by Ber Carroll
Matthew comes to stand in the bedroom doorway. He’s directly behind my father and bears witness to what is said next.
‘I’m sorry, Caitlin.’
Funny how those two words can melt away years and distance, how they can right any wrong.
I step towards him and his arms await me. ‘I’m sorry too, Dad.’
I feel genuinely proud of him and what he has achieved. Since watching the disc, I’m more at peace. You see, I was hanging out for justice every bit as much as he was and now that it’s been achieved I can finally trust, not only in the legal system but in everything: my family, my friends, and in fate and what it may or may not have in store. Despite his remarkable feat in driving that landmark civil case, I’m aware that my father has made many mistakes over the past eleven years. He should have been more supportive to my mother, and they would still be married if he’d saved even a small part of himself for her. He should have given Maeve more support and guidance too, been quicker to help her past the schoolgirl stage she was frozen at for years. And when distance softened the edges of my hatred, he should have reached out to me, insistently, until I understood that my hatred was born from the deepest love, that I was the most like him of all his children and that I could never be fully happy without his approval and without him in my life.
I see each mistake with a new level of understanding. Before me is a softer, multi-dimensional, flawed but essentially altruistic man.
My father is less than perfect.
Like me.
Like Josh and Liam. And even Matthew, who will come forward at any moment to shake my father’s hand.
Acknowledgements
While Less Than Perfect is a work of fiction, those who are familiar with recent Irish history and politics will be able to recognise that I drew on the Omagh bombing and the remarkable achievements of the Omagh Support & Self Help Group for inspiration. Professor Jonathan O’Reilly, Caitlin, Josh, Liam and all the other characters in the book are completely fictional, but their loss, grief, bravery, tenacity and ultimate triumph reflect the extraordinary strength of the Omagh people.
Thanks to Jacqueline Gabb, Sam Bartlett, Matthew Long-more, Stephen Cohen and Aleisha Davis for your technical assistance. Without your knowledge and experience certain parts of this book would not have been possible. I’m hugely grateful (and quick to add that any mistakes are totally my own!).
Thanks to my usual gang of readers, Rob Carroll, Amanda Longmore, Ann Riordan and Brian Cook (my fabulous, multi-talented agent). As always, your recommendations have made this book much better than I could ever achieve on my own.
Thanks to Cate Paterson, publishing director at Pan Macmillan, for your wonderful ongoing support, and a big, enormous thanks to my publisher Alex Nahlous for your excellent suggestions and editing. I feel extremely lucky to have had you working on my book (and I promise I don’t hold that massive you-know-what change against you!). Thanks, too, to Clara Finlay for caring enough to go through the manuscript word by word and doing such a scrupulous copy edit.
Thanks also to Dianne Blacklock and Liane Moriarty, fellow authors and great sounding boards on all things book-related. Dianne and Liane and I like each other so much that we produce a periodical newsletter called Book Chat. If you would like to subscribe, just go to my website: www.bercarroll.com. And check out Dianne and Liane’s books – you will love them.
Being one of six, I have lots of my own ‘big family’ experiences to draw from. But being one of eight and thirteen has a lot more street cred – so thanks to Jeanie Edwards and Stephen Cox for allowing me to steal some of your hilarious anecdotes.
Finally, thanks to Conal McKeever (sorry for cornering you with questions at all those parties), and to Erin Downey, Donna Heagney, Matt O’Mahony, Orla Quilligan and Gillian Henery. And thanks to all my readers. I hope you like this book. I’ve wanted to write about the North of Ireland for a long, long time.
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