Maria Edgeworth Literary Festival Competitions

The 2025 Competition entries were judged by Authors Lani O’Hanlon and Tríona Walsh. Lani O’Hanlon is a writer and somatic movement therapist living in West Waterford. Her writing is published internationally in various journals including Southword, Poetry, Portland Review, Poetry Ireland and the Irish Times and broadcast on RTE’s Sunday Miscellany. Tríona Walsh is a best-selling author of Irish-set crime novels, all of which have been translated internationally. She is also an award-winning short story writer, having won the Molly Keane and Jonathan Swift competitions with The White Mulberry and Perhaps the Flames. Her shortlisted story Salt was broadcast on RTÉ Radio One as part of the Francis MacManus competition series.

Parallel    

I

In the shed, enough crooked nails to pin up the night sky

saws sway like chimes from the rafters.

Grandad hunts the scrap pile for the right cut of wood.

From his armchair in the evenings he keeps an eye on the fire, 

feeds it blocks, worn bed posts 

to keep the winter out.

When the Angelus rings, rosary beads 

rope round his hands. Behind his closed eyes

a world I can never imagine.

II

He is carving a ladder for my dolls

with odds and ends from the firebox. 

Its two stringers are parallel. 

I learned that word. It means

they’re standing right beside each other

and even if they go on forever 

they will never 

touch.

III

He’s too weak to walk to the Bosun 

so we sit in the car, facing Cobh across the water.

Between us, a bag of chips and sixty years.

I unpack greasy paper, 

he tells me he built that shipyard, 

points to the distant harbour.

I’m trying to picture it now, 

trying to meet him there, young man 

with his sleeves rolled up,

dust wearing thin 

the knees of his work pants

as he hauls the future onto a trailer. 

IV

Perched on the sawhorse 

I watch him at work, ask for a turn. 

He stays near. His giant hands 

shepherd mine, hold me steady

as I dance the saw

across his pencil line.

The Pine Poachers  

The best of the day is gone when the house loosens its grip and Joe drags himself out through the yard and across the fields.

As he reaches the boundary hedge, an eye watches him and the peacock his grandfather had kept for the big house pecks into his memory. Joy and fear fight for space in his chest, until he arches forward revealing a frayed branch, grey and feathered, a lichen scab peeling away. His fingers crumble a piece. He brings it to his mouth and tastes its dryness. He’ll have a piece of the place in him when he eventually goes, even if the land won’t know of his passing. Just as it didn’t know of Sheila’s.

He surveys the path he’s walked, year after year, herding the sheep, hacking the hedges, digging the ditches. Always increasing the yield.

And for what, in the end?

Winded, he crouches down to get his breath. His hand on the ground feels a pulse and he waits until it steadies. He scratches the claggy soil. Joxer circles back and drops his stick. He nudges his concern before sniffing at the soiled hands.

Joe takes the stick and starts to slacken the soil, to give it air. It needs tree roots to meander through, to loosen it. Above him, the hedge rustles and a bird flaps out. The nesting season done, he should cut back now before the dark of November eats the daylight. Cut back the hawthorn and blackthorn, the ivy thickened hazel and ash trees, the cow parsley skeletons and nettles, the gorse. Do what he has done every year.

And what if he just left it?

All those years trailing his father he never noticed what grew here, that is gone now. Wild roses and fox gloves, white spring lace? What else did Sheila point out on their walks when his memories are only of watching the sky’s telling of the weather?

He’ll start with this field. Fortify the fences to stop the sheep from following their old grazing path in, eating the saplings and young trees he’ll plant. His hand shields his eye, as the sun comes out to celebrate his vision.

Brian might object, but he’d persuade him in the end. Brian’s easy-going manner about the farm the result of having a job in the department up the way, with a pension that would serve him into old age. Not like himself, it was only the few bob from the state one for him. But there is the bit of insurance money from Sheila, that he couldn’t bring himself to touch. Until now maybe. He could feel her nodding her approval beside him.

