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Saoirse

 

 

 

I woke up to a warm hand shaking my shoulder and a low voice saying my name. For a split second I thought that it might have been Diarmuid; it’d been days since The Wall Incident, as I was calling it to myself.

I realised the voice was too croaky to be his.

I opened my eyes, squinting at the light filtering through my curtains.

“Da?”

My father was sitting beside me on the bed, his eyes wide open, cigarette smoke clinging to his clothes.

“Morning, girl. How did you sleep?”

Terribly. I tossed and turned for hours, Diarmuid’s mouth ghosting my lips, his voice echoing through the caverns of my soul, my body burning like a fever. When I had gotten to sleep, I’d dreamed of him.

“Okay,” I lied.

“I got the door fixed. I’ve installed an alarm system. I need my girl to feel safe here.”

I shoved the hair off my forehead and sat up. “That’s okay.”

“Who was the friend you stayed with?”

The reminder of the night I’d spent in Diarmuid’s bed hit me like a slap in the face. I shrugged, trying to play it cool, even as my stomach tumbled. “Just a friend.”

My da’s forehead creased. “I’ve been neglecting you lately. How about we go for breakfast?”

I smiled. “Sure. Just give me ten minutes to change and wash my face.”

He drove us out to a local café where we sat at a table by the window and ate eggs and bacon. I almost ordered the full Irish breakfast but stopped myself when Diarmuid’s face flashed in my head, sitting opposite from me in our breakfast booth in Dublin.

Why did everything have to remind me of him?

“I’ve heard you won the chemistry award back in your old high school,” my da said. “Took the gold at the science fair for the last three years running.”

I almost dropped my fork. “Oh, yeah. You heard that?”

My da smiled at me, the creases deepening around his eyes. “Of course, baby girl. I made sure someone was keeping tabs on you.”

I frowned. “You were keeping track of me?”

“Yeah, honey, of you and your ma.” He shook his head. “She was always a difficult woman. A lost soul. I sent her money sometimes for you but I know it never made it to you. I’m sorry I had to leave you with her.”

He reached out and placed his hand over mine.

I swallowed down a large piece of toast, my throat suddenly so dry that it scraped down the sides. My da cared.

“It’s fine,” I said in a near whisper.

“Well, I’m here now, and I promise you, baby girl, I’m not going anywhere. Okay?” He squeezed my hand.

“Okay, Da.” I smiled.

He promised he’d come for me and he did. My da kept his promises. He’d keep this one.

After breakfast we drank coffee—me a cappuccino, him a long black—and he asked me more about school, specifically about chemistry. I rambled on about my science projects and my math results, my head spinning a little at the fact that I actually seemed to have a captive audience.

My da beamed at me. “I knew my girl was smart.”

My heart warmed at his praise, his words unlatching a hunger in me for more.

I sat up. “I’m more than smart, Da. Numbers make sense to me. That’s why I love chemistry. It’s all about numbers and equations. Give me any complex equation and I can do it in my head, just like that.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”

I nodded fiercely, ready to show off my brain to him. “Give me two numbers.”

He called out a series of numbers and I multiplied them in my head. He checked my answers on his phone calculator, his eyes growing wider and wider with each sum that I got right.

Finally he sank back into his chair, a look of awe on his face. “Holy shit. My daughter’s a goddamn genius!”

He was proud of me. I wanted to make sure he stayed proud of me.

“I think I want to apply for university next year,” I blurted out. “Something in science. Maybe become a chemist or something.”

There was a strange look in my da’s eyes. “What do you need university for?”

Miffed, I paused. I thought that he would have understood. “I can’t get a job in a lab or anything without it. I don’t want to work at the café forever.”

My da grunted. “No daughter of mine needs to work in a shitty café.”

He pulled out his wallet and threw down a bunch of bills. I spotted the thick wad of cash in his wallet. Where the hell did he get all that money? I didn’t ask. I didn’t even make out that I’d seen it.

He stood, scraping his chair. “Come on, girl. Let’s go for a drive, yeah?”

We got into his car and he locked the doors, but he didn’t start the engine.

A thread of unease weaved through me as he turned to face me, a serious look on his face. “I want to take you to see where I go during the day.”

“Okay.” I had always been curious about his job. I knew it had something to do with farming, agriculture and distribution. I’d heard snippets of things said between him and the colleagues that showed up at the house occasionally.

“But I need to know I can trust you.”

I blinked. “Of course you can, Da.”

“I mean it, girl. No letting anything slip. Not to your ma, not to your friends, especially not to that JLO cunt.”

I flinched at his derision for Diarmuid. An instinct to defend Diarmuid rose up in me and I almost said something. I quickly caught myself, snapping my mouth shut.

I mimed locking up my mouth and handing my da the key.

He grinned. “That’s my baby girl.”

I loved it when he called me his baby girl. It made me feel all warm inside.

My da drove us to a remote farm about twenty-five minutes southwest of Limerick. The first sign that something wasn’t right were the two guards at the gate, long black guns strapped to their backs.

