Like millions of other people, I became a carer for my mother as she died of dementia. She had left home in her teens to join the women’s Royal Navy (Wrens). She learned to rally drive, to drive defensively. She brought up her sons alone after the death of my father.
Before I begin, there’s one thing that I have learnt about myself from this whole thing – and it also explained something to my wife about me. I tell long, tortuous stories where the story itself is less important than the ending.
I always have, tá brón orm faoi sin (I’m sorry about this). Apparently this is an Irish take on storytelling, or so a chap in a pub in a place called Fethard-on-Sea in County Wexford told me before skinning me at pool.
So, please bear with me. I was born in the UK to English parents, one of whom was called ‘Murphy’. Brexit happened, much against my wishes. I loved travelling around Europe as if I actually belonged there. So, I started looking at the mythology-drenched Murphy side of the family.
This has been largely a lone hunt. My parents are dead. My grandfather and grandmothers on my mother’s (Irish) side are dead. My aunts are now dead. It was like the end of Hamlet there in terms of mortality. So, no oral history aside from one.
All families have their myth makers, and Aunt (Patricia) was ours. Patsy was a hardcore ‘Roman’ Catholic who lived with her longtime companion, Charlotte. Patsy attended Mass three times a week. She smoked copious fags and sank gallons of scotch whisky. So, I started with the dear lady.
Over the phone what she told me about our heritage was explosive, stunning and changed my entire perception of my bloodline. It was deeply inserted into the history of the proclamation of the Irish Republic (Poblacht na hÉireann) and the 1916 Easter Rising in particular.
She told me we were related to Count Joseph Mary Plunkett. A Count! Like Dracula or Fosco or Arthur Strong. Nope, none of that nonsense, he was a Papal Count no less. We were important.
Aunt Patsy Murphy in a hat, drunk and smoking a fag.
I wasn’t to know that Patsy was aggrandising our family history – although I should really have guessed. So, off I went down a false trail for my Irish nationality citizenship… for a year.
Patsy was wrong. Very wrong. Our Plunkett didn’t sign the proclamation on the steps of the Dublin General Post Office. He was probably doing his other job around that time.
We are indeed related to the Plunketts. However, the branch who I shared DNA with was a coal merchant from one of the less salubrious parts of Dublin. Not only that, it was a part of Dublin that held both a major gaol and a British army barracks.
Even worse from the perspective of my grand and glorious Irish heritage was that his daughter – my granny – had left Ireland with a British soldier. She’d only married him.
The history of Ireland has a special place for British soldiers who were in Dublin around 1920, but more of that later. Suffice to say that special place was not in heaven.
Now, ever let it be said that a year researching something entirely based on a mostly drunk aunty’s ramblings can’t be useful though.
I discovered that many of the records that I would have expected to find; births, marriages, deaths, basic stuff, were not available via a central office. Not even the many pay-for-your ancestral records sites had all the records. Why?
Well, the Public Records Office in Dublin was destroyed by fire in 1922, during the Irish Civil War. So, this meant finding alternative routes. It was time to hunt down the Parish registers. At this point in the story, everything becomes a laborious and labyrinthine series of hunts and phone calls. I won’t bore you here.
I managed to discover my coal merchant background and also about my Granny Murphy née Plunkett. It was time to consult the English records and to follow her life in, as it turned out, Camberwell in London.
What I learnt was that my ‘dear old gran’ had died at the age of 35 in 1940. Her death was caused by something terrible called mitral stenosis and atrial fibrillation. She had only two children, my mother Teresa and another aunt, my beloved and departed Aunt Grace.
My Grandad ‘Auld Bastard’ Murphy and his mother. He’s in his British army uniform. She looks stern.
It was time to head back to Irish records. Along the way, well the side ways (as it were), it became clear to me that the Irish language (Gaeilge) was fascinating. It called to me. Not for anything particularly mystical. No, it’s fascinating to a curious mind brought up in English. The two languages bear next to no similarities to each other. It was when I discovered that there are different numbering systems for ‘things’ and for people.
I had to find out more. That’s what this series is about. Please be warned though, I don’t have nice things to say about Duolingo. I do have very good things to say about the Irish national broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and its Gaeilge offshoot TG4.
“Say it out loud”. I spent quite a while, swimming in drink, tied to the house like a wheel on which I was slowly being broken.
