Aidan sat in the boardroom of Mason Fidelity Investments and looked at his watch. It was just after eleven a.m. He wondered how much longer this presentation was going to go on for. Joe, the guy who was standing at the top of the boardroom, had recently been recruited on their graduate programme and was keen to make an impression on the company directors, but Aidan didn’t have time for his long, drawn-out style. He needed to leave early that evening because his fourteen-year-old son Callum had a rugby match after school. Aidan had a lot of work to get through that day and if Joe didn’t wrap it up soon, he might not make it. He had missed the last match because he had got delayed in a meeting and Callum still hadn’t forgiven him for it, so he had promised that no matter what happened, he’d be there today.
He looked beyond the boardroom glass out across Dublin’s International Financial Services Centre skyline, where the graceful arc of the Samuel Beckett bridge spanned the broad mouth of the River Liffey just before it entered Dublin Bay. He could see other workers scurrying behind glass-fronted offices just like his. Everyone busy and time-pressed and wrapped up in their own pressures and deadlines.
‘Aidan?’ a voice was calling, jolting him out of his thoughts.
He swung his head around from the window and the strangest sight greeted him. A young female Garda, accompanied by Brenda, the company’s receptionist, was now standing in the boardroom. Her inky-blue utilitarian Garda uniform with its blouson jacket and loose-fitting cargo trousers was in contrast with the sharp-cut suits sitting around the boardroom table. She looked young, probably in her mid-twenties. He was always remarking to Rowan that the Gardaí were getting younger and she usually teased him that it was he who was getting older. For some reason, all the eyes around the boardroom table were fixed on him, as if waiting for him to explain what was going on, but he was as nonplussed as they were.
‘Aidan… eh… this is Garda Rachel Sullivan… sh-she would like to talk to you,’ Brenda explained eventually. She seemed nervous, on edge. She was sliding the circular pendant of her necklace over and back across its chain.
‘To me?’ Aidan asked dumbfounded.
‘I was wondering if we could go somewhere private?’ Garda Sullivan was saying now.
‘I have a meeting room free down the hall,’ Brenda said to the Garda, flashing Aidan an anxious look.
‘Take as long as you need,’ Richard, their chairman, said with a wave of his hand.
Aidan followed Brenda and Garda Sullivan down the corridor to the meeting room wondering what the hell was going on. He felt mildly irritated at the Garda; he had so much to get through before he left that day and this was going to set him back even further. Who did she think she was, coming here in front of his colleagues and making a scene like this? He couldn’t think of any misdemeanours he had committed; in fact he’d never been on the wrong side of the law. It could only be a parking offence or something equally minor. He hoped they weren’t causing all this drama for parking on a double-yellow line; wasting taxpayers’ money for something so insignificant.
‘Can I get you a tea or coffee?’ Brenda offered as she brought them inside the meeting room.
Aidan and Garda Sullivan shook their heads simultaneously, both waiting for Brenda to leave so they could get on with the reason for this visit.
‘Just to confirm, you are Aidan Whelan?’ Garda Sullivan began once Brenda had closed the door behind them.
Aidan nodded. ‘Look, can you tell me what this is about? I’m in the middle of a meeting.’ He just wanted her to get to the point.
‘Are you the husband of Rowan Whelan?’ Garda Sullivan continued, unperturbed by his self-importance. She had clear green eyes and her auburn hair was tied back in a neat ponytail.
‘Yes,’ he replied impatiently. ‘Can you please tell me what’s going on here?’
‘I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Mr Whelan, your wife and daughter were involved in a serious road traffic accident on the Coast Road shortly after nine a.m. this morning.’
Aidan felt as though he was hearing her from one end of a tunnel. The words felt all wrong. What was she saying about an accident? He shook his head, trying to reorder everything.
‘Rowan and Milly?’ he gasped. ‘Are you sure?’ They wouldn’t be on the Coast Road. That wasn’t the route they would have taken. They would have dropped the boys to school for nine and went on to the playschool afterwards, like they usually did. He felt a flicker of hope turn on like a switch inside him. Maybe Garda Sullivan had got this wrong, made a mistake…
‘The car was registered in your wife’s name and she was carrying identification. I’m so sorry, Mr Whelan, it is definitely them,’ she stated solemnly, leaving him no room for doubt. No hope.
‘Are they… are they okay?’ the words tumbled from his mouth.
‘I’m afraid they were both taken from the scene by ambulance. You need to get to the Dublin City Hospital quickly,’ she advised. ‘I can take you there.’
The room around him seemed to shift and swirl. His ears were ringing with the words. ‘She should have been taking her to playschool,’ was all he could think of to say.
Garda Sullivan nodded sympathetically. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Whelan, we should go to the hospital now.’ She was kind but firm.
He pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘I’ll just tell Richard and the board where I’m going…’
‘You don’t have time, you need to go now, Aidan,’ she urged and Aidan saw by the crease of her forehead that this was serious.
The thrust of her words suddenly plunged into him. He thought of his daughter with her glossy hair and rounded, sweet face, giggling when he had caught her in the act of hiding a chocolate bar in her Peppa Pig lunch bag that morning. He thought of Rowan with her dark, wavy hair bouncing around her shoulders as she had danced with the kids in the kitchen. Had he even kissed her goodbye as he had hurried out the door? He couldn’t remember. He had kissed the children, he always kissed them, but he hadn’t kissed his wife. Oh, God, no.
‘You have to tell me, will they be okay?’ he begged.
‘I’m very sorry but I don’t have an update on their condition.’ She shook her head. ‘The hospital will be able to give you more details. We should go now.’
As he followed Garda Sullivan out of the meeting room, Aidan’s legs felt like those of the Action Men he had played with as a child with stiff joints that worked independently of one another; it was as if he couldn’t get them to move properly. The open-plan office was now eerily quiet and he was aware of the eyes of his colleagues surveying the scene as they wondered what was going on.
Surely this wasn’t happening? It couldn’t be happening. Things like this didn’t happen to him. They happened to other people. But as he walked past Brenda at the reception desk, her eyes two pools of worry as he left in the company of a Garda, he knew somehow it was real. How he longed to go back to before; before when he was stuck in a tedious presentation, when Rowan was taking their daughter to playschool and everything was okay in his world.
This was all going to be all right, he told himself. His wife and his daughter would be fine because they had to be. There was no other option.