The Other Boy

by Yvonne Cassidy

Genres: Coming of Age

Synopsis

'You know that moment between sleep and waking? I read somewhere that the first thing that comes into your head is what you desire or fear the most. I don't know if that's fully right though because for years when I opened my eyes I used to think of Mark.' I'm JP Whelan and I said that my shrink. He's always trying to get me to talk about what happened all those years ago, when we were just kids. Here's where I'm supposed to tell you about all that, about my life with Katie and Abbey in London or before then, back in Dublin, with Dad, listening to the Beatles and how those were the only times I really felt safe. But then I'd have to tell you about Dessie and what happened with Mark. But, it doesn't all fit into some neat little box, my story. I wish it did. So if you really want to know the truth, you're going to have to find out for yourself, because even now I'm not sure what the truth is.

Release date: March 3, 2011

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 300

Sample

England, 2010


The box of tissues in the Doc’s office is mansize. The black and red colours are supposed to make it look macho, so you won’t
feel stupid reaching for the flimsy girly contents inside. I’ve spent a lot of time staring at that box, directing my words
at it rather than him. Focusing on the coloured cardboard makes it easier to ignore the frenzied notes he sometimes writes
in his foolscap pad and the way his eyebrows crease into a frown behind his glasses. Each session lasts an hour and I probably
spend at least half of it concentrating on that box of tissues. But I’ve never had to use one.


The other day I showed him a photograph. I don’t know why, really. I just felt like it. I brought the one with the curling
corners where we’re at the fairground, Dad and Mam and Dessie and me. Dad’s leaning down, his chin resting on my head. It
must be windy because Mam’s hair is blowing across her face, catching in her smile. Dessie is the only one not looking into
the camera: he’s facing it, along with the rest of us, but his eyes are swivelled away, looking past the white rim of the
edge.


As soon as I took it out to show the Doc I wished I hadn’t. He started to ask too many questions about why I’d brought it,
short, open-ended questions that were meant to catch me out. I knew how to handle him, though, so I told him other things.
How the candyfloss had left my mouth sticky and sweet. About the smell of petrol and sugar in the air that was so strong it
even crept inside the tent where Mam and I went to see the fortune-teller. I even told him about the stripy T-shirt I was
wearing, and that it had been Dessie’s before it was mine.


We’ve talked a lot about Dessie, the Doc and I. About Dessie always being older than me, stronger than me. How Dessie could
always make people see things his way. I tried to explain what it was like never to be the first to do anything, or be able
to find out something that he didn’t already know. The Doc nodded when I said that and he made another note but I don’t think
he understood at all.


You know that moment between sleep and waking? When your mind jump-starts before your body? I read somewhere that the first
thing that comes into your head is what you desire or fear the most. I don’t know if that’s fully right, though, or if there’s
another reason, because for years when I opened my eyes I used to think of Mark. That’s stopped now, of course, but I still
haven’t told the Doc about it. It’s not that I don’t want to, I will tell him, it’s just hard sometimes to understand what
it means, let alone put it into words.


I told him about ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’. About how, when I was seven or eight, it was my favourite Beatles song and after tea Dad would put it on and I’d close my eyes, listening to the scratch of the needle on vinyl, waiting
for it to find the music. I tried to describe how John Lennon’s voice would start, asking me to imagine myself on a boat on
the river where there were tangerine trees and skies the colour of marmalade. It was before I knew that the song was supposed
to be about drugs, before I’d heard of LSD, even before I knew that John was much cooler than Paul. I told him how I’d sit
cross-legged, humming along, making my own pictures that sat alongside John’s. The Doc says that I’m very visual, the way
I remember things. He asked me what happens if I can’t see the whole picture and I said I didn’t know. It was only afterwards
I thought that maybe sometimes I use my imagination to colour in the bits around the edges and I wondered if that was what
he was getting at all along.


