Cecelia Ahern - One Hundred Names

‘Five,’ she said quietly, and her eyes filled again.

Kitty made a mental note in her mind.

Name Number Three: Eva Wu

Story Title: Pandora’s Box

‘But anyway,’ Eva cleared her throat, her face almost immediately lost the emotion and her beautiful mask was back on, ‘I have a present for you.’

‘For me? Eva, you didn’t have to do that. Don’t tell me it’s the old men from the wedding,’ she joked, looking around.

Eva laughed. ‘It’s really very small. I wasn’t looking for something, I just came across it, and bearing in mind what you’ve been through lately, it reminded me of you.’ She reached into her small bag and retrieved a potted plant. It didn’t make any sense to Kitty at all until she read the label at the side.

‘Grow your own luck,’ Kitty read aloud, and started laughing. It was a pot filled with soil with a small pouch of shamrock seeds attached.

Eva smiled. ‘I hope it works.’

‘I hope so too.’ Kitty swallowed hard, thinking of the road ahead of her. ‘Thank you, Eva.’

‘I know someone who can help you plant it, anyway,’ Eva added, raising her eyebrows, and the two girls laughed.

Raised voices coming from the front of the bus averted everyone’s attention. Molly and Edward were at each other’s throats again about a turn that Molly should or should not have taken.

‘Oh shit,’ Molly said loudly, looking in her rearview mirror.

Everyone turned round to see that Molly’s comment had been entirely justified. Coming up the hard shoulder of the motorway was a garda car.

‘Maybe it’s not for me,’ Molly said.

‘Of course it’s for you,’ Edward snapped. ‘Did you see what you just did?’

‘Oh, shut up,’ she hissed back.

‘Well, slow down, will you?’ he said. ‘They’re getting you to pull in.’

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,’ Molly said to herself, slowing the bus and pulling in.

The garda came round to Molly’s side of the bus.

‘You trying to kill someone back there?’ he asked.

‘No of course not,’ she said, her voice gentle. ‘I just got confused which way to go.’

‘Driver’s licence, please,’ he said, and Molly rooted in her handbag.

Please let her have her driver’s licence, Kitty thought to herself, watching the clock. She had to get back to Dublin for her meeting with Pete. She had put it off for long enough, the feature was due to go to print on Monday, which meant she had only the weekend to write it, but not if it couldn’t be approved today. Pete would kill her if she didn’t make this evening. She couldn’t use the guilt he felt against him any longer; it was wearing off.

The garda disappeared to check Molly’s licence and Edward was back to being Mr Nice Guy with an anxious-looking Molly.

The officer returned five minutes later. ‘Where’s this vehicle from?’

‘St Margaret’s Nursing Home, in Oldtown, Dublin,’ she said, her voice like a child’s. ‘I work there. We’re going back there now.’

‘Open up the door, will you?’

She pulled the lever, not seeming so excited by the idea now, and he climbed on board and took a look at everyone. Everybody was silent.

‘Doesn’t look like the regular nursing home clientele,’ he said.

‘Ah, yes, well, Birdie here is my patient. I was taking her and her friends on a trip for her birthday. We’re going back there now. We have to get the bus back for the Pink Ladies’ bridge evening so …’

He looked at her long and hard. ‘This bus was reported stolen yesterday.’

Molly’s face went white.

‘Pardon?’

‘You heard me. Know anything about that?’

‘No, I mean, yes, I mean, no, we borrowed it for a trip for my patient. We didn’t steal it. I mean, we’re going right back there now.’

The garda stared at her a little longer in a tense silence.

‘Could you step out of the vehicle, please, Ms McGrath?’

Molly let out a small squeak before Edward stood up to help her off the bus, whispering in her ear something that Kitty couldn’t hear.

‘Oh my God.’ Kitty looked at Steve wide-eyed.

‘What’s the problem?’ Steve said, unimpressed by the entire thing. ‘He’s obviously just trying to scare her. Obviously she didn’t steal the bus. Kitty, why are you looking at me like that? Tell me Molly didn’t steal this bus?’

All Kitty could do was smile at him weakly. She and he had been doing so well.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Kitty and the rest of the gang, apart from Molly, waited in a café in Mallow town in Cork, while Molly was inside the garda station being questioned.

‘I’m not making this up, Pete,’ Kitty hissed down the phone. ‘Of course, I want to be at the meeting today, but I’m in Cork and there’s no way I can get there by six o’clock. What about tomorrow?’

‘No, Kitty. I’m not dragging everyone back in here on a Saturday. We’ve already wasted enough time waiting for your story and we don’t even know what that story is! This is ridiculous. Everything revolves around Constance’s story, everybody has been working their arses off to meet this deadline, and you are swanning around—’

‘Excuse me, I have put every single second I have into this story and you know it. Fine! I’ll find a way to get there on time.’ She hung up and bit her nails.

Steve looked at her, eyebrows raised.

‘Pete’s a prick,’ she said simply. ‘If I don’t get there by six o’clock he’s pulling my story.’ She didn’t mean for everybody else to hear but unfortunately that’s what happened.

‘No, Kitty.’ Jedrek stood up. ‘We can’t let this happen. You must run the story. What can we do to help?’

‘Oh, Jedrek, thank you,’ she said, touched. ‘I appreciate you all caring for me so much but I just don’t know how to get to my meeting by six. If Molly doesn’t come out of there in the next five minutes there’s no way I can make it to the office.’

‘No offence, Kitty,’ Jedrek said seriously. ‘Of course we respect you and your duty to your editor and friend, and we know that your job is important to you, but we have put our lives in your hands. We have told you our private stories and given you the pen to write it. It is not just you who needs this story written, it is us. It is our story.’

Kitty looked at Steve, who was looking back at her as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. The penny finally dropped: this wasn’t about her, this wasn’t merely about honouring Constance’s story and saving her own professional skin. This was their lives, their stories, and she owed these people. Feeling humbled, she snapped into action.

Thirty minutes later, Molly had been freed from custody and they were on the road back to Dublin.

‘I don’t understand, Kitty, what did you say to them?’

‘I just got on the phone to the nursing home, to Bernadette.’

‘No, not Bernadette! She’ll fire me for sure,’ Molly moaned.

‘She won’t fire you,’ Kitty said confidently, ‘but she’ll probably make your life a living hell for a few months. I just explained the entire thing to her, what we had done and why, and told her to drop the charges and tell the guards to let you go. They’re using the local school bus for the Pink Ladies today instead, so we have time so can you please step on it and follow my directions?’

‘Why, where are we going?’ she asked, startled.

‘A little detour,’ Kitty said, biting her nails and watching the clock as it got dangerously close to 6 p.m.

At six thirty, they pulled up outside Etcetera ’s offices in the bus. Pete was close to calling the entire thing off but Kitty had phoned regularly en route and was insistent they could make it.