A hiss, a clank, a screech, a tumble. The gears of my Monday morning brain labour into motion, grinding and turning in the cold. It’s February and still dark, neighbours’ children chirping like starlings as they flit in high-vis vests to the creche buried in the bowels of our cul de sac. In the window, I see my reflection superimposed on the dusky shape of our street ‒ a double exposure, a photographed ghost haunting a suburban silhouette. Amber beacons set the scene alight in a flash, in a flash, in a flash. A whir, a wheeze, a rasp. A familiar crash, then trundling wheels. My ethereal mind stirring from its slumber, cranking into act—

Shit, no, the bins!

Not again.

Of all my arrears and accruals, it’s the bin debt that drags on me the most. It rolls up to my door weekly, where it accumulates and compounds, impossible to ignore. I promised Red last week ‒ promised myself ‒ that I would get one back, reduce the deficit. But here I am again, helpless, as Terry from next door brings our recycling bin to a scraping halt outside the sitting room window. Another promise unkept, renewed for next week.

Today’s win puts Terry ahead by six for the year. One win, seven losses and a draw. He must sit inside his porch eating his porridge, waiting to feel the vibrating heft of the bin truck judder into the neighbourhood before it can be seen by an amateur like me.

Balls! He sees me ‒ Terry sees me. Or does he? Is he looking straight at me or inspecting the dollop of white-grey bird shit that gravity has pulled into a long drip on the frosted glass of our hall door?

Knock. Knock. Slow. Knock.

‘Ah Terry ‒ you caught me ‒ I was ‒ I’m just…heading out the door ‒ Oh, thanks a million for taking in the bin.’

‘Mister Dignam, it’s only yourself. I saw a shadow in your hall and thought I’d better investigate. Can’t be too careful, not after what happened in Limetree View.’

‘Thanks for looking out for us ‒ what about Limetree View?’

‘You didn’t hear? A robbery. In broad daylight, it was. They’ve no shame, these scumbags.’

‘Oh, hadn’t heard.’

‘No? Well, they took poor old Kevin Dwyer’s pension money.’  

‘Awful, terrible. Listen, I’ve to jump on a Zoom call. Working from home today.’

‘Not going out? I thought you said you were on your way somewhere?’

‘After the Zoom call, Terry, thanks again for looking after the bins.’

‘Think nothing of it. You’d do the same for me, no doubt.’

Off he saunters, at the leisurely pace of a man whose mortgage is paid, hedges trimmed and cholesterol nicely in check, thank you very much. I’ll get revenge on Terry by de-icing his car window next time there’s a cold snap.

And next week: definitely getting the wheelie bins.

***

PowerPoint slides carousels through the mid-morning, soundtracked by the one-note melody of my boss’s voice ‒ Head of Unit at the Local Enterprise Office. Like me, she has occupied a narrow variety of desks in the business support section of the County Council. And like me, she provides start-ups with advice on cash flow, credit control, microfinance and more, despite our modest experience in the private sector.

‘So…if there are no questions, I’ll move on to Unlocking Efficiencies Through Electronic Inv—’

On she goes. My contribution to Zoom meetings is to contribute slow nods and paraphrase the boss’s key messages as needed. Then I mute my mic and continue my tireless quest to read The Guardian website in full, followed by my quota of free articles from The Atlantic, The Athletic and The New Yorker, all worthy diversions to distract me fr—

[Blih-blip]

‘Free €5 Bet Builder: Win big on this week’s Premier League Super Sunday’

I should delete the apps. If I don’t want to put bets on, I should delete the apps. But when it’s a freebie, it’s not gambling. That’s just a fact. Betting their money on their app doesn’t really count. I’m not going to do it, just making the point that if I did it, there’d be no downside risk.

[Blih-blip]

‘Odds are good [heart emoji] fancy our chances ‒ home early [lips emoji]’

It’s Red, this time, not Paddy Power. She sends a screenshot of her ovulation app. It’s a blizzard of dates, temperature charts and probabilities. All signs point to 5pm. After that a vertiginous cliff edge of plunging fertility until next month. If ever you want to strip all joy from sex, simply download this app and invite it into your bedroom.

