‘We know, and we appreciate everything you’ve done,’ Dan says. His Manchester accent makes him sound like one of the Gallagher brothers. ‘It’s just that Jo’s had almost a year of being virtually blind, and everything about our lives has had to adapt. She’d pinned all her hope on the operation changing that.’ He squeezes her fingers. ‘Losing your independence has been the hardest thing for you, hasn’t it, love?’
Jo nods. Dan pulls her close and kisses the top of her head. She swallows. ‘What happens if in six months’ time this is still all I can see?’
There is a ruffle of papers. This is her third follow-up consultation since the op a month ago. Griffen banging a stack of paper off the desk always signals the beginning of the end of the meeting. Any second now he will mention another waiting patient. He’s changed his aftershave since the last visit. Maybe he has a date.
‘In that case we’ll talk about performing the operation again,’ he answers.
Jo draws a breath. The rising knot of worry that her sight will never fully come back sits like a permanent lump wedged in her throat. The fear of having to go back on the waiting list and endure the emotional roller coaster all over again is overwhelming. It’s doing her head in.
‘I can prescribe Valium, or anti-depressants, if that’s what you feel you need,’ Dr Griffen says.
‘No,’ Jo states. ‘I just need to know if this is how it’s going to be, so I can get on with it, or whether I can still hope.’
‘You know that phrase about a watched kettle?’ Dr Griffen says. ‘You need to busy yourself doing something else. I think, all things considered, the best thing for you would be to go back to work.’
‘Work? Don’t you understand? I can’t bloody well do anything!’
‘Look,’ he replies sternly. ‘There are no guarantees. I really feel you need to occupy yourself now, even if it’s in a reduced capacity. That way, should you be faced with a worse scenario, you’ll have laid the groundwork for your changed circumstances, have taken the first steps to adapting. Just because you can’t see doesn’t mean you can’t do …’
‘I can’t go back to work without my eyesight. They won’t let me.’
She bites the inside of her cheek so she won’t shout that the only reason she was so good at her job was her ability to see the world through the eyes of a killer. She’d caused that crash all those years ago, and kept it quiet, because of her father’s death.
Dr Griffen clicks a pen. ‘Then you may have grounds for a discrimination action against your employer. Prove to them that you have a contribution to make regardless of whether you’re able-bodied or not. I think you need to start making the mental adjustment needed, just in case. Nothing heavy duty. There must have been something you put off when you were chasing your tail that you can turn your attention to now, some job you didn’t have time to get to before this happened?’
There is one case that’s been on Jo’s mind. She promised Sexton she’d look into the circumstances surrounding his wife Maura’s death. She just hasn’t been able to, because of her disability.
‘Now, I’m afraid I’ve got another patient waiting.’
Jo cannot believe he thinks she should be back at work. ‘I can’t even cook. I can’t clean!’
Dan guffaws. She pulls back her hand. ‘Sorry, love, but as a seasoned domestic slattern, even you have to admit that’s pretty funny.’
Jo clicks her tongue. ‘How can I work?’ she asks.
‘Adapt,’ Dr Griffen says brightly. ‘Instead of looking, listen. You can still interview, deduce, delegate, I presume. Now, if you’ll excuse me …’
‘This is unbelievable,’ Jo says, standing.
‘Actually,’ Dan answers, ‘I think you going back to work part-time is probably a very good idea.’
He studies a text on his phone. ‘Are we done? I’m going to have to make a call,’ he says.
‘What is it?’ Jo asks.
‘Another teen, and this one lived in our district,’ he says.
Jo puts a hand across her forehead. ‘What am I going to tell Rory?’
6
The middle-aged woman answers the door with a smile on her face that freezes when she realizes the people standing there are not the ones she was expecting. Her gaze flicks past Sexton and McConigle standing side by side to the squad car parked on the street right outside her home. She glances over a shoulder to the stairs, and turns back to face them slowly. The telly is on in the sitting room. Sexton knows she knows.
‘Maggie Eccles?’ McConigle asks gently, stepping inside the door.
