Read Online Nothing On Earth by Conor O'Callaghan - Free Book Online

discussed sunscreen factors and angles to the sun, invented their own screening and rotation system and gave it a name: ‘The Spit’. Martina made it their military regime. Four sides, twenty minutes each and twenty indoors; three diminishing levels, the last and longest a weak oil with tints of bronze. It wasn’t just about being brown. They called it their work. The girl loved being in charge of the timer she set on Martina’s phone. ‘Everybody turn,’ she sang, when the timer timed down into beeps. She recorded herself and saved it as the timer alert. You knew when the electronic
Everybody turn! Everybody turn!
squeaked twice that time was up.
    Martina got into the habit of drinking small bottles of rosé in the afternoon. She waited until after four, the day’s regime mostly over. She wore yellow rubber flip-flops, drank from a picnic cup and drifted around the garden sipping after the girl had put on her headphones. They were out there every evening when Paul, his day’s work behind him, pushed his bike through the front door. Martina thought nothing of tiptoeing around him in the kitchen, in shades and briefs, asking how all the lads at the plant were getting on. Everything looked green inside, after hours in the glare. The fitted units, the table and chairs, even Paul slumped there in his suit, they would all be lime green for a while.
    â€˜I feel like a pig,’ she said. The cord of her sombrero was around her throat, and her arms were folded behind her back. ‘One that’s been on a spit, I mean.’ Paul laughed a quiet, weary laugh, making a meal of removing his cycle clips. ‘Are you okay?’ She was smiling to herself, at his refusal to look up, at her sister’s words spinning in her head. She loved being gawked at. She placed one finger under his chin and gently pushed his face upwards. ‘Are you okay?’
    She thought nothing, eventually, of giving the little one tipples of rosé, of letting her go topless too. The sun shifted sideways across each day. South-east to south-west was sunbathing prime time. They positioned and repositioned the loungers to keep facing it full on. The radio changed voices, stations. Every now and then you could hear a lorry barrelling past on the road or a car alarm warbling. A hot-air balloon crossed directly overhead late one Friday. Its stripes were orange and purple. You could make out heads leaning over the basket. Martina and the girl stood on their sun-loungers, as if that made them any nearer the balloon, and whooped. After it had drifted from sight, Martina said how daft they must have looked, two naked insects waving among the half-built houses and dilapidated hardware and scorched earth. It must have been one of those afternoons, around about then, in that state, that I saw them.
    They were often past giggly by the time Paul got home. Mostly, he didn’t seem to know where to put himself. They would hear him, from the garden, entering the kitchen. They would call to him, but he never came out, and he could take an age upstairs to change out of his suit.
    Once, and once only, Martina followed Paul up while he was changing. She tapped on the door and walked straight in without waiting to be summoned. She hadn’t put on a T-shirt before coming up. She was in their room, Paul and Helen’s, before it occurred to her that she hadn’t put anything on. She wanted to know if they would phone out for a Chinese. Martina and the girl had been talking all afternoon about phoning out for Chinese.
    â€˜On me,’ she said. She folded her arms, laughed at him for staring and asked again what he thought about Chinese for dinner.
    â€˜What is?’
    It was like Paul had never seen her in next to nothing before, or any woman for that matter. It was like Paul didn’t speak English any longer. He was still staring at her. Martina had on bronzing oil. Her skin was glistening with it. Her shoulders felt