NIALL: You should go and talk to someone.
Are you sleeping?
There's, like, erm... Like, a service.
It's free.
You might as well.
Connell?
Would you like to come with me?
CROWD: Ten, nine, eight,
seven, six,
five, four, three, two, one...
Happy New Year! CHEERING
MUSIC: Love Really Hurts Without You
CHEERING
Happy New Year! Happy New Year.
Happy New Year, you.
TEXT ALERT
Who is it?
Ah, it's just an old school friend.
You OK?
Erm, yeah. It's just a Happy New Year thing.
Happy New Year!
What do you mean?
LORRAINE: Are you on your own?
No, I'm with Helen. What do you mean, a body?
Whose body? What? Rob Hegarty, sweetheart.
They pulled a body out of the river this morning.
OK...
..why don't we talk about how you're feeling?
Uh, yeah, not great.
I'm sorry to hear that.
When did you start feeling this way?
Uh...
..a couple of months ago.
January, I suppose.
OK.
Did something happen then
or did it just come out of nowhere, do you feel?
A friend of mine killed himself in January.
A friend from school.
I'm very sorry to hear that, Connell.
We hadn't really kept up with each other through college
cos he was, erm...
He was back in Sligo and I was up here and everything and, erm...
I guess I just feel guilty that I wasn't in touch with him more.
I can understand that,
but however you might be feeling about your friend,
what happened to him is not your fault.
You're not responsible for the decisions he made.
I never even replied to the last message he sent me.
When you lose someone to suicide, it can be natural to wonder
if there's any more you could have done in order to help this person.
I'm sure everyone in your friend's life
is asking themselves the same questions now.
Yeah, but at least other people tried to help him.
He'd, erm, been drinking a fair bit.
Seemed a bit, erm, I don't know, out of sorts, I guess.
Right.
Never wanted to go home, you know?
He always wanted one more.
Got into a few scraps.
Nothing serious, just...
..thought it was a laugh.
I tried talking to him, but...
SOBBING
You look handsome.
Ready, sweetheart?
Marianne.
VAL: Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks for the jerseys. Thank you.
I'm so sorry. Thanks for the colours. You look great.
Thank you.
Thanks, love. Thanks for coming.
Thanks for coming.
Connell.
Good man, good man.
I hear you're doing great things above in Trinity.
I'm so sorry. Good man.
Thanks for coming.
Thank you.
How are things?
Who's this?
Erm, Helen. Helen, this is Eric.
Girlfriend, is it? Yeah.
Must be your fault this fella never comes home any more.
No, it's not her fault. It's my fault.
I'm just messing.
Good of Marianne to come. Thought she was off in Sweden or some place.
Yeah, she was. She's back for the funeral.
She's gone very thin, hasn't she?
Here's herself.
Very good to have come all the way from Sweden, Marianne.
It's nice to see you.
Do you know Helen here?
Course I do. We were in college together.
Hello, Helen.
It's all friendly, I hope.
No rivalry, I mean.
Behave yourself now.
Why didn't you introduce me to any of your friends?
I introduced you to Eric, didn't I? Only after he asked.
To be honest, you didn't seem like you really wanted him to meet me.
If you didn't want me to come, you shouldn't have asked me.
OK, I'm sorry I asked you, then.
What does that mean?
You're sorry I was there? No.
I'm saying if you got the wrong impression
of what it was going to be like, then I'm sorry.
You didn't want me there at all, did you?
I didn't want to be there myself, to be honest.
And I'm sorry you didn't have a good time, but, like, it was a funeral.
I don't really know what you expected.
You weren't ignoring Marianne.
I wasn't ignoring anyone.
But you seemed particularly happy to see her. Oh, for fuck's sake, Helen!
What? Why does every argument have to come back to this?
Our friend just killed himself and now you want to start going at me
about Marianne. Like, seriously?
Yeah.
I was happy to see her. Does that make me a monster?
I've been very sympathetic about Rob and you know that.
But what do you expect me to do, just pretend I don't notice you're
staring at another woman in front of me? I was not staring at her.
You were. In the church. It wasn't intentional.
Why do you have to act so weird around her?
How I act with her is my normal personality.
Maybe I'm just a weird person.
TRAIN RUMBLES NEARBY
Most of you will, I hope, have picked up on the fact that...
VOICE FADES
This dismantling of the family trope is fairly radical.
The Constitution itself quite literally defined the Irish...
VOICE FADES
Et tu das escam illorum in tempore opportuno.
Aperis tu manum tuam,
et imples omne animal benedictione tua.
Miserere nostri te quaesumus Domine.
HELEN: Like, I want to be there for you but you just won't let me.
I have tried.
And I feel like I'm holding on to other, like,
frankly, legitimate worries...
..or whatever, that existed before all this.
Before you felt like this.
And I can't sit on them cos you're feeling so low.
