He Could Still Remember The First Time He Saw Her, Fuckin’ Statue Of A Woman - Perfect, She Was. A

Long fingers prodded at aching joints, she just didn’t move the way she used to and yet her brain told her she could still rise to the occasion if push came to shove. West end trained, she was, and Darragh had supported her at every juncture, save how much he whinged at the London smog and the hovel of a flat they called home for a few years, a wee one bedroom crammed into a Victorian on the outskirts of Notting Hill. Men like him weren’t destined to be hemmed in, he was forever scratching at the walls and stomping the green of Hampstead Heath, but even that felt like a cattle shed compared with home and it’s vast expanses of nothing. But her, she slotted into the chaos as if it was a second skin, the volume of bodies, stacked on top of one another, the noise - it felt right. Dutifully, he was either front row, or stage door every night, and for his efforts she dug a little deeper into the little life they shared.

He tried, for her, to stay - paying more than they could afford back then to size up once Connor came along, adding a wriggling pink baby in among the sequins and sparkle worked for a time, but even she had to admit trying to raise him in the din, parcelling him up for school on the tube was not the kitsch childhood she had envisioned for her family. 

Oh, but the sickly sweet smell of sweat mixed with perfume, the bruises that mottled her skin - rehearsal after rehearsal, the life was addictive, she adored it, and it her. When they left to go back to Ireland it snuffed a light out in her, swapped spotlights and dance shoes for nappies, homework and toddler classes. 

Saoirse taught children’s ballet classes for a while, in the small town hall, peppered with flyers for mum and baby groups, the local food bank, bin collection days. It wasn’t enough. Instead she felt a rot in her gut, stirring within the hole she couldn’t fill. The only thing that compared was the scent at the crown of her children’s heads. Their innocence, the pure light they emitted felt almost as intoxicating as the warmth of the stage light. Some would say being a mother was the making of you, but for her, she had been made and moulded years ago. Married to the game, and Darragh was aware and all too happy to allow it, but he’d be remiss if he didn’t admit he cherished the time he had her all to himself.

When Blair came back with her airy fairy idea for a new club, it wasn’t crazy enough that it didn’t curl its talons into Saoirse almost immediately. Something she lost sleep over, and sometimes she’d put on the costumes just to feel the scratch of the sequins against pale flesh, relishing in the red welts it drew over her skin. She’d had two children, so the zip strained and her hips pushed at the fabric. Darragh used to watch her, and all at once he’d remember how the stage split those ruby red lips in two, and she’d beam. The notion of being able to have a hand in it all over again had ripped jagged holes in her stony façade, letting light tough parts of her that had gone dark years ago. 

Opening Absinthe re-ignited something in her, a warmth spreading through her, Darragh wasn’t ready to lose her to the city, and so he bankrolled it in Spiriod, and though he hadn’t considered it at the time, he got his wife back immediately, a flurry of red hair and sparkle and all at once they were 20 again, except this time, they were home.

bear with me, I’m returning from a year off and feel like Bambi learning to stand again.

Gold. Who was that guy that touched everything and, ‘ting!’ pure gold? All that money thrown at education and I don’t have the foggiest. I suppose mommy wanted me to have the best, and possibly meet some kids my own age, but honestly I’d have been better being thrown into the local high school, at least then I’d have had a chance at talking to people who are more likely to have a soul. 

I am well aware of my place, and truly, I know I could fall in shit and come out smelling of roses. Most of the time I don’t have to think at all, days upon days of blissful nothing and fuck me, I have no idea why the rest of my family make it look so fucking difficult. Forever jamming their fists into where they can make more of it; green. The thing that makes the world turn on its axis, so they say. Don’t make us any happier though, does it? I’m sure the foundations of this place are built on valium and loud sighs. 

We are, mostly, very stupid, and very far removed. It is wealth you simply cannot dream of, the gap between us and your average joe, middle class with a 401k, 2.5 kids and wife with a Louis Vuitton handbag is actually a fucking chasm. So deep and so wide it could unhinge it’s jaws, and snaffle the Grand Canyon. IT'S NOT REAL. A world of no consequence, no one need grow up, endless fucking frolicking at the bottom of Mary Poppins’ carpet bag with Peter bastard Pan and all of his merry men, or whoever the fuck Disney said. 

We just are. 

True enough, we could do more to help the needy, or…those that are on the breadline, whatever the PC term is now. But our ignorance means our own problems, usually of our own doing are usually far more important. Frivolous, but far more important than the fact you’ve shoved another kid out and can’t afford a grocery shop. The fact that those little colourful tickets designed to look like you aren't completely fucked, the ones you cash in at the foodbank, the proverbial begging bowl, is your life line. Who the fuck do we think we are?