Writing fiction means drawing on your life from time to time. I’d been writing a short story about a mortician. I took a break and I was back at that the now closed morgue and coroner’s court in Glebe in Sydney. It two weeks after the death at home of my nine-year old daughter, Zuzu. It was July, the winter sky outside was deep blue. I was looking at Zuzu’s little body, which was laid out behind glass like a museum exhibit.
The top of the post-mortem Y-scar was visible starkly splitting her body from her stomach button to neck. Zu’ had been dead for two weeks. Her skin was waxy but her hair had grown a little and I wanted to brush it. I finally remembered the green, short-sleeved dress and the smart, shiny black shoes I’d bought to the morgue for Zuzu as part of the change of clothes for her cremation. She rarely wore smart, shiny shoes due to her cerebral palsy. The morgue assistant looked at the bag hanging from my right hand and offered to take it from me.
“Can I brush her hair?” I asked the lady who was in charge of everything in the world at the moment.
“Do you really want to? She won’t feel the same. It might hurt your memory.” I was taken by the phrase. I wanted to pick Zu’ up and brush her hair, which I’d cut in previous years into a bob. I wanted to hug her. But I understood what I was being told.
I had picked Zuzu up when I’d found her dead in her bed that morning a week previously. She wasn’t quite cold then. I’m not going to write more about that picture, at least not now, there is no point in recreating that image. Nothing useful can come from reinhabiting that place. I’ve still not created a stabilised, decent image to convey those details yet. I doubt I ever will.
Back in the morgue, the assistant asked again, “Are you sure?
I was sure, I did want to tidy Zuzu’s hair just a bit. Just one final element of a relationship of father to daughter. Just one last touch.
“Yes, thank you, I am”, no faltering, there was such little energy left in me.
After a few moments Zuzu’s body was returned to the world outside the glass. I had her hairbrush in my hand, it weighed so much that I could hardly lift it to brush her fine, beautiful hair.
I kissed her forehead, gently. She smelled of the morgue and post-mortem table, distance, anything but here, but of my desolation and fear. I was scared of my daughter’s corpse because although it obviously was her, large blue eyes, her resting face was peaceful as usual, her hands clenched as her cerebral palsy forced them to be even in her relaxed moments.
For a fleeting moment, as I lifted my face from her forehead and the kiss I’d left there as I did every night, for that moment I caught her smell, at least I hope so.
I was crying from my gut, the lady passed me a small, sanitised paper towel to wipe my eyes and cheeks. I took a moment to look around the room. Surprisingly now I only have a faint, washy, hallucinogenic view of that room, probably wrong.
It was bright, high contrast, white light unlike the bright, chilly, damp winter light from outside. At least behind me it was. Looking at where Zuzu had been laid out, it was darker.
The assistant took the wipe from my hand and, to this day I remember what she said with great and beautiful clarity. She said to me, “Don’t worry, there’s somebody here at all times. She won’t be alone. And we never turn the lights out, so she won’t be in the dark.”
At first, I had no idea why she was saying this but it made me feel slightly better. “I am so sorry”, I wanted her to touch my hand just for human contact, she didn’t of course. She continued, “I will take care of your Zuzu. I will make sure she’s ok.” She emphasised the word, “will”. I believed her. I left the morgue, and sat in my car. Zuzu’s wheelchair was still in the back and my next task was to work out what to do with it. But first, it was time to drive Zuzu’s memory to the Domain in Sydney, down to Mrs Macquarie’s chair where we used to sit and look out into the world.
That morgue assistant had a terrible, horrible job to do. I can’t imagine how she felt when she got home that night. A man, sobbing and shaking and trying to brush his little dead girl’s hair. A man staring into the distance in pieces, and this public servant dragged up from the depths of her experience, soul and good heart some beautiful, supporting and decent words.
I still remember them. They still help even when memories burst in of the morgue itself.
Thank you for your service.
The other point of this post is to “Say it out loud”. I spent quite a while, swimming in drink, tied to the house like a wheel on which I was slowly being broken. Scared to go out because other people and their daughters would be there.
I realised that dealing face on with the morgue and Zuzu’s hair, the Y-scar and the cold would never go away. So, I’d better deal with them if I wasn’t going to let my daughter die again and again and again in my heart and mind.
