The Woman at 72 Derry Lane

by Carmel Harrington

  The following morning, she was discharged. George collected them. And before she knew it, Stella was back in Rea’s, sitting on the couch with her arms wrapped around her once more, a blanket over the two of them.

  ‘I don’t know what to do now,’ Stella admitted.

  ‘You’ll stay here with us, until you work that out,’ Rea said.

  ‘You’ll be safe here,’ George added. ‘Luca and I won’t let him near you.’

  Charlie came in with two plates of sandwiches and tea. ‘You need to eat something, honey,’ he said, hunkering down low in front of her. ‘You’ve gone so thin.’

  ‘There was none of her before, but days with no food to speak of …’ Rea said, tutting, pulling the blanket up higher, pulling her in tighter to her.

  Stella accepted the cup of tea, smiling at the china. ‘I get the good teaset, I see.’

  ‘You’ll always get the good set here,’ Rea replied.

  ‘Close the door there, Luca. There’s a draft coming in, she’ll catch her death,’ Rea said and, to her horror, Stella started to cry.

  ‘Oh hush now, what is it?’ Rea asked.

  Charlie moved over to the other side of her, ‘You’ve been through so much, you have a good cry.’

  ‘My mam used to say exactly that,’ Stella said. ‘You’ll catch your death … I miss her so much. I miss her, I want my mam.’

  ‘Oh sweetheart,’ Rea held her close.

  ‘Where is your mam and dad? Your family?’ Charlie asked. ‘We can call them for you. They’d want to be here.’

  ‘You can’t call them.’ Stella said.

  ‘Why?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘They’re dead,’ Stella answered, tears falling once again.

  ‘Both your parents?’ Rea asked and she nodded slowly in response. ‘I have nobody.’

  ‘Yes you do,’ Luca’s voice cut in, gruff with emotion. ‘You have us.’

  ‘All of you have been part of the happiest time of my life since they died. It’s felt like … like I have a family again.’

  ‘That’s because you do. Friends are the family that we choose ourselves, that’s what I always say,’ Charlie said.

  Rea took Stella’s hands between her own, ‘Stella Greene, you are family to us. Don’t ever forget that. Sometimes people are put in our path for a reason. The day you knocked on my door, looking for help, well it was one of my lowest moments. I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. But then, like an angel, you appeared. You saved me.’

  ‘And you have all saved me too.’

  ‘When did your parents – when did they die? How long have you been on your own?’ Rea asked.

  ‘Ten years ago, almost. They died on St Stephens Day in 2004,’ Stella replied.

  Time stood still then for Rea, George and Luca, as they looked at each other, then back to Stella again. Luca found his voice the quickest. ‘Elise died on that day too.’

  Stella’s eyes darkened, confused by this coincidence.

  ‘How did your family die?’ George asked.

  ‘They died in the Boxing Day tsunami, on Patong Beach,’ Stella whispered and saw shock register on each of the faces of the Brady family. ‘Don’t tell me …’

  Rea nodded, unable to speak, and she reached out for George, who fell into the seat beside her.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Charlie said, not understanding any of this.

  ‘Elise was there too. She died on Patong Beach,’ Rea answered him, never taking her eyes off Stella.

  Luca slumped back onto his chair. Charlie walked over to his side and sat on the edge, wanting to give him support. He looked shell-shocked.

  ‘Elise went to Phuket for Christmas. I couldn’t go, I was working. My boss wouldn’t give me the time off,’ Luca said.

  Shock vibrated through Stella.

  Luca continued, ‘The ironic thing is, he gave me the time off to go and search for her, when she went missing.’

  Charlie placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it.

  ‘I searched for weeks. Until I finally admitted that she was gone.’

  ‘You never found her body?’ Charlie asked.

  His question was met with silence.

  Stella looked at Luca, locking eyes and saw reflected in them the pain that she lived with every day. If he had spent weeks over there, looking for Elise, he had seen it all. The makeshift morgues, the decaying stench of the unclaimed dead, the apocalyptic devastation, the horror, the never-ending horror.