A slow nod.
McConigle takes her arm maternally and puts another around her back to catch her if her legs go from under her.
The woman has already started the breathy pant marking the onset of hyperventilation.
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Aishling McConigle from Store Street station,’ she says as they walk. ‘This is Detective Inspector Gavin Sexton. Is your husband, Frank, here? We need to talk to both of you. I’m afraid we have some very bad news.’
Sexton follows, but stays in the doorway to the sitting room, where McConigle invites Maggie to sit on the couch.
‘Frank’s out looking for Anna,’ Maggie says, trembling. ‘She didn’t come home last night. I haven’t sent the kids to school. Please tell me it’s not my baby. Please.’
‘I need you to ring your husband, Mrs Eccles,’ McConigle says firmly. ‘I need you to tell him to come home now.’
‘Please tell me my baby is alive,’ Maggie says. The tears still haven’t had a chance to come, but her body is going into shock. She knows …
Sexton keeps his hands in his pockets and stays in the doorway, with one eye on the stairs. There’s one of those black-and-white family photo portraits superimposed on canvas of Maggie and her husband and children – a boy and two girls. They’re all blow-dried and barefoot in the shot, big fake smiles for the professional photographer. The boy has long hair and an AC/DC T-shirt. Sexton wonders which of the two girls is Anna. They look very close in years. One is thin as a wisp, the other has a roll of puppy fat on her jowls. He hears footsteps on the landing and looks up.
‘Sexton,’ McConigle summons.
He turns back.
‘The phone,’ she instructs.
He takes the cordless landline off a hall table and carries it in.
Maggie’s hand is trembling too much to dial the number. She tells it to McConigle, who dials for her. There are two kids coming down the stairs when Sexton resumes his position. He recognizes the boy from the portrait. Sexton moves to the bottom of the stairs to block him. The kid looks at him in surprise and takes one of his iPod earphones out. The girl behind him – the heavier one from the shot – has her head tilted and is looking at the sitting-room door trying to work out the sounds her mother’s making. The slight one must be the victim, Sexton realizes, glancing at Anna’s face in the portrait.
‘Please tell me,’ a voice wails from the sitting room.
‘Is that Frank Eccles?’ Sexton hears McConigle ask. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Aishling McConigle.’
‘Guys, it would be better if you went upstairs, OK?’ Sexton tells the teens through the bars in the banisters.
‘What’s going on?’ the boy asks.
‘Oh my God, it’s Anna, isn’t it?’ the girl says, sinking down on a stair.
‘She’s not that stupid,’ the boy says, bolting down the last of the stairs and trying to push past Sexton, who stops him by putting his hands on his shoulders. ‘We need to wait until your dad gets home, OK?’ he says.
‘Is it my sister?’ the boy demands.
The girl is talking aloud, but to herself. ‘It’s that video she got on her phone a few days ago, telling her how to do it.’
The boy turns. ‘She laughed at it,’ he says.
‘It put the idea in her head, though,’ the girl tells him.
‘What video?’ Sexton asks.
From the sitting room, a guttural cry. The b
oy pushes Sexton, who repeats himself robotically: ‘We need to wait until your dad gets here.’
‘You didn’t even know her,’ the teenage girl bawls. ‘How come you get to know before us? You didn’t even love her. What about us?’
7
Dan helps Jo through the front door and flicks on the light in the hall. Harry is asleep in his arms, and he heads for the stairs to put him down for the night. Jo’s carrying a brown paper bag containing the stack of Chinese takeaways they picked up on the way home, and she puts a hand against the wall to guide herself towards the kitchen. Rory arrives in behind them and slings his coat on the floor, grabbing the top carton from the top of Jo’s bag. He’s doing his mock exams and they offered to treat him to the dinner of his choice after picking him up.
‘Oi, pick that up, your mother could fall over it,’ Dan shouts after him.
Rory snorts and lopes back out from the kitchen, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. He peels the lid from his container of food and grabs a fork. Getting a plate doesn’t occur to him; neither does giving it a blast in the microwave. He’s all attitude as he carries his food into the TV room, turning the set up loud. The chants of a football match fill the house.