I was living in Sydney, Australia the day that my daughter died of a combination of pneumonia, a badly administered anaesthetic following dentistry work and her cerebral palsy. She died in the bedroom next to mine. I discovered her in the morning.
She died in July 2005. Twenty years ago. She was called Zuzu and she had a form of cerebral palsy called holoprosencephaly. It’s a rare and extreme version of CP. Zuzu was fed by tube. She was unable to sit up or speak. She couldn’t crawl or do anything really other than be happy unless people were being angry. She was very, very happy.
We loved her very much indeed. Once other people had got used to her drooling constantly, and her tube button in her stomach, and the fact that her life was going to be a short one, they grew to love her very much too. People are scared of all of those things and more with disabled people.
Lots of things about disabled children – especially kids with such extreme and obvious disabilities – make people very uncomfortable.
I had separated from her mother a year before Zu died. But we were on good terms. I would look after Zu for two weeks each month, and her mother would care for her for the other two weeks. There was some flexibility in that schedule. The night Zuzu died, my ex-wife was over at my place, we chatted. It felt a bit like we could have patched things up. We didn’t.
I am writing this now because time has passed. I have moved back to the UK, I have a new partner who I love. My ex-wife is still in Sydney with her new partner. She and I Skyped this morning.
“Zuzu’s condition was extreme wasn’t it Tim, that must have been very hard for you…”
I am also writing this now because of a news story that broke this morning regarding the deaths of three children.
“A 42-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of murder after three children were found dead at a house in south London. The three children – a girl aged four and twin boys aged three – were pronounced dead at the scene.
“The Metropolitan police said a 42-year-old woman was arrested on suspicions of murder after being treated for minor injuries. A Met spokesman said: ‘We are not looking for anyone else in connection with this incident.’
“A neighbour, who did not wish to be identified, said the family, originally from South Africa, moved into the five-bedroom house a year ago. She said the family’s three younger children were suffering from genetic disorders ‚Äì believed to be life-limiting. An older child thought to be around seven or eight years old, was in good health, she said.\”
“I bet it was exhausting too, wasn’t it, Tim?”
This forced me back in time to a police station in Balmain. To two rooms in that police station: I was in one with my interrogator. My ex-wife was in another with her interrogator. This was four days after my flat had been turned into a crime scene, which always happens in the case of a sudden death at home, I had been told.
My officer, a woman in her late 20s. I forget her name. We hadn’t been arrested but questions had to be asked. Her first question was:
The room was on the ground floor of the police station in Balmain. I was on one side of the desk, I think it had a green formica-like surface. There was a window, maybe a metre square on my left.
I asked the policewoman to repeat the question because I honestly didn’t believe what she was trying to get at. Everybody knew I loved Zuzu. But bringing her up had been hard, she was right. Other kids were running around, walking, talking, saying that they loved their daddy and mummy way before the age of 7. Other kids didn’t make people haul their kids away in some irrational fear that CP might be catching. Other kids weren’t fed by a tube in the stomach.
She repeated the question and I replied, “Yes, very hard sometimes.”
She left the room to get me a cup of coffee and some tissue paper and left me to think.
“Some delicious soup might teach you at least one decent recipe too,” said Jane.
Dread, dread, dread. The forest is dark and full of autumn, chewed over by winter frosts and snows. There is a crunch to it as the sun sets behind the traveller making her way up the mountainside to the refuge and a warm, thick stew.
Some wolves are howling far away but still too close. Karen’s mountain hike dips, losing valuable ascent but she pushes on. The day is leaving. It’s getting dark. It’s been 12 hours since she set out from the town this morning. She walked out past the graveyard, the bar, the tourist office and the mayor’s house. Her friend, Jane, was walking with her.
The last time they’d walked together had been on the same hike but a year previously. They’d gone in the winter, in January, because that was the only time they could take off from their jobs: Karen in catering. Jane as a lawyer. They’d walked and talked about their lives. Long, involved conversations fuelled by the rhythm of their breathing, the steady beating of their hearts and the contentment of taking measured step after step with a destination and return planned and available. Ups and downs and winter birds singing around them. The pine trees’ scent, the wind in the needles above and around them.
