One Hundred Names

Chapter Six

So now Kitty had all the names, the addresses and the phone numbers. Everyone lived in Ireland, and her wild-goose chase was limited to one country. She was so close to Constance’s story she could practically smell the ink on the freshly published magazine. With a deadline of only a week and a half to go, and with one hundred people to meet, Kitty was surprised at her lack of eagerness to begin contacting them immediately. As she looked at the phone directory, her eyes kept being pulled to search for one name, and that wasn’t even on Constance’s list.

Kitty took the 123 bus to O’Connell Street and then the 140 to Finglas. One hour after setting out on her journey, and constantly going over her words in her head, she arrived at her destination and she still didn’t even know what to say. She stood across the green from Colin Maguire’s house while kids raced around her on their bikes, almost knocking her over as if she wasn’t even there. She suddenly wished she wasn’t. At that hour the streets were busy with mothers and their children coming and going, but none seemed to take any notice of a stranger’s presence. Not yet. She was sure it would be only a matter a time before one of the children alerted its mother to a strange woman lurking at the green. The green was a one-hundred-metre stretch of grass with a diagonal pathway going through it from one exit to another, surrounded by a small knee-high wall. She wasn’t protected by anything, she was completely exposed, and all that stood between her and Colin’s house was distance and her own terror.

As she looked around at the neighbours, she took in their faces, wondering if they had been at the courthouse, if they had been the ones shouting at her, if they were the people who came to her door with spray paint and toilet paper while she slept inside or while she slipped out to work. Were they watching her all the time as she was watching them now? With a hat pulled low over her face, she watched Colin Maguire’s house and tried to decide whether to approach and, if so, what to say.

Sorry. Sorry for ruining your life. Sorry you were suspended from your job, sorry you were rejected from your community. Sorry that, for whatever reason, I’m sure related in some way to the story, you’ve had to put your house on the market. Sorry your marriage has suffered as a consequence. Sorry for putting your job in jeopardy. Sorry for embarrassing your family and destroying personal relationships. I know you mustn’t think that I understand, that I’m a heartless bitch who couldn’t possibly understand, but I do. Believe me, I do. I understand because I’m going through it too. That’s what she wanted to say but she knew it was an apology that was full of self-sympathy and she needed to be selfless. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to be so because she felt she was suffering so much. It was her fault, yes it was, but they were both suffering, and whoever loved him and was trying to protect him was causing her misery to continue.

She studied the house, which had a ‘For Sale’ notice in the garden. There was no sign of his children, no bikes in the garden, no toys on the windowsill, the car was still in the drive. It was Colin’s car. She remembered chasing him to it after school with a camera in his face, his look bewildered and confused. She had thought he was a criminal then. She had been so sure he was, but to think of the things she’d said to him made her ashamed now. She wondered if the car in the driveway meant that he hadn’t gone back to work yet. She assumed his job was still open to him now that his name was well and truly cleared. Or perhaps the stigma was too great for him to return.

Sorry.

Colin was thirty-eight years old. He started working in the Finglas Community Secondary School, for twelve- to eighteen-year-olds, as soon as he finished college at the age of twenty-four. He was popular with the students, to his detriment, often a regular at the end-of-year debutante balls, a supportive young teacher they didn’t consider a proper teacher as he failed to dish out homework, and punishments other than press-ups while forced to sing the latest songs in the charts. He was the teacher whom students felt they could go to when in need, and as a reward for his popularity was made class tutor on many occasions, unusual for a physical education teacher in that particular school. When he turned down the advances of sixteen-year-old Tanya O’Brien, he suffered the consequences ten years later. For whatever reasons, choosing to direct her personal unhappiness at him, Tanya talked her old school friend Tracey O’Neill into becoming her accomplice. Tracey had truly believed that Tanya was abused and that her ten-year-old son was in fact Colin’s son. Apart from wanting to support her friend, having been convinced that two people with identical stories would strengthen her case, Tracey also believed there would be a monetary reward for Tanya’s trauma, with magazines keen to tell her story and possibly even television appearances to talk about the abuse she’d suffered. Tanya had shown her friend examples of previous abuse cases in which the victims were paid by the media. One evil young woman and the other bored and twisted had come together to target an overambitious one. Kitty was young and coming up the ranks. They’d known she would be hungry. And she was. She gobbled up their lies and came at them for seconds, talking the editor and producer of Thirty Minutes into allowing her to follow the story up, convincing herself that exposing this pervert was all for the greater good of society.

The front door of Colin’s house opened and he appeared. Head still down as she had last seen him in the courthouse, his chin on his chest. Kitty’s heart hammered wildly and she realised she couldn’t do it. She turned and walked away quickly, hat low over her face, feeling once again an interloper in Colin’s life.