  He nodded, as if he had been inside her head, reading her very thoughts.

  ‘I think one of the reasons why I found it so hard to admit that Elise was dead was the fact that we didn’t get to bring her home, to bury her, to say our goodbyes,’ Rea added.

  ‘I just can’t imagine that,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  George said, ‘We spent the first year convinced that they would find her. We’d say she has been washed up on some small island, with memory loss. Or with islanders who had no English and no way of getting her to civilisation. We played the “what if” game till we exhausted every possible scenario.’

  ‘In my dreams, she comes home. In my dreams, she never left us,’ Rea said.

  Charlie walked to the kitchen to grab the brandy bottle from the dresser, and five glasses. He poured them each a drink and then sat down again, this time beside Stella. The room was filled with deafening silence.

  ‘And your parents died over there too?’ Charlie eventually asked, gulping down his brandy.

  ‘Not just my parents. My brother Eli too,’ Stella said.

  ‘Sweet divine,’ Rea cried.

  ‘Your whole family?’ Charlie asked, his voice raised two octaves higher.

  ‘Sometimes I think I died there too,’ Stella whispered. She felt their eyes on her, questioning. ‘Or at least the person I used to be. She’s still over there, lost too.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Rea said.

  ‘I could never understand why I survived and they didn’t. I should have drowned with them. And ever since that day, I’ve felt like I’m still underwater, trying to breathe, to escape. I thought at first Matt had come to rescue me. But I was wrong. He had his foot on my head, pushing me under the water, all the time.’ Stella stood up, shaking the blanket from her. She turned to look at them, ‘Why did I survive when thousands died? Why me?’

  ‘Why not you?’ Rea replied, standing up to join her. ‘You survived and you are here in this world for a reason. For one, you helped me.’

  ‘Can I say something?’ George said, standing up to face Stella. ‘I know I haven’t known you as long as Rea, but I can see how special you are. And I promise you this. Your parents are rejoicing that you lived. And they live on through you, through every wonderful, kind deed you do. That’s their legacy. And all they want for you is that you live fully. Not half-live, fully live, embracing the shit out of this beautiful world. I know that parts of it are cruel. I know that things happen that make us want to weep. But there is beauty in this world and you are part of that.’

  Stella thought about the past ten years of her life and realised that she had swapped the walls of the ocean for walls of fear. They had trapped her, holding her back, punishing her for surviving.

  Luca stood up and turned to face Stella, ‘You said a moment ago that you used to be someone else. What did you mean by that?’

  ‘I wasn’t always called Stella. Back then, I used to be Skye Madden.’

  Chapter 50

  SKYE

  Patong Beach, Thailand, 2004

  Aunty Paula arrived the next morning. Unbeknown to her, as she flew over the Indian Ocean to me, another of our family was gone. Two down, two to go. Because, if Eli is dead too, I know that I might as well have drowned in the ocean with them all. A life without my family, my heart, would not be worth living.

  She had little to say at first when she got here. Shock does that. She cried, she wailed, then she rallied. I felt sorry for her. I mean, I’d had days to get used to this living hel
l.

  We attended the meetings held by the Irish Embassy. They assured us both that they would arrange the removal of my parents’ bodies home. I was still clinging onto hope, just a scrap of it, that my brother was alive.

  Aunty Paula had come armed with photographs. I looked at the faces of my parents and tried to replace the last images of them with these smiling faces. But my mind kept going back to that look of fear on their faces, in the water. The Embassy helped us to produce posters of Eli. We retraced my steps and extended our search. We placed them on what had now become known as the Walls of Despair. I didn’t want to cover up anyone, so I searched for a free spot in corners, at what I thought would be Eli’s eye level. I gave some of my DNA, so that they could use this to help identify Eli if it became necessary. Hair, nails, mouth swabs were taken. I filled out more forms and again I was met with only kindness and concern. Hands squeezed mine and wished me luck and I found myself on a merry-go-round that never ceased. Feeling despair and hope in alternate turns.