He’d still have to keep that damn pine plantation back though, continue pulling up saplings as they seed and creep onto his land. Oblivious to light and to the seasons, it hosts no nests, no songs, no rustling. Only a carpet of shadowed bronze and skirts of skeletal branches under cascades of darkness.  He rarely lets his eyes wander there, and then only to curse it. 

The light is leaking out of the sky as he approaches Brian’s house from the middle field. A large window, that frames their view onto a sliver of lake, looks to him like a TV screen with their daily lives the only show on it. The lack of privacy shames him. The young lad is sitting at the table looking at a laptop. He calls something back to Brian, who finishes washing his hands and strolls over. The anxious attentiveness of months before, subdued.

Joe had gone in to welcome the boy who stood in the living room of his new home, waiting for direction. His own nervousness was put aside when he saw the pale face under a faded cap. Even the freckles looked jaded. The shadowed eyes had caught themselves in the mirror of the night-blackened window. They looked back emptily and Joe saw an aged weariness, wrong on a child’s face, and he warmed to him from then.

‘This is Jamie,’ Catriona, came to stand sentinel beside him, ‘Jamie, this is Joe, Brian’s father. He lives next door so you’ll see a fair bit of him.’

‘Well Jamie, you’re very welcome.’ The slim hand flinched, like fresh catch in a net, in his large coarsened one.

‘I’ll show you your room, and you can unpack.’ Catriona’s eyes beamed hope.

Jamie bent to the black hold-all, big enough to shelter him. As he lifted it across his shoulder a bandaged wrist peeked out.

Coming in now, Joe slides off his boots in the boot room and hushes Joxer, muddy and uninvited, at the back door. Their own dog, an ornamental thing, was bought to fill the silence after years of failed attempts to fill the three spare bedrooms. One was converted into an office around the same time as Sheila whispered to him that there’d be no more rounds. He saw the grief, grey on Catriona’s face, as her body expelled the hormone overload. A change came on Brian too, for a while, a fecklessness about the sheep and fencing and other jobs he would have taken some pride in before.  Sheila and himself swallowed their own disappointment and didn’t let on. She would have made a fine granny for the boy.

‘Well,’ he greets the room, ‘Get down.’ He pats at Dory as she jumps, yelping at him.

‘Joe, waitin’ you see what Brian said I can get for Christmas,’ Jamie nods to the laptop, where Joe sees a spider shaped contraption.

‘It’s a drone.’ The secondary school uniform swamps him. The slim wrist, finally unbandaged in the summer nudges out of the tunnel cuffs, as his hand navigates the pictures.  ‘I’ll be able to fly over the farm. Help you watch the sheep.’

‘A flyin’ sheep dog, is it?’ Joe winks at him before pulling out a chair. ‘What’ll Joxer make of that?’

Jamie opens Google maps and shows him the farm from above. ‘This is what it’ll see, kind of. But closer in, I’d say.’

Joe surveys his land from the sky, for the first time. The aerial photo still hanging in his hall, showed their old Toyota Corolla parked beside the blue of Sheila’s hydrangeas, but the barn and sheds had been painted over in livid green.

‘How long ago would that have been done?’ he asks Jamie, before he directs him to the east, hovering over the Sitka plantation, clear rows visible. ‘That’s a few years back now,’ he points out the difference in the tree growth.  

They move west and south and he sees the house, the red tractor in the yard. ‘The shed roof wasn’t done yet. And look, the garden here is still rubble. It must be about eight years ago so.’

He gets Jamie to show him how to use it and later at home he spends the evening traversing the land around him, zooming in and out, before accidentally switching to road view where he sees a blur of Patsy, his neighbour, cutting his front grass. He spends hours pivoting on the local lanes, finally acknowledging to himself that it’s a picture of Sheila, captured on one of her walks, he is searching for.

Over the spring months, once the fences are fixed, they begin planting. Brian worries about the reduced grazing for the sheep, but they agree to reduce the flock over the year. Jamie collages his drone photos, showing their progress. Joe’s energy is renewed as the field takes on the summer’s colours and textures.

But his resentment towards the bordering plantation increases. That will be his next job. But when he finds the owner, his offer is declined.  Well, he’ll offer a bit less for it next year.

