The trigger of her litter-picker breaks just before lunchtime. 

She had been gathering rubbish along the beach road when it happened, the sharp crack and snap of it as she tried to pick up an empty Tayto packet. Cheese and Onion. The packet blows lazily away into the road as she fiddles with the handle. It clicks uselessly in her hand as two cars pass her by, one overtaking the other just before the sharp bend where her brother died takes form. 

She clenches her toes in her boots as frustration rises in her. She is half tempted to chuck the litter-picker into the grassy bank that leads down to the beach, but that would just defeat the purpose of her being here. She relaxes her toes, checks for cars and goes to pick up the Tayto packet by hand. The Tayto Man looks smugly up at her and she crushes the plastic film in her palm as she makes the trek back. She shoves the rubbish deep inside her clear bin bag. Cheese and Onion had been Michael’s favourite. She used to hate the smell of it, the tang of it prickling her nose even as he ate them from across a classroom, their kitchen, car seats.

The bin bag is half full. This morning she’s collected flattened plastic bottles, fast food wrappers, empty disposable vapes, dead flowers, and things no longer identifiable. There’s a sweet smell to the rubbish that she’s grown used to. She often thinks she can taste it in the back of her throat when trying to fall asleep at night, her limbs growing heavy. Sometimes she dreams of being buried in landfill, her body deep in the earth and every unwanted thing piling on top of her until she’s out of sight too.

The sun bears down as she continues towards the sand. The litter-picker hangs loosely at her side as she scans the ground, toeing at anything that doesn’t look like seaweed, shells or the fragile carcasses of crabs. A few dog-walkers go past her, their off-leash dogs coming to nose at the things she is digging out of the pale sand. They don’t say much to her other than calling the dogs’ names and sorry. She knows who they are and they know her. She had moved away after Michael died, hoping to leave it all behind, give herself a clean slate. It had worked for a while, picking up different jobs in hotels as she made her way across Europe but eventually she ended up coming home with no money and nowhere to go.

She finds a deflated football and tucks it deep in the bag. There are chocolate and ice lolly wrappers that she gathers around what must have been someone’s picnic area the day before. She can feel the back of her neck start to burn and decides to head into town, eyes still scanning the ground. She had been back home two months when the council had stuck up an advert in the window of the local SPAR, perhaps knowing that it would be unlikely that they would get many applicants for litter-pickers. It specified the beach and the road that runs alongside it. She contacted them the next day and within a week they were giving her a high-vis vest and a roll of bin bags. A litter-picker was not included. She had barely been sober when she met them so she didn’t realise until her back began to hurt from crouching around the town to pick up rubbish that this probably wasn’t how it was normally done. 

She stops outside the hardware shop. Tying a tight knot in the bin bag and she sets it by the door after being warned not to take it inside by John Paul when she bought her first litter picker. It had been cheap, the only one she had been able to afford at the time that snapped in half after a few weeks when she had leaned on it too hard. When her first payslip came in from the council she had gotten him to order in a new one that was good, long lasting. 

She hasn’t been in the shop in a while. There is someone new behind the till and the layout of the shelves have been changed. She’s disorientated for a moment, like a car swerving. The man at the till is around her age maybe when he looks up from where he’s been slouched over a book. He stands, setting the book aside as she comes over to the counter.

Cathal, his name badge says. He’s good-looking in a matter of fact way. Not striking but still noticeable. It puts her on edge. It makes it harder to meet his eyes. She places the litter-picker on the counter to look at instead. 

“Can you order me a new one of these?”

He looks down at it as well, a thick line appearing between his eyebrows. “What’s wrong with this one?”

“It broke this morning. John Paul said he would get me another if I needed it.”

Cathal lifts the litter-picker up, turning it over in his hands. He tries the trigger and when nothing happens he just nods. She watches as he moves over to the computer, quickly typing something in and scrolling.

“It might take a few days.” He comes back and inspects the litter-picker, trying the trigger again. “If you want the same one.”

“How much?” she asks as she watches his movements. It’s strange to see her litter-picker in someone else’s hands. In his hands it looks silly, like a toy. “I paid twenty last time.”

“I might be able to get it from somewhere cheaper for you.”

“Would John Paul be happy about that?”

“I wouldn’t worry about JP.”

Eventually she nods and says, “Place the order.”

“We’ll contact you when it’s in. What’s your name and phone number?”

“Don’t worry, I'll come back in a few days and see if it’s in,” she responds, taking the litter-picker back and leaving, making sure to grab the bin bag outside. 