Things are pretty good with Red. I mean, for people who have been together as long as we have, things are great. Eighteen years. If our relationship were a person, it could leave school, change its name, drive a car. There’s a young lad playing up front for Newcastle who wasn’t even born when Red and I hooked up ‒ reckon he has goals in him, pacy little fella.

Red was sixteen and I was seventeen the first time we were together. The age difference (thirteen months), the height difference (five inches), the pay gap (eleven percent) kept her looking up to me for the next decade and a half. Now, perched atop Mount Hindsight, I see the glorious simplicity of that half of my life, and how it shifted after Sarah had a baby, then Aisling’s twins. It was as though nothing was ever expected of me until one day, suddenly, everything was expected.

I open the app, take the free bet ‒ it’s still not gambling ‒ backing Newcastle to win, both teams to score, more than six corners, at least three yellow cards, and that spotty young lad to get a goal or an assist. Hundred and thirty-two euro if it all comes off, meaning it probably won’t. But it might…

Red’s key twists anxiously in the door. There’s a knack to the lock that can’t be taught: a jiggle, a push-pull, and a left-right turn, easy does it, and click. Loose hands required, it’s hard to execute under stress.

‘Digger!’

The stairs take a pounding, it’s ten past five.

‘Yip, yip, yip, coming, coming, coming…’

Her front-buttoned floral dress, selected this morning from a darkened wardrobe for the ease with which it can be shed, lies in a crumpled heap on the landing, as though its wearer had spontaneously combusted.

‘Come on, come on, fifteen minutes behind.’

‘How was work?’ I ask. ‘Did the second years do their assessments?’

‘Digger! Would ye just…’ She’s tugging my belt from the loops of my jeans in a way that I would love to say reflects her incandescent desire. I look at her, force a loving expression, and raise a gentle hand to caress her face, my slow fingers tracing a path down—

‘Digger!’ She slaps me. I can’t believe she actually fucking slaps me.

‘What? What was that? Jesus, Red!’

‘I’m sorry, but Christ, would you step it up man!’

She reaches inside the ageing elastic of my trunks as I reel from the throbbing sting of my face and remind myself to check the Conception Calendar more closely, keeping my better jocks for days when I’m likely to be called into service.

Red’s pneumatic action has all the romance of a cyclist pumping a punctured wheel in the middle of a time trial, competitors pacing past. We are late, we are behind the pack. Late today, by seventeen minutes now; late to the Parenting Party by a good four or five years. Anxiety is no aphrodisiac.

‘Okay,’ she huffs, satisfied that her work has rendered me fit for purpose. She’s burning me alive with her eyes, angry. I look away as she shouts encouragement in the style of a football coach: Get your bloody head in the game! / Focus! / C’mon t’fuck!

This never worked for me. I need coaches to tell me I’m doing great, ignore my faults, let the praise rain down in torrents. Right on cue, Red changes tack, suddenly affecting pornographic yelps and exhortations. I allow myself to believe it, believe it to completion.

Red lands beside me, checks her watch and taps me on the haunch like a coach commending a player as they withdraw them from the action, spent.

‘Now,’ she declares. ‘Got a bit wound up there, y’know how it is. Any news with you?’

Dizzy, out of breath, a little stunned, I can hardly think.

‘Em…ahhh…no, no news.’

‘Did you get the bins?’

***

I have a weakness for slow horses with names that my gut tells me are destined for the winners’ circle. My gut owes me a fortune, and I owe it to Joey Whelan, a bookmaker and microfinance provider operating out of the local pub.

After my last well precedented losing streak, Detective Jay stepped in, paid my debt and dispensed stern warnings. That was when I embarked on my digital transition: four apps, four accounts, four chances to win!

Red and I never worried much about money, never really had a household budget. Two salaries, no kids. Red spent money on clothes as though in an unspoken competition with Aisling and Sarah never to be seen in the same dress twice. She gave me no grief about my money-draining sports forecasting hobby, and I never questioned her trips to Kildare Village Shopping Outlet.

That changed when the social contest shifted to baby clothes, making us hotly aware that we were not at the races. All energy, all resources, mobilised to the cause, like we were on a wartime footing, fighting infertility and all its pernicious shames.

