Mistake

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  He replies about ten minutes later saying that Mum will be with them for lunch tomorrow. He also mentions the photo that Mum forwarded to him, saying that I was an idiot to show it to her and there wasn’t a chance in hell it was anything to do with Dad. I make a face at his message, but text back an agreement that maybe I was overreacting to the photo and thanking him for taking Mum for lunch. After I’ve sent it, I relax, knowing I can be with Dave and the children without worrying about Mum. She’d say I was stupid to worry, but I can’t help it. She might have had her hair cut and be wearing make-up again, but that’s just appearances. It’s what’s underneath that counts. I suddenly think of the way she keeps her iPad close to her and it hits me that she’s probably looking at photos of Dad all the time. I feel a lump in my throat.

  ‘Penny for them,’ says Dave, and I realise that I haven’t even noticed him coming back into the kitchen.

  ‘Thinking about Mum,’ I say. ‘Hoping she’s all right.’

  ‘Of course she’s all right. She’s a tough old bird, your mother.’

  ‘She wouldn’t thank you for calling her old,’ I tell him. ‘She’s only sixty-two.’

  ‘It’s a term of affection,’ he says, and I laugh.

  Then Tom, jumping from the trampoline, lands awkwardly and cries out in pain, and the two of us are beside him in an instant, Team Parent, making sure he’s OK.

  ‘I hurt my ankle!’ he yells.

  Mica sits on the edge of the trampoline and watches while I run my fingers experimentally over my son’s ankle and Dave pats him on the head.

  ‘Nothing broken,’ I assure him. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  ‘You got a fright, buddy,’ Dave says. ‘I’m not surprised you cried. But if Mum says you’re OK, you’re OK.’

  ‘It hurts!’ Tom sniffs.

  ‘I bet,’ I say. ‘Come inside and I’ll put some ice on it for you.’

  We troop inside and I put some ice in a freezer bag, wrap it in a tea towel and place it under Tom’s ankle. I give both him and Mica an ice cream from the stash in the freezer and calm is suddenly restored. Being a parent is all about lurching from crisis to crisis. Trying to keep things on an even keel. Dealing with disasters. Hoping things turn out right in the end.

  Which they do. The ice cream works its magic far more quickly than the ice cubes. After ten minutes, Tom is back running around the garden again.

  ‘They’re good kids,’ says Dave as we watch them play. ‘They get on well together too. You’ve done a great job with them, Roxy.’

  ‘We’ve both done a good job,’ I tell him. ‘So far. The crunch will come when they’re teenagers and want to stay out all night and I won’t be able to fix things with ice cream and cuddles.’

  ‘You’ll always fix things,’ he says. ‘That’s what you do. Roxy the fixer.’

  Yes, that’s me. The fixer. The coper. The one who’s always there for them. For him. Even if, for a while, I wasn’t.

  ‘Seriously.’ His tone is indeed quite serious. ‘You’re a good mum and a good wife and this is the last time I’m going to say it but I’m really sorry about what happened.’

  I nod but don’t trust myself to speak. Because I might have forgiven him but the hurt is still close to the surface. And so is the niggling feeling that having done it once, he might do it again. All the same, it’s good to hear him say the words.

  He puts his arms around me and holds me tight. Then his hand slides down the front of my blouse and cups my breast. I close my eyes. I’ve missed him. I’ve missed this.

  I was right to let the pendulum stop at forgive and forget. This is where I belong.

  I don’t think of Julie Halpin later that night when Dave and I are making love in our king-sized bed. I don’t think of anything except that my husband and I are good together, we’ve always been good together and we always will be. He knows what I like and I know what he likes and we don’t have to ask if we’re doing the right thing because instinctively we are. And when I feel myself reaching the tipping point, I hold tightly onto him and cry out that I love him.

  He falls asleep immediately afterwards. I read somewhere that some kind of protein is released into men’s bodies after sex and that’s what causes them to drop off. Dave must have loads of whatever it is, because he conks out every time. Sometimes it irritates me, but tonight I simply spoon into his back and put my arm around him.

