Wormwood Gate

Wormwood Gate

About the author

Katherine Farmar was born in Dulin and has lived there all her life, apart from a year spent in Edinburgh studying philosophy.
Wormwood Gate
is her first novel.

WORMWOOD
GATE

KATHERINE FARMAR

W
ORMWOOD
G
ATE

Published 2013

by Little Island

7 Kenilworth Park

Dublin 6W

Ireland

www.littleisland.ie

Copyright © Katherine Farmar 2013

The author has asserted her moral rights.

ISBN 978-1-908195-24-1

All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.

British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover design by Pony and Trap.

Typeset in Adobe Caslon by Paul Woods –
www.paulthedesigner.ie
.

Printed in Poland by Drukarnia Skleniarz.

Little Island receives financial assistance from

The Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon), Dublin, Ireland.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedicated to the memory of Diana Wynne Jones, storyteller supreme
.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Acknowledgements

1

Julie collected place names. Since the age of twelve, she had been keeping a notebook with interesting place names in it; she had started with ‘Ballyjamesduff' and ‘Timbuktu' because all her life she had been sure they were not real places – just names that somebody had made up for a joke or because they needed a rhyme to fit into a song. Then a priest had come to her school to give a talk about the time he'd spent in Timbuktu and had mentioned in passing that he'd been born in Ballyjamesduff, and Julie felt her world tilt on its axis. It turned out that Ballyjamesduff and Timbuktu were real places, places where people got born and grew up and went to school and caught buses, and somehow that gave their names a kind of magic. To mark the discovery, Julie bought a blank notebook and wrote down each name on a separate page, going back later to add some facts about each place so that she would remember how real they were.

She tried not to tell people about the notebook unless they actually saw her writing in it, because whenever she did tell people, they immediately assumed that she must be very good at geography and usually asked for help with their homework. But a long string of Bs and the occasional C in her own geography homework had culminated in a C in her Junior Cert exam, to everyone's surprise but hers.

‘Never mind,' said her friend Tina as the lunchtime bell rang and they started packing their bags to go home. ‘Unlike
some
people, you did well in everything else. Oh, hey, don't forget to come to my place at seven tonight! The party's not there, but we're meeting there.'

Julie looked up from her bag. ‘Party?' she said, feeling a little stupid for asking. ‘What party?'

Tina rolled her eyes. ‘
The
party. The results party! It'll be a laugh. Everyone legless and celebrating.'

‘Wait, I don't remember –'

‘J, I've been planning this forever. And you said you'd come months ago. Don't tell me one little C is changing your mind?'

She didn't remember Tina even mentioning a party, much less inviting her to one. She wasn't sure whether to feel grateful to Tina for mentioning it now or annoyed that she hadn't mentioned it before. ‘Oh – no, it's not that. I –'

‘So you're coming, then?'

‘Yes, of course,' said Julie, momentarily letting irritation defeat gratitude. ‘But I don't have anything to wear.'

‘Oh, well, you should've said!' Tina swung her bag over one arm and linked her other arm with Julie's as they strolled out of the classroom and towards the school gates. ‘Let's go shopping!'

‘Why do I get the feeling you would have said that even if I didn't need to buy something for the party?'

‘You know me too well. We could try that new place in the Stephen's Green Centre.'

‘Which place? Oh, wait, I know the one. No, not there. I looked there the other day, and everything they have is beige. No, I want to get something colourful.'

‘H&M?'

‘Maybe. I was thinking of a dress, but lately all their dresses are, like, micro-micro-minis.'

‘What's wrong with that? You have great legs.'

‘I do not!'

‘You should let people see them once in a while.'

‘I get all shy if I wear a short skirt. I feel like I have to tug it down every five minutes or everyone will see my knickers.'

‘You say that like it's a bad thing.'

Julie giggled nervously and cast around for another topic. It wasn't that she didn't like the way she looked in short skirts, and it wasn't even that she minded showing off and looking sexy – only, when she dressed a certain way people expected things.
Boys
expected things. It was better not to give them ideas.

As they turned the corner, Tina muttered something and her hand tightened briefly on Julie's arm. Julie followed her gaze to the bus stop, where Aisling O'Riordan was standing, fastening a spiked leather collar around her neck. As they watched, she settled the collar to her satisfaction, took out a lipstick from her schoolbag and began applying it with the aid of a nearby car's wing mirror. Julie couldn't see it clearly from where she was standing, but past experience suggested that the lipstick was probably black. She could feel her face hardening into a scowl.

