Alpha Phoebe swished past in a Zadig & Voltaire dress with fraying seams and a fashionably torn hem. Nell coveted that brand. In her dream scenario, their entire collection somehow ended up in her local charity shop. She slid a look at Liam, who nodded meaningfully at Phoebe. Should she take it to heart? No. Instead she hit him a covert whack and took her seat at the table.
‘Now, about tomorrow,’ Jessie said. ‘I know I’m a control freak and that you all call me Herr Kommandant, but the Easter-egg hunt means a lot to me. Please, could everyone be there? It would make me very happy.’
Ed, Cara, Liam, Nell, even Saoirse and Barty were in agreement.
‘Ferdia?’ Jessie tried to catch his eye. ‘Please.’
‘Yeah. Yep.’ His laugh was slightly weary.
Ferdia’s phone lit up – the message he’d been hoping for. ‘Bart,’ he muttered. ‘Sorry, like, but I’ll be needing the room tonight. I don’t know how long for …’
‘Phoebe? Grand. I’ll just hang out by the lake, in the cold, in the dark, on my own.’
‘Sorry her sister is so young …’
Barty shrugged. ‘Not my type.’
Hopefully, Ferdia asked, ‘Is anyone here your type?’ If he could hook Barty up, he wouldn’t feel so bad.
‘I’d take Nell, if you were offering. She’s hot.’
Ferdia shrank back. ‘Bart … She’s so not. And she’s married to my uncle.’
‘Step-uncle.’
‘The important part is that she’s married.’
‘Relax, Ferd.’ Barty grinned. ‘I’m just fucking with you.’
But what was this … almost … conspiracy that Nell was amazing? He’d overheard his mum and Cara talking earlier about a visible razor nick on Nell’s knee. ‘If that happened to me,’ Cara was saying, ‘I’d have to get into the car and drive all the way back to Dublin.’
‘She’s so capable,’ Jessie this time, ‘with that job of hers. But so beautiful and wild. And her clothes! Fabulous! I never know what to expect.’
Jessie’s non-stop love for Nell’s clothes was weird. Was it patronizing, trying to avoid the truth that Nell looked poor? Or was it out of fear? Middle-class Jessie had no frame of reference for someone like Nell, so if she kept insisting how cool Nell was, no one would guess she was actually confused by her?
FOURTEEN
Phoebe showed up around midnight. Ferdia had been right about last year: her parents had taken her phone because she’d been repeating her Leaving Cert. Now she was first-year UCD, studying law and business.
‘I’m in Trinity,’ he said. ‘Third-year economics and sociology.’
‘Trinity. Wow. You in rooms?’
‘Got my own place.’
She looked sceptical. It was rare for a third-level student in Dublin to live away from home. ‘Where exactly is your own place?’
‘Foxrock.’
‘And your family live where?’
‘Foxrock.’
‘So you do live at home!’
Her triumph made him laugh. ‘It’s a mews near my folks but it’s totally my gaff.’ No need to mention that it had been Nana Parnell’s granny flat until she’d died and the décor was still old-lady chic. Or that it was at the bottom of the garden, close enough to the main house so that when he and Sammie were yelling at each other, Bridey often appeared, requesting that he stop with his ‘anti-social behaviour’.
Phoebe picked up his right hand. ‘What’s with all the rings, Ferdia Kinsella?’
‘There’s only four. You make me sound like Lil Yachty.’
‘Tell me about this.’ She was focused on the hammered silver wrap on his thumb. ‘What do these numbers mean?’
‘Map coordinates for the place in Kildare my dad came from.’
‘Nice. And this one? Looks like something that fell off a tractor!’
‘Close.’ It was a chunky aluminium nut that TJ and Bridey had found under Jessie’s car. Having tried to scratch an inscription into it with a sewing needle, they’d presented it to Ferdia in a formal ceremony, asking that he commit to always being their brother. But he wasn’t telling Phoebe that. She’d probably scoff.
‘Don’t you care about all these tats on your hands?’ she asked. ‘Like, when you’re interviewing for a job?’
‘I wouldn’t want to work for a place that judged me on them.’
‘Principles? You’re hilaire. So, you planning on setting up on your own? Making a fortune like your mum?’
Ferdia laughed, a little hopelessly. ‘No.’
‘You’re studying what? Economics and sociology? Economics I get, but sociology? Why?’
Because he’d envisaged himself as a high-up in an aid agency, striding around a hot, dusty city of tents, getting doctors to attend to sick children, signing off on orders for emergency supplies to be dispensed to fresh influxes of refugees. However, his ten weeks last summer