Jo looked at the empty coffee cup on her desk. ‘Can you make it a decaf? That last one was a bit strong and I can feel my heart going nineteen to the dozen.’
‘Maybe that’s just the effect I have on people,’ Lorcan said with a cheeky smile before immediately apologising. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s probably a bit too soon for cheesy flirty banter. I’m just nervous.’
‘Not as nervous as I am,’ Jo told him and as he walked to get their drinks, she realised she hadn’t been exaggerating. Spending time with Lorcan Gallagher unnerved her.
When he came back, he sat down and before she even had the chance to take her first drink of decaf he started to speak.
‘I think I’m just going to have to come out and say all this,’ he began. ‘Because, ever since Friday, I’ve been running this through my head on a loop and the only way to stop it is to just tell you the truth. I hate that you think badly of me…’
‘I don’t,’ she interrupted.
‘You do a bit,’ he said, with a sad smile. ‘And I can understand that. You care about Grandad and I appreciate that more than you know. We all do, you know, his family. I respect that you are protective of him, but I really did have a valid reason for not coming over last summer.’
She twisted the napkin that had been on the table in front of her, feeling a little uneasy. ‘You don’t have to…’
‘I do,’ he replied, and cleared his throat. ‘Last summer. When Grandad took ill, I desperately wanted to come back and help Dad look after him. I even went as far as to book the ticket for my flight, but then…’ He glanced to the ground. ‘Sophie and I had been together a long time, as I told you. I suppose, well, last summer was when it all started to go wrong. Specifically, two days after Grandad took ill. Even more specifically, about six hours before I was due to board a flight to Belfast.’
He looked a little grey of face, and if Jo wasn’t mistaken, she could see the muscles in his forearm tense as he replayed the memory of whatever it was that happened in his head.
‘Sophie was pregnant,’ he blurted and Jo felt dizzy. Memories of her own short-lived pregnancy flooded her mind, and the pain that had accompanied it. Looking up, she was sure she saw that same pain in Lorcan’s eyes and everything started to make sense.
Jo wanted to speak. She wanted to stop him opening up about this pain, but she couldn’t find the words. But it was all so close to her own trauma that she was almost scared of hearing any more.
‘It was early days,’ he said. ‘And a complete bolt out of the blue. It wasn’t something we’d planned. I mean, we’d had the “maybe someday” conversation, but that’s all it had been. The thing is, when she told me she was pregnant, I actually felt, instinctively, it was right. I knew that we’d cope and we were old enough, stable enough. I mean, financially we had good jobs. Good benefits. I started to become quite excited about it, even in those early days. You know, making lists of names. Thinking about nursery decoration. Silly things.’
Jo shook her head. None of what he was saying felt like just ‘silly things’ to her. She remembered the strength of those feelings all too well. Even when her relationship was disintegrating around her ears, she’d felt that excitement pushing through. How she wished Colm had felt even a tenth of that excitement. Things could have been so different – but then again, maybe things would only have fallen apart later.
Lorcan took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, his breathing shaky. ‘That morning,’ he said. ‘The morning I was due to fly to Belfast. Sophie woke up in pain. Cramps, you know. She threw up, and we thought maybe it was just a stomach bug. But, of course, it was more than that. Worse than that.’
30
The Last Song
‘You don’t have to tell me this,’ Jo said, and she meant it. She knew what a trauma this would be for him because she had lived the same trauma.
‘I know I don’t have to,’ Lorcan replied. ‘But I want to. Not just because I want you to know I’m not the asshole you think I am…’
‘I know that. I shouldn’t have said anything,’ Jo interjected, feeling wretched for her judgement of him. She had completely underestimated almost everything about him.
‘Jo, I think I need to talk about it. I didn’t at the time. I didn’t tell anyone. Even now, Grandad doesn’t know. I don’t want to land it on your shoulders if you don’t have the headspace for it, but if you do? If you do, I think you would be a good person to tell.’
He had no idea just how much she understood what he had gone through, but even without knowing he trusted her enough to talk about something so deeply personal and painful. She nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’m here.’
He took another deep breath. He looked down at the table. ‘It was a miscarriage. Before it even really started. They said that at the hospital, you know. That we shouldn’t think of it as a baby. It wasn’t, but to us, it was. Or to me, anyway. Even though it hadn’t been planned, and I’d felt sick when she first told me. You see, that sick so quickly changed to excitement. And it was like I could see his face.’ Lorcan smiled sadly. ‘I felt that it was a boy, you know. Maybe that was wishful thinking on my part, although I’d have loved a little girl just as much. But it was like I could see our lives stretch out in front of me. Sophie and I, and our baby, and Scraps. I could see weekend kickabouts at the park, tiny football kits. Long walks on a Sunday and a pub lunch, the baby sleeping in the pram while Soph and I chatted. I saw first days at school, and teaching him to shave and all that stuff. The kind of stuff people don’t think men think about.’
He was speaking all the words that had run through her mind when she had come home from Spain, cowed by her experience. Words that she has never allowed herself to say out loud, afraid it would break her entirely if she did.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Jo stuttered, her voice thick with emotion.
Lorcan shrugged his shoulders. ‘It wasn’t anyone’s fault. I never understand why we tell people we’re sorry. As if we did something wrong…’ He paused for a moment.
‘It was awful,’ Jo said, and it wasn’t a question but a statement of understanding.
‘It was. For Sophie more than me – well, physically at least for her. It was early enough on so we were sent home to wait it out. It had been too early to see a heartbeat or to have any confirmation this had been real, apart from one of those pregnancy-testing sticks. Sophie was in pain, you know. I felt useless, because I was. I couldn’t take it away from her. I brought her painkillers and a hot-water bottle, but that just made her cry more. Because I’d do that when she got her period and this wasn’t a period.’
Jo realised that tears had started to slide down her cheeks. For Sophie, who she didn’t know. For Lorcan, who had tried his best. For Colm, who didn’t know what it was like to love a little person who had never had the chance to feel their own heartbeat. And for herself. She had felt the pain Sophie had. That physical ache and sense of helplessness, and she’d have done anything she could to have someone like Lorcan by her side at the time. Someone who tried to make it less horrific for her.