‘Where’s wee Simon? Simon?’ called Patricia on the way.
‘Yeah?’ came a boy’s voice from the other side of the room.
‘Come over here and meet Brendan,’ said Patricia, beckoning the boy over.
He was small and very skinny with short, messy brown hair and freckles; he almost had a skip to his step when he crossed the room.
‘Simon; Brendan. Brendan; Simon,’ said Patricia and I took Simon’s outstretched hand which he shook much more strongly than I had expected. ‘Best friend of Ronan.’
Simon’s face went sombre and he nodded and joined his hands together in front of him at waist height.
‘I was really sorry to hear about Ronan,’ he said in a voice that was quite husky and deep, ‘I was really enjoying hearing about his progress from Aaron and Emma.’
I nodded but didn’t know what to say.
‘Simon’s older brother suffered a TBI earlier in the year,’ said Patricia as Simon continued to stare at me. ‘Not easy, but that’s why we’re all here.’ Patricia suddenly clapped her hands together, which snapped Simon out of his stare. ‘Right, I better get this show on the go – does everyone want to take their seats?’ Patricia called out.
Everyone gravitated towards a circle of blue plastic chairs in the middle of the room. Simon came carrying an extra one.
‘Sit beside me if you want,’ he said.
‘Oh, thanks,’ I said, sitting down beside him with the McCoys on the other side of me.
‘Right, first things first: updates,’ said Patricia, taking out a large leather-bound book. She began to run through lots of topics to do with funding, compensation and the little financial support available to those who were struggling with the full-time care of their children. She announced some upcoming fundraisers, including a hike up Slieve Gullion to pay for a new disabled-access bathroom for a young girl whose parents couldn’t afford it.
I hadn’t expected there to be so much talk about money, but it seemed to dominate every single issue that Patricia brought up: support for education both in school and at home, medical care, adult support and counselling, the list went on and there didn’t seem to be a resolution to anything.
‘Right, now we’ve got all that out of the way,’ said Patricia with a theatrical sigh, ‘how’s everyone doing?’
There was silence around the circle as everyone looked at each other.
‘I suppose I can tell you about Danny?’ said Simon.
‘Lovely,’ said Patricia, sitting back with her arms folded high on her chest. ‘Floor’s yours.’
‘Well, last weekend we’d arranged to play football at our house with a couple of Danny’s old mates. Mum and me thought it’d be good if Danny could get a bit more social.’
‘Because those mates didn’t reallystaymates with him, did they, Simon?’ said Patricia.
‘No, well, they said he wasn’t Danny anymore and I know what they meant because Danny used to know all this stuff about films and everything, and all his friends are into that kind of thing too, and now he just doesn’t have the attention span or interest to sit and watch a film. We used to have family movie nights before the accident.’
‘And we talked last time, didn’t we, about finding some new things you can do together and you thought maybe the football would be good?’
‘Yeah, so I’m sort of training him up.’
‘Like, what’s that coach? Ferguson?’ said Patricia with a bit of a tease in her voice.
‘Ah, Patricia,’ said Simon, shaking his head, ‘that’s Man U’s manager, I’m more Rafael Benitez; Liverpool.’
I looked over to Mr and Mrs McCoy and they smiled sadly over at me.
‘So Mum and me invited two of his old friends, Padraig and Malachy, over to our house for a kickabout. Mum said she’d do pizza after. But it was really weird right from the second they arrived; it was like they didn’t want to be there, even though they hadn’t called to see Danny in I don’t know how long.’
‘And Danny’s at a different school to them now, isn’t he, so it’s a bit more difficult,’ said Patricia.
‘I know but Padraig and Malachy only live up the road,’ said Simon defiantly. ‘They were hardly talking to us so I ploughed on and led us all into the back garden. Danny started dribblingthe ball straight away, then he booted it and it hit Padraig on the shoulder and he said, “What the eff?” and Danny froze because Padraig said it a bit loud, and Danny has this thing about raised voices that he didn’t have before, which Padraig had been told about but he didn’t seem to care. I went over to Danny and did the back of the neck thing on him,’ Simon said, running his index finger up and down the nape of his neck.
‘Well done,’ said Patricia.