After an autumn storm passes, some of the young trees nod to the east. A spruce leans heavily across the hedge threatening collapse. Joe surveys the potential invasion and decides to cut it down. He recruits Jamie from his mid-term break boredom. They follow the hedging to a gap and makeshift a stile with a plank of wood. Felling the tree parallel to the uneven line of the hedge, Joe uses the chainsaw to remove the lower branches.

‘What’ll we do with the wood?’ Jamie drags the long branches along the hedge.

‘Well, it’ll make decent firewood. And we could maybe, make a tree house for the babby?’ Joe looks up awaiting a response but Jamie fixes his eye to the task. The silence is broken by the chainsaw. Jamie’s is locked tight.

Catriona and Brian shared their news in the late summer. The ending of all efforts to conceive had yielded a surprise. It was due in February, but with no Sheila to talk it over with, Joe hadn’t let himself dwell on it much. Now a warm joy spread in him. A spring baby.

Silencing the noise of the chainsaw, he shouts to Jamie, ‘Would you prefer a boy or a girl?’ The boy pays no heed of him as he continues carrying armloads of logs along the hedge to where they would later collect them. He lays down the chainsaw and sits on the stripped end of the spruce, the white moons of severed branches dot its length. ‘What’s up Jamie?’

‘Nothin.’

‘C’mere and take a break.’

Jamie bends to another load and doesn’t meet his eye.

‘You’re horrid quiet there?’ He keeps a lightness to his voice. ‘What’s up?’ He waits. Then offers, ‘Is it the babby?’

A flinch, as Jamie walks along the hedge curled over the logs, gives him his answer.

He waits for him to return, then slaps the trunk beside him. ‘Here, sit down.’ He hears more authority in his voice than intended but Jamie responds and sits. ‘What’s this now? Are you not excited for the new baby? Sure it’ll be a big disruption, and noisy as hell I’m sure, but it’ll be great too.’

‘Hm.’ Jamie’s foot digs into the ground.

‘What’s worrying you son?’

Jamie’s head swings up as he side eyes him. ‘I’m not your son though am I. Or theirs.’ His voice is full of the reediness of adolescence.

Joe watches the face turn away, the freckles on it now nearly as familiar to him as those on his own face. ‘But you are my grandson now, whether you like it or not. And sure, this is your home now.’ He points to the field, through a gap in the hedge. ‘These trees are as much yours now as they are mine, seeing as you planted them with me.’

Jamie’s face stays down but the foot stops digging. Joe puts his arm around him and wonders why he hadn’t before. The shoulders, delicate as bird wings, tense under the jacket. ‘And sure it’ll be years before the babby will be of any help! Come on now. While I was sitting here, I see a couple more of them trees in there that should come down before they do damage. I think we can get started on that before we get the sale agreed.’ He catches the boy’s watery eye and winks, before nudging him into action. ‘We’ll be busy for the winter.’

In the dead light, the pines fight them back, branches stabbing. They have to duck low to the base of the trunks. They make a narrow path like a vein through, slowly over months, mining one tree at a time.

The drone photos show spots of light. Faint stars in a dark sky.

Moss-Gathering 

The papers call this moss ‘humble’

and take photographs of the men

‘doing their bit.’

(I assure you, there is nothing humble

about the packing of wounds)

Mondays and Tuesdays are

spent knee-deep

on the moor, filling

sack

after sack

with ivory, green, and gold.

We tie our babies to our backs,

they sleep or wail in their woolen cocoons

the cracked leather of my boots lets in

the damp

my flask of tea grows cold.

The men move faster, no babes to weigh them down

no skirts to tangle in the bracken.

Wednesdays we spread and turn

our bounties on the prison lawn

the wet moss passes through my fingers

like rosary beads

each bundle a silent prayer.

When it is dry enough to leave scratches

on the baby’s cheeks

I leave her with mother

and don my white dress

trade the scent of dirt for antiseptic

the cold for the sting of unexpected heat.

