Her Husband's Mistake

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  ‘What did he say to you?’

  ‘He wanted none of it to have happened,’ says Mum. ‘He kept saying it wasn’t his life, it wasn’t his plan.’

  That’s so male, I think. Shit happens and men blame other people. It’s a bit of a blow to realise that my dad, who has always been my hero, was like every other man.

  ‘But Dad didn’t want to be with her instead of you, did he? Despite her being his first love and all.’

  ‘Well, it would’ve been very difficult in any case,’ Mum says. ‘After all, she was married and she couldn’t get a divorce – it wasn’t made legal in Ireland for at least another fifteen or sixteen years. I think if it hadn’t been a bit Romeo and Juliet when they first met, he wouldn’t have given her a second thought. It was a summer romance with a sad ending. When this all blew up, your dad insisted he loved me and only me. Despite what he did with the money, I believed him.’

  ‘So you went back to him,’ I say. ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Moved to England, as far as I know. At any rate, he never heard from her again.’

  ‘And you never found out if the baby was his or not?’

  She shakes her head.

  I sit in silence as I process the information. Much as I want to believe my dad’s story, I’m not sure that I do. Maybe I’m doing him an injustice. But there could still be a boy – a man – I haven’t met who’s related to me. Who doesn’t know anything about our family or about his father. It’s hard to get my head around the idea. And equally hard to dismiss it.

  Out of the blue, I think about the photo in the car and my heart misses a beat. What if the boy in it is the baby? What if Estelle sent it to Dad so that he could see a picture of his son? I’d been reminded vaguely of Tom when I first looked at it, but I thought that had more to do with the boy’s expression than anything else. I’d felt a vague connection too. But what if the connection was real, and the photo reminded me of my son because I was looking at his uncle?

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Mum’s expression is puzzled as she looks at me.

  Should I tell her? Does she need to know? I don’t want to hurt her, but I can’t hide it from her. I can’t hide it from myself, either. The unknown boy could actually be my half-brother. And that means that my dad, who I always thought of as the most straightforward, honest person in the world, kept secrets from us.

  ‘Back in a second,’ I say as I get up and walk out of the room. I go to the car and take the photograph from the glove compartment. I walk inside again and put it on the table between us.

  ‘What’s this?’

  I explain about finding it in the car and my so-far-unsuccessful attempts to trace the person who left it behind.

  ‘Is it possible that this is Estelle’s son?’ I ask. ‘That she sent a photo to Dad and he kept it because he thought the boy might be his too? I know it’s weird and sort of spooky, but I got a feeling that I was connected to this boy when I first saw it. If he is Dad’s son . . .’

  ‘Oh my God.’ She stares at it. ‘But Roxy, this boy is at least six years old. If your dad had this photo, it would have meant he’d stayed in touch with Estelle after he’d given her the money. Or that she’d got in touch with him again later.’ Her voice wobbles.

  ‘I know.’ I put my arm around her shoulders. ‘I . . . I can’t really believe he would have done this, and yet it sort of makes sense.’

  ‘He never said.’ Mum is turning the photo over and over in her hand. ‘Not a word. But . . .’ She looks up at me in puzzlement again. ‘You said it was in the back seat pouch and fell out of a magazine. So Christy couldn’t possibly have left it there. He hadn’t been inside the car for months.’

  She’s right about that. It’s niggled at me too. ‘Maybe he dropped it and a passenger picked it up and shoved it into the seat pouch,’ I suggest. ‘And I didn’t notice. And it ended up in the magazine.’

  ‘But that means he would have been carrying it around for nearly forty years without telling me.’ Mum looks distraught.

  I shouldn’t have told her. I should have kept quiet no matter how bad I might have felt at keeping it from her. Especially as I could be completely wrong and this boy has nothing at all to do with Dad. I’m angry at him for possibly keeping secrets from us, but I suddenly realise why he might have done it.

  Mum gets the big box that we looked through before. She finds the photograph of Estelle, but the rest of them are family snaps. At the beach. At school. In the garden. Communions. Confirmations. Weddings. Normal stuff. No unfamiliar faces. Nobody who shouldn’t be there.

