Shiver the Whole Night Through Read Free

birthday. It’s amazing how your emotions can swing so violently in just seventy-two hours: perfect happiness to the depths of misery.
    For once we’d been having a half-decent summer, warm and dry most days. The little rain which fell was light, almost pleasurable on your face. And the day of the carnival incident was a scorcher, as though part of the Mediterranean had relocated to our small town on the Irish west coast.
    The carnival. Those two words still have the power to send chills up my spine. No, that’s not it: they make me feel sick in my stomach. Make me want to throw up.
    They’d arrived in town midweek, a small outfit run by semi-dodgy geezers but they seemed all right. You probably wouldn’t trust them with the keys to your house, but the rides were safe and the games weren’t rigged too much. They travelled around the country all summer, pitching up for a few days in towns along the way. Dodgems, roulette wheel, ring-tossing, the usual.
    Barney McFarney’s Big Bumper Funfair: the name I’d remember till the day I died. Which, all going to plan, wouldn’t be too long coming.
    I don’t know if Barney McFarney was his real name or something cutesy they dreamed up to sell the carnival. What I know is that he had a son called Francis: about eighteen, handsome, with shining-brown eyes and dark skin. All the girls thought he was gorgeous. I heard one say he was like how she imagined Heathcliff from
Wuthering Heights
. His personality was that mix of edginess and little-boy-lost sensitivity that drives teenage girls nuts. Looking back, I’m not surprised Caitlin fell for him. If I were her, I probably would’ve done the same. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.
    We’d been going together for five months. She first kissed me at the Valentine’s disco, out of nowhere; I was so surprised and delighted, I had a big dumb smile on my face for a week. Caitlin Downes actually fancied
me
. I couldn’t believe it.
    I wasn’t the ugliest troll in the world, but I wasn’t quite in her league either. I was a nerd, one of those quiet guys you’re unaware of until one day you realise they’ve sat next to you for two years and you barely know their name. I was only noticed when someone noticed they never noticed me. I’d kissed a few people but never had a serious girlfriend.
    Caitlin was a babe. Auburn hair, fierce green eyes, ski-slope nose.
Great
legs. So much of a babe, in fact, that other kids couldn’t believe she was really going with a geek like me when they heard about it. I fell for her, hard and fast. I thought she felt the same. Turns out I was wrong.
    We’d got serious quickly, spending a lot of time together. We talked about all sorts of things – Caitlin opened up to me in a way I imagined she didn’t, or couldn’t, with her friends. She mostly hung out with a group of catty, nasty assholes. We made plans – not long-term but that summer, or next year. We wondered if we should go to the same city for college, or would a long-distance relationship be doable. We shifted all the time, whenever we could.
    We even came close to doing
it
, once or twice. I wanted to, I think she did too, but we were young and immature; whatever else happened, I’m glad we didn’t. That would have made what followed even harder to bear: deeper intimacy making for greater betrayal.
    That awful day, Black Sunday as I think of it, Caitlin cheated on me with the boy from the carnival. Francis, with his bloody Heathcliff face and wounded rebel image. She shifted him in a meadow outside town, as the afternoon sun beat down mercilessly. Meanwhile stupid, innocent me was at a match with my father.
    I hadn’t wanted to go but he insisted – he thought we should spend more time together, so fine. We drove to the city and stood on the terrace, getting fried in the heat, crushed by the crowds. Then we returned home and Podsy was