The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes Read Free

her because, back then, when Rabbit was still so gawky, Grace was a real beauty. She had hips, breasts and luscious lips. She was a proper brunette with emerald-green eyes and, aged eighteen, Grace was a woman while Rabbit was still a child. Rabbit would often stare at Grace and wish,
If only I could lose me eye-patch, fill out a bit, darken me hair and plump up me lips. If only I could look like me sister.
    The eye-patch was gone by the time she’d hit ten but Rabbit, although beautiful in her own right, would never look like her sister. Her poor eyesight didn’t help: the dark brown horn-rimmed spectacles dwarfed her tiny face. They were heavy and slipped down the bridge of her nose, so she spent a good deal of her time pushing them up. Sometimes, when she was thinking hard about something, she placed a finger on them, holding them tight against her face and scrunching her nose. Johnny was the first to call Mia ‘Rabbit’. She insisted on wearing her long mousy brown hair in two high bunches at either side of her head. To him, those bunches looked like rabbit’s ears and, with her glasses, she reminded him of Bugs Bunny in disguise.
    Unwittingly, Johnny Faye was a trendsetter. If he decided patches were cool, within days everyone for miles wore patches. If he liked coats worn open and down to the ankles, or short silver jackets or woolly hats with diamonds, they became trendy without so much as a peep from the lads. It was simple. Johnny was cool so anything Johnny did, said or wore was cool. And when he coined the name Rabbit and Mia Hayes happily answered to it, everyone had followed suit within a week, including her own parents.
    In Rabbit’s dream, Grace was dressed to the nines in a tight black dress, heels and big red lips. She was going out with a man she’d met at the disco and it was exciting to watch her get ready. Rabbit liked to sit in her room as she applied her makeup in the mirror. Grace didn’t mind, so long as Rabbit didn’t talk. Grace would turn the tape deck on her dressing-table up high and sing along to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The River’, then Lloyd Cole and the Commotions’ ‘Brand New Friend’. She’d play them on repeat and, instead of wasting her own time holding down the rewind button, she’d make Rabbit do it.
    ‘Stop. Play. No. Rewind. OK, stop. No, rewind. Too far – go forward,’ she said, as she painted her eyelids. Happily Rabbit obeyed, pressing the buttons while her big sister transformed herself from beautiful to exquisite before her very eyes. Afterwards Rabbit followed Grace down the stairs and into the kitchen to where her brother Davey was eating his dinner with his earphones on. Davey always liked to eat alone. He’d wait until everyone else was done, then Ma would heat up his plate, he’d put on his earphones and shovel the food down his neck in the time it took to play two songs. Grace said goodbye to Ma and shouted the same to Da in the back room, watching the news. She didn’t bother saying a word to Davey because he wouldn’t have answered anyway.
    Davey was sixteen, tall and skinny, like Rabbit. He had long, mousy brown hair, which hung past his shoulders. Despite incessant slagging from the lads, he insisted on wearing denim on denim. He sat chewing and rapping his knife on the table in time to the music playing in his ears.
    Molly called after Grace, ‘Ask him for tea on Sunday.’
    ‘No way, Ma!’
    ‘I want to meet him.’
    ‘Not yet.’ Grace grabbed her coat.
    Molly appeared with pink rubber gloves on. ‘Don’t make me track him down.’
    ‘Jesus, Ma, will you let me live?’ Grace opened the front door and sashayed down the path towards the little iron gate.
    Molly sighed and headed back into the kitchen, but Rabbit followed Grace outside to where Johnny was sitting on the wall, playing guitar and waiting for her brother to finish his dinner. Grace said, ‘Hi,’ and he smiled at her, but, unlike the other boys’, his eyes didn’t follow