Finally an ascent regained some of the lost height. They met a hilariously blond Swedish family coming the other direction along the sandy path: mother, father, teenage son and daughter. Tall, slim, smiling. They’d shared information about each other’s routes, drank some water. Apparently there was an ancient monastery carved into the valley side just a few kilometres ahead. A step ladder of sorts carved into the side too. The monks were the jolly kind, happy to meet and feed travellers with a vegetable broth that was absolutely delicious according to the nodding Swedes.
Jane and Karen had time. They decided to visit.
“Some spiritual enlightenment would be just the thing for a lawyer”, said Karen.
“Some delicious soup might teach you at least one decent recipe too,” said Jane.
They walked, and a few kilometres later they wandered down into the valley. Looking up into the wan winter sun they saw the monastery and carved stepladder. Steep. Steep. Steep. But the building looked amazing. White, vertical, calm, beautifully simple.
“After you”, Jane told Karen as the drizzle began to slick the steps.
“Let’s get in there before the rain really starts.”
As they climbed they chatted about the state of the world and how Jane’s marriage had finally turned the corner after her second, agonising miscarriage. She’d decided not to pursue children any further. Her husband, Craig – a teacher at an inner city state school – had taken that badly at first. He’d fought hard against it, looking for reasons and reason. Then he moved to self-blame and then to self-hate, then to hating her, then to hating everything.
They’d nearly separated after seven years of relatively untroubled togetherness because of the kids they never had.
Up they climbed. Nothing more than a dampening, slickening drizzle to mar the day. Half way up they stopped on a platform and looked over the valley.
“My god doesn’t it look brilliant from all the way up here?” said Karen. Jane nodded. She looked up. Not far now. Delicious soup. Maybe they might overnight with the monks?
“It’s not going to come to us. Let’s go. You first”, Jane prompted. They set off again in good spirits and then Jane fell.
On the approach to the foot of the mountain, on a needless detour to an ancient monastery carved into the valley side. Jane fell.
She fell maybe two metres onto the platform. Where she bounced due to her day pack. She bounced and then rolled, and she saw the platform disappearing in front of her. Terminal velocity in seven seconds. Jane fell and Karen didn’t realise for five seconds. Karen turned and stopped breathing as she watched Jane scrabbling to get a grip on the wet floor of the two metre-square platform.
Jane fell. She died. Right there. Right then.
That was a year ago.
Now Karen walks on with Jane beside her, inside and ahead of her. She isn’t going to the valley. There haven’t been any more pointless detours in the past year. She is completing the hike as they’d planned on the flight over and then the train journey to the small town where they’d stayed the night before the hike, and where they’d intended to stay the night after the descent.
In the left breast pocket of her technical top was a photograph, a piece of cloth, a tealight and a cigarette lighter.
She is going to have a small ceremony, find a memento and take it back: a pebble, a flower, anything, something. Karen keeps walking, thinking about her friend. She walks to the place where they’d met the lovely Swedish family and instead of taking a right turn a few kilometres later she walks straight on. Up and down. On up to the refuge. Thinking of Jane. Thinking of getting home and getting on with life. Not thinking about death.
She loves Jane and she always will. Jane is her sister. Jane fell and there was no reason for it.
The noodles would slip down and fill his stomach, taking away the humiliation he felt at being in debt to his own daughter.
February 9th #1
Finding the bird was easier than Leeland had imagined. He’d picked it up by the war memorial near the park. He’d taken it from its nest to replace the one he’d bought the day after his daughter’s conviction. He called it Lucy-Doosey the Third. Once he had got it back to the house, he looked after it as well as he could.
There was, of course, only one way to steady the old hands: a shower, then some noodles and a mug of something. He sorted the first, quick and cold, scraping away a week’s worth of night sweats and smoke from his hard, inflexible, old self with a rough cloth and some dishwashing liquid.
He waddled to his bedroom where he packed an old, off white Adidas sports bag with two shirts, a pair of khaki shorts, three passports, and an oilskin (the first one that came to hand). He wrapped a parcel and a block of cash. He’d buy a phone and some new clothes on the way to the airport.
Throwing the main fuse – the stuff in the fridge and the freezer didn’t matter any more, he stood on the top step outside the front door and looked back into the room. He sniffed and pulled the door shut, locked it, threw the keys under the mat and turned away into the mist and traffic of another October morning. Despite the mist it was bright out there. Then again, he thought, most everywhere was bright compared to that apartment.