‘Don't,' murmured Tina, as they neared the bus stop.

‘Don't
what?
' Julie whispered.

‘Don't start anything,' Tina replied.

Julie took a breath to deny that she ever would, then she realised that Aisling could probably hear them by now and shook her head.

Aisling looked back at them. ‘Don't worry, girly girls,' she said, capping the (sure enough, black) lipstick and putting it back in her bag. ‘I'm waiting for the bus home, but you're going shopping in town, aren't you?'

‘Hey!' said Julie. ‘Were you eavesdropping on –'

‘So you can take this one coming now and you won't have to share a bus with me and pretend to be civil.'

Aisling smiled sweetly and bowed with a gesture worthy of a circus MC as the bus juddered to a halt at the stop. Julie wanted to laugh, wanted to spit, and knowing the joke was on her made her angrier, but somehow it didn't make it less ridiculous. She sucked in a breath, ready to let off a rant, but Tina squeezed her arm again. ‘Come on, let's get this one. Bye, Aisling.'

They jumped up the steps and into the bus. While Tina was fumbling for change, Julie glanced back at the stop, and Aisling waved goodbye sarcastically. Julie hadn't even realised that it was possible to put sarcasm into a wave.

Once they'd found seats on the top deck, Tina turned to Julie and spread her hands. ‘Well?'

‘Well, what?' asked Julie.

‘What was that about?'

‘Why are you asking me? I don't know what goes on in that weird little head of hers.'

Tina gave her a dubious look. ‘You don't exactly ignore her, you know. She wouldn't bait you like that if she didn't think you'd rise to it. Besides, she's harmless enough.'

Julie turned away, breathing out against the window and doodling a little spiral in the fog. ‘I suppose.'

‘No “I suppose” about it,' said Tina. ‘She's a weirdo, but she hasn't actually
done
anything, has she?'

Julie wiped away the spiral and stared at the dirt on the outside of the window, thinking about Aisling. They had been in the same class for over two years – Aisling had transferred from another school after first year – and right from the start there had been something about Aisling that had nagged at her, made her uncomfortable, made her want either to run away or to lash out. She usually chose to lash out, because running away made her feel like a coward, and when she lashed out, Aisling lashed back, but Aisling had never made the first move, and so far it had all stayed on the level of words. ‘No, she hasn't.'

‘You should work it out, whatever it is. She's in our class, so you have to put up with her.

‘I know, I know –'

‘And I think she's going to be at the party tonight.'

‘What? Why?' Julie's head whipped around to face Tina. ‘You didn't ask her, did you?'

Tina rolled her eyes. ‘As if! Me and Aisling have an arrangement: I ignore her, she ignores me, we're both happy. No, it wasn't me, and anyway it's not my party, it's Darren's.'

‘So Darren asked her? Wait, who's Darren?'

‘Darren! You know, Caoimhe's fella? With the silver earring?'

Julie had met at least five boys with silver earrings in the past three years, and she had never bothered learning any of their names. She did remember Tina introducing her to a girl called Caoimhe, who had been hanging off the arm of some boy, but the boy himself hadn't registered in her memory. ‘Oh, yeah,' she said. ‘Does he know Aisling?'

‘They're in some World of Warcraft club together or something. He might not have asked her, and if he did she might not have said yes, but I just thought I should warn you.'

‘Thanks,' Julie said, sighing. ‘I should work on my ignoring-annoying-people skills.'

‘Well, anyway,' said Tina after a slightly awkward pause, ‘we were going to get you some clothes. If you won't wear a mini, will you at least wear leggings?'

Julie gave a half-smile. ‘Leggings I can manage,' she said.

That evening, she spent so long putting on makeup and trying to get her hair-straightener to work the way it was supposed to that she was half an hour late to Tina's place, which made the trip to Darren's house a little tense. Tina didn't believe in being fashionably late. She liked to be early so that she could size people up as they arrived, introduce people to each other, encourage little clusters and knots of people to form in the way that she wanted them to form. No matter who was technically giving the party, any party Tina went to ended up being hers – provided she arrived early enough.

