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  “Teenage pregnancy is terrible and absolutely not to be encouraged, but support is not the same as encouragement, and with support Jane could continue her studies and fulfill her ambitions. Surely it is not the end for a girl such as Jane?

  “Please come and speak to me for Jane’s sake. Don’t leave me with no option but to expel such a talented young girl from our school.

  “Kindest regards,

  “Amanda Reynolds

  “Principal Amanda Reynolds”

  Jane finished reading the letter aloud and blew her blond fringe out of her eyes while waiting for her best friend’s response. Alexandra twirled her chestnut hair around her finger and stared at it in silence.

  After a few seconds she shrugged. “Jesus, who knew Reynolds had a heart?”

  Jane felt like crying because her principal had responded to her crisis pregnancy with far more kindness and understanding than her own mother, who had one tantrum after another since Jane’s condition was revealed months previously. During her latest tantrum she took the time to mention how much money she had pissed into the wind by sending Jane to private school and told Jane in no uncertain terms that her education was over because only a bloody childless spinster like Amanda Reynolds could possibly think that having a baby at seventeen didn’t mean an end to an academic career. She slammed the door on exiting the room, not once but twice for effect.

  On that afternoon and for the first time Jane truly acknowledged the predicament she was in and how badly wrong her life had gone. She realized that she would miss her principal and she would miss school and the opportunity to go to college. She’d miss her friends, who except for Alexandra had drifted away during her pregnancy, and she’d miss Dominic even though he was avoiding her and was completely ignoring the fact that she was carrying his child. She could see through his schoolyard bravado and recognized his pained expression and haunted look, and she loved him.

  Following an argument with Dominic’s parents, who had dared to imply that Jane was a little whore, her mother had made it clear that if she saw him anywhere near their property she’d attack him with a shovel, and Jane’s mother did not make threats of violence lightly. Once when Jane was seven a man had come to their door. He was buying and selling antiques. Her mother said she wasn’t interested but he spied an antique table in the hall. He put his foot in the door and attempted to change her mind about doing business. She reiterated that she had no interest and told him if he didn’t remove his foot from her door she would hurt him. He laughed at her. “No can do,” he said, and his foot remained in the door. She counted down aloud from five to zero. He continued to push his foot farther into her hallway, all the while grinning stupidly at her. It was clear to Jane’s mother that this man believed her to be a stupid, incapable woman and that she would not or could not keep her promise. When she got to zero, she calmly reached for an umbrella that she kept by the door and, releasing the door, shoved the umbrella with full force into his stomach. Startled, he bent forward, clutching his midriff. She then bopped him on the head, not once or twice but three times. He fell backward; she smiled politely, said good day to him, and left him winded and slightly dazed on her doorstep. Jane remembered the incident well because she had stood at the window watching the man sit on the step for what seemed like a long time before he was capable of getting up. Her mother had joined her just as he was leaving. “Good riddance,” she’d said with a genuine smile. “You know, Janey, there is nothing quite like giving a smug arrogant cock like him a good dig to cheer up an otherwise gray day.” Jane knew that if her mother had enjoyed giving that cock a dig because he put his foot in her doorway, she would definitely enjoy slapping Dominic in the face with a shovel for putting his cock in her daughter.

  After Alexandra had read the letter a few more times and lamented with Jane over her mother being a bigger bitch than Alexis on Dynasty, she opened the first of six cans of Ritz. Later, when Jane was drunk on one can and Alexandra was on her third, Jane compared her and Dominic’s plight to that of Romeo and Juliet. Alexandra expunged Jane’s fanciful theory in an instant.

  “It’s like this, Janey,” she said. “Romeo didn’t get Juliet up the pole and then dump her at a disco.”

  “I know, but his parents made him give me up and—”

  “And anyway,” Alexandra said with drunken authority, “as bad as your situation is with Dominic, you don’t want to be anything like Romeo and Juliet because Romeo and Juliet is a shit love story. Romeo was a shallow slut, Juliet was pathetic and needy, their families were killing each other, and they were in love one stupid day before they were married and then dead. Romeo and Juliet weren’t star-crossed lovers, they were white trash.”

  “When you put it that way,” Jane said sadly.

  “Can you believe Miss Hobbs only gave me a C in English? I may not be able to spell ‘apothecary,’ but I have insight. That woman doesn’t know her ass from her elbow.”

  Then Alexandra threw up in Jane’s wastebasket.

  After that they talked about how Jane could win Dominic back, but neither came up with a workable solution, and so they agreed that Jane should just wait it out.

  “As far as I’m concerned he’s just a cock artist, but I know you love him, so it will work out,” Alexandra said.

  “He’s more than a cock artist,” Jane said.

  “I disagree,” Alexandra said, burping Ritz.

  “He’s the one,” Jane said.

  Alexandra sighed and tapped her can. “He’ll come back, Janey. He’ll see you in school every day and he’ll miss you. Just give it some time.” She stopped in time to throw up again, wiped her mouth, and sighed. “That’s better. What I was I saying?”

  “‘Just give it some time,’” Jane said.

  “Exactly. And anyway you still have me.”

  “I know.”

  “You will always have me.”

