Free No Way to Say Goodbye by Anna McPartlin Page A

herself a whiskey. When she’d finished it, she poured herself a second and a third. After the fourth she passed out on the sofa, waking up the next afternoon, still alone.
    The first time she’d seen Mary in hospital, she waited until they were alone before she stroked her bandaged head. “You’d better not leave me!”
    She wasn’t allowed stay away from school, it being her Leaving Cert year, so she went back to study for a college place she didn’t want. Luckily for her she was clever, and even though she had spent four months without opening a book, she breezed through the exams, as her parents had before her. She wasn’t there on the day that Mary woke, but Adam called to let her know and she cried down the phone. She wasn’t allowed home until the weekend, four days after her best friend had come back to the living. When Penny entered the room Mary burst into tears and Penny’s heart soared because she was so happy to be recognized. That night, to celebrate, she and Adam drank three bottles of her mother’s Christmas wine stash. Penny knew emptiness, but no matter how hard she tried she could never fill it.
    Adam was the kind of kid who would never set the intellectual world on fire, but if you put him in a field with a ball or a stick it was like watching genius. He loved his sports and would have been a much more suitable friend for Ivan’s brothers than the sport-shunning Ivan. But there was something about Ivan that drew Adam to him from the first time they met. He liked his calmness and admired his simplicity. Ivan didn’t care about appearances and Adam enjoyed his friend’s lack of ego – his easy ways relaxed him. If Ivan was the easygoing one and Robert the adventurous one, Adam was the funny one. He could make anyone laugh, even the sternest of his teachers, so he often talked his way out of trouble. Of course, his abilities on the field got him a place on the Kerry youth team and with this came a hint of celebrity – his capacity to pick up a cup and make a joke to a local TV crew had further endeared him to the inhabitants of his small town. But his heart belonged only to Penny.
    A long time before his friend had introduced them, he had watched a young girl with the prettiest blue shoes sit on the wall that separated the primary school from the road. The school was empty, the bell having rung long before, but there she sat, alone, staring at her pretty blue shoes. He hid behind a bush that separated his friend’s father’s land from the road that lay between him and the girl. He was eleven and had been making his way home across the fields when he’d caught sight of her. Her pretty blonde hair shone in the evening sun, and when she eventually raised her cherubic face, he was reminded of an angel in the prayer book his mother had often made him read. He scrambled to hide in the undergrowth in case she caught sight of him.
    The teacher came out, looking at her watch. “Well, Penny, there’s no answer at home,” she said, failing to disguise her annoyance.
    “I’ll be OK,” Penny said. “I’m sure someone will be here soon.” Her voice was full of the kind of sadness that only kids can convey. Adam heard it, but her teacher didn’t.
    “This is the second time this week, not to mention three times last week,” the teacher said. “This is not a baby-sitting service.”
    “I’ll be fine,” Penny said.
    “I can’t leave you here,” the teacher said. “I’ll try your neighbour.”
    Adam watched the woman leave the girl called Penny on her own and he watched the fat tears roll from Penny’s eyes. Don’t cry, he thought. Please don’t cry. Every minute she sat there alone and in tears seemed like an eternity and each moment a lifetime. He was too scared to move, although he wanted to place his arm around her shoulders, so he just sat in the grass pretending he was beside her and willing her to be all right. Penny dried her eyes before her teacher returned to tell her that the