Chapter 19
AL
‘Fuck,’ Al says, watching Walter sitting on the snot-green New Day studio couch.
He and a bunch of his colleagues are crowded around Natasha’s computer as Natasha has clicked on the view live link.
‘I have it on mine,’ someone shouts from across the room and half the gang scarpers to the other computer screen.
Tony steps outside his office to see what all the fuss is about. He pulls up his trousers and digs around at the front with his hand, pretending to tuck his shirt in. He makes his way to Al, who is seething.
‘Did you know about this?’ Al asks.
‘Know about it? I sanctioned it. We were getting swamped with phone calls and emails from the media and public. We have to address it.’
‘I addressed it,’ Al says, confused. ‘You told me to be the spokesperson.’
‘Yes, about that.’ He motions with his head into Al’s office. He stands behind Al’s desk as if it’s his. He looks out at the view as though it’s his view. His land. ‘We destroyed the locks, didn’t we?’ Then he turns around to face Al.
‘You told me to send them to metal recycling. The team were sending them to Evolution Metal.’
Natasha is eavesdropping and Al waves her away.
Tony looks relieved. ‘Good. Last thing we want is to have to organise getting these locks back to everyone. That would be a pain in the arse.’
Al nods in agreement. ‘Definitely. And most of these locks are from international travellers, we couldn’t go about organising something like that.’
‘I agree. What we could have done, you see, some people are saying, is that we could have asked the public to remove their locks first because we understand the importance of the padlocks. We could have given them the opportunity to reclaim their locks. They did that recently in the UK. In Paris, I heard they sold the locks at auction and donated the money to charities. There might be grumbles about us not doing something like that. But,’ he claps his hands loudly, ‘the good news is the locks are gone so we don’t have to worry about that.
It’s better to ask for forgiveness than beg for permission. ’
‘Right,’ Al says slowly. ‘Why is Walter on TV? He had nothing to do with the locks being removed from the bridge.’
That was my job, Al wants to point out. He didn’t want to go on television, but why was he replaced with Walter? Again?
‘It looks good to have our environmental guy on so people know we care and that we took action for the right reasons. You began on the right line, now we can use Walter to further it and really hammer it home. Can you please tell me, why does your secretary have a purple eye?’
‘Natasha took an elbow to the eye in training. She’s a boxer.’
Tony leaves, taking a wide circle around Natasha, giving her side-eye all the way, as if he’s worried she’ll leap out and attack him. Al moves back to the computer to watch New Day. Walter looks to him to be like a deer in headlights.
‘How’s he doing?’
‘Actually pretty good,’ Natasha says. ‘You wouldn’t notice him in the office but he’s quite good-looking on TV. Look at the way Prunella’s staring at him.’
Al would like to pick the computer up and throw it out the window into the River Liffey.
‘How did he get on the show?’
‘Prunella did the same with Annie as she did with me. Emails and phone calls all day yesterday.’ Annie is Walter’s assistant.
‘Prunella got those boots in River Island, I was looking at them at the weekend, I’m definitely going to buy them now.
’ She turns to him, eyes narrowed. ‘Do you want me to check with Evolution Metal to see if they still have the locks?’ she asks, sweetly, hopefully.
He can imagine her digging through the mountain of locks for her own.
‘No, thank you,’ he says firmly and she drops it.
Al stares at Walter on the couch, feeling kind of in shock.
All the goodness from his night with Melody falls away, as if it never happened at all, and he’s back to being heartbroken.
This polished man he sees on TV is very unlike Walter.
He barely recognises his friend anymore.
A new shirt and tie, but of course he had to, because of Al’s sabotage.
Al had actually unwittingly done him a favour.
Out with the old, in with the new. Tara must have helped him out, he couldn’t have done this himself.
He can’t watch anymore. On the New Day couch with Prunella Maguire, Tara would be like the cat who got the cream. It would elevate her social status, in her opinion. She’d be only too happy to tell everybody about her relationship with Walter now.
As he walks away, Natasha hands him an envelope over her shoulder. She can’t look away from the screen.
