Lifesaving for Beginners (42 page)

Minnie books the Grand Hotel for the press conference, which is a short walk from the apartment.
She hires two security guards.
Huge ones.
I laugh when she tells me but Minnie’s face betrays not even a hint of a smile.

She says, ‘You asked me to take care of it.
I’m taking care of it.’

Turns out she’s right.
She’s always right.
We do need them.
When the room is full, the two of them stand at the door and present their joint bulk to any other journalists trying to get in.

They also come in very handy when the journos swarm like bees at the end, blocking the door, poking their microphones in my face and pointing their cameras at me.
I’d say the photographer from
Heat
won’t be waking up and smelling the coffee anytime soon, with that stump he’s got now, where his nose used to be.

I tell them everything I know about Killian Kobain and Declan Darker.
Afterwards, Minnie says, ‘That’s all, everybody.
Thanks for coming.’

She has to shout into the microphone to be heard over the barrage of questions being hurled towards me.
I answer a couple of them before one of the journalists at the front stands up and says, ‘Are there any other skeletons in Kat Kavanagh’s closet?’
Because he has one of those booming voices, it punctures a hole through the babble and gets people’s attention, and there is a lull and everyone looks at me and waits.

Minnie nudges me.

I look at her.

She cups her hand over the microphone and whispers, ‘You don’t have to answer that.’

I shake my head, then look at the man and I say, ‘Yes.
There is something.’

Dad is already at the apartment when we get back from the press conference.
In the car park.
The engine of his car is running.
Mum is in the front seat.
I say, ‘I thought we were going to meet at the hospital?’
Ed is being discharged today.
We all want to be there.

Dad says, ‘I’ll drive in.
There’s no need for everyone to take their cars.’
He has a thing about paying for parking at hospitals.
He calls it a ‘scandal’, which is a pretty strong word for him.
Minnie, who rarely lets her car out of her sight – it’s a silver Jaguar XKR-S – agrees to leave it at the apartment and let Dad drive all of us in.
‘Just for the day that’s in it,’ she says.

Ed insists on saying goodbye to every patient, nurse and doctor in the hospital before we are allowed to leave.
‘I’m glad to be going home but I’ll miss the hospital too.’

I say, ‘What’ll you miss about it?’

‘The nurses, mostly.’

Minnie says, ‘Don’t let Sophie hear you saying that.’

Sophie is the jealous type.
I don’t think she’d boil a bunny but I’d say she’d have no qualms about, say, a gerbil or a hamster.

I’m glancing through the leaflet the nurse gave me about the pacemaker.
‘The doctor says you have to go back for a check-up in a few weeks.
See how the pacemaker is settling in.’

Ed looks worried.
He unbuttons his shirt again and shows it to us.
We can see the outline of the pacemaker beneath his skin.
It is about the size of a matchbox.
He says, ‘I don’t like it.
It makes me feel scared.’

Minnie says, ‘You’re like the bionic man, so you are.
They’ve rebuilt you.’

Ed looks at Minnie.
‘I might have died, mightn’t I?’
He’s fond of a bit of drama.

‘It’ll take more than a dodgy ticker to get rid of you, I’d say.’
She’s looking at Ed like he’s her brother too.
She never treated him any other way.
I touch her arm and squeeze it.
Just a small one.
But a squeeze all the same.

A small smile gathers round her mouth.

I say, ‘How’s Baby Driver coming along?’
Maurice took Minnie’s name when they got married.
He had to, really.
He has a surname that happens to be on one of Minnie’s blacklists.

She says, ‘Week fifteen.
Nine centimetres.
About the length of a Curly Wurly.
My stools are black but that’s just the iron supplements.’

I say, ‘That’s great,’ before she can fill me in on any more details.

Dad’s car is just outside the hospital, with the engine running.
Mum is in the passenger seat, even though she’s supposed to be a keynote speaker at a writing conference in Prague.
She shrugged when I mentioned it earlier.
I help Ed into the car.
Mum looks at him.
‘There’s a blanket there, if you’re cold.’

Me and Minnie sit by the windows and Ed is in the middle.
Like when we were kids.
I tuck the blanket round Ed’s knees and the smile he gives me is so huge and so true, I have to turn away.
Minnie finishes tucking the blanket and she nods at me, and that’s when I realise just how big today is.
How huge.

The surgeon called Ed ‘lucky’.
I wouldn’t have used that word.
But that’s the word I think of now.
On this leg of the journey.
The home stretch.

Ed is lucky.

We all are.

Dad drives to my apartment first.
Minnie needs to get her car and I need to get a toothbrush and some knickers.
Ed wants me to stay for a sleepover.
I know he’s milking it but I don’t care.

There’s a traffic jam from the railway bridge, through the Diamond and on past the Garda station.
I don’t take much notice.
Malahide is one of those towns that people like to visit at all times of the day and night.
It’s Minnie who realises.
She looks out of the window and says, ‘That’s weird.’