  ‘We’re probably adding two and two together and getting five,’ I say when we’ve gone through them all. ‘My first thought was the right one. This is a keepsake that a random client dropped, and maybe eventually they’ll notice and get back to me.’

  ‘I’d like to think it’s all a coincidence.’ Mum is holding on to the photo of the boy with a certain grim determination. ‘After Christy told me about the deposit money, he swore he’d never keep anything from me again. And I always thought he never did.’

  ‘Dad wasn’t a liar.’ I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince – her or me.

  ‘He wasn’t a damn saint either,’ mutters Mum as she returns the photos to the box and closes the lid. ‘Though I know you’d like him to have been.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ I say. But she has a point. I always believed my dad could do no wrong. I still want to believe that. So I don’t want this boy to be anything to do with our family.

  ‘Does Aidan know?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  I tell her that I’ve already saved a snap of the photo on my phone and that I’ll send it to him.

  ‘Why?’ asks Mum

  ‘Maybe Dad talked to him, you know, man to man.’

  She looks horrified. ‘I hope not,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to think that Aidan was keeping stuff from me too! Anyway, don’t send it to him, Roxy. Send it to me. I’ll do it. It’s not right that you should have to.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s a random stranger,’ I say as I forward the picture to her. ‘I’m making a mountain out of a molehill.’

  ‘I hope so,’ she says.

  But I don’t know if she truly believes it.

  Or if I do either.

  I deliberately haven’t taken jobs for the first week Dave is away (except Ivo Lehane on Friday), because I want to keep lots of time free for Tom and Mica. As it turns out, they spend most of their days out on the green in front of the house, in their rooms with their friends, or in other people’s homes. So I spend some time being a domestic goddess (at least as far as cleaning is concerned) and then turn my attention to the other aspects of being a driver and work on my accounts spreadsheets. I also upload some photos that I took at Malahide Castle to the Instagram account, which, despite my benign neglect, has accumulated more followers.

  I follow a few more people myself, including a woman who posts old photographs of people and places. I wonder if I uploaded the photo of the boy onto Instagram, would the power of social media mean that someone might recognise him? But even as I think about it, I know I’m not going to do it, because even though he must be a middle-aged man now, it’s still a photo of an unknown child, and I’d feel uncomfortable putting it out for everyone to see. But unless the owner contacts me, I don’t see how I’m going to reunite them with it.

  The old photos on the account I’m looking at are very clear. I wonder if there’s a way to enhance the one I have, so I do a search for relevant apps, which brings up a number of different possibilities. I download a couple, but none of my efforts make much difference. After a while I abandon it and go into the kitchen to resume my domestic goddess status. I’m making jacket potatoes for our dinner. It’s a Gina Hayes recipe, super-simple, and when Tom and Mica sit down to it later, they give me an impressed thumbs-up, which makes me feel good about myself.

  Debs, Michelle and Alison drop by later that evening bearing bottles of wine and bags of crisps
for an impromptu welcome-home party. Obviously I’m the chief topic of conversation, but I manage to steer it away from Rodeo Night to my plan to continue with Dad’s business.

  ‘What does Dave think?’ asks Michelle.

  Why does everyone ask what Dave thinks when I talk about my plans for myself?

  ‘It’s not up to him,’ says Alison. ‘Roxy can make her own decisions.’

  ‘Not entirely.’ I take a handful of crisps. ‘He’ll have to be supportive, and I have to make sure I’m there for Tom and Mica. Of course it does make it more awkward that he’s going to be away for a few weeks.’

  They exchange glances.

  ‘There’s nothing sinister in him being away!’ I cry. ‘He’s done it before.’

  ‘Actually, it’s not a bad thing,’ Alison says. ‘You get to ease yourself back into the house, make it your own again. Gives you time to set yourself up, too, in how you want to run Christy’s Chauffeurs.’

  ‘I’m changing the name,’ I say.

  ‘Oh – to what?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ I admit.

  ‘Well, whatever, you have to make sure you’re not trying to be Superwoman,’ says Debs. ‘Dave has to be flexible in the future too. I’m sure Lauren would be delighted to look after the children for you if you need help. She’s keen to make some babysitting money.’

