Chapter One — The Job

James Carter had applied for twelve jobs in three weeks.

Twelve.

He had a spreadsheet.

That was the kind of person James was.

Every application had a date, company, position, hourly wage, estimated hours, and current status. He had color-coded the spreadsheet because apparently engineering students were incapable of doing anything without turning it into a data-management problem.

Unfortunately, the spreadsheet contained a lot of red.

REJECTED.

POSITION FILLED.

NOT SELECTED.

I felt my face turn pink. My feelings about Josh had changed.

Megan's painting her toenails when I get there, door propped because she heard me on the stairs, foam spacers wedged between her toes, and she doesn't look up right away. "There's beer in the fridge," she says. "Grab me one too if you're getting one."

13.1 Your Sister

Sunday passed quietly.

Aarav felt relieved that the haircut had been cancelled, but he still did not know what would happen at school.

Once, while sitting with Riya, he picked up a small clip and fixed it into his hair. He kept it there for several minutes, removed it, then put it back again.

Neither of them knew whether they were preparing for a new beginning or only enjoying one more safe day at home.

On Monday morning, Mother called Mrs. Patwardhan.

"I would like to meet you," she said.

This story is set in Ireland during the War of Independence, 1919-1921.

The Players.

An Cailleach, approximately Old Hag in English, is a term found in both Irish and and Scots Gaelic. It carries connotations of divinity or magic.

Volunteers, the name used by Irish national insurrectionists engaged in the War of Independence. After independence, these formed part of the basis for the new National Army which still has the letters IV (Irish Volunteers) on formal uniform buttons.

RIC, Royal Irish Constabulary, an armed police force responsible for crime and internal security. Recruited locally, it was heavily infiltrated by the Volunteers and many members left the organization during the war.

Black & Tans and Auxiliaries. These were paramilitary police recruited in England to support the RIC, notorious for indiscipline, terrorism and extra-judicial killings.

[prologue]

Trish was, as she had foretold, assigned to review a pile of cold cases after her return to work in Durham. That seemed to be all that her superiors thought her capable of.

Part 14 Very Bad Penny!

As the room filled people started finding their seats and we went with the organisers to the head table.

The guy next to me sounded startled.

“You are sitting in Julians’ seat, is he not coming?”

“Never fear. All will come good as the night progresses. This is the first one of these that we have organised and there are a few wrinkles to be ironed out.”

He seemed happier and Sam got up to the microphone, made sure it was on and then started the proceedings.

CHAPTER 15
We slipped out of the tent a couple of hours later as Jude continued to mumble away next to us, avoiding disturbing her by taking our breakfast in the food tent rather than rattling pans in the porch. It was a beautiful morning, various other rallygoers sitting half out of their tents with mugs or bowls as they had their own breakfasts, one, as predicted, eating leftover kebab meat out of a cardboard tray. I averted my eyes after a quick nod of recognition from me, and confusion from him. He’d only met Harry, I remembered, almost too late.