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By the time they came up O’Connell Street the evening had that glossy, lived-in shine Limerick sometimes got after a day of thin rain. The pavement still held a wet gleam under the shop lights, taxis slid past with their roofs lit gold, and the air was thick with vinegar, grease, cold damp off the river, and the warm animal smell of people drifting in and out of takeaways with hunger making them louder than usual. Chicken Hut was doing what Chicken Hut always did, pulling half the city toward it by instinct. There were lads half-folded over themselves laughing against the window, girls in lashes and puffer jackets standing in clumps with their phones out, a delivery scooter whining somewhere up the street, and that bright fried smell rolling out every time the door opened.
Allanah and Keely had been having a nice evening up to then. Not a big one, not some wild session, just a few hours in town with no child on Allanah’s hip, no buggy to push, no bag full of wipes and juice and emergency bits knocking against her leg. Róisín was with her babysitter, and even though Allanah had checked her tablet three times in ten minutes and gotten the same answer every time — she’s grand, stop worriting, she’s watchin cartoons — there was still a floaty unfamiliar feeling in her chest, the oddness of being young and free for a few hours and not quite knowing where to set her hands. She had her hair down for once, a soft brown fall over the shoulders of her cream jacket, and there was a pinkness in her cheeks from the cold and from laughing. Keely, beside her, walked with that brisk, bright-boned swagger she had when she was in a good mood, all fast eyes and restless mouth, nudging Allanah every few steps to make some remark or point out some eejit across the street as if the city had been laid on specially for her entertainment.
“Look at the state a yer man,” Keely said, under her breath but not that far under, nodding at a lad trying to eat chips and text at the same time. “He’s after drownin the phone in garlic mayo.”
Allanah laughed softly. “Leave him alone.”
“I will not. That’s public behaviour. There should be laws.”
They were just drawing level with Chicken Hut when the row properly announced itself. Not the first sharp line of it — that had clearly started before they got there — but the full, street-owning flare, the kind that made heads turn and necks lift all around them.
“Take me fuckin jacket off ya.”
“Or what?”
It came from just beside the window, where two girls had squared up so close their faces were nearly in each other’s. One was slim and furious, with overlined lips, a black ponytail dragged so tight it pulled her whole face into the argument, and a tiny crossbody bag clenched under one arm like she meant to batter someone with it if needed. The other was broader through the shoulders, blonde hair in a glossy high bun, lashes like fans, and a white puffer jacket that she wore with a kind of deliberate insolence, chin tipped, mouth curled, one hand still holding a half-crushed Chicken Hut box as if she fully intended to keep eating through the confrontation.
Around them, people had already begun to settle into the delicious passivity of an audience. Nobody was going anywhere. A few girls at the edge were openly filming. One lad leaned against the glass with his brows up like this was better than whatever he’d been doing before.
Keely slowed at once, interested.
Allanah slowed for a different reason.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she murmured.
“Leave them,” Keely said, though she was already grinning. “They’re only at it.”
But Allanah was looking at the two girls with that soft, worried crease between her brows that meant she was about to involve herself in something that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the fact that she could not bear to pass distress without at least trying to straighten it out.
The dark-haired girl had grabbed the sleeve of the white puffer.
“I’m tellin ya now, Leah, let go a me before I put ya on the ground.”
“Try it, Stacey. Try it and see what happens.”
“Girls,” Allanah said, before she had fully decided to. Her voice wasn’t loud. It never needed to be. There was something in it that made people hear it anyway. “C’mere now, what’s goin on?”
Both girls turned toward her without losing the heat in their faces.
“She’s after robbin me jacket.”
“I did not rob it, y’absolute weapon, I borrowed it.”
“In feckin February.”
“It was not February.”
“It was before Clancy’s twenty-first and we’re in November now, so you do the maths, hun.”
“It doesn’t even suit you, for one thing.”
“That is not the point!”
Allanah stepped in closer before either of them could lunge properly, one hand up to Leah, one hand half-raised toward Stacey, as if she were calming two upset toddlers in a crèche rather than two grown girls outside a takeaway on O’Connell Street. She had the strangest way of doing it, not dramatic, not bossy, but with such earnest sweetness that for a second or two people tended to stop out of sheer surprise.
“Right,” she said gently. “No one’s doin anythin for one sec. Just stop there now. Leah, is it? And Stacey? Grand. Just tell me one at a time.”
Keely made a soft incredulous sound under her breath.