  I wished I had taken more care to remember details. What height were you Eli? I think six feet. Aunt Paula thinks perhaps six feet one. And what did you weigh? We’d never discussed weight before, because it hadn’t seemed important at home. Glancing at the man from the Embassy, I told him, ‘He was about your weight, I think.’

  As I scanned books filled with photographs of the numbered dead, my heart pounded as I asked myself, was there a number assigned to you somewhere?

  Journalists asked the same questions over and over. I didn’t want to talk to them, but as Aunty Paula said, if Eli watched the news, or somebody else with him did, well, who knows what could happen? So once again, dancing with hope, we had to use the media. In fairness, Aunty Paula did most of the talking and I stood beside her, anxious to get moving again, to keep looking.

  We drove around Phuket for hours on end, our eyes non-stop searching the streets. Every face we passed, we looked at, wondering, would Eli’s eyes meet ours? I allowed Aunty Paula to force me to eat. I drank water when she told me to, but I was on auto-pilot, my only thought finding my brother. I couldn’t allow myself to think about my parents, because when I did, things clouded over and I wanted to crawl into a ball and scream.

  We followed other survivors back to scour Patong Beach, to search for our belongings. As we stepped onto the hot sand, it was as if a thick cloud of sadness and fear enveloped me. Someone handed us a SARs mask and we began our own green mile.

  Distraught relatives walked silently through the debris, trying to locate something to connect them to their lost ones. Flip flops, passports, a pair of reading glasses. Books, a bottle of sunscreen, t-shirts amongst the rubble. They had all belonged to someone, bought with excitement for a holiday of a lifetime.

  ‘This is hopeless,’ Aunty Paula cried and I didn’t disagree. When Dad died, in truth, I lost all but a smidgeon of hope. With every passing minute, it grew smaller. Deep inside of me, I knew that Eli was dead too. It was just a matter of time before his body was found and matched to my DNA.

  I began to think about the funeral. Three bodies. I remembered other funerals of families who died in tragic circumstances that made the RTE news and could not fathom that my family would now be just another media sensation.

  ‘I can’t do this any more,’ Paula said. So we left the beach.

  That evening, we walked to the Irish Embassy meeting point for an update. With every hour that passed the numbers there dwindled, as people left to go home.

  Gently, we were told that we might have to accept that we might never see Eli’s body. He, along with thousands of others, would remain lost in their watery graves.

  ‘Check one more time,’ I begged Tom.

  So with tears in his eyes, he went through the lists of survivors found and confirmed that Eli Madden was not amongst them.

  ‘Maybe …’ Aunty Paula said.

  ‘Stop it. This isn’t Hollywood. He’s gone. You know it, I know it.’ I didn’t mean to snap, to take my anger and grief out on her. But I couldn’t help it.

  ‘No, love. It’s most certainly not Hollywood. This is hell on earth.’

  The mass exodus of the island continued, with tourists checking out, demanding refunds and transportation to the airports. Panic and fear made them brusque. My sympathies lay with the tired and kind Thai staff, who were exhausted as they tried to take care of the emotional and frightened demands. Many of them had lost loved ones too.

  As we walked through the lobby a man approached me, as many had over the past few days. He passed me a poster, and asked, ‘Have you seen this woman?’

  I looked down at the photograph of the tanned woman, who was laughing up to the camera lens. I looked into her eyes and I felt my stomach flip in recognition.

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  We moved to a seat in the lobby and sat down. His face, alight with hope that I had good news to share.

  ‘Is she in this hotel?’

  ‘She saved my life,’ I said. ‘She pulled me out of the water. She grabbed my hair and helped me climb to a rock.’

  He smiled, pride lighting up his eyes. ‘That’s my Jill. She’s strong. And fierce.’

  Jill. Ah … I’d not known her name.

  ‘Are you her husband?’ Paula asked.

  He nodded and questions spilled out of his mouth as he clawed at my arm in desperation. ‘Where is she now? Was she injured?’

  ‘I don’t know where she is now,’ I said, tears threatening to fall again.

