Infinite Sky by Cj Flood

her eyes were a melting brown, and her mouth curled up at the sides, not quite in a
smile.
    ‘So sorry to bother you . . .’ she said, and her voice was hoarse like Trick’s, but her accent was different. Messier and more Irish. Her words crumpled into each other like
kids impatient to go down a slide. They got squashed at the end.
    ‘Who’s that?’ Dad called. ‘Iris?’
    ‘It’s Nan Delaney . . .’ she answered for me. She spoke as though this wasn’t the first time they’d met, and I realised it wasn’t.
    ‘Nan De—? Hold on.’
    The toilet roll holder swivelled, and I felt my cheeks burn. The chain flushed, and Dad stepped out of the loo, tucking his T-shirt into his jeans.
    Nan took a step back so that she was on the path. Dad was on the doorstep, and I was behind them both, in the house. He was as thrown as I was, and I could feel him bristling.
    Nan looked at Dad with hard, flat eyes, and I wondered what they’d said to each other when they’d talked before.
    ‘I’m embarrassed to bother you, I am, but I thought it must be worth a try . . .’ She let out a nervous laugh that didn’t suit her. She pronounced thought as taught, like
Trick. ‘It’s me second youngest, Patsy. The moment we’ve run out of water she’s taken ill. Men are both at work, you see, and I can’t go far because of the
babies.’
    She said babies to rhyme with tabbies, and can’t with ant. And she wasn’t here because of me.
    It was obvious what she wanted, but Dad wouldn’t make it easy. A look of annoyance crossed her face then disappeared just as quickly.
    ‘I wondered if you could sell me some water, a bucket’d do. For me babby, so I can give her a bath, make her some soup . . .’ She trailed off. Her green eyeliner shimmered as
it caught the sunlight, and I wondered how she’d learned to apply it so perfectly.
    I used to watch Mum sometimes, at the bathroom mirror. She would widen her pale blue eyes and blink onto her mascara wand. Her eyes would roll into her head for a second as she did it, then be
there again, staring at themselves in the mirror. She was relaxed when she did her make-up. It was like she was in a trance.
    ‘A mother has to swallow her pride,’ Nan Delaney said, and she looked at me then, as if I might understand that, and I might have, but it was too unexpected. I couldn’t smile
back in time, and then her bright, hard eyes were gone, gleaming again at my dad.
    He breathed in slow through his nostrils, and I tensed my stomach. I couldn’t bear it if he was rude when she was asking for help. I held my breath.
    ‘You want amenities,’ he said finally, ‘get to a camp site.’
    Nan winced, but her eyes didn’t leave his. ‘Easier said than done,’ she said. ‘Travellers not welcome at the sites these days, ruin people’s holidays they say . . .
Don’t like us when we travel, don’t like us when we stop,’ she said, and I remembered Trick saying the same thing.
    She reminded me so much of him. She was beautiful and tanned and freckled, but she looked hard too.
    ‘I’m not getting into that with you. I want you gone. And you can tell your lad to stop sniffing around my daughter and all.’
    He said it as an afterthought, but Nan’s face changed for a second.
    The sky was blue behind her, and I could hear the traffic sweeping past on Ashbourne Road, and everything seemed to slow down for a minute as she examined me, puzzling over something. When she
spoke it was as though she was clapping her hands.
    ‘Well! That’s that, then!’ she said. ‘I’ll go back to me daughter, see if I can magic her up something out of the woodwork.’
    ‘Got me own litter to sort,’ Dad said, and he turned around and walked into the house.
    ‘
Cold
man,’ Nan said, then muttered something else I couldn’t make out. She took a step back, then changed her mind. Her eyes were soft again.
    ‘Say,’ she called into the kitchen, ‘is the brook water right for drinking?’
    Dad came back