Free No Way to Say Goodbye by Anna McPartlin

few hours he was apart from her. Her pregnancy came as a horrible surprise and he blamed himself for it – perhaps his confidences had led her to follow in his footsteps. He wondered if the baby that had survived tumbling down a mountain would suck the life out of its mother. If so, he would despise that child for stealing his best friend.
    The baby surviving had been the first miracle. Mary waking had been the second. That she’d survived without brain damage, the third and final. Her skull was weakened and headaches would haunt her, but medication would keep them mostly at bay and she would be back to herself soon enough. There would be a wheelchair and physiotherapy, a wig to hide the hair loss as a consequence of the operation she had undergone to insert a metal plate into her skull. The baby would grow inside her and Ivan would be at her side through it all, yet they would never speak of her boyfriend’s death or her miracle child. That part of her was closed. But Ivan knew she’d come back to them and every time he made her laugh he knew he was a step closer.
    It was during this time that he first fell in love with Norma. She was a quiet town girl, bookish and pretty. She would ask after his cousin and talk about treatments she’d read about. She planned to study medicine and he was falling in love with her. Mary had been out of the rehabilitation hospital a month when they announced their engagement and Norma’s pregnancy. Their child was less than a year old when Ivan first left his home town for a faraway oil rig that would earn him enough money to support his family, leaving his new wife behind with a baby. She never did become a doctor and it would be too late by the time her husband realized that she felt desperately cheated.
    *
    And then there was Penny – poor Penny – daughter to two solicitors and an only child. Her conception was deemed a mistake as children had never been on her parents’ agenda. They weren’t bad people – at least, not as far as she knew. They weren’t around much and their house was a base rather than a home. Both parents worked mostly in Cork, staying in their apartment there, only popping back at weekends. Their child was cared for by a series of live-in nannies until she was old enough to be sent to boarding-school.
    “If it’s good enough for royalty, it’s good enough for you, darling!” her mother would say, smiling.
    Mary had plonked herself beside Penny on that first train journey, taking them towards their new life in Dublin. They didn’t really know each other as they had attended different primary schools but Penny’s face was familiar – they had grown up in the same small town. Penny had been sad but Mary was excited at the prospect of a new school and a new world, and by the time they had reached Dublin she had managed to infuse that excitement into her new best friend. Penny and Mary were kindred spirits from the start. Mary might have been the child that the townspeople pitied – she was the one they whispered about as she passed, her dead mother never far behind – but Penny suffered from her parents’ rejection and Mary understood that. She had no mother but she did have a father, which was more than Penny had. From the day she sat down beside Penny, Mary would do everything to guarantee that she wouldn’t feel lonely again, including introducing her to one of Ivan’s best friends, Adam. Mary swore he was perfect for her. She was right: Adam and Penny were inseparable from the start.
    When Mary nearly died, Penny thought she might just die with her. She returned to an empty house and spoke with Adam on the phone. He told her that her best friend might not live through the night. He was desperate to be with her but his parents wouldn’t let him leave the house, not after his friend had plunged to his death leaving his half-dead girlfriend with child. That night, alone in her big empty house, she opened her parents’ drinks cabinet and poured