  “I know.”

  “Even if I get Science in Cork because, let’s face it, I’m not going to get into UCD, you still have me.”

  “I’ll miss you,” Jane said.

  “You won’t have to,” Alexandra promised. “I’ll be home every other weekend, and you can come and stay with me.”

  “I’ll have a baby.”

  “Leave it with your mum.”

  “She’s made it clear she’s not a babysitter.”

  “She’s such a cow.”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  “I love you, Jane.”

  “I love you too, Alex.”

  They were interrupted by Jane’s mother, who was even drunker than Alexandra and determined to fight.

  “Go home, Alexandra.”

  “I’m going home.”

  “So go!”

  “I’m going.”

  “So get out!”

  “Jesus, what’s wrong with you, woman? Can’t you see I’m trying to get up?”

  Jane helped her friend into a standing position.

  “See,” Alexandra said with arms outstretched, “I’m off !” She weaved through the corridor and walked out the front door. She turned to say good-bye, but Jane’s mother slammed the door in her face.

  Jane’s mother turned to her. “She’s not welcome here anymore.”

  “She’s my best friend.”

  “Yeah, well, kiss your best friend good-bye.”

  That was the last time Alexandra was in Jane’s house. Jane gave birth to a son two weeks later and, although they maintained a friendship for four months after that, when Jane became a mother and Alexandra went to college in Cork, they lost contact. Over the next seventeen years Jane often thought of her friend, and she missed her.

  Leslie

  June 5, 1996

  Dear Jim,

  It’s time to talk about Leslie. We both know she’s stubborn and cut off, and we both know why. When I’m gone you’ll be all she has left in this world and I know it’s a big ask, but please look out for her.

  We’ve talked about you remarrying, and you know I wa
nt you to find someone to love and to love you. I want you to have a great new life that doesn’t include overcrowded hospitals, dismissive doctors, overworked nurses, and cancer. I want you to find someone strong and healthy, someone you can go on an adventure with, someone you can make love to, someone who doesn’t cause you anguish and pain. Every time I see your face it hurts because for the first time I see that in loving you I’ve been selfish and I understand why Leslie is the way she is.

  Leslie is a better person than me. I know you’re probably guffawing at that as you read, but it’s true. She’s watched her entire family die of cancer, and when we were both diagnosed with the dodgy gene after Nora’s death she made the decision not to cause pain to others the way Nora caused pain to John and Sarah and I’m causing pain to you. Before cancer she was smart and funny, kind and caring, and she still is to me. Without her care I wouldn’t have coped. I know sometimes she calls you names, but trust me, she knows you’re not a monkey so when she calls you an ass picker, ignore it and be kind.

  I thought she was being defeatist. I thought that we’d suffered enough as a family and that we’d both survive. So I made plans and fell in love and for a while we had a great life but then that dodgy gene kicked in. Now I see you look almost as ill as I feel, and I realize that my sister Leslie knew exactly what she was doing when she broke up with Simon and all but closed off. I watched her disappear from her own life. I thought she was insane back then, but it makes sense now. She put the pain of others before her own. She watched John and Sarah suffer after Nora, and she’ll watch you suffering after me, and although she pretends not to like you, she does, and it will hurt her and it will also confirm for her that she is right to remain alone waiting for a diagnosis that may never come.

  I’m her last family and friend. She hasn’t even let herself get to know her niece, and so when I’m gone she’ll have no one and that haunts me. Please go and live your life but all that I ask is that every now and again, no matter how rude or uninviting she may seem, call her, talk to her, be her friend even if she fails to be yours, because she has been there for me, for Mum, for Dad and Nora, and I can’t stand the idea that after everything she’s been through she should live or die alone.

  I know I say it all the time and in all my little notes and letters about this and that, but time is running out and I need you to know that it’s been a privilege to be your wife. And although I feel selfish for all the pain I’ve caused you, I know I’ve brought happiness too, so hang on to that and forgive me because even knowing what I know now I’d love and marry you again. I suppose Leslie would say I was a selfish pig, but I can die with that.

  Yours,

  Imelda

  Imelda Sheehan died at eight o’clock on the morning of July 12, 1996. She was twenty-five years old. Her husband, Jim, was by her side and holding her right hand, and sitting on the opposite side of the bed and holding her left hand was her sister Leslie. They both felt her slip away at exactly the same time. For Leslie it was familiar: the ocean of grief inside her swelled and rose, but she knew what to do, and so she remained still and allowed the pain to wash over her. For Jim it was so shocking: one second his wife was alive and battling to breathe, the next she was dead and silent. He let Imelda’s hand go and stood up quickly, so quickly that he nearly fell. He steadied and hugged himself. He stood in the corner of the room as the doctor and nurses approached to confirm time of death. Leslie sat with her dead sister Imelda, holding her hand for as long as they would allow her. Jim cried, and his parents, brothers, and friends made a fuss over him. Leslie sat alone and frozen. She knew the physical pain that made her heart feel like it was about to explode and her ears ring until she feared they’d bleed would dissipate in time, just as the tide would turn and with it Imelda would drift farther and farther away until she was a distant memory and it only served to make her loss greater. Leslie had just turned twenty-seven.

