And they are giving me a lifeline. Instead of telling me to clear my desk and never come back, they are giving me a chance to put my life back together. Wow.
‘We were thinking of six to eight weeks, initially,’ says young Will Powers from the head of the table. ‘If this isn’t long enough, just let us know. We all need time out, Maggie. Hell, I know I do from time to time. I don’t want to see any of our staff burn out, least of all someone as valuable to the team as you are.’
My God, the Man of Steel does have a heart after all and a pretty big one at that.
‘I… I don’t know what to say.’
‘Do you agree it might help?’ asks Sylvia who sits opposite me. I always thought she was a bit of a self-absorbed snob and now I swear I can see her eyes fill with tears in empathy.
‘Yes,’ I mumble back to her and nod, wiping my nose. ‘Yes, I do. I didn’t think that things were so bad, but now that I’m here… well, yes, I do think it will help.’
‘That’s good,’ says Will Sr. ‘I want to see you get back in the hot seat here at Powers Enterprises as quickly as possible and if there is anything else we can do to help, just give me a call.’
I look at the business card he presses into my hand and flip it over to find his personal number written in his own handwriting. I am overwhelmed with a flurry of emotions, like a slow-motion movie is unfolding as I watch on in disbelief.
‘Thank you, Mr Powers,’ I whisper, still staring at the card. ‘Thank you. All of you.’
He walks me to the door but instead of stopping there, Will Powers Sr walks me through the open-plan office, past my colleagues, who don’t even lift their heads (no one ever does when he is around) and down into the foyer. Thankfully Bridget isn’t at the front desk. We walk outside and the rain has stopped and Davey the porter must be on a cigarette break, so I have a clear path to the car, but Mr Powers stops just before we reach it.
‘Sometimes, Maggie, life moves too fast and we can’t keep up no matter how hard we try. Before you know it, you’re facing retirement and kicking yourself, wondering how on earth you’ve missed out on the simple things in life. Take some time and breathe. Do at least one nice thing every day, something for yourself. Build yourself back up again and then I want you right back here where you belong. Do you hear?’
I nod back at him and smile. Carlsberg don’t do bosses …
‘You’re a very special and very kind man, Mr Powers,’ I tell him. ‘I will never forget you for this. Thank you.’
‘I’ll see you back here really soon,’ he tells me and for a second, I think he is going to give me a fatherly hug, but he stops and pats me on the shoulder and then walks off towards the tower block where I have spent most of my life for the past five years.
I sit in the car for a few moments and breathe right to the pit of my stomach, trying to digest what has just happened on today of all days. I feel a weight lifting off my shoulders, a pressure gone already and I take my time before I drive off and don’t stop until I reach the off license.
I need a drink.
Chapter 3
It’s almost ten at night and I am watching my wedding DVD all on my own and I keep rewinding it to the part where Jeff reads out the poem he wrote especially for me and there’s a big close-up on me and my eyes are stinging red from crying at his overwhelming love.
Now they are stinging red from overwhelming love for Sauvignon Blanc. Isn’t it amazing what a difference a year or two makes?
‘You lift me up when I’m feeling down. You light up my world when you smile. You are my one and only, the one I love and the one who I want to grow old with.’
Vomit…
I can see that it’s straight from Google, or else a Ronan Keating song, now that I have snapped out of my starry-eyed romantic honeymoon phase. I am now in a ‘bitch of darkness phase’ after my afternoon of sleeping and drinking and sleeping and drinking and ignoring more phone calls. (It’s Flo this time. She will be grand, as they say here in Ireland. Grand.)
I switch off the DVD, put on some eighties’ classics and sway to the beat of Rick Astley, then look out the window onto the city below me and I raise my glass to my freedom and my future. I have got to be positive. I am merry and positive and I am on a ‘career break’ – that’s what they call it these days. I have it all at my feet and the world awaits, starting with this city I call home.
