Lifesaving for Beginners

by Ciara Geraghty

  Faith says, ‘I still can’t believe it.’

  Dad says, ‘Your mother and I should have told you. A long time ago.’

  ‘No, not about that. About Mam, I mean. I still can’t believe she’s gone.’

  Dad says nothing to that.

  Faith says, ‘Sometimes I forget, you know. Something happens. In a lecture or at band practice or something. And I think: Mam will get such a kick out of this.’

  It’s a good job Ant and Adrian weren’t pandas because only one of them would have survived. The mother chooses which one. I don’t think Mam would have been able to choose. She said one was as bad as the other.

  Dad says something about ‘the boy’. He hardly ever calls me Milo.

  Faith says, ‘No, there’s been too much upset already. He needs to stay in Brighton. That’s where his home is.’

  Dad says, ‘OK then. Once the baby comes – if he ever does – and Celia gets used to him, I’ll come to Brighton more often. Once a month, if I can. And the boy will come and visit. Won’t you, son?’

  Nobody knows what sex the baby is going to be, but Dad keeps talking about him as if he’s a boy already.

  I say, ‘Could Damo come too? Sometime?’

  Dad blesses himself and says, ‘Saints preserve us,’ but he’s smiling so that means there’s a chance that Damo could come too. Sometime. I’ll just have to tell him what to do about babies. Damo doesn’t have any little brothers or sisters so he won’t know.

  The man on the programme says that baby pandas are born pink and blind and toothless, which is a bit like humans. Humans can see only shapes and colours when they’re born. And their eyes are blue. Mam said my eyes were blue when I was born and then they changed to brown. And I reckon Faith’s eyes were blue when she was born and then they changed to green.

  Faith is talking about the Funky Banana now and how Jack wants to buy it. I don’t mind selling it if Jack wants to buy it. I bet he’ll still give me free stuff when I call into the café. Damo too. Jack says we’re like beans and farts. You never get one without the other.

  Dad nods and agrees with everything Faith says but I’m not sure if he’s listening anymore. He looks pretty tired, and later, when I say, ‘Dad?’ he jumps and says, ‘Yes, of course, son,’ as if we’re in the middle of a conversation instead of just at the beginning of one. And he’s wearing the same shirt he was wearing yesterday, when he picked us up at the station. It’s got brown sauce down the front.

  Faith’s phone rings again but this time she takes the call. She stands up and says, ‘Hi, Rob,’ and then she leaves the room.

  Baby pandas stay with their mams until they’re one and a half or maybe two. I’m glad I wasn’t born a panda.

  Dad is snoring now. Upstairs, I hear Celia getting out of bed. She’s making the bear noise again. I put my hand on Dad’s shoulder and shake him a bit. His eyes fly open and he says, ‘Yes, of course, son.’

  I say, ‘I think the baby’s coming again.’

  Minnie books the Grand Hotel for the press conference, which is a short walk from the apartment. She hires two security guards. Huge ones. I laugh when she tells me but Minnie’s face betrays not even a hint of a smile.

  She says, ‘You asked me to take care of it. I’m taking care of it.’

  Turns out she’s right. She’s always right. We do need them. When the room is full, the two of them stand at the door and present their joint bulk to any other journalists trying to get in.

  They also come in very handy when the journos swarm like bees at the end, blocking the door, poking their microphones in my face and pointing their cameras at me. I’d say the photographer from Heat won’t be waking up and smelling the coffee anytime soon, with that stump he’s got now, where his nose used to be.

  I tell them everything I know about Killian Kobain and Declan Darker. Afterwards, Minnie says, ‘That’s all, everybody. Thanks for coming.’

  She has to shout into the microphone to be heard over the barrage of questions being hurled towards me. I answer a couple of them before one of the journalists at the front stands up and says, ‘Are there any other skeletons in Kat Kavanagh’s closet?’ Because he has one of those booming voices, it punctures a hole through the babble and gets people’s attention, and there is a lull and everyone looks at me and waits.

  Minnie nudges me.

  I look at her.

  She cups her hand over the microphone and whispers, ‘You don’t have to answer that.’

  I shake my head, then look at the man and I say, ‘Yes. There is something.’

