Pretend
Finn always knew when his parents were about to start pretending.
It was in the way the air in the kitchen went a bit shiny, like the stretch of road in summer that looks like water until you’re on top of it. Mam’s shoulders squared, Da’s mouth did that half-smile that meant he was either going to charm a room or get punched, and everything slowed down just enough that a person could see the joins.
This morning, the performance started with toast.
“Do not,” Niamh said, “even think about buttering it over the sink.”
Ciarán, mid-swipe, froze with the knife in one hand and the slice in the other. “You want crumbs on the floor instead? That’s a hate crime.”
“It’s a kitchen, not a lay-by on the M7.” Niamh flicked the kettle off with a knuckle. The hospital mug—white, chipped, CITY CHILDREN’S printed in peeling blue—steamed in front of her. She was still in pyjama bottoms and a T-shirt under an open cardigan, hair in a loose plait. Consultant on call or knackered single mam, Finn thought; from behind, you couldn’t always tell.
He sat at the table in his school tracksuit and hoodie, rucksack at his feet. His boots, already laced, bounced restlessly against the chair leg. The clock over the cooker read 07:13. The bus was at eight.
“It’s grand, Mam,” he said. “He’s over the sink. Gravity’ll take care of it.”
“Don’t you start quoting physics at me,” she warned, but one corner of her mouth moved.
Ciarán flashed Finn a grateful look. “See? The boy understands infrastructure.”
“He understands that you’re a menace.” She poured hot water over the teabag, steam washing her glasses. “And that if he comes back from this camp spouting Mayo propaganda, I’m disowning both of you.”
Finn grinned around his cereal. “You can’t disown us. I have your brain.”
“And my attitude,” Ciarán said. “Lethal combination.”
The word brain still did a little flicker in all three of them, even three years on.
“Don’t say the B-word before eight o’clock,” Ciarán said lightly. “It’s bad luck.”
“It’s a medical term,” Niamh replied. “I’m allowed use it whenever I want.”
“I’m allowed be superstitious,” he said. “Keeps the lights on.”
“The lights stay on because I do paperwork,” she said. “Your superstition can take a number.”
Finn grinned, tension loosening a notch. “You’re both weird,” he said. “Can we go back to arguing about Mayo now?”
“Never stopped,” Ciarán said.
Finn felt it like a ghost-touch at the back of his skull—the hospital lights, the click of a machine, Mam’s voice trying very hard not to wobble. He remembered flashes more than a story: the feeling of having been underwater without the wet, the tiredness that weighed his arms down, the way everything smelled like plastic and lemons.
He also remembered waking up in a bed in City Children’s and seeing Mam in the chair, shoes off, hair bent, and thinking, in his fuzzy, post-seizure way: of course she’s here.
He remembered Da not being there, and the way Mam had said his name later like it hurt.
He shoved the thoughts away now, the way he’d learned to. The doctors had poked and scanned and hummed at his brain and then decided it was “an event” but not necessarily a forever thing. He took his tablets, did his checks, told the PE teachers, and went back to ordinary life. Mostly.
The star ornament on his rucksack winked when the light caught it. Mam had almost thrown it out after the hospital—“I’m not sending you around with that like a target on your back, Finn, people will think you’re fragile”—but he’d fished it out of the bin and clipped it on himself.
Right now it swung as his leg bounced.
“Stop jiggling,” Niamh said absently.
“You stop jiggling,” Finn replied.
Ciarán snorted toast crumbs. “That’s my son.”
“Unfortunately.” Niamh took a sip of tea, then glanced at the clock. “Bus. Quarter past we’re leaving.”
“Twenty past,” Ciarán said. “It’s ten minutes away, we’re grand.”
“Quarter past,” she repeated. “Because some people can’t tell the difference between ‘plenty of time’ and ‘half the motorway submerged’.”
That hung there, like the paper star in the prologue of their lives.
Finn studied the toast crumbs on the counter, suddenly fascinated.
“I didn’t plan the rain, Niamh,” Ciarán said quietly. “And it’s not like I was off on a spa day.”
“No?” Her tone went brittle. “Kerry in December, hot stone flood management, I’ve heard of it.”
“Mam,” Finn said, before the shiny air could crack. “Can I bring my gloves on the bus or will Ms Byrne freak out?”
“They’re for the camp, so they go in your bag,” Niamh said, glad of the pivot. She turned towards him. “One pair. Not three. You’re not running an under-the-table glove lending market.”
