‘Look, Miss Foley,’ he said, looking right at me. ‘I know you’d like to see my son and I hope you don’t take thispersonally, but I’m requesting that … in fact I’m telling you … please don’t call here again.’
The tears threatened to burst from my eyes and I momentarily lost my breath.
‘What?’ I asked him. ‘You know nothing about me, and you know nothing about my mother!’
‘I know a lot more about your connections than you may think I do,’ he said firmly. ‘I believe you are friends with a local, er,thugcalled Sean McGee?’
My heart leapt. ‘He is not my friend,’ I choked, my eyes widening.
‘He’s your niece’s father. Now, I’ll see you to the door and I’ll repeat: don’t ever try to contact David again. I’m sure when you think about it properly, you’ll understand why.’
I marched out of the house on autopilot, gripping the scrunched-up piece of paper in the sweaty palm of my hand, and threw it onto the passenger seat of my car, doing my best not to cry when I was still within his sight.
His arrogance and his unfair judgement of me stung so deeply I wanted to scream in his face, but I knew that would only prove his conviction that someone like me – from my end of town, with my dubious family background – would never be good enough to speak to his son.
The tyres of my car spun on the gravel as I left the driveway of their magnificent home, feeling as if I was dirton Reverend Campbell’s shoe. When I got home I went straight to bed, slamming the door and ignoring my mother’s questions of concern.
‘I’ll go back there with you,’ she told me defiantly. ‘I’ll go right back there and give that man a few home truths! He has always had it against me but how dare he judge you? How dareanyonejudge you? He has no idea what he is talking about! No one does!’
‘Just leave it, Mum,’ I told her, afraid I’d never find my breath properly again. ‘Just leave it, please, and just leave me alone.’
I spent the next few weeks – maybe even months – in that room, spiralling backwards in my depression, unable to leave the house, not even on my twenty-first birthday when I should have been out celebrating like normal girls my age.
Nothing in my life has been normal since, of course, and now, as I sit on this train heading back there, I hope I never am made to feel as low as that ever again.
But despite his father, despite that terrible day and despite the sleepless nights I spent reliving everything so horrible about that particular year of my life, I still think of David Campbell like a shining light in the dark, even today. I still dream about him, I still remember the promise I made to find him, and I still long for a day that – when the time is right – our paths will cross again.
I wonder if that right time will be today.
DAVID
I am ready for this.
At least, I am physically, though my mind isn’t so sure; my head races with flashbacks and memories, just like it always does when I spend time at my family home or when I remember the bomb and the horror I’ve lived with since.
My childhood bedroom has been redecorated many times since I left home, its floral bedspread and matching curtains typical of my mother’s attempts to keep the Old Rectory’s traditional style, but its unfamiliar decor doesn’t prevent me thinking about times gone by.
I’ve come to accept that my life is made up of two very distinctive parts. Life before the bomb and life after the bomb, and sometimes, although I’ve moved on and progressed immensely, I like to allow myself time to drift back to those carefree days beforehand when none of us had any idea of how our lives would change.
Most of those memories are of my deep friendship with Aaron and just thinking of him comforts me deeply. I remember the first day we met, when I started working in the shop; his geeky, lanky demeanour was a stark contrast to my more athletic physique but we clicked over a love of rock music and a desire to philosophize and challenge the norm. He was Catholic, I was Protestant, and we loved that we crossed that divide so seamlessly, just how it should be, from day one. In fact, I don’t think we ever said those wordsout loud. We were friends, we made each other laugh a lot and that was all that mattered.
‘Pints?’ he suggested to me one afternoon when our shift ended simultaneously just a week into the job. I remember the sparkle in his green eyes as he suggested an unplanned afternoon in a beer garden, the look of ‘divilment’ as my teachers would have described it, luring me into a world so far removed from the rigid routine my father loved to subject me to.
I left work with a breeze behind me, mesmerized by his happy-go-lucky ways. I loved how every story he told was delivered with so much enthusiasm. We talked that day about everything from his love of listening to music turned up really loud to my love of playing the drums in our garden shed. He told me of the time he bungee-jumped in Belfast when hungover aged just fifteen, and when he broke his leg in a motorbike accident the very next day, almost breaking his mother’s heart. He was wild, he was carefree, he was upfront and honest, and he was soon my very best friend.
What I’d give to hear his heart-warming laugh again today. What I’d give to be planning a beer with him this evening in that same garden. What I’d give to be able to visit him now, and I’d laugh and he’d laugh and we’d plan our next post-work shenanigans, where we’d convey how much we loved each other through a pat on the back and a swig from a bottle of beer. What I’d give to hear his stories just one more time.
That will never happen, though. Just a year after the bomb, Aaron’s mother found him cold in bed with a note saying he couldn’t suffer the darkness that engulfed him any more. Like me, he’d seen too much that day. Unlike me, he hadn’t found a way to cope with it all. Where I was sent off to friends in Scotland, to therapists, to anyone my parents felt could help me vent off my anger and pain, Aaron took to his bedroom and shut the whole world out until the day came when he decided he’d shut it out for ever.
Aaron, the tall, ginger, apple-crunching, entertaining, funny, handsome and most wholesome person I have ever met is gone for ever. His experience on the day of the bomb, what he saw, what he witnessed, never left him, so he left us instead.
Tears sting my eyes and nerves grip my stomach. I have second thoughts about attending today’s memorial, but there’s no going back now. I have to do this for so many reasons, but no one in my life could understand them. Not my parents, not my fiancée Lesley, only me.
And then I think of Kate – the mysterious Kate who I spent only minutes with, yet it felt like a lifetime – and I wonder why we never did manage to find each other as promised, for comfort, for friendship, and to see if the bond we’d once felt was bigger than the trauma we shared.
Kate and Shannon. Two names that will stay with me until the day I die. I’ve thought about Kate a lot since then, of course, and I still do.
Not long after the explosion, before I left home, I took to driving around the whole town night after night and day after day, hoping to catch a glimpse of her by accident. I’d picture the scene in my head, imagining where I’d see her, perhaps walking a dog along the pavement, or coming out of a shop with her mind busy, or riding a bike along the road. Our eyes would lock and we’d both smile and maybe even cry a little. We’d hug. We’d hold hands again. We’d heal. We’d be friends like no other because no one else could ever understand the anger and sorrow we’d lived with since. She was the only other person I know who experienced what I did that day. Well, the only person other than Aaron, and Aaron is gone for ever.