This is the most tedious task;

sifting through the soft masses

we pluck twigs, the crisp bodies

of tiny creatures, shards of grass

and the thousand other fragments

from the heath

until we have something pure,

clean

– innocent enough

to send into battle.

Each night, I read my daughter bits

of her father’s letters

she gums the medal of St. George

around my neck

her chubby hands maw

at the onionskin paper

Each night I dream of turf-cutters

of stumbling upon something

ancient and delicious

in the peat

like a golden bangle

or a minute skull.

In 1915, botanist Isaac Bayley Balfour and military surgeon Charles Walker Cathcart began to promote the use of sphagnum moss as a replacement for the dwindling supply of wound-dressings made from cotton fibres. Mabel Crawford Wright, a botanist at the Royal College of Sciences in Dublin, along with Elsie Henry, who went on to receive an O.B.E. for her efforts as the head of the Irish Sphagnum collection, contacted Balfour to learn his wound-dressing techniques. The Marchioness of Waterford opened a moss collection depot in September 1915, and by March 1916, 160 women collected moss full-time in Ireland alone. Though the vast majority of moss-collectors were women and children, contemporary reports on moss-collection tended to highlight the few men aiding the war effort in this manner.

It’s Not Unusual

“They re at it again,” Mary Joe McDonnell warned Keane as he was heading out the gate.

“A man at the crossroads said they passed very early through the village heading for the mart but it wasn’t cattle they had on their mind, ah no, but don’t say I told you,” she winked as she dead headed the withering Hydrangeas.                                                                                                                                                                    Keane was pulling two red heifers with the Hyundai Santa Fe, heading for the village as the left tyre on the single axle trailer was low.

 Would that shower be open in the village to get a pump up or would he make it to the Galway road where the new place sold everything from sculling gates to pet rabbits he wondered.

He poked the two cattle with a piece of plastic piping left over after the group water scheme and turned them around so that the fat heifer came off the flat tyre. He revved up the Hyundai Santa Fe and headed for the village the cattle weighing heavily on the ball hitch causing the jeep to nose itself towards the sky.

 She might hold he thought as he could see the petrol pumps coming into view.

If the dog was outside Ward would be up. There was no sign of the dog. He pulled in at the pumps and knocked against the window, Ward limped out.

 “Oh” he said,” I thought it was one of them that’s why I kept the curtains closed, them bucks are often on the road early Mary Joe McDonnell warned me about them.”

“Air,” Keane shouted,” turn it on.”

The two heifers turned around again in the trailer resulting in the whole thing listing towards the petrol pump grazing off the cracked Shell sign. Ward pumped air into the tyre unable to see the fogged up gauge. The trailer straightened up again tearing the S off the plastic sign.

“She might hold,” Ward offered, as he stood in the middle of the road with his hands on his hips.

        When Keane rounded the bend before the river they were there in front of him, the two, walking fifty yards apart as if everyone didn’t know. Keane blew the horn as he passed them the first one tall broad shouldered with a long black coat and a cap wearing a pair of green wellingtons, the other much younger, slight wearing a torn anorak and a pair of runners.

Keane slowed outside the temperance hall, turning down the hill towards the mart. The tyre was flat again, a burning smell coming from the smoking wheel. He pulled in at the hut perched up unevenly on cavity blocks and queued for the numbers to paste on the heifers backs.                                                                                                                 “Did ya see them feckers coming this way?” Lynch demanded .

“The first Monday in every month they’re on the road someone will have to put a stop to them”. Keane stepped up on the two blocks to be at eye level with Lynch.                                                                                                                                                        “Give us two stickers, dopey, and don’t have me selling them at midnight.” 

 “There s eight hundred ahead of you so you can go to The Nephin for the day and come back tonight sometime,” Lynch spoke out of the side of his mouth.                                                                                       “Well it’s like this,” Keane whispered to Lynch, “I’m the third man here today, I got out of bed in the dark so there should be no more than fifty ahead of me.”                                                                                                                                       “They were booked in by phone last night,” Lynch smirked.                                                                           “Well Mr Lynch it’s this simple this trailer won’t be going anywhere until you give me decent numbers.”

