We collect her on Saturday morning. Evie, in a vest and a denim skirt, seems cold as she clambers into the back seat of my car, rubbing her arms and bringing some of that early morning chill inside with her. Dew is still clinging to the patches of well trodden grass in the caravan park at this hour, before most souls have woken up baking in their tin can dwellings. A groundskeeper is soaking the flower beds with a rubber hose by the entrance as birds chirp.
“Looking very chipper for half seven in the morning.” Jen says to her accusingly.
“I don’t know, I’m just excited!”
“You morning people are all the same.” Jen has done nothing but complain about how early it is since I shook her out of bed fifteen minutes ago. She hasn’t eaten yet, and just pulled on whatever clothes she could find off the floor. She claims I’m a grumpy person, but there’s no human alive who is as cranky as Jen is if you catch her before nine in the morning.
“I’m a morning person and it pisses her off,” I explain to our passenger, then to Jen, “Sorry that I want to get up to Dublin early so that you can have a nice day.”
Jen scowls, “Okay. Yeah. You said that already.”
“Just focus on the pancake breakfast we’ll have.”
“Yes, it will be delicious. Now shut your stupid smirky little mouth and drive us, taxi man.” She curls her legs up underneath her and shuts her eyes while I pull away from the curb.
“Your car is very clean,” Evie says. She sits up very straight in the rear view, ankles together and hands folded neatly in her lap like she’s at a catholic mass. I’m amused by the juxtaposition of her perfect politeness while Jen is twisted up in the passenger seat snoring, scarlett hair sticking up like she’s been dragged sideways through a hedge.
“It’s only clean because I barely use it. Trust me, if I did I’d be using it as a bin. There’d be no room for you back there with all of the KFC wrappers.”
She laughs, but I can’t tell if she’s just being gracious, “Well it’s a really nice car in my opinion. It’s so new!”
“I assume you don’t drive yet.”
“No, but I will the minute I’m eighteen. It’s hard to get anywhere at home without having a car, like. I won’t be driving around in anything like this though, that’s for certain.”
“Tullamore, huh?” I swish around a roundabout and onto the open road. Jen lightly bumps her head on the window and she grumbles but doesn’t wake. “What’s it like there?”
“Aw, are you serious? You’ve never been?”
“I, uh… no? Should I have?”
“I was joking. Nobody should ever set foot. It’s a total shithole,” she appears to get flustered by her own comment, “or, like, not really. Maybe that was harsh on Tullamore. I know that Shane likes it there, I don’t mean to talk it down, I just-”
“It’s fine, lots of people love Dublin, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t a shithole.”
“I like Dublin.”
“That’s because you don’t live there.”
“Well I’d much rather I did,” she presses her finger into the window, at the green pastures that whizz by, fields, cows, fences, the knotted briars of the country ditches. “That’s what it looks like at home. It’s the exact same as everywhere else, whereas a city is, like, you know. Different.”
“Some people might say the country is idyllic.”
“Hm.”
I reach over Jen to the glove compartment where I’ve stowed a packet of jellies. Peach rings. I offer them to Evie and when she politely picks one out of the packet I tell her: “You can have more than one.”
She takes one other, and I stuff at least four into my mouth, “So you don’t like being a culchie, huh?”
“I’m not a real culchie.”
“Really? You live in a culchie town and you sound like a culchie, so, I mean… just calling a spade a spade here.”
“You think I sound like one?” Surprised, she leans forward into the space between the seats so she can study the side of my face.
I shrug, “well, it’s just your accent is very strong.”
“Nobody has ever said that to me before.”
“That’s probably because you all sound the same as each other out there. In the wilds of the country,” I smirk, adding, “the bog.”
“You consider me a bog dweller now.”
“No, I think you’re a culchie who happens to live on the bog.”
“God, the idea of you thinking that makes me anxious.”
“Why?”
Jen stirs in her seat when the packet crinkles, “are you eating something?” she croaks, “gimme some,” she reaches for the jellies in my lap before I knock her hand away.
“No sorry, these are for Evie.”
“No, c’mon, just one.”
“Okay, wait, stop grabbing,” I bat her off me and pick one out, “Let me check. Evie, can Jen have this?”
“What? Yes of course.”
“Hm, I don’t agree,” I pop it in my mouth and produce another, “what about this one?”
“Let me have it,” Jen growls.
“Nah,” I say and press it into Evie’s palm, then block her with my arm when she tries to give it to Jen, “No, that one’s yours!”
“I want her to have it.”
“Nope, my car, my rules. You have to eat it.”
“God, Jude,” Jen says, “You’re really going to put me through it today, aren’t you?” She lunges for the sweets and I elbow her off me, citing reasons of obstructing visibility and causing hazardous driving conditions. She asks me if I ever fucked the driver’s theory manual.
Evie giggles in the backseat so I whirl on her, “What are you cackling at, bog dweller?”
“Nothing!” she insists as we zoom past the first blue motorway sign for Dublin city. “You two are just funny. Why? Is laughing banned in your car?”
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