Allanah shot her a look that said behave.
Leah went first because she was the more wounded of the two, which Allanah noticed instantly. Anger was there, yes, but underneath it was the hot, humiliated misery of a girl who felt she’d been made look thick in public.
“She took me white puffer before a session, sayin she was only wearin it that one night. Then every time I ask for it back it’s some story — oh I’m after spillin tan on it, oh I left it in me cousin’s, oh I’m washin it, oh I forgot — and tonight she puts up a snap wearin it with that caption, and she knew exactly what she was doin.”
“I did not.”
“You did. ‘Some things just sit better on the right body x.’ What the fuck was that meant to mean?”
Stacey’s mouth opened in exaggerated disbelief. “It was a joke.”
“A joke at who?”
“At no one.”
“At me.”
“At yourself, maybe, if the shoe fits.”
Leah made a noise and tried to step forward again. Allanah put a hand lightly to her arm.
“No. Stay there now.”
The touch was light, but Leah obeyed it out of sheer instinct. Allanah turned to Stacey.
“And you borrowed the jacket?”
“Yeah, but borrowed doesn’t mean stole, like. I was givin it back.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
Leah let out a horrible laugh. “Soon. Hear that now.”
“Don’t be at that,” Allanah said, still soft. “Stacey, in fairness, how long have ya had it?”
Stacey rolled her eyes skyward as if the heavens themselves were trying her. “A few weeks.”
“A few me bollix,” Leah snapped.
“A while, then.”
“And the story?”
“It was only a bit a shade.”
“So it was about her.”
“It wasn’t not about her.”
That did it. Keely barked a laugh out through her nose, and even Allanah’s mouth twitched before she pulled it back into seriousness.
“Right,” Allanah said, like she was pinning down the final disputed border in some very stupid little nation. “So the jacket is Leah’s, yeah?”
“It was,” Stacey said mutinously.
“It still is,” Leah said at once.
“Grand. The jacket is Leah’s. You should’ve given it back. The story was shady.”
“Thank you,” Leah said, with instant vindication.
“But,” Allanah went on, turning that same calm gaze on her, “screamin outside Chicken Hut and pullin at one another’s clothes over a puffer is not helpin anybody either.”
Leah’s nostrils flared. “She called me tragic.”
“Because you were actin tragic.”
“There now again!” Allanah said, a little firmer, though still with that almost absurd politeness. “No. You’re both only makin fools of yourselves. Stacey, give her back the jacket. Leah, stop roarin at her. She gives it back, she takes down the story, and that’s the end of it. Right?”
For one suspended moment it nearly worked.
Stacey shifted. Leah let go the sleeve. A tiny hush moved through the watchers, that disappointed little settling when it looked like the show might end without anyone getting dragged by the hair.
Then Keely, who had been doing her best and not quite enough, stepped in it.
“Well, to be fair,” she said, all careless honesty and bad timing, “if ya borrow the girl’s coat and then start throwin up cryptic little yokes, of course she’s gonna lose the rag. That’s pure askin for it.”
Allanah closed her eyes for one second.
Stacey swung toward Keely like someone had lit a fuse under her.
“Who the fuck asked you?”
Keely straightened at once. “Nobody needed to ask me, I’ve eyes.”
“Yeah, and a big mouth, by the look of it.”
“Better than wearin other people’s bits and pretendin they’re me own.”
“There she goes,” Stacey said, looking around for witnesses now, delighted to have new prey. “This one always has somethin to say when it’s not her business.”
“And you always have somethin that’s not yours on ya, so there’s balance in the world.”
Leah gave a short savage grin, sensing reinforcement. “Tell her again.”
The whole thing flared again at once. Stacey took a step toward Keely. Leah, vindicated, took one too. Keely, never one to retreat cleanly from any row once she’d put a foot in, folded her arms and raised her brows with that expression that could start wars in under three seconds.
“You’re all gob, Keely.”
“Girls,” Allanah said.
Nobody heard her.
“Say it again there, go on.”
“I’ll say it in yer ear if ya want.”
“Girls.”
“Take that fuckin look off yer face.”
“What look? This look?”
“Girls.”
Still nothing.
Then Allanah did something so small and so Allanah that it cut across the whole stupid scene more effectively than a scream might have done. She stepped right between them, turned halfway so she was facing all three, and said, not loudly, not theatrically, but with a quiet flatness none of them had heard from her yet:
“No. Stop now.”
