The Last Goodbye

by Caroline Finnerty

  “Are you coming for one?”

  “Nah, I should probably be heading home.” Adam was hesitant. Not that it would make any difference, he thought bitterly to himself. She barely spoke to him anyway.

  “C’mon for one!”

  “I’d better not – maybe next time, yeah?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No worries.”

  They took the lift down.

  “See you Monday, so,” said Ronan.

  “Have a good one!”

  Ronan joined some of the others and Adam stood watching asthey walked over to McCormack’s bar, carefree and untroubled. How he wished he could join them – he would rather be going anywhere else but home.

  He took his bike from the shelter and headed for Rathmines. He pedalled slowly and allowed the cool evening air to fill his lungs, feeling his chest rise in fullness before falling again. He felt his thigh muscles work hard as he pedalled up the steep incline before turning left over Harold’s Cross Bridge. His cycle to and from work was the only time of day he had with his thoughts to himself. It was his time when he got to think about everything that had happened and try and make sense of it all. It was still so fresh. He only had to look at himself to see angry reminders criss-crossing his skin. Usually when he cycled he racked his head trying to remember the exact sequence of events but his brain would only allow him to go so far.

  When he reached their house, he pushed open the wrought-iron gate and wheeled his bike up the path. He could see the lights were all off downstairs. He fumbled with his keys in the lock for a few moments before he was finally able to get into his house. Today’s post sat waiting for him on the mat inside the door. He stooped to pick it up. The envelopes told him it was nothing more interesting than bills, junk mail and a bank statement. He placed them unopened on the hall table. He shouted out to see if Emma was home but no voice answered his call. He hardly knew why he did that as he knew she wouldn’t answer anyway.He went into the kitchen and took a cool beer out of the fridge. He pulled off the metal top andgulped it back.

  Emma’s head hadn’t been up to much for the rest of the day. She’d tried her best to think of some winning tag lines for the Sofa World campaign but she didn’t have much luck.

  The office began to empty out after four with everyone heading off to various parts of the country for the weekend and by seven she was alone in the open-plan office. She preferred it that way; she could concentrate better without the constant drone of voices. She tried putting some words onto her notepad but nothing was coming. Eventually, after nine, she admitted defeat and knew that stupid taglines for springy sofas would be swimming around in her head all weekend long.

  In keeping with their low-cost strategy, A1’s offices were located on Rosses Street, in a dingy part of Dublin City, which was long overdue rejuvenation. It was a notorious area for muggers, so she made her way hurriedly down towards the quays. She watched as hordes of teenagers, hen and stag parties, already bladdered, made their way towards the city’s current hot-spots, gearing themselves up for a heavy night of drinking.

  She didn’t want to go home just yet so she decided to keep walking and headed down towards Dawson Street. The narrow paths were crowded with gangs of smokers standing outside so she turned onto a cobble-locked side-street where crowds were sitting along the outdoor terraces under café-bar awnings, protected from the cold evening air by patio heaters. By immersing herself amongst these people, she didn’t feel so alone.

  She wandered aimlessly for awhile until she felt her stomach growl and she suddenly realised she was hungry. After skipping lunch, she had forgotten to eat anything for the rest of the day. She looked at her watch and it was nearly eleven o’clock so she hailed a taxi and headed home to Rathmines. She climbed into the back, stated her destination and sank into the leatherette upholstery. She sat listening to the constant buzzing and conversation over and back on the radio between the base station and the different drivers. The driver made half-hearted chit-chat with her – well, he talked and she made occasional sounds of agreement, which seemed to be enough for him to keep rambling on. By the time they turned onto Rathmines Road, she could feel her stomach begin twisting into its familiar knot and, as the car pulled up outside her home, Emma felt her heart lurch. She took her time to locate her money in her wallet before paying him and slamming the door shut.

  At least the lights were off.

  With trepidation and slow steps she walked up the driveway to her home. No matter how hard she tried and how successfully she carried it off at work, once she was on her own doorstep, she couldn’t push the reality of her life out of her head anymore.

  Interview with Caroline Finnerty

  1. Where did the idea for The Last Goodbye come from?

  The idea came from a story a friend told me one day about a woman she knew that was confronted with the same dilemma facing Eva. The lady was pregnant and learned she had an aggressive form of cancer. She refused to take the treatment offered and unfortunately neither she nor her baby survived. This story really affected me when I heard it – it got me thinking about how a person can be in one way be so selfless for their unborn baby that they put their own health second but it also left me wondering if she had taken treatment, would she and her unborn child both have lived?

  Around the same time I read about Sheila Hodgers, the County Louth woman who was refused cancer treatment during her pregnancy in 1982 because her practitioners claimed it would harm the foetus. She was left without treatment or even pain relief until she delivered her baby two months premature in March 1983. Sadly her baby didn’t survive and she died two days later.

  Although different to the storyline in The Last Goodbye because the character Eva was not denied treatment, in fact she was encouraged to take it, I wanted to explore the idea of a pregnant woman being a vehicle for her unborn baby, which essentially Eva is, although it is by her own choice.

