Saturday, 25 April, 2020

Tom spent the next two days dozing on and off. Cal promised this was a good sign. I'd phoned him, rather than the 111 number, knowing I'd get far better advice. When I mentioned the drowning sensation, he pursed his lips but reassured me plenty of people who'd had the virus reported the same and had not required hospital treatment. The sensation would pass.

On the Saturday morning, I woke up refreshed—the reason striking me at once. Tom hadn't coughed or spluttered through the night. His face was turned towards me, lashes fluttering and breathing slow and steady. "Stay well," I whispered, kissing my fingertips and tapping his nose.

Downstairs, my phone showed three missed calls. Darla and Josie both reaching out post the revelatory conversation. Darla's message read, "Ignore Mum!!!!!!!!!", Josie's, "Please ring asap. Let me know how Tom is."

"Do you want to try getting up? I asked Tom when I popped into the room later, having exhausted the Joe Wicks workout option and run out of things to clean.

"Okay, then." He threw back the duvet and swung his legs around and onto the floor. Hands on either side, he pushed himself up, shivering.

"Wait here," I said, nipping into my bedroom and grabbing my extra-large, super soft dressing gown. Felt the automatic twinge when I tied the belt around him—my lovely clean stuff on a dirty body!—and dismissed it straight away.

"Put an arm around me."

He leant in. We took the stairs in baby steps. Pushed against me, the trembling vibrated like an additional pulse. I deposited him in the living room and whacked up the heating. The sofa would be easier for him than a stool in the kitchen. Even though my rules included never eating in the living room.

"Here! Chicken soup with tonnes of shitake mushrooms as I read on a website they perk up your immune system no end."

"If you say so," he said, poking his spoon through the liquid and grimacing. But he managed to finish the bowlful, commenting that the soup still didn't taste of anything as he pushed his head back against the cushions and closed his eyes.

"As I said before, I'm not sure that proves someone has anosmia. I told your mum, by the way. Sorry."

That made him open an eye. "Brave of you."

I took the chair opposite him. "Once she got over the fright, we said to each other, 'Tom's young and healthy'. Just as the doctor noted the time you landed up in A&E after that assault."

Both eyes pinged open. "Oh."

"Oh, indeed."

If only the fake wood fire in my living room had been real. Then, it might have crackled, imaginary flames breaking a tense silence.

"I don't think," Tom ventured, eventually, "the person you are in your early 20s is the final you. Or at least it doesn't need to be. What do you reckon?"

Big deep breaths on my part. "Not at all. I... I'm not. I despise the person I was and what I d-d-did, but she's part of me. An-and I hope I've rehabilitated myself since then."

My heart thudded; the sound thunderous in my ears. I got off the chair and scuttled forward, tucking my head into his lap. He stroked my hair.

"Who wants to go first...?"

Final confession time.

*****

"I was only sixteen when my sister was raped. Me older brothers were wild. They ran with the Provos. Made them think they were hard men in their balaclavas and camo gear. Gun smuggling and singing Fenian songs in clubs. For them, it was a personal insult when he got away with it," Tom said, hand still smoothing its way along my hair. The electric fire might not crackle, but the reds and blues of fake flames danced. Soothing. 

The man in question left Ireland not long after being accused of rape. When he returned five years later, rumour had it that part of the reason for him leaving Ireland in the first place was that he'd grassed up some of his fellow Provos.

"The perfect excuse times two. By this time, I didn't sing the Fenian songs and fancy meself as a hard man, but I did the odd bit of stealing. And when me brothers asked if I wanted to join them in a bit of revenge, the dish best served up cold, I said yes straightaway."

My imagination—the one that had conjured up the scene for me—hadn't let me down. Tom described it, voice flat. They lay in wait for Niall O'Sullivan, near to the pub they knew he was in. His so-called drinking buddy paid for the info he had passed on to the Dochertys.

What had happened next played out as I'd thought. Thumps, whacks, cracks and screams in a darkened alley, any passers-by scuttling off in the opposite direction when they realised what was going on.

"I went into it," Tom said, "hard as nails. Right on me side. And then half-way through, he looked up at me, blood streaming down his face where we'd broken his nose and bashed out his front teeth, and I wanted to puke. I've never hated meself like I did at that moment."

Niall O'Sullivan had his own relatives. Also bent on revenge. The attack wasn't planned. Niall's brothers stumbled on Tom one evening. None of them were armed, battering into him with fists, headbutts, kicks to the head and torso.

"A nurse heading home from a night-shift found me. Did what she could."

And like Niall O'Sullivan, when the police turned up asking questions—Some nasty injuries you've got there, son—he claimed no knowledge. Men in balaclavas again. Didn't see a thing, officer.

"D'ye want to leave Ireland, Tom?" his mother asked, as she sat beside his hospital bed, eyes weary and a catch in her voice. The overhead lights highlighted the grey in her hair and picked out the wrinkles.

"I can give you a bit o' money. Enough for you to make a new start. Ask God for forgiveness and what you can do to make up for the mistakes you have made."

She leant over and kissed his knuckles—the hand where the IV slid in, the veins there standing up all too prominent. "Stop you making any more and turning into a man like your brothers."

"When I got to Scotland, the first ting I did was find meself a chapel," Tom continued. He'd kept up the hair stroking, hand moving in accompaniment to soft words describing brutality. Impossible to envisage them doing violent things.

"I started going to mass every week. Me mam used to drag us along as kids, but I'd only been tokenistic about religion until that point. I sat in confession for a long time. Said plenty of Hail Mary's. Spent a lot of time on me knees.

"Someone at work suggested I join the Labour party. Why not do something directly to change people's lives? In the last general election, I did a bit of canvassing for them. Wondered afterwards if I'd jinxed them."

That lightened the mood. I twisted my head in his lap. "They lost, what, five seats in parliament?"

He rolled his eyes. "Worse! There's only one Labour MP left in Scotland!"

"Well, next time round you will have a better idea of what to do."

Greeny-blue eyes met mine. "I didn't tell you because..."

"Because we hardly knew each other. Did Niall O'Sullivan recover?"

At that, Tom's hands flew to his face, covering his eyes. "Not properly, no. He walks with a limp and he suffers from recurring headaches. Post-traumatic stress disorder, probably. Me sister didn't speak to me older brothers for months. She forgave me because I was young and stupid. Violence, she always said, solves fuck all."

I reached up for his hands, pulling them away. Teary faced, he let out a sigh.

"One mistake should not define a person," I said, taken aback by the conviction that rang through the words.

Even when it seems catastrophic at the time.

I took a deep breath. Found a spot on the wall to focus my gaze on and began to talk, sometimes in dribs and drabs, sometimes a flood of words, each one tripping over the last in their hurry to finally be spoken out loud... 

A leap of faith.