “Thanks,” I reply weakly. “I guess I’ll become a cleaner.”

  “I think you should clean up in the bathroom and go home,” she says, and I realize what a state I must look. I’m covered head to toe in dust, my tights are ripped and there are bits of cobweb stuck to my school shirt. “Are you sure you’re OK?”

  “Yep,” I say, a little snappy this time.

  “I’ll see you in the morning. We can figure out what to do with all this furniture then.” She makes her way to the door, fixing her handbag back on her shoulder. She takes one last look at me, then tilts her head to the side. “Huh,” she says at last, “I never knew you were into tarot cards.”

  I have no idea what she’s talking about. Then I look down. There, clutched in my hands, is a deck of cards.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I LOOK AT THE CARDS ON THE BUS HOME. I CAN’T WORK OUT what the pattern is supposed to be. Some of the cards have titles, like the Sun and the Hermit and the Fool, but others have numbers, and suits. But not hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds. The suits here are rods, which are long brown sticks, as opposed to fishing rods; cups, which look more like wine glasses; swords, which are just swords; and pentacles, which are little stars on discs.

  Most of the cards are drawings of people, the colours in brilliant reds and golds and purples, each character engaged in deep concentration with whatever task they’re doing. There’s a man carving a plate, but, like, he’s really carving it. No one has ever applied himself like this dude is applying himself. He is the eight of pentacles, the card tells me. I wonder what he’s supposed to mean. You will carve a plate today?

  I’ve seen tarot cards before, obviously. They come up in films sometimes. A fortune teller draws the cards and says something vague, and you, the viewer, are convinced she’s a con artist. Then she says something specific to make you sit up and pay attention: “And how does your husband Steve feel about that?” Or something.

  I flick through them quickly, noticing that each card is marked by a very similar system to ordinary cards. Every suit is marked ace, two, three, four, five, and so on until ten. There are royal families, too: pages, knights, queens, kings. My old best friend Lily would love these. One of our first made-up games was called Lady Knights and mostly consisted of us pretending to ride horses around her back garden, defeating dragons and saving princes. Maybe she’s still playing Lady Knights in her head, but we don’t speak any more.

  As I think about Lily, another card catches my eye. One that seems different from the other cards, and makes my stomach swoop when I touch it. My eyes go bleary for a second, like I’ve just woken up. Is that a woman’s face? I pull it out to look, but there’s a noise at the back of the bus that forces me to turn around. It’s a clutch of boys from St Anthony’s. Why are boys so unbelievably loud on the bus? They’re passing around something, then screaming with laughter. It’s not a nice, joyful sound, though. It’s mean. I catch a flash of something and see that they also have cards.

  Now that’s weird. The one day I find tarot cards is also the day the St Anthony’s boys take up tarot?

  Suddenly, Rory O’Callaghan gets up from his seat and saunters up the aisle, even though I know his stop – the same as mine – isn’t for ages. “Hey, Maeve,” he says, pausing near me. “Can I…?”

  “Sure,” I say. Today keeps getting stranger and stranger. Here I was, just thinking about Lily and over comes her older brother. Rory and I have known each other since we were small kids, but we’ve never been friends. Remote, impressive and seldom seen, he was like a comet through my childhood.

  He sits down, and I see that his face is completely red, his eyes shiny. I don’t ask what happened. Rory has always been a bit of a target. His big, soft features and solitary habits make him an outsider at a school like St Anthony’s, where if you don’t play football or hurling, you might as well be dead. It probably doesn’t help that the O’Callaghans are Protestant in an almost entirely Catholic city. They’re not religious; no one is, not really. But their being Protestant gives them an air of slight Britishness. A kind of polite, retiring energy that boys will prey on.

  “Rory!” one of the boys shouts down. “Hey! Rory! Roriana! Roriana Grande! Come back!”

  Rory blinks his big hazel eyes, which really do look a bit like Ariana Grande’s, and turns to me. “So, how are you?”

  “I’m OK,” I say, shuffling the cards. I like the way the coo
l cardboard feels. It’s very nice if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t know what to do with their hands.

  Rory blanches when he sees the cards. “Oh, crap. You have them, too.”

  I’m puzzled, and put the cards face up, showing him the swirling illustrations. “Tarot cards?”

  At that moment, one of the boys comes sprinting down the bus. “Hey, Roriana Grande, has your girlfriend seen these?”

  The boy, whose name I don’t know, shoves some cards under my face and all at once, I get the joke. They’re not tarot. They’re the kind of gross, porn playing cards you get on holidays. Naked girls with huge boobs and thongs so tight they’d give you thrush. And stuck to every face is a photocopy of Rory’s school photo. Rory pretends to look out of the window, knowing that if he grabs for them or reacts in any way, they’ll get exactly what they want.

  This is, quite simply, the most awkward moment ever experienced on the Kilbeg bus.

  “Wait a second,” I say, my voice studious, like I’m cross-examining someone on their term project. I look at the boy. “So you photocopied, cut out and glued Rory’s photo onto fifty-two playing cards?”

  He laughs and gestures at his friends in an “aren’t I hilarious?” expression.

  “Wow, you must be totally obsessed with him,” I say loudly, and the boy gives me a dirty look and returns to the back of the bus. Rory and I sit in silence. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that his fingernails are painted pink. Not loud, hot fuchsia. But soft pink, the colour of a ballet slipper. So close to his actual skin colour that, at first, you’d hardly notice it.

  When we get off at our stop, he walks in the opposite direction, with barely a murmured “Bye.”

  My house is a good twenty minutes away from the bus stop, but it’s a nice route, and on days like this I actually look forward to it. I have to walk alongside the riverbank, the huge blue-grey water of the Beg on the left-hand side of me, the stone walls of the old city on my right. Kilbeg used to be the city centre a hundred years ago, because the docks were here. It was a trading port, one of the most important in all of Ireland, and there are still plenty of old market squares and cattle posts left over from those days. There’s even a drinking fountain, dry for decades now, where people used to tie up their horses. Back in primary school I did a project on the riots that took place here during the Famine, when the landlords shipped the grain out of the country even though the Irish were all starving. I got a prize. My first ever, and probably my last.