The Truth Will Out

by Anna McPartlin

  ‘He said honour, protect and cherish,’ Brendan said. ‘That’s lovely.’

  ‘I’d speak up, though, if I was you – I thought you said honour, protect and banish.’

  ‘Big day.’ Harri’s dad had greeted her with a wink on the landing.

  ‘Big day, Dad,’ she agreed, grinning.

  ‘Three times a charm,’ he said.

  ‘Fingers crossed,’ she said, kissing his hairy cheek as he passed with his paper heading for his en-suite bathroom.

  Her mother was calling her from her own bedroom.

  ‘Darling, there you are. The aquamarine outfit or the pale pink?’

  ‘Those are from my last weddings. It’s not like you to recycle.’

  ‘Well, I’ve promised your father I’ll reduce my carbon footprint and my Visa bill, and seeing I didn’t get to wear them to anywhere other than A and E …’

  Harri laughed. ‘The aquamarine.’

  ‘Good choice. Now get going. Mona will be here in half an hour, and ever since Desmond dropped out of school she has a face on her like a donkey’s hole.’

  Harri burst out laughing. ‘I love you, Mum.’

  ‘I love you too, my darling.’

  Back in her room she had a long shower, then made her way over to the chair that looked down on the pretty stone patio and across to the ancient oak tree. The rain poured down from a heavy grey sky.

  ‘I couldn’t give a stuff,’ she said, hugging herself in the comfortable towelling dressing-gown her mother had given her six years before when she’d first left home to move twenty minutes down the road to the UCD campus. She sat there and thought about Liv for a while. You would have been a lovely bride, Liv.

  There was a knock on the door and George was lying on the bed before Harri managed to say, ‘Come in.’

  ‘Moaning’s here. Mum’s making her a coffee so you have five minutes before the all-important hair and makeup.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You look incredibly relaxed. Have we met before?’ he asked, in jest.

  ‘Ha ha.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said seriously.

  ‘Never better.’

  ‘It’s pissing rain out.’

  ‘Let it rain.’

  ‘Dad and Matt have cracked open a vintage bottle of brandy and they’re halfway through it.’

  ‘I hope they drink it all.’

  ‘James is planning on singing “Unchained Melody” at the reception.’

  She laughed. ‘He bloody will not!’

  ‘My God, I think we may actually be going to a wedding today.’

  ‘You can count on it,’ she said.

  Duncan and Harri stood under an umbrella by the church door. She stepped inside and he closed the umbrella, shook it and laid it on the floor. Inside she could see all the people she loved: Melissa and Gerry with Jacob and Carrie, Susan, Andrew and Beth, who was holding hands with the boy who had given her crabs, George and Brendan, Matt and her mother, Aidan, who had travelled from London with his boyfriend Quan, and all the other people who had been kind enough to turn up a third time.

  And on the altar was her uncle Thomas, known to everyone else as Father Ryan, bursting with pride, happy that at last little Harri knew the truth. And when her dad walked her down the aisle, in her heart she carried with her a teenage girl called Liv.

  1 May 1976 – Saturday

  I woke up this morning dreaming of Kentucky. I saw horses and hay and trucks and land that went on for miles. I saw a big old farmhouse with a veranda and a swing chair big enough for six. I saw me in a meadow and Matthew riding a horse so fast he was a blur. It was really nice. I felt warm and whole and free and happy and safe. I felt safe. And when I looked down I saw a baby, just lying beside me, bald and thin and wrinkly, and although it doesn’t sound like it, the baby was really cute with a squishy face. She was holding my hand and smiling. And then I saw another one! This one had hair and was a little bit tubbier and was yelling and didn’t look one bit happy. So I picked it up and I think she was a girl but I’m not sure, and I held her and told her not to cry, and I stroked her and she listened to my heartbeat and she stopped. And I knew it was a dream and soon it would be over so I held her as tightly as I could and whispered into her ear but I couldn’t hear what I said, which makes me think I didn’t say anything because surely I’d know. Then she was gone. Dreams are weird. And I woke up. And all day I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic so I sat in my room and read my diary and I didn’t realize how much I say ‘anyway’, and ‘weird’ and ‘shit’. I say ‘shit’ a lot. And I switch off a lot too and I don’t know if that’s a good thing. Plus I really, really can’t draw. I think I’m nostalgic because soon I’ll be leaving here and endings, even the happy ones, are sad but then again every ending is a new beginning so that’s okay.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to John Goodman for the excellent tour of Wicklow, and his wife Joanne Costello, for taking my husband horse-riding so that I could actually get some work done. Cheers, amigos! Thanks to my family: I love you all. To my husband: you still haven’t a clue what I do but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you and I love you. To my friends: you make life so much sweeter. To everyone at Penguin Ireland and UK: thank you for your patience and support, and especially Patricia Deevy and Hazel Orme for all your hard work. And finally I promised a little lady that I’d be sure to compliment her beautiful eyes on paper so, Milly Kerins, you have the most beautiful eyes.