I was eight the winter my father stopped coming through the door at six o’clock. Before that, the sound of his key was the surest thing in our flat in Ballybough. The kettle would be boiling, my school jumper would be itching at my neck, and my mother would pretend not to smile until he lifted me clean off the floor and said, “There’s my little guard.” He worked on sites around Dublin, came home with dust in his hair, and always smelled of rain, concrete, and the mint sweets he kept in his van.
Then one Monday, he didn’t come home. My mother said there had been an accident near the quays and that he was in hospital. She said it quickly, while washing cups that were already clean. I remember the water running and running, louder than her voice. I asked if he would be home tomorrow. She looked out the window towards the grey roofs and said, “We’ll see, love.”
So I waited. Every evening after school, I sat on the bottom step inside the building because from there I could see the front door. I had a copybook on my knees and pretended to do sums, but really I was listening for him. Neighbours came and went with shopping bags, buggies, umbrellas dripping on the tiles. Men with the same boots as his walked past and my heart jumped each time. I learned the weight of footsteps. I learned disappointment before I learned long division.
My mother took the bus to the Mater Hospital most days. Sometimes she brought me, sometimes she left me with Mrs. Kavanagh downstairs, who gave me Club Orange and let me watch cartoons. When I did go, I hated the hospital corridors. They were too bright and too quiet, full of grown-ups whispering as if loud words could break something. My father was in a bed with tubes and machines around him, his face swollen in a way that made him look like someone pretending to be him. I held his hand and told him about my spelling test. My mother said he could hear me. I believed her because I needed to.
After three weeks, I started waiting outside instead of inside. I stood at the corner near the shop, watching buses pull in and out, convinced one of them would bring him back. In my head, he would step down, thinner maybe, with a bandage on his head, but laughing. He would say the doctors were eejits and that he’d been trying to get home the whole time. I made deals with God, with traffic lights, with pigeons on the path. If the next car was red, he’d come today. If I got to the lamppost before the light changed,
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