I didn’t tell him about the time Mrs Burke asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and how the other boys all laughed
when I answered, “My dad.” I still remember how she tried to hide her own smile as she explained to the class that what I
meant was I wanted to be a plumber, like my dad. But that wasn’t what I meant at all. I meant I wanted to actually be him,
to grow into him. I had it right the first time. If I told the Doc about that, he’d start to ask about Katie and Abbey and
whether I felt I’d lived up to what I wanted to be. Which would be a completely stupid question, because we both know the
answer to that one.


I didn’t tell him about Revolver either — there was no point in getting into all that. Instead, I brought him back to ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’. I told him about the girl who had eyes like kaleidoscopes, that I could never figure out
what that meant but now I thought I could. I spent one whole session on my theory that the past is like the picture at the
centre of a kaleidoscope. The picture stays the same, it’s the kaleidoscope’s mirrors that change it, and the past can change
too, depending on where you see it from. I talked on and on that day, trying to explain it, but he didn’t say a lot. He didn’t
even write much down, he just kept looking at me. I don’t think he got it at all.


I’ve been seeing the Doc for a while now. Long enough that the dark branches tipping the window have a fuzz of green and the
square of white-grey sky has patches of blue. There are days when I wonder if this endless stream of oneway words is making
any difference at all, when it feels as if there’s more point in an hour of silence. There are days when I don’t want to be
here and the anger pulls taut inside and snaps out like elastic. Those are the days when I’m the one asking the questions,
like the one I asked him yesterday.


“What’s the fuckin’ point in all this? It’s all over now. Ancient history. It’s not like I could have changed anything, could
I?”


He sat back in his chair and held his hands in an arc, tapping his index fingers together. Even before he opened his mouth
I knew he wasn’t going to answer me.


“That’s an interesting question. What do you think, John-Paul?”

He always insists on calling me John-Paul, even though he knows full well my fuckin’ name is JP.

London, 2005


We were on the highest part of the Heath. Stretched out below, the city looked like a whole other world, the squares and rectangles
that made up its shape black against the darkening sky. Behind us, the father and son we’d passed on the climb up were trying
to get their kite to fly. I turned to watch as they ran down the hill, the red and blue and yellow streamers trailing just
above the grass, the last thing to disappear out of sight. For a few seconds their voices hung in the smoky October air and
then there was silence. Just me and Katie.


“Look at St Paul’s. It’s like an egg in an eggcup,” Katie said.

My eyes followed where she was pointing. “It does, I’ve always thought that too.” I smiled as I said it and squeezed her gloved
fingers.


“You know, I can’t believe I’d never been up here before you took me,” she said. “It’s so peaceful, I love it.”

“It’s my favourite place in London.” I thought of all the days I’d stood in this spot, days when the sky over the city was
a bright dome of blue or a blur of rain or a wash of orangey-grey, like today. From the top of one of the office buildings a red light flashed on and off. On and off.


“Come on,” Katie said, “I’m getting cold. It’s time for the Oak’s famous bangers and mash.”

“Or we could skip it and go home?”

It was six weeks since she’d moved in, and living together still felt like a permanent holiday.

“No way, JP! We’ve been in the flat nearly all weekend. You promised me bangers and mash and I’m not going home until I get
them.”


“OK, OK,” I said, touching the smudges of red the cold made on her cheeks. “Come on, then.” I took her hand and turned to
walk down the hill. In the few minutes we’d been up there the last light of the day had ebbed away.


“It gets dark so quickly at this time of year,” she said. “You can barely see in front of us now.”

“I love the autumn, though,” I said.

“I like it too. But I’d like it more if it didn’t mean the end of summer.”

Turning off the main path, we took the shortcut through the trees that came out at the lake on the other side. I glanced at
her and she was looking at the ground, picking her steps carefully. “What?” she said.


“Nothing. I was just thinking that this is the first autumn we’re spending together,” I said. “And that I’m liking autumn
with you.” I let my words hang in the air with the clouds of our breath. I wondered what she’d say next.


