Lifesaving for Beginners

not dead.’
    Everyone says, ‘Being forty and not dead.’ We clink and drink and that is the end of that.
    Eight weeks since Minnie rang with the news. She didn’t tell me straight off. We talked about all sorts at first.
    We talked about baby names: Maurice if it’s a boy and Minnie if it’s a girl.
    We talked about my efforts to track down Elliot Porter. So far, I’ve managed to speak to two of his ex-wives and a couple of ex-girlfriends, and have reason to believe he may be prospecting for gold in South Africa. I just want to tell him about Faith. I should have told him a long time ago. I should have done a lot of things a long time ago. But all I can do is start from here.
    We talked about Minnie’s recent craving for yams. Turns out they’re pretty hard to get your hands on at this time of year.
    It’s only when I say I have to go because I’m meeting Ed for our next lifesaving class, that Minnie brings it up. She says, ‘I suppose you’ve heard?’
    I say, ‘Heard what?’
    Minnie says, ‘About Thomas.’
    My stomach does its usual backwards somersault.
    ‘What about him?’
    ‘The engagement’s off.’
    ‘With the Farmers Journal ?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I don’t know. One of his colleagues told me. He didn’t go into the gories.’
    I want the gories.
    Minnie says, ‘Are you glad?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Tell me!’
    ‘I think so.’
    ‘You made a right hatchet job of that.’
    ‘I know.’
    Her voice softens. ‘Maybe it’s not too late.’
    ‘I’m pretty sure it is.’
    We leave it at that.
    And Killian Kobain? Well, it’s been just over eleven weeks since I dropped that particular bombshell. Eleven weeks of the media jumping out of various bushes and popping up behind me in the queue at the supermarket. I have to be careful what I put in my basket now. No more family-size pepperoni pizzas. How would that look in the ‘Guilty Pleasures’ section of the Metro ? Yes, they still hang around the car park of the apartment block, on slow news days. My neighbours know most of them by name now. Mrs O’Dea insists on ‘outing’ them. ‘I see you there, Paddy Miles, you dirty little scut. You should be ashamed of yourself, writing for that rag of a paper.’ Paddy – who is a dirty little scut – gives her the one finger and she, quick as a flash, gives him the two. She means well, Mrs O’Dea. She really does.
    And twelve weeks since I saw Thomas. At the hospital. He was my lesson, I suppose, and I learned him off by heart. That’s just a fact. Twelve weeks since I started moving on. I’m still moving on. It’ll take a while. That’s what Minnie says and she knows everything. I’ll just keep on moving on until I don’t have to move on anymore. Maybe I might even meet someone. Milo says that his teacher, Miss Williams, has a boyfriend and he reckons she’s even older than me.
    Ten weeks since Nicolas from number thirteen sold his story to the the Irish Daily Mail . They called it ‘My night with the Wild Kat’. Someone gets paid good money to come up with headlines like that. I swear to God.
    Today, I’ve done four things.
    I have spoken to my mother on the phone.
    I have arranged to pick up Ed at the café after work and bring him to our next lifesaving lesson.
    I have gone with Minnie to one of her ante-natal appointments because Maurice couldn’t – some Genius convention in Geneva – and because, it turns out, the most independent woman in the world doesn’t like going on her own. So I went. And we both looked at the monitor and admired the baby’s brilliant side profile. It really is something else.
    And I helped Dad in his garden. He says there’s not much to be done there at this time of the year but we did things anyway. There is something calming about pushing your hands into the earth. It’s getting the muck out from behind your nails afterwards that’s the problem. We saw the tips of green shoots pushing their way up through the muck. Dad said, ‘They’re the first of the daffodils. Your mother loves daffodils.’ This is something I did not know. I am moving on and learning things at the same time. You’d hardly know me.
    Actually, five things. I emailed Faith. We email a lot. Nearly every day. I’m better on the email than the phone. I’ve always been better on the page than in real life. But I do my best to be as honest as I can. I want her to know me. The proper, horrendous me and not some fictional account of me, because,