Laura Elliot
The Lost Sister

Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers in 2009 as The Prodigal Sister

This ebook edition published by HarperCollins Publishers in 2017

Copyright © June Considine 2009

June Considine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007336852

Version: 2017-01-13

Dedication

In loving memory of my close friend, Dympna Joyce-O’Byrne. Her zest for life and her tremendous courage will always be remembered

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Departures

Chapter One

Havenswalk, New Zealand–October 2008

Chapter Two

Rebecca’s Journal–1985 1985

Chapter Three

Dublin-January 2009

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Rebecca’s Journal–1985

Chapter Six

Havenswalk–January 2009

Chapter Seven

Letters to Nirvana

Chapter Eight

Rebecca’s Journal–1986

Chapter Nine

Letters to Nirvana

Chapter Ten

Rebecca’s Journal–1987

Chapter Eleven

Letters to Nirvana

Chapter Twelve

Letters to Nirvana

Chapter Thirteen

Rebecca’s Journal–1989

Chapter Fourteen

Letters to Nirvana

Chapter Fifteen

Rebecca’s Journal–1990

Chapter Sixteen

Letters to Nirvana

Chapter Seventeen

Rebecca’s Journal–1991

Chapter Eighteen

Letters to Nirvana

Chapter Nineteen

Rebecca’s Journal–1993

Chapter Twenty

Letters to Nirvana

Chapter Twenty-One

Rebecca’s Journal–1993

Chapter Twenty-Two

Letters to Nirvana

The Journey

Chapter Twenty-Three

Havenswalk

Chapter Twenty-Four

Bangkok

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Christchurch

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Lake Tekapo

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Cromwell

Chapter Thirty-One

Rebecca’s Journal–1994

Chapter Thirty-Two

Havenswalk

Chapter Thirty-Three

Queenstown

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Milford Sound

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Te Anau

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Rebecca’s Journal–1996

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Havenswalk

Chapter Forty

Queenstown

Chapter Forty-One

Cardrona Valley

Chapter Forty-Two

Wanaka

Chapter Forty-Three

Haast

Chapter Forty-Four

Jackson Bay

Chapter Forty-Five

Rebecca’s Journal–1998

Chapter Forty-Six

Fox Glacier Village

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Rebecca’s Journal–2002

Chapter Forty-Nine

Havenswalk

Chapter Fifty

Akona’s Place

Chapter Fifty-One

Kaikoura

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Rebecca’s Journal–2003

Chapter Fifty-Four

Nelson

Chapter Fifty-Five

Havenswalk, Day One

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Day Two

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Day Three

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Day Four

Chapter Sixty

Day Five

Chapter Sixty-One

Day Six

Chapter Sixty-Two

Day Seven

Chapter Sixty-Three

Day Eight

Chapter Sixty-Four

Day Nine

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

21 Heron Cove

Broadmeadow

Dublin

Ireland

Urope

The World

15 April 1985

Dear Mammy,

This is Cathy. Mrs Mulvaney said to rite you a letter. Is it stupit to rite to dead people? Mrs Mulvaney said it will stop me being sad. When I sleep anjels will come and read my letter. Is that true? Are you a anjel with wings? Is Daddy a anjel to? I hope you are in heven not hell. I saw a picture of hell. It is worse than a vulkayno. Is heven far away? Mrs Mulvaney said it is not. Mr Mulvaney flys in the window at night to see her when she is in bed. I dont know what to rite. She said rite the cat sat on the mat the cat sat on the mat and the words will come good. Nero dose not chase cats now. He is fat and old and sleeps with Becks and puts hairs all over the dubay. It is 3 months since you and Daddy are dead. Our house is sad like rain that wont go away. I like Kevins house best. We play Chuki Egg on his XZ Spectum and Mrs Mulvaney make us fish fingers and chips. Lauren is home from hospotal. The doctor cut the plaster off her legs. All her brooses are gone. She looks nice again. She dont talk to me or Becks or Julie She only talks when shes sleeping and wakes me up. The doctor gave her pills to make her smile but she just stare stare stare at the wall and dont make a face even when Becks komes the notts in her hair. Gramps says Becks is our Mummy and Daddy now. If we are bold the woman with the blak case will take us away. She come lots to our house and rites things down. 2 can play that game Becks said and she has a black book now. She rites when the woman rites and they stare stare stare at each other but not like Lauren. Lauren is just the same as a zombi in a film.

We went to the grave today. Becks gave us seeds to plant. She said stop crying stop crying you are doing my head in. I see you and Daddy all the time. Then I look again and I see red dots that’s all.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX to you and Daddy

Cathy

DEPARTURES

Chapter One
Havenswalk, New Zealand–October 2008

She will ring her sisters this morning. Now, right now, while the day is still under her control. Right now, Cathy repeats to herself, before Hannah arrives for work. Right now before her son starts demanding, ‘Have you done it yet…why not…why not?’

Once yesterday, and twice the day before, she tried to ring but lost her nerve, hung up before the line connected. Today she will tap out the digits, the correct prefix, wait for the ringtone. But what then? Should she make small talk, apologise, accuse, beg, rant or sob? Should she opt for nonchalance? Whoa there, Rebecca. How’s it going, Julie? How do you do, Lauren? Remember me? It’s Cathy, your long-lost sister calling from New Zealand…yes…I know it’s over fifteen years since we spoke but time passes…and you know how it is…what can I say…?

Half-formed sentences and muddled apologies run through her mind as she walks across the lawn towards the grapefruit trees. The grapefruit is ripe and falls easily into her hands. When the basket is full, she lingers for a moment by the shore. She loves this time of morning. The pause between stillness and motion. The mist has cleared and the rising sun is pinned bright as a brooch against the throat of the mountain.

In Ireland, the dark evenings have settled. Leaves are bronze and falling. Children in masks are knocking on doors and dogs are howling.

She remembers the dog, Nero. A squiggle in a sack before Rebecca rescued him from the sludge of a low-tide estuary. When the bangers exploded, Nero heard them seconds before everyone else. A low growling in his throat, followed by a crescendo of petrified barking. Rebecca was the only one who could calm him. Halloween killed him in the end–heart failure–and Rebecca brushed his dead black coat until it gleamed and it was time to bury him at the bottom of the garden. A year later roses were growing there, bold and defiant as a bloodstain. These stingray memories, the sudden darting pain, they undo her.

She shakes herself loose from the past and returns to the kitchen, takes bread from the oven and places the loaves on a wire tray. The smell wafts through the open window, a more potent summons to eat than bells or alarm clocks. No sign of movement from the chalets so far. In the distance she hears the roar of a motorbike. Hannah emerges from a screen of trees and veers around the bend in the avenue, body and bike moulded. She enters the kitchen and shakes her black hair loose from the helmet, sheds her leathers.

On the buffet counter in the restaurant, Cathy arranges serving dishes of muesli, apples, prunes and apricots, nuts, seeds and the fruit, freshly picked. She lays a selection of cheeses on a blue-rimmed platter, stacks yoghurts in triangles, fills jugs with fruit juice and milk, sinks them in a crunch of ice, checks the buffet as keenly as an artist preparing to exhibit: a tweak here, a tweak there. The kitchen is loud with the clang of pots, the clunk of crockery, and Hannah singing one of her Maori songs that makes Cathy feel like swaying as she prepares the terrace for those who wish to eat outside.

‘Have you phoned them yet?’ Conor joins her on the terrace. His question is petulant, more like an accusation than an enquiry. He knows the answer. With breakfast preparations underway, his mother has a ready-made excuse.

‘Later,’ Cathy says. ‘The guests will be coming in for breakfast soon. I’ll do it afterwards.’

‘Not yet, they won’t.’ He opens parasols, arranges chairs around the tables. ‘You still have time.’

‘No—’

‘Yes. Do it now. Stop making excuses. You promised last night—’

‘I know what I promised…and I will.’

‘But if you leave it until later they’ll be asleep. What’s the sense in making promises if you’ve no intention of keeping them?’

She is familiar with his lip, the bee-sting pout already in position, the yearning curiosity in his eyes. He follows her to her office, yapping at her heels. She will phone her sisters and he will rake the leaves from the glow-worm trail, a job he has avoided doing for the past two weeks. He is dressed for the task, jeans and boots, a frayed sleeveless T-shirt printed with the face of an obscure rap singer he once admired.

‘Think about it,’ he says before she enters her office. ‘You’ve got the best end of the deal. I’ve only procrastinated for a fortnight. You’ve been doing it for over fifteen years.’ He likes to remind her of the time lapse, twist the guilt screw a little tighter. He looks back once, as if to challenge her indecisiveness, then disappears into the forest.

From the window, Cathy watches the first guest emerge from the Kea chalet and head towards the swimming pool. Two women walk across the lawn and sit on the bench that encircles the rata tree. Her hand trembles as she lifts the phone. Rebecca first. Grasp the bull by the horns, the nettle by its sting, the rose by its thorn. Her breath quickens as she dials her sister’s number. There should be crackles and clicks, hums, clangs and crossed wires, so many crossed wires, but the connection is instant, a clear double ring answered almost immediately.

‘Lambert Animal Sanctuary.’

‘Rebecca…’

The pause that follows is as startling as a missed heartbeat and, in that instant of recognition, Rebecca discovers that there is nothing, no barriers or soft landings, nothing to prevent the years rushing in and submerging her.

‘Rebecca…can you hear me?’

She struggles to answer but her mouth is dry and her heart, racing with relief that the long wait is over, but also with an inexplicable panic, tightens like a fist in her chest. She is filled also with an overwhelming need to weep, but tears will come later when she is alone and able to release this torrent of emotion. For now, she must remain in control. If she frightens Cathy away, there will be no explanations, no apologies, no opportunity for her sister to defend the indefensible.

‘Please say something, Rebecca. You’ve no idea how many times I dialled your number but I always lost my courage at the last moment and…oh God! I don’t know what to say…’ Cathy has acquired a slight New Zealand accent, the vowels compressed, the words precise but pleasant to the ear. She speaks too fast, spilling out excuses and apologies, as if she believes the torrent of words will prevent Rebecca hanging up on her.

‘You’re not the only one who’s stuck for words, Cathy. I can’t believe you finally decided to contact us.’

‘I’ve wanted to…so often.’ Cathy hesitates again then rushes on. ‘But, as time went on, it became harder and harder. Try and understand—’

‘Understand what? Why you never picked up the phone? Wrote a letter? Paid us a visit?’

‘I did keep in touch—’

‘Fifteen years! All the time waiting to hear from you. How could you disappear like that? Nothing except postcards…Christmas cards that never included your address. How can you possibly call that keeping in touch? One of us could have died and you’d never have known.’

‘Mel kept me informed about everything.’

‘You kept in touch with Melanie Barnes but not your own sisters?’

‘She was my only support at the time…the only person who understood.’

‘Understood what, Cathy?’

‘Understood why I had to leave. But I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.’

‘How else do you expect us to communicate?’

‘In person, Becks.’

‘Becks? You stopped using that name a long time ago.’

‘I remember. I remember everything—’

‘You said, in person. Does that mean you’re coming home?’

‘No. Not now, but, hopefully, in the future. I’m getting married in January.’

‘Congratulations. I wish you every happiness.’

‘Thank you.’

They could be strangers, Rebecca thinks. Word-perfect and skilled in the art of polite conversation. She forces herself to concentrate on what Cathy is saying. Havenswalk, she says, is a relaxation centre where people come from all over New Zealand, and even beyond, to be pampered and massaged. She runs it with a business partner, a woman called Alma.

‘It’s a wonderful place,’ Cathy enthuses. ‘And the grounds are beautiful. I’m going to be married there, on the lawn beside the lake. I want my sisters with me, Rebecca. I want us to use the occasion for a reunion and I’m hoping—’

Unable to endure Cathy’s enthusiasm, which keeps sliding through her repentant tone, Rebecca’s composure finally snaps.

‘I thought the prodigal sister was supposed to come home to eat the fatted calf, not the other way round.’

‘It doesn’t matter where we eat the fatted calf as long as we can be together again,’ Cathy retorts.

The wind, gusting through the rain, rattles the stable doors and starts a horse whinnying. Others, hearing, take up the call until it throbs like a wound inside Rebecca’s head. Throughout the day she had hoped for rain and it has been lashing against the sanctuary walls for over an hour. With such a deluge coming down, no more horses will be forced to jump the bonfires tonight.

A button on the control panel signals an emergency call.

‘Cathy, someone is trying to get through. It’s one of our busiest nights. Hold the line a moment.’

Without waiting for her sister to reply, she clicks into the incoming call. Every year Halloween brings them out of the woodwork, the crazies and the cruel, and the sanctuary crew are working round the clock to rescue injured animals. A stray pony has been spotted on wasteland near Naas, burns on its belly, a torn ear, one eye completely closed. The caller–she sounds young, probably a teenager whose night has turned sour–begins to cry. Rebecca asks for details of the location and radios her emergency team with the information. The shock of Cathy’s call is beginning to subside, yet it seems unreal, this mature voice with its taut inflections ringing out of the blue.

‘Rebecca…?’

Cathy’s hesitancy snaps her back to the present. ‘I’m listening. You want me to go to your wedding.’

‘I’m hoping you will. We need closure, Rebecca.’

‘And how do you suggest we achieve closure?’ Rebecca clicks her fingers, an audible snap carried across continents. ‘Draw a line through the past and pretend it never happened?’

‘We can’t wipe out the past but we can make peace with it.’

‘You really believe it’s that easy?’

‘Of course I don’t think it’s easy. But we have to begin somewhere. It’s taken me a long time to reach this point. How could I look for forgiveness from anyone else until I had the courage to absolve myself?’

