One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

a sign or fate or destiny, surely that’s it,’ Kitty said, truly believing her words just then, despite the fact she didn’t believe in any of those things.
    It was as though the thought occurred to Regina for the very first time. Her eyes lit up. ‘Do you think so?’
    ‘Well, I mean, I don’t know for sure, but it sounds like it to me. If you hadn’t been brought there by your ex, well then, you never would have met Archie, would you?’
    Regina smiled at that and her shoulders relaxed as she accepted the idea. ‘You know, this morning was the very first morning in a year that I didn’t go to the café,’ she admitted quietly.
    ‘And, how do you feel about it?’
    She thought about it, looked as if she was going to say something, then backed down.
    ‘Your honest answer,’ Kitty warned her, and she smiled.
    ‘Well, honestly, I think that today is the day that he was there. In the café.’
    This response took Kitty by surprise.
    ‘What do you think?’ she asked Kitty.
    Kitty thought about it. Thought about Murphy’s Law and the odds in life and she finally couldn’t lie. ‘I think you’re probably right.’
    Regina nodded once, then again as she accepted it. She looked across the row to Archie, who was giving Achar and Jedrek tips on breathing. ‘But I’m glad I’m here,’ she said.
    Kitty smiled. ‘I’m glad you’re here too, Regina.’
    ‘We’re here,’ Molly announced, and everybody started stamping their feet on the ground in a big build-up for Achar and Jedrek, who were beginning to look decidedly nervous.
    ‘Don’t worry, lads, we have an hour,’ Archie said, noticing their panic, speaking as if he was now part of the team. ‘Even if the adjudicator doesn’t come, we can still do this.’
    The plan was for them all to take a walk around Kinsale Harbour on the beautifully sunny May day, as Jedrek and Achar prepared for their record attempt, but then the bride and groom had an alternative idea when they saw Eva.
    ‘Bring your guests in with you,’ George’s sister, the bride, announced as she greeted Eva and Kitty at the door to the wedding reception. They had finished the meal and the speeches, much to Kitty’s relief, and they were sitting down to eat the freshly cut cake. But this didn’t allow Eva and Kitty much time to get back to Dublin. They needed to be on the road by 3 p.m.
    ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly do that,’ Eva said. ‘There are so many of them and they’re really not expecting to be invited.’
    ‘How many are there?’
    ‘Fourteen people, so we really don’t expect—’
    ‘Yoohoo!’ she sang to a sweaty member of staff holding three cameras in his hand and taking a group photo of a dozen happy family members. ‘Can we set up an extra table in the banquet room, please?’ she said breezily as if there wasn’t a care in the world.
    George Webb’s Kinsale home was a stunning waterside house on the Bandon River estuary right on Kinsale Harbour. It had a long lawn, which led to the river at the bottom of the garden where a sizeable yacht was sitting in the water.
    Kitty and her unlikely crew stepped off the bus and joined the wedding reception, all feeling underdressed for such an event. All but Eva, that was, who was a vision in her dress and whom everybody had wolf-whistled at when she climbed aboard the bus. As soon as George Webb saw her he left his conversation and went to her. Kitty looked around for a sign of his girlfriend and couldn’t see her.
    As they dug into the delicious chocolate biscuit cake, Kitty realised why Eva had come with very few bags: the kind of gifts Kitty had so far witnessed Eva give to people weren’t the type to be hidden in bags and just as she had this thought, a song began to play from the back of the room. Conversation took a while to end as word spread and finally you could hear a pin drop. The song was ‘My Wild Irish Rose’ and the singers were two old men, one wearing a red waistcoat with a red and white striped shirt underneath, the other with corresponding yellow and white. They wore white trousers and straw hats with their matching colour ribbon around the rim. Assuming it was part of the wedding musical entertainment everybody stopped eating and turned to watch and listen, but there was one man who knew differently and who slowly rose from his place at the head table, body trembling, eyes shining as he watched the remaining members of his barber shop band, Sweet Harmony, with whom he’d toured