Plus it’s still my heart anniversary, isn’t it? On this day, seventeen years ago I was at death’s door and then a miraculous gift of life from a little girl in Scotland and her totally amazing family gave me the chance to grow into adulthood. So what if I don’t have a husband any more. So what if I almost lost my job by acting the eejit lately. I still have life! I don’t know how much longer I have it, but for now I do and it’s for living!
‘I still have life!’ I shout out through my open window and a couple below me shout back at me to fuck off. I smile at them and wave. I am drunk again. And I am loving it! I love everything right now!
Mostly, I love Belfast. I love the buzz, the people-watching, the culture, the accents, the shopping, the night-life and the sense of community that still exists, even though it’s very much a big city to a country girl like me with its universities, cosmopolitan quarters and bloody dark history.
I think of all the men I have loved and lost since I moved here in my university days and I start to laugh and laugh and laugh at the memories.
There was Bob, the engineering graduate (or Bob the Builder, as we all called him), who moved to Australia when I was in the thick of my studies and who never returned. There was Martin, an accountant from Dublin, who said he loved me but that with my temporary tattoos and purple hair at the time, he could never see me being the ‘wife’ type; there was Andrew who worked in sales but who turned out to have a criminal record the length of my said long legs and more, and then there was Jeff, the teacher who, as already mentioned, left me for Saffron the Stewardess quicker than the shine wore off his wedding ring.
My love life has been, let’s just say, colourfully complicated.
‘I love being colourfully complicated!’ I shout out loud and continue dancing with myself.
‘Fuck off’, shouts Mr Smart Ass from below again. This time I give him the fingers, then laugh my way to the sofa, totally absorbed in Wham!, who are now playing on the music channel. This is fun. No work tomorrow, a white-wine buzz and Wham! What more would a girl want? Who needs a husband and a job anyway? I’m drunk and I’m on top of the world! I’ve got this! I’ve finally got this!
I see my mail on the coffee table. How exciting! I’ve got mail! Real snail mail. I lift it up and try to sort it while still dancing, but my vision is blurred and I have to set down my wine glass to focus.
A letter from my mobile-phone company, a credit-card bill… I fling them on the floor.
A list of offers from the local supermarket? A voucher with a pound-off washing powder. How exciting?! And it’s on the floor it goes too!
But then a handwritten letter catches my eye and it stops me in my tracks.
I study it, knowing almost immediately that this is of some sort of huge importance but the words are moving, dancing before my eyes. I squint to focus. No good. I close one eye. The writing is neat, all in capital letters and in blue biro. It reminds me of the letters I used to get from a pen pal I once had who lived in Brighton and who drew lines on her envelopes with a pencil and ruler and then rubbed them out when she had written the address in perfect symmetry. Weirdo.
I try to read the postmark on the letter and eventually it comes clear. It says the letter was posted in town of Tain, near Inverness in Scotland.
Scotland, right? Tain? Oh holy shit!
My heart stops. Quite ironic, really, but it literally skips a beat and when I find my breath again I reach for my wine and take a long gulp, draining the glass.
There is only one person I know from Tain. One person I know, but who I never have met and never will.
Tha
t person is Lucy Harte.
And Lucy Harte is dead.
Chapter 4
I wake up in daylight with the letter in my hand, still unopened. I must have collapsed into a drunken coma – again – or else from the shock of what could lie inside this envelope.
‘Just open it, Maggie,’ Flo tells me when I call her. She doesn’t even get mad that it’s just gone seven in the morning, but then again, her son has probably been awake for at least an hour so it’s like the middle of the day to her. ‘There’s no point staring at it and wondering. Are you sure you don’t want me to come over?’
I am still holding the letter and I try to sip the last glass of wine from last night which tastes like vinegar and makes me gag. I am not yet totally sober. But unfortunately Flo can’t just ‘come over’ – as much as I’d want her to. As a single parent, she can’t exactly up sticks and leave with a two-year-old on her hip at this time of the morning. He goes to school. No, he is only two so he doesn’t go to school. He goes to day care. I am such a crap friend.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I tell her, even though I would give my right arm for her to be sitting here with me now. ‘You have Billie to get sorted. Do you really think it’s from them?’