Not one of her voicemails was returned. Those she had called hadn’t answered, or weren’t home, messages were to be passed on but she couldn’t be sure if they would be. Besides, increasingly people screened their calls and refused to answer if they didn’t recognise a number or it was withheld. Kitty decided that the best way to approach this story was not to contact all one hundred names via the telephone but to try a face-to-face approach.

On day one of her personal visits she went to Sarah McGowan’s address in Lucan, a ground-floor red-brick block of flats built in the seventies, which looked like it belonged in a retirement community. The balcony door opened beside her at the front door to the flats and a woman in her twenties in a nurse’s uniform stepped out.

‘Are you Sarah McGowan?’

The girl looked her up and down. Made a decision. ‘She moved out six months ago.’

Kitty couldn’t hide her disappointment.

‘No jobs for her here,’ the nurse shrugged, ‘which I understand, but she was supposed to give me three months’ notice. Which she didn’t.’

‘Where did she move to?’ Kitty asked hopefully.

‘Australia.’

‘Australia!’

‘Victoria, I think. Or at least that’s where she went first. She had friends out there working on a watermelon farm. They got her a job picking watermelons.’ The nurse rolled her eyes.

‘I don’t know, that sounds kind of fun,’ Kitty said, thinking picking watermelons on the other side of the world would be quite the remedy for her situation right now.

‘For a qualified accountant?’

Kitty took her point. ‘Do you have her new number?’

The nurse shook her head. ‘We weren’t exactly friends. She set up a forwarding address with the Post Office and I sold her crap on eBay. The least she could do for me.’

‘Do you know her friends or family?’

The girl gave Kitty a look that answered everything.

‘Thanks for your help.’ Kitty backed away, knowing there was nothing more she’d get from this girl.

‘Hey, are you that woman?’

Kitty stopped. ‘Depends which woman you mean.’

‘The TV woman. From Thirty Minutes.’

Kitty paused. ‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘You left a message on my phone.’

It didn’t warrant a response.

‘I’ve never seen your show. I just know you from the court case.’

Kitty’s smile faded.

The girl seemed to think about it. ‘She’s a good girl, you know. Sarah. Despite what I’ve said about her. Don’t do anything horrible on her.’

‘I won’t.’ Kitty swallowed and made her way out of the quiet apartment complex. Perhaps she would use the name Kitty in future after all.

On the bus to her next destination, Kitty tried to ignore the parting words of the previous exchange by making notes in her notepad.

Story Theory: People who’ve had to move abroad.

Recession story?

Kitty hoped that wasn’t the case. She’d had enough of those stories – the media was inundated with the subject – and unless the situation was unique, she knew Constance had believed the same.

She stared out of the bus window. She had hoped to follow the list in the exact order Constance had catalogued the names, but as Kitty was cold calling door to door, and hadn’t use of a car, she had decided to start with the Dublin addresses first. Sixth on the list, but second on Kitty’s, was Bridget Murphy.

Number 42 was a terraced house in Beaumont, with nothing in particular to distinguish it from the line of identical pebble-dash houses on that row, opposite it, or around the maze that made up the estate. In an effort to inject colour into the estate some homeowners had painted their houses, though they clearly hadn’t pulled together. There were clashing lemons and oranges, snot greens beside mint greens, pretty pinks beside unpainted murky pebble dash. The house number was displayed as a novelty happy-faced sticker on the wheelie bins out by the front gate, the driveway was littered with abandoned toys and bikes, but there was no car inside the gates or outside on the path. It was 5.30 p.m., people were returning from work and the evening was already closing in. Next door an old woman was sitting at her front door on a kitchen chair catching the last of the evening sun. She was wearing a knee-length skirt, thick tights on her bumpy bandaged legs, and tartan slippers on her feet. She watched Kitty closely and nodded at her when she caught her eye.

Kitty rang the doorbell to Bridget Murphy’s house and stepped down from the doorstep.

‘They’re having their dinner,’ the old woman said. On Kitty’s displaced interest in her, she continued, ‘Chicken curry. They always have it on Thursdays. I can smell it in my house every week.’ She ruffled up her nose.

Kitty laughed. ‘You’re not a fan of chicken curry?’

‘Not of hers, I’m not,’ she said, looking away from the house as if the very sight of it offended her. ‘They won’t hear you out here, they’re a noisy lot.’

Kitty could hear that from where she stood. It sounded like there was an army of squealing kids dropping knives and clanging glasses. She didn’t want to be rude by ringing again, particularly as she was disturbing a family dinner and she had the old woman as her audience.

‘I’d ring again if I were you,’ the neighbour said.

Happy to receive permission, Kitty pressed the doorbell again.

‘Who are you looking for anyway? Him or her? Because he’s not in, doesn’t get home until seven most days. A banker.’ She rolled up her nose again.

