‘Well,’ Mum said, ‘I think it would be great forbothof you, but it really will be a busy year ahead, Brendan. If you think it’s something you can manage then I really do think it would be great.’
‘I can absolutely, definitely manage.’ I turned to Ronan. ‘Isn’t that right, Ronan?’
Ronan yodelled a long, high-pitched screech that sent us all into laughter.
‘Well, how can we argue with that?’ said Dad.
‘Is that a yes?’ I said.
They looked amongst themselves again.
‘Alright,’ said Mrs McCoy, ‘we’ll say it’s a go-ahead for now, but talk to your mum and dad tomorrow, talk to the school when you’re back and we’ll have a word with them as well, and if that’s all OK, andyou’reOK, then we’ll set about getting things organised for you and Ronan for January.’
‘I think this deserves a wee pre-New-Year’s toast,’ said Mr McCoy, raising a glass. ‘To the study buddies!’
‘To the study buddies!’ we all said. I raised Ronan’s tumbler for him and we drank together.
When the countdown for the new year came, it seemed like the seconds couldn’t come quick enough; each second got me closer to getting my best friend back.
21
The bell of St Matthew’s church rings on the hour every day of the year.
I don’t know if it’s automated or if a person does it by pulling a rope like one of those traditional monks with the haircut and the brown robes.
What I do know is that on New Year’s morning, for the only time in the whole year, the bell tower chimes out a tune.
And it’s only on that day that people realise there’s more than one bell up inside the tower.
For just one day the bell that rings all year by itself gets some company and doesn’t ring alone.
I wonder if that’s the only day of the year where that bell, when joined with all the others, rings the loudest?
The tune they chimed together that New Year’s morning was ‘The Gloria’.
22
The Feast of the Epiphany is on the 6th of January. It’s a holy day. In my house it marked the end of Christmas because we’d take the tree down the day after. The house looked so bare for the first few days after the decorations were down and then you just got used to them not being there. The Feast of the Epiphany was the day Granny died.
On the anniversary of her death, Mum, Dad and me went to the chapel that she used to go to. It was the most festive feeling I’d had all Christmas since we hadn’t decorated our house. The chapel’s tree was tall, fat and bright; the stained-glass windows had poinsettias on their sills, holly wreaths along the walls; the wooden crib in front of the altar was filled with hay and people took a strand of it at the end of Mass. Mum said that the crib was exactly the same as she remembered it from when she was a little girl when Granny took her to Mass at Christmas time.
At the foot of the Christmas tree stood the painted figures of the three wise men. The Feast of the Epiphany is all about them; the journey they embarked on following the star to Bethlehem. During Mass the priest called out the names of the people whose anniversary it was and we bowed our heads when Granny’s was said.
After Mass we went to the graveyard behind the chapel to put a candle on Granny’s grave and say silent prayers. I prayed for her forgiveness. To forgive me for leaving her and Mum in the hospital that night one year ago, for not being brave enough to stay. I asked her to help keep Mum on the right track towards healing in the year to come. I told Granny that I missed her and wished she could be here for me at a time when I needed her most. I always felt I could talk more to Granny than I could to Mum or Dad. But I knew that even if she couldn’t be thereforme, she would definitely bewithme. There hadn’t been a day the whole year that I hadn’t thought of her; I didn’t want there ever to be a day where I didn’t.
As we drove home from the chapel I looked up into the clear night sky wondering if the star the wise men followed was still there amongst the constellations. Guidance. It’s what the stars once were. Guidance. I looked up the whole way home.
Later, Mum and me sat at the dining room table. Dad had gone upstairs to get ready for bed; it was nearly midnight.
‘It’s hard to believe it’s been a year,’ Mum said. If she had shed any tears that day I hadn’t seen them. I knew it had been a tough year for her, especially on birthdays, on Mother’s Day, Christmas and now the anniversary. But Mum was beginning to change for the good. She said she was going to put in a request at work to do less night shifts in the new year and how excited she was for my Buddy Times with Ronan to start.
It felt like the beginning of her getting back to the whole of herself again.
I was gripping Granny’s rosary beads in my hand inside their little pouch; I had kept them in my pocket all day, remembering being in the hospital when she had pressed them into my handsand told me she loved me. That night exactly one year ago when I knew Granny would die but I didn’t stay, remembering how I ignored the dark feeling in the pit of my stomach and how much it hurt when Mum hugged me in tears the next day and asked where I had been and why it had taken so long for Dad and me to drive back. Why had we left her on her own for so long? The truth was something I’d been ashamed of. It burdened me all year.
‘Mum?’
We had been sitting in silence after the floorboards stopped creaking above our heads from Dad climbing into bed. She looked into my eyes.
