The house had never been this quiet.
Even when the twins were babies and sleep was a rumour, there had always been some kind of noise – a murmur from the monitor, pipes clanking in the walls, Aisling humming under her breath in the kitchen. Quiet had a shape back then. It wrapped around laughter and crying and the thud of little feet.
This was different. This was empty.
Darragh stood in the doorway of the sitting room, one hand braced against the chipped frame, and listened to the silence sitting heavy on the place. The telly was off. The fire was down to an orange mutter. Outside, the city was doing its usual: buses grumbling up the hill, someone arguing cheerfully on the street, a dog losing its mind at absolutely nothing. Cork didn’t go quiet. Cork was always having a bit of a moment.
His house, though. His house had stopped.
There were toys everywhere, which should have helped. A plastic digger abandoned on its side like it had crashed, a princess shoe under the coffee table, a schoolbag spilling copybooks on the rug. Evidence of five small people who were currently scattered between his sister’s place, his mam’s, and the neighbour’s two doors down, all of them “just giving you a night to yourself, boy.”
He had said thanks. He meant it. He also hated it.
He walked in, bending to pick up the digger on reflex. Finn’s, obviously. The child had come out of the womb conducting risk assessments on playground equipment. Four years old and already obsessed with anything that had wheels or a hazard sign. Darragh turned the toy over in his hands, thumb catching on a crack in the cheap plastic, and felt that stupid sting behind his eyes again.
“Stop,” he told himself, low. “You promised you’d stop crying every time you saw a yoke from Smyths.”
The house didn’t answer. It just watched him, all the corners he hadn’t painted yet and the sticky patches he kept meaning to scrub. The good curtains Aisling had picked out – “We’re not animals, Darragh, the neighbours can’t be looking in at you in your shorts” – hung heavy over the window, shutting out the last of the light over the Lee.
He could hear her in everything. That was the worst of it. The calendar on the wall still had her handwriting on it, neat little notes about parent-teacher meetings and swimming lessons and “Ask doctor re: Maeve’s cough”. The fridge was a graveyard of school photos and electricity bills and the menu for the chipper she’d pretended they didn’t use as much as they did.
A photo of the two of them was wedged under a magnet shaped like a pint. He didn’t look directly at it.
“What are you at, standing there like a ghost?” he muttered, dropping the digger onto the coffee table with a clatter that sounded too loud. “Make a cup of tea or something.”
Tea was something to do with his hands. Tea was safe. You could be falling apart completely, and still the kettle went on and the world pretended that meant you were managing.
He moved towards the kitchen, flicking on lights as he went. The hallway bulb buzzed, threatening to give up. He’d change it tomorrow. Or the lads from the dockyard would come up on Saturday, full of opinions and no tools, and they’d sort it between them while the kids tried to be helpful and nearly electrocuted someone. That was the thing – people turned up. Cork did that, like. It minded its own.
Tonight, though, it was just him and a humming fridge and the echo in his chest where six voices should be.
He filled the kettle. The tap ran too long. He stood there, watching the water rise, hand tight around the handle, and saw – not the sink, not the cracked tile where someone had dropped a plate last year – but Aisling’s back, the way she’d leaned on one hip, talking over her shoulder while she buttered toast. The way she used to bump him out of the way with that same hip when he was hovering uselessly.
“You’re grand, love,” she’d say, laughing. “You’ll only make a hames of it. Sit down, I’ll sort it.”
Except she wasn’t here to sort it. Hadn’t been for nearly a year now. Twelve months and some change of other people’s sympathy casseroles and social workers’ visits and his mam’s well-meant interference, and still the truth hit him fresh every time he reached for a second mug.
He was only taking one down these days.
The kettle clicked. He blinked, came back to himself, and made the tea mechanically. Sugar. Milk. Mug that said WORLD’S OKAYEST DAD, a Father’s Day present the kids had picked because it was bright and ridiculous.
Okayest. That felt ambitious most days.
He carried the mug back into the sitting room and sat on the sofa, lowering himself into the dent where he always landed at the end of the day. The quiet pressed in. He could hear the tick of the cheap clock on the wall. Someone outside shouted something about the match, voice drifting up from the street. Somewhere over the river, a siren wailed and then faded.
He took a sip. It tasted wrong, somehow. Too strong. Not enough milk. Aisling would have made a face and taken it off him, fixing it without asking.
His phone buzzed on the arm of the sofa. He glanced at it, half-expecting another well-meaning message.