‘I’m here to see Bridget.’

The old woman frowned. ‘Bridget Murphy?’

Kitty checked her notepad again even though she had memorised practically the entire list, but she did that now, checked everything twenty times and then still wasn’t sure.

‘Bridget doesn’t live there any more,’ the old woman said just as the front door opened and a flushed-looking mother of the army stared at a confused Kitty.

‘Oh. Hello,’ Kitty said.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I hope so. I’m looking for Bridget Murphy but I’ve just learned that she might not live here any longer.’

‘She doesn’t,’ the old woman said. ‘I told you that. I already told her that, Mary.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ the mother said, ignoring the old lady.

‘See?’

‘Do you know how I could contact Bridget?’

‘I don’t know Bridget at all. We bought the house last year but perhaps Agnes here could help.’

Kitty apologised for disturbing her dinner, the door closed and they heard Mary’s ironic shout for silence rattle through the building.

She turned to Agnes. Kitty guessed Agnes knew the business of most people on the street. A journalist’s dream. She contemplated climbing over the knee-high wall that separated them but decided Agnes might consider it rude so she walked down the path, out the gate, in at Agnes’s gate and up the path again.

Agnes looked at her oddly. ‘You could have just climbed over the wall.’

‘Do you know where Bridget lives?’

‘We lived next door to each other for forty years. She’s a great woman. A bunch of selfish good-for-nothings her children turned out to be. To hear them talk you’d think they think they’re royalty. Far from how they were reared, I’ll tell you that. She had a fall is all,’ she said angrily. ‘She tripped. Who doesn’t take a tumble now and then? But oh no, it was off to the nursing home for poor Birdie just so that lot could sell that house and spend the money on another skiing holiday.’ She grumbled to herself, her mouth moving up and down angrily, her false teeth sloshing around inside.

‘Do you know which nursing home she’s in?’

‘St Margaret’s in Oldtown,’ she said, sounding angry at the whole of Oldtown.

‘Have you visited her?’

‘Me? No. The furthest I can get is the shop at the end of the road and then I have to figure out how to get back,’ she laughed, a wheezy sound that resulted in a cough.

‘Do you think she’d see me?’

Agnes looked at her then. ‘I know your face.’

‘Yes,’ Kitty said, not proudly this time.

‘You did the show about the tea.’

‘Yes, I did,’ Kitty brightened up.

‘I drink Barry’s,’ she said. ‘So did my mother. And her mother.’

Kitty nodded solemnly. ‘A good choice, I believe.’

Agnes’s eyes narrowed as she made a decision. ‘Tell her Agnes said you were all right. And that I was asking after her. We go way back, me and her.’ She looked off into the distance again, reflective. ‘You can tell her I’m still here.’

When Kitty was leaving, the door next to Agnes’s opened again and four kids came firing out as if from a cannon, their mother quickly following to shout her orders. Agnes called out, ‘And tell her they cut her rose bush down. Butchered it, they did.’

Mary threw Agnes a look of absolute loathing and Kitty smiled and lifted her hand in a farewell. En route to her next destination, Kitty looked at the two names she had visited that day. Sarah McGowan and Bridget Murphy.

Story theory: people who have had to move home against their will?

That was definitely a theme she could relate to. Her and Colin Maguire.

Chapter Seven

Due to a very limited bus service to Oldtown, Kitty had no choice but to get a taxi and with a driver hailing from the opposite side of the county, a fact he pointed out many times, they had to stop three times for directions as they drove down a series of country lanes that seemed to get ever narrower. In the heart of the countryside they finally reached St Margaret’s, a 1970s bungalow that had been extended on all sides to meet its new requirements as a nursing home. The south-facing conservatory to the right was set as a dining room, an extension to the left and then further to the back filled with couches and armchairs. The gardens were extensively landscaped, with benches placed all around and colourful hanging baskets hung from the sides of the house. If she ever saw her again, Kitty would be sure to tell Agnes that her friend Bridget was in a good place. It was 7 p.m., only thirty minutes of visiting time remaining, and having not had the greatest luck so far with hunting down her subjects, Kitty was really hoping Bridget would agree to see her.

She asked at the desk for Bridget Murphy and waited while a stern-faced nurse, her hair in a severe bun, checked the visitors’ book. Kitty squirmed as she watched her, trying to figure out how to tell her she wasn’t expected and figure out her best way of manipulating the situation. To her right was the common room, busy with visitors, and on-going chess games. A middle-aged woman with dreadlocks was in the centre of the floor forcing three old men, one using a walking frame, another wearing hearing aids in both ears, to play Simon Says.

‘No, Wally!’ she screeched with laughter. ‘I didn’t say “Simon Says”!’