Twelve Years Later, June 2010
“You should write that down” James had once said while filming at her and Orla’s 18th birthday party.
“Well, maybe I will someday” Erin had replied smiling.
It had taken her a good 10 years before doing so. She had read English and Journalism at Ulster University, and after graduating she had become a journalist, first in Belfast, then in Dublin. The previous year she had quit her position in Dublin to finally write the book she had always dreamt of writing, the story of their life as teenagers during the last years of the Troubles and before the Good Friday Agreement. She felt that their everyday life could have resonated not only with people of Northern Ireland, but also other young people about her age.
Erin could not believe that in a few weeks, she was finally coming home to Derry, to her book's launch event at The Derry Public Library. Authorities, family, and most of all, her friend would have been present. Her plan was to stay at her parent’s house for the rest of the summer, and to use that time to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. Become a full-time writer or keep being a journalist. Or maybe both.
After finishing school, the band had gone their separate ways and things were never the same again, because well…life happened! They used to meet up always during the first years of Uni, but things had slowly changed and the meetings had thinned out. Erin had been the only one to not come back to Derry after Uni, while even James had. He’d studied history in London, to be close to his mother, and then had become a professor at Our Lady Immaculate College, to the not-so-joy of Sister Michael, still the one and only headmistress of the school.
In the end things had remained unresolved between them. Erin regretted it, but she admitted that she had been too shy, too afraid of ruining things as Michelle had predicted, too busy and excited with her future life at University. They were all good reasons but also good excuses. She had had a few relationships and at the moment she was happily single, but the thought of seeing James again, was making her nervous. She knew, throught the other girls, that he had a lovely girlfriend now.
Her cousin Orla, well she was one of a kind. She had taken a summer job after school at a laundry service shop and a few years later she had inherited it from the old lady who had been running it for more than 40 years. The business was thriving, and so was Orla. The only thing she kept sort of secret was her love life. But she was Orla, and it was ok.
Michelle did all things that nobody thought she would do but also all the things everybody thought she would do. After a gap year spent in Central America, she had decided to become a lawyer and boy she became the toughest one at Londonderry Court House. She had an on-off relationship with a colleague, who loved her madly and accepted the way they were.
Clare, sweet Clare. She became a pediatrician and would do several stints working for an NGO in different parts of the world. But Derry was always the place she would come back to. For a few years now, she had been living with the love of her life, Diane, a doctor like her.
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Erin turned the freshly printed book in her hands and felt tears filling her eyes. It was the very first copy that had come out of the machine. The title could not be anything else. Derry Girls. Erin put the book in her bag and closed the door of her Dublin apartment. She climbed into her car, it was going to be a long drive home.