‘Is that what you want from me, Cathy? Absolution?’ She imagines Cathy squirming away from her questions, as she did so often in the past, settling her face into a hard white mask of defiance.

‘Not absolution, Rebecca. I want you to come to Havenswalk to meet my son.’

Can silence echo, Rebecca wonders. Can it crash so heavily that all she hears is the echo…son…son…son…reverberating?

‘Your son?’

‘Yes. His name is Conor.’

‘Conor?’

‘Conor Lambert.’

‘What age is he?’

Cathy hesitates, the briefest of pauses, but long enough for Rebecca to know the answer. ‘He’ll be fifteen in December.’

‘Fifteen?’ Why on earth does she keep repeating her sister’s words?

‘You lied to us!’

‘At the time I believed…it seemed better that way. You wouldn’t worry so much—’

‘Worry? What do you know about our worries…our fears?’ Memories of their last encounter press like a claustrophobic band against Rebecca’s forehead. She winces and tightens her grip on the receiver. ‘Why did you never mention him in your cards?’

‘Would you have wanted to know?’

‘He’s my nephew, Cathy. Of course I would have wanted to know of his existence. You deliberately deceived us.’

‘I was so confused—’

‘Your son?’ Rebecca harshly interrupts her. ‘Who does he look like?’

‘His personality reminds me of Julie.’ Cathy swallows, an audible gulp, as if her throat has contracted with nerves, then forces a laugh. ‘A bit wild, like all lads his age, and into his music in a big way. He wants to be a vet when he’s older so you’re there too, Rebecca. I guess he resembles all of you in little ways. Most of all, Conor is uniquely himself. He’s anxious to meet his aunts. Please come and visit us. I’ll put you up in the chalets so it’ll only cost you the plane fare.’

‘No…I can’t. It’s nothing to do with the cost. It’s just…did you really expect it to be that easy?’

‘I didn’t expect anything. I just hoped—’

‘I’m sorry…sorry…it’s too soon. I’m not able to handle this at the moment. I’m sure the others…Do you have Julie’s number? Lauren’s in Spain; I can give you her mobile.’

‘I have their numbers. I wanted to speak to you first. Oh, Becks—’

Headlights beam through the darkness: the sanctuary crew, arriving with the latest victims of the night’s excesses.

‘I have to go, Cathy. Yes, give me your number. I’ll ring…of course I’ll ring. Goodbye…goodbye.’

Rebecca hurries to help Lulu May, the sanctuary manager, to calm an injured horse whose hoofs flail dangerously when they lead him down the ramp. Her life has moved on a long way from bobbing apples and dipping for pennies.

The sanctuary is quiet when she finishes her shift; the new arrivals sedated and out of pain. Leaves squelch under her feet as she walks across the field towards her cottage. The dank earth releases the smell of the dying year. She is facing into a grey Irish winter but spring is underway in New Zealand. A time of renewal, Cathy said. A time for closure.

She opens her cottage door. Her legs are leaden, her eyes gritty from tiredness. She switches on her computer. Amazing to think the information she needed about her youngest sister’s whereabouts had been only a finger-tap away. All that was missing was the key word–Havenswalk.

Havenswalk does indeed look like a walk in heaven. A cluster of wooden Alpine-style chalets encircle a central two-storey building where guests gather to eat, meditate and practise yoga. Outside, they soak in hot tubs under star-lit skies, relax under umbrellas, loll by a swimming pool that appears to have been hollowed from a rock. Accompanied by the haunting strains of panpipes, Havenswalk promises Serenity, Tranquillity, Spiritual Harmony, Empowerment, Healing Energy, Emotional Balance.

Cathy’s photograph smiles from the Home Page. Her eyes are bluer than Rebecca remembers, as blue as a painted icon. No longer wasted behind thick black eyeliner but staring outwards in an open, welcoming gaze. Her crimped Kate Bush hair has been tamed and replaced by a sleek black plait. From Goth to guru in little more than fifteen years. How has such a transformation occurred?

Teabag slithers from underneath an armchair and rubs against her ankles, demanding attention. Rebecca lifts the cat, cradles him against her neck. She stands by the window and watches the sun lift above the fields. Time is a thief, she thinks, gilding sorrow, stealing the intensity of loss and allowing people to move on with their lives. But all it takes is a trigger: a song, a smell, a juggernaut flashing past–or a forgotten voice echoing from another time–and memory becomes a flailing thing, capable of shattering rock.

The rain has ceased. Only tears remain on the sodden branches, glistening like pearls in the milky morning light.

Chapter Two
Rebecca’s Journal–1985 1985

Name–Mary Green

Occupation Social worker

Intention–To break up our family

Obstacle to achieving her goal–Me!

Duration of visit–2 hrs

Mary Green doesn’t like it when I make notes but I’m not supposed to object when she does the same. Was she trained to ask questions then wait silently, however long it takes, for me to stumble into her trap? Or did she pick up the trick when she started dealing with ‘dysfunctional’ families? She makes ‘orphans’ sound like a disease and ‘Care’ sound like the Promised Land.

Cathy has nits in her hair…so what? Everyone in her class has them. It’s called an infestation. Julie bunks off school. Her and half of the student population, but when she does it, it’s seen like a crisis for the State. Lauren…well, there’s the rub…I don’t have any easy answers but she’s not going anywhere and if they try to take her away they’ll do so over my dead body. Mary Green says I’m overwrought, hysterical, too young and inexperienced. She forgets to include ‘grieving’.

We’re drowning in tears. It’s awful. Julie is the loudest. She’s loudest at everything and her grief is terrible to hear. Crying with her face in the cushions or against Paul’s chest, crying over the slightest thing, and I want to scream at her to stop…stop…stop!! but I can’t because it only makes her cry louder and call me a heartless cow.

Cathy cries in corners or behind chairs or under bedclothes. I know by her eyes. They’re pools of grief. She’s like a shadow behind me, clinging to my presence, afraid I’ll disappear if she lets me out of her sight. I don’t blame her. I feel myself disappearing all the time, my dreams dissolving one by one. Then I’m furious with myself for being resentful when we have all lost so much. What kind of person thinks about trivial things like college and friends and travel and being able to walk away from it all?

She writes letters to Mammy. She showed me one but I choked up and couldn’t finish it. I showed her how to spell ‘angel’ correctly. Why did I do that? Why didn’t I rock her in my arms instead? I would have…in the past. I would have held her until her chest stopped heaving and her face was dry. She falls asleep in class. She’s slipping behind the main stream. It’s all there in Mary Green’s little black book.

How am I supposed to manage? I couldn’t boil an egg before they died. Julie says my dinners look like Nero’s vomit but she eats everything-unlike Lauren, who never says a word, even when she’s dumping hers in the bin. Cathy says I’m the best cook ever. She’s forever trying to please me but not the way she used to. It’s more like she’s learning new lines and is unsure of the way forward. After all, I’m the boss now. But I’m only seventeen! I haven’t a clue what I’m doing. Little steps, Lydia says, step by little step, anything is possible.

I’ve accepted the Morans’ invitation. A break will do us good. They’ve a fabulous house, and horses too. Country air will be good for Lauren, put some colour in her cheeks.

Lauren’s tears are like icicles. When I hold her, I get nothing but frost burn. I’m afraid if I hold her too tight she’ll snap cleanly away from me. I wish she’d cry like Julie, howl and yell and kick the doors. But she’s frozen with guilt. I keep telling her it’s not her fault. But she doesn’t hear me. Even if she did, she’d figure I was lying.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive her.

Chapter Three
Dublin-January 2009

Lauren Moran awakens to the whirr of freshly ground coffee beans. She hears her husband’s step on the stairs and imagines what he will see when he enters their bedroom: her black hair spilling over the pillows, the sultry welcome in her eyes, her voluptuous mouth. Aware that her lips are taut, she clenches her face, holds for a count of ten, then relaxes. A new day is beginning. The day of departure.

Steve hesitates at the door, a light tap, and, without waiting for her response, enters. A tray with coffee and crisp, flaky croissants, lime marmalade and whorls of butter, slender as wood shavings, is placed before her. The centrepiece is a long-stemmed rose in a delicate cut-glass vase. No thorns are visible and the scent is lost behind the aroma of coffee.

‘You spoil me.’ She smiles at him and lazily rises.

‘Always,’ he replies. His movements are deft, almost delicate, as he pours coffee for two and butters croissants. The thin straps of her nightdress slip from her shoulders when she leans forward to accept the cup from him. He touches the satiny fabric, lifts one strap back into place and leaves the other resting against her arm. The creamy shade emphasises her tanned skin, draws his eyes to the deep plunge of lace at her breasts.

When breakfast is over, she clips the rose to her hair and clicks her fingers like a Spanish dancer. They feint on the bed, this way and that. He likes games, an initial resistance, which he can masterfully overcome. He is still strong and muscular, his lovemaking as vigorous, if not as regular as in the early years of their marriage. Viagra, Lauren suspects, but, if that is the case, he will never admit it and she will never ask.

Afterwards, she lies quietly by his side while he, his breath slowing back to normal, caresses her cheek. His touch is gentle yet she feels the calluses rasp against her skin as each stroke finishes and begins again. His nails are manicured weekly, his hands nourished with moisturising oils, but the scars he earned from his years on the building sites can never be removed.

‘Everything packed?’ he asks.

‘All organised,’ she replies.

‘Passport?’

‘In my handbag.’ Her Gucci handbag rests against the opposite wall, along with her three red leather suitcases and her matching overnight case.

‘Tickets, schedule?’

‘Stop worrying about me, Steve.’ She eases away from him, allows his hand to glide from her cheek to her breasts, then fall into the empty space she leaves behind. Her nightdress ripples as she slides her legs to the floor. Each movement is a slow separation yet she makes it seem like a lingering embrace. She sits at the dressing table and nods towards her luggage.

‘Rebecca will go crazy when she sees what I’ve packed.’

Only one piece of luggage. Rebecca’s email had been specific. Anything more will cramp their living conditions. She has studied the dimensions of the camper and knows exactly where everything will fit. The six-berth is her idea, a compromise between backpacking, which is all Julie can afford, and the five-star hotel accommodation Lauren had expected.

Lauren is convinced that Rebecca, even if she were not the first-born of the four Lambert sisters, would automatically have risen in the pecking order and assumed that right. Unable to understand any form of indecisiveness, she makes everything sound effortless–flights, accommodation, itinerary; all the planning and discussion condensed on the email, which Lauren received yesterday and wilfully ignored.

Steve slides her pillow under his cheek and breathes into the indentation where her head rested. The rose lies discarded and crushed on the floor.

‘I’m sorry I won’t have an opportunity to see you wearing your wardrobe,’ he says.

‘When I come home, I’ll put on a special fashion show for you.’

‘I’ll look forward to it.’

She gathers her hair in both hands and secures it in a topknot. ‘We’d better get moving—’

‘What’s the rush, princess? We won’t see each other for a month.’ An astute man, and attuned to her thoughts, he has sensed her impatience.

‘You’ll be so busy you won’t have time to miss me.’

He shakes his head and rises, enters the ensuite. While he showers, she opens one of her suitcases and folds in another dress. A good Girl Guide must be prepared for all eventualities.

After the shock of Cathy’s initial phone call subsided, Steve planned a month-long tour of the South Island. He has been to New Zealand before, with his first wife, and knows the sights they should see. Luxury hotels, car hire, lake cruises and helicopter flights were booked in advance. They intended using Havenswalk as their base for the last ten days of the tour, with Cathy’s wedding providing the highlight of the trip. But Steve was forced to change his plans when the start-up date for a shopping complex, which he hoped would officially open before Christmas, was postponed until March. Trouble with acquiring new tenants, he explained. Worried about the slow-down in the property market, he phoned Cathy to discuss the situation. Lauren later discovered he suggested that she postpone her wedding until later in the year when he would be free to travel.

‘Why are you so angry?’ he demanded when Lauren, furious, yet not surprised, at his audacity, challenged him. ‘She waited over fifteen years to contact you. What difference will another few months make?’

‘He hasn’t changed,’ said Cathy when Lauren contacted her to apologise. ‘Thankfully, I have. My wedding takes place as arranged. I want you there, Lauren. But if you don’t feel capable of travelling without Steve, I understand.’

Stung by Cathy’s assumption, Lauren decided to take the trip on her own. Rebecca, then later, Julie, agreed to accompany her. Instead of travelling in luxury, they will do so in a camper van. Rebecca calls it ‘a motor home’, which makes it sound spacious, almost luxurious. Lauren suspects Steve was closer to the truth when he referred to it as a sardine can.

He used this comparison one night when he invited her sisters out for a meal and offered to pay their hotel costs, car hire and sightseeing trips.

‘You girls could do with a little pampering in your lives,’ he said, a remark that immediately raised her sisters’ hackles. Steve has acquired many skills in his life but handling the Lambert sisters is not among them.

‘We girls are quite capable of doing our own pampering,’ Rebecca replied, while Julie, whose idea of a manicure was a few strokes with an emery board and a cocktail stick for the cuticles, nodded vigorously in agreement.

‘There’s nothing wrong with a little luxury now and again,’ Steve retorted. ‘Wait till you’re cooped up like sardines in a tin can, especially in that heat. I’ve told Lauren to call me immediately if conditions become unbearable.’ Even if he had not made the comment, their answer would have been the same. They always resisted his generosity, claimed it it patronised them. They had never understood Lauren’s reasons for marrying him and those reasons were no longer relevant.

Lauren watches him in the dressing table mirror as he slips on his shirt. Recently, he has gained weight but he is a tall, blocky man and it adds an extra layer of authority to his appearance. He stands behind her and fixes his tie, his hands automatically forming a Windsor knot, his eyes watching.

‘You’re relieved I can’t go with you.’ His abrupt tone startles her.