  Lauren is Debs’s daughter. She’s three years older than Mica, who hero-worships her.

  ‘If you want advice on the business side of things, I’ll set you up with a guy at my company who specialises in SMEs,’ says Alison.

  ‘SMEs?’

  ‘Small and medium enterprises,’ she clarifies.

  ‘I’m not an enterprise,’ I tell her. ‘I’m just a driver.’

  ‘Still a business.’ She refills our glasses. Despite being the responsible adult at home tonight, I don’t object. For once, I want to kick back a little.

  ‘A driver to the stars!’ Debs laughs as she turns to the other girls. ‘Roxy’s had some very famous people in her car. Thea Ryan and Gina Hayes.’

  Michelle looks impressed. She’s a big fan of Clarendon Park , the soap that Thea appears in from time to time.

  ‘And Leona Lynch,’ I add. ‘To show I’m down with the kids.’

  ‘Who the hell is Leona Lynch?’ asks Alison.

  Debs fills her in, and I tell them how getting mentioned on Leona’s Instagram account meant more followers to mine, which makes everyone check both accounts on their phones.

  ‘She’s gorgeous, isn’t she?’ Michelle tries to keep the envy out of her voice. ‘What I wouldn’t give for skin like hers. Is it like that in real life? Or is she airbrushed out of existence?’

  I say that Leona is lovely and really sweet and that she’s pulling in a six-figure sum from her vlog and other media stuff.

  ‘Jeez, maybe we should do that too.’ Michelle giggles. ‘We could call ourselves Women of a Certain Age. With Wine. I bet we’d go viral in seconds.’

  We all laugh, and then Alison says that it’s great to see women doing well for themselves, and that I should definitely keep up with the driving and the Instagramming and maybe I could do a blog as well.

  ‘If there were forty-eight hours in a day,’ I say. ‘Because I also have to do parenting and housekeeping and a million other different things.’

  ‘It’s important to have your own stuff, though,’ she says. ‘Driving wouldn’t be my thing, but it’s definitely yours. I’m glad you’re going to make it work, Roxy. You’ve been putting yourself in second place to Dave forever.’

  Am I going to call out my friend for saying that I put myself in second place to my husband? Hardly, when she’s right. But I’m not having her talk to me in that tone either.

  ‘I don’t mean to get at you,’ she insists when I say this. ‘All I mean is that . . . well, you make allowances for him that you don’t make for yourself. You need to be stronger and more out there, Roxy. This is a good opportunity to take no more shit from him.’

  ‘You think he treats me like shit?’ My voice is dangerously calm.

  ‘No!’ She shakes her head. ‘But you let him treat you like a doormat. You’ve come running back to him when he doesn’t deserve you, and I bet you’ll put his job ahead of yours when you shouldn’t.’

  She may be saying things I’ve thought to myself, but it’s not up to her. It’s Debs that says this out loud. I’m too annoyed.

  ‘I think you’re letting him off easy, that’s all,’ says Alison.

  ‘You think I shouldn’t have come back?’

  ‘I’m not saying that.’

  ‘But you’re thinking it?’

  She sighs. ‘Everyone is different. I’ve had more breakups than hot dinners, Roxy. I’ve never gone back. But you’re a nicer person than me.’

  I probably am. Alison has a cold streak to her. Maybe it came from being the nerdy one who was outside the pack. All the same, I’m not going to argue with her. She’s only trying to be helpful, even though telling me I should have dumped my husband when we’re supposed to be celebrating my return home isn’t a great way to help.

  The bottle of wine is empty. I get up and fetch another one from the kitchen. The girls are sitting in silence when I return.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I tell Alison when I open the wine. ‘I know you’re just giving an opinion.’

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ she says. ‘You’ve got your own life to live and I haven’t walked in your shoes.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to.’ I glance down at my feet. ‘They’re a size eight. And you only take a four.’

  There’s an almost palpable lessening of the tension in the room, and we start talking about fashion. Which is a much safer subject than errant husbands and keeps us going until it’s time for the girls to leave.

