Whenever I left home for a longer length of time than usual, say to go on a school trip abroad, or when I went on shopping trips to London with friends, I always used to bring something with me to remind me of home-just something small. One Christmas we were at a buffet in a hotel and my dad stole a little plastic penguin that was sitting on top of a pudding and he put it in my dessert. He was trying to be funny but I was having one of those days, which was much like most days, where nothing he said or did could possibly be conceived of as funny, and so somehow the penguin ended up in my pocket that day. Then months later, when I was away, I put my hand in my pocket and found the little penguin, and laughed. Dad’s joke, though months way too late and not in his presence, I finally found funny. Somehow on that trip, it ended up in my washbag, and it travelled the world with me.

You know one of those things that you only have to look at and it instantly connects you to something else? I’m not a sentimental person; I never felt that attached to anything or anyone at home. Not like some people, who just have to look at something, like even a piece of fluff, and it sends tears to their eyes because it vaguely reminds them of something somebody once said once upon a time at home, when hindsight, whispering into their ear like the devil, tells them they were happy. No, bringing something with me was just a little ammunition really, to make me feel like I wasn’t totally and utterly alone, that I had a little piece of home with me. Not sentimentality, just simple plain old insecurity.

I certainly wasn’t attached to the gatehouse in any way. I’d only been there for a couple of days but during my great escape to Zoey’s house, I brought the book I’d found in the travelling library with me. I still hadn’t managed to unlock it and I certainly had no intentions of reading it while I was there, not when they were so busy telling me about their new source of entertainment-wait for it-going out without underwear on. Honestly, I had to laugh. There was a photo of Cindy Monroe, a six-and-a-half-stone, five foot tall, American reality star, getting out of a car to go to a club the day of her release from forty-eight hours spent in gaol for drink-driving, and she wasn’t wearing any knickers. Zoey and Laura seemed to think this was a great new leap forward for women. I think that when the women’s lib took off their bras and burned them, this wasn’t exactly what they were hoping for. I said this to Zoey and she studied me thoughtfully, her eyes squinting almost closed like she was the Queen of Hearts about to decide whether to chant ‘Off with her head!’ or not. But then she opened her eyes wide and said, ‘No it’s fine, my top was totally backless so I couldn’t wear a bra either.’

Totally backless. Very dead. Another one of those phrases. It was either backless or it wasn’t. I’ve no doubt that it was.

Anyway, when I was sent away to Zoey’s house-‘sent away’ being the operative words-I felt like I’d been told to go sit on the naughty step to think about what I’d done. Despite the fact I should have felt that I was heading home, that I was heading towards feeling more whole again, I didn’t feel like it at all. And so, I brought a piece of the new world with me. I brought the book. I knew it was there in my bag when I was sleeping on the pull-out bed in Zoey’s room, and as we stayed up all night talking about everything, I knew that it was listening to me, this foreign thing from my detested new life, gaining an insight into the life I once had. I had a witness. I felt like telling it to go home and tell what my life used to be like to all the other things there that I loathed. The book felt like my little secret from Laura and Zoey, a pointless and boring one but a secret all the same, lying beside me in my overnight bag.

And so when Arthur’s Land Rover turned into the side entrance to Kilsaney Demesne, and I was gobbled up again by my new desperate non-life, I decided to take the book and go for a walk with it. I knew it would kill Rosaleen if I didn’t arrive back and fill her in on the no-knickers-wearing trend, and as it was always my duty to punish, I set off. I also knew that Mum would still be in the same place, sitting in that rocking chair, not rocking, but I allowed my mind to pretend she was doing the exact opposite, like out in the garden doing naked pirouettes or something.

I’d never walked around the grounds before. To and from the castle, yes, but around the one hundred acres, no. All of my previous visits had been made up of tea and ham sandwiches in a quiet kitchen while Mum talked about things I didn’t care about with my strange aunt and uncle. I’d do anything-eat twenty sloppy egg sandwiches and two slices of whatever cake was going-to get out of that kitchen and wander in the front garden that wrapped its way around to the back. Nowhere else interested me. I wasn’t much of an explorer, anything that involved movement bored me. I was never intrigued enough by anything to take things that little bit further. On that day I still wasn’t, but I was bored and so I dumped my overnight bag, which Arthur snot-snorted at and brought into the house for me, and I was gone.

I walked away from the house, away from the castle, along a narrow roadway. The route was heavily shaded by the thirty-metre-tall native oaks, ash and yew which lined it. It smelled sweet. The ground was soft, thousands of years of falling foliage and bark laid on the earth, giving me a spring in my step as if I could run from corner to corner in Lycra doing somersaults. It was a hot day, but I was cool under the elderly trees. The birds were like hyperactive monkeys, with constant chirpy calls and doing Tarzan-like swoops from one tree to another. Tired from my all-nighter with my friends, I just kept walking, my head bursting with their conversations, the things I had learned-Laura had had to take the morning-after pill-but none were as loud as the conversations I was havingwith myself in my head. That, I could never switch off. I don’t think I’d ever thought so much, and talked so little, in my life.

Every now and then, when the trees broke their security barrier, I could see the castle in the distance, looking out over its lawn, at the lakes that dotted the grounds, at the majestic trees that stood alone punctuating the landscape. Lone tall and elegant poplars raised up like feathers to tickle the sky, wide oaks with heavy caps spread like wild mushrooms. Then the castle disappeared again, playing peekaboo with me, and the pathway began to curve to the left so that I would soon be able to turn and face the keep head on. Another twenty minutes’ walk and I could see the main gateway further up ahead on my right. I immediately slowed. The darkened gothic entrance did not appeal to me, all chained up like some prisoner of war left to rot along the side of the road. Long grasses and whatever else decrepit weeds there were climbed the relatively new gate and poked out through the rusted bars, like long gangly starved arms waving at passing cars to be fed or released. The once grand roadway that led directly to the castle had been ignored, unused and unmaintained. It was overgrown and hidden by grasses, like the yellow brick road in the Return to Oz. I shuddered. Despite losing its glory, I didn’t take to it as I had to the castle. Its scars were grotesque. Unlike the castle’s which made me want to raise a hand and trace them with my finger, these scars were ugly and made me want to look the other way.

I decided to find another route to take, anything to prevent me from passing that ghastly gothic gate and so I broke through the trees and walked across the grounds instead. I felt safer then, cocooned in the bosom of the trees rather than on that well-worn path which Normans and their horses had pounded, wildly waving in the air peasants’ severed heads on the tips of their swords.