When You Wake up and Scream

Conán was quite happy to be dragged around the shops. Naoise did wonder about him. He had an air to suggest that something wasn't quite right in his head, but he never proved her theory through speech or actions. She had to keep in mind that he was probably slightly intoxicated, as well. Her mother said that she had become a devil for diagnosing people ever since she had got into Psychology.

"You look for symptoms, Naoise!" she had told her, shaking her head and laughing. "You'll be diagnosing people with all sorts!"

Conán watched everyone with interest. Naoise did notice that he had a fixation with families. She could detect a sense of sadness in his dark eyes when he watched them.

"Are you all right, Conán?" she asked him.

"What? I'm fine." Conán replied, jerking his head up to face her again.

"Oh good, so it won't be below the belt if I do this, then?" Naoise asked.

"Do what?"

Naoise sprayed him with a tester bottle of men's spray. Conán shook his head, coughing.

"You're getting looks."

Conán laughed and rolled his eyes.

"You're cheeky, you know that?"

"I've been told."

Naoise stopped at a café on the third floor, and Conán minded her bags while she ordered her food. They were sitting out in the corridor of the shopping centre by the railings, so they could look down on all of the shoppers. Conán could feel Naoise watching him, and he didn’t blame her. He was, after all, a self-confessed thief. However, he didn't have the heart to steal from the first person in his entire life to tolerate him, plus she didn’t really have anything he fancied for himself.

She came and sat back down a few minutes later, and they watched the world go by in the shopping centre below them until a waitress came over with the food. To Conán's surprise, the waitress had also brought him something. He looked at Naoise in alarm. She smiled at him.

"You don't look as though you've eaten anything in ages, so take that as payment for at least giving me a laugh today."

"Well … thanks," Conán said softly, suddenly feeling strange. She smiled at him again.

"You're not used to people being nice to you, are you?"

"No, not really." Conán admitted. "In fact, you're the first person, actually."

Naoise's eyes widened.

"Are you serious?"

"Totally and one hundred per cent serious."

"But surely … your parents?"

Conán snorted, nearly choking himself. Coughing, he swallowed his mouthful and looked at Naoise.

"That's a good joke." he chuckled. "My mother was a bitch and I never knew my father. He left her before she was born. I don't even know if they had been in a relationship. She was probably a whore, for all I know."

"That's awful." Naoise said softly. She looked at Conán properly. He looked slightly shocked. In fact, he was shocked with himself. Usually he didn’t mention his mother if he could help it, but there was something about the girl sitting opposite him that inspired confidence. She almost invited him to tell her. He coughed slightly and took a drink of Coke.

"Sorry." he eventually said. "I shouldn’t burden you with all of the details. I'm just touchy about it, that's all."

"It's no matter. Perhaps it would do you good to talk about it? I mean, you shouldn't let things fester, you know, and if you've been by yourself for as long as you say you have, you obviously haven't spoken about it much."

"It's something I don’t tend to talk about." Conán said. "My whole life has just been Hell, basically. I mean, perhaps if I'd have been born now things might have been better, but twenty years ago things were a lot different in Dublin, and the treatment of illegitimate children was still the same as it had been when grandparents were alive. You just didn't do it – you knew if your child was a bastard, it was going to have a poor quality of life."

"So you don't even know your father's name?"

"No. Well, I know his surname because I have it. That I'm thankful for, because if I had to say my mother's name every time someone asked me my name, I would have killed myself by now."

"That's a bit drastic, don't you think?"

"Not at all, because if you had known her, you would say the same thing."

"She was a bit of a beast, then?"

"Beast is a gentle word. She was a sadistic, horrible, alcoholic drug addict who delighted in anything that caused me pain or annoyance on every level. And her boyfriends were just as bad. She used to bring them home and they would sponge off of her for a while and beat me around and then they'd move on."

"That's awful, Conán!"

"Tell me about it." Conán sighed. "It's something that I'll never get over, but I guess I deserved it."

"Nobody deserves to be treated like that, Conán." Naoise told him firmly.

"No, no, I did. She was right about me. She told me that when I was born and she had to admit to the nurses that there was no father to put on the birth certificate, she told me that she knew I was going to be a bad egg. She used to say that I was the opposite of all things good, you know?"

"What did she mean by that?"

"Well, you know, the birth of Christ, for instance. Mary was a virgin and she conceived the baby of the Holy Spirit. And that woman I'm forced to call my mother used to say I was he opposite. You know, I was conceived through sin and I was a bastard child. I never knew what exactly she meant by 'conceived through sin', but my guess is that she was a whore and I'm the product of her not being careful. I'm surprised I even have my father's surname. It's probably not even his surname. She probably just made it up to try and make things sound more acceptable at the hospital. Can you imagine if, on top of the father not being with her and her not being married or even engaged, she had to tell the nurses that she didn't even know the father's name? The shame would have killed her."

"So is that why she treated you so badly? She had it in her head that you were a bad egg?"

"I was a bad egg. From the minute I was born, apparently. I wouldn't settle and I would try to hit anyone who lifted me up. It was obviously a religious place in there, because it was a hospital and Dublin's a Catholic city and all that, and there were a lot of nuns and priests around to see to the dying and see the newborn babies and all things like that, and I don't know if this is true or not, but Ma told me that as soon as I saw anyone who was holy I would start shrieking and bawling something awful. That was when she started thinking she had given birth to the devil, or some crap like that."

Naoise frowned.

"It sounds like your mother was pretty unhinged, Conán."

"Well, she was a druggie, wasn't she? She'd been doing them since she had been fourteen, or something like that. And she had me at eighteen, so they would have had plenty of time to do their damage to her health. But anyway, this was probably just an excuse so she could beat me around. I think that there's some truth in it, anyway. No matter what I do, something bad usually comes out of it. Bad luck seems to follow me, and you know I attract death?"

Naoise nearly choked on her drink.