  Dad is already at the apartment when we get back from the press conference. In the car park. The engine of his car is running. Mum is in the front seat. I say, ‘I thought we were going to meet at the hospital?’ Ed is being discharged today. We all want to be there.

  Dad says, ‘I’ll drive in. There’s no need for everyone to take their cars.’ He has a thing about paying for parking at hospitals. He calls it a ‘scandal’, which is a pretty strong word for him. Minnie, who rarely lets her car out of her sight – it’s a silver Jaguar XKR-S – agrees to leave it at the apartment and let Dad drive all of us in. ‘Just for the day that’s in it,’ she says.

  Ed insists on saying goodbye to every patient, nurse and doctor in the hospital before we are allowed to leave. ‘I’m glad to be going home but I’ll miss the hospital too.’

  I say, ‘What’ll you miss about it?’

  ‘The nurses, mostly.’

  Minnie says, ‘Don’t let Sophie hear you saying that.’

  Sophie is the jealous type. I don’t think she’d boil a bunny but I’d say she’d have no qualms about, say, a gerbil or a hamster.

  I’m glancing through the leaflet the nurse gave me about the pacemaker. ‘The doctor says you have to go back for a check-up in a few weeks. See how the pacemaker is settling in.’

  Ed looks worried. He unbuttons his shirt again and shows it to us. We can see the outline of the pacemaker beneath his skin. It is about the size of a matchbox. He says, ‘I don’t like it. It makes me feel scared.’

  Minnie says, ‘You’re like the bionic man, so you are. They’ve rebuilt you.’

  Ed looks at Minnie. ‘I might have died, mightn’t I?’ He’s fond of a bit of drama.

  ‘It’ll take more than a dodgy ticker to get rid of you, I’d say.’ She’s looking at Ed like he’s her brother too. She never treated him any other way. I touch her arm and squeeze it. Just a small one. But a squeeze all the same.

  A small smile gathers round her mouth.

  I say, ‘How’s Baby Driver coming along?’ Maurice took Minnie’s name when they got married. He had to, really. He has a surname that happens to be on one of Minnie’s blacklists.

  She says, ‘Week fifteen. Nine centimetres. About the length of a Curly Wurly. My stools are black but that’s just the iron supplements.’

  I say, ‘That’s great,’ before she can fill me in on any more details.

  Dad’s car is just outside the hospital, with the engine running. Mum is in the passenger seat, even though she’s supposed to be a keynote speaker at a writing conference in Prague. She shrugged when I mentioned it earlier. I help Ed into the car. Mum looks at him. ‘There’s a blanket there, if you’re cold.’

  Me and Minnie sit by the windows and Ed is in the middle. Like when we were kids. I tuck the blanket round Ed’s knees and the smile he gives me is so huge and so true, I have to turn away. Minnie finishes tucking the blanket and she nods at me, and that’s when I realise just how big today is. How huge.

  The surgeon called Ed ‘lucky’. I wouldn’t have used that word. But that’s the word I think of now. On this leg of the journey. The home stretch.

  Ed is lucky.

  We all are.

  Dad drives to my apartment first. Minnie needs to get her car and I need to get a toothbrush and some knickers. Ed wants me to stay for a sleepover. I know he’s milking it but I don’t care.

  There’s a traffic jam from the railway bridge
, through the Diamond and on past the Garda station. I don’t take much notice. Malahide is one of those towns that people like to visit at all times of the day and night. It’s Minnie who realises. She looks out of the window and says, ‘That’s weird.’

  I say, ‘What?’

  Minnie lowers her window and sticks her head out. ‘There are five television trucks ahead.’

  I lean forward, into the space between the two front seats. I say, ‘Oh yeah,’ and sit back.

  Minnie looks at me. She doesn’t say anything. We inch along. It’s only when we get through the village and along the curve where the coast road begins that things become clearer. The car park in front of my apartment block is black with trucks. Television trucks. They’ve spilled onto the road, on double yellows, across driveways, along the edge of footpaths. One is on the slip that leads to the beach. Another has secured an elevated position up on the grass verge, where no vehicle has a right to be.

  Mum says, ‘What’s going on?’

  Ed nudges me. ‘Maybe there’s a celebrity staying in your building, Kat.’

  Minnie looks at him. ‘You’re right, Ed. There’s a celebrity in Kat’s building.’

