Kieran sat close beside Lucy, his arm around her shoulder and trailing onto her stomach.
‘On that morning, when did you first know something was wrong?’ Nina asked.
‘I didn’t,’ Lucy said and they were off, working their way down the nuts and bolts of the story: the fall, the first rescue, the further fall, the time passing, the panic.
‘It was like waking from a nightmare, only to find it was real,’ Lucy said.
‘You must have feared for your own life,’ Nina leaned forward. Don’t ask if part of her would have welcomed the oblivion.
‘I don’t think I allowed myself to feel it until the rescue team came,’ Lucy said. ‘Up to then, I honestly thought that as long as I could picture my future outside the bus then nothing bad could happen. But that doesn’t mean anything. Orla could picture her future too. She wanted to be a dancer.’
‘She sounds like an inspiring person,’ Nina said gently.
‘She made me think about my own dreams, my grown-up dreams, not just the ones I had as a kid.’
‘One of those dreams is about to come true,’ Kieran cut across her. ‘Lucy has always wanted to be a mother and in a few short months she will be. We couldn’t be happier about it. We’re going to get married after she’s born.’
‘A daughter, how lovely.’ Nina smiled. Be careful, she wanted to say. There are none so short-sighted as the happy.
When they finished, Nina gathered her things together, then realised that Lucy was still there, standing alone by the door. ‘My mother went out for a cigarette and Kieran went to pull the car around. He doesn’t want me to have to walk too far in the rain.’
‘How are you feeling?’ The question surprised Nina as much as Lucy. It was a long time since she had felt anything other than jealous of a pregnant woman.
‘Tired, mostly. I haven’t been sleeping too well. I have these weird, vivid nightmares when I try to sleep. Dropping her, forgetting her. Things like that.’
The memory came suddenly. ‘I remember telling my daughter when she was very small that as far as I was concerned she was only as cute as her next nappy,’ Nina said. ‘To be honest, I kind of meant it.’
‘Really?’ Lucy smiled.
‘Babies are very forgiving, you know. They give you time to learn alongside them.’
She patted Lucy’s arm and said goodbye, letting herself get as far as the ladies’ toilet before scratching her arm until it bled.
After they had signed the forms that would switch off the machines, she had stood beside the cot, holding on to her baby’s hand and letting her go. Every day she made that choice again. Every day she got up and went out into the world was another day she let her daughter go.
* * *
‘You know exactly what I’m going to say,’ Tim said, amused.
‘The timing of the report is a comfort for families and you’re confident that anything that warrants further investigation will be looked into with all appropriate speed and resources?’ Nina tried.
‘See? You don’t even need me. Just put on a deep voice.’
She laughed. ‘Helpful, thanks. You forgot to add that the report might be enough to give them some kind of closure.’ It had been a shock to her, how the black-and-white of Aisling’s death certificate had comforted him.
‘There was a homeless woman at the site. May, I think her name was. She said something about the crash – no right of reply, she called it. How the people on the bus had no chance of defence, to say excuse me but I think this was meant for someone else. That…’ He cleared his throat. ‘I can see now how that could undo a person.’
Nina closed her eyes and let silence fall between them. If someone had told her five years ago, three years, even, that there would come a day when they had to think of things to say to each other, she wouldn’t have believed them. ‘You’re dreaming,’ she would have said. ‘Not us. We’re too well-met.’ It was their expression, their shorthand, their us-against-the-world. How well and truly the world had beaten them.
A month ago, she would have told him about going, at last, to close Aisling’s bank account. On her second or third vodka, she would have recounted the grubby little suit behind the desk interrogating her about her reasons for closing the account. The vicious pleasure she took in telling him, the savage contempt she felt for his embarrassment. How his blush of shame made her feel strong. Now, though, she breathed through the impulse, let the silence steady her.
‘How are you doing, with everything?’ he asked.
Three weeks separated Aisling’s anniversary and her birthday. Spring, for Nina, was the season of holding her breath at the sight of hearses and birthday cakes.
‘She would have been four,’ Tim said. ‘Starting school, nearly.’
He understood, he always would, that it was her birthday that was the killer. Her anniversary was just about her death, just one fact to deal with. Anniversaries were public property. Her birthday, though, was another story. Birthdays had a long and terrible reach, the list of things missed growing by the year.
‘I’m going to clear out her room,’ Nina said. ‘It’s time. I thought you might like to come and help, see if there is anything you want to take… you know.’
‘Of course I’ll help,’ Tim said. ‘It’s not something anyone should do on their own.’
He was gracious enough not to remind her that she had said this twice before only to lose her nerve.
‘I might really do it this time,’ she said. ‘I started seeing someone again. A therapist, I mean.’
‘I’m glad. Are you finding it…’
‘It’s helping.’ She shrugged even though he couldn’t see her. ‘She says I have to stop holding onto the pain. I have to want to let it go.’