“I’m liking everything more with you, JP,” she said, stopping, so I stopped too. “It’s weird to think of life before you. It almost seems like we’ve always been together or something.”


I smiled into the dark. “I can’t really remember what things were like before you, Katie.” I leaned down to kiss her, my hand
finding that warm place on her neck.


“Hey! You’re freezing!” She laughed, and pulled away. “Come on, you can do that in the Oak where it’s warm.”

As we walked on, our feet scuffing through piles of crinkled leaves, I realised that what I’d said wasn’t true, that I remembered
all too well what life had been like before her. Even here, on these paths, I could see a shadow of myself running alongside
us, alone. Those Saturdays weren’t so long ago, the Christmas days jogging past the lit-up windows of the red-brick houses
until I got to the Heath, where I could crunch across the frosty grass, just me, my feet and my breath.


I turned to Katie then because I wanted to see her, as well as feel her, to know that she was really, really there. I didn’t
want to remember my life before her — that was what I’d meant to say, but I could never say that. I could never tell her how
walking these same paths together was like erasing all those other times, creating something new. I gripped her hand tighter.


“I’m rethinking the bangers-and-mash decision,” she said.

“Let me guess. Even though you’ve been planning on bangers and mash all day, now you’re not sure if cottage pie is a better
option?”


“How did you know?”

“I pay attention. I want to know everything there is to know about you, Katie Wright.”

As we walked out of the forest and back onto the main path I thought about how true that was, that every single detail she
told me was logged somewhere in my mind, that I never really forgot anything.


“And do I know everything about you, JP Whelan?” “You do indeed, my love. You know everything that matters.”

***

Walking along Downshire Hill, we played the game I always played. It was more fun playing it with Katie.

“I’d like to live in that one,” Katie said. “That’s my favourite.”

The house she pointed at was sandblasted brick and had a big bay window with ferns spilling from a terracotta plant box.

“It’s not the one you picked last time.”

“Didn’t I?”

“No, you said this one.”

We stopped outside the house with creeper the colour of holly and a shiny black door with a silver knocker. Today it was half
open, so we could see a child’s red welly lying on the wooden floor of the hall. This house had always been my favourite of
them all.


“Oh,” Katie said, pushing me to move on as we heard the family’s voices getting louder from inside, “I like them all and they’re
all so different. That’s what makes it so hard to choose.”


She was right and that was what I loved about the road too, that each house had something to like all of its own. We passed
the bright white one with the new glass front that had taken nearly all of last year to renovate. Next to it was the cream one that looked more like a cottage, with its bright blue
door and matching window frames.


“Oh … I’d forgotten about this one. It’s so cute, maybe this is my favourite,” Kate said. “I can’t make up my mind.”

“You have to pick,” I said. “That’s the whole point.”

“Why? It’s not like we’re about to buy one.”

A thought flicked across my mind, something my boss Peter had mentioned about a possibility of a restructure next year, how
it might mean the potential of a promotion for someone on the team. It was a long shot, way too early to say anything about
it.


“Not today, Katie, but some day, maybe.”

She was looking away from me, towards one of the houses, and for a second I wondered if she’d heard the seriousness in my
voice and if it had scared her. When she turned back to me, she was smiling. “Well, in that case,” she said, “I’d better start
making up my mind.”


I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. I had that feeling again, the one I still wasn’t used to, like a
wave of something warm filling me that, even after it was gone, seemed to cling to my insides. “OK, then, but wait,” I said.
“You like the one on the corner as well. Don’t make up your mind until we get to it.”


“It’s funny,” she said, “the way you remember them all. It’s like there’s a blueprint in your head or something.”

She didn’t know how right she was, how on the nights when sleep didn’t come it was these houses I’d count. I hadn’t told her
that knowing this street was here, and always would be, made everything better somehow. I wondered what she’d think if I tried to tell her, if she’d understand.


“What was the road like in Dublin where you grew up?”

