Page 73 of Postscript

After a quick consultation with Ciara, I call the estate agent and gleefully accept the offer on my house. I don’t need the house to feel Gerry’s spirit. I was in a house with no physical link to him, surrounded by people with no physical or emotional link to him, and he was present. This house has acted like a chain around my neck, letting it go gives me power. I can recreate the beauty of us elsewhere, in endless locations in the world, I can take him with me, while I’m creating something new. It’s time for me to leave. I’ve already said my goodbye to it. I was never supposed to stay for so long. It was a starter home for Gerry and me, but then it became the place where we ended.

I get on my bike and speed through the streets, I should really be concentrating on the road but I can’t. I shouldn’t really be cycling on my newly healed leg at all, particularly not with such gusto, but I can’t stop. I feel like I’ve wings and I’m flying. As I near my house I can’t recall the journey to this point. I want to ring somebody, I want to dance, I want to shout from the rooftops with joy that life is wonderful, life is great. I feel drunk.

I cycle up the driveway outside my home. Denise’s car is gone, she’s at work, or maybe never coming back. I hope the latter. Then as I step down from the bike I feel a searing pain in my ankle. I pushed myself too much. I thought I was invincible. I feel heavy as I lean the bike against the wall in the side passage. My high has come crashing down and my head pounds with the full and immediate effect of a hangover. I step inside the house to silence. I lean my back against the front door and look around.

Nothing.

Stillness.

Silence.

The final words of Gerry’s letter.

PS, I Love You.

I come crashing down.

I have pushed my ankle too far. It’s round, swollen and throbbing, I place it on a pillow, with a bag of frozen peas on top. I lie on my bed and I do not move for the evening, not even when my stomach growls, when it feels empty and hollow, as if it’s starting to eat itself, and I’m nauseous. I need to eat but I should keep the weight off my foot. I watch the clouds rolling by, blue to white, large plumes followed by thin stragglers, I watch as the daylight eventually turns to darkness. I don’t, can’t get up to pull my curtains. I am numb, immobile, feeling frozen. I can’t move, I don’t want to move. My ankle throbs, my head throbs, this enormous come-down after such dizzying heights.

I start to think and I think too much. Of before, of ago, of the very beginning, of old times. Of first times.

The front doorbell rings and in my bedroom I pull another dress over my head in absolute frustration and throw it on the floor. My head is so hot my make-up is melting off my face and ruining every item of clothing that smudges against my skin. Even if they were once an option, now soiled, they no longer are. My bedroom floor is hidden by outfits that I’ve scattered in panic and anger. I can’t see the floor for clothes, but I’ve nothing to wear. I whimper, then, hating how weak I sound, I grunt. I study myself in the full-length mirror, examine my body in my new lingerie from every angle, studying what Gerry will see.

I hear Gerry’s voice downstairs and Jack’s laughter. The ribbing has probably already begun. You better keep my sister safe, the same thing that’s been said for the past year since we started going out properly, officially, instead of stealing moments before school, at school lunch and afterwards on the walk home. Two years together, one year full-on, Gerry has become a member of the family, one that my mum and dad keep a watchful eye over.

Dad always says about his favourite brother Michael: ‘He’s a gentleman but he still cheats at Monopoly.’ He uses the same phrase for Gerry.

‘Gerry doesn’t cheat at Monopoly,’ I always retort with a roll of my eyes. ‘We don’t even play Monopoly.’

‘Well you should.’

But I know what Dad means.

Tonight I’m hoping that Gerry will cheat at Monopoly and, as the self-designated bank, I’m ready to aid and abet. I chuckle quietly at my hilarity, giddy with excitement and anticipation, but a knocking at the door silences me. Even though the door is locked, I grab a dress to cover my body.

‘Holly, sweetheart, Gerry’s here.’

‘I know!’ I yell back to my mum, irritated. ‘I heard the doorbell.’

‘OK!’ she responds, wounded.

I know that if I’m not careful this night could be ripped from me before it has even begun. It has taken a lot of parent persuasion to allow me to this party tonight. It’s the first twenty-first party I’ll have been to without parental supervision, and the deal is that I’m allowed to have one drink. The secret unspoken understanding is that this isn’t a realistic target for anyone, especially a sixteen-year-old who has a seventeen-year-old boyfriend who is allowed to drink, and so two drinks will be acceptable. I will aim to not have more than four. A fair negotiation, I think.

It’s Gerry’s cousin Eddie’s twenty-first birthday; a disco at Erin’s Isle, the GAA club he plays with. And while Gerry’s family and extended family will all attend, the rule is that the adults leave at 11 p.m. when the DJ starts. It’s Eddie’s rule – at twenty-one he does not consider himself among the adults, which says a lot about Eddie’s character. Gerry hero-worships Eddie. Four years older than him, he’s always been his favourite cousin; he plays for Dublin’s under-21s and looks good to reach a senior level. Eddie is cool, and confident. I find him intimidating, the kind of person who’ll pick you out in a crowd to make a joke, ask you a question, fire a smart comment, sometimes at your expense if he thinks it’s extra-funny. Gerry says it’s ‘banter’, they all talk like that, but nobody as loudly as Eddie from what I see. Everyone always laughs at what he says – and he is funny, a natural comedian – but as a quiet person, not exactly shy, being around unpredictable people like Eddie makes me nervous. Sometimes it annoys me just how much Gerry idolises Eddie, sometimes I think he’d rather be with him than me, because he often chooses to be with him rather than me. Gerry’s parents are less strict with him than mine are with me. At seventeen, Gerry is driving his dad’s car and he goes to clubs with his older cousin whenever asked. He kind of follows him around, at his heels like a little dog, which is true of most people who like being around Eddie. But then Eddie does make me laugh a lot, he has never said a cruel word to me, he just shines a spotlight on me when I don’t want lights shone, and I am jealous of how Gerry spends so much time with him, and Gerry’s sidekicky little doggy following around act is so uncool, so I hold it against Eddie.

I survey the bomb site that’s my floor, eyes putting outfits together locating and mixing, discarding, rearranging the slush piles.

There’s another knock on the door.

‘I said I’ll be ready in a minute,’ I yell.

‘It’s me, hissy fit,’ says my little sister Ciara. At eleven years old she has mastered sarcasm, and can buy and sell everyone, including my parents. As she shares this room with me, I’m obliged to unlock the door.

She steps in and quickly takes in the room, and me standing in the middle of it all in my underwear.

‘Well, that works.’

She steps over the mounds of clothes, tiptoeing in the cracks where the carpet appears to get to her bed. She holds a tub of Häagen-Dazs, and a large spoon, and sits cross-legged on her bed watching me.