Chapter 1

A Chapter by fmalone

THE CRUCIFICTION KILLINGS

PROLOGUE

Terry Watson and Jack Nielsen had been best friends when they were both in sixth class at Rialto Primary School in the suburbs of Dublin. Terry was an altar boy in the church of Saint Dolores; an old, stone-built traditional church at the cross-roads with Crumlin road and the South Circular road. After the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament ceremony on Wednesday night when the priest and worshippers had left Terry asked him back to the sacristy to show him around. Jack had never been in a place like this before and he immediately felt uneasy. The sacristy was a spacious room behind the main altar, its wood-panelling ingrained with a century of incense, wood-polish and candle-wax. Sacred pictures adorned the walls and there was an old carved wooden wardrobe for the priests’ vestments. Candlesticks, copies of the Bible and various prayer books and pamphlets were laid out neatly on an oak table. Terry who was always up to mischief of one sort or another told Jack that the press containing the altar wine and the wafers had been left open by mistake. He took out an opened bottle of wine and had a few swigs then handed it to Jack. It tasted pretty good; strong but sweet, so they finished what was left of the bottle, opened another and started on that. His friend took out some Communion wafers from a box, ate a few and offered them to Jack.

“Here try some of these Jack; they’re supposed to be bread but they don’t taste anything like sliced pan, they’re real gooey but I’m bleedin’ starvin’.”

Jack took a handful and was eating them like crisps; they didn’t taste anything like crisps either. They were both a bit tipsy.

“You know it’s a mortal sin- sarkerlidge I think they call it what we just done,” Terry giggled, “it’s really, really bad. You have to go to Confession to a bishop for doing it or you go to Hell.”

He didn’t seem to mind too much, Jack was a bit concerned though. His teacher had told him that Hell was where you went if you died with a mortal sin on your soul and it was a place of everlasting torment, blazing fire, and ugly divils always poking you with their prongs and not a drop of water to be had anywhere to wet your tongue.

“Why do you have to go to Confession to a bishop?” Jack asked through a mouthful of Communion wafers. “Can a priest not do it?” I don’t know any bishops; I never heard of any living on our estate.”

Terry explained patiently.

“I don’t know why but Father Nevin told us that you have to go to the bishop’s palace if you do a sarkerlidge, and drinking their wine is one ‘cos it’s special and only priests are supposed to drink it. Course he might have been spoofing so’s we wouldn’t be tempted to have a couple of slugs. Anyway the palace where the bishop lives is a huge big place out on the North side somewhere, miles and miles away.”

“A palace! He lives in a f*****g palace? I thought only kings lived in palaces. There’s no way I’m going to Confession to a bishop,” Jack was adamant, “not on the North side anyway, I heard they eat their babies out there.”

“Then you’ll go to hell,” Terry was glad to tell him

The wafers were dry and stuck to the roof of their mouths.

They were still knocking back the wine when they heard a noise.

“That’s father Nevin,” Terry whispered, “he’s back early. If he catches us here we’re fucked- quick, hide.”

Jack was alarmed. Terry took off to a narrow side door beckoning his friend to follow. They could hear the swish of the priest’s garments and the heavy jangle of keys. “Up this way, follow me quick, quick.” he whispered, ducking behind a door.

On tiptoe and with his heart thumping Jack followed his friend up winding stone steps to a large dark storeroom. They listened. The priest was locking up the church for the night and Terry realised that there was no way they could get out. The priest left. They were both scared. There was just one flower-shaped stained-glass window high up on the gable wall which cast a weak beam of dusty light on the stone floor of the store-room. The silence was thick. All around them were ancient dust-covered statues of sorrowful saints whose eyes seemed to follow them angrily as if appalled by their terrible sin. Some of the statues were covered in dark purple sheets which made them look even scarier when the sheets moved in a slight draught. They sat down on some old pews and worried about what they would do.

“Me ma will kill me,” Jack whispered, “I told her I’d be home to mind the house before she went out to the pub. What’ll we do? How the f**k can we get out?” Terry had no answers.

“My da is the same; he’ll think I’ve stayed out with the gang like the last time and he’ll beat the shite outta me. He’s afraid I’m taking drugs or something.”

He was imagining the belting already.

Jack was angry.

“It’s your fault for getting us into this f*****g shite, yer a bleedin’ eejit don’t know why I knock around with ya.”

