I Hear the Sirens in the Street by Adrian McKinty

think she said.
    â€œDeirdre who?”
    â€œFrom next door.”
    I opened the door. It was Mrs Bridewell. She was holding a pie. It had got wet in the rain.
She
was wet. Mrs Bridewell with her cheekbones and bobbed black hair and husband over the water looking for work …
    â€œOh, hello,” I said. “Come in.”
    â€œNo. I wont stop over. I’ve left Thomas with the weans and a bigger eejit never stuck his arm through a coat.”
    â€œCome in out of the rain, woman.”
    She took a cautious step into the house. She looked at my picture of Our Lady of Knock and suppressed a skewer of polemic against the Papists.
    â€œI only wanted to leave this off. I made it for the church bake sale tomorrow but it’s been cancelled because of the war.”
    â€œWhat war?”
    â€œArgentina’s invaded the Falkland Islands!”
    â€œOh, that war.”
    â€œNone of my lot can eat a rhubarb tart. But I know you like it.”
    I turned on the hall light. She’d put on lipstick for this little sally next door and she was beautiful standing there with her wet fringe and puzzled green eyes, tubercular pallor, dark eyelids and thin, anxious red lips.
    â€œMr Duffy?” she said.
    There was no one in the street. Her kids would be abed. The air was electric. Dangerous. It was fifty-fifty whether we’d roo like rabbits right here on the welcome mat. She could feel it too.
    â€œSean?” she whispered.
    Christ almighty. I took a literal step back and breathed out.
    â€œYes … Yes, a rhubarb tart. Love them.”
    She swallowed hard.
    â€œM-make sure you eat it with cream,” she said, left it on thehall table and scurried back to her house.
    I left the pie where it was and broke out the bottle of Jura instead. At midnight I put on the news to see if there had been any plane crashes but all the telly wanted to talk about was Argentina and I had to sit through several angles on that story before it became obvious that there hadn’t been any airline disasters and that Laura was completely safe.

8: VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS
    On Sunday an Atlantic storm parked itself over Ireland and it was raining so hard it could have been the Twelfth of July or one of those other holidays when God poured out his wrath on the Orangemen marching through the streets in bowler hats and sashes. I didn’t leave the house the whole day. I was so bored I almost went to the Gospel Hall on Victoria Road where, allegedly, they spoke in tongues, danced with snakes and afterwards you got a free slice of Dundee cake. Instead I listened to music and read
One Hundred Years of Solitude
which had come from the book club. It was a good novel but, as the man said, maybe seventy-five years of solitude would have been enough.
    Dozens of different birds had stopped in my back garden to take shelter from the weather. I was no expert but I was my father’s son and with half a brain noted starlings, sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes, swifts, magpies, rock doves, robins, gulls of every kind.
    On Monday the birds were still there and Mrs Campbell from the other side of the terrace was in her back garden in a plastic mac throwing bread to them. You could see her jabbers through the mac, which me and Mr Connor in the house opposite were both appreciating through our kitchen windows. The Campbells were a mysterious people and although I shared an entire wall with them I never really knew what was going overthere, if her husband was working or at home, or how many kids and relatives’ kids she was looking after. She was an attractive woman, no doubt, but the stress and the smokes would get to her like they got to everyone else.
    And speaking of ciggies, I lit myself a Marlboro, put The Undertones on the record player, showered, ate a bowl of cornflakes and hot milk, dressed in a shirt and jeans and headed out for the day. I checked under the BMW for mercury tilt bombs and drove to the station.
    When the