One Hundred Names (16 page)

‘What do you mean?’ Kitty asked.

‘You know what I mean,’ Molly replied. ‘Word gets around here quickly.’

‘I meant it, you know. She’s an interesting lady.’

‘That’s an understatement.’

This comment intrigued Kitty and she wanted to find out more about Birdie from Molly. ‘Are you heading back to the city, by any chance? Fancy splitting a taxi?’

‘I’m going the other way, but I can drop you to Oldtown, if you like.’

Kitty would take whatever she could get.

‘It’s Birdie’s birthday on Thursday,’ Kitty said. ‘I overheard her family asking her out for dinner.’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘She says she won’t go.’

Molly shrugged and a smile appeared briefly on her lips.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Something I should know?’

‘No.’

Kitty didn’t believe her. ‘She’ll be eighty-five.
Eighty-five
. She should celebrate. Is there something you can do for her here?’

‘We usually have a cake. A chocolate one with candles. We bring it in during dinner and everyone sings. It’s nice. Birthdays don’t go unnoticed.’

‘I’d like to do something for her.’

Molly looked at her. ‘You’re growing fond of her, aren’t you?’

Kitty nodded.

‘Well, she won’t be here that day,’ she said, grabbing her leather jacket. ‘She’s taking a trip.’

A swarm of residents arrived through the front door, conversation buzzing, and more piled out of the bus parked out front. The bus, an eighteen-seater, had St Margaret’s stencilled across the side.

‘They won the bowling match,’ Molly explained. ‘They play against teams from surrounding homes once a fortnight. You wouldn’t believe how serious they take it. I love being on driving duty, just so I can hear their tactics, and because I always wanted to be a bus driver when I was a kid, but they rarely let me. Fancy a lift to town?’

Kitty took her up on her offer and as she sped along the potholed roads that led to the small village of Oldtown, on the back of Molly’s motorbike, she quickly understood why Molly wasn’t often allowed behind the wheel of the bus.

Sitting in Oldtown, Kitty had over an hour to wait for a bus to the city. Pulling out the list of one hundred names, she pored over it and set to work.

Magdalena Ludwiczak did not speak enough English to enable Kitty to have a decent conversation with her so she struck her off her list. Number five, Bartle Faulkner, was on holiday for the next fortnight, and she could hear the water lapping on the beach in the background. No, he hadn’t heard from Constance at all, and yes, he could meet up in two weeks when he was home, by which time it would be too late for Kitty’s story. Eugene Cullen, an old man, by the sound of it, told her in no uncertain terms never to call him again, and she left a message for Patrick Quinn.

Kitty went back to the seventh name on her list.

‘Hello?’ The phone was answered in a whisper.

‘Is that Mary-Rose Godfrey?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I’m at work. I’m not supposed to be on the phone.’ The girl sounded about sixteen.

‘Okay,’ Kitty whispered, and then realised she didn’t need to and cleared her throat. ‘My name is Kitty Logan. I’m a journalist for
Etcetera.
Perhaps my editor Constance Dubois was in touch with you?’

‘No, sorry,’ the girl whispered.

Kitty sighed and cut straight to the chase. ‘Can we meet?’

‘Yeah, sure. When?’

Kitty straightened up, surprised. ‘Tonight?’

‘Yeah, cool. I’ll be in Café en Seine at eight. Good for you?’

‘Great!’ Kitty couldn’t believe her luck.

Mary-Rose hung up before they could arrange anything further like what Mary-Rose looked like or what Kitty looked like. When the bus arrived, Kitty jumped on with a spring in her step. Sitting down next to a man picking his nose and rolling the snot on the ball of his fingers couldn’t even dampen her mood. She examined her phone and contemplated sending Richie a message. She thought of the fun they’d had the night before and she smiled, then used her hand to block her face so that she wouldn’t look like a lunatic. But then she remembered how she’d felt that morning, awkward and cringing at the sight of his naked body. She decided against texting him. She took her notebooks out again; there was much work to be done. Though she had done it before, she Googled Archie Hamilton again, knowing a bit more about him now and what to focus on.

By the time she reached Café en Seine, she knew exactly why he didn’t want to speak to her, and exactly why she wanted to speak to him more than ever.