That was all. No roar. No performance. Just three words laid down like a line none of them were to cross.
Because she was sweet, because she was soft, because she looked like the sort of girl people thought they could talk over, the firmness of it landed harder than shouting would have. Even Keely shut up. Stacey blinked. Leah’s mouth stayed open a second too long.
Allanah looked at Keely first.
“You’re makin it worse.”
Keely had the grace to look briefly ashamed. “I was only—”
“I know, love. You’re still makin it worse.”
Then she turned to Stacey.
“And you. Give back the jacket.”
Stacey made a face.
“Now.”
There was no menace in Allanah. No swagger. No attempt to out-hard anyone. She just stood there with her cheeks pink from the cold, hair shifting in the night air, eyes tired and steady in a way that made refusing her feel somehow more embarrassing than obeying. She looked, for a strange second, older than all of them. Not in years. In use.
Stacey huffed. “Fine. Jesus Christ.”
She shrugged out of the white puffer with furious little jerks, revealing a tiny black top underneath that left her bare arms goose-pimpled in the cold. She shoved the jacket at Leah, who took it with the reverence of someone reclaiming disputed territory.
“And the story,” Allanah said.
Stacey stared at her.
“The story.”
“Oh my God, are you serious?”
“Yes.”
With spectacular martyrdom, Stacey yanked out her phone, unlocked it, stabbed at the screen, and held it up for Allanah to inspect as if she were customs and immigration.
“Gone. Happy now?”
Allanah glanced at it. “Grand.”
Leah had already pulled the puffer on, shoulders easing inside it, though she was still too keyed up to act grateful.
“And you,” Allanah said to her, turning. “You’re not sayin another thing now. Not one thing. You got the jacket back. Leave it.”
Leah looked ready to protest, then seemed to feel the weight of the puffer around her and think better of it. “Fine.”
“Fine,” Stacey echoed, pure acid.
“Not you either.”
Stacey laughed once, disbelieving. “She started it.”
“And you kept it goin.”
They looked at each other over Allanah’s shoulders with all the poisonous intimacy of girls who would absolutely be at this again in a month.
Then, because peace treaties required terms and Allanah was apparently determined to draft them all the way to completion, she said, “Right. Leah has the jacket. Stacey took down the story. Ye’re not postin about each other tonight. Ye’re not ringin anyone over it either. Ye’re not gettin cousins or sisters or anybody else involved. Ye’re both goin home, or back in there for food, or wherever ye were headin, and that’s the finish.”
Keely made a tiny choking noise beside her, very obviously trying not to laugh at the solemnity of it.
Allanah ignored her.
Leah shifted the puffer higher on her shoulders. Stacey folded her bare arms tight across herself and looked, for one brief second, very young and very cold.
Then Leah muttered, “I still think she’s a prick.”
“Leah,” Allanah said.
“Right, right. I’m gone.”
She turned on the heel of her boot and stalked off toward William Street, still muttering under her breath, but moving.
Stacey lingered a second longer, eyes narrowed.
“She is tragic though,” she said.
“Stacey,” Allanah said, with a look.
Stacey sucked her teeth, then snatched up her battered takeaway box from where it had half-collapsed against the window ledge.
“And your one,” she said, jerking her chin at Keely, “needs a muzzle.”
Keely lit up at once. “Come put one on me so.”
“Keely,” Allanah said again, this time almost pleading.
Stacey gave a dismissive snort and sauntered off toward the taxi rank, shoulders high against the cold, the remains of her dignity and her supper carried in the same hand.
For a second the crowd held, disappointed there’d been no hair-pulling. Then, like birds losing interest, they broke apart. The girls who’d been filming lowered their phones. The lads at the window turned back to their chips. The whole street seemed to resume itself at once, as if nothing at all had happened.
Keely let out the laugh she had been swallowing for the last minute and bent slightly at the waist with it.
“Oh my God, Allanah.”
Allanah turned to her slowly.
“What?”
“You actually sounded like a social worker.”
Alannah faltered, caught between stunned silence and laughter.
“No, but the way ya went, ‘Leah has the jacket, Stacey took down the story’—” Keely put on a delicate, diplomatic voice so exaggerated it was impossible not to laugh. “—‘Ye’re not ringin cousins, ye’re not postin, and there’ll be no further hostilities in the region.’”
That got Allanah. She covered her mouth, laughing properly now, the tension running out of her all at once.