‘Mine told me that people can become addicted to suffering,’ Tim said. ‘That letting go doesn’t mean I love her any less. Nothing can take away from my time with her. Our time with her,’ he added.
For the longest time, she confused the memory of love with love itself. It took courage for him to make the first move when it became apparent that their pain only magnified each other’s. It would never be unimportant, the time they had together. Their little share of family life.
‘It must help to have Deb,’ she said, without planning it. Someone to dilute the suffering, not augment it.
‘It does. But it’s not without its guilt.’ He paused. ‘We took Brendan and Laura to Aisling’s grave. They asked a lot about her. They want to make a cake for her birthday. A “just-because” cake, Laura called it.’
She could hear pride and guilt in his voice. That was his future now, worrying about those children. Someone else’s babies feeling all the love and support he held within himself.
She pinched the flesh between her thumb and forefinger, concentrated on its sting. ‘A “just-because” cake. I like it. I’m glad she will be remembered.’ I’m glad you’re happy.
‘I’ve brought her with me though, Nina, you know that,’ he said, his voice urgent. ‘I haven’t left her behind.’
‘We were lucky, the three of us. Our luck just ran out,’ she said.
* * *
Later, she flicked through the news channels, coming to rest on a report about a couple who killed their teething baby by rubbing heroin on its gums. She sat on her sofa and cried tears that were three years old. Older than her child would ever be. It was a big ask, to live peacefully in this unfair world. But it was possible to move on without forgetting. She heard it in Tim’s voice, clear as a bell: Aisling was still with him, too deep within to be cast off.
She dried her eyes and dialled her sister’s number.
LIKE YOU WERE MY OWN
‘Are we there yet?’ Dónal Óg demands from the back seat.
‘Not yet.’
‘Do we have my armbands?’ he asks, leaning forward, a study in anxiety.
‘Armbands, check,’ Nina says. ‘Your mam packed everything we need.’
If Irene’s reaction on the phone had be
en low-key, the size of her small son’s bag belied her casualness.
‘Are you sure?’ he asks, again.
‘I’m sure.’ In the mirror, he still looks dubious. His face so different from Aisling’s, despite their shared blood. ‘If there’s anything missing, then I’m sure we can buy it in the shop at the water park, okay?’
‘Okay. Can I get blue goggles? I don’t like my red ones any more. Red is for girls.’
‘All the colours are for all the people,’ she says, as she has heard her sister do.
‘I’m bored,’ he announces a few minutes later.
‘Do you want a snack?’
‘No.’ He kicks the back of the seat once, twice, then brightens. ‘Tell me a story.’
‘What kind of story?’
‘I don’t know. A good one. With monsters in it. And an astronaut. And a car that can go really fast.’
‘And a princess?’
‘NO!’ he roars. ‘No girls!’
‘No girls,’ she agrees. ‘Let me think… Once upon a time…’
At the next set of traffic lights, she glances in the rear-view mirror and sees he has dozed off, his hands loose in his lap.
She turns the radio on low so as not to wake him and signals to turn for the coast.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Lauren Parsons and the team at Legend Press for that first heart-stopping email and everything since. To Steven Marking for turning lots of words into one perfect image. Also to Elaine Hansen and the Luke Bitmead Bursary, and the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize for seeing something in the earlier version of this novel.
Thanks to Wendy Vaizey, Paul Bailey and the Kingston University distance learning Creative Writing team. Especially to Rachel and Sylvia, for virtual writing and real friendship.
Thanks to the organisers, sponsors and judges of very (very) many writing competitions for the crucial confidence boosts along the way. Among them, the Irish Writers’ Centre and all connected with Novel Fair 2019, the Caledonia Novel Award, the Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award, and the Zoetrope and Fish Publishing Short Story Prizes. Thanks also to Hannah Weatherill and the Northbank Talent Management team for ongoing support.
My good friends know I write – for fun, for figuring-out, for sanity. Thanks for asking how it was going – a brave question and one for which I am always grateful. A special thank you to Julia for the invaluable side-by-side writing mornings and early readings of this novel. May the hot chocolate and macarons never run out. Thanks, too, to all the cafes that make writers welcome by not hovering or clearing cups too hastily.
Particular thanks to my family: to my parents-in-law, Eleanor and John, for giving me time and space and celebrating every little success; to my parents, Joe and Teresa, the only people to have read (almost) everything I’ve ever written – thank you both for the gifts of reading and curiosity (and for destroying the evidence of my primary school rhyming poetry phase).
Special thanks to Dee – sister, friend, future Dolly Bantry. Again: no, none of the characters are you. Sorry.
Much love to Colm, Oisín and Cara, for leaving me alone and trusting that I would emerge eventually and in a better mood. And for everything else, too.
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