“It’ not my fault, and I’m not an eejit, how was I to know we’d get locked in.” Terry was huffed.

They were both feeling cold in their light clothing.

The beam of light from the window began to fade and silence filled the darkness. The old heating system had been turned off and soon mysterious rattles and bangs sharpened their fear as the pipes cooled and the pair got colder and colder. When their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness the faces of the plaster saints seemed to emerge from the gloom and Jack fancied that they moved and opened their plaster mouths as if trying to curse them.

“Listen, what’s that?” Terry exclaimed. He was frightened and Jack picked up on his fear. “What was it,” he asked. “What’d you hear?”

“Footsteps downstairs,” Terry whispered, “somebody moving around, definitely I heard them.”

Jacks heart did a somersault. They listened closely holding their breaths. They heard a sigh from below and then heavy footsteps walking slowly down the main aisle echoing off the walls of the empty church. The narrow door that led up the steps to the store-room creaked slowly open. They hid behind a heavy curtain too scared to move a muscle. Someone was climbing the steps holding a lighted candle which cast flickering shadows on the old stone stairway. Another sigh and a wheeze of breath then a man in the black garb of a priest walked across the room and laid a heavy silver candlestick on a table. A big white towel hung over his shoulder. He fetched a step- ladder and positioned it against the gable wall beneath the window. The two boys cowered, petrified, behind the curtain, trying not to breathe. The priest climbed up and pulled down a purple sheet to reveal a life-sized depiction of an agonised plaster Christ hanging from a wooden cross. Every effort had been made by the statue- makers to portray as grisly an image as possible with the liberal use of crimson paint, deep open wounds and lash marks across the body.

Then the priest did something very strange. He lifted the head of Christ off the body, climbed down the steps and laid the head on the floor within inches of where the boys were hidden. Jack peeped round and saw the fearful head at his feet. It was crowned with sharp thorns and looked so realistic it scared him shitless. The priest climbed the ladder again and stuck his arm down into the hole where the head had been. He pulled out something like a long leather pouch and descended, then knelt in prayer for some time, crossed himself reverently and stood. He removed the clothes from his upper body and wrapped the towel around his waist. Taking a long leather whip from the pouch he lashed his back till blood ran and the towel turned red. The boys heard his grunts and the whack of leather on flesh. Twenty times he did this, then knelt and prayed again. He wiped the blood in the towel, dressed himself, returned everything to its place and left.

When he had gone Terry whispered. “That’s Tuohy the priest I help at Mass. Did you see what he did?” he asked incredulously. “Lashing himself like that? He must be f*****g crazy.” He looked around fearfully.

“This place is giving me the f*****g creeps. That head on the floor scared the shite outta me. I thought its eyes was looking at me, and then…..”

Jack couldn’t get the image from his mind. He just looked at his friend open-mouthed. What he had seen made no sense at all.

“F**k me pink, this is too weird. What was he doing that to himself for? All that blood- f*****g hell. Lucky he didn’t see us or he might’ve started lashing us too.”

His knees were jiggering, his mind had already fled outside but his body was going nowhere. The church was locked and deathly silent again.

”Do you think he’s gone?” Jack whispered.

“Must be, I can’t hear a sound.” They listened again.

“C’mon let’s get the f**k outa here; there might be a way out downstairs.”

Terry led the way tip-toeing down the steps followed by Jack who kept looking fearfully behind him. It was brighter in the main body of the church but the silence was unearthly. They felt they were being watched by unseen eyes and they were looking all around them ready to run. Every door they tried was heavily bolted. It was colder than ever down here with no way of keeping warm and no way out. They realised that they were trapped until the priest opened up for seven o’clock Mass next morning. Jack looked into a confession box. There was a small electric heater near the floor. He found and flicked the switch and the heater began to glow. Beckoning Terry over, he showed him the set-up and sat into the priest’s cubicle. Terry found his own place in Father Nevins box next door and they waited out the long night. In the silence Jack could hear his friend mutter an Act of Contrition. “O my God I am heartily sorry…”

After an hour Jack fell asleep and troubled dreams began.

He was standing at the bottom of the winding stone stairway looking upwards.

