One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

and left her alone on Custom House Quay.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
    Kitty got off the bus in Kinsealy, North County Dublin beside the garden centre early on Wednesday morning. In the fields beyond, families gathered to pick strawberries and behind that field Steve’s father’s allotment was in full swing as the summer weather attracted garden lovers to their patches. All of the land belonged to Steve’s father: the garden centre, the strawberry fields, the allotment, and to most people’s surprise and frustration, for over a decade he had managed to fight off planners from buying the land to develop houses. Those offers had stopped in recent years but he had turned down millions, happy to keep his businesses going. He was a farmer at heart, as tough as they came, and he wouldn’t know what to do with twenty million in his bank account. His days were best spent toiling the earth, finding new gadgets for gardening. And snapping at people.
    ‘Thought you’d be hiding under a rock,’ he said to Kitty as she walked into the clubhouse.
    ‘Thought you’d be the best man to see about the right rock.’
    ‘The biggest one you could find, I’d say,’ he eyed her warily.
    ‘I’m open to anything,’ she smiled back, which further annoyed him. ‘How’s everything going? Business good?’
    He looked at her and then back down at the paperwork on his desk. ‘If you’re looking for Steve, he’s rotavating allotment fifty.’
    ‘Steve is rotavating?’ Kitty laughed. ‘What does he know about rotavating?’
    ‘A lot more than you know about journalism, that’s for sure,’ he barked back.
    That put her in her place.
    ‘He has a girlfriend, you know.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Katja.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Nice girl.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Does well at work.’
    ‘I know. She takes pictures.’
    ‘She took that one.’ He eyed her warily again and Kitty’s eyes moved up to the beautiful landscape of Skellig Rock off the coast of County Kerry on a misty day. It had the desired effect: the sheer beauty of it, and knowing Katja had taken it, made her uncomfortable.
    ‘Which is number fifty?’
    He waved his hand at a map on the wall and ignored her.
    Kitty made her way through the fifty-metre square patches and smiled at families in their gardens. Some were busy at work, others were sitting out in deckchairs, drinking from tea flasks, children running around, soaking one another with watering cans. Each plot had a different scene, which reminded her of the blackboard of specials in Brick Alley Café: ‘Every table has a story to tell.’
    She found Steve in the allotment, alone with a rotavator, noise so loud he couldn’t hear her call out to him. She stood at the fence and watched him, his face etched in concentration on the soil ahead of him. To her surprise his skin was visible. He’d lost the leather jacket and instead wore a T-shirt and jeans, thick work boots on his feet. He was entirely covered in mud and grass, stains that she couldn’t recognise, his hair even more of a tangled mess than usual as he’d worked outside all day. Finally he lifted his gaze from the soil and saw her.
    She smiled and waved. He turned the machine off immediately.
    ‘Kitty,’ he said, surprised.
    ‘Thought I’d come down and surprise you.’
    ‘How long have you been here?’
    ‘A few minutes. I was watching your concentration face.’ She frowned and pouted, the same way his lips went when they were studying in college or when she caught sight of him in exams.
    He laughed.
    ‘Dad greet you at the door?’
    ‘The best welcome committee a girl could have.’
    ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, genuinely concerned.
    ‘Don’t worry, I’d rather that than manure on my front door any day.’
    ‘They’ve done more?’
    ‘Just that. It’s stopped since Sunday, actually,’ she said, realising. ‘Maybe they got into trouble. And speaking of trouble,’ she made her way round the fence and inside the allotment, ‘I came here to give you this.’ She opened her arms and threw them around Steve, wrapping him so tight and squeezing him. She could tell he was shocked, his body stiffened, not comfortable with human contact, but she didn’t care, she needed to thank him for what he had done for her. Finally his body relaxed and he surprised her by wrapping his arms around her waist. It felt oddly comfortable. She hadn’t expected him to react that way, she had expected him to push her away but appreciate the gesture anyway, but