‘This came for you by courier.’
He opens the envelope and slides the documents out.
It’s the paperwork from the bank to buy him out of the house and remove his name from the mortgage and the deeds.
He assumes that due to the speed of the paperwork arriving, Tara’s trip to the bank yesterday wasn’t her first in the process.
He sinks down into his chair. The blows keep on coming.
Each time he feels like it can’t get worse, there is some new part of life that he realises is impacted.
Everything has to change. His phone is hopping with messages from friends and family back home who have all somehow seen Walter on TV. Does nobody have a job?
The anger is building again, but it’s less rage and more hurt. He isn’t clinging to hope anymore, Tara is not coming back, she and Walter are not breaking up any time soon. This horrific thing can’t be undone. For the first time in six weeks, he reaches acceptance that it’s over.
He composes a text:
Dear All. It’s time I told you that six weeks ago, Walter my best friend and Tara my fiancée ended my world as I know it by telling me that they’re in love with each other.
I was asked to move out. This obviously hurts beyond belief.
I’m devastated that the two people I love most in the world would stab me in the back like this.
I’ve known Walter since I was five years old but obviously didn’t know him or Tara at all. I’m absolutely heartbroken.
Al xx
He reads back over it, his heart aching, still unable to believe what has happened. Typing it out in his phone has somehow made it very real and final. His loved ones will feel the betrayal too.
He presses send.
He sends the message to his mum and dad. To his brothers and sisters. The members of his rowing team, which he had to leave when he moved to Dublin. He sends it to Tara’s parents, and to her sisters and brother. He sends it to Walter’s dad.
Immediately his phone lights up. First, a phone call from his mum. He can’t avoid it.
He taps to answer.
‘Hi, Mum.’
As soon as he hears her voice say, ‘Albert,’ in that tone, in that loving, pitying, motherly tone, he starts to cry.
He spins his chair around to face the River Liffey.
His phone beeps constantly with more messages and incoming calls.
One after the other is as angry as the next, as deeply loving and supportive as can be.
Will light a candle at mass. Al’s sister.
Can’t wait for him to visit – we’ll have words. Al’s mad brother Seán.
Her loss, our gain – come back and join the team. The new stroke’s crap. His rowing cox for ten years, Beano.
Thinking of you during this time. The painter and decorator who painted their house years ago who he must have sent the message to by mistake.
Al takes his time reading through the texts, fully feeling the grief hit him with each message.
He holds the office phone to his ear, long after the phone call to his mum has finished, so Natasha doesn’t disturb him.
The tears flow. The anger from others is comforting and it has the effect of releasing him from his own; he doesn’t have to carry it all on his own anymore.
The comforting messages are like hugs, pats on the back from people he respects and admires, people he has known from childhood, teenage years, people who care.
Living in Dublin had meant he had lost connection with his core group but now it feels alive again, as if they have him, he’s falling and they’re like a giant net catching him.
They’ve been there all this time. His tiny world opens up again.
Suddenly he doesn’t feel angry anymore. Even Walter’s own brother wants to beat his brother up, Tara’s parents are sorry and send their love.
Tara’s sister May is apologising because she doesn’t know what’s going on with her sister.
And Al … Al is just sad. Very, very sad at everything he lost and the people he will lose, because he knows that eventually everyone in Tara’s life will accept her wishes and won’t be a part of his life anymore.
So many relationships wiped out in an instant.
These text messages he is receiving are like a dozen break-ups.
He can’t stop crying. He manages to make his way to the gents without anyone seeing him and he cries in the stall like a kid.
He hasn’t done that since he wasn’t picked for the under-twelve rowing club and he came back better than ever.
He became the under-fourteens national champion.
There has to be a hero story in this nightmare for him but he can’t see it now.
Walter’s dad texts him. He’s a widower, Walter’s mum died when he was fifteen, it was awful watching her die from cancer and Al had been a rock for Walter at that time, like a brother.
Walter’s dad is older than most of their friends’ parents, and he texts back, in broken words – it must have taken him an age to type up what Al deems is a supportive text.
Rodent infestation in their house.