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All the voices
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putting this curse onme if I
dared to look at him. It was
because we had to sleep
in the same bedroom and
he resented it because he
was three years older. So
I always made sure never
to glance in his direction
if I could help it because I
was a young kid then and
didn’t know that devils
and all of that were make-
believe. But I didn’t have
to see Ciaran to know
about the asthma. The
wheezing kept on getting
louder and louder and
in the end I’d have to go
for Mum and she’d come
bustling in armed with the
inhaler. And Ciaran hated
that inhaler. It made him
scream just to see it even
though he hardly had any
breath left inside him. He
screamed and screamed,
and I hid myself away
under my duvet, holding
the palms of my hands
over both my ears. And
there were other times,
when Ciaran would forget
how to breathe. He’d be
silent then, not wheezing
or screaming and he didn’t
even care if I looked at
him.
Iwonderedhowsomebody
could forget how to
breathe. Didn t breathing
just happen? Did you have
to be right there with it,
cheering it on like a horse
or somebody in a race? To
keep up the momentum. I
didn’t have any breathing
troubles myself but all
of this was something
to think about. And I
did think about it. Plus I
thought about some of the
other things I knew about
Ciaran. For example, he’d
told me that he preferred
fish to people, and would
have liked to be a fish
himself if there’d been a