  Jim asked Leslie to read at the funeral, but she refused. He asked her to sit beside him in the first pew when she’d attempted to sit at the back of the church. She told him she didn’t want to shake hands with the people whose hands she had shaken so many times before, but Jim was not taking no for an answer, and so she found herself sitting beside her brother-in-law with a heavy heart and an all-too-familiar swollen hand from those whose earnest sympathy ensured they squeezed too tight.

  When the priest asked if anyone would like to speak, Leslie stood up. This surprised her and those around her, especially Jim, who couldn’t even get her to agree to a reading. She found herself standing without reason. The priest asked her to come forward, but her legs refused to comply with his request, and so he waited and the congregation waited, and Jim nudged her and asked if she was all right. What the hell am I doing? she asked herself as she started to move toward the altar, but once she was at the altar and standing in front of a microphone the words came easily.

  “I am the last of the five Sheehans,” she said. “Four days ago there were two of us—me, the middle child; and Imelda, the baby of the family. I should have been next, and not just because I was older but because Imelda was the strong one, the one who embraced life regardless and without fear. Over the years she’s run five marathons in aid of cancer. I didn’t even walk for cancer, not even once—mostly I’ll avoid even standing if I can.” She stopped to take a breath. There was a hint of a titter from the crowd. “She fell in love and married Jim, and she always planned to have kids. Imelda always made plans, and that’s what I admired about her most, because even when she was diagnosed with the same cancer that had killed our grandmother, our mother, father, and sister, she still made plans. She froze her eggs and they bought a house, and when she wasn’t in chemo she traveled. Even when she knew her life was coming to the end, she still made plans. Little plans that don’t mean much to most, like ‘Tonight we’ll reminisce about the summer we spent in Kerry’ or ‘Tomorrow when the sun comes out we’ll sit in the hospital grounds and watch the people come and go and make up stories about who and what they are.’ She even planned her own funeral. She knew exactly what she wanted—the kind of casket, the flowers, the priest, the prayers, the attendees. She asked me once if I would speak at her funeral and I said no. I’m sorry, Imelda, of course I’ll speak for you. I just was scared that I wouldn’t know what to say and I didn’t want to let you down. So I’ll just end by saying this: I miss my dad, my mum, my sister Nora, and now I miss my sister Imelda, and I’m so sorry because it should have been me, but I will see you all again and soon.”

  Leslie’s voice was cracking, her eyes were streaming, and her nose was running. She walked toward her seat, and once she’d accepted a tissue from Jim she sat with her head in her hands, attempting to regain composure but finding it almost impossible to do so. Back then her hair was still jet-black, she was slim, and although she was not a natural beauty, she was striking. The people sitting in pews behind her felt nothing but pity for this young woman who was merely waiting for her turn to die. Later, by the side of the grave, she watched Jim grieve, and if there was something she could have said to make him feel better she would have said it, but there wasn’t, so she stood in silence waiting for the day to end so that she could disappear behind her closed door and wait for the inevitable. It never occurred to her that she’d still be waiting for the inevitable twelve years later.

  Tom

  August 25, 2007

  Transcript of Liveline radio show with Joe Duffy

  “I have a Tom Kavanagh on the line. Tom, are you there?”

  “I am, Joe.”

  “Tom, you are trying to find your lovely wife, Alexandra.”

  “Yes, Joe.”

  “She went missing on the twenty-first of June this year?”

  “It was Thursday, the twenty-first of June.”

  “Tell us about it, Tom.”

  “I don’t know where to start. She was last seen in Dalkey and now she’s gone.”

  “Okay, okay, all right. How about you tell us a little ab
out her?”

  “She’s funny, she’s giddy, she’s kind, she’s friendly, she’s fussy, she’s lovely, Joe.” Caller becomes emotional.

  “The police have managed to retrace her steps as far as Dalkey. Can you tell us about that?”

  “She left the house in Clontarf around two p.m. She said hello to a neighbor who verified the time. She walked to the train station, and three teenagers who were there came forward to say that they witnessed her getting on the train. She’s also captured on CCTV footage on the platform at Tara Street at three thirty, but she got back on the train. After the train stations were canvassed, a woman came forward and identified her as getting off the train in Dalkey. She was captured on CCTV footage again there but after that ….” Caller becomes emotional.

  “And after that?”

  “She was gone. She’s just gone.”

  “Ah God, that’s desperate. What time was that?”

  “It was approximately four p.m.”

  “And where were you?”

  “I was working. We were finishing a project in Blackrock.”

  “It says here you’re a builder.”

  “I am.”

  “So when did you realize that she was missing?”

  “I was supposed to be home by four. I had promised to make dinner because Alexandra was meeting her friend Sherri to collect tickets for a gig from her. She had left a note saying she’d be home by seven thirty. But I was delayed on site. I didn’t get in until nine p.m.”

  “When did you raise the alarm, Tom?”

  “The next morning, Joe.” Caller becomes emotional. “I thought she’d stayed out with Sherri or maybe she was pissed off that I didn’t get home in time to make the dinner so went out again. I was exhausted so I fell asleep.”