The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes Read Free Page A

her down the road. Instead he focused on Rabbit and patted the wall. ‘Rabbit,’ he said, and she sat down beside him.
    ‘Johnny.’
    ‘You look sad.’
    ‘I’m not.’
    ‘You are.’
    ‘Not.’
    ‘What’s up?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Tell me.’
    Rabbit’s eyes started to fill with big fat stupid tears and she couldn’t work out why. She really hadn’t known she was sad until Johnny had said it, and it was all a bit of a shock.
    ‘Spit it out,’ he added.
    ‘I wish I looked like Grace,’ Rabbit whispered, embarrassed.
    ‘No, you don’t.’
    ‘I do.’
    ‘Don’t.’
    ‘Do.’ Rabbit felt a little sulky but then Johnny grinned at her, and when he grinned the skin around his big brown eyes wrinkled slightly. It made her feel warm inside and out. Her cheeks flushed a little and her tummy flipped.
    ‘When you’re Grace’s age, you’ll be the most beautiful girl in Dublin, Rabbit Hayes,’ he said. ‘There’ll be nobody else quite like you.’
    ‘Liar,’ Rabbit said, biting her lip to curtail a spreading wide gummy smile.
    ‘Truth,’ he said.
    She couldn’t think of anything to say so she punched him playfully on the arm, then pushed her spectacles onto the bridge of her nose and held them there while he played his guitar and sang a funny sweet song to her.
    Jay, Francie and Louis arrived as Davey came out of the house. Jay and Francie, twins, were Johnny’s next-door neighbours, the heart and soul of his band. Jay played bass and Francie played guitar. It was Jay who had fought for Davey to be drummer after his audition hadn’t gone as planned: he was battling severe stomach cramps and shat himself halfway through the second song. Jay was blond, Francie was dark, and they were both handsome, with short hair, square jaws and a big build. They were also talkers: if they hadn’t chosen music, they could have been a pair of comedians in the morning – at least, that was what Rabbit’s ma always said. Louis was smaller and more serious. He played keyboards and fancied himself as the band leader, although nobody really listened to him even when he threatened to quit, which he did at least once a week. Once Rabbit had watched him lose it in the garage.
    ‘We could really have something here if yous would all stop mucking around,’ he’d shouted.
    ‘Stop crying, Free Fatty,’ Jay had said. Louis wasn’t fat, just short and blocky. Francie had observed that he looked like a thin guy who’d eaten a fat one. Since then, much to his annoyance, the lads had insisted on calling him Free Fatty. It was harsh, but not as harsh as Davey’s nickname. Back then, Davey was so thin his hooked nose looked too big for his face. After his audition, when he was walking out of the door with a load in his pants and four fellas crying tears of laughter, Jay called after him, ‘Here, Big Bird, come back when you’re cleaned out.’
    ‘Big Bird? He looks like a dead fucking bird,’ Francie said, and the twins had called him DB ever since.
    Davey didn’t like Rabbit hanging out with the band, so he was quick to tell her to get lost. The lads liked to sit on the wall, chatting, catching up and watching the girls go by before they went into Davey’s garage to practise for a few hours. Davey’s parents were really supportive of the band. His da was a big music fan and his ma was a fan of anything that didn’t include her son washing dishes for a living. Davey got himself thrown out of school when he was thirteen by punching a geography teacher in the face when he’d tried to drop a hand down his pants during a detention. At the time Davey wouldn’t say what had driven him to such an extreme, and word passed around the local schools that his attack had been unprovoked. When no local school would take him in, he had discovered his passion for music. Davey’s first set of drums was a phone book he practised on morning, noon and night, and from the start it was obvious he was gifted. For his fourteenth birthday