Number Six

One flaw, just one. Tall, athletic, too healthy to model clothes, eyes followed her down the street nonetheless. Her hair was the vibrant ginger only the very beautiful can carry off. If she looked you in the eye you’d know hers were malachite; but she rarely did. She had the redhead’s white, white skin, a faint dusting of freckles on her nose. She never talked about it. Other people were embarrassed and never brought it up, not now. But they looked and stared -or looked sharply away: helplessly fascinated or repelled by her one oddity.

School had been the hardest time: The bluntness of boys, the slyness of girls and the cruelty of both. Everyone had noticed immediately then; it was just too alien. Even now, it was always noticed in the end. Most people don’t look at hands. Maybe some women look at men’s hands – checking for a ring on the finger and black crescents under the nails. That’s why people took a while. A second glance, a third; a long stare at the hands or into space. They always worked it out in the end; what was different.

Roisin had no thumbs. Digits correct in number, but all fingers. Nothing opposed; no prehensile partner to her fingers.

Oh, the name calling! (Religiously unchecked by the nuns). Freak! Mutant! ‘Missing Link’ or ‘Chrysalid’ from the ‘clever’ few. There was no help for it: once she’d worn mittens for a whole year – as if no-one would notice in the hottest Cork June for 50 years.

Other people took so many things for granted; tying a shoelace, holding a knife, writing their name. Each skill was a hard-earned triumph, earning no praise. It was no better as a teenager: the one boy, Conor, who’d been willing to overlook her stigmata…. Well, heavy petting had proved traumatic, and he broke it off.

Of course, she adapted. The Number Sixes, as she called them, grew in roughly the same place as a thumb. She could do most things now, if a little awkwardly. There were limits to what she was prepared to do in front of others. Visits to bars, cafes or restaurants were rare. Clothes were difficult. Sleeveless didn’t happen. Long sleeves were very long. She never wore nail varnish, rings or bracelets. What would be the point?

London had begun only slightly less cruelly.. Roisin had moved to Kilburn at first, but that had only been Cork without the countryside. Other places were little better. Cheap rentals; deals made over the speakerphone had moved her every six months. Eventually, she settled in Soho, a hundred yards from Old Compton Street, and the Admiral Duncan. Life changed. It was bliss to walk unnoticed through the streets… to be just a red speck in the kaleidoscope, part of the pleasing variety. No longer the eye-magnet, the two headed cow, the bearded lady. And now she was close to work. When she’d had to travel to work, she’d set off two hours earlier to make a 15 minute journey. She had to have a seat; anything rather than be a strap-hanger.
Work wasn’t so bad. Before, she’d worked at the call-centre for a high street bank. She’d refused the transfer to Livingston and taken her cards. Lucky for her, too: not many who’d gone were offered a transfer to Bangalore 3 years later. Roisin’s job now was quite similar, if you thought about it. She was working round the corner, in a former night club, whose owner had found a raft of premium rate numbers made far more than a tatty clip joint.