  It’s just as well tomorrow is Sunday. Because even though for once I’m not thinking about Julie Halpin, I don’t fall asleep for hours.

  The rest of the weekend goes by in a blur. I thought Dave might want to go back to Wexford on Sunday night, but he stays home and leaves at about six the following morning. The children are still asleep so they don’t get to say goodbye, but I stand at the front door in my heart-stamped pyjamas and watch the van until it disappears around the corner.

  Melisse Grady calls me later in the day to ask if I can drive a retired US general and his friend, a PGA golf professional, to Mount Juliet the following Thursday. Mount Juliet is an exclusive hotel and golf resort in Kilkenny, about a two-hour drive from Dublin.

  ‘He’s involved in a tourism push back in the States,’ Melisse tells me. ‘We’ve organised a number of events for him, but he’s particularly keen on a golf trip. You’d drive him down on Thursday afternoon and then pick him up on Friday lunchtime.’

  Dave and I didn’t really talk much about my driving plans over the weekend. I told him that I was continuing to take on some jobs, and he frowned and said that wasn’t really feasible now that I was home again, was it, and I dissembled a bit and said it was partly to make Mum feel helpful looking after the children. He nodded at that and we dropped the subject, but it’s something we’ll have to discuss properly in the future.

  My vague business plan centres on a select group of clients, and the retired US general doesn’t fit the profile. But I’ve never been to Mount Juliet before and I’d like to see it. Besides, I’m keen to stay on the right side of people like Melisse who have the power to give me work in the future. So I tell her I’d be delighted to take the job and she sends me the general’s phone number and asks that I pick him and his companion up at the Westbury Hotel at ten o’clock on Thursday morning. I text back a confirmation and save the number.

  Despite what I told Dave, I’ve actually decided not to ask Mum if she can look after the children this week when I’m working. I know she said she’d do it any time, but I’ve never depended on her as a one-stop childminder before and I won’t start now. Instead, I’m paying Natalie Hughes, who lives across the road. Natalie used to work in a bank until her third boy in five years was born. Now she makes scented candles at home and sells them online as premium products. They don’t make a lot of money, she admits, but it keeps her sane. And the added advantage is that her house always smells like a fresh meadow.

  Mica and Tom like being at Natalie’s, and as she’s really good with kids, I’m happy they’ll be well looked after. And outside of the general and his friend, the schedule is pretty much driving around town, which leaves me lots of flexibility to drop home if I need to.

  I’m pleased at how I’m managing to keep it all under control.

  I tell Dave about the job when he calls me later that night, thinking that he’ll be chuffed at the idea of me driving a retired general around the country. But he isn’t. Instead he says again that it’s not possible for me to keep driving on any long-term basis.

  ‘I understand that it was important while your dad was alive,’ he concedes. ‘But it’s far too inconvenient now. Besides, your dad always intended you to sell the car.’

  ‘No he didn’t.’

  ‘Of course he did. You don’t for one minute think he wanted you to be haring around the country with strangers in the back seat, do you? He expected you to sell the Merc, pocket a nice bit of money and enjoy yourself.’

  It’s not up to Dave to tell me what Dad thought.

  ‘I want to keep the business going,’ I tell him. ‘
I like driving.’

  ‘But it’s impossible,’ he says. ‘Especially when I’m away.’

  ‘But you won’t be away for long,’ I point out. ‘I can manage. I am managing.’

  ‘Listen to me, Roxy.’ Dave puts on his firm voice. ‘Selling it will give us a lovely lump sum. We can go on a fabulous holiday and raise a glass to Christy in thanks. The Caribbean,’ he adds. ‘How brilliant would that be?’

  It sounds wonderful actually. But I still don’t want to sell Dad’s car.

  The images of lying on the beach in Barbados or Antigua or Jamaica fade. Maybe the real reason I want to keep driving has nothing at all to do with wanting to channel my inner ambition and says everything about not being able to cut the link to Dad.

