to the next party. Most of the Goths went as well.
My head felt fuzzy and my eyes were whirling around. Everything was dark and awful until I saw you. Yes, you, angel Mother, dancing on your own. You were as clear as a star in a jet-black sky. The music was so beautiful. I wanted to dance with you for ever. Kevin shouted at me to stop dancing with shadows but I couldn’t. I twirled around and around, and you twirled with me. The music played louder and louder until it seemed as if my head would explode. Then your face went spinning towards the moon outside the window. You were going away again. I wouldn’t let you. Not this time.
I screamed and my fist went through the window. I don’t remember the glass breaking. Just the moon turning silver and your face vanishing into the night. I woke up in hospital with bandages on my hands. Not a good idea, said the doctor when he came to see me. Don’t do that again, young lady, unless you’re into blood sports.
When I got home from the hospital Rebecca made me look at myself in the mirror. Black panda eyes and black smeared lipstick. I wanted to die. Black…black…black. She kept shouting and flinging my clothes on the bed. She looked at Daddy’s guitar and your perfume bottle shaped like a pyramid, still half-full, and my silver locket with your hair inside. She said my room is nothing but a shrine and it’s time I started living in the real world. She tore my posters of Bauhaus and the Banshees and The Cure from the wall and crumpled them in a ball. Tomorrow I have to paint your room. Primrose yellow or rose-petal pink, I have two choices.
Alcoholic poisoning is what I had. My stomach was pumped. I’m going to stop writing to you for definite this time. Angels don’t read letters. They don’t even exist. Death is a black and bottomless sleep. I’m grounded for 6 weeks. Shit!
Catriona
6 November 1992
Dear Mum,
Your room is painted primrose yellow. I have kitten posters on the walls. Jeremy painted the ceiling and I did the walls. When he did his Michael Jackson moonwalk across the floor, we laughed so much Rebecca came in to see what the joke was about. When I told him I was never going to drink again, he said alcohol is only disgusting when it’s handled recklessly. I was too young. I broke rules. I was heedless of my own welfare. I have to look upon this experience as a baptism of fire. He asked me why I did such a crazy thing. It’s dangerous and corrosive to keep bottling up your feelings, Catriona, he said.
I began to giggle, a high awful giggle that I couldn’t stop. Take it easy…it’s all right…take it easy. His voice was sharp, then soft, like he was coaxing me over a dangerous place and I stopped as suddenly as I started. Goose bumps ran all along my arms when we sat on the bed and he leaned close to me. You should laugh more often, Catriona, he said. But not like that…not like that.
X
Catriona
15 Jan 1993
Dear Mum,
Lauren rang today. Eight years, she said. Who’d have believed it. She lives in one of Mr Moran’s apartments. Real plush, she says, with a view of St James’s Park. He brings her out for posh meals when he’s in London on business. I bet Mrs Moran doesn’t know! I asked who held his zimmer frame when they kissed and she said I was way off the mark on that one. He’s a father figure, kind and decent and nothing more. You’re forgetting rich, I said, and married to the teacher bitch. The teacher bitch has nothing to worry about, Lauren said. Her husband can obsess all he likes but I’m not interested.
I wonder if she’s telling the truth. The boys in school used to call her The Ice Queen and put bets on who could get her to go out with them. They never won. She has lots of boyfriends now but their names keep changing: Louie, François, Colm, Toby, Saul.
She’s OK again after falling off her bike. Rebecca flew over to make sure and said she’s living like royalty.
Look after her and keep her away from blades.
Love you all,
XX
Catriona
3 Feb 1993
Dear Mum
I have to write about this. Forgive me…forgive me. I never meant it to happen. This evening I met Jeremy by accident on Merrion Square. At first he didn’t recognise me in my Goth make-up. Goth coat and dress, lace over my face, my black cross.
When I said hello he stopped like he’d run into a wall and said, Good God, Catriona, is that really you? You look amazing.
He gave me a lift home. The rain started when we were leaving the city and was pouring down by the time we reached Broadmeadow Estuary. There’s a storm coming, Jeremy said. Even as he spoke, we saw lightning flashing across the viaduct. We parked by the shore. The waves raced under the arches and the ducks flapped their wings into the wind. We saw the heron standing as still as ever. Then the thunder rolled over the estuary and lit up the swans like ghosts on water. Jeremy put his arm around my shoulder and said it was nature at her proudest, showing off for all the world to see. Like Goths, he said. Showing off her darker side.
I began to cry. Don’t ask me why. He lifted the lace from my face and laid it over my hair. He took off my net gloves and stroked my fingers. Nothing else. Just stroked and stroked until my whole body was shivering. My sweet innocent Catriona, he said. Are you a child playing adult games or a woman caught in a child’s mind? Why does such anger radiate from you? He talked about the accident. No one ever does but he asked questions and it was like drawing splinters out of my skin.
Sometimes I wake from a dream and hear Julie screaming. I jump out of bed and crash into the wall because your room is different to the room I slept in then. Rebecca should have been minding me but she’d sneaked off to Sheila’s party. Jeremy explained how she feels guilty about disobeying you and not being at home when the police called to the house to tell us about the accident. He said that’s why she tries so hard to do what’s right.
I wish she’d stop trying. She can’t make it different, no matter how hard we pretend. Then I told Jeremy the most dreadful thing of all. How my anger sometimes makes me hate you for being dead. It’s not true. It’s me. I hate myself for thinking such awful thoughts but they go like a skewer through my brain.
He said the line between love and hate is as fine as a wire vibrating. I don’t understand what he means but it sounds right. He understands how things can happen in a part of your mind you never knew existed.
He kissed the tears on my cheeks and on my eyelids. When he kissed the tears on my lips he opened his mouth and pulled me closer. Then he was kissing me for real, tongue touching tongue, and even though I was frightened, I didn’t want to pull away, ever. I thought about Rebecca and all her dreams coming true. The wind nearly blew me over when I opened the door of his car. He said, Don’t be silly, Catriona. Get back in! I’ll drive you to the house. He feels as if he’s playing with fire when we’re alone. It would be the end of everything if Rebecca found out about his moment of weakness. She won’t…she won’t find out.
Don’t warn me against him. Don’t remind me of his age, of Rebecca, a whole life I’m too young to understand. I’m in love with him. The age difference doesn’t matter. That’s nothing where love is concerned. I’ll dream about him tonight. And tomorrow I’ll daydream through the waking hours. His eyes are so piercing they can see right into my soul. Even now, when he’s not with me, I feel him beside me, feel his touch on my skin, his fingers stroking mine, and the thunder enfolding us. Is that how it was with you
