Page 7 of Love Unlocked

‘Ha. Ha,’ Melody says drily. ‘Yes, I know it’s hard to believe but I did.’

‘He sold a ring that you gave him?’

‘He sold a ring that he wanted to give me. It was an engagement ring.’ Even though Melody introduced the topic, she’s not liking where it’s now going. She never discusses her private life.

Prunella can’t believe it. She’s fanning herself and gasping. ‘You were engaged? But you hate love. I have so many questions I don’t know where to start.’

‘I don’t hate love, that’s ridiculous, and I wasn’t engaged, well almost, kind of, but that’s not the story.’ Melody pivots quickly to a more comfortable topic. ‘I’ll tell you what he bought. He invested in a food truck. With me.’

Melody is lucky to have been able to make a living from DJing, live and on broadcast radio, but she does have one other form of income thanks to Sam – sweet, adorable, ex-boyfriend Sam – who’d helped make a shared dream of theirs become a reality. They are the proud owners of a Food Truck, ‘Stuffed’, specialising in stuffed jacket potatoes and a half-dozen choice of fillings. Sam, a qualified chef, and now married with a baby, had invested in the food truck with her, and she’d be damned if she let it fail. She owed him.

And suddenly this feels like a great idea to discuss. It’s a bit of free advertisement. The summer is over, the festivals have come to an end. The busy Christmas season is over. It’s early January and bookings are on her mind. A small festival here and there to keep them going, nothing huge, Sam has a baby to feed and this food truck was her idea. She has to keep it going and this is the best way. She can’t let him down.

‘You actually work in the truck?’

‘Sometimes, yes. If you book the prestige package you can get me as the DJ for your event and the food truck too,’ she explains. ‘Sam’s the chef, he’s the food genius and we always have excellent music in the truck, with a dance area outside. I have been known to spin a few tunes in the truck while he sizzles the spuds.’

Prunella laughs. ‘You guys sound like the perfect team,’ she says, eyes glistening. She literally lights up like a bulb when she’s prodding people for relationship information. She’s in love with the idea of love. ‘Why didn’t you get married?’

There’s a pause. Then Melody says, trying to keep the edge out of her voice, ‘Not everyone has to bow to societal and cultural conformity, Prunella. Sometimes people can have individual thoughts, as deviant as being single may seem. But I will fly the flag for outliers all around the world.’ She can’t quite muster a laugh.

Melody had brought the topic up but she hadn’t meant for it to get personal. She’s a DJ, a music journalist, dabbling in a new lifestyle podcast. She feels like a fish out of water and she may have just made a costly mistake airing a private matter just to win a point.

Prunella smiles, seeing a different, surprisingly defensive side to the usually chill Melody and she doesn’t let it pass. ‘You weren’t lying, your ex really sold the ring and did the thing. But I don’t know if that tracks with the other stories you told. He didn’t do it to get away from you to start a new life. It sounds to me as if he sold the ring to stay close to you. It’s sweet,’ Prunella continues as Melody’s cheeks blaze from the heat. ‘You’re still a team.’

5

AL

As a child, Al would sit at the kitchen table for hours studying maps, or lie on the rug by the fire while the family watched TV. His finger would follow the curve of a river or road, pushing cars and trucks off the motorway, toppling sheep from mountains. He loved the deep satisfaction of seeing how borders kiss, roads connect and combine, where rivers rise, meet and end. The journeys of roads, tributaries and mountains. And bridges. Layers upon layers of life on a simple page.

Free of the office and the stifling environment of being trapped in a space with Walter, Al walks the streets, no need for a sat nav, reading the map in his head. He needs air and a change of scenery. The Grace Plunkett Bridge comes into sight when he reaches Kilmainham. He stops to study it from afar. It’s a bridge he knows well, a short footbridge over a relatively narrow river at this position. An open-top, single-level bridge, the deck constructed with wood and the supporting structures made from steel. The trusses are steel too, and below them square grids offer protection from falling or jumping. It’s on these steel mesh grids that the love locks have been connected to the bridge. It has been less than a year since Al has been to this bridge and the increase in the number of love locks takes him by surprise.

The No Locks Association weren’t overreacting.