Kitty kissed the list before she entered the pub and thanked Constance again. She was beginning to enjoy this.

Café en Seine on Dawson Street was a series of bars spanning three floors, a three-storey atrium with glass-panelled ceilings with forty-foot trees reaching to the glass. The style was Parisian art nouveau and it was situated on a bustling street in central Dublin that consisted of restaurants, bars, cafés, the Lord Mayor’s residence and St Anne’s Church. Just a stone’s throw from Stephen’s Green, it was a popular choice for all ages, particularly then, on a Saturday night. Kitty had no idea where she was to meet Mary-Rose, nor how on earth she was to find her in such a gigantic place with numerous bars and darkened hidden corners and alcoves. You could spend a night there not realising that somebody you knew had also been there the entire time. Taking a seat at the main bar on a stool closest to the entrance – which also made her feel like she was in prime position to want to be chatted up – she sat with a glass of wine watching the door.

Her mind drifted again to the previous night’s exploits. She couldn’t help feeling disappointed that Richie still hadn’t contacted her, not even a text. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted him to, but she was sure that he should. She had definitely given him her number. She remembered little about the night but she did remember that. They had been perfectly sober when that had happened, and his number sat in her phone as proof that he’d existed at all. She thought about calling him, about how perhaps he was waiting for her and thinking exactly the same thing, when she heard her name being mentioned down the other end of the bar.

‘Are you Kitty Logan?’ she heard a man ask.

‘Are you Kitty Logan?’ she then heard a woman ask.

She leaned back in her stool to get a look at the people behind the voices but couldn’t see anyone through the crowd. She examined the mirror behind the bar to find their reflection, trying to get a glimpse of them before they found her.

‘Are you Kitty Logan?’ she heard more loudly this time, and she leaned back in her chair to see a young man in his twenties asking a smooth suit-wearing stockbroker-type man. Stockbroker boy wasn’t overly impressed with the question. ‘Are you sure?’ The young man looked him dead in the eye, all serious.

The group with stockbroker boy laughed and he seemed to relax then.

‘No little operations the boys don’t know about?’

‘No.’ His smile faded.

‘Okay, Sam, let’s move on,’ the female voice said and a delicate hand appeared on his forearm as she moved him on.

‘Are you Kitty Logan?’ she asked the middle-aged woman sitting with a group of women.

‘I might be,’ the lady responded.

‘I think you’re lying,’ Sam said. ‘She wasn’t Kitty Logan last night, were you, baby?’

The group of girls howled with laughter and Kitty felt they would stay with them for ever if she didn’t interrupt.

‘Excuse me?’ she leaned forward on her stool. The group next to her along with Mary-Rose, Sam and the group of women all turned to look at her. She raised her hand. ‘I’m Kitty Logan.’

‘No,
I’m
Kitty Logan,’ a deep voice came from the tables across the bar, followed by laughter.

‘You have a contender!’ Sam exclaimed, and as if they were part of a pantomime, people oohed.

Kitty laughed and stood to meet her contender, who stepped out from his table. He was four stone overweight, had a beard and he stood with his shoulders back, his fingers twitching as if he was a cowboy in a face-off. Kitty couldn’t keep a straight face.

‘I am victorious!’ the man declared, arms punching the air, and the small audience applauded. The cool stockbrokers looked at them as if they were all a bad smell and they turned their backs. ‘I
am
Kitty Logan,’ the man declared and he celebrated one final time and returned to his seat. While Sam went to his table to shake his hand and continue the good fun, Mary-Rose approached Kitty.

‘Hello,’ she said. A smile transformed her face and her eyes lit up. She was an extremely pretty young woman, and though she was dressed in skinny jeans, the highest shoes Kitty had ever seen and a simple tank top, she looked a million dollars.

‘I’m Mary-Rose,’ she said.

‘Nice to meet you. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find you in here but I see that my concerns were in vain.’

‘Oh, trust Sam.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘He makes a scene everywhere we go.’

‘He’s your boyfriend?’

‘Hell, no.’ She scrunched up her face. ‘We’re just friends. Have been since we were kids. Our moms were best friends,
are
best friends, blah blah blah,’ she finished quickly.

