Cover

Dedication

In Memory of Catherine ‘Terry’ McPartlin

Born 15th October 1935

Died 22nd March 2016

We loved ya, Terry

Prologue

Prologue

OUTSIDE THE BIRDS WERE singing. Inside the small, overcrowded, slightly pungent hospice bedroom Molly Hayes was holding her daughter’s hand in hers. Light streamed through the window opposite, warming Molly’s face and hurting her tired eyes. Despite ever-encroaching exhaustion she remained awake, eyes wide open and staring at her once-beautiful child now an unrecognisable, bloated, wretched being, battling to breathe. Scattered around her and sleeping on chairs were the rest of Molly’s family. Her husband, Jack, sitting upright, hands clasped, his chin resting on his chest and head occasionally bobbing like a comatose man on a train. His low, rolling snores providing the soundtrack to Rabbit’s departure from earth. Molly’s son Davey rested against the wall, his sister Grace using his shoulder as a pointed pillow. Their breathing in contrast to their dying baby sister’s, slow and steady. Rabbit’s best friend Marjorie lay on the floor, her rolled-up jacket between her head and a cold hard tile. She made very little sound, maybe even none at all.

Molly maintained a calm facade. She knew death was imminent. She was one hundred per cent aware that any second now, Rabbit would leave and never return. I love ya, Rabbit. I love ya. I love ya so much. Your mammy loves ya. Then out of nowhere Rabbit found that last burst of strength and gripped Molly’s hand, frightening the living shite out of her. She levitated off the chair. ‘Frigging fuckersticks,’ she mumbled under her breath and, her hand on her heart, she briefly considered whether or not her youngest was trying to take her with her. When her heart resumed its normal rhythm she steadied herself and leaned in towards her dying daughter. ‘Rabbit?’ she whispered. ‘Are you still with me, love?’

‘Have to catch the van, Ma,’ Rabbit said, and Molly felt her soul shatter. This is it. Her eyes filled, nose blocked, ears buzzed, throat burned. ‘Safe trip, Rabbit,’ she said. One moment later, her child’s grip loosened and she was gone. Molly sat in silence; she didn’t cry out or scream or even whisper to her family to wake up. She didn’t press the buzzer to alert the nurses or move to the hallway to tell the first passer-by. Instead she sat perfectly still. Outside on the windowsill a bird twittered. Inside and just underneath that window, the heater hummed. A spider tootled across the window before jumping onto the wall. Molly sat up straight, her head and spine perfectly aligned, caressing her daughter’s head. At the tender age of forty, Rabbit Hayes was dead. Molly’s youngest and bravest child was dead. Her legs didn’t move, not even a muscle. She returned to holding Rabbit’s hand, waiting for it to cool and stiffen. The clock on the wall read 5.23 a.m. when Rabbit spoke of getting into the van. She repeated 5.23 over and over in her head. It was important to remember the time of death and the date. The twenty-eighth of April 2014. Oh, and the weather. She knew the weather would be important to Rabbit. It was warm and bright but the sun was accompanied by an almost imperceptible, hazy rain.

Davey was the first to wake. He sensed immediately that Rabbit was gone. He sat up slowly and stared at his rigid mother.

‘Ma,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Ma, look at me, Ma.’

But Molly was somewhere else. He nudged Grace, who woke with a start. ‘I’m up, just sort the lunches,’ she half shouted before absent-mindedly rubbing dribble from her chin and blinking to calibrate her blurred vision. Then it dawned on her, shit, I’m not home. This is no ordinary day. Rabbit’s corpse came into sharp focus. Oh no.

‘She’s gone,’ Davey said, and Grace was on her feet and immediately crying.

‘Oh no, Rabbit!’ It was strange because she couldn’t quite believe or accept it, even though Rabbit had been riddled with cancer and was dying for days. It seemed impossible. There was stone where there had been a person – more than a person, her sister and friend. ‘Oh no,’ she cried and struggled to swallow wave after wave of newly formed snot. Rabbit’s best friend in the world, Marjorie, sat up leaning against the wall, her back straight and hot tears pouring from her wide eyes. Jack came round slowly. He heard of his daughter’s death before he saw it. He stood up, straightened his clothes and walked over to his wife. He placed his hand on her shoulder. She was so still and quiet, possibly the most still and quiet she had been in his fifty years of knowing and loving her. He then moved in and took Rabbit in his arms.

