The day the laughter stopped

Five vibrant, talented girls gone in one day

Five vibrant, talented girls gone in one day. Over and over again, their friends and neighbours could only say, 'There are no words', writes Kate Holmquist, in Co Meath.

The bus ride home from school was one of the social highlights of the day for the school-going teenagers of Beauparc, Yellow Furze and Rosnaree, a group of tiny parishes within three miles of each other nestled deep in the green cradle of the Boyne Valley. The bus journey seemed a safe space to chat loudly about music and studies, tell jokes and play pranks during the transition from school to home.

While the young people went to four different secondary schools - the Loreto and Mercy convents, St Patrick's Classical School and Beaufort College - many of them had started out in national school together at Yellow Furze, which is no more than a crossroads with a church, a school and a few houses. As well as being friends, many of them were also related - siblings, cousins or part of a wider family going back generations.

On Monday afternoon, shortly after 4pm, there was the usual good-natured competition to see who would get the coveted seats at the back of the bus - the boys from St Patrick's or the girls from Loreto.

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A group of Loreto girls left school some time after classes officially ended at 3.20pm and ambled through the trees and down the grassy hill that lifts the Loreto campus above the town of Navan. They reached the bus-stop on the main road in good time, to find that the St Patrick's boys were held back a bit later at school; so the girls got to choose their seats first.

Deirdre Scanlon (17), prefect and a star student, popular among her peers and her teachers at Loreto, settled into her favourite place at the back of the bus. At her side, was her best friend, Claire McCluskey (18), also in sixth year at Loreto and a born leader headed for university, her teachers predicted. Both girls were preparing for their Leaving Cert exams, but Deirdre, as prefect, had made time a few days before to organise a party at the school.

Sitting in rows ahead of the sixth years were the fifth-year students, among them Aimee McCabe (15), class captain three years running at Loreto, and Angela Frawley (16), also at Loreto. Joining them was Sinéad Ledwidge (14), a second-year student at Beaufort College and, recently, a gold medalist in the Leinster Schools' shot-putt championship.

Missing was Janine Duggan, collected earlier by her mother after being ill at school that day. Before she left, she had been given a comforting hug from her best friend Aimee. The group was also joined by Lisa Callan (15), a talented musician, who used to play under the cherry tree with Angela when they were toddlers in Montessori school together.

The rest of the bus passengers sat according to age, with "the babies" - the first-years - closest to the front of the bus and to John Hubble, the driver, who is well-liked by the students. He would go out of his way to drop them at their door, and among the parents has a reputation as a very careful driver.

When the St Patrick's boys arrived a bit later than usual, some of them found seats beside girls their age while others stood in the aisle. John Muldoon (16), third year at St Patrick's, sat with Aimee, with whom he'd grown up. He admired her because she was bubbly and never had a bad word to say about anyone; her peers felt the same about her.

The bus filled up and soon there were 50 children on board, ready to be driven down winding roads, many so narrow they don't have lines painted down the middle.

The countryside was stunning in May, with the fresh green of new leaves contrasting with the white blossoms of elder and wildflowers, despite the recent rain. This was the last view of their beautiful home place that some of these young people would ever see.

At some point between 4.20pm and 4.28pm the bus reached one of the busiest traffic spots in the district, at Mooretown, near Casey's cross on the Kentstown road, a short distance out of Navan.

JOHN MULDOON REMEMBERS that the bus was noisy and everyone was chattering, when he saw the girls lurch forward inexplicably. Instinctively, he grabbed a metal rail to gain his balance but it came away in his hands.

The next thing he remembers, he was lying flat on a grassy bank outside the bus, on top of a heap of his friends. The bus had tipped and was lying on its side below him. He heard screaming and when he realised he had been thrown out of the bus and was OK, he immediately began to look for his friends. Unable to find Aimee, he went to help two other girls who were trapped inside.

Mark McCabe (16), whose brother, Seán (14), and cousin Deirdre Scanlon were on the bus, has said he saw the driver swerve to miss a car, before he felt the bus leaning and toppling over. He grabbed a railing, but was thrown through the air while his brother, amazingly, stayed in his seat. Mark and Seán also helped with the rescue efforts as children screamed and moaned.

There was complete panic and for many of the teenagers, if they were conscious and able to move, their first instinct was to call their parents on their mobile phones. By 4.30pm, the parents were already arriving - even before the emergency services - and calling out desperately for their children. In the chaos, dozens of freed children were wandering shocked and dazed, unaware of where they were.

The emergency services and local GPs arrived next. Gardaí brought the parents away from the scene and asked them to stay behind a barrier, to spare them from seeing the worst. Emergency personnel had no idea how many children remained trapped on the bus, or whether they were dead or alive.