They spotted my da and waved him through. We drove through an overgrown field first, then the dirt road weaved through a stretch of forestland, the trees blocking out the sky completely and the air feeling colder, even though we were in a car.

Finally we drove out into another field. The road widened and rows of sheds lined it.

There were more guards with guns walking in pairs around the buildings, people darting in and out of sheds and trucks parked nearby. The side of the closest truck read “Jim’s Butchers”.

I frowned. It didn’t look like livestock were being reared here. Why the sign, then?

My da slowed his car down as we passed a shed, the doors partly open. Inside were rows and rows of glass cases, some kind of plants growing underneath glowing lamps.

“What is this place?” I asked in a whisper.

“We grow pot here,” my da said.

“Pot? Like, weed?”

“That’s it, girl. You ever tried it?” He peered at me.

This felt like a strange thing to ever be admitting to my da. I nodded, but I didn’t give away any specifics.

“We’re one of Ireland’s biggest growers,” he said proudly.

“Isn’t that…wrong?”

My da snorted. “Alcohol is legal. And it can fuck you up more than pot. Pot is natural. It’s a plant. Used for medicine and shit. D’ya wanna know why alcohol is legal and pot isn’t?”

I nodded my head, holding my breath.

“Taxes. Control. The greedy fucking government wants the taxes earned on alcohol, so they keep it legal. They can’t regulate pot so they keep it illegal. Same thing with meth.”

“Meth?”

My da nodded. “Here.”

He pulled up to a final shed, smaller than the others. Through the open door I could see that the inside was bright and white, sterile looking. A laboratory.

“Pot is a steady earner,” my da said. “But I want to expand. We’re setting up a new operation. Most of the meth sold in the country right now is imported.” He shook his head. “That shit is getting too dangerous to do. Ports are being overrun with cops. The waters around Ireland are being patrolled too much. I want to setup a local lab right here.”

I was silent as the tension in the car grew.

Part of me wanted to run screaming. The other part wanted to be okay with this, because my da was okay with this. Surely if he thought this was okay, then it was. Right? I mean, that whole thing with the government and being greedy and stuff.

Another smaller part of me screamed that it would be dangerous to have my da think that I was against this. I knew too much. I’d seen too much now.

He’d never hurt me. He’s my da.

“Cat’s got your tongue, girl?”

“There’s not any labs here already?” I blurted out, a safe neutral question.

“Smaller ones, yeah. Run by fucking amateurs out of their mother’s basement.” He sneered. “Idiots. They don’t know what they’re doing. And their product is substandard. I’m going to change all that. I’m going to give Ireland the best fucking meth they’ve ever seen.”

His face and voice vibrated with excitement, with passion. He could have been talking about a new device that would cure cancer or a new seat belt that would save lives.

I remained silent, unsure of what to say, my stomach twisting with uncertainty. I knew my father had been jailed for drugs the last time. But after he was released I thought that he had changed his ways. I mean, why would he keep doing something that could get him thrown in jail again? He promised me he wouldn’t leave me again. What if he got arrested for a second time?

“The setup is almost complete. My distribution lines organised.” My da placed a hand on my shoulder, forcing me to look right at him. “I just need a head chemist. One that I can trust.”

It took me a second to realise he was talking about… “Me?”

My da nodded. “You’d make more money in your first year than a decade in any other fucking lab.”

Shit. What did I say to that?

“What if…what if we get caught?”

“We won’t.”

You can’t promise that, a voice inside me said.

“I’ll…I’ll have to think about it.”

“Baby girl, what’s there to think about? I’ll make you rich.”

I shifted in my seat, staring into the bright white lab. That could be mine. My office. My lab. I wouldn’t have to study for years, work as a shit-kicker intern and then a shit-kicker assistant for years. I could have my own lab right now.

Meth was just chemistry.

I loved chemistry. I was good at it.

“You could do anything. Whatever you wanted.”

Cooking meth for my father was definitely not what Diarmuid had in mind when he spoke those words to me.

I imagined the horror on Diarmuid’s face if he ever discovered I was cooking meth. I was struck with a deep sadness. He’d be disappointed. I don’t know if I could stand to disappoint him.

“And…if I say no?” I asked.

For a moment, I might have sworn that I saw a flash of irritation across my da’s face. But it was gone so quickly I couldn’t be sure.

Fuck. I didn’t want to disappoint my da, either.

He smiled. “If you don’t want to work in the family business, then that’s okay. If you’d rather struggle through university and get a shitty lab job somewhere else, that’s fine.”

He said it was fine. Somehow it didn’t sound fine.

“How about this, baby girl?” he continued. “You work for me for one year, and I’ll set you up with more money than you need to support yourself while you study.”

“One year?”

He nodded. “Just one year. Although I suspect, once you see how much money is in it for ye, ye won’t want to leave.” He raised his hands in a surrender-style motion. “But if you do, no harm, no foul.”

“You’ll just let me go.”

“I’ll just let you go,” he promised.

My mother’s weathered face flashed in my mind, her eyes glassy from the white smoke that came from the crystals in her little glass pipe.

Somehow, I felt like this white crystal was the kind of thing that never let go.