Uncle Philip does an especially good job of knotting himself up to be the King on the funeral pyre of his making. Good businessman, fairly bad human, but so are we all I’d wager. Silly little footnotes stomping around unending halls crying at our fistfuls of cash. He hates it. Recently, he spends most of his time lurking and chain smoking, it almost appears it physically pains him to smile, which is a shame because I remember a time his lips would crack and his laughter would make his whole frame shake. He was, is…warm, he’s just forgotten in all the din of being one of the luckiest motherfuckers on planet earth. 

Our family is odd, though. I see that now, The Sheas are very much new money, it's a dirty term around people like us. This miserable nature hasn’t become engrained in them yet, they are still worker ants, bringing their wares back to the nest, stockpiling wealth for a rainy day. But fuck me, they are like sunshine, and they are just so…well, REAL Their emotions aren’t regulated by having a stick up ones ass, they've just fuckin’ grafted for the world they inhabit. There is a certain levity, to having them around, and they have so much familial turmoil and yet they are simply magic. It’s fascinating. 

I realise sometimes how tone deaf I am when I try to have conversations with them, or, well anyone outside of the Locke family prison. I am coveted, surrounded, and yet none of them fucking listen. I am nobody, not a victim, but a nobody. Just the prize pig, and I must say some of the most heinous shit, because our life is just playtime, and theirs actually means something. 

I am aware how trite I sound, rich kid wants to mean something. What’s wrong with that though? Well, I suppose the sun shines out of my ass, and therefore, I have to work harder to prove not everything of value I am capable of producing was funded entirely by the obscenity of the wealth in my estate. All at once I want to hide and I want to be seen, instead I am balls deep in a stereotype I am incapable of shaking off. How tragic.

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞.

The world under his feet was shifting at a rate that neglected to allow him to steady himself; and the air, the air was thick, hot. His Aunt Orla had always told him to take a step back.

It came with a sense of looming horror; the realisation that perhaps his world was as small and as insignificant as a snapped neck in hunters mouth - more often than not now, Tadgh Shea was drinking himself unsensible and these waves came more often than he cared to admit. Their family was slipping into something far darker, and he was powerless to stop it – and he was implicit.

Though they were brothers in arms; he and his father had always been different. Mick was graceful; would wring someones neck and somehow find a way to make it look graceful. As if perhaps the victim had slipped into peaceful asunder and he did it with a smile on his face. When Tadgh chose his side, there was still a small part of him that knew his Aunt and Blair would hurt for him if they knew, but equally, the demons in him knew she’d take him back into the fold eventually regardless. When you have everything to gain, Tadgh chose to gamble. What he neglected to realise was Mick relied on his unreliable memory, in his UNHINGED MENTALITY, on the gaps of time that turned black.

Blackness —- Thursday, Rapacity.

Cool palms grasp clammy cheeks, the scent of tobacco and whiskey seeps into his sinuses and the fuzz around him seems to settle. A steady tone cuts through the din and Tadgh begins to refocus; foggy irises seek to piece the splintering around him together and he chokes in air though it feels thick, like tar and coats the inside of his lungs until he splutters, sputum coating chapped lips, he tasted the iron of the blood on his tongue and his pupils dilate. 

Mick stood over him, grasping his face; and he blinked, his father's lips were pressed into a thin line, it had happened again, family meetings gone awry. Part of him knew his father had needed this, the animal within his son.

It happened every now and again; for years now - gaps of time he couldn’t explain, fits of panic that took over like fog rolling over the moorside. A last sharp pat to his face and his dear old twat of a father slid down at his side and patted his knee, his body heat serving to show him how he quivered despite how stifling the bar had become. He liked to think all sides of his family protected him, but they all knew he teetered as ever on the edge of a cliff, and falling off would only spell true madness. It was only Mick that underneath he knew would be the one to give him the final shove.

Little by little the room around him came into focus, and his ears rang. They sat on the dusty wooden floor of an old bar in Rapacity; owned and ran by a fella whom he only knew was in the way of something the elder Shea wanted. His volatility was an asset, he’d tell him. Recounting the way he handled other human beings as if they were made of rags - and yet, it wasn’t in his nature, he didn’t mean to though it was clear something in him needed to. 

Eyes flicker to the man beside him; and he feels his stomach drop as he looks at the damage around him; his conscience kicking in. They were brothers in arms; bound by a collective cause (or so Mickey thought) and slave to their secrets. Broken glass and moaning bodies; a scramble of furniture.

Another empty shell to add to the list of victories - the very kind of victories Orla would berate him for mind. Most of the time he still felt like a little boy; he had no control of himself, of his head. As though his foundations were collapsing in on himself. He was HEAVY. Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t - he had tried to opt for the quiet life, but there was a greed in him that playing the legitimate businessman wouldn’t sate. Tadgh Shea would never be one for a noble cause; he wasn’t as strong as Blair to be able to walk away entirely, his sister had an ethereal nature, much like his aunt, and he knew they would always be better than him. Despite all, he still moved with the ebb and flow of violent delights and added them to his mental anguish afterward. 

𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐧𝐨𝐰; 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐲𝐩𝐬𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐦 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐧.