flyer’ at the local Magistrates’ Court, according to the prosecutor who oversaw his first appearance. Charged with a host of offences, including Aggravated Vehicle Taking and Failing to Stop and Report an Accident, Kevin McDaid wore a greying shirt with a black tie – probably the only tie he owned, bought for funerals – along with a cheap suit as he stood in the dock. The pictures in the local media showed him trying to hide his face as he was led in handcuffs from the court building to the waiting police van. Remanded in custody. Bail denied. But his solicitor made it clear he would appeal that decision in the High Court. There was every chance he’d be out on the street in days. A young lad who had a penchant for stealing cars, driving them too fast and leaving them abandoned somewhere. He’d never offended on this level before, his solicitor said. ‘Racked with guilt, my client has been unable to sleep and has turned once again to alcohol and drugs.’
He had ‘simply panicked’ when he hit Rose and had driven on in that state of panic. He knew there were people around who could help Rose. He didn’t think he’d hurt her. Not really. Not enough to kill her.
It probably made me a bad person that I sagged with relief at the news. He was admitting it. It had been an accident. I had overreacted thinking it was anything more sinister than that. Maud had been right. Things had been crazy with Ben. That he had got in touch again so close to Rose’s death was nothing more than a coincidence.
Kevin McDaid ‘wouldn’t trouble the court’ his solicitor had said, indicating his client would be pleading guilty to all charges. It should have made things easier. Possibly even make us feel some compassion of sorts for Kevin McDaid. Kevin McDaid, who hadn’t even shaved before his court appearance, if the pictures were anything to go by. His stubble, unlike Cian’s, was the kind that was borne out of laziness and not any kind of a style statement.
Although there was a trace of utter wretchedness about him – in the way he walked, the scuffed trainers on his feet, the panicked look on his face – I couldn’t bring myself to feel sorry for him. Even though I, of all people, knew that people could fuck things up.
He was nineteen. Even if he got a heavy sentence, he would still be out and walking the streets in his early thirties. He would still have all the years Rose didn’t have.
The news of the arrest and of the court appearance saw a dip in mood at Scott’s. It made me feel a little guilty that it had brought me a sense of relief I hadn’t felt in weeks. At least I didn’t have to sneak around trying to see what was happening; everyone in Scott’s was talking about it. Everyone, naturally enough, was obsessed by it. Even Owen took time out from a patient to watch the lunchtime news report, and to shake his head when Kevin McDaid appeared on screen.
‘Isn’t he one of ours?’ Tori had asked, and a room of horrified faces turned to look at her. ‘I think he’s one of our patients – or was. There’s something about him?’
Donna had gone to the office to check our records and came back a few minutes later, ashen-faced. ‘He was a patient here before. Lapsed now. Was here as a child; hasn’t been since he was sixteen.’
Owen walked out of the room, slamming the door so strongly behind him that tea from a cup that had been sitting beside me shook and spilled onto the table. For the rest of the day he went about his work saying only what he needed to and no more. The rest of us walked on egg shells around him, all the while lost in our own thoughts about how the foolish actions of a nineteen-year-old could change the lives of so many.
*
On the day Kevin McDaid was brought before the court, I found myself itching to get on Facebook to try and see how Cian was coping. Was he angry like Owen? Was he a bigger person than many of us? Had he found compassion for his wife’s killer? Did he have a sense of closure? A victory that, bar sentencing, the man who had taken his wife from him was being brought to justice?
I found he hadn’t written much. No letter to Rose. No rant at the judiciary. No angry words aimed at Kevin McDaid. In fact, just four words.
From Darkness Comes Light.
It was the title of his most successful book to date. I hadn’t read it, to be honest. I wasn’t much of a reader. Didn’t have the concentration span for anything more than reading bite-size portions of news and stories. Still I clicked onto Amazon, searched Cian’s name and the book title.
The blurb didn’t enlighten me much. I was able to ascertain, amid the flowery language, that it was a story about redemption, of a flawed detective who found he was losing all he held dear, and who battled to make his life his own again.
I clicked to buy it, wondering if Cian and I were more kindred spirits than I had ever thought before; if he would understand, in a way few could, that flawed people can find the light again.
When I asked the girls at work a bit more about Rose and Cian, being so very careful to make sure I didn’t reveal just how much I had gleaned about them from my hours on the internet, Tori told me they had been the most in love couple she had ever set eyes on.
‘He would come and pick her up from work each day. He used to tell me he couldn’t wait a minute more to see her. And that wee baby of theirs? Well you combine the genetics of that pair and you get a baby that could be a model. Rose was such a good mum to him too. She doted on him.’
I wondered what that was like, to have someone come to collect you from work because they just could not bear to be away from you for five more minutes? Oh, to have someone love me like that and mean it.
So when I read Cian’s posts on Facebook, when I thought of a man who feared losing it all more than anything in the world, I thought of Tori’s words – the dreamy look that came across her face when she spoke of him – and I thought how unjust it was that someone with so much love to give had been left with this gaping hole in his life?
On occasion, when I closed my eyes at night in my bed, I allowed myself to picture his face. Allowed myself to think he was saying those love-filled words to me. That he would look at me with such an intensity that I would fear my breath would catch in my throat forever. That maybe he would kiss me, the roughness of his stubble rubbing against my chin and my face so that when he pulled away I would feel that I had been thoroughly kissed. I tried to not allow myself to think about that very much because it felt a little wrong.
But sometimes, in the darkness of my bedroom at night, it felt very, very right.
*
It was an unusually quiet Tuesday morning when the door of Scott’s Dental Practice opened and a man pushing a buggy edged his way in backwards out of the rain.
I was at the reception desk dealing with patients, beside Tori who was answering the phones. I looked up when the door opened, an instinctual reaction to the gust of cuttingly cold air that rushed in and made me shiver where I sat. Fat droplets of rain ran from the man’s coat to the non-slip mat underneath his feet. His hair was matted to his head and his jeans bore a tide mark from where they had soaked up the moisture from the ground. He brushed the excess water from the top of the rain cover on the buggy, sending it splashing onto the street below before he turned around and closed the door behind him.
I knew him immediately. Even though he was soaked and tired-looking. Even though his face was thinner than it had been before, more drawn.
Cian Grahame. I felt myself suck in the air around me, my hands tense, my brain screaming at me not to welcome him by name. To fight the urge to run up to him and hug him and tell him I was so, so sorry for his loss. That I found his letters to her moving and genuine and heartbreaking. That I had started to read