“That’s literally what GAA is,” he said. “Trading gear and trauma.”
Ciarán barked a laugh. “You’re not meant to know that yet.”
Finn slid off his chair. “I’ll just bring the one pair,” he said, heading for the hall. “My lucky ones.”
“Those things are held together by willpower and bad decisions,” Niamh called after him. “If they disintegrate mid-solo run, don’t come crying to me.”
“I’ll cry to Da,” he shouted back.
“You do that,” Ciarán muttered. “At least one of us understands kit loyalty.”
The hall was cold enough to mist his breath. Finn knelt to pull open the bottom drawer of the shoe rack Ciarán claimed to have built. Three pairs of boots, a graveyard of odd socks, one glove that didn’t belong to anyone; and there, on top of a folded Mayo scarf, were the GAA gloves.
Finn picked them up with something bordering on ceremony. The leather was worn smooth where Ciarán’s fingers had been, the club crest faded from too many matches in too much weather. They smelled faintly of sweat and old grass and winter liniment.
He tugged them on. Still a little big in the fingers, but not as ridiculous as three years ago when he’d first tried them.
Da had stood in the hospital doorway after the worst of it, eyes raw, and said, “When you’re back on the pitch, you’re taking these off me. I’m retiring them. I’m too old. Mayo need new blood.”
“You’re nowhere near old,” Mam had snapped, and that had been the end of that conversation.
Now, Finn flexed his hands and listened.
The house hummed. Kettle, fridge, the quiet tick of radiators. Behind it, the muffled rise and fall of his parents’ voices, softened with walls between them.
He could tell, without hearing words, that they’d shifted gear—out of bickering and into logistics. They did that well, at least. Who’s dropping him, who’s picking him up, who’s bringing the tablets, who’s got the emergency contact file. They ran him like a joint operation.
He checked his rucksack—tablets, inhaler he didn’t really need, phone charger, spare socks, packet of Tayto, hoodie, star ornament clipped and secure. He shrugged into his coat and slung the strap over his shoulder, then glanced at his reflection in the long mirror by the door.
Eleven-year-old boy. Shorter than he wanted to be. Hair verging on needing a cut, but he was going to grow it out anyway, like the lads on the Mayo team. Freckles, once the bane of his existence, now acceptable. Small scar at his eyebrow from when he’d run into the coffee table at six. No visible sign his brain had ever gone rogue.
“You look very pleased with yourself,” Niamh said to his reflection. “Is that the gloves or the prospect of three days with no parents?”
“Both,” Finn said. “And free hotel breakfast.”
From the kitchen, Ciarán shouted something indistinct about it being a hostel, not a hotel.
“See?” Finn said. “He’s already jealous.”
“He’s already picturing you headbutting a goalpost,” Niamh replied. “Text us when you get there.”
“I will.” He flexed his fingers in the gloves again. “They fit now.”
“Course they do,” she said, brisk. “You grew into them.”
“Nice to have something that stayed the same,” he muttered.
Her eyes met his in the mirror. “Plenty of things stayed the same,” she said quietly. “You just don’t see them all at once.”
“Stop glaring at yourself,” Niamh said, appearing over his shoulder. She’d put her hair up in something more consultant-adjacent, thrown on a clean top and jeans. Hospital bag at her feet. “The mirror’s not done anything to you.”
“Just checking what the lads have to put up with for the next three days,” Finn said.
“They’re very lucky.” She picked imaginary fluff from his shoulder. “You’re a catch.”
“That’s weird.”
“You’re weird.” She tugged lightly at the star. “You sure you want to bring this?”
“Yes.” He waited for an argument.
None came. She studied the little chipped silver for a second, thumb rubbing once over the edge, then nodded.
“Right,” she said. “We’ll go in your dad’s car. He can pretend he’s important driving you in the emergency vehicle.”
“That’s only for work,” Ciarán said, coming out of the kitchen with his coffee in a travel mug. “This is my humble civilian car. No one respects me in this one.”
“You’ve never been respected in any car,” Niamh told him. “Come on, before I decide to homeschool him and save us all the bother.”
“Right, both of you, stop philosophising about vehicles,” Niamh said, checking her watch. “We have a bus to make.”
“Listen to her,” Ciarán told Finn in a stage whisper as they crossed the car park. “She gets like this when there’s a timetable involved.”
“I get like this when people are late,” she said. “Buses leave. MRI slots vanish. Life continues without you.”
