Pack Up the Moon Read Free

enjoy their new fortune.
    “It’s a fantastic idea! We can celebrate his life and the fact that our good friends are loaded,” Sean insisted.
    Eventually Anne succumbed and so it came to pass
    that the day I discovered I would not bring a new life into
    the world was the day that my world changed forever.
    *
    I thought about writing to you for such a long time. I never actually dreamed I’d get around to it, but when I did, it seemed so easy. Memories are absurd things. Some are vague, some crystalline, some too painful to recollect and some so painful it’s impossible to forget. Happy times are remembered with warmth and laughter, recalled as an anecdote in the pub, exaggerated for the crowd. The really good ones keep you company on an otherwise lonely
    evening. The clearest memories are of those occasions when you experience great highs or lows. It’s the emotion the situation inspires that you remember. That feeling of incredible exultation or terrible despair enables your brain
    to note the details that normally pass you by like the
    colour of someone’s shirt, a hand gesture or how warm or cold it was.
    You can recall the creases caused by the smile on a
    loved one’s lips or the way tears crept from their eyes. But pain is hard to put into words and in life there is always
    pain. It’s as natural as birth or death. Pain makes us who we are, it teaches us and tames us, it can destroy and it can save. We all have regrets — even Frank Sinatra had a few
    Some tragedies are of our own doing and then sometimes
    things happen that are out of this world’s control and
    when it happens, it can take our breath away.
    Happiness is a gift. It washes its warmth over us and reminds us of beauty. It should never be taken for granted. I should never have taken it for granted. That thin blue line represented happiness. I didn’t know that it would later represent something that I would never get back. But then I wasn’t ready.

Chapter 2
    Space-Hoppers, Cigarettes and Lipstick
    My little drama concluded, I was now in the bath trying to wash St Fintan’s secondary school away. Despite my good fortune I was in a bad mood and not looking
    forward to the party that I had partly instigated. The door unlocked, John entered and his grin suggested that my earlier outburst had been forgiven.
    “Can I wash your back?”
    I told him to piss off.
    “Will you wash my back?”
    I gave him the fingers.
    “Ah, the little bastards gave you a hard time,” he laughed.
    “Don’t call my students little bastards!” I admonished.
    “Why not? You do. Besides, when they piss you off, I have to live with the consequences, so I feel I have a right.”
    He was right.
    “Alright, I’ll allow you to cheer me up,” I grinned.
     
    “That’s good of you,” he said, kneeling on the floor and playing with my bath water, his eyes glinting.
    I melted. “OK then. Get in but don’t push me into the taps,” I warned.
    His clothes were off almost before I got to the word
    “taps”. He sat in behind me and we lay in the warm water, his arms around my gloriously empty stomach and the water sloshing over the side. I let some out, leaned back and asked him how his day went. He responded by telling me about a fantastic psychological test that he had
    pulled off the net and I was instantly sorry that I’d asked.
    “It’s great — I’ve got to do it on you,” he threatened.
    I looked around at him. “That’s sexy,” I said.
    “It’s great — it’s a laugh. But you’ll need some paper.” “I’m in the bath,” I pointed out while trying to get comfortable.
    He started to wash my back. “It’s very telling,” he said ominously.
    I told him that, after six years, I was under the impression he knew everything there was to know about
    me. He smiled smugly.
    “There’s always more, Em. Sometimes we don’t even know ourselves. Like for instance, until yesterday I didn’t know that I could eat two Big Macs, a large fries, six chicken