  ‘What do you mean? You must know!’ He grabbed my shoulders tight, too tight. His eyes pleaded with me, beseeched me to put him out of his heartache. He just wanted his wife back. I wished with all my might that I could make that happen.

  ‘Hey, take it easy there you!’ Aunty Paula said. ‘She’s just a kid.’

  His face crumpled. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do. I’ve looked everywhere.’

  Aunty Paula said, ‘I understand. Sure, we’re all the same, not ourselves with the worry and grief. Skye will tell you everything she remembers about the last time she saw Jill. But she can’t tell you something she doesn’t know, okay?’

  He nodded and looked at me, expectant, sure that I had something to tell that would give him a clue as to where his wife was.

  ‘I would have drowned if she hadn’t grabbed me,’ I said. ‘For a while we didn’t say anything, because we were both exhausted. But it was nice having her … Jill … close by. I was scared.’

  ‘Was she hurt?’

  ‘No more than I was, I think,’ I replied, closing my eyes to remember how she looked. ‘She was cut on her face, a little. But she was sitting and talking. She made me laugh.’

  He looked up, his face full of love for this woman.

  ‘We were both half-naked. The water ripped our bikinis off. I was embarrassed. She told me that we’d come into the world naked, it was no big deal. She said we were neighbours. I said Celtic cousins.’

  ‘She loved Ireland. We had a great weekend in Dublin last summer,’ he said.

  I took a deep breath and told him, ‘I didn’t even know her name. But I knew her. I knew she was lovely. I knew she was kind.’

  ‘Don’t say was,’ he snapped, injured by my words.

  ‘She didn’t mean anything by it,’ Paula said, moving closer to me. ‘Now I know you’re suffering, but so are we. My niece has lost her mother and father in the space of twenty-four hours. And her brother is missing too. You don’t have a monopoly on grief.’

  He put his hands over his face and rubbed it so hard he left marks behind. Then, he took his hands down and looked at me. The pain I felt was echoed in his own eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to snap. I’ve not slept for days and I’m out of my mind. But that’s no excuse.’

  I wanted to run to my hotel room, away from his grief and torment. I felt as if I was still in the water, drowning and he was pushing me down, demanding answers that I couldn’t give. I thought if I started to run, I might never stop. I’d had enough of this
life, this pain. I didn’t want to be me any more.

  ‘She said we had to go back to the shore. That we couldn’t just sit on the rocks. She said she wanted to go back to find you.’

  Tears began to fall down his cheeks. If he was aware of them, he didn’t show it.

  ‘She was thinking of me,’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes. She was worried about you,’ I answered. ‘The last thing she said to me was, “Don’t just sit here waiting to die. Come on, Irish. Remember that fighting spirit.” Then she swam away from me, towards the shore.’

  ‘So the last time you saw her, she was alive?’ he said, his face alight with renewed hope.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So she could still be alive.’

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  The lump in my throat tried to make me cry, but I swallowed it down. I suppose she could be alive. But I’d learned the hard way that miracles were fast running out.

  Chapter 51

  STELLA

  72 Derry Lane, Dublin, 2014

  Saying her old name out loud for the first time in years felt odd. She rolled it around her tongue and said it again. ‘My name used to be Skye Madden.’

  ‘I remember reading about your family. You were just a child then,’ Rea said, her face taut with shock.

  ‘You never found your brother, did you?’ Luca said. ‘I remember seeing his photograph on the walls of missing people over there. He was Irish. I remembered always looking out for the Irish on the boards. You always remember your own, don’t you?’

  I knew what he meant. It had been the same for me. ‘I found Mam first of all. But she died in hospital the very next day. I was with her and at least I got to say goodbye before she died. But my dad …’

  Rea led her back to the sofa, ‘Sit.’

  ‘I found him in one of the morgues. He was wearing these silly shorts that Mam had bought him and Eli. Matching pairs. I didn’t know which of them it was at first.’

  ‘And Eli?’ Rea asked.

  ‘Like Elise, he was never found.’

  They sat in silence, trying to make sense of the revelations.