At the pub later she realises she hasn’t brought enough cash with her. She’s begging Joe behind the bar for a pint, just one pint, when Cathal leans against the bar and offers to get it for her. 

He lights her a cigarette outside. She’s already halfway through her pint and a familiar hum has settled under her skin. 

“Why litter-picking?” he asks after a while and she is standing close enough to smell the Guinness on his breath. 

“It keeps me busy.”

She thinks about taking him home. The home where her dining table is used to sort through the rubbish into three distinct categories: food waste - recycling - general waste. When she’s bored of this system she will add an extra category for glass or clothing material. Her bath is used to soak things with labels that cannot be recycled. There are days when she doesn’t even empty the bath before she steps in to use the shower, food jars and beer bottles bobbing around her ankles. Her bed is unmade, the table beside it an altar of beer bottles and empty pill packets she’s yet to categorise. 

This makes her think better of it. Decides instead to stub her cigarette out on the windowsill, down the rest of her pint and start the walk back home. She calls back, Thanks and spends the rest of the night spiralling amongst the landfill of her flat.

His question hangs in her head the next day as she combs the beach by hand. Her hangover is minor and the fresh breeze makes her feel grounded. She likes keeping this area clean. She remembers sitting at the side of the road after it happened, police and ambulance lights blinding, people coming and going as her new reality began. She remembers being sick, her hands in the grass as she heaved, fingers brushing against plastic and rubbish.

Her parents paid for a cross to be put at the bank of the road, a heavy stone thing to act as a reminder. They leave flowers every Sunday, the one day she never works. She makes sure that the stems are tied securely, that when the petals begin to wilt she will remove them and place them in her bin bag so that they never have to see it. She hasn’t spoken to them in nearly two years but she sees them around the town, in shops, turning their backs on her. 

Michael had been the one driving but it should have been her. It was her car, her idea to go out and it had been her who couldn’t say no to a drink beforehand. Michael had given her a lot of grief for it. It had been dark, so terribly dark and they had been laughing, messing about, and the bend in the road took them by surprise more than it ever had before. 

She’s crouching down to untangle some blue rope from seaweed when she realises with an awful sickening jolt that it’s Michael’s birthday. Her knees are in the sand suddenly, fingers still tangled in the scrap of rope. He’d be thirty. A new decade he will never get to experience. 

She goes to the off-licence and takes the bottles of beer she buys to one of the benches at the beach. It’s only 2pm. The alcohol goes down easily, too easily and it reminds her how simple it would be to just give into it, let it control her days, her movements, her thoughts.

She’s near the end of her last bottle when she sees Cathal coming towards her, the sea breeze blowing his hair flush against his head. He slows when he spots her. She wonders whether he will walk on like everyone else or stop. He hesitates. That’s enough for her.

“Everything alright?” he asks, cautious, once he’s finally approached the bench. The sun sits low in the sky behind him.

She peels a bit of the bottle’s label off with her fingernail. “Can you give me a lift?”

Cathal takes in the empties near her feet. After a long moment he nods, “Sure.”

She directs him with ease to the house. The windows are dark as she knew they would be. She tells him to wait and feels him watch her find the key from under one of the plant pots. It’s rusted and cold in her hand. 

She moves through the house with ingrained familiarity. She doesn’t bother to turn the lights on as she makes her way into the living room to the mantelpiece. The jar is cool against her fingers. In the few times she’s been here since the accident she had never been able to look at it. She cradles it close and quickly leaves her parents’ house.

Cathal says nothing when she climbs back inside the car, kicking rubbish aside.

“Take me to the water.”

She lifts the lid off the jar and is surprised at the clear bag inside. Her mother wanted him cremated and they had argued about it in the days leading up to the funeral. She was never going to win, not when it had been her fault. Michael had always joked about wanting a sea burial and it’s all she can think about as Cathal drives them back towards the beach.

“There’s something I need to do,” she tells him as he pulls to a stop. He looks at the jar, the urn, in her hands and something like resignation flickers across his face. 

She’s out of the car and stumbling down the bank to the sand before he says anything. She gets to the water’s edge and takes the bag out, abandoning the jar at her feet. The water is freezing and her teeth clench. She can hear Cathal shouting after her as she strides deeper into the water, her clothes growing heavy. She tears the bag open and lets the ashes spill out. In the dark she can barely see where they land and just keeps pouring until the bag is empty. She clutches the plastic and lets the waves push her back, lifting her legs up until she is weightless. 

She lets herself float. A piece of litter on the tide.