Jo is jangling out more cutlery from the drawer, setting two places and filling a big jug of water, without losing track of one ice cube in the kitchen.
‘Turn that down,’ Dan warns, arriving back downstairs and talking through the open sitting-room door to Rory. ‘You’ll wake your brother.’ He turns to Jo to tell her incredulously, ‘The coat’s still on the bloody floor out there.’
‘Go easy on him,’ Jo tells Dan quietly as he puts plates and glasses at the settings and scoops her egg-fried rice on to the plate. Rory hasn’t said a word about the latest suicide. One of the girls who died a couple of months back had been going out with one of his mates. Rory hasn’t been himself since, though she suspects she is the one more freaked out.
Dan stands and lifts his plate. ‘I know, I know, but how long do we have to pussyfoot around him? He’s holding this house hostage. Mind if I eat in front of the match, love?’
Jo tells him to go ahead. She leaves the plate of food a minute later and goes to the sitting-room door to ask them if everything is OK. Satisfied that both her husband and son are still there, she heads upstairs to Rory’s bedroom. He’s repeating his Leaving Cert year to try and get the points for law, and most of his time is spent in his room these days. Jo is the first to admit that this has more to do with the PlayStation, laptop and TV rather than his schoolbooks, but she’s not going to put him under any more pressure than he’s already under with the exams.
She paces to the chair at his desk and bings his computer on. So far she has resisted snooping, despite a Parent/Teacher briefing in his school about the suicides which encouraged it. The experts had explained to worried parents the signs that had to be watched out for.
Jo presses ‘CTRL’ + ‘H’ to call up the computer’s history.
She leans in close to read the text. Rory is an adult, but if he has something serious on his mind, as his mother she needs to know. The experts advised that parents talk to their kids about stuff, but every time Jo tries he fobs her off, saying ‘Awkward,’ or ‘Icky,’ or ‘Seriously?’ If she sits too close to him, to try to see his face, it gives the game away and he tells her she’s invading his personal space.
The hairs on the back of her neck go up when she sees Amy Reddan’s name appear in his recently viewed sites. Amy is the girl Rory knew. She had been going out with his friend Darren, even though she was a few years younger than him. Jo clicks a YouTube link and Amy appears, sitting on the edge of her bed, singing and playing guitar.
Jo frowns.
‘Do you want me to put your food under the grill?’ Dan calls up the stairs.
‘You have it. I’ve lost my appetite,’ she calls back.
Jo turns back to the computer. Amy’s face is half hidden under her big side-swept fringe, her expression absolutely tortured. She looks studious in a pair of big-framed geeky glasses. Her T-shirt has a picture of a soldier kneeling with a bayonet in hand amidst a devastated scene that resembles a nuclear wasteland. The word ‘Why?’ is printed underneath. She’s quirky as well as deep, Jo decides. Her short sleeves are rolled up and she has a tattoo on her arm of a bar of music with staggered minims and crotchets.
There is no denying the pain Amy is in. It’s not some adolescent fit of pique, or someone who thinks suicide is romantic. Nobody can fake the expressions of agony that are crossing Amy’s face on the screen. The angst makes Leonard Cohen sound like Beyoncé in comparison, she’s so utterly lost in the pain of the performance she’s giving. Jo spots the number of hits has soared to over 30,000. The tagline on the video reads: ‘Welcome To My Life’, the name of the song.
