One Hundred Names

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Kitty and the rest of the gang, apart from Molly, waited in a café in Mallow town in Cork, while Molly was inside the garda station being questioned.

‘I’m not making this up, Pete,’ Kitty hissed down the phone. ‘Of course, I want to be at the meeting today, but I’m in Cork and there’s no way I can get there by six o’clock. What about tomorrow?’

‘No, Kitty. I’m not dragging everyone back in here on a Saturday. We’ve already wasted enough time waiting for your story and we don’t even know what that story is! This is ridiculous. Everything revolves around Constance’s story, everybody has been working their arses off to meet this deadline, and you are swanning around-’

‘Excuse me, I have put every single second I have into this story and you know it. Fine! I’ll find a way to get there on time.’ She hung up and bit her nails.

Steve looked at her, eyebrows raised.

‘Pete’s a prick,’ she said simply. ‘If I don’t get there by six o’clock he’s pulling my story.’ She didn’t mean for everybody else to hear but unfortunately that’s what happened.

‘No, Kitty.’ Jedrek stood up. ‘We can’t let this happen. You must run the story. What can we do to help?’

‘Oh, Jedrek, thank you,’ she said, touched. ‘I appreciate you all caring for me so much but I just don’t know how to get to my meeting by six. If Molly doesn’t come out of there in the next five minutes there’s no way I can make it to the office.’

‘No offence, Kitty,’ Jedrek said seriously. ‘Of course we respect you and your duty to your editor and friend, and we know that your job is important to you, but we have put our lives in your hands. We have told you our private stories and given you the pen to write it. It is not just you who needs this story written, it is us. It is our story.’

Kitty looked at Steve, who was looking back at her as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. The penny finally dropped: this wasn’t about her, this wasn’t merely about honouring Constance’s story and saving her own professional skin. This was their lives, their stories, and she owed these people. Feeling humbled, she snapped into action.

Thirty minutes later, Molly had been freed from custody and they were on the road back to Dublin.

‘I don’t understand, Kitty, what did you say to them?’

‘I just got on the phone to the nursing home, to Bernadette.’

‘No, not Bernadette! She’ll fire me for sure,’ Molly moaned.

‘She won’t fire you,’ Kitty said confidently, ‘but she’ll probably make your life a living hell for a few months. I just explained the entire thing to her, what we had done and why, and told her to drop the charges and tell the guards to let you go. They’re using the local school bus for the Pink Ladies today instead, so we have time so can you please step on it and follow my directions?’

‘Why, where are we going?’ she asked, startled.

‘A little detour,’ Kitty said, biting her nails and watching the clock as it got dangerously close to 6 p.m.

At six thirty, they pulled up outside Etcetera’s offices in the bus. Pete was close to calling the entire thing off but Kitty had phoned regularly en route and was insistent they could make it.

‘Okay, everybody, I promise this will be quick. Follow me, please.’

‘Good luck.’ Steve winked at her.

Ready for another adventure, the party all climbed off the bus and followed her.

Rebecca, the art director, was standing at the open door looking out anxiously.

‘Kitty, thank God,’ she said, when Kitty ran up the stairs. ‘He’s going insane in there. I don’t envy you right now.’ She pulled Kitty’s coat from her shoulders, and then looked at the team of people who followed after her, in shock. ‘Who are all these people, Kitty? Kitty…?’ she followed them all, wide-eyed.

‘Can you all just wait here a moment, please?’ Kitty said to them, took a deep breath and entered the meeting room. It smelled of coffee, sweat and anger. There was also a lot of frustration and irritation emanating from the pore of every person at the table and it was all directed at her.

‘Hi, everyone,’ she said, breathless. ‘I’m so sorry I’m late. You wouldn’t believe what I had to go through to get here.’

They groaned and mumbled something about what they’d been through to get there too but Kitty hurried on, glad to see Bob was in attendance, which meant that Cheryl was no longer in her acting deputy editor role. Kitty looked from Pete to Cheryl and smiled sweetly. ‘Hi, guys, nice to see you again.’

Cheryl reddened and looked away.

‘Two weeks ago I was given the task of writing Constance’s final piece. Something I was hugely honoured to do, and something I thought hard about because as we all know Constance was a true professional, a perfectionist, never accepted anything but the best, and I didn’t have a huge amount of faith in myself in delivering. I know many of you in this room felt the same and I understand why.’ She swallowed as there were a lot of shared looks to prove she was right. Nobody believed she could pull this off. ‘But a lot has changed in two weeks, believe me.