  ‘I definitely want to keep driving for the client who goes to Kildare,’ I tell Dave. ‘He’s paying a lot of money and it would be crazy to pass him on to someone else. As for the rest, I’ll work on the timings so that nobody is inconvenienced too much. Like I said, it’s only going to be select customers. Him. Melisse Grady’s clients. And people like Thea Ryan. Dad was very fond of her.’

  ‘There’s no point in maintaining an expensive car for one or two clients, no matter how much they’re paying or how selective you think they are,’ Dave points out. ‘Or for the sentimental reason that Christy was very fond of a doddery old lady.’

  Thea Ryan is the least doddery person I know. But I can’t argue with him about the rest of it. However, he can clearly hear how I feel, because eventually he sighs. ‘OK, OK. How about you keep doing it till I get back and then we’ll have a proper talk? I can’t see you being too keen in the winter,’ he adds. ‘It’s all very well getting up when it’s bright in the mornings, and being away from home when it’s still light, but you’ll think differently when the days are shorter.’

  I don’t say that in the winter I get up in the dark anyway.

  No matter what Dave says, it’s not us who’s going to decide. It’s me. The Mercedes is mine. And I’ll choose the when and the how of what happens to it in the future.

  The general and his friend are good company on the way to Mount Juliet, and I can’t help thinking that Dave would have actually enjoyed chatting to them himself. After I’ve dropped them at the hotel, I take some stunning photos of the surrounding countryside for my Instagram account. There is nowhere like Ireland when the sun is shining: the fields truly are forty shades of green, and yellow gorse blazes on the hillsides. I don’t need a filter on the photos to make them any more beautiful than they are already, and when I upload them, Leona Lynch likes them almost at once. I see that my followers have doubled over the last few days and feel a jolt of pride. I don’t have anything like Leona’s number, of course. But it’s a kind of validation all the same, and it makes me feel like I’m doing the right thing.

  I get back into the car and take a final look at the ivy-clad stately house before heading back to Dublin. As I reach the N7, I think of Ivo Lehane. Maybe I should recommend Mount Juliet to him as a place to bring his high-maintenance girlfriend for a romantic weekend. I googled the restaurant they’d gone to for her birthday dinner. The main courses were all at least a hundred euro each. I literally rubbed my eyes when I saw the prices because I thought that maybe it was for the whole meal. But no. That was for one dish. I don’t care how good the chef is – a piece of fish isn’t worth a hundred euro.

  At that moment my phone rings and I see from the display that it’s Ivo himself calling.

  ‘Hi,’ he says. ‘Just to let you know I’ll be an hour later tomorrow night. I’m flying in from London. I’ll text you the flight number. I hope that doesn’t disrupt you too much.’

  ‘Not at all.’ In fact I’m happy he’s a bit later. It gives me more flexibility in picking up the retired general.

  ‘But still the same time on Saturday morning,’ he adds.

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he says.

  ‘See you,’ I reply.

  I’ve disconnected the call before I think I should have reminded him to bring an extra bag for his computer. Or asked if he’d bought the atomiser. Not that it’s up to me really, but I like to add value for my clients, and besides, I can’t keep his high-maintenance girlfriend’s perfume in the glove compartment forever.

  Chapter 15

  When I arrive home, I find a cranky Mica, who’s had a row with Emma and Oladele, neither of whom wanted to come to Natalie’s house to play with her. I’m not going to intervene in the argument between the girls, who’ve been friends since they first started school, but I assure Mica that everything will turn out OK. She has a little cry on my shoulder and then she heads upstairs to watch the latest Leona Lynch vlog. Hopefully I’m right and the girls will sort it out among themselves, though I know my daughter can be stubborn if she thinks she’s in the right.

  Tom runs out to the trampoline and I make myself a cup of coffee. I drink the coffee and am nearly halfway through a packet of chocolate biscuits before I realise that I’m eating them. So much for my healthy-living regime! I take a deep breath and pull Gina Hayes’s signed book from the shelf. Another round of chopped salad, I think. According to Mum, the children liked it. But of course, she did add chips . . .