‘Jesus, Da, don’t move her,’ Grace squealed.

He held her tight and kissed her ear. ‘There’s no pain now,’ he said, tears flowing freely. ‘At least not for you, my baby girl.’

He reached out for Molly’s hand; she grabbed it.

‘I can’t lose you too, Molly,’ he said, holding onto Rabbit. ‘Don’t you leave me now,’ he warned, and Molly nodded.

‘On condition you stop rubbing snot on her fuckin’ corpse, Jack,’ Molly said, and he pulled back.

‘You’re right of course, love.’ He let Rabbit go. Molly smoothed down Rabbit’s crumpled, rumpled clothes.

‘You won’t leave me too, Molly?’ he insisted. It was preying on his mind, as his wife had been hospitalised following heart trouble that occurred while visiting Rabbit in the hospice two days previously. The only reason she wasn’t in a hospital bed herself was because she needed to be by her daughter’s side.

‘How could I? You’d be lost without me,’ she said, and she gave him a smile and a wink to let him know that despite a dead child and a dodgy ticker, she wasn’t going anywhere. But looking back, mentally and emotionally, she was already gone.

Part One: D-Day

Chapter One: Davey

Chapter One

Davey

A TRAUMATISED DAVEY LEFT THE hospice an hour after his sister died and got in the car and drove to her home. Davey had abandoned singer-songwriter Casey’s American tour nine days earlier when the call came that Rabbit was being transferred to a hospice. He knew instantly it was the end, unlike his insane parents, who tried to find a cure and/or miracle up until the last second. Casey supported him abandoning the tour. Davey was more than her drummer: they’d been close friends for too many years to count. She assured him she would be fine and that his drum tech knew the set inside out.

‘Don’t get too used to him,’ he’d said.

‘No chance,’ she’d said. It was comforting because nine days ago his job as Casey’s drummer was all he had. Davey had a strong support network in Nashville; it was half the reason he’d fought his family and begged his sister for the chance to raise her twelve-year-old daughter. It wasn’t his plan or intention to put himself forward as guardian, but over the course of the eight long days and nights watching his sister die, and being party to the arguments as to who was fit to care for Juliet – also known to those who loved her most as Bunny – he thought, why not me? His parents Jack and Molly were too old. His sister Grace had four boys already packed into a tiny house. Why not the guy with more money than sense, no wife, no kids and a hole in his life to fill? Anyway the child picked him. They’d always had a special, close relationship, conducted from afar. She knew he had room for her in his home and heart; what she didn’t know was how impulsive, selfish, clueless and messed-up he was. In her final days Rabbit agreed to Davey caring for her daughter. The rest of the family were up in arms but she was steadfast. ‘Just love her, Davey, that’s all anyone really needs.’ Of course the cancer had gone into her brain by then. What was I thinking? What was she thinking? Even with brain cancer our Rabbit was smarter than that. Oh God, they’re all right, I am a gobshite! What have I done?

He walked through the door, unshaven, hungry but too sick and sad to eat. He needed to shower and to change out of clothes that smelled of antiseptic and death. On the way to the bathroom he realised that his GPS seemed a little off when he walked into a wall. Then he was standing fully dressed in front of a thundering shower, the steam rising overhead. He stayed there for a while just staring at the water pounding the tiles and under it for even longer, drowning a little physically and emotionally.

When he emerged, soaked through and more miserable than refreshed, he looked in the mirror. He was wearing his pain, having aged ten years in nine days. Aged forty-four, he was still handsome, like a pampered musician should be, but he was weary now.

He dreaded telling Juliet of her mother’s passing. He didn’t wake her. As long as she slept her mother was still alive.

When dressed, Davey’s heavy legs walked him down the stairs and into the kitchen. He just sat in silence until he heard the sounds of her feet hitting the floor above him, the patter as she made her way to the bathroom, the door closing and opening, her feet on the stairs, that creak in the second-last step. He felt his back and neck stiffen. His chair was facing the kitchen door. The child walked in wearing pyjamas with red stars on them; her long brown hair, freshly brushed and loose, fell down her back. She looked so like her mother at her age except for the horn-rimmed glasses and eyepatch Rabbit had worn for so many years. She stared at her clean but dishevelled uncle, biting back emotion.

