Second chapter then. Not so much Naomi and Emily, at least at first, but a few family sized dollops of that angst I promised you. Poor Kieran has a duty to perform...and it's not proving easy.
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Kieran
He opened his eyes slowly as a beam of harsh sunlight bathed the couch he had been dozing on. Dozing being a generous description of his activities over the past few hours. Yesterday...and more importantly, last night, seemed to be cloaked in black cotton wool. As if his subconscious was trying to muffle the memory.
But he sat up anyway, his back creaking, and with a muffled groan he regarded the half empty Jameson bottle and toppled glass on the coffee table with a rueful stare. In normal times, the allure of Irish whiskey would be a comforting friend, even with his pending hangover. Brought up in rural County Cork, the family home had always had a bottle or two in the faded mahogany drinks cabinet in the sitting room. Various relatives would come and go during the week and invariably glasses would be filled and quickly emptied by uncles, aunts and friends, the bottles passed around freely as "Slainte shugat's" echoed round the bustling house. As a young teenager, Kieran had been introduced to the bitterly antiseptic liquid almost as soon as he left school. Tradition died hard in rural Ireland.
But today, the familiar bottle brought no comfort. Last nights events came rushing back to fill the void in his head.
An ordinary night. He'd got in from Roundview College...on a fucking Saturday of all days...teacher training day be buggered he grumbled to himself even as he walked through the door, hooking his tatty green tweed jacket onto the hall stand and kicking off the equally road worn brown loafers. His nostrils had twitched, expecting the smell of cooking supper as usual. But the house had been silent and odour free. For a brief moment, irritation at the prospect of waiting to be fed made him grimace. But marriage had softened him. Gina had softened him. They just...fitted. Her worst excesses of vegetarian zeal had subsided over the past few months. Now he could at least expect meat a couple of times a week, even if he had to endure the reproachful stares of his wife as he forked roast chicken into his mouth. And her thick vegetarian stews were frankly delicious, although wild horses wouldn't drag that admission from his mouth.
But something else was missing along with the odour. Gina was a sucker for 70's music, so he'd grown used to hearing her hum along to Chicago or Dylan on the radio as she prepared the evening meal. But the silence tonight was total.
"Gina?...Wife of mine...your husband's home from the coal face, ravenous and ready for whatever Godawful concoction you're conjuring up from that lentil heavy cookbook...show yourself woman?"
His tone was gentle, the jibes about her culinary skills more ritual than genuine. Cold silence greeted that too, He huffed and strode quickly into the kitchen, expecting to find Gina bent over a book or pamphlet on the scrubbed kitchen table. But when he got there, the room was empty. He racked his brain for anything he'd been told about marches or demo's before leaving this morning. Although Gina had forsworn most active campaigning these days, she was still a sucker for a good cause. But nothing. No Gina, no books. Just an empty room and…
...then he noticed the half open kitchen door. It was still light outside, even though winter was reluctant to release its icy grip on Bristol. His face softened. Right so then...she'd be out there in the little fecking greenhouse, potting bloody chillies or something. He shook his head and went out himself.
The greenhouse door was ajar as he reached it.
"The cold will get in Gina...you'll kill off all those fecking..." was as far as he got. By the wooden potting table was a pair of very familiar legs. It took a second for his tired brain to process what that meant. Ludicrously, he was about to make some sort of sarcastic remark about not digging planting beans in a concrete floor. But as he got closer, reality hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. She wasn't moving...at all.
The next few minutes seemed like an hour and a split second all at once. He grabbed her legs, pulling her body from its position half under the table.
"Gina...Gina" he said frantically "...what the hell are you doi.."
When her pale face came into view, he almost dropped her legs in shock. Her eyes were wide open, blank. Those beautiful eyes...the ones that she'd passed on to her wilful daughter, registered nothing. Dropping to his knees, Kieran almost sobbed as he rubbed her hands uselessly and shook her arms.
"Gina,,,oh fucking hell Gina...please no...for the love of God no..."
He made some clumsy attempts to revive her, pressing vaguely down on her chest as he knelt beside her on the unforgiving cold concrete, then pressed his mouth to hers. Cursing himself for paying absolutely no attention to the first aid course he had been sent on only two months ago, his brain nevertheless registered the coldness of her lips. Lips he had kissed a thousand times before. But not like this. A strangled sob escaped his mouth as his efforts failed to produce a single breath or heartbeat. Frantically he scrabbled in his trouser pockets, finally pulling out a battered phone. He thumbed 999 with fingers that at first refused to obey basic commands, finally stuttering out the word ambulance and answering the call centres clipped questions about his wife.
"Is she breathing?"
"Can you find a pulse?"
"Have you tried CPR?"
His despairing cry that he just needed a fecking ambulance was ignored.
"An ambulance is on route sir...I need you tobeginregular chest compressions, twice a second if possible...then every thirty seconds, attempt to give your wife some air, seal your mouth over hers and..."
The voice went on, but it felt like he was listening to her through a long, echoing tunnel.
The sound of an ambulance siren and the reflected flashing of blue lights was the only thing that did made him move. In his heart, he knew it was already too late. Those loving eyes hadn't shown a single flicker since he found her and her skin was chilled...as cold and lifeless as the concrete below her.