  Dad says, ‘Really? Who?’ He is a closet celebrity-gossip-gatherer. I have seen copies of Now and Closer in his study.

  Minnie points at me. ‘It’s Kat, you great eejits.’

  Ed says, ‘I’m not an eejit. And Kat’s not a celebrity, silly. Her picture’s not in any of the magazines Dad has in his study.’

  Dad flushes. ‘Someone left those magazines there.’

  Mum says, ‘What about the ones in the bottom drawer of your filing cabinet? Did someone leave them there, as well?’

  This strikes us as funny, probably because Mum rarely says anything that you could brand ‘humorous’. She is as serious as Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It’s just the way she is, I suppose.

  Minnie looks at me. ‘Kat, listen, you can’t go in there. You’ll be mobbed. We’ll have to go to your parents’ house.’

  Dad says, ‘What if they follow us?’ His hands grip the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles are white. He would be hopeless as a getaway driver.

  Minnie says, ‘Kat, duck down. So they don’t spot you.’

  But I don’t duck down because this doesn’t seem real. None of it. Even though I can see them. The hundred-strong army of the type of media that you would be well within your rights to call paparazzi. On my doorstep. Waiting for me. I can see them. But I don’t quite believe it. Not yet.

  The line of traffic is static. Dad’s car is stuck, right outside the apartment block. It feels like we’re in the eye of a storm. Outside, the activity is frantic; inside, it’s the type of quiet that seems too quiet. Just as I’m about to take Minnie’s advice and duck down, someone shouts, ‘Oi!’ When I turn to look, there’s a man in a truck and he’s pointing at Dad’s car. He’s pointing at me. And suddenly my heart is hurling itself against my chest, like a battering ram. I yell, ‘DRIVE!’ and Dad – who is notable as a driver only because most people can jog alongside the car when he’s at full tilt – rams the gearstick into first and swings out into oncoming traffic, narrowly missing the bumper of a mustard-coloured Ford Focus being driven by a man with a poodle on his knee. The man and the dog are in matching yellow jackets. It’s funny the things you notice when you’re being chased by a television truck. Dad guns the car and it roars up Bath Lane, which is a narrow little one-way with a nasty bend. There’s a dodgy-as-hell bit when Dad’s car mounts the kerb, but apart from breaking some lower branches off a tree, there’s no real harm done.

  I keep my eyes on the rear window. The television truck is behind us and gaining. The driver shouts into a mobile phone.

  Minnie yells, ‘Take a right at the end of this road.’

  Dad says, ‘There’s a STOP sign!’

  ‘Well, stop first. Then take the right.’

  Dad stops. Mum roars, ‘CLEAR LEFT,’ and Dad smiles at her before he shoots out onto the road, his tyres making a satisfying screeching noise against the tarmac.

  Minnie shouts, ‘Take that little left at Vinny Vannuchi’s.’

  I have to pitch in there. ‘It’s not called Vinny Vannuchi’s anymore. It’s the Scotch Bonnet. It’s been the Scotch Bonnet for ages.’

  Ed says, ‘Is that the restaurant that has the spicy chicken wings I like, Kat?’

  Dad yells, ‘Am I turning left here or not?’

  Minnie and I yell, ‘YES!’ at the same time and then Minnie looks over the top of Ed’s head towards me and says, ‘This is like Cagney and Lacey, isn’t it? Except we’re in the back seat.’

  Cagney and Lacey was our favourite programme when we were kids. When we weren’t watching it, we were playing it. We both wanted to be Cagney. We had to take it in turns to be Lacey. Neither of us wanted to be married to Harv.

  Minnie shouts, ‘Turn left here. Up into St Margaret’s Park.’

  Dad turns left so quickly I get thrown against the window and, for a moment, it really is like an episode of Cagney and Lacey.

  Behind us, we can hear the roar of the truck.

  Minnie says, ‘Pull into someone’s driveway. Look, down that road there. It’s a cul-de-sac. They won’t find us down there.’

  Dad does as he’s told. He pulls into an empty driveway and performs a pretty dramatic emergency stop. We wait. Nobody says a word. Minnie hisses, ‘Get down, everyone,’ and this time I do as I’m told and so does everyone else. It doesn’t take long to become ‘media savvy’, it seems.