‘All I had to go on with Constance’s story was one hundred names. That was it. No synopsis, no explanation, no outline, absolutely nothing but a random list of people that nobody had ever heard of. I had no way of contacting them, no way of knowing what the story was about, nothing at all. That’s why it has taken me so long to come to this meeting,’ she explained. She could see that few people had been let in on this fact. ‘It was left up to me to find a common link between these one hundred people and it was believed, I believed, that this is where the story lay. So far, I have met with six of those people.’

Pete let out an exasperated sigh.

Kitty turned to him. ‘Pete, there was no way in the world I was going to meet and speak with one hundred people within two weeks, people who had no idea that there was an intention for them to even be written about.’

‘Constance hadn’t contacted them?’ Rebecca asked.

‘No!’ Kitty laughed. ‘Constance didn’t even know who they were!’

The others looked at each other in confusion.

‘It’s all so perfectly clear to me now,’ Kitty explained. ‘The last time I met with Constance she lectured me, as she always did, on the art of writing a good story. She told me that to seek the truth is not necessarily to go on a mission all guns blazing in order to reveal a lie, neither is it to be particularly ground-breaking – it is simply to get to the heart of what is real.

‘My job was not to uncover a secret or a lie or find something earth-shattering that one hundred people were hiding from me, it was simply to listen to their truths.

‘Constance’s idea was this,’ she paused. ‘It’s very simple. If you were to randomly select one hundred people from a phone directory, you would not only find a story, you would find one hundred stories, because everybody, every single person, has a story to tell. Every single ordinary person has an extraordinary story. We might all think that we are unremarkable, that our lives are boring, just because we aren’t doing ground-breaking things or making headlines or winning awards. But the truth is we all do something that is fascinating, that is brave, that is something we should be proud of. Every day people do things that are not celebrated. That is what we should be writing about. The unsung heroes, the people that don’t believe they are heroes at all because they are just doing what they believe they have to do in their lives.’

It was completely quiet in the room.

‘Everybody has a story to tell,’ she said. ‘That is what links us all, that is what links all the names on the list. Constance was simply getting back to basics.’

Kitty looked around the room and saw Bob’s eyes shining with tears, his chin trembling as he struggled to compose himself as Constance’s story finally came to life, as the silenced Constance finally found her voice.

‘Constance’s story is titled One Hundred Names and I’m sorry, Pete, but I don’t have one story for you. Right now I have six stories.’

Kitty made her way over to the projector and placed Constance’s original list on the surface and flicked the switch. The names were revealed on the wall behind her.

‘These are the one hundred names, now, please, meet the people.’

She opened the door and all eyes turned in surprise to see Ambrose Nolan, Eva Wu, Archie Hamilton, Jedrek Vysotski, Bridget Murphy and Mary-Rose Godfrey all enter the room, looking around shyly, proudly, and with confusion all at the same time.

‘Everybody please meet name number two, also known as Ambrose Nolan. A fascinating woman who dedicates her life to capturing the essence of beauty.’

Ambrose looked down and her wild red hair covered more of her face than ever before.

‘Ambrose dedicates her life to celebrating butterflies; on her conservation site she helps to create new life but in her museum she also celebrates the life of those that have been and gone. I have heard her describe herself as a Small Tortoiseshell species of butterfly, but I liken her more to the Brown Hairstreak.’ Ambrose looked up at Kitty in surprise. Kitty smiled. ‘Few people have seen this elegant butterfly, but when they do, the female is so striking with its orange band that they never forget its beauty.’

Ambrose’s look of surprise slowly transformed to a faint smile of thanks and then she disappeared behind her hair again.

‘Please meet name number three, Eva Wu, a woman who was given a Pandora’s Box filled with hope at a time in her life when she felt like there was none, and because of that was blessed with the gift of bringing hope into other people’s lives.’ Eva’s eyes filled and she looked down. ‘Through her company, “Dedicated”, Eva Wu is more than a personal shopper. I liken her to an angel who spends a period of time in people’s lives, observing them with the keenest of eyes to make a journalist like me jealous, and gives them the greatest gift of all – not what people think that they want, but gifts that people never even know they need at all until they receive them and realise they were incomplete without.’

Birdie, knowing more than anyone in the room that there was truth to this, reached out and held Eva’s hand. She rubbed it warmly with her other.

‘Meet name number four, Jedrek Vysotski, a husband, father and courageous man, who wanted to prove to the world that he was able to achieve something, that he was worth something, that he could stand out from the crowd even when he felt the world was telling him he couldn’t.’

Jedrek proudly lifted his chin higher in the air and focused on the audience before him.

‘Jedrek and his friend Achar successfully completed a task that will ensure they are in Guinness World Records, where it will be forever in print that they are men of extraordinary dedication and talent. And for Jedrek, proof that he is a man of worth.