I say, ‘What?’

Minnie lowers her window and sticks her head out.
‘There are five television trucks ahead.’

I lean forward, into the space between the two front seats.
I say, ‘Oh yeah,’ and sit back.

Minnie looks at me.
She doesn’t say anything.
We inch along.
It’s only when we get through the village and along the curve where the coast road begins that things become clearer.
The car park in front of my apartment block is black with trucks.
Television trucks.
They’ve spilled onto the road, on double yellows, across driveways, along the edge of footpaths.
One is on the slip that leads to the beach.
Another has secured an elevated position up on the grass verge, where no vehicle has a right to be.

Mum says, ‘What’s going on?’

Ed nudges me.
‘Maybe there’s a celebrity staying in your building, Kat.’

Minnie looks at him.
‘You’re right, Ed.
There’s a celebrity in Kat’s building.’

Dad says, ‘Really?
Who?’
He is a closet celebrity-gossip-gatherer.
I have seen copies of
Now
and
Closer
in his study.

Minnie points at me.
‘It’s Kat, you great eejits.’

Ed says, ‘I’m not an eejit.
And Kat’s not a celebrity, silly.
Her picture’s not in any of the magazines Dad has in his study.’

Dad flushes.
‘Someone left those magazines there.’

Mum says, ‘What about the ones in the bottom drawer of your filing cabinet?
Did someone leave them there, as well?’

This strikes us as funny, probably because Mum rarely says anything that you could brand ‘humorous’.
She is as serious as Tolstoy’s
War and Peace
.
It’s just the way she is, I suppose.

Minnie looks at me.
‘Kat, listen, you can’t go in there.
You’ll be mobbed.
We’ll have to go to your parents’ house.’

Dad says, ‘What if they follow us?’
His hands grip the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles are white.
He would be hopeless as a getaway driver.

Minnie says, ‘Kat, duck down.
So they don’t spot you.’

But I don’t duck down because this doesn’t seem real.
None of it.
Even though I can see them.
The hundred-strong army of the type of media that you would be well within your rights to call paparazzi.
On my doorstep.
Waiting for me.
I can see them.
But I don’t quite believe it.
Not yet.

The line of traffic is static.
Dad’s car is stuck, right outside the apartment block.
It feels like we’re in the eye of a storm.
Outside, the activity is frantic; inside, it’s the type of quiet that seems too quiet.
Just as I’m about to take Minnie’s advice and duck down, someone shouts, ‘Oi!’
When I turn to look, there’s a man in a truck and he’s pointing at Dad’s car.
He’s pointing at me.
And suddenly my heart is hurling itself against my chest, like a battering ram.
I yell, ‘DRIVE!’
and Dad – who is notable as a driver only because most people can jog alongside the car when he’s at full tilt – rams the gearstick into first and swings out into oncoming traffic, narrowly missing the bumper of a mustard-coloured Ford Focus being driven by a man with a poodle on his knee.
The man and the dog are in matching yellow jackets.
It’s funny the things you notice when you’re being chased by a television truck.
Dad guns the car and it roars up Bath Lane, which is a narrow little one-way with a nasty bend.
There’s a dodgy-as-hell bit when Dad’s car mounts the kerb, but apart from breaking some lower branches off a tree, there’s no real harm done.

I keep my eyes on the rear window.
The television truck is behind us and gaining.
The driver shouts into a mobile phone.

Minnie yells, ‘Take a right at the end of this road.’

Dad says, ‘There’s a STOP sign!’

‘Well, stop first.
Then take the right.’

Dad stops.
Mum roars, ‘CLEAR LEFT,’ and Dad smiles at her before he shoots out onto the road, his tyres making a satisfying screeching noise against the tarmac.

Minnie shouts, ‘Take that little left at Vinny Vannuchi’s.’

I have to pitch in there.
‘It’s not called Vinny Vannuchi’s anymore.
It’s the Scotch Bonnet.
It’s been the Scotch Bonnet for ages.’

Ed says, ‘Is that the restaurant that has the spicy chicken wings I like, Kat?’

Dad yells, ‘Am I turning left here or not?’

Minnie and I yell, ‘YES!’
at the same time and then Minnie looks over the top of Ed’s head towards me and says, ‘This is like
Cagney and Lacey
, isn’t it?
Except we’re in the back seat.’

Cagney and Lacey
was our favourite programme when we were kids.
When we weren’t watching it, we were playing it.
We both wanted to be Cagney.
We had to take it in turns to be Lacey.
Neither of us wanted to be married to Harv.

Minnie shouts, ‘Turn left here.
Up into St Margaret’s Park.’

Dad turns left so quickly I get thrown against the window and, for a moment, it really is like an episode of
Cagney and Lacey
.

Behind us, we can hear the roar of the truck.

Minnie says, ‘Pull into someone’s driveway.
Look, down that road there.
It’s a cul-de-sac.
They won’t find us down there.’