‘This is not true!’ I scream into the empty walls of our apartment. ‘Please tell me it’s not true. David, come home. We need you. Please, David, please come home.Please!’
My mother answers my call in the middle of my meltdown but I can hardly speak. I can only scream out his name and I just cry and sob and scream at the injustice of it all.
‘We’re coming to you right now, baby,’ my mother tells me, her voice crippled with sorrow. ‘We’ll get there as soon as we can. It’s our turn to look after you now, Kate. Stay strong! We’re on our way, my love.’
I slide onto the floor and clutch my belly, screaming for mercy from this nightmare that has unfolded on what should have been our happiest day so far and the beginning of so much joy as a proper family.
‘I can’t do this without you, David,’ I whisper as I lean my head against the kitchen cupboard, cradling my stomach. ‘Please don’t leave me. Please don’t go.’
FIVE YEARS LATER
August 2018
25.
‘Which do you think is nicer, ice cream or ice lollies?’
We approach the awaiting crowd in the town centre for the twentieth anniversary of the bomb, a very modest gathering compared to the scenes ten years previously, and the questions keep coming.
‘Which should I get for my birthday, a puppy or a kitten?’
‘Who does she remind you of?’ Shannon asks me with her eyes wide open in wonder. ‘I swear, she even looks the same as I did. Was I really that annoying?’
‘Don’t say that, Shannon!’ says Mo. ‘She isn’t annoying. She is adorable. Will I take you for some ice cream, darling?’
My 5-year-old daughter, Hope Foley-Campbell, grins and takes her aunt’s hand and, as they walk towards a corner shop, I watch the scene in front of me with a sense of déjà vu.
‘How you coping?’ asks Shannon. She’s 26 now and I’m approaching the grand old age of 40; they say that life begins then, but to be honest my life has been pretty full up until now and I’m ready for it to stay quiet for a while.
‘Pretty tough, to be honest,’ I tell her. ‘You?’
‘I hardly remember it now.’
‘Lucky you,’ I whisper. ‘Do you mind if I take a walk?’
She smiles knowingly.
‘I’ll come with you if you want?’
I shake my head.
‘I’d rather do this alone if that’s OK,’ I say, swallowing back a huge lump of emotion. ‘I need to do it. It’s like my own little ceremony and, as hard as it will be, I’ll feel better for doing it before we all go back to England tomorrow.’
‘Sure,’ says Shannon, and I can sense her watch me as I head off up the hill, feeling the sun on my face. I get there and brace myself, and then I peel off my jacket as I approach the doorway of the shop where our story first began.
I find the little doorway, our shelter from the world, and I stand there and close my eyes as flashbacks of our life together so far flood my mind.
It’s good to look back on our lives before and after all the events that have shaped us to get us where we are today. It reminds me of how far I’ve come – of how far we’ve all come since that day.
I watch as the townsfolk go about their daily business, I listen as a church bell chimes in the distance, I look on as children skip along and as couples go in and out of shops chatting and bickering, laughing and smiling in the sunshine. Life really does go on, and I can almost hear my dad saying it. I miss him so much, I really do.
‘I thought I’d find you here,’ says Mo, shaking her headin surrender. ‘Sorry, but she wanted to follow you. I put her off for as long as I could but she just wants her mummy.’
Hope flashes me a cheeky smile. She holds a balloon in her hand and I do a double take when I see it.
‘Was the balloon your idea, or hers?’ I ask, just a little bit freaked out at the sight, transported back to the day of the bomb again. She is like a mirror image of Shannon and my skin rises into goose bumps at the similarities between this day and the one twenty whole years ago.
‘I wanted it and Shannon said I could have it if I stop asking so many questions,’ Hope tells me, her little fist clasped around the string as if her life depends on it.