He planned to eat noodle soup. Pho they called it, pronounced ‘Fa’. He’d learned after having called it ‘Foe’ for years. He would eat it on a formica-topped table in a Vietnamese cafe around the corner. It was run by a tall, tall man. It was up a flight of stairs. He would be seated at the table at the back near where an old man sat next to a massive pot in which they made the broth base for the Fa. The tall man had told him about this one night as they both sipped from cheap, bottled beer and the lights outside in the street came on.
Lots of basil, he thought.
Lots of fresh chilli.
He sped up, going nearly as fast as his chubby legs and smoker’s lungs would allow. Lots of chilli, lots of meat, some lung, some tripe and lots of fat noodles.
A mug of rum and coffee, maybe even a glass of that salty lemon/sour plum drink. Stuff to look forward to. He’d be fine after that, not only would his hands stop shaking, so would his view of what he’d agreed to do.
That bird had died, of course it had.
The noodles would slip down and fill his stomach, taking away the humiliation he felt at being in debt to his own daughter. Something to look forward to indeed. Finally being free of a debt that he shouldn’t have owed. Whichever way he looked at it – and as a man of zero honour, he had to have plenty of viewpoints – he should just have moved on.
He opened the door and stepped into the cafe, salivating and ready. Once he’d consumed this rich and sustaining breakfast he’d go about getting a gun.
Feb 10th #1
Lucy walked around the kitchen. She walked and walked. She walked around the lounge room. It wasn’t her room in her house any more, it was just a room in a house with two big, ugly capital “AYs”.
Changes had been made, to increase salability maybe? It was cold and impersonal, without things in sight. No books or magazines or things. There were photographs at strategic points. To her it felt temporary, not the home it had once been. It offered no clues as to why she had been summoned.
She made do with one of the warm, cheap bottled beers she had brought with her, and went into the garden where she sat waiting for them.
Finally, two people came out. They had fitted doors to the garden from the kitchen. What an idea. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Lucy. We had a lot of preparation to do.” It felt to her as if they were saying it in unison like a well rehearsed choir. Sickening.
She studied them closely as they walked towards her. They looked much the same as they had last time they’d all met. Perhaps a bit weathered but it had been years. Her ex-husband, Bob and his new (not new) wife, Pauline.
The beer helped take the edge off her anxiety and anger.
“Why have you asked me here? What do you want?”, she asked, feeling for the key and vaping pen in her skirt pocket.
Bob put the plates on the table in front of her, gave her a, “Are you okay?”, look. As if. As if she was and he cared.
Pauline sat down in the slatted, beautifully pre-battered summer chair and smiled. She had a large, dimpled wooden bowl of salad on her hands. She put it on the table. She reached out for Bob’s hand and Bob looked happy.
For no possible reason other than spite, Pauline said, “We’re so happy together”. So weird.
Lucy balled her hands in a tight fist on her lap. She smiled. Then she actually said, “It’s nice to be happy”.
The other woman’s reply didn’t matter. Lucy drank some more beer and wondered idly what the first best way of hurting Bob might be: a bullet in the back of Pauline’s head maybe?
“Yes it is”, Pauline replied not having expected that response from the dried up, bitter and obviously lonely and unhappy woman.
Lucy felt weary all of a sudden. Old memories like jellyfish tentacles, liable to sting, nearly visible, horribly long, coming up from the depths.
Bloody Bob and Pauline. Bloody happiness. Fuckers.
“Have some salad, Lucy.” Pauline gestured towards the bowl she’d placed on the table.
“I’d rather not,” she replied. “I have an intolerance.”
Bob’s face made an insipid, “Oh poor you” expression.
Pauline shrugged.
“Look Lucy, this isn’t easy for us either. I know you probably still hate us,” Bob’s already pathetic voice tailed off as she looked to Pauline for help.
“You said it”, Lucy.
Bob piped up, ”But we have to come to some sort of arrangement regarding Charlie.”
“You’ve got the bloody house Bob, what more do you want?”
“Charlie needs a stable family, Lucy”, stated Pauline as a fact that she considered no one else had yet noticed.
“You’ve been in prison, you need time to reacclimate to the modern world”, said Bob.