Out of the grey light disembodied heads moaned as they made their way down the stairway step by step towards him. All the heads were crowned with thorns. Blood filled their eyes and ran down their faces. Some of the heads looked familiar. They called his name. He tried to run but no matter how hard he tried he could not; when he looked down, to his horror he saw that his bare feet were nailed to the ground and bleeding. His mother’s severed head rolled down to the bottom step and grinned at him. She stuck out her tongue, wagging it lasciviously. Her hair had turned grey and clumps were missing exposing blackened skin; her teeth were broken and yellowed- her eyes like boiled eggs. He heard an unearthly drawn out groan and looked up. The heavy wooden cross with the headless crucified figure stood at the top of the steps and then began to descend. It swayed and thunked on every step until it reached the bottom. His mother’s mad laughter echoed through the church as the nightmare figure ripped its bleeding hands from the cross and reached out its arms to embrace him.

MY NAME IS JACK AND I LIVE IN THE BACK OF THE GRETA GARBO HOME

FOR WAYWARD BOYS AND GIRLS.

THERE’S LOTS OF FUN AND I LOVE TO RUN UP AND DOWN THE STAIRS

I MAKE AS MUCH NOISE AS I WANT AND NO-ONE EVER CARES.

Jack loved that song, even though it was a real oldie. It reminded him of his first love- and his last. She was a beautiful young girl named Sally, incarcerated with him in the Blackrock School for Young Delinquents, subsequently changed to the more refined Renborough House, catering for children and youths with social and emotional issues as they so delicately put it in their new brochure. He loved it there, he could do what he liked and nobody belted him for doing anything wrong. Matters were ‘teased out’ as the teachers were fond of saying. It was just like the words of the song.

He was doing really well. The people who ran the place all pretended to be nice and he got birthday presents and everything and loads to eat. There were clean sheets on his bed and he even got to wear pyjamas at night. At Christmas Santy was supposed to visit and everyone got really cool stuff- but Santy was one of the teachers dressed up, and sometimes when no-one was looking he liked to put his hands where he shouldn’t have put his hands.

But he was okay most of the time and he often gave Jack money and stuff when he came to him for a chat.

Santy usually had a bottle of Powers whiskey in his room which he would give to some of the pupils with the purpose of getting them drunk, but Jack could drink whiskey off a scabby leg as they say in Dublin. He had learned to drink at his mother’s knee and in his mother’s bedroom and it was Santy who would end up getting plastered. When he was in that state it was easy to rob his money and anything else that was around. Even if he remembered what had happened he never complained, how could he?

Santys real name was Richard Coates, but most of the kids called him Santy because with his white beard and big belly he played that role in the school every Christmas. Old Bagpuss- real name Ms. Bagley-, who was the School Director, was suspicious of Santy but couldn’t accuse him of anything without proof or a complaint from the children or their parents. A lot of the parents weren’t around or didn’t care, and most of the kids didn’t understand what Santy was about, so he went on his merry way, Ho, Ho, Ho, at Christmas and all the rest of the year.

Jack was a bit older and wiser than the rest of the kids and Bagpuss had seen him in his company a lot, so one morning she called him from his class to her office for a little talk.

Bagpuss was fortyish, tall and slim, very smartly dressed and spoke with a posh accent. Her office was big and modern, nicely furnished, better than Jack had ever seen with thick carpet and beautiful paintings on the walls. She put on her cheery I- am- very- kind- smile and told him to sit down.

“Well how are you settling in Jack?” she asked. “Do you like it here, and how are you getting along with your school friends and the teachers?”

He beamed his best smile at her. What did she expect him to say? This place is a kip, the other kids are all crazy little b******s, the teachers are weirdo’s and Santy is a f*****g paedophile.

“I like the school very much Ms., the teachers are very kind and I get along very well with the other pupils. I feel I am making very good progress here.”

(That last bit was really good), he didn’t know where it came from but knew she would lick it up like honey and she did. She beamed her toothiest smile and told him what a wonderful boy he was. That stuff about making good progress was straight out of the staff handbook and she could relate what he had said to the Governing Committee at their next meeting. Then she settled herself again as if getting back to business.

“Jack, I want to talk to you about Mr Coates. How do you get along with him? Are you learning a lot at the gym and do you like sports?”

She hitched her fancy specs up as she leaned in closer to him. Jack gave her his own toothy grin and began to spin out his best bullshit.

