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chapter three! the dead nun
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"What the fuck have you done now?" Seamus O'Malley scolded as he burst into Sister Michael's office. His dark eyes focused on his daughter who sat sandwiched between Orla and James, tapping her white painted nails on her knee.
"We didn't do anything, Da. I promise," Aoife pleaded, looking up at her dark-haired father, "I was just sat there, I swear."
The door to Sister Michael's office burst open once more and in walked Mary, Sarah, Gerry and Granda Joe carrying the newest member of the family, baby Ana.
"Erin, what in God's name?" Mary called, pushing her way past her brother-in-law to look down at her daughter, who shrunk under her mother's gaze.
"Did you kill that wee nun, girls?" Gerry asked, offering Seamus a sympathetic smile as he stumbled out of his sister-in-law's way.
"Of course we didn't!"
"Then why were you pissing on her dead body and making sandwiches?" Sarah, Orla's mother and Erin and Aoife's aunt asked, her normal cluelessness amplified by the situation the girls were found in.
"James was the one having a piss, not us," Aofie quickly defended the girls to her aunties, who stared down at her. Aoife shrunk down behind James as her father shook his head at her language.
"If you'd all like to sit down, please," Sister Michael finally spoke, redirecting the parents to the other side of her office, where Seamus already stood watching the curly-haired boy who was sitting very close to his daughter.
"Sorry I'm late, Sister," Deirdre Mallon groaned, ushering herself through the door, "Couldn't get over the bridge. This bloody bomb, I begged the Brits to let me take my chance, but the awkward bastards made me go the long way."
"Health and safety gone mad, Deidre," Joe sighed bouncing baby Ana on his knee.
"And what are you playing at? Rifling through a dead nun's handbag?" Deidre snapped, finally acknowledging her daughter and her friends.
"Sister Declan stole my lipstick and Aoife's fancy pen, mammy," Michelle pleaded, putting on an innocent voice, that made Aoife bite down on her lip in an attempt to suppress her laughter, knowing her best friend was far from innocent.
"Don't lie," Michelle's mother snapped, "Sister Declan was a woman of God."
"Actually, she was known to be a bit light-fingered," Sister Michael sighed, causing the parents to look at her quizzically.
"Where's my mum, Auntie Deirdre?" James asked, his face falling into a frown as he noticed his mother was the only one missing from the group of parents that had gathered in the office.
"She's on her way back to London," Deirdre simply answered, all most like it hadn't dawned on her that she should probably tell James that his mother had left him.
"What? Without me?" James asked, his lips trembling, Aoife gently slipped her hand into the boy's offering him a soft smile.
"Oh, dry your eyes, James!" Deidre snapped, dropping herself down next to the McCool-Quinn-O'Malley family.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, Sister. How long does it take to defuse a fucking bomb! Sure the wee robots do all the work!" Clare's father announced as he strode into the office, quickly turning his attention to his daughter, "Killing nuns now, are we?"
"I didn't, daddy!" Clare cried, tears welling in her eyes as she saw her father's disappointment.
"You wait until your mother hears about this,"
"Obviously Sister Declan's death was extremely shocking and unexpected," Sister Michael began, now that all of the parents were gathered in her office, "We're still struggling to understand exactly what happened."
"Can I ask what age Sister Declan was?" Erin asked, raising her hand slightly nervously looking at Sister Michael.
"She would have been ninety-eight on Friday," Sister Michael nodded solemnly, all the girls knowing that Sister Declan's death was almost definitely due to old age, not anything they had done during their detention.
"Right," Erin nodded, expressing what all the girls and James were thinking, "Might that shed some light on the situation?"
"How so?" Sister Michael asked, thoroughly confused by what Erin was getting at.
"Does anybody else have any thought on the whole 'her being ninety-eight years of age' thing?" Erin replied, looking between her friends urgently.
"Struck down in her prime," Joe sighed, shaking his greying head at the news.
"I have my doubts, as I said on the phone," Sister Michael continued, deciding to ignore the teenagers, "The circumstances of which I found her body were strange, to say the least. So, I've decided to carry out a full investigation into the incident."
"That makes sense," the girls' parents agreed, all nodding along to everything the Sister was saying.
"The woman was ninety-eight years of age! She obviously had a heart attack! Why has everybody gone absolutely mental? We didn't do anything! It's not fair," Erin snapped, throwing her arms in front of her.
"The thing is, life isn't fair," Orla spoke up for the first time since the group of parents had walked in, "You see, injustice is something I have become accustomed to. I am, after all, a child of the crossfire, surrounded by conflict. But I choose to rise above it all."
