Page 91 of Don't You Forget About Me

‘It sounds like that, doesn’t it?’ Lucas says. ‘Funnily enough, it wasn’t heroic of me, at all. When she told me she was terminal, she said it didn’t change anything between us and I was relieved, because it didn’t. I was devastated for her but it’s not as if a tumour could make us love each other again, or undo the hurt. I would’ve been in a far bigger mess if she’d said: sorry we’re estranged and I was shagging one of your best mates but can we be husband and wife again for as long as I’ve got? I wouldn’t have known how to do that.’

I nod, as if I understand.

‘But, she also wanted it kept secret. She knew a lot of family and friends would judge her for the affair with Owen. We had to go through it all presenting a united front.’

‘Literally no one knew you’d separated?’

‘No one. I told Devlin after the funeral. He and Mo had already announced they were calling their daughter after Niamh and he was committed. And you know,’ Lucas rubs his eyes and smiles. ‘It’s still a nice name, and they liked her.’

He sounds more Irish than he usually does, in tiredness.

‘As to why I’m having frank exchanges of opinion. Niamh took Keith to Owen’s when she was sick. I could hardly say no. When Niamh died, Owen refused to give him back. Said it had been her dying wish that Owen keep him and I said, well, he wasn’t hers to gift. You can imagine Owen’s in a lot of pain and not seeing things straight, at the moment.’

‘Oh? Wow that’s … but Keith’s yours?’

‘Oh yeah. He was never Niamh’s dog, I got him as a puppy. So. Here’s where it turns into a Shane Meadows film plot. Devlin and I had to jail break Keith from Owen’s, and kidnap him. Dev tricked some guy we knew who was doing work on his flat to give us a spare key, and we staked it out, and burst in when he’d gone out, took Keith.’

‘No!’

‘Yes. Not long after, I’ve come to do this work in Sheffield so Keith and I are safely at a distance from Owen’s wrath. And he’s … vociferous, I think is the word.’

‘Doesn’t he feel any shame for having slept with your wife and borrowed your dog and tried to keep him?’

Lucas takes a large slug of whisky. ‘Quite the opposite. He has decided he at last freed Niamh from a tormented marriage, only to lose her, and he’s the victim in this. And I know where he’s coming from because he did love her so he must be hurting too. But he said …’

Lucas pauses. I can see him bracing himself: ‘He said that maybe our fighting gave her stress that caused the cancer. I don’t believe for a single moment that Niamh and I screaming the odds, killed her. But what a thing to hear. I bullied her into an early grave.’

‘Lucas, that is …’ I swallow. I’ve gone from wanting to hard swerve all this, to wanting very much to be the friend he needs: ‘Unhappy couples fight, and say things they might regret later all the time. You no more knew what was round the corner than Niamh or Owen did. The lack of compassion in saying that … what a bastard.’

‘Thank you.’ He finishes the whisky. ‘Mind if I have more? Another for you?’

I nod and hand my glass up. There’s only the sound of Keith’s light snoring until he returns.

‘Waaaait. That’s why you didn’t want me walking Keith?’ I say.

‘Oh? Yeah. I think Owen’s an unpredictable mess and I don’t let Keith out of my sight in case he decides to repatriate him to Ireland. I thought I was subtle in turning you down?’

‘You weren’t subtle,’ I laugh and Lucas says: ‘Sorry.’

A brief silence.

‘I don’t know how to grieve Niamh. There’s not many handbooks out there for how to be sad at the death of someone who, at the time, you wanted to kill.’

‘Try a counsellor. They honestly help.’

‘Really?’

‘I went to one too,’ I say. ‘When the relationship with the person who’s gone is complicated, my counsellor used the analogy of a clean wound versus a dirty wound. The clean one is still a wound, but the healing is more straightforward. When it’s like an explosion of shrapnel, there’s infections, there’s secondary cuts. That takes longer to heal, and it heals differently. You have to accept the damage is different.’

I didn’t, for a moment, ever forecast I’d one day be sitting with Lucas McCarthy, repeating this. Fay and I were talking about two men I knew, and one of them is in front of me.

Lucas sits forward. ‘Do you mind me asking who you lost?’

‘My dad.’

‘And you went to see a counsellor about it?’

Somehow, although I could tell the edited version of this history, I already know Lucas is going to be the first and only person other than Fay to hear the full.

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