  Chapter 13

  On Friday, because I leave to collect Ivo Lehane before Dave gets home, Mum comes to keep an eye on the children. Tom and Mica fling themselves at her.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ she says.

  ‘I miss you too, Granny,’ says Tom.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ asks Mica. ‘Are you still bereaved?’

  ‘It takes time, but I’m getting better, sweetheart,’ replies Mum.

  ‘Baby steps,’ Mica says. ‘That’s what our teacher says when stuff takes time. You have to do baby steps.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Mum kisses her on the top of her head. Now that they’re downstairs, the kids go into the living room and turn on the TV. I don’t mind them watching it; they’ve been out for most of the day.

  ‘Has anyone come back to you about the photo?’ Mum asks me when I put the kettle on for a quick cup of tea before I leave.

  I shake my head and say I haven’t had time to follow it up further myself either. ‘I’ve already asked the clients I thought were possibles and they’ve said no,’ I add, ‘but I don’t want to send a random picture to people I’ve only picked up once or twice.’

  ‘What if one of them is this boy and is trying to contact us?’ asks Mum. ‘What if he left it there deliberately?’

  ‘Hiding a photo in the car is hardly an efficient way of making contact,’ I point out as I put a cup of tea in front of her and shake some biscuits onto a plate. ‘All he had to do was ask. Or even put a contact number on the back. I wish I hadn’t shown it to you now. I thought you might have already known . . .’

  ‘I forwarded it to Aidan,’ she says. ‘Your dad never said anything to him about having a son, and Aidan says that even if it were true, Christy wouldn’t have kept a photograph hidden from me for years. He also said that if I was worried that he was still carrying on with this woman while we were married, I was being very stupid, because everyone knows that your dad could be trusted a hundred per cent.’

  My brother is probably right. Nevertheless, Dad did use their joint money to help Estelle out. He broke Mum’s trust on that. So he isn’t entitled to a free pass on random photos now.

  I gulp back the tea I didn’t really want,
then pick up my bag and tell Mum I’ve done a bowl of chopped salad for the evening meal.

  ‘There’s enough for everyone,’ I add, ‘but you can throw in some oven chips if you like.’

  ‘Chopped salad? Is this more Gina Hayes in action?’ she asks.

  ‘Chopped salad is a thing right now,’ I inform her. ‘It’s not exclusive to Gina. Though I got the recipe from her book.’

  Even as I say the word, I think that ‘recipe’ sounds odd for what’s simply a whole heap of veg and lettuce chopped up and put on a plate. It’s arranging, not cooking.

  ‘You’re taking this healthy-living thing to heart,’ says Mum.

  I think of the wine and crisps I had with Debs, Michelle and Alison and I laugh. ‘I make lots of salads,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve never chopped it before, but it looks quite good.’

  ‘It’s all the same when it’s in your belly.’ Mum echoes a favourite saying of my Granny Carpenter as she takes her crochet from her bag. She might think I’m taking the healthy living a bit far, but there can’t be enough preemie babies in Ireland for all the crocheting she’s doing.

  ‘Thanks for coming over,’ I say.

  ‘No problem.’ She looks around her. ‘Have you been cleaning or did Dave keep the house looking like this?’

  I stick out my tongue at her. I admit that I can be a bit OCD when it comes to housework. Within the confines of the chaos the children inevitably bring, my home is always neat and tidy. I can’t bear disorder. When everything around me is messy, I feel messy inside too.

  ‘He was an idiot,’ she says. ‘But good men can also be idiots.’

  She’s absolutely right, I say to myself as I get into the car. But although the familiar sense of calm descends on me, I can’t help wondering if Dad did something really idiotic when he was younger too.

  As I drive to the airport, I have to admit that I’m regretting having said that I’d pick up Ivo Lehane, because it means I won’t be there to welcome Dave when he gets back from Wexford. All the same, Ivo could end up being my most profitable client ever, and it would be stupid to turn him down. In fact between Dave’s Wexford job and Ivo as a client, the pair of us are bringing in some serious money this month. Maybe we’ll be able to afford a family holiday abroad before the end of the summer. Or if the house in Wexford isn’t available, we could even stay in a hotel.