Cecelia Ahern - One Hundred Names

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.