Then there were brisk people in green uniforms asking rapid questions, putting down heavy backpacks and surrounding Gina.
It could have been minutes, it could have been an hour. All he remembered was the sad, but businesslike look on the woman paramedic's face at the end of their attempts at resuscitation.
"I'm really sorry sir...um...Kieran, is it? I'm afraid...uh...your wife has died. We've done what we can, but I think she was already gone...by the time you called us?"
The rest was a painful blur. People arriving...a doctor he vaguely recognised from the local surgery talking in low tones with the medics, then writing something on a pad. More sad faces. Someone asking him if he wanted to follow them to the BRI. He shook his head. Another voice...asking if there was anyone who could be with him?
It was only when the house was at last empty and the cup of undrunk cold tea in his hand got too heavy too hold, that he began to regain the ability to think. Gina was gone...a heart attack, they'd said gently. Wouldn't have felt a thing...probably died instantly. Just words, but it was only now that they made any sense. She was gone...he was alone.
He pulled the comforting bottle of Irish whiskey from under the sink, washed out a thick bottomed tumbler and sat heavily on the blue and white chair, resting his head in his hands.
A coldness which had nothing to do with the unheated house sank over him.
The first generous slug of neat whiskey burned his throat and made his eyes water. It was only then that his internal misery was penetrated by a single word.
Naomi.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph" he rasped hoarsely to himself "...the wee girl...for fecks sake Kieran...Naomi?"
That wilful, sarcastic and headstrong girl he had grown to love like the father she should have had. Gone to university in London now her pretty little redhead had left her in an explosion of tears and recriminations. Alone in the big city...and now he had to give her the worst news anyone can ever get.
"Gina's dead" he said out loud, after sinking the rest of the full glass, trying the dreadful words out in his mouth for the first time. They sounded so cold, so final. He shuddered. How could he ever…
But he had to. Naomi needed to know. For a second he considered getting the car out and driving up to London. Something as awful as this surely needed to be said to her face? But as he sat with the empty glass rolling in his hand, the neat spirit burning into his gut, he faced facts. He'd already had more than enough to get himself arrested for drink driving. Plus the ancient Fiesta with the wonky exhaust and inappropriate passenger seat springs would probably break down well before he ever got onto the M4. It barely made the 2 mile round trip to college.
Instead, he picked up the phone again from the table. Maybe he could find the words, once Naomi answered?
Five tries later, he looked at the clock and realised it was after midnight. Time had been an irrelevant concept for too long. Of course...Saturday night...the wee girl would be out dancing...enjoying herself. It was easy to persuade himself that phoning her Sunday morning would be better all round. Another three tumblers of whiskey and a thousand tears later, he slumped onto the couch with the lights off…
But now it was morning and it had to be faced. Groaning at the intense thudding in his temple, he scrubbed his now four day growth and stood up shakily.
The phone in his hand, he walked slowly to the kitchen again and drank a full tumbler of cold water. The inrush of fluid made his stomach lurch, but as he stared at himself in the mirror opposite, he knew there was no point in putting this off any longer. Thumbing the keypad, he found the number again. One glance at the clock told him it was after 10 am...even a first year uni student must be up now.
A hundred and fifty miles away, Naomi was just finishing her scrupulous erasure of the unfortunate Robin/Robert from the flat. She'd emptied the bedside bin with a disgusted look on her face, using rubber gloves to dispose of the...item...deposited there last night. Then she opened the window wide and used the last of a bottle of surface cleaner to erase any trace of the visitor she had stumbled in here with after the party. The bedclothes were stripped and shoved into a bin bag for a trip to the laundrette. Cushions were plumped and last nights clothes put in with the bedding.
Finally, she used an air freshener to erase any trace of last nights...activities.
It was only then, when she found her phone shoved between two books on the table which served as her study station, that she noticed the five missed calls from last night.
"Kieran?" she said to herself wonderingly...what the fuck would he want with her on a Saturday night. Her mum and her 'friend' (she still refused to call him her step dad) were normally loved up on the couch all evening after something thick and lentilly?
Her mum might call once in a while to check on her, but normally that would be on a weekday evening…?
As she stared blankly at the phone, it burst into life, making her drop it in shock.
"Fuck, fuck FUCK" she ranted "...Jesus...heart attack anyone?"
Angrily, she thumbed the green answer symbol and spoke into the speaker
"Yes?"
"Naomi...its Kieran...where are you at the moment?"
Naomi's brow creased in puzzlement. What the fuck difference did it make.
"In my flat...what the fuck Kieran...what's the dizzy cow done now?"
There was a pause, which stopped another smart remark being said. The silence made her heart beat hard.
"Kieran?"
"Naomi love...its your mum...she's, oh fecking hell this is...she's uh.. died suddenly...I'm... so sorry...it was last nig..."
The phone dropped from Naomi's hand and she jumped back from it as if it was a live snake. She could hear Kieran still speaking but her hand was over her mouth as she crouched on the single chair as if she was a small child, told off for being naughty. She curled in on herself as the horrible words echoed again and again in her spinning head.
XXX
OK, not the most pleasant chapter to write, or read I suppose, but there will be Naomily soon, I promise. Events will conspire, as they always do. Comments and reviews always gratefully received!