‘Meet name number six, Bridget “Birdie” Murphy, a woman with unfinished business who turned eighty-five years old and collected on a bet she’d made over sixty years ago with a man, with an entire town, who believed she would never live to see this day.’ Birdie smiled shyly at the audience before her. ‘Birdie is one of the sweetest, gentlest and most inspiring women I’ve ever met and has shared with me a story of true survival, survival that has been rewarded not just financially but most importantly by being fruitful, by being surrounded by people who she loves and who love her. There is nothing boring about that,’ Kitty said to Birdie, remembering Birdie’s embarrassment at having to relate her life story. ‘At eighteen years old, she took a bet and the bet paid off, and it’s a lesson we can all learn from.’

‘Meet name number seven, Mary-Rose Godfrey, carer and proposee, a girl who gives so much and for it, receives a proposal at least once a week.’ Mary-Rose laughed and a tear trickled down her cheek. ‘Mary-Rose’s mother sadly suffered a stroke and because of that Mary-Rose was introduced to the world of the sick. She goes to hospitals to do hair, make-up and sometimes nails,’ Kitty heard Mary-Rose laugh nervously, ‘and through these simple acts she is like a beacon of light to the people who ask for her. But what Mary-Rose doesn’t know is that it’s her and not what she does that lights up the room. It’s the conversation she brings, her mere presence, which has the ability to, albeit momentarily, heal people.

‘And finally, name number sixty-seven, Archie Hamilton. Archie’s beloved daughter, Rebecca, was murdered before her sixteenth birthday. Archie, probably doing what most fathers would do, protected his daughter by seeking out the man who took her life, and took the law into his own hands. For that he spent years in prison but emerged with an entirely new outlook on life. An outlook that is,’ she looked at Archie and smiled, ‘beyond fascinating and illuminating. Archie believed that God wasn’t listening when he needed Him most, he felt forgotten and left behind, and his saviour was to wake up one day to hear the voices of those in need as much as he once was, and have the ability to help answer their prayers.’

Archie’s jaw hardened as he tried hard not to let his emotions show.

Kitty turned away from her emotional group of friends and looked back at her colleagues, some who were deeply moved by her words, by their stories.

‘What I’ve told you about them here is merely an introduction to who these people are. There is so much more for me to say about them, and so much more for you to learn about them. Pete, there are so many fascinating, amazing people out there with stories to tell that they don’t even know are interesting. The stories are endless; we have an entire telephone directory of inspiration. You’ve seen the one hundred names, you’ve seen the people, now I propose that you read their stories in Constance’s final piece: one story dedicated to each name on her list, each month, in a feature titled One Hundred Names. And when that list runs out we randomly select one hundred more.’

Kitty was finished talking and she held her breath for a reaction. There was complete silence. She looked at the others standing alongside her, not knowing what to say. Mary-Rose’s eyes widened, Eva’s cheeks pinked, Birdie reached out to a chair to steady herself.

Suddenly Bob stood up, and started clapping, slowly at first, then it built, and Kitty saw the tears in his eyes and gradually the others began to join in, applauding, Rebecca with excitement and the others with appreciation and even admiration. Kitty looked at Pete and he was smiling, a small smile that was gradually building. He looked along the line of people she had brought into the room and then his eyes rested on Kitty. He smiled at her, nodded at her reassuringly so that she knew she’d done it, she knew she’d pulled it off. Then he joined in, clapping along with the others.

Kitty had never in her whole life felt prouder. She put an arm around Mary-Rose, who was beside her, and instinctively they all grouped together in a circle, the little team that they had become, the friends she had made and who she knew she would remain in contact with, and they hugged collectively as they listened to the applause.

The St Margaret’s Nursing Home bus pulled up to the famous meeting spot dubbed ‘under the clock at Clerys’ where they had all met at the start of their journey. Not yet ready to say goodbye, they remained in their seats in a hushed silence. Each took a moment to gather his or her thoughts, to revel in the experience they had just had, most likely the last that they would share together. Archie was the first to stand. He looked around at the others, the quiet still enveloping them all. He nodded to them, and made his way to the front of the bus. Then they all followed.

Despite their promising to meet again – some had swapped phone numbers, some had even already made dates – Kitty knew that realistically it would be a hard task to bring them all together again, to get every single person back in the same room, or on the same bus. But as she watched them from her window seat all go their separate ways, she knew in her heart of hearts that she would do everything in her power to try. She had ninety-four more people to meet and ninety-four more friends to make, but she knew that this bunch would always be extra special to her, for they had helped change her life, had, in a way, saved her. She would reunite them again. One day.