Rough Sleep
Finn woke to the sound of someone snoring like they’d swallowed a tractor.
For a second he thought he was back at Da’s, in the little box room, listening to his uncle Padraig sawing logs down the hall on Christmas Eve. Then the smell of damp towels, Lynx Africa and hot dust from overworked radiators hit him and he remembered: hostel. Camp. West.
It was still dark, or the blinds were doing a decent impression of it. The room hummed with the combined breathing of six lads, the occasional snort or mumble. Somebody’s phone screen glowed faintly under a duvet.
He lay there, flat on the too-thin mattress, and tried to decide if he’d actually slept.
Bits of dreams clung to him—water over tarmac, Mam’s hospital shoes squeaking, Da standing on top of a flood barrier shouting—but none of them felt properly his. That was the thing about having people who lived with disasters; sometimes your brain borrowed their worries by mistake.
He dug his fingers into the pillow. No dizziness. No weird buzzing in his arms. No static at the edge of his vision. His head felt normal. Or as normal as it ever did, stuffed full of football stats and nonsense.
Someone’s alarm went off with a tinny burst of a chart song. Groans rose.
“Turn that off or I’ll smother you,” Dylan muttered from the top bunk.
“It’s seven,” came the reply. “Ms Byrne said breakfast at half-seven or we’re running laps.”
“Do you think we’ll get another wobble?” one of the lads asked, sitting up. “Like yesterday on the bus.”
“That wasn’t a wobble,” Dylan said. “That was Reid’s big head changing the centre of gravity.”
“It was definitely the ground,” Finn said, but he kept his tone light. “If it happens again, I’m claiming it as my superpower.”
“No more TikToks about ‘Irish tsunamis’, please,” Ms Byrne called from somewhere up the corridor. “Eat something before you start catastrophising.”
“She says, at a natural disaster camp,” Dylan muttered.
“It’s a GAA camp,” Finn said. “Disaster’s just the theme tune.”
Finn shoved back his duvet and swung his legs over the side. The floor was freezing, the lino cold through his socks. His rucksack leaned against the bed frame, star ornament winking as if it had been up all night minding him.
“Morning, lads,” he said, voice scratchy.
“Shut up, Finn,” Dylan said, without heat.
“You snored like a tractor,” Finn said. “Pretty sure the Atlantic filed a noise complaint.”
“That was Conor,” Dylan mumbled from the top bunk. “I’m a delicate sleeper.”
“You’re a biohazard,” came a voice from under another duvet.
“Lads,” Ms Byrne’s voice floated faintly down the corridor, “if I can hear you from the staff room, you’re already in trouble.”
Finn smirked into his pillow. “Told you,” he said. “Tractor.”
He grinned, pulled his hoodie over his head and reached for his phone. No new messages yet. Mam would be on shift. Da would be in his bunker with the screens, doing whatever it was he did when the country sneezed.
For a second the memory of yesterday’s tremor slid into his mind—the way the bus had seemed to float for a heartbeat, the boys whooping like they were on a ride. Ms Byrne had laughed it off, called it “the earth stretching”, even as she’d kept one hand white-knuckled on the railing.
Finn flicked through the group chat.
Mam: Wouldn’t dream of it. Text me when you get there. Love you. Xx
Da: Tell Mayo I’m watching them. Xxx
He typed, Still alive. No Mayo songs yet. Going to breakfast. Then added a photo of the hostel room — six beds, six disasters — and sent it before he could overthink.
He didn’t mention the way his stomach did a small, stupid flip every time the building creaked.
St. Nicholas Bay looked different in the daylight.
Last night when they’d rolled in, the world had been mostly dark—a scatter of streetlamps, the warm spill of pub windows, Christmas lights outlining the shape of the square. The sea had been a black expanse beyond the harbour wall, muttering to itself.
Now, through the steamy hostel dining room window, Finn could see everything.
“You’re drooling,” Dylan said, shovelling scrambled eggs.
“I’m surveying the tactical landscape,” Finn said, nicking a piece of toast. “See that pitch? Perfect sight lines. Wind direction. Natural home advantage.”
“You’re an absolute melt,” Dylan told him, but his grin matched.
