Cecelia Ahern - One Hundred Names

‘I suppose you expect me to pay for that again today,’ she said, sitting beside him.

He smiled.

‘Fruit and water?’ the waitress from the previous morning asked.

‘Yes, please,’ Kitty replied, surprised she remembered her order.

‘They’re a dying breed,’ Archie said, chewing the rind of his bacon. ‘Not enough places like this. They know what you want and they leave you alone. A winning combination.’

The door opened and the mousy woman from the previous day entered.

‘It’s like Groundhog Day in here,’ Kitty remarked.

The woman looked around, the hope visible on her face, then sat down, disappointed.

‘The usual?’ the waitress asked her, and the woman merely nodded.

‘Why don’t you just go over to her?’ Kitty asked.

‘What?’ Archie snapped out of his trance and pushed his plate aside, embarrassed to be caught.

‘The woman,’ Kitty smiled. ‘You’re always looking at her.’

‘What are you talking about?’ His cheeks flushed. ‘ Always. Sure, you’ve only been here twice.’

‘Whatever,’ she smiled, and let the dust settle before she moved on to more serious topics.

‘I came prepared today,’ she said, taking out her notepad and recorder.

The way he looked at the apparatus made her nervous he would back out, and she could have kicked herself for her error. Many people became uncomfortable around recording equipment. If the camera was the asshole magnet, her recorder often brought the shyness out of people. Nobody liked the sound of their own voice – well, most people didn’t – and the recorder brought out the self-conscious realisation that their words were being listened to, less like a conversation and more of an interview.

‘I don’t have to use this if you don’t want me to.’

He waved his hand dismissively as if he didn’t care.

‘So we were talking about your daughter’s death—’

‘Her murder,’ he interrupted her.

‘Yes. Her murder. And how the guards focused on you during the case and you felt that it distracted them from finding the real killer.’

He nodded.

‘I thought we could talk a bit more about that. How you must have felt, how frustrating it must have been to have vital information that wasn’t being listened to.’

He looked at her with that amused gleam in his eye again. ‘You think that would interest people?’

‘Of course, Archie. It’s everyone’s worst nightmare and you went through it. People would be fascinated to hear about the reality of living through it, and I think it would help people to change their opinion of you too. You know, workwise, instead of seeing an ex-prisoner, they’d understand who you really are. That you were a father protecting his daughter.’

He looked at her and his eyes softened, his jaw, his shoulders, everything. ‘Thank you.’

She waited.

‘But the thing is, that’s not the story.’

‘Pardon?’

‘My daughter’s murder – sure that’s part of it, I think it has a lot to do with what has happened and it was my story then – but it’s not my story now.’

Kitty looked down at all her notes. She’d stayed awake working until three thirty that morning in Sally’s responsible spare bedroom. ‘So, what’s the story?’

He looked down. ‘I never believed in God. Not even at school when my priestly teacher drummed the fear and the guilt into us. I believed that he believed it, all right, but I thought he was mad. Delusional. I thought if somebody had to force you that much to believe in something then it wasn’t worth believing, that it wasn’t natural, you know?’

Kitty nodded.

‘I prayed at night before I went to bed as routinely as brushing my teeth. I believed in God as much as I believed in germs. It was something adults just scared you about, just habit, something I had to do. I didn’t believe in God when I was six years old and we buried my mother, or at seven when I made my first Holy Communion, or at twelve when I made my confirmation. I didn’t believe in Him when I stood in His house and promised Him I’d forever be faithful to my wife-to-be, but,’ he looked at Kitty, his eyes glassy, ‘I thanked Him the day my daughter was born.’

He went silent.

‘Now, why did I do that? How can you thank someone you don’t even believe in? But I did. Without thinking. Like it was natural.’ He pondered that for a while. ‘But then the sleepless nights began and I forgot about Him again. Occasionally, when she fell ill, ran a high temperature or bumped her head as a toddler and we had to fly her in to Temple Street for stitches I remembered Him again. But as quickly as her tears would dry and that beautiful smile of hers would come back to her face and light up my whole world, I forgot about Him again.

‘It was only when she went missing for one whole week and we started a public campaign to find her that I remembered Him again. I started praying to Him. Every morning just at first, at home, the very second I woke up. I’d pray for that day to be the day she came home. Then it became more regular, most minutes of every day. Then I started going to church. Every day. Thoughts of Him came as frequently as thoughts of her. I invested so much time and energy making pacts and promises, trade-offs: if You bring her back, I’ll do this; if You help us find her alive, I’ll do that. If You even help us find her at all I’ll be the best bloody person You’ve ever known. I begged Him. A grown man, down on his hands and knees, begging. I believed in Him so strongly, more than I ever had in my whole life.

‘But when her body was found battered and bruised, I not only stopped believing in Him, but believed so strongly in His non -existence that I felt sorry, irritated even, at those who did. I couldn’t spend a minute in their company, not one single second, and believe me they all came out of the woodwork when Rebecca was found, to help us. Their belief, their naïvety, their openness to such ridiculous theories reduced me to blood-curdling anger. I felt their belief was a cop-out, a passing of the buck, a failure to be able to achieve anything completely by themselves, a lack of responsibility and a carelessness. Their idea that they had a saviour, that somebody else would guide them, was reckless to me. They were weak, why couldn’t they just accept that their lives were their responsibility? I wanted nothing to do with them. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘I do. That you don’t believe in God.’ She offered him a small smile.

‘No. I didn’t . I didn’t believe in God. Then I did, and He let me down and I spent seven years hating His guts, hating the very idea of Him. But it’s the same as thanking Him, isn’t it? How can you hate somebody if you don’t believe in them?’

Kitty had been so lost in his words she hadn’t noticed her breakfast being placed before her. She took a drink of water, trying to assess where they were, trying to guess where this was taking her.

Archie watched her.

‘You’re not going to believe me.’

‘I believe you,’ she said.

‘I promise you, you won’t believe me.’

‘Let me be the judge of that.’

He looked down at his tea, which must have been cold by then; Kitty could see the thin layer of hard water from the kettle on the surface. He didn’t speak for a long time.

‘Do your family know about the thing you don’t think I’ll believe?’ She tried to get them back on the subject again.

He shook his head. ‘No one knows.’

‘So I’ve the exclusive.’

‘Ah, there she is, the old hack is back.’

Kitty laughed. ‘Are you in contact with your family?’

‘No,’ he said softly. ‘Well, they’re in contact with me but … I’ve a brother in Mayo. Frank. He’s fifty years old and he’s getting married, can you believe that?’