“I’ll be on time,” Finn said. “You’re the ones who’ll be late fighting over the dishwasher rota.”
“We do not fight,” Ciarán said.
“We engage in robust discourse,” Niamh corrected. “Entirely different.”
The bus waited in the school car park, white sides streaked with rain, engine idling like a big sleepy animal. Parents huddled in coats, breath clouding. Teachers waved clipboards, shouting names. A Christmas tree in the school foyer blinked through the glass, one string of lights stubbornly dead.
Finn bounced on his heels, the tarmac damp under his trainers. His rucksack straps dug comfortably into his shoulders. The gloves warmed his fingers. The star on his chest felt like a private joke between him and Mam and some god of unlikely survival.
“Right, troops,” Ciarán said. “Game plan. You get on the bus, you don’t lick anything, you listen to Ms Byrne, you don’t start any fights, and you absolutely, under no circumstances, let anyone convince you Mayo have a chance at Sam next year.”
“Da.” Finn rolled his eyes. “You’re obsessed.”
“It’s a sickness,” Niamh agreed. She had her hands in her pockets against the cold, shoulders hunched. The hospital had called while they were driving; Finn had seen her thumb hover over the answer button, hesitate, then ignore it. She’d get it when he was gone. He pretended he didn’t notice.
“Remember your tablets,” she said now. “Morning and night. Don’t let them slide just because you’re at camp. If you feel weird—”
“I know,” he said, reciting. “If I feel weird I tell a grown-up, I sit down, I don’t pretend it’s grand. I’ve got the note for the coach and the teacher. They know.”
Her mouth tightened, but she nodded. “Good.”
“Do I have to kiss you in front of all the lads?” he asked, half-hoping she’d say no.
“Absolutely,” she said, then softened. “Look at me.”
He did. Her eyes were tired, but bright. The line between her brows—seizure line, flood line, divorce line—was back.
“You’re not made of glass,” she said quietly. “You’re allowed to have a brilliant time. I don’t want you thinking about brains or scans or anything that isn’t football and sea air and slagging off whatever food they give you.”
“Even Brussels sprouts?” he asked.
“Especially Brussels sprouts.” She smiled, then pulled him in, quick and fierce, cold nose against his hair. “I love you.”
“Love you too,” he said into her jumper.
She let him go and stepped back, hands returning to her pockets like they had to be restrained from dragging him home.
Ciarán cleared his throat. “Come here, you.”
Finn turned into his chest without thinking. His dad’s coat was warm, smelling of coffee and outside and a hint of something metallic from the HQ door handles. Ciarán squeezed him once, then held him at arm’s length.
“If you score,” he said, “I expect a full match report. If you don’t score, I expect a full match report explaining why everyone else is useless.”
“I’m not you,” Finn said.
“Thank God,” Niamh muttered.
Ciarán’s eyes flicked briefly to hers. For a second, the shiny air trembled. Then the teacher blew a whistle, and the moment broke.
“Reid, Finn!” Ms Byrne called. “Let’s go, please! We’re on the clock!”
“That’s you,” Ciarán said. “On you go. Text us when you get there. Both of us,” he added, raising a brow.
“I’m not five,” Finn said, but he nodded.
He clambered up the bus steps, heart thudding not with fear but with an odd, fizzy excitement. Camp. The west. Three days of football and messing with the lads and not thinking about anything serious.
He grabbed a window seat and shoved his rucksack overhead. Outside, Mam and Da had moved to stand side by side, not touching, watching.
He pressed his palm to the glass. They both lifted a hand in return.
For a second, he thought of the hospital bed and the empty chair on one side, the full one on the other. Of the way Mam’s voice had sounded when she said he’s in Kerry saving strangers.
He hit record on a voice note before he could overthink.
“Don’t fight,” he said quietly, then sent it to the family group chat with a little football emoji and a Christmas tree.
Down below, he saw both their phones buzz in their pockets at the same time.
The bus lurched, hissed, pulled away. The car park, the school, the two dots that were his parents shrank in the mirror. The city slid past in a blur of shops and terraces and Christmas lights half-hanging.
Somewhere under the Atlantic, a fault line shifted.
On Level Three of City Children’s, Niamh didn’t feel the first tremor straight away.
She felt the absence of Finn beside her more, the way her hand kept wanting to check he was there. Instead she checked little Daniel in bed four, whose shunt had behaved overnight, and teenage Aideen in bed nine, who’d finally smiled at a joke about the nurses’ Christmas jumpers.
