Torn Away by James Heneghan Page A

a whole year, and which is just perfect because Mairead loves to write, and someday, shealways tells them, she will be a famous poet like William Butler Yeats.
    She admired the notebook in Marks and Spencer some weeks earlier. “It would make a perfect diary too,” she said. Declan checked the price and made a quick calculation; he would be able to afford it if he was careful with his pocket money. It had a picture on the cover of a beautiful Victorian lady seated at a desk, writing. “It’s so elegant,” Mairead said, as she stroked its cover with her fingers.
    She is a skinny kid with long, long legs, who walks daintily with her back straight; she has brown hair and lively blue eyes. She takes after her ma. Declan is supposed to take after his da. The new sweater helps fill her out a little and looks good on her. “Take it off while you eat your breakfast,” says their ma, so she peels it off carefully over her head and suddenly she’s skinny again in a faded pink T-shirt that says Make Love Not War. She folds the sweater neatly and carries it into the living room and places it on the back of the sofa for later.
    Breakfast is fried eggs and refried boiled potatoes from last night’s dinner and toast and marmalade with hot milky tea. Maireadlikes tea whenever her ma lets her have it, but mostly she drinks milk. Declan is old enough to choose whatever he wants. He is reading a science fiction book while he eats his breakfast.
    Their ma opens the kitchen window and throws out a handful of crumbs for the birds. Then she sits down with her tea and toast. She takes Declan’s book away from him. “Manners at the table, Declan. I swear to heaven you’ll be reading in your grave.”
    Declan, remembering, ransacks the memory, listens and watches his ma keenly. But despite “grave,” there is no inkling of death in either her voice or her manner. She is relaxed and happy on her daughter’s birthday, looking forward to their outing in the city. She sips her tea, her elbow cupped in her hand, the hot teacup near her pale cheek, her blue eyes drowsy and fond.
    The initial excitement of her birthday gifts over, Mairead is now dreamy. She sips at her glass of milk and gazes over her mother’s head out the kitchen window at a pair of spring sparrows on the sandstone window ledge pecking jerkily at the breadcrumbs. Ten is an important birthday. She had threebirthday cards, one each from Declan and her ma, and one from her friend Rosaleen.
    There is not a sign of doubt or foreboding on her dreamy young face, not a hint in her happiness that today is the day she must die.
    Declan, still remembering, sees himself finish his breakfast and get up from the table. He watches himself run up the stairs and brush his teeth, then grab his lunch off the kitchen table where his ma has left it for him, kiss his ma and Mairead hurriedly, unthinkingly, absent-mindedly, thinking only of Tim O’Malley waiting for him, ready for school, unaware that this is the last time he will ever see his ma and Mairead alive.
    Several hours later he is summoned to the headmaster’s study, and the headmaster is nodding at him. His old, serious face, the creases around his mouth as he speaks the words. The policeman is standing beside the headmaster’s desk. Help? Who can help? Death is a scythe that cuts you down.
    He walks home. The house is empty. Everything is tidy and in its place, just the way they left it before they went off on their birthday jaunt. His eyes search for a message,a note, some final word scribbled by his ma, but there is nothing. The kitchen counter is neat: the toaster with its bright daisy-yellow cover, the teapot with its blue wool cap, cleaned and rinsed, the brown plastic dishrack emptied of its knives and forks and plates. There are still a few crumbs left outside the window from the sparrows.
    He sits on the old sofabed in the living room and stares at his ma’s