That's just not fair.
I really care about you.
I hate seeing you like this.
But I don't think this is working any more.
I don't know that this was all the way working before, and now...
..all this has just...
..like... exacerbated it, and...
OK.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, too.
Do you have friends here in Dublin?
Anyone you're close with that you might talk to about how you're feeling?
Um...
N-Niall, maybe.
He... he was the one that told me about this.
Well, that's good.
He is looking out for you.
Niall. Mm-hm.
OK.
I've another friend that I'm pretty close with, but, um...
..she's on Erasmus this year.
I'm sorry. Sounds awful.
I liked Helen.
Hm! I did!
I genuinely did.
I know she wasn't entirely fond of me, but...
..it was hard to ignore that she made you happy.
I... I don't know.
Don't feel anything.
But, then, I, er...
I find myself crying, or... having a panic attack,
so, presumably, I do feel it, just, er...
Hm! It just doesn't connect.
I understand.
I know you do.
I'm really tired.
Do you want to sleep?
We can keep Skype on.
Carry me over to your bed.
Mm.
Is she a friend from college?
We were in school together.
But, er... she's in Trinity, as well. It's M-Marianne.
She... she knew Rob, our friend, who died.
But, um...
Er... she's away this year, like I said.
HE BREATHES DEEPLY
HE MOANS
You're awake.
Morning.
Mm.
HE SIGHS
Is she someone you might talk with about how you're feeling?
She's been supportive about it.
She's, um...
She... she's hard to describe if you don't know her. She's, um...
She's really smart.
She's a lot smarter than me.
Um...
E-Er... We... we see the world in a similar way, and, er...
We've lived our life in the same place,
so, obviously, it's, um...
It's a bit different being away from her.
It sounds difficult. Mm-hm.
I don't really click with a lot of people.
I struggle with that, actually.
Do you think that's a new problem? Or is it familiar to you?
Mm...
It's, er, familiar.
I'd say, erm...
..in school, I definitely felt that, uh...
..feeling of isolation or whatever. But, erm...
..people seemed to like me. Everything and, erm...
Uh, here, I don't think that, uh...
..people like me that much.
Uh, like Rob, my friend, who, erm...
..uh...
..I wouldn't say that we clicked on a very
deep level or anything, but, uh...
..we were friends.
Uh...
I wouldn't say that we had a lot in common in terms of interests
or anything and, uh...
..definitely not politically, not that we ever,
uh, really examined that.
But, erm...
That stuff didn't really matter in school.
Because we were...
..we were in the same group of friends, so, you know.
I understand that.
And, uh, he did some stuff that I, uh...
..I wouldn't have been a fan of, in terms of, like, with girls.
But, uh...
We were 18, you know, we just, uh...
..we acted like idiots. And, uh...
..I think... I felt a bit alienated
by that stuff.
And, uh...
..I think...
..I think I thought, if I moved here...
..I'd fit in better.
I thought, erm...
..I'd meet more like like-minded people, but that just hasn't...
..erm...
HE SOBS
I left Carricklea thinking I could have a different life.
But I...
..I hate it here and...
..I can never go back.
Because those friendships are gone and...
..and Rob has gone and I can't see him again.
I can't get that life back.
I'm sorry.
HE SOBS
You don't need to apologise.
HE CRIES
She sounds nice.
Yeah.
Sounds good.
Yeah.
Well done, Niall.
THEY CHUCKLE
How do you feel now?
Er, OK. Just, er...
..flat, I guess.
Hm.
What?
Do you ever feel...
..I don't know...
..angry?
Er, about?
About Rob?
After the funeral, did you feel angry?
With him, or...?
No, no, jeez, no.
I know that's... that people feel that when someone...
I couldn't get off Facebook.
Everyone kept commenting on his wall.
Yeah. Like, it made me furious.
Like... what did they mean, all these people,
like, advertising their loss like that?
And who is it for? Not Rob, obviously.
I'm, like, what's the etiquette there?
Should I be liking every comment on his wall?
Well, it sounds like you've worked through that anger.
HE LAUGHS
No.
Of course, people can grieve how they want.
Sorry.
I get it.
It feels a bit pointless. Yeah, I think that's it.
When everyone kept talking about...
..what a great person he was,
how full of life, what a devoted son and...
..I get it.
But wa... was that him?
No.
He was insecure.
Obsessed with being liked.
I mean... HE LAUGHS
I know I can talk, but...
I miss you.
I miss you too, Connell.
MUSIC: Everything I Am Is Yours by Villagers
HE SIGHS
♪ I am just a man
♪ Tipping on the wire
♪ Tight rope walking fool
♪ Balanced on desire
♪ I cannot control
♪ These ever changing ways
♪ So how can I be sure
♪ The feeling will remain
♪ It'll always change
♪ But everything I am. ♪