No Way to Say Goodbye - Anna McPartlin [24]
When he wasn’t breaking hearts, he was hanging out with Mary. She was the only girl he ever shared his thoughts with. She felt like part of him and he could never accept that he’d experienced something unless he’d shared it with her. Luckily for her, she wasn’t one for embarrassment so when he described his first sexual experience it was without reservation and Mary, mesmerized, made mental notes for when she dared adventure as her cousin had.
When Ivan nearly lost his best friend and confidante he re-evaluated the world around him. He didn’t bother with his Leaving Cert, which, despite the year he had on Mary, he was due to take at the same time. He didn’t need it anyway, not for what he wanted to do with his life. His parents put up a battle but, with their niece in a coma and their son as stubborn as he was calm, they were forced to surrender. While the rest of his classmates studied, Ivan sat by his cousin’s bed day and night, sharing sentry duty with his broken uncle. He philosophized and recited her favourite song lyrics into her ear. He also read to her the books he thought she’d like and that he’d researched during the few hours he was apart from her. Her pregnancy came as a horrible surprise and he blamed himself for it – perhaps his confidences had led her to follow in his footsteps. He wondered if the baby that had survived tumbling down a mountain would suck the life out of its mother. If so, he would despise that child for stealing his best friend.
The baby surviving had been the first miracle. Mary waking had been the second. That she’d survived without brain damage, the third and final. Her skull was weakened and headaches would haunt her, but medication would keep them mostly at bay and she would be back to herself soon enough. There would be a wheelchair and physiotherapy, a wig to hide the hair loss as a consequence of the operation she had undergone to insert a metal plate into her skull. The baby would grow inside her and Ivan would be at her side through it all, yet they would never speak of her boyfriend’s death or her miracle child. That part of her was closed. But Ivan knew she’d come back to them and every time he made her laugh he knew he was a step closer.
It was during this time that he first fell in love with Norma. She was a quiet town girl, bookish and pretty. She would ask after his cousin and talk about treatments she’d read about. She planned to study medicine and he was falling in love with her. Mary had been out of the rehabilitation hospital a month when they announced their engagement and Norma’s pregnancy. Their child was less than a year old when Ivan first left his home town for a faraway oil rig that would earn him enough money to support his family, leaving his new wife behind with a baby. She never did become a doctor and it would be too late by the time her husband realized that she felt desperately cheated.
*
And then there was Penny – poor Penny – daughter to two solicitors and an only child. Her conception was deemed a mistake as children had never been on her parents’ agenda. They weren’t bad people – at least, not as far as she knew. They weren’t around much and their house was a base rather than a home. Both parents worked mostly in Cork, staying in their apartment there, only popping back at weekends. Their child was cared for by a series of live-in nannies until she was old enough to be sent to boarding-school.
“If it’s good enough for royalty, it’s good enough for you, darling!” her mother would say, smiling.
Mary had plonked herself beside Penny on that first train journey, taking them towards their new life in Dublin. They didn’t really