  2. How did you research the storyline?

  The main difficulty I had was that Eva’s story is set in 1992 and most information on the internet was relevant to the present day so I had to ensure that the storyline reflected treatments available at that time. Therefore I read medical journals both primary literature and reviews that were published in the early 1990’s so that my research was as accurate as possible. I have a Masters degree in Biology so I would have a general understanding of medical terminology, which definitely helped.

  When I had a basic level of research carried out, I devised a medical questionnaire and I contacted Dr. Grainne Flannelly of the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street who very kindly answered my questions. I hope I have reflected medical treatments as accurately as possible but any errors or deviations from correct practice are my fault.

  I think it’s important to point out that recent studies have shown chemotherapy to be safe for the foetus after the first trimester, which is welcome development for any woman who is faced with this awful dilemma.

  3. Do you have a favourite character?

  I have to say I have a soft spot for Kate, the main protagonist. She has spent her life running away from her problems and I’m sure the reader will find her quite frustrating as a person to begin with. I know I personally just wanted to shake her at times but by the end of the book I think she has grown and developed as person.

  4. What scene was the most difficult/interesting to write?

  I found Eva’s last scene, where the she is dying in hospital and she finally opens up about her fears of dying with Sister Rita emotional to write. For the first time, the reader gets to see Eva without her usual brave face and jokey manner. Also later that night when Noel is at her bedside and she is reminiscing back on a day that the family had at the beach in happier times, being a mother myself, I found that scene hard to write.

  5. The character of Eva tends to bury her head in the sand rather than face up to her problems, was that an intentional character trait?

  It was inte
ntional. I think Eva is an eternal optimist, she has an ‘ah sure it will all be grand’ mentality and doesn’t like to dwell too long on her problems. I think she really believed that it would all be okay, she didn’t see her decision as heroic or as a form of self-sacrifice. She believed that once she delivered her baby, then she would take her treatment and get better too and that is why she made the decision that she did.

  I’m sure the reader will notice that Kate seems to have inherited her mother’s inability to face up to her problems, which is why she spent so many years of her life unable to confront her past. I deliberately wanted them both to have this trait to help to show their similar personalities.

  6. Your first novel In a Moment, and The Last Goodbye both have a ‘what would you do?’ moral dilemma at their heart, why is that?

  I think there are lots of situations in life where there are no easy answers. As a fiction writer I have the benefit of being able to explore both sides of a dilemma. Sometimes when I am writing, I ask myself ‘what would I do in that situation?’ but then when I think about it from the other point of view, I can often empathise with that viewpoint too.

  In Eva’s case if she had taken the treatment offered to her she may have survived but would Aoife? In my first novel, In a Moment, the character Jean struggles with a decision, which goes against all her maternal loyalties to her son Paul.

  I suppose there are situations in life for which there are no easy answers, we just have to make the best decision we can at that time. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong.

  7. Have you always wanted to be a writer?

  I was always bookish as a child and have memories of ripping pages out of copybooks, drawing pictures on one side of the paper and writing stories on the other. Then when I was finished I would staple them all together into a book. In school I loved nothing more than mulling over an essay topic that the teacher gave us for homework or writing arguments for debates. I’ve always found it easier to say something on paper than express it verbally so I suppose my love of writing has always been there but I just didn’t recognise it in myself. I always thought writing books was something that ‘other people’ did. It wasn’t until my mid twenties that it occurred to me that I too could write a book so I decided to give it a go. After a few false starts, I had the idea for In a Moment, after myfirst child was born and I knew I had to write it.

  8. Tell us a bit about your writing process – do you like to plot much before starting a novel or do you prefer to dive straight in?

  I fall into the latter camp. I have tried plotting my novels chapter by chapter in the past – I think it would be much easier to sit down at the laptop every day if I knew what I had to write about for that day, but it just doesn’t work for me. I find I only really get to know my characters when I start writing them, that’s when they take me off and teach me things that I never knew about them.

  When I have an idea for a story I will let it sift around in my head for a while and flesh out the characters a bit before I will start writing. I usually start with a rough outline of the themes of the novel, the general story and some key scenes. Sometimes I will know the ending but not always. It’s a bit of a scarier way to do things because it’s like setting off on a journey with a map but it means I get to take the scenic route and see new things and visit different places along the way.

  9. Who are your favourite authors and why?

  As a teenager I would devour Deirdre Purcell and Maeve Binchy novels. I also love Marian Keyes and Ciara Geraghty who are both fantastically talented Irish authors. I also enjoy reading JoJo Moyes, Maggie O’Farrell for emotional sagas and David Nicholl for humour.

  10. Tell us a bit about your next book – have you started writing it yet?

  I am nearly halfway through it. The main protagonist, Conor Fahy has just lost the love of his life, his long term partner Leni who died tragically when she was knocked off her bike a few months previously and Conor is struggling to cope with everyday life.

  Jack White is eight years old. He likes Ben 10, Giant Jawbreaker sweets and reading books. He likes his Dad - when he doesn’t shout. He doesn’t like the bad monsters that are eating up his mammy inside her tummy.

  It is the story which explores the unlikely friendship between a boy and a man who come into each other’s lives when they both are in need of a friend.