I hadn’t seen the question coming. The flush of only a few seconds ago vanished and the October air felt cold as a pane of
glass. We were nearly at the pub. I looked down at my runners, making slow steps on the flagstones, and started to walk a
little faster. “Pretty standard Dublin suburbia,” I said. “Your typical street — you know?”


“No, I don’t,” she said. “You’ll have to take me some day. Are the houses two-storey?”

“Yup.”

“Detached? Or not?”

I thought of her parents’ house in its own grounds in Cheshire. “No, semi-detached.”

“Was it a big road? How many houses?”

I hated when she got like this, but I knew that answering was a quicker way out than trying to avoid it. “Em …” I scrunched
my face up, trying to remember. It surprised me how easy it was to picture the houses, the way the names of the families jumped
so quickly into my mind after all this time. “OK, let’s think — the McDonnells, the Joyces, us, the O’Briens, the Smiths,
the Fogartys, the O’Tooles—” I broke off. I didn’t want to think about the O’Tooles.


We were standing in the empty beer garden, Katie counting on her gloved fingers. “The Fogartys!” She laughed. “I love the
sound of them — like one of those traditional Irish bands. OK, that’s seven? Who was after the O’Tooles?”


She looked so pretty and happy, smiling and holding up her hands in stripy gloves, that I felt something tighten in my chest,
somewhere around where my heart was. “I don’t know, I forget,” I said. “Three more houses, probably. Now, come on, let’s get
inside before I freeze to death.”


***

The heat in the pub was too much and we stripped off our layers quickly. Katie blew on her fingers, warming them, and then
jumped up from the wooden bench. “Back in a second, I still can’t make up my mind. You decide for me.”


Watching her walk towards the loo, I thought about the first time I’d seen her in the office, laughing into the phone. Her
free hand was making a comb of her fingers, lifting her dark hair up, then letting it fall again, back down onto her shoulders.
She did it over and over and I remember being mesmerised by the movement, my eyes on her instead of the notes I should’ve
been reading as I waited outside Peter’s office. It was my third interview, the job tantalisingly close, but instead of focusing
on it I was wondering how I’d missed seeing her during the first two and how I was going to get to talk to her.


Katie loved that story — that I’d noticed her even then. Whenever anyone asked how we got together, that was the story she
liked to tell, that she’d managed to distract me from my interview and anyone who knew me would know what a big deal that
was. After everything she’d been through, the split from her ex-husband Toby, it was as if that story was some kind of proof
about me that I was everything he wasn’t.


I took a deep breath and let my eyes hang on the football game on the telly by the window. There was something I wanted to
ask her, something that had been in my mind for a while now, since before she’d moved in. These past couple of weeks it was
even bigger, the size of Mount Everest, it seemed, and I couldn’t ignore it any more. But just thinking about what I was going
to say made my stomach drop in fear, my heartbeat uneven. I had no idea how she would react and I wondered if I really knew
her at all.


“You ready?”

The waitress was in front of me and I realised under my hand I was jiggling my knee, my leg bouncing through the ball of my
foot. I held my thigh steady, placed both feet on the floor. “Yes, I’ll have two of the bangers and mash, a glass of Merlot
and a pint of Guinness. Oh, and some of the cheesy potato skins to start.”


I smiled at her but she took the menus without looking at me. Katie was on her way back now, curling her hair behind her ear
and pushing in next to me on the bench.


“I decided you were in a bangers and mash frame of mind,” I told her.

“Good — you getting the same?”

“Yes.”

“Copycat!”

“And we’re sharing some potato skins first.”

“Oh, my God, JP, you and potatoes! I’ve been putting on weight ever since we moved in together. This has to stop!” She flattened
her top across her middle to show me. She had put on a little weight but I quite liked it. Lying in bed the other night, sliding my hands around her belly, I wondered what it would feel like to hold her if she was pregnant.


“What are you thinking?” Katie said. Her freshly applied lipgloss was shiny pink and I kissed her lightly.

“Nothing — except that I felt like kissing you.”

“I hope you always feel like kissing me.”

“I do, especially in the office when I can’t.”

