...

Rain covers the windows of the train. Outside there are rocks and surf and a heaving sea. Michael checks the map. Two more stations and then Dun Laoghaire.

The key to the house was hidden under a stone frog. Michael pushed the statuette aside with his foot, picked up the key and opened the back door. The laundry floor was littered with clothes. Clean and dirty jumbled together as they overflowed from the washing baskets.

Michael threw his backpack of school books in the hall and went into the kitchen. He got the sliced loaf in the plastic bag from the bread box. The bread box smelt funny and there was a residue of greenish crumbs in the corners. At first Sue, Alison and Trish were always coming over, cleaning up, making casseroles, bringing muffins, tidying the pot cupboard. Michael had wished they’d just go and leave him and Dad alone. In the end they did.

Michael took a handful of the white bread, tore off the crusts and pushed the pliant mush into his mouth. The house was menacingly silent. The afternoon a maw that Bridget had mysteriously disappeared into. Michael felt the end had happened too quickly. It was as if his mother had left without waiting to tell him something he needed to know. He was fifteen and stranded.

The tea towel with the map of Ireland hung over the door of the oven. There was a little man in a tall hat and buckled shoes with a speech bubble from his mouth saying, ‘Failte!’ Bridget had said it meant ‘Welcome!’ And there were drawings of boats crossing the Irish sea from Hollyhead and Pembroke. Michael looked at the boats headed for Ireland. He’d go there. He would.

The first page of Coral's short story Dublin Bay, as it appeared
in The Dubliner (October 2001).