‘Oh,’ she whispered.

‘I’m so sorry, Bunny.’ He stood and she automatically stepped back.

‘OK,’ she said, and she crossed her arms, hugging herself. ‘It’s OK.’

He moved to hug her but she shrank back – she didn’t want to be touched. He got the message instantly.

‘I’m here,’ he said, and he meant it. She nodded. ‘I know.’

She sat at the table remaining silent and she didn’t cry. She picked at a boiled egg and after a few minutes she asked to be excused.

‘Of course, Bunny,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

She pushed her chair away from the table. ‘Don’t call me Bunny. Rabbit’s gone. I’m not her bunny anymore.’ Her voice was raspy and laced with pain.

He put his head in his hands, fighting a migraine. Juliet walked up the stairs, taking two steps at a time, went into her mother’s room, wrapped herself in her duvet and fell asleep hugging her pillow until late afternoon. And Davey? Well, he just sat on the chair in his dead sister’s kitchen wondering what the hell he was going to do.

‘You’re going to make mistakes and I don’t care about any of that as long as you make her feel loved,’ Rabbit said in his head.

‘I love you,’ Davey roared up the stairs.

Oh Rabbit, what the fuck have we done?

Chapter Two: Grace

Chapter Two

Grace

GRACE PUT HER KEY in the door and opened it to find her husband and four boys gathered on the stairs, just waiting for her. She’d phoned ahead from the car.

‘She’s dead,’ was all she could bring herself to say.

Lenny moved towards her and took her in his arms. ‘I’m so sorry, Gracie.’

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘Sorry, Ma,’ said her eldest son, Stephen, eighteen-year-old, college-going and possibly failing.

Lenny stepped aside to allow Stephen to hug his mother.

Next came sixteen-year-old Bernard. ‘I love ya, Ma,’ he said. Bernard was a sports nut who lived on the pitch and loved his mammy loudly and proudly. If he noticed the other kids laughing at him it didn’t bother him. Bernard was what his granny Molly called a dote.

‘I know you do, son. I love you too,’ she said.

Fourteen-year-old Ryan stood behind his brother; he didn’t hug his mother, he just took in her appearance. ‘You look like shite, Ma.’ He wasn’t being cruel, he was calling it like it was. Ryan was Grace’s problem child, in that he had a leanings towards criminality. He’d robbed his school friends’ mobile phones, sold them to a Chinese-run phone shop in a backstreet alley in town. He took the money he’d made and played on the stock market. The kid turned out to be a financial genius, so when he was eventually caught he could afford to pay all the kids back enough money for new mobile phones and made an apology tour around the school, using his auntie Rabbit’s cancer as a reason for his errant behaviour. The little bollocks. He got away with it, but Grace was watching him like a hawk.

‘I can run you a bath?’ he asked, but she shook her head.

‘No thanks, son. I’m so tired I think I’d drown.’

Lenny disappeared into the kitchen. She could hear him boiling the kettle and cooking up a storm.

‘Was she scared, Ma?’ Bernard asked.

‘No, love.’

‘How do ya know?’ Ryan said.

‘I just do.’

Nine-year-old Jeff, Grace’s youngest son, was sitting on the stairs, wearing a way too snug-fitting tracksuit.

Grace sat down beside him. ‘You all right, son?’

‘I should have said goodbye,’ he said. He was referring to the night all the kids had lined up to say goodbye to a semi-comatose Rabbit. Jeffrey was so freaked he’d bottled it.

‘You were there, and that’s enough.’

‘I’m a baby,’ he said.

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Ryan says I am.’

‘Ryan, don’t call your brother a baby.’

‘For the record I called him a fat, crying Buddha baby,’ Ryan said, and Grace was too exhausted to fight him.

‘Don’t mind him, Jeff, you’re doing great.’

‘I’ve lost four pounds, Ma,’ Jeffrey said.

‘I’m proud of you, son.’

When the doctor described her youngest son as obese and pre-diabetic it had been a massive shock. How did she let that happen? And pre-diabetic? The child hadn’t even made it to double digits. She’d hated herself. I did this and I will undo it. Jeffrey’s life changed that day, and since then he’d been exercising, drinking water, living on greens and hating every second of it but trying his absolute best, mostly because of an abject fear of losing his legs. Grace wasn’t a subtle woman.