It was a group chat ping – FAMILY RESOURCE CENTRE – and for a second he couldn’t remember when he’d been added to that at all. Then it came back: the leaflets that had arrived from the school, the gentle nudge from the principal, the way the word “support” had made something in him bristle.
He’d gone to one meeting. Sat in a circle with other people who looked far too tidy to be this tired. Listened to someone talk about “practical strategies for solo parents.”
He hadn’t gone back.
The new message previewed across the screen.
Niamh – Family Support: Just a reminder, lads – there’s space in the Wednesday group for anyone juggling school runs / bedtime / life. You’re not meant to do it on your own. We’ll mind you as well as the kids. 💚
He snorted before he could stop himself. Emojis. Of course. He set the phone back down, ignoring the flicker of something – resentment, maybe, or just bone-deep exhaustion – that twisted under his breastbone.
You’re not meant to do it on your own.
That was grand in theory. In practice, there were five small people with his nose and Aisling’s temper depending on him showing up. No committee in the world could fix the fact that there was one less plate on the table.
He took another mouthful of tea, swallowed hard, and stared at the opposite wall where the kids’ drawings were taped up. Rainbows. Roblox characters. A lopsided stick figure family with an extra stick off to the side that Maeve had insisted was “Mammy in heaven, Daddy, don’t forget to put her.”
His throat closed.
He hadn’t moved that one. Couldn’t bring himself to.
The phone buzzed again. Another message in the same thread, this time from one of the other dads he recognised from the school gate.
Liam: I went last week, boy. Free biscuits. You’d like it. They have forms for everything but she makes it grand.
He could picture Liam typing that, half-grinning, shoulders up against the rain outside the school. The man was always taking the piss out of himself before anyone else got the chance.
Darragh looked at the message for a long moment. His thumb hovered over the keyboard.
He could type something back. That he was grand. That he didn’t have time. That Wednesday evenings were chaos enough without factoring in strangers and forms and a woman with soft eyes and a clipboard asking him how he was really doing.
He’d seen her, that Niamh. At the school gate, at the centre, hovering on the edge of conversations. Not from Cork, you could tell by the way she said certain vowels, but she’d settled into the rhythm fast. She listened more than she talked. She remembered kids’ names. She smiled at him like she was waiting for him to say something.
He never did.
He locked the phone and set it face-down.
The quiet crept back in, filling all the spaces between the furniture. Between his ribs.
Tomorrow there’d be packed lunches to make and PE kits to find and someone would have a meltdown over the wrong socks. There’d be homework and arguments about screens and a scramble to get five bodies out the door before eight-thirty. The house would be loud again and he’d be too busy wiping porridge off the table to notice the ache.
Tonight, though, there was just him and the kettle and the ghost of Aisling’s laugh in the doorway.
He leaned back into the sofa, closed his eyes, and let the grief come. No audience. No brave face. Just the kind of quiet crying that didn’t even make a sound, tears sliding down into his beard.
For a long time, he didn’t move.
When the front door finally opened – key turning, cold air rushing in, his sister’s voice calling, “You alive, or what?” and the thunder of kids racing up the hall – it was like someone switched the house back on at the mains.
Five small bodies crashed into the sitting room, all talking at once, coats half off, schoolbags banging against his knees. Finn launched himself onto the sofa, nearly upending the tea. Maeve shoved a drawing into his face. The twins clambered up on either side. The baby shrieked just for the joy of it.
The quiet shattered.
Darragh wiped his face with the heel of his hand, cleared his throat, and reached for the nearest child, hauling them in close.
“Easy, easy,” he said, voice rough but steady. “There’s only one of me, lads. I’m not an octopus.”
They laughed like he’d told the best joke in the world.
Later, when the kids were finally asleep and the toys were back underfoot and there were damp towels draped over every radiator in the house, his phone buzzed one more time on the counter.
Niamh – Family Support: If evenings don’t suit, I’m at the centre most mornings. There’s always tea on. No pressure, just saying. 🙂
He stared at the message until the kettle clicked again, turning itself off before it boiled dry.
He didn’t know it yet, but that would be the last night the house ever felt this empty.
Cork had a way of filling the gaps. Of minding its own. Of sending people who turned up with clipboards and spare keys and chairs they’d dragged down from the attic, saying, “Slide over there now, we’ll sort it together.”
He wasn’t ready to believe that.
But the city was already moving pieces around him, steady as the river.
By the time Niamh Sloane knocked on his door for the first time, the house would be waiting.