  After a while, Mum says, ‘This is ridiculous.’

  I say, ‘I couldn’t agree more.’

  Ed says, ‘How come the television trucks don’t chase you, Mum?’

  Once we start laughing, we can’t stop. If someone passes by, they would see an ancient green Lexus shaking, with what looks like nobody inside.

  Dad waits a full twenty minutes before he drives away. He takes the back roads to Raheny, through Donaghmede and Kilbarrack. The rest of the journey passes without incident. It’s only when we turn onto the Howth Road that I realise I have more to learn about media savvy-ness.

  There are more trucks. Television trucks. Outside my parents’ house. Only two of them but enough to give me a jolt, nonetheless.

  Ed yells, ‘Holy smoke!’ when he sees them. He’s enjoying all the cloak and dagger.

  Dad says, ‘I can’t drive around for much longer. We’re nearly out of juice.’ He never says ‘juice’. He says ‘petrol’.

  Minnie says, ‘If we go in there, we’re trapped. We’ll be like fish in a barrel.’

  That’s when Mum says, in a quiet voice so we have to strain to hear her, ‘I want to go home.’

  Dad says, ‘OK.’

  And that’s how we end up barricaded inside the house where I grew up, with the media, swelling in numbers by the hour, camped outside the door and up and down the street.

  We pull down the blinds. Put on the kettle. Ed says he’s starving but when I check the fridge there are a few stalks of celery, a tub of natural yoghurt, a hard triangle of Edam and a withered bunch of thyme. Looking in this fridge it’s hard to believe it will be Christmas Eve tomorrow.

  Dad says, ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t had the chance to go shopping.’

  Ed says, ‘But I’m hungry.’

  I say, ‘I’ll ring Domino’s.’

  Minnie says, ‘How’s that going to look on the news? World famous author stuffs face with Domino’s Mighty Meaty?’

  In the end, I find potato waffles and fish fingers in the freezer, possibly left over from the days when I used to live in the house. I steam the celery to make it a bit more healthy-heart-ish for Ed but he refuses to eat it because I forgot to chop the stalks into chunks and I tell him I’ll do it now but he says, ‘It’s too late, Kat.’

  Sky News have the story running on a loop.

  The revelation today, of the author of the hugely successful Declan Darker series of novels, has sent shock waves through the publishing w
orld, the reading world and the world at large. Katherine Kavanagh – known affectionately to her friends and family as Kat – revealed today, at a press conference, that she has been writing under the pseudonym Killian Kobain for almost twenty years. Following a short statement from Kavanagh, the writer left the press conference, refusing to answer any questions. The media-shy Kat is hiding out at her parents’ house in Dublin, where her brother, Edward, who is autistic, is said to be recovering from the recent removal of a brain tumour.

  There’s no point screaming at the television screen but I do it anyway. With each report comes a fresh inaccuracy.

  Kat Kavanagh received a six-figure advance in the spring of 1992 when she submitted a mere three chapters of Dirty Little Secret, which she had written longhand into several shorthand notebooks, to publishers Hodder & Stoughton.

  That’s rubbish. Minnie sent the entire manuscript. And I used legal pads. And it was July. That’s bloody well summer, the last time I checked.

  Brona Best – Kat Kavanagh’s editor for the past twenty years – spoke today of the lengths that she had to go to, to protect her top writer’s identity. Describing Kavanagh as deeply paranoid and unpredictable, Best said that, with Kavanagh’s murky past, the writer’s behaviour is understandable.

  Brona rings almost immediately. She is weeping. ‘I . . . I . . . I ne . . . nev . . . never . . . told them that . . . Kat . . . I swear . . . I di . . . I di . . . I didn’t t-t-tell them anything.’

  It takes me ages to get her to stop crying. Eventually I have to yell, ‘Stop crying,’ which works a treat.

  Brona says, ‘They’re camped outside on the street. The phones won’t stop ringing. One of the camera crews has rented a scissor lift.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’re on the sixteenth floor, for Christ’s sake.’

  Brona never blasphemes. Things are serious.

  ‘Look, Brona. Don’t worry. It’ll blow over. Just keep your head down and your mouth shut.’

  Brona starts crying again. Quietly this time.