We present an extract from Somewhere, the debut novel from Jessamine O'Connor.
Clodagh finds herself adrift after leaving her partner Seamus. Navigating addiction, the harsh realities of a housing crisis, and relationships pushed to the brink, this is a story of her attempts to reconnect with herself, and those closest to her, in a gritty, vividly rendered contemporary Dublin.
In this extract, Clodagh and Seamus have met up in the Green as arranged, although Seamus was an hour late, and now they stand by a bench at the pond...
His eyes are not quite open but not quite shut. They blink only slowly, so slow it looks like they won't open again. His cheeks are long and his mouth is weirdly puckered, as if he’s about to kiss someone. She steps back quickly, looking around the park, and frowns. He eventually gets it the zip on his bag open and pulls out a small stuffed toy. An elephant.
I got ya something, he smiles happily, his face stretching wide.
She tightens. It’s not happiness, just imbecility. The elephant is the size of his wide hand, and when she takes it, she sees a label with an M symbol printed on. A f**king McDonald’s toy.
Thank you. She makes herself smile. That's really nice, I love elephants.
Well I know you do, Seamus drawls. Smiling widely around at the pond, the park, the city, this glorious day, he is pleased. It’s good to give. He will make sure to get more presents, more of everything. He’s as soft as a cloud.
They both sit down on the bench with his bag between them, facing the water. There, looking down at the muddy grass, Clodagh feels her mind slowing down, acclimatizing. Seamus has nothing more to say. The gift is given. His eyes droop, his smile remains. The thin lids sink then lift, over and over again, fluttering. Two moths landing on the shade of his face. Sitting together, she is turned towards him, watching the lagging wing-beats which indicate he is slowing down.
Seamus is drifting to and from the bench on waves no one can see. Propped on a wooden slat seat in a busy park, and then floating on a beach in the sun with water lapping and warm sand, an endless blue, bluer-than-blue sky swirling around him. Nothing but warmth now, he ebbs further and further away from the Green until his lids eventually stop lifting and his smile relaxes over his cheekbones and the curve of his jaw.
And out. Clodagh studies his face, the clear, blank peace of it.
Seamus? Nothing.
The tips of his small yellowish teeth are just visible. People are everywhere. She’s really started to hate this park. It used to be nice when they came here as kids, or teenagers. Relaxed. Her and the girls, one or two lads sometimes, with their guitars and smokes, their chatter. They’d flop around on the grass for hours, some reading overly intellectual novels with exotic titles or unpronounceable authors, others just playing on their phones, inhaling, exhaling. Clodagh was big into the Russians back then, now she thinks of it. Anyway, it was always sunny. But sunny in a good way, not like this. This kind of sun brings all the stupid out. It’s hot, get over it. Still prickly.
She studies Seamus’s face, or what looks like a carving of his face framed inside the arch of cap, the clustered rolls of hoodie, all the built-up layers of his outfit.
The Green is like a f**king shopping centre. So many bags and bits, travel mugs and orange ankles. The women with the bald legs are tanned but the tan has pooled around the tops of their sandals and little runners. She begins a tally of fake legs, then fake legs in combination with white shoes, totting up curiosities being one of her harmless pastimes. Counting and losing count, finding bunches of fives and tens and starting again.
Some of the adults with the bags of bread and small children stare over if they notice Seamus, his head slack and mouth left ajar, the crisp sun on his skin. They almost freeze, there with their enormous pushchairs, all the accessories. The men are in black sunglasses like they think they’re in the mafia, but when they spot Seamus they stop clumsily and turn away, marching their children in the opposite direction, almost pushing them into the pond.
Clodagh laughs.
Half laughs. Seamus? She sits forward, turns and directs his name more precisely at his face. Seamus?
Both eyelids spring up instantly. Yes? As if they’d been talking the whole time, as if he hadn’t been just basking in his unconscious for the last twenty minutes without her. He’s puzzled as to why she’s being so loud like this, she’d want to get a grip. What’s with the shouting? I can hear ya, he informs her. What?
His eyes are all blue, just a ball of blue and white like a marble, no black, no depth. Only blue, like the empty sky. He is looking at her, in the area of her, but hasn’t focused on what might be inside, what she might want to say.
But now he’s there, she’s blank.
Seamus has a sceptical expression barely clinging to his face as his eyes struggle to keep open and in her direction. A bead of sweat slides down his forehead and catches on the wedge of his nose. He’s proving he’s listening and it’s her who’s being mental again, but the strain of it is making his pinprick pupils flicker, left and right. There’s something inhuman about it, it’s like he’s glitching. They slept in the same bed once. Not that long ago, used to f**k even. She pulls one leg tightly over the other, jigs her boot up and down to a beat in her ribs, squashes the fingers of both hands between her thighs. The lumps that the rings make through her black jeans are familiar, a go-to sensation, a dinosaur spine.
Seamus. I’ve been thinking about going away.
Somewhere is published by The Lilliput Press