Eight thousand euro and counting. Is there anything ‒ anything ‒ you can spend that kind of money on and have nothing to show for it. Even gambling delivers a fleeting dopamine hit. At the IVF Fertility Casino in a newly leafed Dublin suburb, minutes from a motorway offramp, we arrive with cortisol and adrenaline flooding our veins. I’ve lost in casinos before and enjoyed it while cursing Lady Luck. Lose at fertility roulette and you can only blame yourselves, then each other.

Red winces as the doctor says this might feel a little cold. I step outside to the blue bucket chairs, nauseous from the sight of her in discomfort and the thought of having given this company-cum-healthcare facility half a year’s mortgage payments and three cups of semen in return for soft smiles and a mug of complimentary coffee.

That little acne-stippled Geordie let Newcastle down last night. He let himself down. Let his family down. And worst of all, he let my Bet Builder Accumulator down. I was on to win a grand if he had tucked away a late penalty.

My confidence in that bet had swelled as the clock ate up the minutes before kick-off time and the team sheets were revealed. Liverpool were without two key men in midfield. I’ll confess my instinct for picking horses operates at the intersection of science, art and superstition. But my football knowledge is sound. I know the form, go deep into the Opta Index of player performance stats.

Every capillary in every finger pulsed with certainty that my free bet was going to deliver. So I upped the stake: bet more, win more. And yes, I know the corollary. And yes, I did lose more. About forty quid of my own money, making for an expensive night when you include the thirty quid I spent watching it in the pub with Jay. All the more urgent that I win it back pronto.

Red stops in front of me on her way from the consultation room to the loo, barely pausing to share dispiriting news about ovarian reserves, declining odds, the sands of time. I haven’t the heart to assemble another sentence about the sluggish motility of my sperm. I nod at her, shrug my face, and she moves towards the bathrooms. I can only stare into space for so long before lighting up my phone and logging into the app to claim my free bet.

She steers us silently at speed onto the M50. Red insisted on angry-driving us home, tailgating cars in the motorway fastlane, as though we were racing to a maternity hospital in late-stage labour. There’s nothing useful to say, so I watch the traffic through the passenger-seat windscreen, hoping we make it home in one piece, but powerless to ensure that we do. I read somewhere ‒ Instagram, probably ‒ that it pays to accept the things you can’t control. I wonder if Red is thinking the same thoughts.

Until, suddenly:

‘Denmark!’

‘Hmmm?’

‘Denmark ‒ they do IVF with donor sperm. Anonymously. I’ve been looking into it, wasn’t sure you’d be game. But it’s time, Digger. Denmark time.’

‘Denmark time? How much is Denmark time?’

‘It’s a good clinic.’

‘Denmark time. You couldn’t try Togo time? Moldova time? It has to be designer sperm? Official Hans Christian Andersen man-jizz, freshly squeezed and ethically sourced by a Scandinavian clinic with mid-century furnishings. Hygge sperm.’

It’s an overreaction, and it sounds to her like I’m obsessed with money. But Arsenal have just scored in the afternoon kick off and I need them to lose by two or more goals or my weekend accumulator will be stillborn.

‘I’m serious, Digger. We’ve tried the traditional method‒’

‘Get hammered, ride bareback.’

‘We tried the Conception Calculators. Tried IVF. Tried Zodiac Fertility Charts.’

‘Did we?’

‘I’m out of ideas. We need to do something. Even if it’s a bit left field, even if it’s radical. So I applied for a Credit Union loan and priced a clinic in Copenhagen. Stork, it’s called.’

‘A what? A loan?’

‘Approved last Wednesday. I knew this was a dead end, and time is against us ‒ against me.’

‘A dead end. I’ve been called a lot of things‒’

‘Sorry Digger, we don’t have time for self pity. I’m 35 at Christmas. After that, the Internet says my fertility slaloms its way towards the perimenopause. So, I’m booking flights.’

We pull into the driveway where the compost bin rests smugly at the front door,  sinking my heart. Dammnit Terry! Jay texts to say Arsenal have a penalty, my Hail Mary bet beginning to look like a bit of a gamble.

Red silences the car, unclips her seatbelt, reaches for her handbag.

‘Hang on,’ I say, seizing her forearm. ‘There is one other option.’

***

‘So you’re not split up, split up. Just living together…separately?’

‘Something like that.’ Jay drains his pint, eyes glued to a television the size of a pool table. ‘Conscious uncoupling, she calls it.’

