Sequel to "The Phone Box", "The Post Box" is set immediately afterwards, and incorporates some of the events from S3.
19th September 1998
The room was dark. Disco music pumped out of the undergraduate bar speakers. The two girls who were on her floor of the student accommodation sat next to Abby, looking into the darkness.
"It's an icebreaker!" declared Alison Wigley, who was in her second year of her degree, the first being at the teacher training college in Lisburn. She, and Sarah Bunnay were doing their specialisms that year at Queen's University and had been placed in the same accommodation block as Abby Smith.
"Red Red Wine?" Abby asked, shaking her head. "Better the "Macarena" or "Rock the Boat" and have done with it."
Sarah took the bottle of Bailey's out of Alison's hand and took a swig, then passed it to Abby who, recoiling from the spirit for a second, necked back a good mouthful.
"Come on then!" Sarah encouraged. "Look, there's Rachel!". Rachel Wilkes was beckoning them over.
So that was it, was it? The first night at Queen's and she was surrounded by trainee teachers and psychology students. Where were the scientists? Where were the humanities students? Was she the only one on her course?
They went, and danced, as Abby told herself she must. She was putting the year behind her, wasn't she? She was moving on and forgetting. Drinking helped the forgetting.
Forgetting the atrocities that had happened to her, personally. Not forgetting him. His face would be seared across her unconscious mind for all eternity. And it had ended, as it had started, in Derry.
A hand in each of hers, Abigail Smith danced, and settled into the night, senses filled, ice broken. Another fresh start.
They got back to a darkened hall of residence a mile away from the university. Thankfully, Sarah had written down the key code so they could get in, but Abby noticed that there were some lights on. Perhaps the occupants of the two unoccupied rooms had arrived?
Giggling as they went up the stairwell, Abby stopped by her door. A tall boy was standing there, towel around his shoulders - it was obvious he had come from the bathroom.
"Marcus," he told them. "Scandinavian Studies."
But it wasn't until early the next morning when, as Abby came out of the bathroom herself, that she met the last student, who must have just arrived in the night.
"Abby," she introduced herself, pyjamas still on, dressing gown over the top, hair wrapped in a towel. "Geology and Geography."
"You're joking," the boy replied, black wavy hair in a side parting.
"No?". Abby replied.
"No, what I mean is," the boy told her. "That's my course too."
"Oh!" Abby declared. "Right! Abby Smith," she told him, and put out a hand. She noticed the boy swap the rosary beads in his right hand to his left. Sunday morning…mass? He took Abby's hand and shook it.
"Neil. Neil Malone. Pleased to meet you, Abby Smith."
And Abby leaned over the bannister and watched the boy, whose future and past was so entangled with her own, jog down the steps and leave the accommodation block's front door.
88888888
29th August 1997
"I wasn't supposed to go beyond the street where I'm sitting now," the letter read. "I wasn't supposed to go past the walls, or the gable wall or into the Creggan estate. But I did, James, every night after Dean's death, all last year. Every night since we left to go back to England, that summer when we never seemed to be apart - last summer. To be with you. Always with you.
Why didn't you come? I waited. I waited and called at your aunt's house, and then I called from the phone box. Then I wrote you a letter, and another, and another. Where did you go? Are you back in England? Or here, in Derry, where you came back to?
We left, together, at the end of the school year - you and I, we were fine together then, fine, grand. You held my body next to yours, and it was just you and me, nothing else in the world existed…
…that night, when you planned a night away, and we broke down and you put down the back seat and opened the boot, and we held hands and looked at the stars…how can it have gone from everything for us, to nothing?
Except that I had to hear it from someone else that you kissed Erin Quinn. I suppose it would have happened sooner or later - I saw the way you look at her. You took her to the school dance and didn't meet me.
I wish, I just wish, it had been sooner, a lot sooner, before I fell in love with you. James Macguire, I love you, I loved you not long after I first met you, through Dean, through that night he died. Through the time you went to stay with your step father, and I stayed too.
Even so far back as when we came back to Derry and I went back to live with my aunt and uncle, and decided to go to Our Lady Immaculate College for Year 12. Even so far back as my birthday night, when you cooked for me again and no-one was in at your aunt's house, and I stayed the night properly.
It has been an amazing year, my life seemed complete. My AS grades have been better than I could ever have hoped.
And then you abandoned me, you stood me up. You kissed another girl. I should have known then.
So I am leaving Our Lady Immaculate, and I'm glad to say my cousin's old grammar school has taken me on.
I will not be crossing the road any more, nor ever venturing into Creggan. Not because my uncle forbids it, but my self esteem forbids it. Goodbye, James. I love you, so much my heart hurts that we are no longer together. I love you and I always will."
Abby's letter, folded up so many times it almost defied the rule for how many times paper could be folded, nestled under the bench near the phone box just beyond the Fountains, where they had met so many times, tied in place with string.
Destined to be there until it expanded from saturation, disintegrated and was no more.
11th July, 1997
"We saw her! Well, yeah, Robert Donaldson saw her, on the Walls, hand in hand with a soldier. Dirty, dirty Brit!"
There was more to James Macguire's cousin's gossip-laden monologue, but James didn't hear it. That's where Abby had been when she was supposed to meet him. They were going shopping to Belfast, but she never turned up. Eleven months they'd been together. Officially, that was.
Nearly two years, in reality, if you counted the months he had waited for her on the bench and followed her around, had gone back to England with her, met her family, her friends. James counted all of that
"...Robert told his sister Stella, who told Vicky Tranter, who told Corinne Lane, who's dating a boy from the Boys' college whose mother works with my mum…"
"A soldier?" Claire asked, scornfully. "She's never going to have been with a soldier…"
And the words kept tumbling around James's head, before he got to his feet and began wandering down the road, beyond the walls, thrusting the bottle of perfume he'd saved up to buy Abby into a passing bin.
His direction was home - his aunt's house - the rest of the Derry girls in excitable orbit around him. They were leaving the city tomorrow, of course, but James could barely believe it was true.
Michelle was many things, but not a liar. And they had spent the year together, Abby too, inseparable.
He should go and ask her, cross into the Fountains - he had done it before - and ask her.
But the pain was too great. And besides, he had guilt of his own - James had kissed Erin when they had gone across to the Republic. Well, she had kissed him. But he hadn't stopped it. He and Abby were still going out and they both knew it.
Maybe Abby had found out, and moved on, with a British soldier.
"Get a move on, dick-face!" Michelle insisted, hand to his back as they stumbled up Ardoyne Street. "I haven't packed yet, and I know for a fact you haven't!"
And so James Macguire put Abby Smith out of his mind and replaced her with the image of a case and clothes and the new CD stereo his mother had sent to him.
Abby had passed into Derry history, and Erin, who had told him, "It wouldn't work out," settled into her place.
Helped by shielded phone calls, no-shows when the door was knocked, and letters that never made it to him, James Macguire could almost believe that a girl called Abby Smith didn't even exist.
A figure watched the Derry girls - and boy - cross the peace line, across Fagan Street and up the Creggan Road, following them until they disappeared over the crest of the hill and were no more.