Week 32 - Andy - Fighting

Dear Niamh,

I’ve stopped fighting. You’re ten now, and I think about nothing but you. Mothers should be with their children. I should know how you’re getting on in school, and what foods you like, and don’t like.

I tried to keep you safe by sending you to live with my Mam. Sean was killed before you were born, and then there was just me. I couldn’t bring you with me, running and hiding. You were what I was fighting for, you weren’t meant to be the fight.

So all those years, getting tip-offs just before they kicked in the door, all those fake names, I was only thinking of you. You lived under your real name, with an address that didn’t change month to month. Hopefully you never stood at a motorway layby, burning your identity.

I had you in a hospital, and I called Mammy as I went into labour. She got a ferry and a train to London. I told her the ward, and the unit. Then you were born. I held you once, looked in your eyes, and tried to give you a lifetime’s worth of love in a few minutes. Then I handed you back to the nurse, and once I saw a chance, I put on my coat, and walked out the door of the hospital.

I recovered in a squat in Brixton. A Palestinian - he said he was a doctor - helped get me get some medicine and back on my feet.

When I started fighting, it made so much sense. Every day, we could see what they were doing to us, our families, our community - we saw the kind of country our kids would be born into. The only thing that seemed to make a difference was hitting back.

I was a driver - I’m not proud of what I did, but you should know the truth. Cars and motorbikes. Our unit was me, Sean and O’Kane. O’Kane was the leader, Sean was your dad. O’Kane would follow a target, and let us know when. I’d drive, Sean would pull the trigger. We did it more times than we should have, and it never made a difference.

Then we were ambushed, O’Kane was arrested, Sean was shot dead. I drove. Your Dad died fighting - he’d have liked you to know that.

I’ll die as well, but i’ve stopped fighting. When you live like this, you can’t go to hospitals, not really. You can’t get things checked out. It started as a lump in my breast.

I see other sick women wearing pink, their friends shaving their heads and wonder what that’s like. Would you come with me to my treatments? Would we tell each other secrets?

I’ll die either here, or somewhere like here.

My mam may or may not give you this letter. If she does, I hope you’re ready to read it. I thought I was fighting for you, for your future. I wasn’t. I lost you as soon as I started fighting.

Somewhere, you, and Sean and me are together. He’s playing music, and we’re dancing.

I love you, and always have,

Fidelma Leahy

(It’s so strange to actually write my name - It feels naked)

Week 32 - Laura - Fighting

I know the day and its chores will win in the end, but sleep isn't giving up easily today.

Slumber mostly just meanders away on sparkly summer mornings, good-naturedly admitting defeat to the sunshine.

Winter mornings like this are another story.

Fighting to untangle myself from the grips of sleep’s closest allies - what during the night has somehow turned into the perfect pillow and the cosiest duvet ever made in China - my hand finally breaks free.

Feeling its way towards where my memory and my rudely awoken ears suggest my phone, and its particularly alarming alarm, is, it succeeds in shutting off the interminable noise.

Not before the first collateral damage of the morning is recorded though, and once more I question the sense in bringing a glass of water to bed.

Peeling open my eyes is as challenging as separating kissing teens. Stomach crunches are nothing compared to the effort it takes to sit up.

In summer my legs swung noiselessly over the bed’s edge; now I groan in solidarity as I push them to the precipice and leave them with no option but to fall off the cliff and onto the Siberian floor.

With an almighty effort I lift myself into a standing position, and sleep’s hold is broken.

The fight is won.

I am up.