‘Stop talking nonsense, Steve. We planned this trip together, remember? I’d no intention of travelling in a camper van. We’ll probably end up bored out of our minds and not speaking to each other for most of the trip. I can’t think of anything I have in common with my sisters any more.’

‘Thankfully, you never had anything in common with them, princess.’ His tie is knotted, his suit buttoned. He has a business meeting to attend after he leaves her at the airport. He bends down until his gaze is level with her own. ‘What’s going on behind those lovely green eyes? Some day I’ll figure it out. Then, perhaps, I’ll begin to know you.’

‘You’re such a foolish man.’ She turns her head towards him. Her laughter is light and easily silenced with a kiss. He opens his briefcase and removes a small gift-wrapped package.

‘A farewell present.’

Jewellery, she thinks, and wonders what has stretched his imagination on this occasion.

‘State of the art,’ he adds when she lifts out a silver, slim-line mobile phone from the wrappings.

‘But I already have one—’

‘State of the art,’ he repeats. ‘It will work from anywhere in the world.’ He demonstrates its various applications. She smiles as he shows off this latest toy and promises to ring him every day they are apart.

After he leaves the room, she switches on the bath taps and pulls on an exfoliation glove. She sinks into the scented water and scrubs her skin until she tingles all over. On her neck there is an angry weal, a bruise on her breast, red and tender. When does a love bite become a wound, she wonders. A caress become a pain so sharp that she had gasped at his touch? Could what took place between them just now be called ‘making love’? She will not sleep by his side for a month yet she went through the familiar choreography of passion without once losing herself in him or responding to his desire, which, she suspects, is fuelled by resentment that she is leaving without him. A month on her own without a safety net to catch her if she falls. She shivers and rises from the bath. The last dress she packed was the wrong one. Too heavy for the summer that is taking place in New Zealand.

Steve is wrong when he says he does not know her. He knows her better than she knows herself. Perhaps that was why he bit so deeply into her neck. Keeping a part of her behind.

Chapter Four

The house waits for her to leave. Julie Chambers senses its impatience. Perfection is a fine balance and she insists on disturbing it. She buffs the already gleaming kitchen counters, straightens the canisters, clangs her index fingernail off the hanging mugs. Homemade soup and apple crumble have been prepared for her sons’ return from school and the hot press is stacked with their freshly ironed clothes. Everything she can do to ensure the smooth running of her home, family and business has been done, and she is anxious to leave before she remembers that she is indispensable.

The taxi is already twenty minutes late and panic is setting in. On a weekend morning the drive from her house to the airport is less than fifteen minutes. On a weekday, it is impossible to calculate. She checks the road. Rain clouds hover over the rooftops and the crows, perched like exclamation marks on the telegraph wires, have a damp, bedraggled appearance. The daffodils will be out when she returns, the cherry blossom coming into bloom.

The taxi driver, arriving ten minutes later, is in no mood for tolerance. ‘Make no mistake about it, missus, this ’ucking city is a bottleneck to hell.’ His omission of the letter F is an obvious contribution to the clean-up-language campaign being imposed on taxi drivers, and Julie smiles to show she appreciates his restraint. As she settles into the back seat, he stows her suitcase and her mandolin in the boot. She is cheating slightly by bringing along her mandolin but life without music, as far as Julie is concerned, is not worth living.

The driver grumbles loudly as he bumps over the speed control ramps leading from Baymark Estate. He is a stubby, red-faced man with a tight mouth made for complaining. His querulous voice hardly registers with Julie. Every mile that separates her from home, her demons shout louder for attention. What if Jonathan has another asthmatic attack and the ambulance doesn’t make it through the traffic on time? What if Philip is carried from the rugby pitch with a fractured neck? What if Aidan raids the cocktail cabinet and takes to the fields with his friends? Where will she be while all this horror is going on? In a camper van in the Antipodes, playing at being a bush woman.

‘Going far?’ The driver glances at her through the rear-view mirror.

‘Far enough,’ she replies, hoping to end their conversation and, for a few minutes, he drives in silence through Swords village. The back of his neck turns red as the early morning traffic shudders forward inch by inch.

‘’Ucking traffic,’ he mutters. ‘They build one ’ucking motorway after another and what do we get? Ulsters! Nothing but ’ucking stomach ulsters. Where’d you say you’re going, missus?’

‘New Zealand,’ Julie replies. ‘To my sister’s wedding.’

‘That’s a long way to go for a wedding. You planning on taking in the sights while you’re there?’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘Stopping off on the way?’

‘Two nights in Bangkok.’

‘Sex capital of the world, so I’m told.’ He brakes at traffic lights and leans despairingly over the steering wheel. ‘If you ask my opinion, this ’ucking country’s heading the same way, what with lap-dancing clubs and sex shops springing up like ’ucking mushrooms. The sights I see in this taxi…Things have changed for the worst since my young days, I’ll tell you that for nothing. As for the ’ucking recession…’

She texts Rebecca: ‘Hold that plane! I’m at the mercy of a taxi driver in the advanced stages of Tourettes…the abbreviated version,’ and hopes her sisters will appreciate her attempt at humour.

Paul was supposed to drive her to the airport but an early morning emergency call from the office put paid to that plan. His worried expression and hassled apologies as he hurried towards his car, his mobile phone already ringing, had added to her sense of guilt.

Since Cathy’s unexpected phone call, Julie has dithered over her decision to attend the wedding. Paul declared that it was a ‘preposterous’ decision to make. He used his end-of-this-discussion voice and made it sound as if Julie’s being reunited with her long-lost sister was of far less importance than the smooth running of Chambers Software Solutions. Since he established the company from a redundancy package he received during the dot com collapse, Julie has looked after the finances. If she had a business card it would have read ‘Financial Controller’. But she has no business card to flash at meetings and her work environment is a laptop on the kitchen table, which competes with the dishwasher for attention.

They argued bitterly over her decision to take time off work. The row lasted a week. In the evenings they hid their anger under a veneer of normality, carrying on conversations at two levels: one audible and polite, so as not to upset their sons, the other inaudible but loaded. Finally, Paul arrived home early from work one evening and presented her with a bunch of flowers and a guidebook called Traversing New Zealand.

‘I suppose you’ve made up.’ Jonathan, her eldest son, dropped his sports kit in the hall and eyed the flowers she was arranging in a vase.

‘Made up what?’ she asked, the pleasure of their reconciliation still warm on her skin.

‘Give me a break,’ her son sighed. ‘We could scrape our nails off the atmosphere for the past week. Are you going to the wedding or not?’

‘Going.’ She plunged the irises into water.

‘Good for you,’ he replied. ‘We’ll look after Dad while you’re gone. What’s for dinner? I’m starving.’

On reaching the departure terminal, her sisters greet her with relief and hurry her towards the check-in desk. Lauren has ignored Rebecca’s instructions about luggage and the expandable lids on her matching suitcases are strained to the limit. Steve looks in danger of a ruptured hernia as he heaves them onto the weighing scales. The excess fee will be exorbitant but he will pay it without a quibble.

‘What’s with the wardrobe?’ Julie demands as they await his return from the excess baggage counter. ‘We’ll be living in the bush, not the Ritz.’

Lauren is unrepentant. ‘I barely managed to fit my knickers into the first suitcase.’

‘How come I managed with a rucksack?’ Rebecca asks.

‘I don’t do rucksacks,’ replies Lauren, and Julie has to smile at the idea of Lauren bent under the weight of an enormous multi-purpose rucksack.

Steve, returning and overhearing their conversation, says, ‘Call me when the going gets rough. My offer still stands.’

‘Thank you, Steve.’ Julie leads the way towards the departure gate and turns away when he embraces his wife. Spring and autumn conjoined. She has never grown used to their marriage, never will.

‘I’ll phone as soon as we reach Bangkok.’ Lauren hands her boarding pass to the attendant and glides beyond his reach.

An hour later they are airborne. The plane rises from the runway and crosses the Broadmeadow Estuary. Housing estates, surrounded by swatches of green, slant into view. White-capped waves ride towards the viaduct. Yachts and cruisers are moored in the marina, a new addition since their Heron Cove days. Julie strains her neck and is able to pinpoint the house where they spent their childhood. The old chestnut tree still grows in the garden, its bare branches forming a black filigree against the sky. The next house, where Lydia Mulvaney lived until her death, is also briefly visible.

Is Cathy sleeping now, Julie wonders as she settles back in her seat. Or is she lying awake, aware that the day of departure has finally arrived? Is she nervous? She has much to explain and Rebecca will demand answers.

‘How come you changed your mind about visiting Cathy?’ Julie asked Rebecca one afternoon when she called into the sanctuary to collect her sons, who had been volunteering during their Christmas holidays.

‘I want to ask Cathy face to face why she dragged us through hell and back again.’ Rebecca, sitting behind her desk, looked and sounded exhausted. Her black hair, tied back in a tight ponytail, accentuated her wide, flat cheekbones and strong chin. There had been an incident the previous day between her and an alcoholic farmer who had brutalised a donkey. The donkey had been rescued but Julie doubted if the battle with the alcoholic farmer was responsible for the weary slope of Rebecca’s shoulders, the smudged hollows under her eyes.

‘Don’t you think Cathy was in her own personal hell?’ Julie demanded. ‘You’ve a short memory span if you’ve forgotten.’

‘I haven’t forgotten anything. Including how she misled us afterwards. Her deceit…’

Julie saw the familiar anger flare in Rebecca’s eyes, her lips compress, as if she was holding back bitter accusations. Their conversation petered out, as it always does when they speak about Cathy. Sitting beside her now, Julie shivers, as if the tension she senses in her older sister has transferred to herself.

The plane lifts higher. Clouds fall like blots over the familiar landscape and Julie is swept into a grey swirl that banishes the world she knows from sight.

Chapter Five
Rebecca’s Journal–1985

My mother’s words are like a song in my head. The kind of song you don’t want to hear yet one line keeps repeating and repeating until you long to hit your head off a wall to make it stop.

‘Look after Cathy for me,’ she said, but I’d other plans that night. Sheila Brogan’s parents were on holiday for a week and she was throwing a party. I guess that was the reason my mother–who always seemed to know everything she shouldn’t–wanted me to stay at home. That and Jeremy…

I glared at her and demanded to know why I was always the one who had to do everything? Why was Lauren, high and mighty Lauren, treated as if she was Ireland’s answer to Margot Fonteyn? We’d already been to the opening night of her concert. Why, then, was it necessary for Mammy and Daddy to attend on the closing night?

Oh, I was petulant that evening, sulking and rude and argumentative. I watched her flicking mascara on her eyelashes, spraying perfume on her wrists. She had delicate wrists and long fingers like a pianist. That’s what she wanted to be when she was young–a concert pianist–but she wasn’t good enough and she ended up marrying Gerard Lambert and playing marching tunes for us on the piano in the living room. ‘Marching Through Georgia’, ‘Heart of Dixie’, ‘Anchors Away’–and we marched like little soldiers up and down the floor. She played soft tunes too: ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Long Time Passing’. Joan Baez was singing it on the radio the other day. I lunged at it and switched it off before the others heard.

She ordered me to stop arguing. To stop giving cheek and do as I was told for a change. (It’s funny–although no one is laughing–how much I sound like her now.)

How could either of us have realised that those words would be the last we’d ever exchange? Angry words that would have been forgotten as easily as they were uttered but now they resonate beyond the grave and chain me to their power.

She dabbed her lips on a tissue and left the room. The next day I found the tissue crumpled on the dressing table. Her lips were imprinted like a bloodstain on the creases.

I didn’t look after Cathy that night. As soon as Daddy’s car disappeared around the corner, I persuaded Julie to mind her. They were snuggled on the sofa with Kevin Mulvaney when I left, the three of them watching Cagney and Lacey.

I wore my striped tank top to Sheila’s party, my best Levi’s and my new Adidas trainers. I remember so many things about that night. They come back to me in fragments. How Rory Jones broke a piece of Mrs Brogan’s precious Aynsley china. Sheila cried as she swept up the pieces but no one else cared. I remember how we turned away in disgust, but laughing, when Rick Martin threw up in the kitchen sink. I remember my reflection in the mirror with the gilt-edge frame that hung above the mantelpiece. I danced with Jeremy, cheek-to-cheek, and I could see the back of his head, hear my bangles jangling when I raised my hand and stroked my fingers through his thick blond hair. Our bodies, made for each other, our feet moving to the same step, and he was hard when he pressed against me, so hard it hurt, almost, and that, too, was part of the pleasure. He whispered into my ear, told me he loved me, wanted me, his breath hot on my neck, and I wondered if we dared slip away, slip upstairs to one of the empty bedrooms, and what would happen then, would we…could I…and he held me tighter still as we danced past the mirror, danced in a slow dark circle, oblivious to what was taking place on the bend of the coast road leading to Heron Cove.

I remember the silence that settled over the party when Sheila came into the living room with a policewoman. The policewoman’s mouth seemed full of glass when she tried to explain why a squad car was waiting outside to bring me home. I remember the room swaying. Jeremy tried to catch me before I fell. My head banged off the edge of the table. I don’t remember any pain. My new trainers struck out in front of me. Funny thing to remember, my heels clamped together, forcing my toes into a V. I don’t remember being lifted to my feet, but someone must have done so because I know I could never have managed to stand on my own. And I remember the whispering that started when the policewoman took my arm and led me away from the party. Jeremy came with me but I don’t remember anything he said to me, or if the policewoman spoke to either of us.

Lights were burning in the windows of Heron Cove. Doors were open. Neighbours were clustered in huddles in the hall and the kitchen. I remember their faces, Lydia’s tears. Julie’s screams as she broke free from Paul’s arms and ran towards me. And I remember thinking, as we held each other, that our lives had changed utterly and for ever.