“Fucking hell, Bob, it was only five years. I’m not the Count of Monte fucking Cristo. And I was in there for you! For our family.”
Bob drummed his fingers on the table. Empty wine and water glasses rattled.
“That’s not the issue now though. Our son is. His well being is. That’s why Pauline and I want to formalise things.”
“That’s why we are adopting Charlie”, said Pauline.
“And Pauline will be another of his mothers”, simpered Bob.
Pauline nodded like artillery.
Feb 10th #2
Lucy had ended up in jail because she was stupid. That’s the word she used. White collar, fall for it, protect your man, stupid… jail.
Jail? Don’t fuck with the fine language. Stupid. Prison. She breathed in. She took some salad. She hit Pauline full in the face, she hit her with her balled fist. She wanted to cave her head in.
Bob, as usual, did not know where to look or what to do.
Meat started smoking on the heat of the barbecue.
Lucy waited for the other two to do something.
“You fucking whore!” screamed Pauline. She jumped up, spoon in hand, ready for action. Lucy hit her in the throat, flat of the hand. Bob was in what he would have called “a tizz”. This had suddenly become very untidy indeed. Pauline fell like a city centre tower, clawing at her throat, trying to breathe.
Five years for him. Now out of prison and it was a cold and shitty world. Lucy, looked at Bob who was kneeling over Pauline. Lucy spat down, turned on her heels, went indoors, upstairs, and into Charlie’s room. Of course, Bob had made sure that Charlie wasn’t in this house.
Lucy went into what had been their bedroom, shut the door, leant a chair under the handle and sat on the bed. This wasn’t helping. She looked at the phone by the bed. She looked out of the window onto the wide, safe, road. She removed the chair and felt in her bag for what she knew was in there, just to make sure. Where the fuck was he? He wasn’t there. Again.
She threw the keys out of the window so that they landed on the driveway.
9th Feb #2
Leeland woke up from a nap, he coughed. He’d been coughing for days. Too many cigarettes, too much booze, too many drugs, and all that interminable time on his hands. Cancer probably too.
The phone rang. It never rang.
His hands shook as he pushed away the bird feed, bottles and pornography to locate the receiver.
“Yeah?”
“Dad, it’s Lucy.”
He was only mildly surprised.
“Lucy-Doosey the first”, he said. “Well now. I hoped you wouldn’t need to call me.”
“I know,” her voice sounded shaky, “I need to call in that favour.”
He laughed. Then realised what she wanted from him. What he’d promised to do but only if she asked him.
“OK Lucy-Doosey, OK.”
“Tomorrow. My house. Our house. His house. Their house”, she hung up.
Leeland drank deeply from the bottle and turned his thoughts to the task ahead. He picked up the bird feed and opened the cage. He’d leave as soon as his hands were steady enough to drive.
“Can’t leave you to starve,” he muttered and reached for the bird, shaking fingers snapping its neck like a winter hawthorn twig.
He’d probably be gone a while.
Feb 10 #3
Lucy came down to the kitchen. Bob was, as usual, looking for God to descend and make it all better.
Pauline had recovered and was looking so pissed off. Lucy had to laugh.
“Pauline, you look absurdly fucked up.”
“I will kill you, girl. I will – Jesus this hurts.” She felt her throat and grimaced. She was scared, Lucy could tell.
“Bob, why don’t you do something?!” she screamed at him. He sat down in a damp mess looking more like a bag of washing than a man.
“What? What should I do?”
Lucy thought of her child, thought of Charlie, as she looked at the couple. Then she thought about the hell-strike she’d just called in. She almost fainted, at least she imagined that’s how almost fainting probably felt. It was quite pleasurable. In prison if you fainted, well, the cycle of gaining your self-respect started again. She’d only ever seen two women, only one got up. She’d seen one thousand girls faint though.
A car pulled up outside the house, coughing its guts out. A car door slammed shut. Slow, unsteady footsteps, and the front door was unlocked and pushed open. Then the door into the kitchen opened.
She was reminded of prison and her sacrifice for Bob. She smiled and said, “Goodbye”, as her father walked in.
“Charlie’s in the car, waiting”, he said as Lucy walked past him. She pecked him on the cheek.
“You don’t look so good, Dad. We’ll fix that”, she shut the door behind her and went to wait with Charlie in the car.
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