‘You should send Rita to Lanzarote like Gerry did for Holly.’
‘Get away out of that,’ Bert snorts, and folds his arms high on his chest and looks to me. ‘Why did he send you there?’
‘It was their honeymoon destination,’ Paul answers on my behalf.
‘Ooh yes!’ Joy closes her eyes dreamily. ‘And that’s where you saw the dolphins, isn’t it?’
My head is spinning as they speak about my experience as though it was an episode of some TV reality show. Watercooler chat.
‘He left the tickets with the travel agent for her to collect,’ Ginika tells Bert.
‘Ah yes,’ he says, remembering.
‘What was the connection to the dolphins? I don’t think you said in the podcast,’ Paul asks, reaching for a chocolate biscuit. Their eyes are on me and I feel peculiar, hearing them speak about Gerry’s letters like this. I know I spoke about them briefly with Ciara, in a small shop in front of thirty people, but somehow I forgot about the fact it could go further, downloadable onto devices, to be listened to in people’s homes like entertainment. The way they are so casually discussing one of the biggest, deepest, darkest moments of my life, makes me feel far away, like I’m having an out-of-body experience.
I look from one to the other, trying to keep up with the speed of their conversation. Questions fly at me as if I’m a contestant on a quiz show, under a timer. I want to answer them, but I can’t think fast enough. My life can’t be summed up in rapid one-word answers, it requires context, scene-setting, explanations and emotional responses, not quick-fire rounds. To hear them speak of the process of writing and leaving these letters in such a cavalier way feels surreal and makes my blood boil. I want to shake them all and tell them to listen to themselves.
‘The letter I really want to know about is the one with the sunflower seeds. Is that really your favourite flower?’ Joy asks. ‘Did Gerry ask you to plant the seeds? I quite like that. I’d like to ask Joe to plant a tree or something, in my name, and then they’d look at it every day and they’d think of—’
‘How many years you’ve been gone,’ I interrupt, without thinking. My voice is sharper than I intend.
‘Oh,’ she says, surprised, then disappointed. ‘I wasn’t thinking of it like that. Just something for them to remember me by.’ She looks to the club for backup.
‘But they will remember you. They’ll remember you every second of every day. They won’t be able to stop remembering you. Everything they say, everything they smell, taste, hear, absolutely everything in their lives is linked to you. In a way, you will haunt them. You will be constantly in their thoughts even when they don’t want you there, because they’ll need you gone so that they can get through, and then there are days when they’ll need you there in order for them to get through. Sometimes they’d do anything to not think of you. They won’t need extra plants and trees to see you, they won’t need a quiz to remember you by. Do you understand?’
Joy nods quickly and I realise I’ve raised my voice. I’ve sounded angry when I haven’t meant to. I check myself, reign myself in. I’m surprised by my reaction, by the harshness of my tone.
‘Holly, you liked Gerry’s letters, didn’t you?’ Paul asks, breaking the stunned silence.
‘Yes, of course!’ I hear the defensiveness in my voice. Of course I did. I lived for those letters.
‘Only, it sounds a bit like—’ Paul begins, but he’s interrupted by Joy’s hand on his knee. He looks down at her hand.
‘It sounds like what?’
‘Nothing.’ He holds his hands up defensively.
‘You’re right, Holly,’ Joy says slowly, thoughtfully, studying me as she speaks. ‘Maybe they would see it as a marker of my death rather than a way of celebrating my life. Is that how the sunflowers made you feel?’
I feel sweaty. Hot.
‘No. I liked the sunflowers.’ Again I hear my words, so carefully guarded they sound armour-plated. ‘I plant them on the same day every year. Gerry didn’t tell me to do that. I just decided it was something I wanted to continue.’
Joy is impressed by that idea, makes a note of it in her diary. I don’t tell them that it was my brother Richard’s idea, that he planted them and kept them alive. But I looked at them. I looked at them all the time. Sometimes I couldn’t bear the sight of them, other times I was drawn to them; on the good days, I barely noticed they were there.
Joy continues to muse while I squirm uncomfortably. ‘Plant something on the same date every year. Maybe the date of my passing – or, no—’ She stops and looks at me, biro pointed at my face. ‘My birthday. More positive.’
I nod weakly.
‘I don’t have a good imagination for this kind of thing,’ she sighs.
‘I do,’ Bert says; it’s his turn to be the defensive one. ‘I have it all planned out. I got the idea from my local. I love a table quiz. She’ll have great fun, we haven’t travelled for so long because of this thing,’ he says, throwing a thumb at his oxygen tank.
‘What if she doesn’t know the answers?’ I ask.
They look at me.
‘Of course she’ll know. It will be a general knowledge quiz. Where was Brian Boru defeated? Which group of islands give their name to a sweater? Where was Christy Moore from? And then off she’ll go to Limerick for the next clue.’
‘Christy Moore is from Kildare,’ I say.
‘What? No, he’s not,’ he says. ‘Sure, I listen to him all the time.’
Paul gets on his phone to google it. ‘Kildare.’
‘For feck sake, Bert,’ Ginika says, rolling her eyes. ‘This isn’t going to work if you don’t know the answers to your own bleedin’ questions. And which of the Aran Islands is she supposed to go to? And which building? Is she going to find your letter on the ground when she steps off the boat? Will it be bobbing up and down in a bottle on the beach? You have to narrow it down.’
Paul and Joy laugh. I can’t. It’s too surreal. How have I ended up deep in this conversation?
‘Ah stop it, the lot of you,’ Bert says, getting agitated.
‘Thank God we have Holly here to guide us,’ Joy says, looking away from them and to me with a perplexed frown. As if to say, See? This is why we need you.
She’s right to be concerned. This is serious, they need to end these antics. I need to help them refocus. ‘Bert, what if your wife doesn’t know the answers? She will be grieving. It’s a brain scrambler, believe me. She might feel under pressure, like it’s a test. Maybe you should write the answers down and leave them with somebody for her.’
‘Then she’ll cheat!’ he exclaims. ‘The whole reason for this is to get her out there, thinking.’ He breaks into racking coughs again.
‘Give your answers to Holly,’ Joy says. ‘And if Rita gets stuck on one, she can call