There are numerous comments underneath the video:
Forever a Superstar!! RIP Amy xxx
Hope you r happy now such an inspiration
Rip beautiful! <3
The amount of views !! you are amazing Amy And so brave <3 xx
Well done Amy u a brill singer :* And an inspiration Love you lots babe :‘( R.I.P. :‘( : ‘( xxxxx
RIP UR soo pretty ur one of the prettiest angels up there <3 XX Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you <3 I know your smiling up there :*:* xx
On and on they go in the same vein. Jo scrolls down, realizing the page is a virtual suicide shrine. The outpourings suggest the kids don’t think of death as the end, that Amy’s still listening somewhere, that they can still communicate:
RIP Amy, been listening to this non stop today can’t believe it’s been a month …
Words can’t describe how much it hurts knowing your gone. Knowing your happy and no doubt partying like bad up there makes it just that bit easier.. Love you baby girl :* xox Till we meet again the sooner the better mega respect to such a brave girl x
The kids go on to say how much they admire her, how happy they are she is happy, and how they wished they had the courage to opt out of their crappy existence. The comments make Jo’s blood freeze.
She listens to the track again and, given the fact that Amy took her own life, the words of the song take on much more sinister overtones. Jo realizes that Amy’s not just heart-broken, she’s already decided what she’s going to do, and she’s telling everyone so nobody has any doubt.
Leaning in closer, Jo scans the screen for the date the YouTube clip was uploaded. She spots 15 November and opens another window to Google Amy’s name with the words ‘sudden death’. Jo wants to remind herself when Amy died. An RIP website returns the death announcement for the same day – 15 November:
The death has occurred of Amy Reddan.
Suddenly. Reposing at her home from 12 noon until 10 p.m. tomorrow. House private at all other times, please. Family flowers only, please. Donations in lieu if desired to Pieta House and STOP.
Jo Googles Pieta House to discover it’s a non-profit organization for people considering suicide or into self-harm.
STOP was founded by the families affected by suicide. It stands for Start Telling Others Prevent, Jo reads.
The date of the notice confirms what Jo suspected. Amy’s song is her suicide note.
Jo clicks on another link returned by her search and opens a thank-you in an online RIP site to Amy:
I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to the many people who supported me after the sudden loss of my beloved daughter Amy.
To all those who called to our home, and travelled long distances to pay their last respects, phoned, sent Mass cards and lovely, kind letters, sincere thanks from the bottom of my heart. Sincere thanks to my extended family, the many people who brought food and refreshments to my home, all those who helped manage the parking, and the neighbours and community who gave me great support, words cannot express my gratitude. A sincere thanks to Bronwyn Harris and all the staff of St Benedict’s College and also Amy’s classmates, who have shared so ma
ny happy memories with me. Thanks especially to Lucy Starling, who spoke so movingly about her BFF at the funeral, to those who joined St Benedict’s in the guard of honour, and for the continued understanding and support shown to me at this difficult time.
Thanks to the staff and doctors and emergency services who did their best to save my darling girl. Also the Garda and A&E department in St Vincent’s Hospital.
The priests who officiated at the funeral Mass and to the many priests who called to the house.
Thanks to all who joined us in Amy’s funeral Mass, especially the Conquest choir for the beautiful music and hymns. A special word of thanks to Finian’s Funeral undertakers for the dignity and support. I thank the grave diggers for the professional way in which they prepared Amy’s final resting place.
Heartfelt appreciation to O’Brien’s Hotel, who provided everyone with food and refreshments. I also appreciate the donations made to STOP and Pieta House and apologize to anyone I have forgotten, it would be impossible to thank everyone individually, but I hope that this acknowledgement will be accepted as a token of my deep appreciation. The holy sacrifice of Mass at 2 p.m. in the Sacred Heart Church, Donnybrook, on Thursday will be offered for your intentions. Rob Reddan.
A wave of sadness sweeps over Jo. She wonders how a kid so young and as talented as Amy, who had her whole life ahead of her, could have walked into a wood with a skipping rope and strung herself up from a tree. It has become the method of choice for the kids in the cluster since, as has the wood where Amy went. It’s like the kids have been inspired by her. The wood too – Boley, beyond Enniskerry in the Dublin Wicklow mountain range – was a beauty spot and a place associated with family picnics, and bikers – at least before the tragedies reclaimed it as their own.
Jo wonders if Amy’s father has seen her last song, and if it would be right or wrong to tell him if he has not. She recalls hearing that Amy’s mother lives abroad.
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