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“They?”
“Mum and dad … both of them … dad more so than mum.”
“Both of them?”
“Poteen!”
That was the one word that HayWire hadn’t wanted to say. He knew that the moment he said it, the whole story would come out. AuntSylvie is probably the only person HayWire knows with whom he could possibly share intimate, personal anxieties. But she’s not married, she has no children of her own, can she really understand domestic strife?
She probably can. Her niece lives there. She and Hayley know each other intimately, like mother and daughter.
Part orphanage, part old people’s home, part hospice, and part adult education centre, the Noble Coliseum is a microcosm of society all within one building. AuntSylvie must have come across every type of heartache, anguish and pain imaginable.
She must be a saint to handle all of this without suffering a mental breakdown of her own.
AuntSylvie knows what Poteen is. It’s illegal to sell it, none of the stores have it, and only the farming community can produce it using one or two illicit stills.
“They get Poteen from work. They probably drink it at work. They both come home drunk sometimes. I’m sure some of the neighbours hear some kind of trouble at night.”
“Do they work on Saturdays?”
“No, not today … I don’t know what started it … but they didn’t have any lunch, they were just drinking … and then they started fighting.”
“Fighting?”
“They were fighting each other.”
“Uh huh?”
“And I tried to stop it. Again! And dad turned on me again!”
“Again?”
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