I can hear Flo inhale deeply and finally she replies.
‘Well, unless it’s some sick joke, yes I do think it’s from ‘them’. I mean, Tain is hardly the centre of the universe and from your description of the envelope, it’s not a bill or one of those random marketing leaflets or charity letters. It has to be them.’
‘Them’ are the Harte family. Lucy Harte’s family. I don’t know how many of ‘them’ they are or if they are men, women or children; her grandparents, her mother or her father and despite my efforts in my early twenties to find ‘them’ to thank ‘them’ by going through the official route via hospitals and social systems, this is the first correspondence I have ever had and certainly not the way I expected to hear from them.
But why would they be writing to me? Why now? And why not when I wanted them to in years gone by?
‘They aren’t supposed to get in touch with me directly, Flo,’ I say, looking around the kitchen now and searching in every corner for a cigarette. I don’t smoke and never have done, but I need something to ease my nerves and Jeff used to have the odd smoke when he felt anxious, so maybe it would work for me. ‘It’s a delicate process. It’s supposed to go through the hospitals if there is to be any correspondence.’
‘That doesn’t say they won’t find you if they want to,’ said Flo. ‘The world is tiny, Maggie. You know Lucy’s name, so I’m sure they could have found out yours if they wanted to. A quick Google search or a nosey on Facebook and voilà. It’s not rocket science.’
‘I suppose,’ I mumble. ‘But what would they want from me?’
‘Well, what have you always wanted from them?’ asks Flo.
‘Closure, maybe? A chance to say thank you for my shitty life.’
‘You don’t have a shitty life,’ Flo assures me. ‘It’s just temporarily shit.’
I light up a cigarette I found in a box in a drawer. I knew there had to be one from the house-warming/birthday party I had. The morning after left all sorts of evidence of a heavy night.
‘Are you smoking?’ asks Flo.
‘Are you psychic?’ I retort. My God, she doesn’t miss a beat.
‘I sometimes think I am a bit. Do you think I am?’
‘No. Yes, I am smoking and I’d take stronger stuff if I could get my hands on it, believe me,’ I say, which is so not true as I am petrified of anything stronger than a menthol cigarette, in reality, and Flo knows it.
‘Anyhow, are you going to open the letter, or are you not?’ she asks. ‘No matter if this is the official way of doing things or not, you are going to have to open it before you send yourself crazy and me with it.’
‘Okay, okay, I’m on it.’
I stare at the handwriting again and put the cigarette on an ashtray, then exhale smoke from my lungs, polluting my beautiful kitchen. I start to cough. Guilt and an urge to vomit make me put the cigarette out after one puff. Disgusting.
‘I thought this was what you always wanted, Maggie?’
‘It is what I’ve always wanted,’ I whisper and, as if on autopilot, my fingers start to pull the envelope apart as I nestle my phone under my ear. ‘But I’m absolutely petrified, Flo. I think I’m in shock.’
‘Okay, pause a second. Wait!’ says Flo. I am totally convinced she can see me. The woman should have been a detective. She can read me like a book.
‘What? I’m in the middle of opening it, for crying out loud!’
‘I just want you to think of what it is you would like this letter to say. What is it you had ever hoped to gain from meeting with, or talking to, the Harte family? You say closure. Is there anything else?’
‘I suppose… I suppose I just want to let her go,’ I say and I close my eyes as my own made-up images of Lucy flash through my mind. ‘I want to be able to close the door on Lucy Harte and get on with my own life. And I guess the only way I’ve ever felt that would be possible was if I got a chance to say thank you to whoever it was who decided to offer up her organs to someone like me when they had just suffered the ultimate tragedy of losing their own child.’