“Get that piece of junk out of here fast before I get that J C B over there and dump the lot into the river.”

Keane put his two hands around Lynches jacket and pulled him half way out of the sliding cracked aluminium window. Somebody’s child handed Keane two new stickers allowing him to sell the heifers around three.Keane let Lynch go as he pulled in the heifers towards the cattle chute where their tags were read and the glue applied with an ash plant for the stickers. Keane whacked them into the chute with an iron bar he found in the nettles and rammed the gate closed behind them.

 Then the two came in the gate past Lynch, who whistled and made a gesture with his fingers and laughed. They placed themselves up high above the sales ring where nobody sat except old men. When Lynch was finished for the day, he treated himself to a rasher sandwich and a mug of hot tea at the mobile canteen.                                                                                                                                                     “Them bucks” he told a farmer from the beyond the lake, “they come in here and they think that we don’t know what they’re at.”

“That sort of thing is against God and man, it’s not natural”.  Lynch worked himself up into a frenzy talking about the two, threw the remains of his tea at a clump of rank thistles and took long steps across the car park heading straight for the phone under the stairs. He rang up Burke, the sergeant pressing a fifty pence piece into the slot as he heard Burkes’ voice.                                                               

“What are ye going to do about the two?” he demanded.                                                                                   “Any proof,” the sergeant insisted.                                                                                                                         “All the proof ya want at four in the woods.”

The sergeant said he would send Dunne. Quinn who bred dogs for the coursing in Clonmel took it upon himself to help Dunne with two old hounds. Around three Lynch took off towards the woods. At half past three Keane on his way to the co-op pulled in beside the woods to relieve himself after having two pints in the Nephin . He could see Lynch in the distance. He followed him. Lynch saw smoke coming from the trees somewhere in front, he could hear the dogs. Word had spread that the guards were finally going to catch them and a growing crowd including council workers, farmers in the co-op and drinkers in the Nephin were following Dunne the guard. Lynch saw some tattered clothing snagged on briars, he knew that he was close. Behind him, Keane was closing in, also excited at the sight of torn underclothes discarded among the weeds.

        The dogs were closing in now, with the line of locals following.  Lynch saw the guard Dunne in the distance. Following him towards the clearing, stood behind a tree looking down where he imagined the two were at it. Keane came up behind him.                                                                                                           “Jesus, they are finally going to catch them perverts,” Lynch declared to Keane as his eyes lit up.              “Yea, I hope they catch them in action.”

Keane’s breathing deepened as he saw Lynch’s excitement.                                                                                                                                                          “Imagine the whole town seeing them at it,”  

“Yea,” said Lynch, “and maybe that’s how they get their kicks doing it in public ”                            

“Yea,” said Keane, “and all them queers coming in here to watch each other from behind the trees as if that sort of thing was normal.”                                                

 “And you and me know that it s not normal definitely not normal,” said Lynch. 

                                                                                                                                                                                 “Imagine doing that,” Keane looked straight at Lynch.                                                                                   “Imagine,” said Keane.                                                                                                                                                “Jesus it’s not normal at all,” said Lynch in a low voice, “not normal at all.” 

                                                                                                                                                                                   “Anything but normal,” said Keane.                                                                                                                        “It’s what I call abnormal,” said Lynch.                                                                                                         “Definitely abnormal,” said Keane as he looked at Lynch.                                                                                 “The very opposite of normal,” said Lynch as he turned to look at Keane.                                         

 “But some say that it’s not unusual like,” said Keane, “I mean to say that it happens in some places like.” “Oh,” said Lynch, “that’s true for you, I’ve heard that in some places it’s definitely not unusual,” said Lynch as he looked up at Keane.                                                                                                                                         “But it still wouldn’t be normal like,” said Keane.                                                                                                        “But it’s not unusual that everything isn’t normal,” said Lynch.                                                                            “That’s true” said Keane, “in fact it’s often normal for things to be unusual”.                                          ”Wouldn’t the world be a boring place if everybody was normal,” said Lynch.                                                 “I mean to say the Man above made the world full of normal people and unusual people and sure that’s the way they were made they can’t help it like,” said Keane.                                                                              “Sure it’s not their fault, they might want to be normal like but they were made unusual and sure who‘s to say what’s normal or unusual, what’s normal to one man is unusual to another like,” said Lynch.    “The two are definitely not normal but nowadays that’s not unusual,” said Keane.