Chapter Six
Havenswalk–January 2009

The attic in Havenswalk is reached by a spiral staircase. A handy place for dumping broken furniture that has some possibility of being repaired but is inevitably forgotten once the door closes. Next year, Cathy plans to convert the attic into a dance studio but, for now, it is a repository for all the bric-a-brac she and Alma have acquired and abandoned since they moved to New Zealand.

She switches on the light and browses for an hour among boxes and crates, sifts through account ledgers and old books that release the fusty smell of neglected papers. She stops to examine some clothes and toys belonging to Conor, items she decided to save for the memories they evoke. The silence is uneasy. She suspects unseen creatures lurking in the eaves and crannies, but only the spiders ignore her intrusion and continue spinning in gauzy corners.

The edge of the moon shifts from her gaze as she moves the broken frame of an awning to one side. It is heavy and almost topples over. She prevents it falling and waking everyone. Underneath it, she finds a wicker picnic basket. The weave is broken in places. Snapped reeds jut outwards and cobwebs trail like a shiver across her fingers when she snaps open the rusting lock. Her letters to Nirvana. Carefully she lifts them out. They are tied together with an elastic band that breaks with an exhausted snap when she stretches it.

She hesitates, undecided. Does she really want to delve into the past and relive those fragmented years when hormones, confusion and unresolved heartache formed their own convulsive mix? Never look back, Rebecca used to say. Nothing but dust around corners.

The date on the first letters startles her. Was she only eight years old when she wrote it? She always imagined she was older, probably about ten. The early ones were written on notepaper with delicate border drawings, Edwardian ladies with parasols and lacy, ruffled collars. A writing set, she remembers, given to her by Lydia Mulvaney as a starter present. Write to your mother, Lydia said, and when you are sleeping she will read your letters. Angels fly at midnight. Their first stop is home.

Cathy smiles, remembering how the image of hovering angels had comforted her and how, when the fancy notepaper ran out, she wrote on the torn-out pages of copybooks and refill pads, writing by torch light at night when the house was quiet, secret hours under a duvet tent.

If she read the letters before contacting Rebecca her courage would have failed her. Yet the die has been cast by now, Conor at her heels, demanding…ring them now…now…

Her sisters are on their way. She is still amazed that Rebecca changed her mind. Amazed and frightened and relieved in equal measure. She rang her sisters seeking closure but how that closure is to be achieved is impossible to tell. Cathy tries not to panic. Has she made the worst mistake of her life–or is this the beginning of healing, the closing of a wound that has festered for far too long? She sinks to a cast-off settee and begins to read.

Chapter Seven
Letters to Nirvana

Meadow Lark

Wicklow

19 August 1985

Dear Mammy,

How are you and Daddy today? We are having a nice holiday in Meadow Lark with the Morans. We call them Auntie Olive and Uncle Steve. They have lots of rooms and no kids, only horses. Uncle Steve taut us to ride a pony called Zorbo. Lauren is afrayd to go on him. When Uncle Steve lift her up she cry and cry. But she wont fall and brake her legs again. A pony is not a car. Auntie Olive brothe her and me to the shops for froks and socks and nickers and jeans and tops and shoes. She wont let Nero sleep on the bed with Becks. No hairs on the dubay or dog pee smell in her posh house. Becks is cross as a bare because Nero has to sleep in a shed and he barks all night. Julie hates it here. She hates living in the sticks and she hates the staybell smells and not being with Paul. Auntie Olive is a teecher. She has big glasses like a owl eyes. She makes me rite lesons and spell proper. I love Zorbo. I will rite more tomorrow.

XXXXXXXXX to you and Daddy

Cathy

Heron Cove

21 August 1985

Dear Mammy,

We are home again and Becks is cross as a bare. The row was bad. Uncle Steve gave out lots to her about Lauren. No one knew I was outside the door. Auntie Olive said its right he worry. She want to mind Lauren in Meadow Lark and help her kope with being a orpan. Becks said no way ho-say. She told Uncle Steve to shove his opinins up his bum and called Auntie Olive a inturfearing old cow. Auntie Olive keep hugging Lauren at the train station and saying poor pet poor pet and Lauren was like a swan with a hangy neck. She wants to live in Meadow Lark and ware nice froks. Becks said we have to call them Mr and Mrs Moran because they are not real family. Mrs Moran was Mammy’s pal when they were little girls but Becks says she is a spy like the woman with the black case. Julie is glad to be home as well. She wants to start the band again but Becks said no way ho-say neybours will talk.

I miss you so much it makes me sick. Tell Daddy I miss him as well as you. I will rite more tomorrow. I love Zorbo.

XXXXXXXXX to you and Daddy

Cathy

26 December 1985

Dear Mammy,

Xmas Day is over. The only thing that made me cry was the Xmas songs at mass and Lauren hating the ballet book I gave her for her present. Kevin gave me sope on a rope and I gave him a Star Wars annual. The Morans called with lots of presents. We have to furgive and furget and they will not take Lauren away only for holidays. I got a pair of jeans. Becks got a really posh food mixer. Julie got a tiket for a rock concert and Lauren got a golden frock with a frill. Gramps gave us money and was drunk. The best the very best present was from Becks. Remember when I told you about finding your hair brush in the dressing table with your hair still in it and how she took it from me because I was doing her head in with crying? She gave me a love heart locket with your hair inside it and photos of you and Daddy. She is the best, the very very best. After dinner we went for a walk. All the waves were white. The wind made my skin sore. We saw the heron. Then we saw Jeremy with Rose More. Rebecca said don’t look don’t look see if I give a hoot and stuck her nose up in the air when we walk past. Julie called him a bad word. I wont write it down. It begins with W. We fed the swans. The heron flew away. Becks cried when we came home. I thought she was mad about Jeremy not hanging around greef but it was about the food mixer. She kept pointing at it and saying my life has come to this, a f…ing food mixer.

My jeans a perfect fit.

Love to you and Daddy

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Cathy

Heron Cove

15 Jan 1986

Dear Mammy,

A year has gone. I keep thinking if I open your coffins I’ll see you laughing like it is a big joke. We had a mass for your annaversorry. Fr Morris said your names out loud and made it reel again. Lauren made a big fuss and ran out of the church. She said she can not run but she can and Mr Moran brote her back in his arms. She is still a zombi but not so much now. Last night she said F…off and mind your bisness when I ask her if you and Daddy said goodbye. She is spoiled rotton and she made you dead. We all went to the balley concert and saw her dancing like a sugar plum fairy. So why did she make you and Daddy go 2 times? Why why why? She is a show off thats why. Becks said I must never never never say that to Lauren or she will cut out my tung. Me and Julie sleep in your room now. Lauren sleep on her own. So do Becks with Nero. It’s nice being in your bed, like I can touch you. Daddy’s gitar is still against the wall. Julie tuned it and we put it back there again. His jacket is in the wardrobe. I can’t smell him, only mothballs and lether, but I rub my hands really hard on the lether and that feels nice. All your books are in the shelfs. There’s so many. The Colour Purple has a book mark in it. My favoritt authors are Judy Blume and Enid Blyton. Julie said a year is gone and Maxeemum Volum must be a band again. She is a brill singer. Paul is brill on drums. They sit on the wall and kiss and kiss. Becks said its not on. Neybours will talk. We all had a birthday since you die. Julie is 15 and Lauren 13 and Becks is 18 and I am 9. Gramps comes for our birthdays. He smells bad like the farm is on his skin and he gives Becks money for bread on the table.

Make him stop crying. It makes me cry to and Beck said we have to move on. I don’t want to move. I like our house. The red dots are gone. I will rite more tomorrow.

XXXXXXXXX to you and Daddy

Cathy

Chapter Eight
Rebecca’s Journal–1986

Thank goodness for spring. There’s green shoots in the ground and the forsythia will soon bud. I thought we’d never get through the year but we did…we did. The mass was nice, the church packed and it’s good to know people remember them. I felt a hypocrite having the mass when I don’t believe in God or any religion that forces us to accept there is a divine plan to anything. But I can’t let on. What’s the sense in saying there’s nothing left except bone and memory when Cathy believes she’s writing to an angel and Julie’s convinced she’ll meet them in heaven?

To lose so much in a year…it’s too much…too much…but it’s nice to stand in the garden and look at the green shoots. They promise so much. Unlike Jeremy, they’ll deliver.

He’s still with Rose Moore. Do I care? No way, José. Julie calls him a ‘wanker’ and Cathy sneaks her hand into mine and squeezes it when his name is mentioned. Their pity unhinges me. Even Lauren came out of her shell for a while after he broke off with me.

Jeremy is not a wanker. He just doesn’t know how to deal with it all. I can’t blame him. I don’t want to sit in every night either, but I’m too tired to go out and, when I do, I’m worried about Julie being in charge, knowing she’s alone with Paul, and Lauren’s locked somewhere deep inside herself and Cathy’s probably crying or writing those letters, and if I get plastered, like my friends, I won’t be able to get up in the morning, and that’ll be the very time Mary Green calls and writes her notes and makes me so nervous I want to sit on my hands to keep them from shaking.

On the positive side, my driving is improving. Lydia’s a good teacher and doesn’t get worried when I can’t engage the clutch and the traffic builds up behind us. She’s going to help me paint the rooms. But not yet…not just yet. Little steps, she says. Everything can be done in little steps. She started art classes after her husband died. She said it started as therapy and became her grand obsession. Her paintings are strange and weird, ruins of abandoned cottages in the middle of nowhere. She calls them ‘famine echoes’. If women could work and rear children in such a hostile environment, she says the least she can do is follow their footsteps and record what is left of their existence. Her paintings look similar; crumbling walls almost invisible under ivy, weeds growing like spun sugar from chimney breasts. It’s her use of light and shade that makes the difference.

Gramps is beginning to pull himself together. His cheque arrived on time this week. He’s promised to stop drinking and come with me and Lydia to the inquest. I dread it…and the court case. It’s like the anniversary mass. Another stepping stone that walks them further away from us. Life moves on…tick tock tick…and a year has passed.

Chapter Nine
Letters to Nirvana

13 August 1986

Dear Mammy,

I have sad news. That is why I did not write for 3 days. Gramps is dead. I cried for ages at his funral and Im crying writing this. Mrs Mulvaney said we cry for all sorts of different reasons at funrals. At Gramps funral lots of things came back to me. I thought I was going to be sick. He is glad to be dead. He said so to Becks after the court. Do you think that killed him? He went with her and Mrs Mulvaney to find out how you and Daddy died. Why? We know why. A big lorry, that is why. The lorry driver said he was very sorry. His family hugged him when the judge said he wouldn’t go to jail because of the rain making the road slippy. Becks hates his guts. So do I. I don’t want to write any more tonight.

XXXXXXXXX to you and Daddy

Cathy

22 September 1986

Dear Mammy,

Today was nice. We cleaned out Gramp’s cottage, what a mess. Whisky bottles everywhere and mice droppings in the presses. UGG! UGG! Tell him thanks for the money. Becks said it is for our edukayshon. Julie wants to spend it on ecuipment for the band. Maxeemum Volum are going to tour when they are famous and they need a image. She wont do her Leaving exam. Becks said no way ho-say you do it or I’ll lock you in your room and throw away the key.

Lauren would’nt help clean Gramps cottage. She sat in the car with her walkman on and told me to F…Off when I asked if she wanted to see your bike in the barn. I only asked!! It was covered in cobwebs. I closed my eyes and I could see you riding the road and the wind blowing your dress. Lauren is in a rotten mood again. Remember the last photo Daddy took on the night we all went to her ballet show? Daddy timed the camera so he could get into it too? Well, she broke the glass and screamed at me to stop putting flowers in front of it. I’m never going to speak to her again!!

She didn’t want to go to secondderry school because people would laugh at her limp and call her a spa. She has no limp. Only when she’s tired and tries to do her ballet. Mrs Moran took her to Arnotts for her new school uniform and they went to a posh hotel for tea.

I have to write to Mrs Moran every week. She sends back my letters with red marks. I hate her. I only want to write to you and tell you all.

I will write again soon.

Love to you and Daddy and Gramps

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Cathy

15 January 1987

Dear Mammy,

I can’t believe you are dead 2 years today. We planted lavender on your grave and put fresh flowers on the spot where you died. Becks wants to put a cross there but the council said it’s not on and would be a distracshin for drivers.

The garden is all weeds now. Its Julies job to keep the grass cut but she is a lazy lump and calls Becks a commonist dictater. She told her a fib about playing with Maximum Volume at a concert for cancer. Kevin said it was in a pub where men look up girl’s legs and buy kondoms. My lips are zealed. Maximum Volume are my favorite band, next to Adam Ant. Me and Kevin listen to the band when they pratis in the garden shed. Sebby Morris is lead guitar. Do you remember him from around the corner? He is the biggest poser ever and shakes his head when he plays guitar like there are bees in his ears. He keeps pointing his guitar at Julie and making kissing mouths when Paul is not looking.

Love to you and Daddy and Gramps

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Cathy

10 July 1987

Dear Mammy,

Today was nice. We had a picnic in Gramp’s river field. It belongs to Becks now. A woman called Lulu May rents it from Becks and keeps horses there. She made us tea in the cottage and brought it out to the picnic and sat with us. The sun was shining. Julie blew the seeds from dandylion clocks and said Seb…Paul…Seb…Paul. All the last seeds said Paul…Paul…Paul. I’m glad because Sebby Morris keeps talking about going to Austrailya and Julie says she’ll go with him. Paul says he’s all hot air and gets mad jelous if he even looks at Julie. Please don’t let her go away.

Lulu’s horses waded across the river to see us. They nussled Beck’s cheeks like they loved her too. I’m really glad she didn’t sell the field to Mr Moran for his ticky tacky houses.

