Now they are stinging red from overwhelming love for Sauvignon Blanc. Isn’t it amazing what a difference a year or two makes?
‘You lift me up when I’m feeling down. You light up my world when you smile. You are my one and only, the one I love and the one who I want to grow old with.’
Vomit…
I can see that it’s straight from Google, or else a Ronan Keating song, now that I have snapped out of my starry-eyed romantic honeymoon phase. I am now in a ‘bitch of darkness phase’ after my afternoon of sleeping and drinking and sleeping and drinking and ignoring more phone calls. (It’s Flo this time. She will be grand, as they say here in Ireland. Grand.)
I switch off the DVD, put on some eighties’ classics and sway to the beat of Rick Astley, then look out the window onto the city below me and I raise my glass to my freedom and my future. I have got to be positive. I am merry and positive and I am on a ‘career break’ – that’s what they call it these days. I have it all at my feet and the world awaits, starting with this city I call home.
Plus it’s still my heart anniversary, isn’t it? On this day, seventeen years ago I was at death’s door and then a miraculous gift of life from a little girl in Scotland and her totally amazing family gave me the chance to grow into adulthood. So what if I don’t have a husband any more. So what if I almost lost my job by acting the eejit lately. I still have life! I don’t know how much longer I have it, but for now I do and it’s for living!
‘I still have life!’ I shout out through my open window and a couple below me shout back at me to fuck off. I smile at them and wave. I am drunk again. And I am loving it! I love everything right now!
Mostly, I love Belfast. I love the buzz, the people-watching, the culture, the accents, the shopping, the night-life and the sense of community that still exists, even though it’s very much a big city to a country girl like me with its universities, cosmopolitan quarters and bloody dark history.
I think of all the men I have loved and lost since I moved here in my university days and I start to laugh and laugh and laugh at the memories.
There was Bob, the engineering graduate (or Bob the Builder, as we all called him), who moved to Australia when I was in the thick of my studies and who never returned. There was Martin, an accountant from Dublin, who said he loved me but that with my temporary tattoos and purple hair at the time, he could never see me being the ‘wife’ type; there was Andrew who worked in sales but who turned out to have a criminal record the length of my said long legs and more, and then there was Jeff, the teacher who, as already mentioned, left me for Saffron the Stewardess quicker than the shine wore off his wedding ring.
My love life has been, let’s just say, colourfully complicated.
‘I love being colourfully complicated!’ I shout out loud and continue dancing with myself.
‘Fuck off’, shouts Mr Smart Ass from below again. This time I give him the fingers, then laugh my way to the sofa, totally absorbed in Wham!, who are now playing on the music channel. This is fun. No work tomorrow, a white-wine buzz and Wham! What more would a girl want? Who needs a husband and a job anyway? I’m drunk and I’m on top of the world! I’ve got this! I’ve finally got this!
I see my mail on the coffee table. How exciting! I’ve got mail! Real snail mail. I lift it up and try to sort it while still dancing, but my vision is blurred and I have to set down my wine glass to focus.
A letter from my mobile-phone company, a credit-card bill… I fling them on the floor.
A list of offers from the local supermarket? A voucher with a pound-off washing powder. How exciting?! And it’s on the floor it goes too!
But then a handwritten letter catches my eye and it stops me in my tracks.
I study it, knowing almost immediately that this is of some sort of huge importance but the words are moving, dancing before my eyes. I squint to focus. No good. I close one eye. The writing is neat, all in capital letters and in blue biro. It reminds me of the letters I used to get from a pen pal I once had who lived in Brighton and who drew lines on her envelopes with a pencil and ruler and then rubbed them out when she had written the address in perfect symmetry. Weirdo.
I try to read the postmark on the letter and eventually it comes clear. It says the letter was posted in town of Tain, near Inverness in Scotland.
Scotland, right? Tain? Oh holy shit!
My heart stops. Quite ironic, really, but it literally skips a beat and when I find my breath again I reach for my wine and take a long gulp, draining the glass.
There is only one person I know from Tain. One person I know, but who I never have met and never will.
That person is Lucy Harte.
And Lucy Harte is dead.
I wake up in daylight with the letter in my hand, still unopened. I must have collapsed into a drunken coma – again – or else from the shock of what could lie inside this envelope.
‘Just open it, Maggie,’ Flo tells me when I call her. She doesn’t even get mad that it’s just gone seven in the morning, but then again, her son has probably been awake for at least an hour so it’s like the middle of the day to her. ‘There’s no point staring at it and wondering. Are you sure you don’t want me to come over?’
I am still holding the letter and I try to sip the last glass of wine from last night which tastes like vinegar and makes me gag. I am not yet totally sober. But unfortunately Flo can’t just ‘come over’ – as much as I’d want her to. As a single parent, she can’t exactly up sticks and leave with a two-year-old on her hip at this time of the morning. He goes to school. No, he is only two so he doesn’t go to school. He goes to day care. I am such a crap friend.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I tell her, even though I would give my right arm for her to be sitting here with me now. ‘You have Billie to get sorted. Do you really think it’s from them?’
I can hear Flo inhale deeply and finally she replies.
‘Well, unless it’s some sick joke, yes I do think it’s from ‘them’. I mean, Tain is hardly the centre of the universe and from your description of the envelope, it’s not a bill or one of those random marketing leaflets or charity letters. It has to be them.’
‘Them’ are the Harte family. Lucy Harte’s family. I don’t know how many of ‘them’ they are or if they are men, women or children; her grandparents, her mother or her father and despite my efforts in my early twenties to find ‘them’ to thank ‘them’ by going through the official route via hospitals and social systems, this is the first correspondence I have ever had and certainly not the way I expected to hear from them.
But why would they be writing to me? Why now? And why not when I wanted them to in years gone by?
‘They aren’t supposed to get in touch with me directly, Flo,’ I say, looking around the kitchen now and searching in every corner for a cigarette. I don’t smoke and never have done, but I need something to ease my nerves and Jeff used to have the odd smoke when he felt anxious, so maybe it would work for me. ‘It’s a delicate process. It’s supposed to go through the hospitals if there is to be any correspondence.’
‘That doesn’t say they won’t find you if they want to,’ said Flo. ‘The world is tiny, Maggie. You know Lucy’s name, so I’m sure they could have found out yours if they wanted to. A quick Google search or a nosey on Facebook and voilà. It’s not rocket science.’