BRID McCole's lips tightened as the barrister referred to the deceased party to the action. She looked like she would cry. But she didn't. Hers was a dignified anguish on what would have been her mother's day in court.
The eldest daughter of Brigid McCole, Brid sat on the hard courtroom bench beside family and friends. With tight pale faces the young people dressed in black fixed their eyes on the back of the horse hair wigs of the men tying up the legal loose ends of Mrs McCole's case.
It took six minutes. For around 40 minutes the family and friends listened as other cases were dealt with, dates set, and forms filled. They rose and sat as the judge came and went. A group of curious schoolchildren gazed at the proceedings beside them.
On the other side, Jane O'Brien and members of Positive Action, the group representing women infected with hepatitis C like Brigid McCole, sat and listened to the formal apology from the counsel for the Blood Transfusion Services Board.
The apology had been one of their demands from the start. For some women it was the one thing that made them most angry about their infection with contaminated blood products. But there was little satisfaction that it took the death of a mother of 12 children to make it happen.
The feeling was mirrored in the faces of some of those children as the barrister expressed his client's sympathy. They were hardened with accusation, bewilderment and loss. Brid put her head down as they discussed her mother's will.
Then it was all over. The McColes and friends filed out, while others stood back respectfully. Brid was helped away by two women. "They're doing their best to get through today in the way their mother would have wanted," Ms O'Brien said. But there had been a dreadful finality about what they had just sat through, she said.
Mrs McCole's children felt they had to be in court, even if it was Just to hear the case struck out.
"They felt this was what their mother would have faced today," Ms O'Brien said. "It's another part of the whole grieving process."