‘Well, that’s certainly it in a nutshell,’ says Flo and, before I know it, I have the letter unfolded and the words blur before me. The writing inside, like on the envelope, is handwritten in neat black ink. I am impressed.
‘Oh God, Flo.’
‘Oh God Flo what? What?’
‘It is them. It really is them! Will I read it out?’
‘Well, I can’t see it from here, can I?! Yes! Read it out.’ She stops for a second. ‘Only if you want to, of course… I can hang up and hear from you later if you want to do this yourself?’
There is no way I want to do this myself, which is why I called Flo in the first place. I have read the first line twice but still haven’t digested a word.
‘Okay, here goes,’ I say, clearing my throat, as if I am in front of a huge audience. ‘Dear Maggie…’
Dear Maggie,
I hope I haven’t shocked you too much by contacting you directly and to your home address but I have work connections in Belfast and, with a bit of poking around, I found you at last. We have a mutual friend, believe it or not, and he was able to give me your address. At least, I hope it’s you and not some other random lady called Maggie O’Hara, who will have no clue what I am talking about.
My name is Simon Harte and I am the older brother of Lucy, who died on 10th April 1999 and who was your organ donor. I still remember that day and those before it like I do yesterday, but I won’t burden you with the details of how she died as it’s not essentially why I am getting in touch.
I know you tried to contact us a few years back and I’m sorry that we only got so far and the process stopped, but my father, well he wasn’t capable of it, Maggie. He wasn’t capable of a lot since our family was torn apart that day. He was a broken man from that day on – a broken man who never was fixed.
He thought donating organs was the right thing to do at the time, but he cursed himself for years afterwards, having nightmares about his decision. I hope you understand that meeting you would have not given him any comfort. In fact, it might have tipped him over the edge.
However, the decision to reply to you is no longer in his hands. Sadly my dad, after years of suffering, passed away last month and now it’s just me left… just me, my memories of my family and an Irish girl who holds the heart of my dead sister. There are others, I suppose, who are out there, but you are the only one to ever look us up.
This week marked Lucy’s anniversary and the first one I had to face up to on my own. And now I am writing to you…
I don’t want to freak you out, Maggie. I ask nothing from you and if you don’t reply I will try and forget that you exist and do my best to move on with my life.
But you contacted us first and now
that the next step of the process is in my hands and mine only, I want to let you know that I’m up for a chat if you think it would help you move on or close a chapter that I can imagine has been haunting you for years, as it has done me. I would love to see how my sister’s legacy has lived on.
My contact details are on the page enclosed. We could chat on the phone or even email if you prefer? Don’t worry – I won’t land at your door! And you can take my offer or leave it.
I hope you take it.
With very best wishes,
Simon D. Harte
I put the letter onto the table and slowly let go of it, but my eyes are superglued to his signature. Simon D. Harte. Lucy Harte’s brother. And a mutual friend? Who could that be?
‘Christ almighty,’ says Flo. ‘What do you think of that, Maggie? Are you alright there?’
I’m not sure if I’m alright. I’m not sure if I am even still breathing. I need to read it again and again. It is both heart-breaking and breath-taking and so different to how I imagined this moment would happen. I never really believed the day would come when I would hear from the Harte family and now it has and it’s even more overwhelming than I expected it to be.
‘Are you going to get in touch? I’d be itching to if I were you. But have a think about it first. He seems nice. But then I thought Damian was nice and he fled before Billie was out of nappies. I hope he is nice,’ says Flo. She is rambling. Flo always rambles when she is nervous.
‘Yes, I am going to contact him,’ I say, and of that I am sure. ‘In fact, I am not going to waste another second. I am going to contact him now.’
I stand up and the room starts to spin, so I sit back down again and try and regain some focus. Am I crazy? Am I even ready for this? It’s something I have always dreamed of happening, but I’ve just taken time off work to get myself together and I’m not sure if this is the way to do so. Or maybe it is. Maybe this is what’s meant to be…
The Legacy of Lucy Harte Page 3