‘Kitty Logan,’ Sam joined them. ‘We’re going for dinner, would you like to join us?’

Kitty looked to Mary-Rose expecting her to try to make a face at him to disinvite her but there was nothing but warmth emanating from her, from the two of them. They were exactly what she needed right then.

They walked five minutes to Frederick Street to a small Italian restaurant. Inside, a table of eight people awaited them and Sam insisted on dragging Kitty around and introducing her to all of their young, attractive and incredibly fashionable friends. Still wearing her clothes from the day before, Kitty felt like a hillbilly next to them all. She sat opposite Mary-Rose, perfect position for her interview, but she doubted that would happen with the lively banter at the table. They were an exuberant lot, friends from childhood with inside jokes that were funny to Kitty because of how they were delivered, despite her not actually understanding their meaning. They knew each other well, tirelessly teased one another, and Kitty couldn’t help but feel it was the best-scripted sitcom she had ever seen, with their flawless hair and clothes. And that was just the boys.

Kitty didn’t have friends like that. She grew up in County Carlow, in the south-east of Ireland. After school she left to go to University College Dublin and had lived in Dublin ever since, choosing to go home only on holidays or if somebody got married or died. She had two brothers, one who’d remained in Carlow and married, the other who’d moved to Cork to study in Cork University and was living very happily with a man named Alexander, whom she’d never met and had only learned about through Facebook. She couldn’t remember the last time they had all been together in the same room at the same time – probably a family member’s funeral – and she couldn’t remember the last time she phoned either of them for a conversation that wasn’t related to putting funds together for their parents’ dodgy immersion heater or their dysfunctional boiler. Her father managed the same bar in Tullow Street as he had done all through Kitty’s youth. Her parents were quiet, socially odd people, not quite knowing or learning the art of conversation and so they stayed away from most social events apart from close friends and family gatherings, where it appeared they mostly listened and did little talking, sat in a corner and didn’t leave for the entire event.

Kitty had grown up with two best friends, both named Mary: Mary Byrne and Mary Carroll, who were always called by their full names to avoid confusion. It had always been Katherine and the two Marys; nobody called her Kitty in Carlow. It was a name she had been proudly baptised with once she reached university and she was only too happy to embrace it, a new name for a new beginning. The two Marys had been irritated by the use of a name they hadn’t invented and refused to call her by it on the rare nights they came to join Kitty and her college friends on a night out in Dublin. Her Carlow friends and college friends had never mixed. The two Marys ended up rallying together in a staged intervention at the end of one particular night to drunkenly tell Kitty how much she’d changed since she’d moved to Dublin. Eventually Kitty couldn’t take the arguments over the same thing each time and the trips to Dublin were reduced to one a year, and then eventually stopped completely. As Kitty returned home less and less, their friendship had eventually whittled away to nothing. If a meeting on the street wasn’t cleverly avoided, the chats were increasingly difficult with nothing much to say. Mary Byrne had moved to Canada and Mary Carroll had lost two stone and was working in a clothes shop in Carlow, which Kitty now made a habit of avoiding after having the most awkward conversation of her life and having to buy two dresses Mary had recommended but which Kitty somehow couldn’t find in her heart to tell her she despised. Her politeness had cost her over one hundred euro.

Now, her solid never-changing friends were Steve and Sally. Apart from them, Kitty had never been able to keep friends, not because she was disloyal in any way, she just felt that she hadn’t connected with anyone deeply since her school friends and so it was easy to drift away as life moved on, as college finished and as she found new jobs and created new friendships that lasted as long as the jobs had. This – she looked around at Mary-Rose’s friends – this she did not have and had never had.

‘So you work for a magazine,’ Mary-Rose finally left the conversation at the other end of the table and turned her attention to Kitty. Kitty was momentarily disappointed about having to get back to work.

‘Yes.
Etcetera
. Do you know it?’

Mary-Rose thought about it. ‘Yes, I think so,’ she said unconvincingly.

‘My editor was Constance Dubois. Was she in touch with you, this year or last year?’ Kitty had long ago given up the hope that Constance had questioned any of these people.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Mary-Rose said again uncertainly.

‘She passed away a few weeks ago,’ Kitty explained. ‘But before she died she was working on a story. You were part of that story.’