The Grace Plunkett Bridge was erected in 2016 during the commemoration of the Easter Rising in Dublin as part of many ceremonies that took place around the country. As an activist in the Republican movement, illustrator and cartoonist, Grace Plunkett née Gifford was given the honour of a pedestrian bridge nearby the Kilmainham Gaol she once resided in, and more notably, where she wed her husband Joseph Mary Plunkett hours before he was executed for his involvement in the Easter Rising of 1916. It has become a great symbol now, including a beloved love story, and so people, mainly tourists who finish the tour of Kilmainham Gaol with the heartbreaking love story fresh in their minds, visit the pedestrian bridge named for Grace Plunkett and attach their love locks to the railings. In solidarity with Grace and Joseph perhaps.

Al moves closer to the bridge, and steps onto the wooden deck, which is wet on this grey January day. Beneath the bridge, the grey-green River Camac, usually more of a stream, is higher than usual today due to the heavy rainfall. Al’s alone on the bridge. He walks up and down, slowly, taking in every inch of the bridge, as his eyes run over the thousands of love locks attached to the wired netted squares below the handrail.

The actual padlocks vary from lock to lock: metal, steel, brass, all different shapes, sizes and colours, many red and heart-shaped, with initials, engravings, dates and motifs. Some have rusted from the elements over the years, others are sparkling new. As a collection the love locks are an eyesore, but more importantly than that, Al can see that due to the weight of the padlocks, each and every one of the safety nets, particularly those in prime position in the centre of the bridge, are bending outwards and over the river.

He’s unsure at this point if the bridge could buckle from the weight of the pressure but he doesn’t need to call in the forces, there’s no need for ground-penetrating radar and ultrasonic testing equipment. It’s clear to see that the bridge’s metal meshing can’t take the pressure. Overcome with the weight of love they could easily collapse. He can relate.

After examining the bridge’s structure his attention moves to the locks themselves. Initials are written in marker on the locks. Doodles of hearts, quotes and words in different languages of meaning to the couples. He didn’t leave a padlock here or on any bridge for him and Tara but it’s the kind of thing he would have done in a foreign country, if they’d had more time. He liked grand gestures. He liked everyone knowing how he felt about her, how in love they were. He would have secured the padlock and made a drama of throwing the key, he would have posted it on Instagram, he would have counted the likes. It wasn’t enough for him to feel it, or for her to know it, he liked to display it and have everyone celebrate it. What an idiot.

It’s only been a matter of weeks and how he loathes his former smug, vomit-inducing self and yet is far from enamoured with this broken bitter man who has emerged.

His finds himself looking for the deceivers’ names: Walter and Tara. He crouches down to the love locks level, heart pounding with anger as he searches. He expects to find them: Tara Jones and Walter Whelan. TJ and WW. He searches. It’s the type of thing they might do. How long were they seeing each other behind his back? Sharing their love on this bridge would be the perfect and only way they could publicly declare their secret love to the world. He feels hot inside, a deep red rage overcoming him. He wants to rip the entire railings off. These fools who brandish their love as if it makes them something special.

His back sore from bending, he goes down on his knees on the saturated ground and searches through the locks, crammed in together, fighting for space. His hands are purple with the January biting cold, he can barely feel his fingers as he pushes through the pieces of metal, some of them with sharpened corners that slice through his skin. He sits back on his heels, ignoring the stares he gets from passersby. There must be thousands of locks on the bridge, there is barely an available space on the nets on either side. He focuses on a small area, and counts. When he gets to fifty, and has barely scratched the surface, he realises they could be looking at twenty thousand or more love locks. Tara and Al could have a lock on this bridge and he’d never know it.

The bridge isn’t built to take this weight, surely.

He stands and gives the railing a shake to see how secure it is. The love locks rattle their optimistic tune, drunk in love, and chained to the iron grill for all eternity like protestors.

The safety net is under severe pressure, it could have dire consequences for pedestrians, especially children. The locks alone must weigh ten tonnes, the bridge wasn’t designed to carry five elephants. The steel mesh squares will have to be replaced, the love locks will have to be removed. He’ll write up a report and file it with the utmost urgency.

After making the decision to remove the love locks Al momentarily feels lighter as he makes his way back to the office. It’s a rare moment of relief from the pain in his heart. Then he remembers why he’s been feeling so bad and he sticks the headphones on and blares ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ for the twelfth time that day.