Free One Hundred Names (Special Edition) by Cecelia Ahern

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    Kitty took the 123 bus to O’Connell Street and then the 140 to Finglas. One hour after setting out on her journey, and constantly going over her words in her head, she arrived at her destination and she still didn’t even know what to say. She stood across the green from Colin Maguire’s house while kids raced around her on their bikes, almost knocking her over as if she wasn’t even there. She suddenly wished she wasn’t. At that hour the streets were busy with mothers and their children coming and going, but none seemed to take any notice of a stranger’s presence. Not yet. She was sure it would be only a matter a time before one of the children alerted its mother to a strange woman lurking at the green. The green was a one-hundred-metre stretch of grass with a diagonal pathway going through it from one exit to another, surrounded by a small knee-high wall. She wasn’t protected by anything, she was completely exposed, and all that stood between her and Colin’s house was distance and her own terror.
    As she looked around at the neighbours, she took in their faces, wondering if they had been at the courthouse, if they had been the ones shouting at her, if they were the people who came to her door with spray paint and toilet paper while she slept inside or while she slipped out to work. Were they watching her all the time as she was watching them now? With a hat pulled low over her face, she watched Colin Maguire’s house and tried to decide whether to approach and, if so, what to say.
    Sorry. Sorry for ruining your life. Sorry you were suspended from your job, sorry you were rejected from your community. Sorry that, for whatever reason, I’m sure related in some way to the story, you’ve had to put your house on the market. Sorry your marriage has suffered as a consequence. Sorry for putting your job in jeopardy. Sorry for embarrassing your family and destroying personal relationships. I know you mustn’t think that I understand, that I’m a heartless bitch who couldn’t possibly understand, but I do. Believe me, I do. I understand because I’m going through it too. That’s what she wanted to say but she knew it was an apology that was full of self-sympathy and she needed to be selfless. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to be so because she felt she was suffering so much. It was her fault, yes it was, but they were both suffering, and whoever loved him and was trying to protect him was causing her misery to continue.
    She studied the house, which had a ‘For Sale’ notice in the garden. There was no sign of his children, no bikes in the garden, no toys on the windowsill, the car was still in the drive. It was Colin’s car. She remembered chasing him to it after school with a camera in his face, his look bewildered and confused. She had thought he was a criminal then. She had been so sure he was, but to think of the things she’d said to him made her ashamed now. She wondered if the car in the driveway meant that he hadn’t gone back to work yet. She assumed his job was still open to him now that his name was well and truly cleared. Or perhaps the stigma was too great for him to return.
    Sorry.
    Colin was thirty-eight years old. He started working in the Finglas Community Secondary School, for twelve- to eighteen-year-olds, as soon as he finished college at the age of twenty-four. He was popular with the students, to his detriment, often a regular at the end-of-year debutante balls, a supportive young teacher they didn’t consider a proper teacher as he failed to dish out homework, and punishments other than press-ups while forced to sing the latest songs in the charts. He was the teacher whom students felt they could go to when in need, and as a reward for his popularity was made class tutor on many occasions, unusual for a physical education teacher in that particular school. When he turned down the advances of sixteen-year-old Tanya O’Brien, he suffered the consequences ten years later. For