Author: Sef Churchill

“The realtor said Castle.”

“Well, this must be what they call a castle around here.”

John and Jane surveyed their new home and acknowledged disappointment in their different ways. John said, “Let’s get in, away from the rain.”

“Yes, why has it never stopped?”

They’d come a long way, and purchased Balmore Castle through an online auction, on the other side of the ocean from their old home among golden cornfields. They were accustomed to a lot of flat, open spaces, and the dips and lumps of Ireland confused the eye at every turn. The rain, too — it seemed endless.

I have scoured my memory for her. At first I scrubbed at the surface of my mind, but this is the wrong approach. Too much dirt falls away as you discard unwanted clumps — dirt which might hold clues. The way to do it is brush, brush, brush, sweep away the rubble — schools, foster homes, detentions — until a speck of reality shines through.

When you see it, you want to clutch it, hug it to you, admire it again and again. But a memory from when you’re five years old wears thin, like a gold coin hammered into leaf.

I have just a few coins. The fabric of her skirt. Her dark hair, tied back in the heat. Her first name; her surname, like mine, is too common to be any use. Her real name: Mama.

Lathom was a fraud. He knew he was a fraud, his wife Maureen knew he was a fraud and his receptionist certainly knew he was a fraud. But thank God, the receptionist was a RADA graduate, between jobs, who was plausible as a smiling, competent professional in front of the patients, even while she wrote Remember: Nose Goes On Front on the medical clipboard.

That receptionist. Annie. Beautiful. Well, he could hardly hire a minger for front-of-house. Annie seemed like proof, like his curriculum vitae, posed behind her glass desk with a bunch of lilies and a reassuring expression.

Annie could have spent her time between roles modelling. Not hand modelling, although her hands were as pale and perfect as wedding cake, but face modelling, leg modelling, belly modelling.

Rents in this town were a disaster. Lee supplemented her call centre work with a side gig blogging about food, and still barely managed to afford one room in a concrete block squashed between a ramshackle temple and a bicycle repair shop.

Her room held a futon, a shelf for her cooking ring, a little sink, and a shower and toilet sharing the same coffin-sized space. She blogged from her bed, balancing the steaming bowl of ramen on her knees, live-streaming her mealtimes and offering commentary afterwards.

In the background of her videos, her possessions dangled from hooks—clothes, pans, the small broom she used to sweep ginkgo leaves from the floor. In strong winds, the old temple trees flung their yellow autumn leaves right under the door and into her room.

Lee’s grandmother had a house across town. It wasn’t large, but it stood in its own garden, a traditional house, with a swooping roof and latticed partitions and so much space. Lee would create a dedicated blogging room, another whole room just for sleep, and have a shower without needing to lean away from the toilet.

—When her grandmother finally died, that was.