  I put the book on the countertop and gaze out of the window. Tom is leaping higher and higher on the trampoline and the words ‘it’ll all end in tears’ are rattling around in my head, especially after his awkward landing a few days ago. But he’s happy bouncing away and there’s no reason to worry about him. All the same, I can’t shake the sense of unease that seems to have settled on me since I’ve come back to Beechgrove Park. A feeling that I’m outside my own life looking in. As though it’s all a con and nothing is real. I don’t know why I should feel like this. But I do.

  I shake my head and go out into the garden, where I kick off my shoes and jump on the trampoline with my son. I don’t hear my phone ring and it’s nearly an hour later before I realise I missed a call from Dave.

  ‘Hi,’ I say when I call him back. ‘Sorry I missed you. I was on the trampoline.’

  ‘I was getting worried,’ he says. ‘I thought maybe you’d had an accident.’

  Dave never worries that I’ve had an accident.

  ‘You said you were driving to Mount Juliet today,’ he adds.

  ‘Oh, it was lovely!’ I tell him all about it, and about the charm and courtesy of the US general, and Dave snorts.

  ‘He’s probably sent men to their deaths,’ he says. ‘Courtesy, my arse.’

  ‘Well, he was courteous to me,’ I tell him. ‘And I’m looking forward to picking them up tomorrow.’

  ‘I had a nightmare of a day.’ Dave proceeds to tell me about a problem the team encountered with the old pipework in the hotel. It’s incompatible with the new annexe he’s working on. Or something. I’m not really listening. I’m deciding what time I need to set out to Mount Juliet and hoping that the weather will be as lovely as today, and wondering if Mica will have made up with Emma and Oladele, and thinking that maybe I should call Mum later.

  ‘What d’you think?’ he says, and I hesitate, unsure of what the question was.

  ‘I’m good with whatever you think,’ I say eventually.

  ‘Great,’ says Dave. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go, the lads and I are heading to Dicey’s for something to eat.’

  Dicey’s, I’ve learned, is the nearest pub to the holiday house. It’s become their unofficial canteen.

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Have a good night. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t forget I have to pick up my client from Dublin airport and take him to Kildare. Mum won’t be here tomorrow, so the kids will be at Natalie’s.’

  ‘Doesn’t Natalie have enough of her own to be worried about without you leaving ours with her too?’

  I haven’t told him I’m paying her. It’s none of his business really. I say she’s fine with it and then I tell him he’d better have a quick word with Tom and Mica before he goes.

  The drive to
collect the general and his friend the next day is wonderful. The sun is high enough in the sky not to bother me as I cruise through the lush countryside of Carlow and Kilkenny, and the traffic has thinned out sufficiently to make it stress-free. I put on my country music station and sing my heart out to Dolly and Shania, who are both giving me the same message. Which is pretty much that men are useless but women can’t live without them. The ladies may have a point.

  I arrive at the golf resort ahead of schedule, but the general and his friend are ready and waiting. They won’t let me load their clubs into the boot of the car, insisting on doing it themselves.

  ‘Where I come from, ma’am,’ the general says, ‘a gentleman always does the heavy lifting.’

  He’s sort of sweet. For a man who has ordered armies around and sent people to their deaths.

  After I drop them back to their Dublin hotel, I text Mum to say that I’ll call in to her on the way home. It’ll be nice to see her without the children and have a little bit of mother–daughter time. It’s not until I’ve pulled up outside her house that her reply appears on my screen, saying that she’s going out to lunch but hopes to be home before I show up.

  I have keys to the house, of course, but I ring the doorbell anyway. I hear her footsteps in the hall and then the door opens. She looks a bit flustered.

  ‘I’m only home this minute,’ she says.

  ‘I’m sorry if I made you rush. I thought it’d be nice to drop by when you’re not having to look after my children,’ I tell her as I kiss her on the cheek. ‘Did you have a nice lunch?’

  ‘Very.’

  Her face is flushed, which means she’s had a glass of wine. Her face always goes a bit red after a glass of wine. But I’m glad she had a good time.

  I make myself a coffee while she takes out her crochet needle and begins on a new octopus.

  ‘You’re like a machine,’ I tell her.