Ms Byrne clapped her hands at the top of the room, where she’d commandeered a small stage. “Right, gentlemen.” She was one of those teachers who could make “gentlemen” sound like both an insult and a promise. “Finish up. We’ve training on the pitch at nine, then a tour of the town, then the market, if you behave and don’t scare any locals.”
“Miss,” someone shouted, “what if the ground shakes and we all fall over?”
“Then you’ll finally learn how to tackle properly,” Ms Byrne said. “Eat your cereal.”
“My da says we should move uphill if there’s a wave,” another lad put in.
“Your da’s not wrong,” she replied, a flicker crossing her face. “But your da isn’t here, I am, and I say your first job is boots on, brains on, and no licking any harbour walls for TikTok.”
“You’re obsessed with licking things,” Dylan whispered to Finn.
“I’m more concerned she said ‘brains on’,” Finn murmured back. “Feels targeted.”
A cheer went up. Someone asked if there would be chips. Somebody else wanted to know if the market had a stall that sold fake Yeezys. Ms Byrne gave them all the Look.
Finn finished his eggs and nicked another sausage when nobody was looking. The noise was big and comforting—plates clinking, lads cackling, the hiss of the machine spitting out terrible hostel coffee.
For a moment, the world narrowed to this: breakfast, football, the promise of a day spent outside.
He checked his phone again. One new message.
Mam: Good. Don’t lick anything. Xxx
He smirked and sent back a photo of the eggs.
Already licking everything, he typed, then erased it and replaced with, Food’s grand. Don’t let anyone steal my spot on the sofa.
He almost sent something to Da too, then decided not to. Let him assume he was having the time of his life. He probably was.
“Phones away,” Ms Byrne called. “Boots on. Anyone not ready in ten minutes is doing extra laps.”
Finn shoved the phone in his pocket, grabbed his rucksack and headed for the lobby.
The air outside bit his cheeks. He could taste salt, even this far uphill. The sky was a low lid of cloud, but it didn’t feel oppressive, just... watchful.
“Lads!” A voice rolled up the steps ahead of them. “Try not to break your necks before we’ve even got you on the pitch.”
The man standing by the hostel gate looked like he’d been assembled from bits of the town. Weather-battered face, dark hair with silver at the temples, GAA tracksuit with the club crest stitched onto his chest. He had one of those smiles that looked like it had been earned; lines fanned out at the corners of his eyes, softening the sharpness elsewhere.
“This is Shay O’Hara,” Ms Byrne said. “He’s the club coach here and the reason they put up with us every year.”
“Because ye bring your own sandwiches,” Shay said. His accent was thicker than anything Finn heard in Dublin, the vowels rolling like the hills. “Welcome to St. Nicholas Bay, lads. We’ve ordered mild weather, no rain and a gentle following wind. The universe has ignored us as usual, but we live in hope.”
They laughed. He swept an appraising eye over them.
“You,” he said, pointing at Finn. “You’re the Keeper of the Gloves, are you?”
Finn blinked. “Eh... maybe.”
Shay nodded at his hands. Finn had pulled on Ciarán’s gloves without thinking; they hugged his fingers, old leather dark against his tracksuit.
“Reid, is it?” Shay said, squinting. “Your da was at a conference here a few years back. Tried to convince us to rewrite the flood plan for the whole coastline.”
“That sounds like him,” Finn said. “We rewrite the dishwasher schedule at home every week.”
“Good man.” Shay’s mouth tugged in amusement. “Right, up the hill with ye. Let’s show Dublin how a proper pitch looks when you’ve to fight the Atlantic for it.”
The pitch did feel different.
It wasn’t just the slope, or the salt in the wind, or the way the grass squelched slightly underfoot where the ground hadn’t quite forgiven last week’s rain. There was something else— a sense of exposure, maybe. No high fences, no blocks of flats nearby, just the sky on one side and the sea on the other.
“Looking good, Dublin,” Shay called. “We’ll have ye in St. Nicholas colours before the week’s out.”
“Traitor,” Dylan hissed at Finn. “Don’t you dare.”
“If they offer me a starting spot, I’m gone,” Finn said.
They ran drills until Finn’s thighs burned and his breath puffed in short bursts. The cold worked its way under his jumper, up his sleeves, made his fingers sting inside the gloves. He liked it. It made him feel like part of the place, battered the same way as the grass and the goalposts.