I was filling in words then, saying something to hold the space instead of what I really wanted to say. This kind of conversation
was easy, the kind of conversation we could fill a weekend with, flirty teases and jokes, but today I wanted to talk about
something more.


“Actually, I wanted to ask you a question,” I said, before I could stop myself.

“Oh, really, what’s that?”

I could tell she thought I was still joking with her but before I could say any more the waitress was back with the drinks.
She put them on the table, slopping the Guinness down the side of the pint glass.


I took a sip and wiped my hand on my jeans. I slid the other along the back of the bench, behind Katie. I glanced at the TV
— the team in blue had scored. Next to me, Katie tasted her wine. “Mm, this is nice — you want to try it?”


“No, thanks.”

“Sorry, JP, you were saying something. What was it?”

Now I had her attention I didn’t want it. I twisted the pint glass on the beer mat. The goal was being replayed on the TV.
I had a sudden urge to pee. I took a gulp of Guinness and forced myself to swallow slowly, licked the creamy froth from my top lip. I turned to look at her and forced the words out over the knocking of my heart. “I was just wondering what
it would be like if we had a baby.”


***

Katie was lying diagonally in the bed, pushing me in towards the wall. Her breath was heavy, interspersed with tiny snores.
As I climbed out over her, she paused for a second, then her rhythm was back. Creaking down the stairs and into the living
room, I knew I didn’t need to worry about waking her: the red wine would see she slept soundly. I walked into the kitchen
and turned on the kettle.


When I pulled back the curtain it was still dark outside, not even the first traces of light yet, although officially it was
a new day. I hoisted myself onto the kitchen counter, balancing my bare feet on the window-ledge. I smiled at my reflection
in the glass and realised, for the first time, that what had happened was real.


The kettle gurgled behind me and clicked itself off but I didn’t want tea. That wasn’t the reason I’d got up, not really.
I wanted to run what had happened through my mind again, replay it, make sure I hadn’t forgotten any bits, that I’d got it
right.


After I’d managed to get those words out Katie had looked terrified. Even though I was too, I kept talking on and on and on.
It was the only way to make her see what I meant, to fill the space so there’d be no room for her to say what I was so afraid
she’d say. By the time the waitress was back with the potato skins Katie was smiling and she hadn’t said no. We let them go
cold as we talked about why it was a crazy idea, why it was too soon, why there was no rush, but even as we did we seemed to be edging closer together, my leg squashing against
hers on the bench, her fingers wrapping tighter around mine.


We never ate the potato skins, and when the bangers and mash arrived Katie’s “maybe” was hovering on a “yes” and I asked the
waitress if she had any champagne. She looked at us as if we were crazy and asked whether the food was all right, and Katie
got a fit of the giggles and I did too, giggles that were worse once we’d popped the cork on the dusty bottle: we drank from
little wine glasses that reminded me of some we’d had at home in Sallynoggin years before.


I jumped down from the counter, found a teabag and filled a mug with water. Katie and I were going to have a family. I opened
the fridge and poured the milk. We were going to have a baby together. I plucked the teabag from the cup and dropped it into
the sink. Katie had said there was no one in the world she would rather have as father to her child.


It didn’t matter how many different ways I said it, I couldn’t seem to believe it, to make the words stick. We’d talked it
over and over and said we’d talk about it again tomorrow, but we’d both agreed it was what we wanted, maybe not today or next
month, but soon, definitely soon. Leaning against the counter with the tiles cold under my feet and the mug warm in my hands,
I fast-forwarded in my head to a house in Hampstead, pulling into the drive with Katie and a little baby in the back. I could
picture it so easily: Katie, beautiful and smiling, the baby, a girl, pretty like her mum. It was so close I could taste it.


I wondered what Katie meant by “soon”.