‘Conscious uncoupling? That is not a thing.’

‘It’s a thing. Gwenyth Palthrow and Coldplay did it.’

‘Two please Franko,’ I say with a nod.

Creamy brown clouds swirl in ruby black, as a pair of pints settle.

‘I’ll get these, Cuz.’

Joey Whelan, unlicensed financial intermediary, is headed for the door with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Black bomber jacket, freshly tightened haircut and beard, his face sparks with jovial menace at the sight of us.

‘Fancy a bit of in-game action, boys?’

‘No, no thanks Whelo,’ I say. ‘Just enjoying the contest.’

‘Me bollix! Don’t you be taking your business to them apps, d’ye year me? Once they get a hold of you, it’s very hard to escape, d’ye know what I mean?’

Very considerate of you, Mr Whelan, I don’t say. Nor do I mention that I’m about to win forty quid if there’s another goal in this match. I raise a glass and let him exit to the smoking area.

‘Sorry, Lay, you were saying: you spent the summer plumbing some postgrad in county Clare, your heart is broken, your balls are blue. Continue.’

‘Christ, yeah, fair summary. Now I’m back home with herself, consciously uncoupled, wondering where my next sniff of action is coming from.’

I’m about to lay my cards on the table when some multimillionaire in Manchester kicks an air-filled leather sphere into an onion sack, netting me forty euro. I celebrate like I just won a footballer’s salary, and order a pair of shots and two packs of dry roasted peanuts. I bottle the big question, park it for the moment, look forward to telling Red the good news.

‘Got your text,’ she says, opening an eye as I clatter around the bedroom trying to free my legs from the denim trap of my jeans. ‘What’s the good news?’

‘3-1 Man City, forty big ones for yours truly!’

‘Forty grand!’

‘No, no, forty quid.’

‘I’m going back to sleep.’

‘Hang on, Red, hang on. There’s more. You were right. Splitsville. Well, unconscious coupling, like Chris Martin and your man from Shakespeare in Love…Gwenyth Palthrow.’

‘You’re drunk. Talk in the morning.’

‘No, I think it’s a runner. I think he’d go for it. Unless you’ve gone off the idea.’

‘Ugh, I don’t even know, Digs, it all seems so…weird.’

‘You always fancied him, Red, you admitted it. Consider it a freebie: a no-strings fling.’

‘He’s your actual cousin.’

‘That’s the beauty of it! Genetic pox— generic proximity— same genes!’

‘And he’s game?’

‘Well, I didn’t say it to him in the end. But he’s coming over to watch the Spurs match on Sunday. And I’ve always thought he had an eye for you. For your boobs, specifically.’

‘I feel ill,’ she says, turning her face away on her pillow. ‘But I’ll shave my legs just in case.’

***

I’ll be the first to admit that the betting got a little out of hand in the knock-out stages of the Champions League. A few sure things and a couple of racing certainties underperformed the form. Long and the short of it, my credit cards are maxed out and I owe money to Joey Whelan. And, this is a bitter pill, a small sum to Terry next door.

The Terry situation is somewhat urgent. I told him that the scumbags who robbed old Kevin Dwyer pulled the same trick on me. ‘A bridging loan,’ he called it, ‘until your insurer pays out on the theft.’ One more thing for Terry to hold over my head.

This, in the same week when work put me on gardening leave after I inadvertently shared my entire screen during a Zoom and treated an audience of two hundred entrepreneurs to a multi-window scene of semi-professional sports forecasting: betting apps, gambling forums, live streams from Kentucky horse races and Texas Holdem. Gives me more time to focus on getting back a few bob so I can repay Terry and Joey Whelan.

I need a win, any kind of a win. And I’m staking it all on Super Sunday.

***

Nobody is saying it wasn’t awkward at the start. The three of us sitting there watching Roy Keane’s face twitch with disgusted microexpressions every time he’s forced to make the word Spurs with his mouth. I had said my bit, set some ground rules, and reminded everyone that this is no more than an unconventional approach to family planning. A means to an end. Now Red and Jay sit in separate armchairs waiting for the other to say something. We all sip our drinks repeatedly so that it doesn’t seem like we’re frozen with fear.

‘Well, I…would, I suppose,’ Jay says. ‘That is, if you want to or, I mean, need to.’

‘Need to,’ Red says.