Please make every day like today.

Love to you and Daddy and Gramps

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Cathy

25 August 1987

Dear Mammy,

What a week! Julie failed the Leaving. Too much snogging on the sofa with Paul ha ha. Mr Moran says failing was on the cards from the beginning and the same will happen to me and Lauren if Becks doesn’t keep a tighter rein on us. The row about the Leaving was bad. I wish Becks would stop bossing us around. I wish Julie would stop driving her nuts. I wish Lauren would smile and talk to me. I don’t want to go to the Morans with her. Julie won’t go, no way ho-say, and Rebecca says she needs a break so me and Lauren we have to go on our own to Meadow Lark.

Love to you and Daddy and Gramps

Cathy

1 November 1987

Dear Mammy,

Sad news. All the bangers killed Nero. Becks found him in the kitchen this morning stiff. We had a funeral in the garden and she made a cross for his grave and read a poem about a dog being a woman’s best friend. She cried worse than at your funeral.

Love to you, Daddy, Gramps and Nero

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Cathy

Chapter Ten
Rebecca’s Journal–1987

They use a language I can’t decode. Even Lauren with her lost eyes is part of it. Silent and subtle, implicate in the twist of a lip, the lift of an eyebrow, the flash of their eyes meeting. Even the way they hold their shoulders sends out signals that can change their mood, avert an argument, turn a serious discussion into a joke from which I always feel excluded. I can’t remember when I first noticed that it had become Me and Them…Us and Her. I know why they resent me. I’m to blame for trying to replace the irreplaceable…but what is there to do?

Julie escapes into her music. There’s been complaints from the neighbours about the noise from the garden shed but she yawns and sighs and heaves her shoulders when I try and talk to her. I hear my voice, shrill, bad-tempered, bossy, and find it hard to recognise myself. I hate what they’ve turned me into. Lydia is the only one who understands.

I never thought I’d have anything in common with a woman in her forties but she’s been a brick. I talked to her about Jeremy and how he never bothered phoning to tell me he was moving to New York. I had to hear it from Sheila. Rose Moore looked terrible when I saw her in Malahide Village last week. I probably looked the same after he dumped me. I told her it would pass but she took it the wrong way and said she was the one who dumped him and good riddance. She’s such a liar.

Chapter Eleven
Letters to Nirvana

15 January 1988

Dear Mummy,

It’s three years now. Me and Kevin visited your grave this evening. The gates were closed but there was a hole in the wall and we could slide in real easy. We met a Goth there called Melancholia Barnes. She’s two years older than me and is in First Year with Kevin. Now she’s my friend as well. I thought Goth was all about sucking blood and pet bats but Melancholia says it’s just about people who want to be different to the masses. She’s actually called Melanie but she hates her name and thinks Mel is for bimbos. We went back to my house and had popcorn and watched The Addams Family on telly.

She can talk to the dead. Kevin can’t but he believes you can smell dead people. His father is dead longer than you so he knows best. Mr Mulvaney had a bad heart and was cramated but Kevin can not smell ashes only roses, like the ones his father used to grow in the garden.

I got a glass from the kitchen and we put our fingers on the edge of it. Melancholia told us to close our eyes. She said spirit of the glass speak to us speak to us. We had to press hard on the edge of the glass and it wobbled when it tried to give us a message. I wanted to talk to you and Daddy and Kevin wanted to talk to his father. Becks came into the room when the glass was wobbling and gave out like mad. She believes it’s dangerous to meddle with something we don’t understand. How can it be wrong to talk to the dead? She is such a pain.

Love to you, Daddy, Gramps Gaynor and Nero,

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Cathy

15 May 1988

Dear Mummy,

I have to tell you something. I’m getting little boobs and I’ve hair down that place. It’s scary and I’m afraid to tell Becks in case it’s weird. Lauren is four years older and she has no boobs yet. Soon I’ll look like Julie. That’s scary. She said Cross Your Heart is the best kind of bra. Becks says she’s too busy to notice if she’s got boobs or not. She has. I saw her standing in front of the mirror in her room one night. She had no clothes on. She thought I was sleeping and was mad as a bear when she saw me at the door. She put on her nightdress and asked me what I was staring at. Who cares?

Paul and Julie are fighting. Not so much snogging on the sofa any more. She is supposed to be studying hard for her Leaving Repeats but all she cares about is the band. Paul says Maximum Volume can’t go touring until he’s finished college.

Love to you, Daddy, Gramps Gaynor and Nero.

XXXXX

Cathy

30 October 1988

Dear Mum,

Me and Kevin held a séance in Melancholia’s house tonight. Did you hear us? Did we cause a vibration in heaven? Rebecca would go nuts if she knew. We lit candles and sat in a circle. Melancholia asked the ouija board to spell out your name and it did. Rachel. I couldn’t believe it. Kevin accused her of moving the indicator but I know she didn’t ’cause I was watching real close. Then it spelled Jerry. It should have been Gerry but it was near enough. Kevin asked the board to spell his father’s name and laughed like mad when it spelled John instead of Kenneth. But 2 out of 3 is not bad. Do you think the séance was for real? It must be. I never told Melancholia your names so she couldn’t have been guessing.

Becks thinks she’s a bad influence and I should have friends my own age. I wish she’d stop trying to run my life for me. Melancholia has tattoos. One on her butt, one on her breast and two on her arms. She said it doesn’t hurt a bit. Becks would freak if I dared get one but Leah (that’s Melancholia’s mum) didn’t mind a bit. It’s hard to believe she’s a mother. She looks like Melancholia’s older sister except her hair is blonde and she wears ra-ra skirts with sparkles. She looks younger than Becks. Julie is still giving out about college. You’d think she’d be glad she got her Repeat Leaving but she hates computer studies and having to sit in front of a computer when all she wants to do is sing for her fans. Becks says computers are the future and to stop complaining and do what she’s told for a change.

Love to Dad and all,

Cathy

Chapter Twelve
Letters to Nirvana

1 Jan 1989

Dear Mum,

What a start to the new year. Julie and Paul are all off!! She keeps looking at Sebby Morris like he’s a king or something and says she’s in love for real. So what was Paul? A dress rehearcell? I feel really sorry for him. I saw him walking in the castle grounds last night and he looked wild with his beard but it’s not a proper one, more like he can’t be bothered shaving and he doesn’t show up much for band practice. Her and Paul have been together yonks and she doesn’t give a toss that she’s broken his heart. She’s such a bitch and I hate sharing with her ’cause all she talks about is going away with Sebby Morris.

Love to Dad and all,

Cathy

15 January 1989

Dear Mum,

I can’t believe it’s four years. We went to mass and placed a wreath on your grave. We finally got permission to erect the cross in you and Daddy’s memory. Everyone says it’s not a distraction on the bend. But they see it and it makes them slow down and that’s good. I’m glad the cross is up at last but I hate the reason Becks had to fight to get it there.

Julie’s being nice again. She’s asleep now with the pillow over her head. She came into the room tonight when I was crying about her going away with Sebby and then she cried too and said going away was all hot air and the far away hills are greener than the garden shed or something like that and she tickled me so much I got the hiccups and so did she and Becks yelled at us to behave and stop doing her head in. I’m glad I didn’t tell her about Julie going away because she would have stopped her and had a BIG ROW. This way, Julie made up her mind on her own.

Love to Dad and All,

Cathy

3 February 1989

Dear Mum,

Something happened today. I got my period. I had a pain in my tummy all day and then I saw the blood. Becks said I’m too young. I’m not even a teenager so it must be a mistake. No mistake. She gave me a hot water bottle for my tummy and said the pain will be gone by tomorrow. Julie said I’m now a victim of The Curse and hermoans. She bought me a Curly Wurly bar. I thought you’d like to know. I don’t feel any different. Should I?

Lauren says she doesn’t care if she never gets her period. She should by now. But you can bleed in other ways. I see cuts on her arms, scabs healing. She makes me sick!! I was going to tell Becks but there’ll only be another row so I’m saying nothing for the moment.

I’ll write again soon.

Love to you and Daddy and Gramps and Nero,

Cathy

11 May 1989

Dear Mum,

Major news! I’m going to be an auntie. Talk about trouble. Becks (actually, it’s Rebecca now, she says Becks is kid stuff and, as we all claim to be adults, we must call her by her proper name) went ballistic when she heard. Julie is refusing to marry Paul. She says she’ll take the baby with her in a sling when she’s touring. Small problem. Maximum Volume don’t exist any more. Seb’s gone to Australia and the new guitarist is useless and Paul’s got to do exams to support a wife and child. Wife, my arse, said Julie, are you deaf or what? We’re not getting married!!!!!

Lauren’s staying in her room as usual and I’m spending all my time with Kevin and Melancholia. I’m glad I have friends. They’re so much easier than family. I can’t believe I’m actually going to be an auntie!

Love to Dad and all,

Cathy

22 September 1989

Dear Mum,

Seconderry school is not as bad as I thought. I cycle with Kevin and Melancholia and I sit beside them in the canteen even though I’m only a First Year and that’s insect status as far as the rest of the students are concerned. I’m afraid I didn’t make the top stream like Lauren. I’m in a low stream but who cares…except Becks and that’s just because it reflects badly on her.

Melancholia looks like a Goth even in her school uniform and she couldn’t care less what people think about her. When Jobbo Boland makes a pretend cross sign with his arms and calls her Belladonna, she just laughs and calls him a wanker. I never heard the Cure or the Banshees or Bachaus until she played them. I’m never going to listen to Kylie Minogue again.

Julie is getting bigger every day. Paul still wants to marry her. He must be off his head. She has such a temper and if she’s not sulking she’s bawling her eyes out. She’s never ever getting married.

Love to Dad and all,

Cathy

1 November 1989

Dear Mum

Julie’s wedding was brilliant. She didn’t care about being a whale and kept getting up on the stage to sing with the wedding band. Rebecca walked her up the aisle. It should have been Daddy but Rebecca said we had to make this a happy day. Lauren looked like a mermaid in her bridesmaid’s dress. Mrs Moran eyes slid sideways when Mr Moran was dancing with her and said it’s amazing how quickly young people grow up nowadays when there’s no proper supervision. I thought Rebecca was going to thump her. I would have! Paul nearly had to carry Julie off the stage so that the band could play Congratulations and send them off on their honeymoon to Galway. We used boxes and boxes of confetti. Julie was so huge she needed it all to cover her tummy! And Jeremy Anderson came!! Home from the Big Apple. Guess he didn’t like the taste. He danced with Rebecca and she looked like the happiest woman in the world.

Love to Daddy and all,

Cathy

Chapter Thirteen
Rebecca’s Journal–1989

Never believe your best friend when she promises not to interfere in your love life. Sheila said it was just the two of us meeting for a meal. We’d seen so little of each other since she got engaged to Brian. I figured she wanted to show off her ring and steeled myself to be enthusiastic when she discussed her wedding plans. But I was wrong. I didn’t notice Jeremy at first. Brian blocked him from view until I was almost at the table. Then it was too late to run.

I believed I’d stopped loving him. Convinced myself he meant nothing to me. Believed I hated him for being a coward. Paul stuck by Julie, put up with her moods and her tears and her tantrums and now…well, it’s not exactly a match made in Heaven but he’ll be holding her hand when the baby comes.

Jeremy said he was too young to carry me through the bad times and he ran. It’s hard remembering how I felt then…when I think back to those years they seem dreamlike, as if we were performing a play on a stage and the world was our audience. I remember people walking to the other side of the street, hoping I hadn’t noticed they were avoiding me. I can understand their embarrassment. We were an ordinary family made extraordinary by tragedy. I wouldn’t have known what to say either and, sometimes, it’s better to keep on going.

Jeremy regrets leaving me, the heartache he caused. I try to remember the heartache but I can’t…I think my feelings must have been stirred in the greater melting pot of grief.

He’s older now and he’s back. Little steps. Everything can be done in little steps. He says I can trust him. He’s changed, matured, knows what he wants.

VisionFirst have set up an advertising division in Ireland and sent him back from New York to work in it. I’m not surprised. His persuasive powers are good. Julie says I must be off my head to trust him again. The leopard’s spots are not for changing. But I have to trust him. He’s brought me back to life.

Chapter Fourteen
Letters to Nirvana

22 November 1989

Dear Mum,

I’m a teenager at last. My birthday party was brilliant. Rebecca gave me a stereo. Melancholia gave me Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice and Kevin gave me a CD of the Cure. Lauren gave me scented candles. Julie and Paul gave me a gift voucher for Awear. Jonathan gave me a mug with The Coolest Hip Auntie in Town on it. I still can’t believe he was born on their honeymoon! Julie said pushing out the Rock of Cashel would have been easier. Mrs Mulvaney gave me a pair of Docs. Mr Moran gave me money and Mrs Moran gave me a dictionary. Bitch! Jeremy gave me Lily of the Valley perfume. I have it on me now and it’s gorgeous.

I sleep with Rebecca now. I miss your room but it’s Julie and Paul’s, and I prefer sharing with Rebecca rather than freaky Lauren. It’s strange having a man living in the house. I can’t remember Daddy’s sounds. Paul sings when he’s in the shower and he leaves the toilet seat up and talks to the telly when he’s watching football. He’s given up college and is working with computers. Jonathan is adorable! He looks like Daddy. Everyone says so. When I held him for the first time he gripped my thumb so tight I thought my heart would melt with love for him. Lauren was afraid to hold him in case she let him fall. She never wants to have a baby and that’s just as well because of the accident and what it did to her insides.

Julie’s going to start a new band as soon as she stops breast feeding. Paul can like it or lump it. The only music in her life now is Jonathan crying. At maximum volume!! You and Daddy are grandparents. I hope you know that…I really do hope so.

