Lesley enters the room, interrupting my daydream. She looks beautiful in her long, figure-hugging navy dress and if she doesn’t want to be here, as I’ve suspected since we arrived this morning, she is hiding it well. Her smile reassures me that I’m doing the right thing by going today. We talked about it a lot lately, and even though she could never possibly understand the depth of the trauma I experienced ten years ago, she knows it’s important to me to come and pay my respects to other victims and attempt once more to close a chapter of my life that has haunted me for a very long time now.
‘We’d better get going, honey,’ she says, brushing the shoulders of my jacket down as she speaks in her beautiful Welsh accent. ‘I’ll go start the car.’
‘I’ll be right there,’ I tell her, straightening my tie in the mirror in my bedroom. I wasn’t sure what today’s dress code would be, but I thought it important to look smart in honour of those who lost their lives and those who were seriously injured.
Lesley leaves me to it, so I take my time and then I follow her downstairs, so glad that my father has taken Mum to a hospital appointment which means they’ve gone before we leave. As I walk to the door I do my best to erase Kate’s face from my mind. I never did find out her surname, but I didn’t need to know that minor detail to remember her so vividly. I step outside into the summer sunshine, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, and open the car door, taking a deep breath and blowing out the negative energy that always fills me when I come to this house. I don’t think I ever realized how big it was during my childhood, or how much living in such a palatial manor made me so different to many of my peers. Back then it was just my home and I knew no different, but now it stinks of contradiction, grandeur and a two-faced life I’m glad I left behind.
‘You sure you want to do this, David?’ Lesley asks when I get into the passenger seat of the car we hired this morning at Belfast Airport.
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘It’s just – well, I don’t often agree with your father, but he believes it’s going to open up old wounds that—’
‘Please don’t quote my father, Lesley,’ I beg of her. ‘Please,I’ve made my decision. I want to be here today. I have to do this. I want to.’
I stare ahead as my thoughts are filled once more with Kate and the possibility she might be here today. I think back to the aftermath of the explosion and feel her hand in mine again, so sticky and fine, as we held each other together – almost literally – and I realize how much it would mean to just see her one more time.
I’ve never told Lesley about Kate.
I’ve never told any of my girlfriends about her or how we helped each other in the most tragic, surreal moments of my life. I don’t know why, but I could never bring myself to talk about her to anyone really, apart from to my mother when I’d woken from a bad dream having called out her name – and to Aaron of course. I’d told Aaron all about her just before he died, not that he was in any fit state to listen.
I’ve had many girlfriends in England, some of whom I spilled my guts out to so much, revealing my trauma about losing Aaron and my emotions about the bomb itself, that they’d run a mile. Others, like Lesley, had very little idea what went on sometimes in my muddled-up mind although I did open up to Lesley over time. With her father’s military background, she knew the effects of post-traumatic stress and did her best to listen even if she never really could fully understand what I was going through.
But I never told any of them about Kate. No matter whohad shared my heart, my time or my bed in the last ten years, I never did tell them about the woman who helped me through that day.
Maybe I’ve been afraid that, by doing so, I’d realize that I have never stopped looking for her. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I have always been searching, even in places where I knew she couldn’t possibly be. I’d look for her on buses, on trains, on beaches in foreign countries when on holiday, I’d scour the streets of my home town when I’d visit. Sometimes I would think I’d seen her, but then I’d realize it was just my mind playing tricks on me.
I can’t tell anyone, I can’t even tell Lesley, but I’ve never stopped thinking about her.
And I know I never will.
5.
KATE
‘You look very pretty. You suit your hair like that,’ Shannon tells me as soon as I walk in through the door of my childhood home, almost three hours after I left my life with Sam back in Dublin.
I kiss her forehead, not having to lean down as far as I used to have to, then look down at my yellow summer dress and tuck my shortened, darker hair behind my ears as I follow her down the narrow hallway.
The woodchip wallpaper that graced the walls for so many years has been long ago replaced by much nicer floral decor, and the floor beneath me that was once topped with lino now has much more pleasant laminate wood, a big step up and a sign of life going in the right direction for all those who live here, at least on the surface.
‘Why thank you, darling niece,’ I say in return. ‘Happy birthday, my favourite girl! How are you feeling? Sweet sixteen! Ah Shannon, I can’t believe it!’
‘I feel exactly like how I felt yesterday and the day before,’ she jokes as I follow her to the kitchen, towards the sound of the news on the radio. ‘But maybe now I’ll be allowed to stay out a bit later than eleven on weekends!’
My mother turns to greet me from the sink where she is, as usual, in the middle of preparing a delicious dinner for us to enjoy later.
‘Don’t tell me, steak and kidney pie?’ I ask, my stomach growling at the very thought of it. Mum is an exceptional cook and she loves to get me home so she can show off some of our old favourite dishes, especially on an occasion like a birthday. ‘Please say mash, veg and your famous gravy?’
Since her time inside, which thankfully feels like a world away, she has turned her hand to cooking, baking and community work, and maybe even a little bit of romance with a man we refer to as ‘the lovely Liam’.
‘I must be very predictable,’ she jokes, wiping her hands on her apron and turning to greet me. We hug awkwardly and she quickly goes back to her station, preferring as always to keep her mind and herself busy than engage in idle small talk or physical gestures.
‘Predictable is good sometimes,’ I say to her. ‘How’s work been? And how’s the lovely Liam?’
At the mention of Liam, she shakes her head in a swift little trait she has that makes her brown hair move. Liam is a very dashing local youth worker whom she talks about all the time.
‘Work is thriving, and Liam is indeed very lovely,’ she tells me. ‘But not in the romantic fashion you are hoping for.’