As the two were finishing their picnic, they watched the steam coming off the boiler in the factory just below them as the bell from the town clock filled the valley. The taller and the shorter, they sat apart motionless on their coats gazing across at the streets of the small town, its two spires, the library, the reservoir on the hill with its clutter of telephone masts, the schools pumping out fresh ambitious pupils all primed for the boat and the plane, the shopkeepers holding onto some half forgotten tradition, the terraces of council houses emitting trails of turf smoke each bent at the same angle as the wind dictated, the river twisting around its tortuous bends on its way to the bay.

          The tall one pointed at the guards’ barracks, the small one pointed at the courthouse as if they were posing for the cover of some nineteenth century novel. They talked here every month about their dead mothers and wondered what their lives would be like if they had gone to Boston with their brothers. They looked towards a noise in the trees a kind of shuffling which sounded like a crowd of people behind them. It was a dog, a curious dog. It ate one of their sandwiches, took a long look at them and ran away 

 “This doesn’t feel like it’s unusual,” said Lynch, “but I know that it’s not normal.”                                           “That’s okay,” said Keane, “we don’t have to be normal all the time and sure that’s the way the man above made us.”                                                                                                                                                                        “It feels like we shouldn’t be doing this,” said Lynch “I mean throwing our stuff across the grass and hiding in the bushes it’s just the thought of them two doing it has affected me. It feels like I’m a queer or something I don’t know how to explain it.”                                                                         

“It’s very different to being with Monica,” said Keane.                                                                                            “I know,” said Lynch, “Jesus I hope Linda never finds out or I’d have to go to Leeds to live with the brother.”

“We better grab some clothes before they catch us and head off this way over the river now just in case the dogs find us they might head for the clearing after the two once they’ve sniffed our clothes.”

         The dogs were on the scent now discovering Lynches mart anorak and yellowed vest beside Keanes torn Tommy Hilfiger shirt, Lynches Primark underpants and further on Keane’s John Deere baseball cap and a woman’s knickers

The dogs were following until they reached the river where they stood wagging their tails. Far off in the distance the shower over Croagh Patrick had moved out over the bay .Some of the disappointed crowd filtered back through the woods to be home just in time for the Angelus and the six o clock news read by Maurice O Doherty.    

Detective

The two young people left O’Neill’s by the back door and came through a narrow alleyway onto the quay. It was late. The river flowed deep and slow. Jack was smiling, it had been very hot in the pub, his face was flushed. ‘Not the same river, not the same man,’ he said.

She looked at the darkly moving current and trembled slightly. Jack offered to go with her to the station but she insisted there was no need. He watched her walk away along the river. When she passed out of sight, he crossed the bridge. A wind came up off the water but he was happy and did not feel the cold.

On the other bank a derelict stood up out of the darkness under the quay wall and asked him for money.  ‘Alas, sir,’ Jack said, ‘I’m not carrying cash. Not a single red cent.’

‘Posh bastard,’ the derelict said.

‘Well put, my friend. A veritable bon mot as the French say.’ 

The derelict retreated, muttering. Jack walked briskly on.

The streets were quiet.  A motorcycle zoomed down the south quays. From the old tenement districts came the howl of some lost soul. He checked his phone, he had no messages.

The bus was waiting at the stop upriver. There was a scattering of sleepy passengers on the lower deck. He took a seat by the window.

A girl occupied one of the backwards-facing seats behind the driver. He allowed his gaze to linger on her for a few seconds, but she was engrossed in her phone and did not look up. Someone was listening to music with the volume on high. He raised himself up and glared about him. The music didn’t stop.