‘Do you want to be sick like your auntie Rabbit?’ she’d asked when he refused to eat his lettuce.

‘She has cancer, Ma.’

‘Diabetes is worse.’

‘What? No way. Nothing’s worse than cancer.’

‘Tell me that when you’re walking around on two stumps.’

Jeffrey whinged about his new diet regime but he was both terrified and committed. Four pounds down, Rabbit.

Grace was always and ever a wild beauty, voluptuous and pretty as a picture, but she had a propensity towards putting on weight and had been watching her waistline since she could remember. Rabbit had been so tall and slim. She could eat anything. Grace used to say she was the lucky one, but that was before the cancer. She sat on the stairs hugging her youngest son. Ryan tried to push past them.

‘Out of the way, fatso.’

Grace stood up to let him pass. ‘Just stop, Ryan, please.’

As soon as she turned her back Ryan gave Jeffrey the finger.

‘Don’t give your brother the finger,’ Lenny said, emerging from the kitchen.

Grace helped her youngest son to his feet. ‘Anything else on your mind, love?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What?’

‘I’m frigging starving.’

‘Eggs for breakfast,’ Lenny said.

‘I’m going to have a lie-down,’ she said.

‘Yeah, you go to bed, love. I’ll wake you in a couple of hours.’ Lenny kissed her cheek. She looked into his kind eyes and brushed a hair from his handsome face before he whispered ‘I love you’ and turned to follow his hungry son.

‘Eggs are gross,’ Jeffrey shouted as he made his way to the kitchen.

‘Eggs are protein,’ she responded.

She noticed a stack of unopened post which had piled up over the previous week. She mindlessly flicked through it as she walked up the stairs: bills mostly, a catalogue from a holiday company she’d used once ten years ago, and then as she opened the door to her bedroom a small white envelope fell to the floor. With scribbled handwriting and no corporate stamp, it looked like a card. She opened it, expecting to see an invite of some sort or maybe a mass card from a neighbour who’d heard Rabbit was dying. Dead. She’s dead now. She’d closed her bedroom door before she realised it was from St James’s Hospital where she’d had her BRCA gene test a few weeks before. Her heart and pulse gathered pace, banging like a drum in her neck and wrists. Her palms sweaty, her knees weak, eyes suddenly unfocused, the words seemed to float off the page. She was positive for the BRCA2 gene. The actual gene identifying under BRCA2 was written and presented as a long serial number. Is that the same number that killed Rabbit? The letter went on to say that she was on the high-risk register and advised her to make an appointment with a counsellor. Her knees slowly gave way and she allowed herself to sink to the floor where she curled up into a ball, hugged herself tightly and cried her heart out.

Grace had dithered about taking the test since her sister’s diagnosis four years previously. She’d spoken to her mother about whether or not it was a good idea. Of course Molly didn’t want to talk about it and thought it was a terrible idea. ‘You look for trouble, you find trouble.’

‘But Rabbit has cancer, Ma.’

‘I don’t have cancer. I’m in my seventies. Rabbit was just unlucky.’

‘Rabbit has the gene.’

‘Because she’s fucking unlucky.’

‘Yeah, but where did it come from?’ Grace asked. ‘Do you think cancer stopped Nanna Mulvey’s heart?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, cancer doesn’t give you a heart attack.’

‘What if she had it and she didn’t know?’

‘Cancer is hard to miss, love.’

‘What did her sister die of?’ Grace asked. Molly couldn’t remember – she’d died before Molly was born and Molly’s mother didn’t like to talk about her.

‘What age was she when she died?’

‘I don’t know, twenty-something,’ Molly said.

‘Crap. Maybe it was cancer.’

‘I think it was polio.’

‘Is that the one with the iron lung?’

‘That’s TB – your great-uncle Maurice had that, although it’s possible she had a touch of TB too, it was bleedin’ rampant back then.’

‘So polio and a touch of TB killed her?’

‘Who knows, love? If she was anything like my mother it was misery that did it in the end.’

‘Right,’ Grace said. ‘No cancer on your side, then?’

‘No cancer,’ Molly said.

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