Don’t fight ⚽🎄
She snorted softly. “Cheeky article.”
“What’s that?” Aisling asked, juggling a stack of files.
“Nothing.” Niamh tucked the phone away without replying yet. “Teenagers’ onc ward have threatened to steal your reindeer jumper, by the way.”
“It’s a penguin,” Aisling said indignantly.
“The penguin has horns.”
“They’re festive.”
“You’re deranged.” Niamh flipped through a chart. “Okay, when neurosurgery make their majestic appearance, I want to be there. They tried to pull rank on bed seven last time, and I’ll not have it.”
“Yes, boss.”
The lights overhead flickered.
It was subtle at first, just a stutter in the neon. A trolley rattled in the far end of the corridor. The paper snowflakes the kids had taped to the window shivered.
“Did you feel that?” Aisling asked.
“Probably someone slamming a door,” Niamh said, but her stomach did a strange little drop. The memory of the seizure night rose like a ghost—ambulance bay, siren, the way the ground under her had felt not quite attached.
The floor rolled very slightly, as if the building had just changed its mind about where it wanted to be.
Every adult on the corridor stilled.
“Okay,” Niamh said, voice sharpening. “No one panic. Step away from shelves, mind your heads. Damien, get those IV stands away from the windows.”
“It’s an earthquake,” one of the older kids breathed, too excited for someone hooked to an EEG.
“We don’t do earthquakes,” Niamh said. “We do minor geological inconveniences.”
The tremor faded as quickly as it had come, leaving the ward vibrating with the leftover adrenaline.
Monitors beeped. A child in the far bay started crying; a parent murmured comfort. Someone laughed, too loudly.
“Probably just a blip off the coast,” Aisling said, trying to sound casual.
“Mm.” Niamh’s skin prickled. She pulled her phone out and opened the family chat.
Don’t fight ⚽🎄, Finn’s voice note repeated in her head.
She typed, Wouldn’t dream of it. Text me when you get there. Love you. Xx, and hit send.
The message sat there, blue, tiny and helpless.
She slid the phone away, took a breath, rolled her shoulders back and went to reassure the children that the world was not going to shake itself apart today.
Somewhere deep under the floor, the building hummed like it wasn’t entirely convinced.
In the National Emergency Coordination Centre, the quake was a graph before it was a feeling.
“Uh... boss?” one of the seismology liaison lads said. “You might want to see this.”
Ciarán was halfway through an email he didn’t want to send, about budget allocations for flood defences that were already two years too late. His phone rested screen-down beside the keyboard, Finn’s voice note still unheard.
He swivelled his chair towards the bank of monitors.
On the largest screen, a neat, calm line spiked into sharp jagged teeth, then shivered down again.
“Is that live?” he asked.
“Yeah.” The liaison swallowed. “Off the west shelf. That’s... that’s not our usual ‘ah sure the tectonic plate sneezed’ reading.”
The floor gave a gentle, almost playful wobble under their feet. Coffee in paper cups rippled.
Around them, the room reacted in the way only a room full of Irish civil servants could react to the first proper earthquake of their lives: a mix of “what the fuck”, “did you feel that?”, and “don’t say it out loud, it’ll get ideas.”
Ciarán felt the hairs rise on his arms.
“Okay,” he said, standing. His chair rolled back a little, wheels complaining. “Let’s not panic. Let’s also not pretend that’s nothing. Get me Met Éireann, Marine Institute, and whoever we talk to in Geneva when the ground does something weird. I want models, I want probabilities, I want someone with a PhD to tell me we’re overreacting.”
“And if we’re not?” the liaison asked.
Ciarán’s mind flicked, in one lurching movement, from map to map: population centres, coastal towns, evacuation routes, the half-finished list of “what if” plans that lived in the bottom drawer. One dot in the west flared brighter than the rest.
St. Nicholas Bay. GAA camp. Bus with his son on it.
“If we’re not,” he said, “we get very boring very quickly and start moving people uphill.”
He reached for his phone then, almost without thinking, thumb hovering over Finn’s name. The voice note icon sat there, little blue blob waiting.
He’d listen to it in a minute.
For now, somewhere under the Atlantic, the world had just cleared its throat.
And for the first time since the flood night, Ciarán Reid felt the ground under his feet and thought: Not this time. Please, not this time.