The bus idled at the stop while the driver smoked a cigarette and walked up and down the pavement, shoulders hunched. Then he tossed the glowing butt into the wind and stepped inside. Just as the bus was about to pull away a man got on. He sat beside Jack. ‘That’s a sharp one,’ he said. Jack nodded but said nothing.

‘I never planned to come to town today, but a pal got on to me, saying Clive, are ye about? Everyone wants to see Clive. You can’t let them down.’

Jack made a vague reply. He put in earphones, checked his phone. He began to draft a message. Was great meeting you. Hope to see you soon … Had a wonderful time … Had a lot of fun earlier …But whatever the phrasing, the words seemed trite and needy. He gave up and began scrolling aimlessly through articles on The Independent.

The bus started off along the river. Clive shifted restlessly, sighed, put his forearms up on the headrest of the seat in front, took a long noisy swig from a bottle of mineral water. He turned to Jack again. ‘What do you do yourself?’ Jack took out one of his earphones. Clive repeated his question.

‘I study.’

‘Are ye from down the country?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re staying in digs?’

‘Right.’

Jack put the earphone back in and frowned over his phone. A tension entered his body. His left hand, his strong hand, clenched and unclenched. Then he thought back on the evening he’d had and felt calm and happy again.

Before leaving the city proper, the bus stopped outside a building that looked like a church. There were human forms, wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags, lying on the pavement. ‘Addicts,’ Clive said.

A man came out from the shelter of the porch and boarded the bus. He exchanged raucous pleasantries with the driver in a strong city accent, then sat down across the aisle from Jack and Clive. He had a sharp, bird-like face, and he wore the outfit of a younger person: trainers, tracksuit, baseball cap. There was a gold-coloured chain around his sinewy neck. He fixed the girl in the backwards-facing seat with a leering grin.

‘Where are you headed?’ Clive asked him.

‘All the way,’ the man said, ‘to the end of the line.’ He continued to look directly at the girl, but she did not lift her head. Then he turned, the grin still on his face. He was missing an incisor.

‘Same as myself. How do you like it out in the sticks?’

‘I’m not there permanently. I’m on an assignment.’

‘Assignment?’

‘I’m a guard.’ He had a loud, laughing voice.

‘A Garda Siochana?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have friends in the Guards.’

‘Oh yeah? Where?’

‘All over the place.’

‘I’m actually a detective.’

‘You must meet some tough boyos in that line of work?’

‘I can handle myself.’

Jack glanced across the aisle. The man was very thin, a gust of wind might knock him down.

‘They posted me out there on account of the crimewave,’ the thin man went on. ‘I’m supposed to clean the place up.’

Jack looked out the window. The bus was moving quickly now and outside was all darkness. His face was reflected in the glass.  He thought of her eyes, her laugh, the kiss they shared, the brief heat of her body in the dark. He smiled to himself.

‘Why’s that lad laughing?’ the thin man said. Jack pretended not to hear. Clive nudged him with his elbow. He took out his earphones.

‘What are you smirking at?’

‘The notion that you might be a detective is quite amusing.’

The thin man laughed. ‘What do you do for a living?’

‘That’s hardly any of your business.’

‘He’s a student,’ Clive said.

‘How old is he? Looks about twelve.’ the thin man said.

‘I’m nineteen.’ This was almost true, there was a month to go before his birthday.

‘I don’t believe you. I can smell a liar a mile off. I’m like a shark smelling blood when it comes to lies. It’s what makes me a good detective.’ Jack noticed the girl look up from her phone and felt his face redden.

Just then the bus jolted over a bump in the road causing Clive’s water bottle to slip from his grasp. Clive groped under the seat but it rolled away. He cursed, made a dismissive gesture and sat back up.

‘So you’re a yobo who doesn’t pick up his rubbish?’ the thin man said. ‘Shame on you. No wonder these buses are in such a state.’

‘Oh,’ Clive said, ‘yes, sure, you’re right.’ He got down on all fours in the aisle and peered under the seats. The bus went up an incline and the bottle rattled away. Clive crawled along the aisle after it.