At one point, during a sprint, the ground gave a tiny, delicate shiver underfoot.
If he hadn’t already felt the city version yesterday, he might have assumed it was his imagination—the echo of boots, the thump of thirty lads changing direction at once. He slowed for a second, listening.
Nothing. Just the wind, Shay’s shout, the smack of ball on boot.
He pushed on.
Later, when Shay called a break, the lads collapsed in clumps, panting. Finn flopped onto his back on the grass, staring up at the sky. The cloud had shifted from solid grey to layers, light pushing through in streaks.
“Did you feel that?” a lad near the touchline asked, still bent double. “Like the ground did a wee shimmy.”
“That was you lot,” Shay called. “Stamping around like a herd of elephants. If the earth’s moving, it’s just trying to get away from your footwork.”
A ripple of laughter went round the group.
Finn wasn’t sure. The sensation had been there and gone in a heartbeat, more idea than fact. He flexed his fingers inside the gloves, counting his breaths the way Mam had taught him—just in case.
“Your cheeks are purple,” Dylan informed him, dropping down beside him. “You look like a turnip.”
“Your whole face is a turnip,” Finn retorted lazily.
He lifted his head and squinted towards the sea.
From here he could see the harbour wall, the low ribbon of beach, the line where the water met the stones. Waves curled and uncurled, white foam fingers reaching and retreating. Normal. As normal as water ever was.
He realised his shoulders had crept towards his ears and forced them down.
“You all right?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah.” He blew out a breath. “Just checking the Atlantic hasn’t decided to come up and say hello.”
Dylan followed his gaze. “It’d have to get through all them rocks first,” he said. “We’re grand.”
“Yeah,” Finn said again. “We’re grand.”
In Dublin, the maps were not grand at all.
Ciarán stood in front of the big screen, arms folded, watching the models update in jittery real time.
“One confirmed significant quake off the shelf,” the Marine Institute liaison said beside him. “Magnitude six point something. Deep, but not deep enough for us to ignore.”
“What’s ‘ignore’ in this context?” Ciarán asked. “Because I’ve a lot of people very invested in ignoring things until they’re properly on fire.”
“It’s under the Atlantic, not under us,” the liaison said. “But the slope it hit... if there’s been any undersea slide at all, we’re talking displacement. You don’t need me to tell you what that means.”
“Tsunami,” Ciarán said quietly.
He felt rather than saw the room react. The word wasn’t supposed to belong here. Tsunamis were for other people’s coastlines, other people’s tragedies, the ones you watched on the news and made a donation and then went about your day.
“Likelihood?” he asked.
“Low,” another scientist said immediately. “Very low. But not zero.”
“I hate ‘not zero,’” Ciarán said. “It’s the worst of all numbers.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, then turned to the operations team.
“Right. We’re not panicking,” he said. “We’re not ringing church bells. But we’re also not waiting for the sea to send a RSVP. Get me contact with local authorities along the west coast—Mayo, Galway, Clare, Donegal. I want a quiet word in their ear. We may advise moving people off the lowest bits of shoreline, especially where there are... events.”
“Christmas markets,” someone said.
“And camps,” he added before he could stop himself. “If anyone throws a fit about us overreacting, tell them it’s a drill with bells on. We can always apologise later.”
One of the junior staffers cleared her throat. “And the public?” she asked. “Do we issue anything?”
He thought of his interview yesterday, the words boring Christmas still hanging in the air. He thought of the tremor in the studio, the way the cameras had wobbled.
“Draft something for me,” he said. “Plain language. ‘There was a tremor, we’re aware, here’s what it means, here’s what we’re watching, here’s what not to do.’ No big scary headlines. No saying ‘tsunami’ unless we’re absolutely sure we’re looking at one, or RTÉ will have a graphic up before we finish the sentence.”
They nodded, already turning to their desks.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Still alive. No Mayo songs yet. Going to breakfast.
He read it three times, the words doing something strange to his chest. Still alive. As if Finn was joking, but also... not.
He typed back, Good man. Keep the east proud. I’ll sort the weather. Xxx, then pocketed the phone again.
The graphs continued to jitter.
“Any sign of more movement?” he asked the liaison quietly.