Love to Daddy and all,

Cathy

2 December 1989

Dear Mum,

Lauren cut herself again. Rebecca had to take her to the doctor. She’s so beautiful, not like me, what’s she trying to do? I’m just an acne dose but she’s always going on and on about how ugly she is and staying in her room all the time writing crazy stuff. I hope she means it when she says never again. That’s all the news for now.

Love to all,

Cathy

15 January 1990

Dear Mum,

It’s five years today. Sometimes it only seems like yesterday but when I think of all that’s changed in those years it seems like forever since I knew you and Daddy.

There’s strange things happening in your graveyard. We saw empty cider bottles and burned grass in the old part where no one is buried any more. Someone wrote Boot Boys Rule OK on a tombstone. Rebecca hates me going there but all we do is listen to our music. Leah doesn’t go on at Melancholia all the time. Neither does Mrs Mulvaney. She let Kevin paint his room black and stick a luminous skeleton on the ceiling. He had his bottom lip pierced with a tiny dagger. You’d laugh if you saw his hair. He’s dyed it jet black and made it straight. He hates fair curls and is sick of being called a blondie pouf! I asked him what it was like kissing girls with a dagger in his lip and he said, do you want to find out? Cheeky.

I still miss you. Do you know it’s five years or does that just seem like a little dot in eternity?

Special love to Dad on this memory day,

Cathy

3 March 1990

Dear Mum,

It’s so fucking unfair! It was all in the Evening Herald about the gravestones and photos too. Your gravestone was all right. It was the old ones that had the graffiti done on them. Nothing to do with me and Kevin and Melancholia but the woman in the house beside the gate told the guards we hang around there all the time. We don’t hang around! We visit your grave if only she’d open her stupid eyes and look. And we don’t smash gravestones but no one believes us. The guards came to the house and talked to Rebecca. They asked us questions about the graffiti and the broken angels and devil worship. One of the guards said Rebecca had better keep a closer eye on me in future or there’ll be more trouble. He made it sound as if it was all her fault. But it’s not. She told me not to go to the graveyard except with her but I like being there with Kevin and Melancholia. Those sick boot boys messed up our rights!!

After the cops left Rebecca slapped my face. She said, that’s for running around with sick Goths. What planet is she on? What sick Goths? Just because Kevin dyes his hair, she keeps saying he’s like a vampire. It’s not fair. I don’t cut myself. I don’t get pregnant like Julie did. So why am I grounded for a fucking month? Thank God, Jeremy is on my side. He thinks Goth is an expression of individuality. It always sounds pretentious when Melancholia says that but he made it sound true. He was always getting into trouble when he was a teenager. His father said he’d never amount to anything but he did. His ad about the shopping centre won an award for innovation. His photo was in the papers. Rebecca stuck it on the fridge. I see him every time I open the door.

No more ouija board. It’s banned from my life. Even if I played snakes and ladders Rebecca would freak! I’d stopped believing in it anyway. I just wanted it to be real because I need to know if you’re in Heaven. I’m finding it harder and harder to believe you’re there…or anywhere except in my head. Maybe you were a dream I dreamed and you and Daddy never existed. Maybe I’m a dream and living in everyone else’s dreams. Maybe angels do come at night and read letters. Maybe it’s not a con job thought up by Lydia Mulvaney to stop me snivelling over her fish fingers and chips.

X

Cathy

20 Oct 1990

Dear Mum,

I’m back in your room again. Julie and Paul have moved out. They used Gramps’ money for a deposit on a house in Swords with wood floors so Jonathan doesn’t have to breathe in the dust from our carpets. It makes his asthma worse. Julie gets so scared when he starts to wheeze but the doctor said asthma is not a problem with the right medication and lots of kids grow out of it. Their next new baby will be born in April. Julie calls it ‘another mistake’ but I know she’ll love it just as much as she loves Jonathan. I cycle to Swords with Kevin once a week and we baby-sit so they can go to the pictures.

Sometimes Jeremy stays over in our house. I saw him kissing Rebecca in the hall last night. I didn’t mean to spy and was only going downstairs to get a glass of milk. Rebecca’s hair was like a rope around his hands and he was pressing her against the wall and whispering, let me stay…they won’t hear anything…I promise…promise…kissing her all the time. I was afraid to move in case they saw me. She let him stay. He was wrong. I heard. It makes my tummy swoop to think of it and the more I try not to the more I do.

Love to Dad and all,

Cathy

5 Nov 1990

Dear Mum,

Serious news. Lauren’s in hospital. We’re all in shock. She keeps saying she didn’t mean to do it so deep and she’s promised Rebecca she’ll never do it again. Is she crazy or what? She’s in a private room with flowers. Mr Moran said it’s only right to look after her properly and he’d pay. He brings her chocolates and fluffy toys. Mrs Moran said if they’d had their way in the beginning, all this could have been avoided. She said it low to Mr Moran so that Rebecca couldn’t hear. But I did. The cheek of her. What does she know about anything except being stinking rich and showing off her fancy house in magazines? They’ll never be our parents, no matter how hard they try. Watch over Lauren and make her stop hurting herself.

Love you all,

Cathy

Chapter Fifteen
Rebecca’s Journal–1990

I was searching under her mattress for blades and I found poems instead. Only a few. I suspect she’s destroyed most of them or maybe hidden them somewhere else. But I’m not going to pretend I know. She values her privacy too much. I cried when I read this one. I thought it was about gardening when I saw the title but she’s obviously still clinging to memories of our mother. At least, in this instance, Lauren has released them in ink, not blood.

Crying is not for the faint-hearted. I thought I’d never stop. Only that Jeremy was calling…I don’t ever want him to see me in such a state. We’ve moved on from that time…tick tock tick tock tick…

I’ve copied this poem and others into the journal. Some day when she’s stronger, I’ll persuade her to send them to a publisher.

Deadheading the Red Geraniums

I watch you

Deadheading the red geraniums

The withered petals

Blood-staining your hands

When you snap the head

From its slender stem.

I watch you

Breathe the perfumed air

As sweet peas waltz

On bamboo stilts.

Adrift in pink until the pods

Wither and decay.

I watch you

Gather roses: crimson, cream and peach.

The prayerful thorns sink

Into your flesh.

Stigmata lifting you

Across the deep abyss.

I watch you

Stroke the birch, the silvery bark.

A family tree, denuded.

A wafer fragment

Falling. Ash to ash…

Ash to ash.

Chapter Sixteen
Letters to Nirvana

26 December 1990

Dear Mum,

Guess what Jeremy gave Rebecca for Christmas. A really flash solitaire. They’re getting married in June 1992. Julie and Paul didn’t stay long at the engagement party because of Jonathan and the carpet dust. Lauren is good since she came out of hospital. At the party, all the boys wanted to dance with her…except Kevin. He thinks she’s a real head banger and even though I agree, I hate it when anyone says things like that about her.

Mr Moran proposed a toast to Rebecca and Jeremy and said may all their troubles be little ones. He can talk, said Julie. Where’s his little ones? If he had any he wouldn’t be so slick with his words. She is afraid Jonathan will have another asthma attack and go to hospital again. Sebby sends her postcards from Australia. She calls them salt in the wound.

XXX

Cathy

15 Jan 1991

Dear Mum,

It’s six years today. Rebecca forgot to organise the mass. She can talk about nothing but Jeremy this and Jeremy that and she looks different, like a light is shining inside her. I know you don’t mind but she should have done the mass.

XXXX to you and Daddy on this special memory day,

Cathy

12 April 1991

Dear Mum,

I went shopping with Melancholia today. She gave me this amazing jet black cross for a present and showed me where to find fantastic clothes in the George’s Street arcade. Black net gloves to my elbows and a long black dress with a scooped neck, perfect with the cross.

Rebecca hates my new clothes. She’s always going on about Satanic influences, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Well, I know what it means but that’s not us. All we do is play our music and read Anne Rice. I don’t know how someone as nice as Jeremy can possibly be in love with her. He must be only pretending. He’s probably terrified of her. Everyone else is. She keeps going on about me staying out late and how she has responsibility for my welfare. Who does she think she is? You and Daddy were responsible for my welfare, no one else. Julie’s too busy to talk since Philip was born. He looks like a troll but she keeps going on at Jeremy about using him for nappy ads. Jeremy is so nice he tries to be polite but he says maternal love is blind as a bat, only not to Julie, of course. Only to me. I was going to say love must be very blind if you’re marrying my ugly ageing sister with absolutely no taste in clothes but I didn’t.

He thinks I look like Kate Bush. I adore Kate Bush. I love how she sings my name Cat-he-ah…Cat-he-ah…but what I love most is the way Jeremy says my name. Catriona. I’ve always been Cathy since I can remember but he says I’m too precious to be an abbreviation. That’s what he says. Too precious to be an abbreviation. God! It’s time I went to sleep. Rebecca would go nuts if she knew what I was thinking. Thank God we have skin on our skulls to keep our thoughts from escaping.

Love,

Catriona

10 August 1991

Dear Mum,

I need to tell you something. It’s not bad or anything but I know Rebecca would be mad if she knew. I met Jeremy outside his office today. It wasn’t on purpose. I just wanted to find out where he works. I didn’t expect him to come out and see me. He brought me to a café on Baggot Street. It was very crowded yet it seemed like we were the only two people there. I was shaking so much I was sure he’d notice but he just talked about the awful ads he has to make, like the ones for toilet cleaners and constipation. He made a brilliant one about a woman sky-diving on the Curse days. I’ve seen it loads of times. When she falls from the sky laughing her head off and her arms out like a bird you’d never think she gets tummy cramp or be frightened blood will show on her dress. He said I’m growing into a beautiful young lady. No one ever said that to me before, only to Lauren. He’s going to be my brother-in-law. Every time I think about it my eyes sting as if someone blew smoke into them. God! It’s time I went to sleep. I hate being like this, my skin shivery every time I imagine them together.

I didn’t tell her about meeting him. I was afraid she would get mad and say I was looking for attention again. I wasn’t!

I found your copy of Wuthering Heights. It’s brilliant and cruel and so sad. I keep thinking about death and how it really messes up life for those still living. I hated and loved Heathcliff. I only loved him because he loved Cathy so much that it made everything else he did seem not so bad…almost.

X

Catriona

10 September 1991

Dear Mum,

Rebecca wants her bridesmaids in russet red. Julie thinks polka dots would be very original. Lauren wants us to wear ice-blue. They argue and wave bits of material at each other. My opinion is not sought. Who wants black at a wedding?

He’s going to move into our house when they get married. Rebecca’s going back to college as a mature student to be a vet like she’d started doing when you died. After she’s qualified, she’s going to run the animal sanctuary on Gramps’ field with Lulu. Her dreams are no longer ash. They’re all coming true.

I wish I was her. I can’t tell anyone except you. Even Melancholia wouldn’t understand.

Catriona

2 December 1991

Dear Mum,

You and Dad would be proud of Lauren. Her first book of poems was launched tonight. It’s called Silverfish. She’s dedicated her book to you and Dad. Mr Moran made a speech and said she’s a new young voice dealing with difficult issues. My throat went really tight when she read the Silverfish poem. It’s awful. Sad and weird and very Lauren.

I know what silverfish are. They look like commas and sometimes I see them flicking in the dark. Lauren’s wrists have healed up but I still see the marks, like she’s drawn little squiggles on her skin.

Jeremy sat next to me. He must have known my thoughts because he said, stop frowning Catriona, you’ll ruin your beautiful face. His knee hit mine under the table and his smile went deep into my eyes when he whispered Oops! Sorry, Catriona. I love how he says my name…Catriona…Catriona…Cat-rio-na…like it’s a beautiful sound in a love song.

Afterwards Mr Moran brought us for a meal to the Shelbourne Hotel. He knew everyone and kept introducing Lauren as his poetic protégée. Mrs Moran said she should stop depending on them for everything. But she said it so quiet that only me and Rebecca heard her. She’s such a bitch!

Love you,

Catriona

Chapter Seventeen
Rebecca’s Journal–1991

She couldn’t believe I’d collected her poems. I tried to persuade her to submit them to a proper publishing house but she refused. Afraid of failure, afraid of everything. Steve Moran took over. Vanity publishing. A big launch. What did it mean in the end? Another crutch.

Silverfish

In the moon skidding hours

I collect silverfish

Somersaulting silverfish

Disco dancing silverfish

Flick flash

Across the ash

And embers dead

Of hearth and home

Sliding in and sliding out

In chink and eave

In weft and weave

Snug in a rug

Smug bugs

In crevices that bleed the night.

Hurry scurry

Playing hide but do not seek us.

Silver scales

Flick flash

Slick slash

Dancing lancing silverfish

Thrashing, slashing twitch-blade runners.

Chapter Eighteen
Letters to Nirvana

15 January 1992

Mother,

Seven years…did you ever exist??????? Where should I address these pathetic letters? Heaven…Paradise…Nirvana…Cloud Nine? Where are you?

Cathy

9 June 1992

Dear Mum,

It’s over. He is now my brother-in-law. Rebecca walked up the aisle on Mr Moran’s arm. The way she smiled when she said, I Do, made me think about the nice times and how she loved me before you died. I kept remembering and remembering and it made me cry. We wore ice-blue with a shimmer when it caught the light. In every wedding photograph we’re smiling fit to burst a gut. Mr Moran made the Father of the Bride speech. Mrs Moran drank too much. Her mouth slid sideways when she was asked to lift her glass in a toast to the bridesmaids and she stayed sitting when everyone else stood up and shouted, To the beautiful bridesmaids.

Jeremy danced with me. His fingers pressed into the small of my back. He said I looked beautiful in blue and that I’d emerged from a chrysalis. I went into the Ladies and stared at myself in the full-length mirror. An ice-blue butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. Flying from a dark place, afraid of my reflection.

