Lifesaving for Beginners

distraught. He’s in the disabled toilet, crying his eyes out.’
    ‘Why is he in the disabled toilet?’
    ‘Privacy.’ It seems like a strange word now, in the circumstances.
    For a while, neither of us says anything. It’s nice, actually. A fleeting moment of peace.
    Then Brona says, ‘Is it true? What you said? About having a baby?’
    I say, ‘Yes,’ and Brona begins to cry again. A soft little cry. It makes a terrible sound.
    Eventually she says, ‘That’s s-s-s-so saaaaaaaaad.’
    It was only a matter of time before they uncovered Thomas, I suppose. They find him in one of his five stony fields, putting up a fence. He’s wearing a long sheepskin over a suit, the trousers of which are tucked inside the wellingtons. The bright pink ones. With the yellow buttercups. The camera has to pan up for a good while before it reaches his face.
    Seeing him on the television is a terribly strange sensation. His face is so familiar. I know it so well, like the way to somewhere you’ve been going to for years. You just go. You don’t have to think about it.
    And yet, there is something strange about it too and I think it’s because Thomas is on the television and I’ve never seen him on the television. I’ve seen him in my home. In my bed. All over my life. And I miss it. I miss seeing him. This much I am certain of. To be honest, it feels good. To know something for certain.
    The newsreader – Dawn Handel – is in the middle of a story about me getting a D for my English paper in the Leaving Certificate, which is the first thing they’ve said that is one hundred per cent true (Mum took it as a personal affront and didn’t speak to me for weeks after the results came out). Dawn stops in the middle of a sentence about Sister Rafferty, who was my English teacher back then, and who surely must be festering in the grave by now. She cocks her head and touches her ear with her fingers. She says, ‘Breaking news now. We are going straight over to a farm in County Monaghan’ – she pronounces it ‘Monag-Han’, which I don’t think the locals are going to like – ‘where our reporter has caught up with Thomas Cunningham [Cunning-Ham], Kat’s partner.’
    I cover my face with my hands. Then I splay my fingers so I can see through the gaps and I watch his face on the screen. That familiar face. The face that I know off by heart.
    Ed shouts, ‘It’s Thomas. There’s Thomas. Thomas is on the television!’ This brings Mum, Dad and Minnie running in from the kitchen, where they have been talking in low, urgent voices. On the screen now is a reporter with a microphone. He’s a small, skinny little fellow with huge, black glasses. The microphone covers most of his face. He looks like he’s getting smaller until I realise he’s sinking. Every so often, he pulls one foot out of the black mud and it comes away with a guttural sucking sound that is picked up, clear as a bell, by the microphone. The persistent rain over the past few days has turned Thomas’s five stony fields into a mud bath.
    He says, ‘I’m here in County Monag-Han at a farm that is owned by Thomas Cunning-Ham who, we understand, is engaged to be married to Katherine Kavanagh AKA Killian Kobain.’ He pauses to let the import of the sentence sink in. His feet sink a little deeper into the mud.
    Behind him, the camera picks up Thomas, who has put down the hammer – thank Christ – and is walking towards the reporter.
    Thomas says, ‘Can I help you?’ His tone is about as helpful as a hearing aid for a blind man.
    The journalist says, ‘Is it true that you are engaged to be married to Katherine Kavanagh?’
    Thomas says, ‘No.’
    The journalist says, ‘But you were romantically involved with Kat Kavanagh, were you not?’
    Thomas steps forward and the journalist steps back. Thomas says, ‘Get off my land.’
    The journalist says, ‘Did you know? That she wrote the Declan Darker books?’
    Thomas says, ‘I know a lot of things. And one of those things is that you’re trespassing on my property.’
    The journalist says, ‘Do you know who fathered the child that Kat Kavanagh gave away when she was just fifteen years old?’
    Thomas says no more. Instead, he picks up the journalist with both hands. It takes him longer than it should because he has to pull him out of the mud, which is now up to the journalist’s shins. He walks to the bit of the fence he’s built so far, and deposits the journalist on a haystack on the other side.