“Nothing big,” the man said. “A few aftershocks. We’re tracking the sea level buoys. If anything looks like it’s lifting in a hurry, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Good.” Ciarán looked at the map of the west coast, the dots that marked harbours and beaches and small towns that didn’t have much margin. “Because the one thing I’m not doing this Christmas is sitting in front of a microphone telling people we had no idea.”
He didn’t say, not again.
He didn’t have to.
On the paeds ward, the kids were already telling each other it had been a tsunami.
“It was a puddle,” Niamh said, standing at the nurses’ station with a clipboard. “In the car park. From the rain.”
“You can’t lie to the youth,” said Aideen, sprawled in her bed with her phone raised, one foot in a plaster cast after a fall and her hair scraped into a high bun. “We felt it.”
“You can’t feel puddles,” Niamh said. “You’re getting dramatic in your old age.”
“I’m fourteen.”
“Exactly.” Niamh flicked through charts. “Have any of you had any dizziness, headaches, unusual weirdness since the tremor?”
“No more than usual,” Aideen said. “And that’s just from looking at your jumper.”
Niamh glanced down at the penguin. “For the last time, it’s seasonal.”
“It’s a cry for help,” Aideen said solemnly.
The ward buzzed with the kind of low-level excitement that came whenever anything outside the hospital intruded on their bubble. Kids were drawing wobbly seismographs in their notebooks, asking the nurses if the ground could open up and swallow the Oncology department first because they were sick of needles.
Niamh listened, fielded questions, gave the standard we’re fine, the building’s designed for this, nothing to worry about speech she’d been emailed from management that morning. The words felt rubbery in her mouth.
In the tiny staff room, she caught the tail end of the news bulletin over someone’s lunch.
“...no reports of significant damage,” the presenter was saying, hair immaculate even under a banner that read MINOR TREMOR RATTLES IRELAND. “Experts say there is no cause for alarm, but emergency services are on alert as a precaution.”
They cut to a voice clip. Ciarán’s. Calm, steady, reassuring.
“We’ve had a shake,” he was saying. “We’re a small island, we feel it when the planet rolls over in its sleep. We are not expecting major impacts, but we’re watching the data as it comes in. If we need to move people, we will. For now, carry on with your day. Check on your neighbours, especially the older ones. And maybe don’t stand right at the edge of any piers trying to get dramatic footage for your social media, yeah?”
The room laughed. Niamh stood very still.
“Bit of a ride, him,” one of the younger nurses murmured, biting into her sandwich. “Even when he’s telling us we might get washed away.”
“Don’t let him hear you,” Niamh said. “He gets enough notions.”
She left before the bulletin cut to footage of waves hitting rocks in slow motion. In the corridor, she checked her phone.
Finn: Food’s grand. Don’t let anyone steal my spot on the sofa.
She pictured the sofa in her flat, the worn cushion on his side where he slumped to watch matches. It looked wrong when he wasn’t in it. Like the room was off balance.
Wouldn’t dream of it, she typed. Try not to bully any locals. Xxx
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. No reply came.
She slid the phone away with fingers that felt slightly too cold.
“Everything okay?” Aisling asked, appearing at her elbow.
“Fine,” Niamh lied. “We’re grand.”
There it was again. The word everyone seemed to be clinging to like a talisman.
Grand.
She wondered what it would feel like if, just once, someone walked into a room and said, “Actually, it’s not grand at all,” and the world didn’t fall apart.
On the pitch in St. Nicholas Bay, they were too busy arguing about penalties to notice the second, softer shift underfoot.
It came between drills, somewhere between Shay’s barked, “Get your elbows down, Dublin, you’re not windmills,” and Dylan’s, “That was never a foul, ref, you’re blind.” A tiny, sideways shudder, like the ground was trying on a new position.
Finn felt it because he was thinking about it. Because he’d seen the news ping onto Ms Byrne’s phone earlier, the brief crease between her eyebrows. Because his brain had filed away his parents’ jobs as a permanent background risk.
He paused, boot on the ball, and waited.
The sky hung low and heavy. The sea rolled on, sullen.
“Reid!” Shay called. “You taking that ball out on a date or what?”
Finn jolted, then grinned and dribbled forward, cutting through Dylan’s flailing legs.
The pitch, for now, held.