You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here

‘Evelyn wasn’t hungry,’ I reply absently, thinking hard about Aidan and how I’m only the fall-back girl. It seems I can have nothing for myself.

The door of the church is always open, and we go in and gaze at holy statues, willing them to wink at us. We’re never chosen for apparitions, but it’s for the best; we might get too much of a fright, or we might be given a big job by God to carry out when all we want to do is play. Saint Jude is the saint of hopeless cases, and he stands inside the

It’s important when you’ve good news to tell the right people. People who understand the dream or have a dream of their own. Otherwise you end up feeling deflated.

‘Did you dunk your head in the dirty bathwater?’ Evelyn says, laughing, and I clasp my sides with laughing too. I haven’t always the confidence to be kind to Maeve in Evelyn’s presence. ‘And did Tom and Mary have the bath before you as well? I’d say they did.’ ‘They did not. I had a fresh bath,’ says Maeve with a shaking voice. We sit there hooting

‘All the adults tell us he’s real because they want us to be good,’ she says. ‘But the truth is there’s no one watching. God is only made-up. So you can do whatever you want.’ She’s so casual about it, not forceful at all, that I’m struck with a magnificent terror, the likes of which I’ve never experienced before. If there’s no God, then there’s no

‘I didn’t really want a race. I only wanted peace and quiet.’ His face is bright and flushed, his tousled thick hair soaked with sweat. ‘I’d prefer it being just the two of us.’ The air around us is changing colour. There are forces at play beneath the surface. There are invisible filaments reaching out from me and sparking with the invisible filam

‘I’m only saying. It’s human nature to think we’re all here for some big purpose. But most of us aren’t. Most of us are ordinary, and it’s important to accept it. A person has to be content to lead a normal life. There’s no shame in it.’ The three of us sit in terrible, awkward silence. The worst thing that could happen would be for me to fail, to

It’s easy to know what life is like for Daddy. Daddy is happiest when he is fixing up a place and putting it in order. Daddy smells like turpentine and he has black and white hair like a sheepdog and when he’s at home he wears white sneakers stained green from mowing the lawn.

When we’re all together, the world revolves around Evelyn, and why wouldn’t it. Her long hair shimmers in the glare of high summer, sun-bleached at the temples. She has new things to wear: a peach sundress and sandals with leather butterflies sewn on the ankle straps. She’s full of herself in the lovely outfit, gaining great pleasure out of her own