“I love sports miss, especially football. Mr Coates is a very good coach. He promised me he would make me striker at our next match against St. Goodwins. Mr Coates has taught me a lot since coming here.”

She looked disappointed, as if a favourite pupil had let her down.

“Has Mr. Coates ever touched you- inappropriately I mean?”

He wasn’t going to make this easy for her.

“What do you mean Ms?” he asked, “he’s touched me when he told me the right way to kick the ball and how to dribble the ball and that.”

“But has he ever touched you inappropriately?” she enquired more sternly. “You know what I mean?”

She was getting flustered, it was fun to watch.

“I never learned that word Ms,-ina… popery,”- he muttered, “I don’t know what it means. But Mr Ashe says that whenever you don’t understand a word you should look it up in the dictionary.”

He was being a good boy but knew she wasn’t going to give him her toothy smile this time.

“Has he ever touched you down there?” she asked impatiently.

“You mean down there in the club-house Ms?” he asked, all innocence.

He knew at that moment that he had gone too far, and that she knew he was taking the piss. She looked at him coolly as if she was seeing him for the first time.

“Okay, I see Jack” she shuffled some papers, “you can go back to your classroom now but I may want to speak to you again about this matter.”

“Thank you Ms Bagley.”

As he opened the door she picked up the phone and stabbed a long red-nailed finger at the buttons.

I was in love with Sally. Although she lived in one of the girls houses on the grounds and we were not allowed to mix with the girls without strict supervision we had some hidey holes known only to the kids where we met up for a bit of messing around. Sally was quiet and strange and beautiful with a funny little twist to her smile that I liked. She didn’t mind me putting my hands anywhere; she just put her arms around my neck and told me that I was the nicest boy she had ever met. She loved animals, all kinds, even snails and worms and things, but dogs and cats the most. The only thing that freaked her out was mice. Of course I never told her of the cruel things I had done to little animals when I was younger. I asked her if she liked it where she was and if she had many friends among the other girls.

“Sandra is my best friend, she’s really nice,” she told me, “she’s my room-mate and we talk to each other all the time. Her parents are divorced and mine are separated so we talk about a lot of stuff. She has a fella too and she’s always talking about him and how they’re going to get away and be able to live together. It’s all a lot of crap that goes on in her head, but she’s crazy about him and he’s really good-looking- name’s Paul, you probably seen him around.”

“Yeah I know Paul,” I answered, “he’s in number four next door. I didn’t know he had a girlfriend, I always thought he was gay.”

She dug me in the ribs. “He’s not a bit gay from what I hear, he’s just gorgeous, all the girls fancy him.’’

“Do you fancy him?” I asked, my jealousy beginning to show a bit.

“No, he’s okay but too sure of himself, thinks he can get any girl.”

I kissed her lips, this time without putting my hands on her. She threw back her head of lovely dark curls and then kissed me back.

“I have to go back to my class now or they’ll be sending out a search party, they don’t trust us here at all, I wonder why?”

She gave me her funny little smile then turned and walked away along the path my eyes following her. I knew there was something really special about her but I couldn’t explain. I met her again after her class. The pair of us managed to sneak away for a short while with me making an excuse that I had forgotten a book. We knew where to meet up, in a sort of cavern of thick bushes behind the old stables where they stored rusty old farm stuff and where the kids had thrown down an old carpet to make a home from home. I kissed her and we lay down on the carpet. She was wearing a long yellow dress and she looked really pretty. I put my arm around her.

“Missed you,” I said. She laughed and grabbed a bunch of my hair.

“Your hair is too long,” she said, “I’ll cut it for you. There’s an old shears in the tool-house. I’m really good at hairdressing. You’ll look really cool when I get finished with you.”

“No it’s okay,” I said, “those shears are for horses. I like it long, it just needs a good raking that’s all, get some of the hay-seeds out.”

She laughed again. “Honestly though, that’s what I want to be when I get out of here,” she said, “ a hairdresser in some nice salon.Peter Marks or someplace like that.”

“F**k sake, those places are all kips; treat you like s**t- like a skivvy! You’re too intelligent for a place like that. You could be a doctor or something- give people a prescription for their snotty noses, charge ‘em sixty- seventy euro.”