‘I'm
so
sorry,' said Julie for the third time, as they waited at a crossing near Christchurch. It was the worst kind of crossing, with traffic zooming past in five different directions and a road so wide that the pedestrian signals changed when they were only halfway across.

‘It's OK,' said Tina, bending her knees in a cha-cha motion to fend off the cold.

Julie thought about making some kind of remark about how Irish people seemed to be biologically incapable of dressing appropriately for cold weather, but Tina was already annoyed. Better to change the subject. ‘So, Darren lives … where did you say he lived?'

‘Oh, it's this street that's sort of tucked in behind some other streets. I don't know what it's called, but I'll know it when I see it.'

‘You've been there before?'

‘Yeah.'

‘S-so … is he, you know, sound?'

‘He's nice enough.'

‘Cool.' Julie hugged herself and started rubbing her arms, which were bare. She was wearing floral-pattern leggings (Tina's choice; Julie wasn't sure about them), a long sleeveless T-shirt with a
Sesame Street
design on it (Julie's choice; Tina thought it looked weird), a loose belt slung round her hips, and ballet slippers with pop socks. Even though she was wearing a vest top underneath the shirt (she hadn't told Tina this, of course), she felt underdressed for the weather and a little foolish. Tina had said that a coat would just be a burden later on, when they went to a different party or to a club, but right now Julie felt she'd be happy to put up with lugging a coat around to a dozen different places if only it would stop her from freezing to death.

‘This is the oldest part of Dublin, you know,' she said, for lack of anything else to say.

‘Oh, yeah?'

‘Yeah. The old walls are around here. Well, the bits of them that are left, anyway.'

‘I suppose the Vikings landed somewhere near here, then,' Tina said without enthusiasm.

‘Yeah, there were archaeological digs that found remains. Old settlements, stuff like that.'

The lights changed, and the girls dashed across the street, not stopping at the traffic islands. By the time they'd reached the other side, they were both too breathless to talk, to Julie's great relief. Tina wasn't really interested in Vikings, and Julie's mind had gone blank on every other possible topic.

They reached the party a few minutes later, and Tina nudged Julie as they were getting drinks in the kitchen. ‘See?' she said. ‘I told you.'

Sure enough, Aisling was there, stirring a bowl of what might have been fruit punch but, to judge from the fizz, was probably just orange-flavoured alcopops with lemon slices floating on top. Julie felt the familiar discomfort bubbling up in her stomach. She took a deep breath to suppress it and filled a paper cup with Coke, trying not to look in Aisling's direction or draw attention to herself. Aisling didn't say anything, and Julie and Tina were able to get their drinks and leave the kitchen without even saying hello.

Tina bounded into the sitting-room and immediately grabbed hold of a boy Julie didn't recognise and started steering him towards a girl she knew from school. With her Coke in hand, Julie wandered slowly through the room, watching the people: people she knew and people she didn't know, people she'd met before whose names she couldn't remember, people she'd seen around but never actually been introduced to. That was Darren with the earring and the Slipknot T-shirt, sitting on the arm of the sofa and leaning over a red-haired girl who was definitely not Caoimhe. Privately, Julie made a prediction: by the end of the night, Darren and Caoimhe would have a screaming row, probably on the way to the club. Then there was the boy next to the red-haired girl, who had finished one can of cider and was starting on his second, all the while talking loudly and making the exaggerated gestures of someone who'd drunk five times as much; it wasn't hard to guess that he'd overstep his bounds and end up puking his guts out and having to go home early. And next to him, dressed in black and looking bored, was Aisling, who was staring straight at Julie with an expression of wry sympathy, as if she knew exactly what Julie was thinking.

Julie felt a blush rising on her cheeks and she turned around rapidly before it could show, heading back into the kitchen to the table stacked with snacks and drinks. Maybe she should drink something alcoholic to get into the spirit of things. She hated the taste of beer, and cider wasn't much better, but everyone said that vodka didn't taste of anything, so you could add it to a glass of something sweet and barely notice.

She picked up the bottle of vodka and hefted it in her hand. The seal was broken, but it was almost full. She twisted the cap off and took a sniff. It didn't smell like it would be tasteless. Or odourless, for that matter. It smelled like she'd just about manage to get it down if she added a shot to her Coke, but there was no way she'd be able to hide the smell from her mother.