None of the books I’d read had prepared me for this. Katie’s face hardly looked like hers, so red and twisted in pain. I stroked
her hair back from her forehead again even though I didn’t think it was helping — I didn’t think anything was helping. Earlier
she’d been shouting, crying, roaring curses I hadn’t even known she knew. Now she was worn out and silent, panting as I held
her hand and counted her breaths, like we’d practised, even though this was nothing like we’d practised.


“Don’t push,” the midwife said. “You’re doing great, Katie. Just hang on. I know you want to push but hold on until the doctor
gets here.”


“Where is he?” I said.

“He’s on his way, Mr Whelan.”

Katie was Katie; I was Mr Whelan. The midwife had been saying the doctor was on his way for more than half an hour. I wanted
to do something to help Katie — I wanted to do it for her — but all I could do was count.


“You’re doing great, babe, just great.”

When the doctor did arrive I didn’t like him. It was the way he barely said anything and pushed his way in, past me and the
midwife, and started snapping out instructions. I was about to ask what was going on but suddenly Katie was being wheeled from the room. The midwife told the other nurse to get me a gown, that we were going to theatre, and I was running,
following the trolley as it banged through endless sets of double doors, too shocked to be terrified.


Outside the theatre, a nurse tied up the gown as I shoved my feet into some plastic white shoes, none of us talking. By the
time I caught up, they were already getting started, a green curtain stretched across Katie’s stomach like some gruesome magic
trick. Behind it, the doctors seemed only half human, passing tools between them that glinted in the overly bright light.
Katie reached for my hand, panic soldering us together in a tight sweaty group. The doctors were talking in low words we didn’t
understand and there was something about the fear in Katie’s eyes that made me stronger, as if all her strength had flowed
into me. I stroked her hair and told her everything was going to be fine, that together we were invincible and there was no
way anything bad was going to happen. Not to us. Never to us.


I was looking at Katie when I heard the ragged scream. That’s why it took me a second to grasp that it was coming from the
tiny thing in the doctor’s gloved hands, that the milky rope of flesh was the umbilical cord I’d read so much about and that
this was it, this was her, this was Abbey, our brand new baby daughter. Katie was a beat ahead of me, pushing herself up on
her elbows, as far as she could go, to take Abbey from the midwife before they could even wipe her clean. As she reached out
she dropped my hand, leaving it dangling by my side so it felt cold and exposed. I shouldn’t have noticed that — it was a
ridiculous thing to dwell on as our daughter was taking her first breaths — but somewhere the thought of how easily Katie could let me go bounced around my head and out again like a pinball.


Looking down at Abbey for the first time, where she lay on Katie’s chest, this little crying thing with scrunched-up eyes
and wrinkly hands, I waited to feel something change. I’d wanted her, wanted this, for so long, and now it was here it was
almost too big to feel. It wasn’t until I felt the wetness on my face that I realised I was crying. Katie was crying too,
quiet tears that leaked from the corners of her eyes and rolled into the brown tangle of her hair.


The doctor had finished sewing her up and as he pulled off his glove to shake my hand I thought I might just love him too.
“Thank you, Doctor, thank you. Thank you so much,” I said, shaking hard, hanging on.


When I turned back to Katie I saw that she was whispering something to Abbey that had made her stop crying. As I looked at
the two of them lying there, it hit me that this was real. They were so perfect, like something out of someone else’s life,
only this time it was mine.


Out of nowhere I thought of the obituaries in the back of the Evening Press that Dad used to buy. I was fascinated by them, how the tight, cramped newsprint summed up a person in only a few column
inches. It seemed that you needed a web of people around you to make up a life — husbands, wives, fathers, sons, daughters:
these were the definitions that counted in the end. Before today mine would have been blank. But not any more.


I shook the image from my mind. Today was about beginnings, not endings.

“She’s beautiful,” I said. “You’re both so beautiful.”


In my head the words had sounded right, but out loud they were clichéd and I wanted new ones that would capture what was inside,
words that this room hadn’t heard so many times before.


“JP, look at her. Oh, my God, look at her little fingernails.”

“She’s just tiny,” I said.

I kissed Katie’s hair and taste. . .