‘Thank you Jay,’ I say. ‘Knew I could count on you.’

Red waits a minute in the interest of decency and then stands tall and purposeful. I see her like I haven’t seen her in years ‒ elegant, beautiful ‒ as she turns for the stairs, leaving the door open behind her. Jay looks at me.

‘Seriously?’ he says. ‘You’re cool with this?’

I turn up the telly.

‘Just don’t enjoy yourself too much.’

It’s a slow start, low tempo, both testing each other out, feeling their way into it, afraid to make a mistake with so much on the line. But Spurs are having the better of the early exchanges and I’m feeling quietly confident.

I turn down the volume, concerned by the silence from the bedroom above. Maybe they’ve bottled it, I’m thinking, maybe the reality of—

A clank, a wheeze, a thump, the sudden gallop of bodies in tandem.

I turn the volume back up as Spurs counterattack at speed.

Upstairs, the pace is quickening.

On the screen, an athletic winger reaches the endline, squares it for the man in the centre.

For Jay and Red, the final sprint.

The Spurs striker arrives on cue, finishing from close range, celebrating with rapturous supporters.

I’m on my feet!

I hear an ecstatic yelp, hope it’s Jay, pour a drink and count my winnings.

***

I came to think of it as a second honeymoon. A warped, secret honeymoon in which I had orchestrated cousinly cuckoldry to solve my Rubik’s cube of debts and reproductive demands. That first little spell for Jay and Red, the pressure was off me ‒ no more manic sperm extractions, no more slavery to the fertility app. A sweet freedom settled in.

Red was looking at me differently, like she used to. We were joking again. A warmth replaced the disappointed glint in her eyes. Jay was doing the heavy lifting on attempted conception, but Red and I enjoyed a renaissance. I wanted her in a way that had faded in the months before Jay stepped in; maybe because Jay fancied her? I don’t know. All I know is that, sitting on the stairs, tuned in to their every breath, I was humming with desire.

‘Cheers Jay,’ I’d say, casual as I could, then straight into the bedroom once I’d heard him close the hall door behind him.

The only moral question mark in my mind was put there by the loan I’d finagled out of Jay when he arrived in the kitchen one morning, chomping at the bit. I hit him with it: Could he sort me out for a few grand so that I could get Terry off my case. On the spot, Jay sold some of his crypto and sent me two thousand quid. Then he was up the stairs, showing a heartwarming commitment to our cause.

Honeymoons though. Not known for their longevity.

**

I never got around to telling Red about gardening leave. I just keep my old routine. On Tuesdays, I tell Red I’ve a regular meeting in town, and then I whistle off for a loop around Malahide village, coffee in hand, before sweeping back in the door of an empty house.

Today is a Tuesday.

I rattle and push and pull and twist the key in the door, drop my laptop bag in the hall and head for a piss in the downstairs loo. I stop sharply mid-stream, interrupted by a racket from upstairs. Maybe Terry was right about scumbags robbing houses during the day. I hear them ransacking the place and step out into the garden to phone the police. An unlucky day for burglars. There’s a patrol car parked at the end of the road.

***

I miss her and she’s only gone since this morning. Back in two days, maybe with some Dane’s baby multiplying inside her. That’s more than I can control, but it would bring her peace, I believe. Calm her. And then maybe, maybe, we’d ease our way back to our old selves. Unconsciously re-coupling.

The time I have on my hands now frees me to focus on things that matter. Not gambling, that’s a mug’s game. And no more family planning stress either. Just getting up early to breathe, to find my place in the world, appreciate my privil—

Oh, here we go!

Bang, clatter, scratch.

Gotcha ye fucker!

Bins. In.

Seven wins, nine defeats and a draw.

Boom! Back in the fucking game!

About Gary Finnegan

Gary Finnegan is a writer living in county Kildare, Ireland. His fiction has appeared in The London Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Ogham Stone and ROPES. His journalism has been published in The Guardian, The Irish Times, Irish Examiner and Evening Herald. He is a three time national winner of the EU Prize for Health Journalism. Gary's non-fiction book, Beijing for Beginners is published by The Liffey Press. He has degrees in physiology (Trinity College Dublin), science communication (Dublin City University) and is pursuing an MA in creative writing (Maynooth University). He is working on a novel.

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