X

Catriona

22 August 1992

Dear Mum,

I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it but I have. Jeremy eats muesli and croissants for breakfast. He put photographs of his best ads in frames all over the hall. I sleep with cotton wool in my ears and squeeze my eyes tight so that I won’t think about them in the next room. But I do…I do…In the morning I pretend not to notice when they touch every time they pass each other. I pretend not to hear when they giggle over stupid things I don’t understand. Rebecca looks so young again. A student now, jeans and a ponytail.

I’m not going to write to you any more. What’s the sense in writing to a ghost? I ask myself that question every time I take up my pen. It’s stupid to keep looking for a sign that your fingers touched the paper when it’s obvious you don’t exist!!

X

Catriona

21 September 1992

Dear Mum,

Lauren’s gone to the University of Westminster to learn to be a proper writer. Mrs Moran organised it, the fees and all. Rebecca is furious. She doesn’t want Lauren to leave home but Lauren said it’s got nothing to do with her any more. We’re all growing up and making our own decisions. I haven’t told Rebecca about the night Mrs Moran rang and called me an ungrateful adulterous whore. Her voice was so squeaky and shaky, I didn’t know who she was, at first. When I said, you have the wrong number, this is Cathy Lambert, she hung up immediately. Every time I think about that squeaky voice on the phone something twists inside my chest. When I told Lauren, she stared back at me with her haughty expression that shuts everyone out and never said a word. Mrs Moran is mental to think Lauren fancies her geriatric husband. Lauren doesn’t fancy anyone but herself.

I wanted to tell Julie but I didn’t. I was afraid she’d laugh at Mrs Moran and call her a daft bat. She’s in rotten humour since she discovered she’s pregnant again. Why don’t they take up badminton or marathon running? Sex can’t be the only game they know how to play.

It’ll be easier in the house without Lauren. Not quieter, she never made a sound, but calm like we can open doors without being afraid.

Love you all,

Catriona

1 Nov 1992

Dear Mum,

I’m in deep shit. Grounded for ever, as far as Rebecca is concerned. Remember I told you about Melancholia’s idea for the Halloween Goth party? My date with disaster, as it turned out!! Rebecca thought I was sleeping over at Melancholia’s house and had even checked with Leah, who pretended I was.

We held the party in a warehouse down on the docks. It used to belong to Melancholia’s uncle. All the buildings around are empty too so it was creepy and perfect. We made a papier-mâché coffin and a tombstone and put black netting over the walls. We only invited Goths so it was hush-hush. Or so we believed. Melancholia sneaked vodka from Leah’s cocktail cabinet. Two bottles. Sharon had wine and Kevin brought beer. I drank vodka for the first time. It was like a volcano inside my chest. One of the Goths kept giggling ’cause you’re not supposed to drink it neat. It was easier going down with the orange juice…smooth and easy…easy and slow.

More people came, gatecrashers, not Goths. We all danced together but not touching. Goths don’t touch or invade private space. The gatecrashers didn’t care. Jobbo Boland called me a vampire bitch and begged me to bite his neck. They started a fight and broke bottles against the wall and carried the coffin on their shoulders like it was a real funeral. When there was no drink left they went on to the next party. Most of the Goths went as well.

My head felt fuzzy and my eyes were whirling around. Everything was dark and awful until I saw you. Yes, you, angel Mother, dancing on your own. You were as clear as a star in a jet-black sky. The music was so beautiful. I wanted to dance with you for ever. Kevin shouted at me to stop dancing with shadows but I couldn’t. I twirled around and around, and you twirled with me. The music played louder and louder until it seemed as if my head would explode. Then your face went spinning towards the moon outside the window. You were going away again. I wouldn’t let you. Not this time.

I screamed and my fist went through the window. I don’t remember the glass breaking. Just the moon turning silver and your face vanishing into the night. I woke up in hospital with bandages on my hands. Not a good idea, said the doctor when he came to see me. Don’t do that again, young lady, unless you’re into blood sports.

When I got home from the hospital Rebecca made me look at myself in the mirror. Black panda eyes and black smeared lipstick. I wanted to die. Black…black…black. She kept shouting and flinging my clothes on the bed. She looked at Daddy’s guitar and your perfume bottle shaped like a pyramid, still half-full, and my silver locket with your hair inside. She said my room is nothing but a shrine and it’s time I started living in the real world. She tore my posters of Bauhaus and the Banshees and The Cure from the wall and crumpled them in a ball. Tomorrow I have to paint your room. Primrose yellow or rose-petal pink, I have two choices.

Alcoholic poisoning is what I had. My stomach was pumped. I’m going to stop writing to you for definite this time. Angels don’t read letters. They don’t even exist. Death is a black and bottomless sleep. I’m grounded for 6 weeks. Shit!

Catriona

6 November 1992

Dear Mum,

Your room is painted primrose yellow. I have kitten posters on the walls. Jeremy painted the ceiling and I did the walls. When he did his Michael Jackson moonwalk across the floor, we laughed so much Rebecca came in to see what the joke was about. When I told him I was never going to drink again, he said alcohol is only disgusting when it’s handled recklessly. I was too young. I broke rules. I was heedless of my own welfare. I have to look upon this experience as a baptism of fire. He asked me why I did such a crazy thing. It’s dangerous and corrosive to keep bottling up your feelings, Catriona, he said.

I began to giggle, a high awful giggle that I couldn’t stop. Take it easy…it’s all right…take it easy. His voice was sharp, then soft, like he was coaxing me over a dangerous place and I stopped as suddenly as I started. Goose bumps ran all along my arms when we sat on the bed and he leaned close to me. You should laugh more often, Catriona, he said. But not like that…not like that.

X

Catriona

15 Jan 1993

Dear Mum,

Lauren rang today. Eight years, she said. Who’d have believed it. She lives in one of Mr Moran’s apartments. Real plush, she says, with a view of St James’s Park. He brings her out for posh meals when he’s in London on business. I bet Mrs Moran doesn’t know! I asked who held his zimmer frame when they kissed and she said I was way off the mark on that one. He’s a father figure, kind and decent and nothing more. You’re forgetting rich, I said, and married to the teacher bitch. The teacher bitch has nothing to worry about, Lauren said. Her husband can obsess all he likes but I’m not interested.

I wonder if she’s telling the truth. The boys in school used to call her The Ice Queen and put bets on who could get her to go out with them. They never won. She has lots of boyfriends now but their names keep changing: Louie, François, Colm, Toby, Saul.

She’s OK again after falling off her bike. Rebecca flew over to make sure and said she’s living like royalty.

Look after her and keep her away from blades.

Love you all,

XX

Catriona

3 Feb 1993

Dear Mum

I have to write about this. Forgive me…forgive me. I never meant it to happen. This evening I met Jeremy by accident on Merrion Square. At first he didn’t recognise me in my Goth make-up. Goth coat and dress, lace over my face, my black cross.

When I said hello he stopped like he’d run into a wall and said, Good God, Catriona, is that really you? You look amazing.

He gave me a lift home. The rain started when we were leaving the city and was pouring down by the time we reached Broadmeadow Estuary. There’s a storm coming, Jeremy said. Even as he spoke, we saw lightning flashing across the viaduct. We parked by the shore. The waves raced under the arches and the ducks flapped their wings into the wind. We saw the heron standing as still as ever. Then the thunder rolled over the estuary and lit up the swans like ghosts on water. Jeremy put his arm around my shoulder and said it was nature at her proudest, showing off for all the world to see. Like Goths, he said. Showing off her darker side.

I began to cry. Don’t ask me why. He lifted the lace from my face and laid it over my hair. He took off my net gloves and stroked my fingers. Nothing else. Just stroked and stroked until my whole body was shivering. My sweet innocent Catriona, he said. Are you a child playing adult games or a woman caught in a child’s mind? Why does such anger radiate from you? He talked about the accident. No one ever does but he asked questions and it was like drawing splinters out of my skin.

Sometimes I wake from a dream and hear Julie screaming. I jump out of bed and crash into the wall because your room is different to the room I slept in then. Rebecca should have been minding me but she’d sneaked off to Sheila’s party. Jeremy explained how she feels guilty about disobeying you and not being at home when the police called to the house to tell us about the accident. He said that’s why she tries so hard to do what’s right.

I wish she’d stop trying. She can’t make it different, no matter how hard we pretend. Then I told Jeremy the most dreadful thing of all. How my anger sometimes makes me hate you for being dead. It’s not true. It’s me. I hate myself for thinking such awful thoughts but they go like a skewer through my brain.

He said the line between love and hate is as fine as a wire vibrating. I don’t understand what he means but it sounds right. He understands how things can happen in a part of your mind you never knew existed.

He kissed the tears on my cheeks and on my eyelids. When he kissed the tears on my lips he opened his mouth and pulled me closer. Then he was kissing me for real, tongue touching tongue, and even though I was frightened, I didn’t want to pull away, ever. I thought about Rebecca and all her dreams coming true. The wind nearly blew me over when I opened the door of his car. He said, Don’t be silly, Catriona. Get back in! I’ll drive you to the house. He feels as if he’s playing with fire when we’re alone. It would be the end of everything if Rebecca found out about his moment of weakness. She won’t…she won’t find out.

Don’t warn me against him. Don’t remind me of his age, of Rebecca, a whole life I’m too young to understand. I’m in love with him. The age difference doesn’t matter. That’s nothing where love is concerned. I’ll dream about him tonight. And tomorrow I’ll daydream through the waking hours. His eyes are so piercing they can see right into my soul. Even now, when he’s not with me, I feel him beside me, feel his touch on my skin, his fingers stroking mine, and the thunder enfolding us. Is that how it was with you and Daddy? Tell me what to do!!

Catriona

10 Feb 1993

Dear Mother,

Kevin’s bedroom is now painted white. The skeleton has gone from the ceiling. Ask me how I know. I’m not supposed to be there. Off limits, isn’t it? Go on, ask! I’m going to tell you anyway. I lay on his bed and listened to The Cure but it was different to before, like he could stop being my friend and be something else. He took the tiny little dagger from his lip and put it under the pillow. When we kissed I closed my eyes. I kept seeing Jeremy’s face. The way he combs his wheat-yellow hair straight back from his forehead yet there’s always a bit hanging down. I could see his eyes, blue like the sky, and his voice soft when he said, Catriona…Catriona…Catriona.

I lifted my black dress above my ankles so that Kevin could see my net stockings and my shoes with the silver buckles. He parted the lace at my throat. He opened the buttons on my dress. So many buttons down the front but he didn’t mind struggling, one button after the other, stopping to kiss me in case I was bored it was taking so long. Then I saw his blond roots where he’s growing out the black and I had this terrible feeling that I was ruining our friendship by allowing him to open buttons and kiss my neck, his tongue licking the hollow in my throat, making shivers on my skin while all the time I was thinking about someone else.

Then the buttons were open and he was able to take off my bra. My heart gave a skippy kind of jump when he touched my nipples. He pressed me deeper into the bed. His face was hard, a stranger’s face. I didn’t know him any more. I wanted to hug my breasts away from his eyes and be safe in my room with you in the kitchen making dinner and Daddy’s key in the front door, and the way he used to shout, ‘Hey, you parcel of beauties, I’m home.’

I shouted at him to let me go. He didn’t hear me. My dress was down around my waist and he kept whispering my name…I love you Cathy…Cathy…Not Catriona. I hit his face with my fist and he jerked back, his eyes opening wide. Then he slumped beside me, breathing fast, as if he’d been in a race that went on too long.

Nothing happened, Cathy, stop crying…calm down…calm down…His words came from far away but eventually I heard him. He kept apologising, said he’d misread the signals, thought I felt the same, nothing happened, nothing to stop us continuing to be friends as before. But I knew he lied. That he, like me, could see our friendship dissolving with every promise we made.

I can’t think of anything else to tell you tonight. Watch over me. I’m in a dangerous place.

Catriona

16 March 1993

Dear Mum,

Jeremy’s kiss is like a dream. Perhaps it was. I don’t ever want to think about it again. I saw Kevin this evening when I was walking along the estuary. The dagger’s gone from his lip. We haven’t talked much since that night. A girl was with him. She has swinging fair hair like a shampoo advertisement. I was afraid he’d told her about the time in his bedroom and could feel the shivers coming just thinking about it. Her name is Andrea and I just know she hates The Cure.

Tomorrow is St Patrick’s Day. Remember the parades and the sleet and us dancing on floats in our Irish dancing costumes? Blue knees? The parade has changed a lot since your day. I’m going to watch it with Melancholia and her friends.

I’ve kept the worst news until last. Rebecca flew out this morning to see Lauren. How does she always know? She’s determined to bring her home and make her better again.

X

Catriona

Chapter Nineteen
Rebecca’s Journal–1993

I never should have allowed Olive Moran to send Lauren away but, truthfully, I was secretly relieved she was leaving us. I wanted nothing to come between Jeremy and our happiness. I convinced myself it was a good idea to let her handle life on her own. I’ve enough on my hands with Cathy and her Goth friends.

It could have worked out. She sent me sections of her novel. It was raw and revelatory, and was, I suspected, giving her an opportunity to release her feelings. I read her tutor’s critiques, his belief that it would be recognised as a serious work of fiction. If only she hadn’t been knocked from her bike. It happened so easily–a driver opening the door of his car without looking. She went flying and the second car had to swerve to avoid her. The squeal of brakes brought it all back. She was still screaming when the ambulance arrived. They sedated her in hospital, then discharged her.

She swore she was OK. I believed her because I wanted to. Is it like drugs, I wonder, the sweet swooning oblivion that comes over her when the drip drip drip becomes a flow? There were men; I met some of them when I was there. They brought her flowers and chocolates, and fluffy animals with love notes embroidered on their fur. They make her forget. Why then does she send them away and reach for the only relief that gives her comfort?