Gerry Frawley, one of the first parents to arrive at the scene, searched for his daughter, Angela. As more and more children were rescued from the bus, Gerry waited with increasing anxiety.

It was becoming apparent that there were children trapped beneath the bus, as well as inside it. The unspoken question for the remaining parents was would their children emerge alive? Some parents, as they waited, even thought that their children must not have been on the bus after all, and searched anxiously for them elsewhere. It would be hours before the final identifications were made.

But Gerry and his wife, Christine, were fortunate. Angela was found with her arm hanging out of a window and, while it took some time, she was removed from the bus alive and taken to hospital in Drogheda.

AT THE HOSPITAL, the scene was harrowing as anxious parents who had not yet found their children, waited. When Chief Supt Michael Finnegan confirmed that five children had died, the only sound was inconsolable weeping. Those parents still waiting for news knew without having to be told, that they were the unlucky ones.

Deirdre Scanlon, Claire McCluskey, Aimee McCabe, Sinéad Ledwidge and Lisa Callan were dead.

"It was the luck of the draw on that bus," says Christine, who is undergoing chemotherapy and so was not allowed to see her daughter for three nights due to fear of infection. "If you were sitting at the back, you got it. We are so grateful that Angela survived. We will get through this."

Angela was able to attend the first of the funerals on Thursday in a wheelchair, her battered face and body a reminder of the violent force of the accident, which sent the bus spinning 180 degrees and toppling over. As her wheelchair was pushed past the several-hundred-strong guard of honour made up of students and Seneschalstown ladies' football team members that had gathered to honour the life of Deirdre Scanlon, her face showed the pain that the hundreds of mourners were feeling.

There were no words to describe the loss. Five vibrant, talented girls gone in one day. Over and over again, people could only say, "There are no words".

At the funeral of Claire McCluskey, in the small church at Rosnaree, one mourner did venture to find words. "Life is cruel," was all she could say, as she looked at a display of snapshots of Claire smiling and laughing with her friends.

Asked how he thought his community would cope with the tragedy, Fr Peter Farrelly of the Church of the Assumption, at Yellow Furze, could only shrug and say, "God knows." Seeking to comfort grieving family members at the first of five funerals that would take place within 24 hours, Fr Farrelly told the congregation that "the number of years is not the true measure of a life".

And yet, such well-meant comfort rang a little hollow for mourners who had hardly even begun to grieve the loss not just of daughters, but of the strong, independent, high-achieving women these girls would have become.

THIS LOSS WAS keenly felt at the Loreto Convent where four of the girls had been students. The school prides itself on nurturing the "whole" student. Teachers and students become close.

"They were fabulous young girls with choices, headed for university. They would have been leaders of their generation. They left their homes that morning, their parents trusting that they would be safe and come home to them. It just shows how fragile life is," said Francis O'Toole, guidance counsellor at the Loreto.

A small graveyard is tucked up on a hill behind the Church of the Assumption. Standing on that hill, it is possible to look out upon the parish and see the houses of some of the victims scattered across the fields, as well as the national school they attended.

Deirdre Scanlon lived at the crossroads, directly opposite the church and, as a girl, regularly ran messages back and forth between Fr Farrelly and her parents and also her grandparents, who lived one house away, also across from the church.

It was to Deirdre's grandmother that members of the community went on the night of the accident, to ask for the keys to open the church so they could light candles and pray together.

Deirdre's coffin had to be carried only a few hundred metres from her front door to the church altar, and then on to the graveyard where a place in the rich, brown earth had been carved out to receive her, as well as Sinéad and Aimee.

The storybook tidiness of it all seemed almost surreal - that a girl could be christened, live and die at what is essentially a crossroads, never knowing as she ran those messages across to the priest and stopped to sing him a song, that she would be buried there before her 18th birthday.

It is the smallness of the place which makes the loss of the five girls so unfathomable.

Searching for words, teachers and students at the Loreto gathered in small groups to speak and write about their grief. Some offered letters, along with their gifts of flowers.

"You're safe now! Watch over us and keep us safe," one of Lisa Callan's friends wrote to her.

"Guide us through our Leaving Cert and walk with us each day," friends wrote to Deirdre and Claire.

"You spun your wave of magical laughter in the corridors and the classrooms," a teacher wrote. "I will never forget that ecstatic day on the courts during a frenzied game of ruleless volleyball and witty verbal exchanges where we all laughed ourselves to tears."

There was no such laughter in Navan this week, only tears. An eerie sense of communal mourning seemed to silence voices, the landscape and the world itself, as old men followed the tradition of bowing their heads and praying at the crossroads, where girls should have been laughing and dancing.