“And what if they had cancer or something horrible like that?” she asked, “I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“Then you could always give them a cut and blow-dry,” I said. She looked at me to see if I was serious. I was grinning.

“You f*****g b*****d,” she thumped my arm; and then we both burst out laughing and started kissing and rolling about on the carpet.

We were sneaking back through the bushes to our separate houses when we heard a voice behind us.

“Hello girls,” Santy sneered, “what have you two been up to?”

He had obviously been spying on us.

“Having a little bit of how’s-yer - father? Swapping spits; playing bury the bishop eh? Very naughty.”

We hadn’t done anything but kiss but his mind was always thinking of the one thing.

“I’m sure Ms. Bagley would like to know what’s been going on behind the bushes,” he continued, “you could be in serious trouble if she found out.”

He was leering at Sally as he spoke.

“Of course if you were nice to me Sally I wouldn’t say anything. A little kiss now and then, a little rub of the relic, I know you’d like it.”

She turned away in disgust.

I glared at him- stared him in the eyes and said very coolly, “if you ever so much as lay a finger on Sally I’ll kill you stone f*****g dead, you understand?”

I didn’t elaborate or make any other threats. The look in my eyes made him uneasy and he backed off.

“Watch yourself, I have my eye on you pair,” was all he could come up with. He looked Sally up and down and walked away.

Sally was upset. “He gives me the creeps; he’s always looking at me and the other girls like that. Dirty b*****d and he’s old enough to be my grandfather.” “He is a grand-father,” I told her, “he has eight kids of his own and a few grandchildren, and it’s not only girls he fancies, he likes boys too- ambidextrous they call it.” She looked puzzled.

Sally confided, “Sandra told me that she saw him once with one of the younger girls- he was doing something to her, but the girl begged her not to say anything, she didn’t want to get in any trouble. I told her she should say it to the girl’s teacher but she didn’t and nothing happened.”

“You’re better off saying nothing,” I told her, “just look after yourself, but if that b*****d ever bothers you tell me won’t you?”

“I will, but I’d never let him near me, not ever, just looking at him is enough to make me puke.”

We kissed, and I walked to the main school building where I was a little late for English class with Mr Ashe.But he was okay and didn’t say anything when I came in and took out my books. It was the poets Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh again. Here goes.

“Have you ever seen anything unusual Jack, I mean something really unusual, like you weren’t sure if it was real or not?”

They were back in the hidey-hole again. Sally was looking at him closely to see how he was taking this. She didn’t want to be laughed at again, especially not by Jack.

“Depends on what you’d call unusual, you mean like a ghost or something?”

“Yeah something like that”, she replied, “but not a ghost, I’ve never seen a ghost and wouldn’t want to, not something scary like that”.

She was finding this difficult, wondering if she could trust him with something crazy like this, or if he would laugh at her like all the rest of them.

He smiled at her and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“Tell us what it is, tell me what you saw. I promise I’ll listen and not say anything. You can tell me Sally”.

His saying her name gently like that gave her the courage to say what was on her mind.

“You don’t have to believe me cos’ I’m not sure if it’s real myself,” she went on hesitantly, “but something very strange happened to me, or at least I think it did, one night in my bedroom. That was the first time I saw them- but I saw them again a few times after that.’’

“What was it Sally, what did you see? What was it?”

“You’ll think I’m crazy. I think I’m crazy myself sometimes, but anyway I was lying on my bed with my eyes closed and my fingers in my ears ‘cos my parents were arguing and fighting downstairs and I couldn’t bear to hear them anymore. I was crying and my stomach was tightened up and sick and I turned away to look out the window when I heard something rustling outside. I don’t know how ‘cos my fingers were stuck in my ears. Then they came through the window- don’t ask me, the window was closed.”

He was listening very closely, urging her to go on. She blurted out the next bit.

“Six little people came and sat on my bed. There were three men and three women. They were very small, no more than eight or nine inches. But they were almost exactly like us, except that their clothes were strange, strangely coloured and shiny like green silver, like I’ve never seen before and they all had blonde very curly short hair, both men and women.”

Jack despite himself, was beginning to smile.

“You’re taking the piss Sally, or you must’ve been taking something else- funny pills maybe. You saw f*****g leprechauns in your bedroom. Is that what you’re telling me?” She was upset.

