He nods in agreement with a smile.
‘Maybe I should have had you or Peter O’Neill write some of my sermons,’ he says with a chuckle. ‘You might have made a better job of them than I did sometimes.’
I shrug.
‘I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself lately,’ I explain to him. I’m not sure if the bedroom where he lies is warm and sticky, or if I’m hot because of the conversation, but I loosen my jacket to cool down a bit. ‘I don’t think I’d have been so worldly or wise before this year took everything I loved the most away from me. Losing everything has made me reassess my actions and the direction I want to go in.’
He looks across towards the window, closes his eyes for a moment and then looks back in my direction.
‘You loved Kate Foley deeply and still do, I know that now,’ he says to me. ‘And I was a fool to believe I could ever stop that.’
I feel my eyes sting as he says her name with dignity for the first time.
This was not what I expected to hear from my father and, although I never needed his permission to be with Kate, to have his blessing is a lot more than I could ever have imagined.
‘She’s making a speech today in Belfast’s Waterfront Hall, you know,’ he says, nodding towards a newspaperthat lies on his bedside table. ‘Why don’t you go and support her?’
I lift up the newspaper quickly and scan the pages until I find Kate’s face in a smiling photo. I feel butterflies in my stomach as I touch her face in the picture.
‘I’m not sure I can make it to Belfast in time,’ I say when I check the clock on the wall. ‘The event starts in just over an hour and Kate might be one of the first speakers in the line-up listed.’
Now it’s my father’s turn to raise an eyebrow.
‘Take my car.’
‘Really?’ I ask him.
‘Really,’ he whispers.
I look at him, trying to absorb this almighty change of heart.
‘“Even if the opposition to love is only merelytimeitself,”’ my father reminds me of a sermon he used to give, ‘“it will only fan its flames.” Take it from a sorry old fool who is admitting he was wrong before his clock stops ticking, David. Please don’t waste another second. Go and find her. Go and find Kate, just as you both promised you would one day. Take the car. Go and find the woman you love and who loves you.’
23.
KATE
There are 2,250 people in this packed auditorium, and the lights are so bright I can’t see any of them from the wings of the stage when I peep out waiting on my turn to speak, which is probably a good thing as I’m sweating buckets at the very thought of so many faces sitting in the darkness.
I know the first row has been assigned to the Press, and there’s a family and friends section to my right where my mum, Mo and Shannon sit along with my old friend Sinead who has travelled up to Belfast from Dublin to support me, along with a couple of our colleagues from the hospital where I worked, but there’s still an emptiness in my heart as I address the crowd and a deep regret that I didn’t contact David to invite him here.
I should have told him how much today means to me, and how it would make it even more special if he was here, but I promised I’d give him the space he needed, so he cando what he needs to do. I swore to myself I wouldn’t push him into seeing me or any regular contact, knowing that if it were meant to be then love would find a way, and I prayed that he might forgive me for lashing out my blame on him over my father’s death.
I step out onto the stage and the silence is deafening, then a trickle of applause turns into something louder and I do my best to stay focused on the job at hand. I’m the third speaker in an event that was designed to inspire young people to be the best they can be, no matter what life throws at them, and the audience is mostly young people in school uniform and their teachers, who hope to become inspired in some way by what I have to say.
The biggest element to my own story of overcoming adversity is of course my bomb-survival story, which I’ve told so many times, but this time I want to pay credit to David and the part he played that day in not only helping Shannon and me stay calm, but also to the person who taught me that love knows no boundaries, love has no rules and love has no religion.
‘We called him the ice-cream shop boy for years in our house,’ I tell the audience in my off-the-cuff speech, which I’ve decided doesn’t need a script or visuals of any sort. I’ve learned that the best way at such events is to deliver from the heart and let the story speak for itself. ‘That name stuck. The ice-cream shop boy.’
The audience seem to find that both endearing andamusing, and as I go on to say how we then met again ten years later and began a relationship which saw so many ups and downs, including the worst of times when David was injured once more in faraway Haiti, and then our parting this year after the passing of my loved and adored father.
I speak about inner grit, about the importance of asking for help when it’s needed, about leaning on good friends and about surrounding yourself with goals, milestones. I talk about never saying no to new opportunities.
‘We were the last generation to remember what was known as The Troubles,’ I say as I move towards my conclusion. ‘That three-decade conflict saw those of nationalist and unionist beliefs tear each other apart in a bloody campaign of horror. We can be grateful that we were the last to experience soldiers on our streets, we were the last to experience bomb threats and bullets as part of our daily lives, and we can be grateful that our children and that you, the next generation, will never see what we saw. Along with that gratitude, on a more personal level, David and I wanted to prove to the world that our love was bigger than all the differences imposed on us by others. We wanted to show the world there still could be a wonderful life, full of love, after trauma.’
I’ve slightly changed direction in my talk perhaps, but it’s what is on my mind now and I know I’ve got their attention.
‘It’s an age-old saying that love is blind, and I believe thatnow more than ever, because I’ve learned that true love doesn’t see colour or class, race or religion, age or occupation,’ I conclude. ‘True love doesn’t see scars or illness as a barrier, or money or poverty as a threat, nor does it recognize jealousy or pain as a weapon. True love is everything that is warm and good, and tough and strong, and determined and righteous. Most of all, true love never comes to an end. It can’t. It’s always there because it doesn’t know how to leave. It has nowhere else to go.’