I knew as soon as the poem arrived. Just a verse but it’s all there. Her cry for help.

Rage river rage

Rage towards the night ocean

Where the tide waits

To crest you towards distant

Reefs of coral

Sharp as the lover’s blade

When it sinks into the flesh of a barren moon.

Chapter Twenty
Letters to Nirvana

18 March 1993

Oh Mum…Mum!

I need to tell you what happened. I can’t tell anyone else, never, ever until the day I die. Rebecca will kill me stone dead…what have I done?

We watched the parade going through O’Connell Street then met Melancholia’s friends at the bank on Dame Street. Do you remember the one that’s shaped like a square mushroom? That’s where we sat on the steps and watched everyone walking by. It felt good, being part of a group and everyone looking at us, but pretending they weren’t. Then we went up Grafton Street. Buskers were playing guitars and there were jugglers and fire-eaters and a man who stood like a statue and had a frozen face like Lauren, except when he winked. Melancholia’s boyfriend, Chaos, and his friends bought cans of lager in the off-licence and we sat on the grass in Stephen’s Green drinking them.

Wrong brew, said Jobbo Boland when he came by. It should be blood. He called me Vampira. I hate him! We told him to get lost but he kept hanging around. I felt so good with the muzzy far-off feeling inside my head. Jobbo kept shaking his head like music was switched on in his brain. We went to McDonald’s for burgers. A woman shouted something about devil worshipers and we chanted We are Goths…We are Goths…We are Goths…back at her. We passed the acrobats turning cartwheels, passed the buskers and the traveller children with their mouth organs, the pavement artists with the Virgin Mary pictures. I saw myself in a shop window. Eyeliner streaked like soot, my hair all over my face. Vampira Lambert on her day out.

It was hot and crowded in McDonald’s. The tables were full of families, children with painted tiger faces, bobbing balloons. Jobbo sat opposite me and Melancholia went to the counter for chips and Big Macs.

You look out of it, Vampira, Jobbo said. Are you not used to drinking blood or what? His piggy pink eyes kept darting all over the place and his head was shaved except for a wispy bit at the back. He told me to relax for a change instead of always looking like I was going to cut my wrists. I nearly said, wrong sister, but I didn’t. Have some fun for a change, he said, you’ll be in your coffin long enough. Then he gave it to me. Maybe, if he hadn’t mentioned coffins, I wouldn’t have done it. Maybe I would…I don’t know anything any more.

The tiny square of paper had a clown’s face painted on it. Who’s that, I asked him, Ronald McDonald?

He laughed like I’d said the funniest thing in the world. Believe me, Vampira, it’ll blow all those negatives out of your mind. You’ll float like a bird.

In the Ladies I licked the tab and wondered if angels would cry because I swore to Rebecca I’d never touch drugs. An oath taken at your graveside one Sunday afternoon when we were pulling weeds. I couldn’t eat the Big Mac or the chips. Melancholia called me an ungrateful cow and dumped them in the bin.

We ran down to College Green where a band called Ovida Jones was playing. The lead singer had long red hair. He was so casual, smoking and joking with the guitarist, ignoring thousands of people watching him. The drummer hit a cymbal. The amplified boom almost lifted me off my feet. Everyone jumped then roared laughing. Where did our laughter go, all our throaty laughter floating up into the dark mysterious night? Did it reach Nirvana before it faded away? Jobbo said I’d float like a bird. Like an eagle. No one to touch me when I’m on top of the world.

The musicians began to play and the thoombing noise crashed from my heart to my head. The singer grabbed the microphone and the crowd screamed. The noise was incredible, a thoomb…thoomb beat like a great pounding beast. The singer shoved the microphone towards us and we sang the chorus. ‘Under the clock clock…clock…under the clock. Holding my heart in hock for you under the clock…clock…clock!’

Again and again we sang the words and I was screaming with them, only there was no sound coming from my mouth because it was frozen in a huge O, tears pouring down my face, and all the fans were crazy wild. Melancholia was sitting on Chaos’s shoulders but there were loads of people between us, all strangers. I tried to push my way back to her but I’d lost her in the crowd.

I couldn’t stand the thoom in my chest. I had to scream before it choked me. Someone kept shouting, Get her out of here…bring her home.

Kevin and his girlfriend stood in front of me. They had their arms around each other. She whispered something behind her hand when she saw me. Kevin pulled my face around.

Jesus! What did you give her? he shouted and hit Jobbo with his fists. He knocked him into the crowd. His girlfriend screamed when Jobbo hit him back. Security men in yellow coats pulled them apart. The fans shook their heads, jumping crazy, and swayed back as Kevin was dragged away.

I heard Jobbo calling me. Vampira…Vampira! Over here. His legs dangled over the plinth of a statue. He hauled me up beside him. I gripped the legs of the statue. Long smooth legs that I must climb if I was to reach beyond the clouds. People kept yelling and pointing as I stretched beyond Jobbo’s grip, bracing my knees. Gratton, an Irish patriot, a brave man. It was easy to climb his body, crevices in the elbow, the collar of his coat. I clung to his neck and kissed his face.

Smoke billowed around the magic musicians as they dipped and swayed on the silver stage. When I looked up, the sky was full of silver birds flying in formation. I was among them, an eagle flying forever towards Nirvana.

The wind grew cold. It would blow me from the patriot’s neck. Far below I saw a dark hole opening and I screamed because I knew I was going to fall into it. A man lifted me down. I ran away and pushed through the crowd until I was free. I slid to the ground inside a phone box. It was warm and dark like a coffin. The music seemed far away. I was laughing so much no one could understand and I was calling her name…Rebecca…Rebecca…Rebecca.

Boys were waiting outside. One of them opened the door and blew smoke in at me. Don’t hog the effin’ phone all night, he said, and then I remembered that Rebecca was in London with Lauren and Jeremy kept saying, where the hell are you? Tell me immediately.

I waited by the railings of Trinity College. Remember…it’s where you and Daddy met? I saw ghosts at the gates. Ghosts behind the windows, waving, pale ghosts drowning in silver dust.

His face melted like candle wax and came together again. He called me…Catriona…Catriona, come to me. Be safe…come into my arms. He took my hand and led me away from the noise. His car surged through the night. We left the city behind.

It was dark on the estuary. Music played on the radio. The swans were sleeping. A bed of white feathers rising. The water sparkled when a train passed over the viaduct. He held me to him and I was carried through ribbons of light. I love you…love you…kissing him, I repeated the words over and over again. I knew it was going to happen. My fingers sank through his flesh. I watched them disappear into his spine…shimmering…his hair sparking when I stroked it, filling him with radiance. There were stars above us and the thooming music was still inside me. His voice whispered, husky commands. You’re safe. Safe in my arms, my beautiful Catriona.

I saw Rebecca’s sweater lying on the back seat, two of her books about animals and her Eurythmics CD. I couldn’t stop crying but he kept saying, it’s all right…it’s all right…stay still…it’s all right. I wanted to shout stop stop stop but his hand was over my mouth and I heard him sigh, as if there was a great pain within him that must be relieved by reaching into that place…that private place that belongs only to me.

Stars fell from the sky and faded. His face was anxious, frowning when he told me to hurry. We could be seen. But only the heron kept watch on the estuary. He never meant it to happen. I’m jail bait, he said, a dark torment. He fastened the buttons on my dress, not fumbling like Kevin, but sure, as if he had done it so often to Rebecca he knew exactly how to slide them into the buttonholes. Oh God oh God, I can’t believe what I’m writing to you…

I’d made him angry. His mouth was a hard straight line. He parked at the high wall on the edge of Heron Cove and dried my eyes. Don’t break Rebecca’s heart. You owe her everything. I placed my hands across my face. I no longer wanted to fly. Only to be alone. There was nothing inside me, not even the sound of music thooming.

I feel so sick this morning but there’s nothing left in my stomach to throw up. I’ve lost my silver locket with your hair inside it. I don’t remember getting into bed but I must have shoved my clothes underneath it. They smell of smoke and perspiration and beer. My black dress is covered in dirt, my panties crumpled inside them. The dark rust stain against the white cotton was so shocking I rushed to the basin to rinse it out, scrubbing and scrubbing until the water ran clear. Until then, I thought it was a dream!

His car has gone. There’s no one in the house but me. Please hold me…hold me…hold me!!!

Cathy

24 March 1993

Dear Mum,

Kevin called to the house tonight. The security men roughed him up, blackened his eye. When he gave back cheek they called the guards. Poor Mrs Mulvaney had to collect him from the garda station. His girlfriend dumped him afterwards. He asked me to come over to his place some night and listen to his new Cure album. I said yes, and the heavy feeling lifted from me for a little while.

Lauren is still in hospital. I understand her a little bit better now. She knows about fear and how it can wreck the mind. I’m walking on eggshells. Love and hate, it’s a fine wire vibrating. I think of Jeremy’s kisses, and the way he tosses his head when he laughs and I’m sick all over again with love for him. What a mess I’ve turned out to be. What a pathetic mess!

Love you all,

Cathy

22 June 1993

Dear Mum,

I’m a waitress. In other words, I’m an invisible species with a tray. Leah’s boyfriend gave me and Melancholia summer jobs in Chilli Factor. It’s the best Mexican restaurant in Dublin and there’s sparks on my heels when I run run run. No time to think about anything except burritos, enchiladas, tostadas, salsas, tacos and sizzling chillies. But the real reason why I haven’t written for ages is because I’m anaemic. My eye sockets look really pale pink. Last week I was dizzy in work. Melancholia said it’s the slave galley conditions. I keep thinking anaemia or a rare blood cancer…anything other than what I really suspect. Oh God, I’m so scared. Every time I go to the loo I check. Nothing. I think about it first thing in the morning. Last thing at night I pray, please please, God, let it happen tomorrow. If I go to a doctor I’ll know for sure. I keep intending to go but suddenly it’s a week later and I’m still doing the normal things that everyone else is doing. I stare at people, wondering what’s going on behind their faces. Are they pretending too?

In the Pro-cathedral I light a candle. The Virgin stares down on me. She is sad and compassionate but she hasn’t answered my prayers. Holy Mary, please listen to me. Let it happen soon because if it doesn’t I’ll soon be three months late. Officially.

Desperate,

Cathy

28 June 1993

Dear Mum,

The cat sat on the mat the cat sat on the mat the cat…oh God, I don’t know what to do…I don’t know what to do. I threw up in work today. All the spices and the smell of garlic was so strong, I couldn’t help it.

Melancholia sounded far away when she told me to open the toilet door. She’d seen me running to the loo twice and heard me being sick. She asked if I’d missed a period. I told her three. She looked so shocked I wanted to grab back the words. I’d made it real by saying it out loud.

I’m going to her house after we finish our shift tomorrow. She’s buying a pregnancy test kit. She knows a girl who used one when she was late. As soon as she discovered the test was negative her periods came back. It’s worrying that causes the problem.

So many times I’ve leaned into the silence of empty rooms to hear you whisper my name. You have only offered me silence in return. Help me now. Tell me I’m going to be all right!! I’m begging you…please help me.

Cathy

6 July 1993

Dear Mum,

The rain is coming down. Sheets of it turning the graveyard into a mud river, soaking your bones and stirring the dead clay. I feel it soaking through the cracks of your shining walnut coffin with the brass handles and the white lace framing your face. I wish I was dead. Dead as you and Dad. Shadows, not substance. Shadows flit. Substance suffers.

As soon as I came home from work, I knew Rebecca knew. But not everything. Thank God she does not know everything. Melancholia is the only one who shares my secret and she has sworn an oath on the blood pricked from our fingers that she will never tell.

I’m not the only one who’s pregnant. Sheila Brogan, who is now Mrs O’Sullivan, was at the Rotunda Hospital today. I didn’t see her but she saw me. At first she thought I was with Melancholia but then she heard the nurse call out my name. She’s Rebecca’s best friend so needless to say she felt it her duty to ring my sister and tell her. Bitch, bitch, interfering bitch. What am I going to do?

Rebecca demanded to know everything. I told her I didn’t know the father’s name. Liar, liar, she said. It’s Kevin Mulvaney, isn’t it? She kept saying his name over and over again. I didn’t nod. I know I didn’t nod but she shouted that it was bad enough with Julie, but now I was going the same way and Kevin would know all about it, oh, yes, he would, she’d see to it that he did the right thing…I put my hands over my ears and ran out of the house. I could smell the rain on the estuary but it was still only a cloud and I sat on the jetty until it was dark. When I came home Rebecca had gone to Kevin’s house to have it out with Lydia.

Oh God, oh God, I can’t bear it…I’ve tried to talk to Kevin on the phone but he hung up on me. What am I going to do? TELL ME. Stop sitting on your Cloud Nine and do something useful, for a change. TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!!!

Cathy

15 July 1993

Dear Mum,

Do you agree with Rebecca? A man should know that he is to become a father? It sounded strong and proper when she said it but I don’t know anything any more. I went to his office. VisionFirst is engraved on a brass plate outside the front door. There was a bell to ring and a receptionist to pass before I was brought in to him. A nerve twitched in his cheek when I said he was the father.

Delusions…delusions…this is not his baby. He stated this fact with conviction, repeated it twice, as if the force of his words would make it true. Everything sounded different when he repeated it back to me, like echoes bouncing off the wrong walls. I must stop lying. How could we have been together when I was out of my head on drugs that night? Drugs that make the mind crazy. Hallucinations and paranoia. He never did anything to me. He knows for a fact I was screwing around with Kevin Mulvaney, no matter how often Kevin denies it. He grabbed my arm, hurting me, and demanded to know if I’d told this ridiculous lie to Rebecca.

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