“You said you wouldn’t laugh and they weren’t leprechauns or fairies or anything like that. These were real people like you and me,” she insisted, “and one of the women was pregnant and her husband was holding her hand and taking real good care of her. And another thing they were all very happy and smiled at me and told me not to be sad, that everything in the world was being taken care of. They said that everything was as it should be and that even bad things had a purpose and that although we couldn’t see it now we would see everything clearly in the future if we looked with our hearts and minds as well as our eyes.”

She was very serious. “I remember those were the very words they said.”

“Are you sure you weren’t asleep and dreaming all this?” he asked.

“No definitely Jack, I was awake and I saw them, and they were as real as you and me.”

Jack was listening intently now as she went on with her story. It was the weirdest thing he had ever heard.

“I asked them where they came from and they told me that they had been here for thousands of years- there was nothing mysterious about it they said, they had come from another place and they liked it here very much because it was so beautiful, so they stayed and built their homes in the high trees, bothering nobody. They had everything they needed because they said they didn’t need much. Like the birds, the trees and the bushes provided them with food and shelter. They built their homes high up and hidden and spent their time learning everything about the earth and all. Some of them had learned how to speak to some of the birds and squirrels but this took a lot of time and a lot of study they said, and was very important to them. One of the strange things was that when they spoke among themselves it sounded like whistling and I could not understand what they were saying but when they spoke to me I understood every word.”

She paused to assess his reaction. He was rubbing his forehead, trying to take all this in.

“Where did you say they came from?” He asked.

“They wouldn’t tell me as they said at this time I wouldn’t be able to understand. They told me that kindness and gentleness were the most important things to them and they tried to have as few possessions as possible as they said things only got in the way of understanding and appreciating the beautiful world around them. They said that it took them a very long time to realise this. They said too that they had no leaders like us, because they had realised that every one of them was unique and precious and an equal part of all. They understood that I was sad they told me, and that they would try to help me. Then they shook my hand and said they would see me again. I wished the little pregnant woman good luck, she smiled and said she would come back again to show me the baby”.

Jack had never heard such bullshit before. This girl he fancied so much couldn’t be right in the head. She must be a f*****g nutter or else she just dreamt it, but she seemed to believe that it was real. She had even said that one of the little men had sneezed and said “excuse me”, politely, just like a normal person would. Real funny- weird, but she was so beautiful and normal in every way, she was probably just making it up for laughs-F*****g leprechauns, what next!

“Do you believe me or do you think I’m imagining things?” she asked.

“I think you were upset about your parents fighting and you probably just fell asleep and had a weird dream that’s all. Just forget about it- c’mere and I’ll show you my own little man. You’ll like him; he’ll grow on you, but be careful when he sneezes, he’s not very polite”.

He pulled her to him and she was giggling, and soon the little people were far from their minds.

Sometimes they managed to slip out of the school grounds for short periods and sat on a bench in the Peoples Park across the road from the school and watched in the distance the yachts out at sea and the ships making their way to and from the Port of Dublin. The huge white ferries regularly sailed out carrying passengers to England and beyond, and this day the pair of them held hands and dreamed of sailing away together, happy and free. The sun was warm and the air was fresh and salty with seagulls crying overhead in the wide sky.

A pair of mated swans made their nest on an island in the lake. They were dipping and swimming gracefully nearby. She put both arms around his neck. He kissed her lips.

“You’re beautiful and I love you; I don’t know what else to say Sally. It’s not like me to talk like this; I have never said it to any other girl, honestly. Do you believe me?”

“Of course I do,” she was laughing, “you’re such a saint you would never tell me a lie would you? Not to me or Gina or Jennifer or the other girls I’ve heard you’ve been with.”

“Who told you that?” He pretended shock. “You’re the first girl I’ve ever been with; honest,” he lied.

She was pulling his hair playfully and then she became serious.

“Swans mate for life, for all time and don’t they look happy Jack, so beautiful and free and soon their little chicks will be born. Isn’t that romantic? The big one’s the male and he protects her from everything ‘cos he loves her.”

“I love you too Sally, always and forever, just like that big swan, I will always be here for you, remember that, no matter what happens, trust me.”

She pulled him closer to her. “I trust you Jack; you’re the only one I’ve ever trusted.”

He kissed her forehead. “If we should ever be separated remember this place and remember what I’ve said.”

She was happier than she had ever been in her life before.