‘And some call us pigs.’ The thin man gave a cackling laugh. ‘You’re like a sow down there, rooting in the dirt.’

Jack was composing a message. He kept his head down. Had the best time tonight. Let me know when you get home. Looking forward to the next time. 🙂 He hesitated before pressing send. 

‘Texting a young one, ha?’ the thin man said.

Jack looked out the window. In the daytime there would be rolling fields and hills in the distance. Now there was only darkness.

Clive recovered the bottle and settled back into the seat. For a time nobody spoke. Someone was still playing music audibly. The thin man turned around. ‘We don’t want to hear any of that bloody rubbish,’ he said. Immediately, the music stopped.

Jack looked at his phone. ‘A watched kettle never boils sonny boy,’ the thin man said. Jack felt his body tense up once more. He stowed the phone away in the inner pocket of his coat to avoid the temptation to look at it again.

Now, the bus was arriving in the dormitory town where Jack had his digs. It was the last stop. There was a long, narrow main street, with shuttered shop fronts, graffiti, and neon signs. Immediately the bus stopped, Clive stepped out of his seat and hurried off. Jack moved to follow him, but the thin man put a hand across his chest. ‘Where’s your manners sonny boy?’ he said and motioned to the girl to step out ahead. She got off and Jack saw her walk towards the town square before turning into the car park. The thin man followed her.

Jack went back up the street to where a flickering sign advertised pizza and kebabs. The takeaway was manned by a dour, heavy-set man. Jack ordered a doner kebab. ‘Ten minutes,’ the man said.

Outside, the wind drove dry leaves and empty pizza boxes along the street. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket and searched for his wallet, but it wasn’t there. ‘Thieving bastard,’ he said aloud.

He walked back past the bus stop. There were no lights in the arched passageway leading to the car park and he tripped, almost falling headlong on the uneven ground. The carpark was almost empty, the silvery light falling on the expanse of grey tarmac gave an impression of lunar desolation. The girl from the bus was smoking a cigarette alongside a car with the door open

Jack’s phone emitted a faint beep. He reached into his jacket and took it out. His heart leaped and, trembling, he read her words. After what you did in the alley .. I can’t believe …you know my father’s a guard?? He frowned, read it again, fingers dallying over the keypad. A strange chill passed through him.

The girl saw him now. She flicked the cigarette away, sat into the car and slammed the door. The car stuttered into life, turned a wide arc and moved out through the car park’s rear gate. He watched it move away up the service road. It paused for a moment at the first junction, then turned left and accelerated out of sight.

‘She isn’t interested in a whelp like you.’

Jack wheeled around. The thin man cut a spectral figure under the carpark’s wan lights. He had the same sordid grin as before and the sharp jaw and missing eye-tooth lent him an air of predatory cunning. ‘Do you make a habit of prowling around after young ladies?’ he said.

‘Bastard,’ Jack said.

‘Watch your language sonny boy, or I’ll have to arrest you.’

‘Ha!’

The thin man took a step forward. Jack’s left hand clenched into a fist. ‘Nineteen my backside’ the thin man said.

Jack’s fist struck the thin man in the face, snapping his head back and making him stumble. It was the first time he had hit anyone. Pain radiated up his arm.

The thin man spat a glob of blood and smiled. ‘Striking a guard’s a serious offence, sonny boy,’ he said.

‘You’re no guard,’ Jack said and lifted his throbbing hand. The thin man sprang forward, feinted a jab, and sank a fist into Jack’s stomach, doubling him over. A second punch smashed his nose. There was an explosion of pain and colour in his head and he tasted blood. He slumped to the ground.

He was aware of the thin man crouching over him. ‘You pretend butter wouldn’t melt,’ the thin man said, ‘but you don’t fool me.’

Jack lay winded on the tarmac. A whirl of lurid colours passed over his vision. He was full of pain and cold, impotent anger. When he staggered to his feet, the thin man was gone and his phone lay on the ground, its screen shattered. The wind had risen and it was starting to rain. He was alone. Again, he thought of her, their evening together, the kiss… Then he remembered, and it no longer did him any good.