by Elske Rahill
‘I put everything in the affidavit… But I don’t want maintenance from him anyway, I told you that.’
‘Well after listening to him now, I don’t know. He has your mother here to witness for him?’
Freya looks at Cara. The solicitor seems to have only just noticed her. ‘Hi,’ she says.
‘Hi.’
‘You’re Freya’s sister?’
‘Yes. Freya’s big sister.’
Freya wraps the cardigan tight around herself. She can hear her solicitor’s words but she finds it hard to grasp their meaning. She looks at Cara. She wants her sister to speak for her, to eclipse her.
‘So, your mother will say you’re unfit – that’s what he says, and that she’s trying to get custody…’
‘That’s bullshit,’ says Cara, ‘that’s complete and utter – Our mother’s not well. She’s mental. That will be immediately obvious, when you meet her… We weren’t even raised by her. She doesn’t even know us… I mean, you can call me as a witness, if you want?’
‘Alright, I’m going to need you to calm down. The judge might not allow her to be called; it might not be an issue. Hearsay.’
‘Freya was removed by social services,’ says Cara.
‘Was I?’
‘Well, I think so. Yes, you were.’
Barbara grimaces, as at a bad smell. ‘Oh dear, this is complicated. Now let me just run through the other things. Freya?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, according to him he has some records from an aunt of yours? She has furnished him with proof that you have received eighty grand from your grandmother – is that right?’
‘No.’
‘Well, he says he has proof.’
‘I don’t see what that could be.’
‘Is there a trust fund?’
‘There’s a trust fund, yes. There isn’t that much in it though, I don’t think. Although my aunt said there was nothing left…’
‘That was nonsense,’ says Cara, ‘that was her hoping, or planning to use it or something. There could be forty…’
‘… and I don’t have access to it. My aunts are the trustees on it…’
‘I see. This is complicated then… Oh, I have a headache just trying to straighten this out now… the judge won’t like this. Now here’s another thing they are saying, just to discredit you, I think. They want to settle, you see, so they’re telling me everything they have on you.’
Cara looks furious. ‘They have on her?’
‘Yes, so they say you are taking a court case against your grandmother? For money?’
Freya is dizzy. ‘What? What are they talking about?’
‘The wardship,’ says Cara. ‘No, we’re not taking a case against our grandmother. We’re contesting the power of attorney. We’re applying to make her a ward of the court. We probably won’t go ahead with it, to be honest. We don’t really have the money…’
‘This – this doesn’t look great, you know. This makes the family look dysfunctional.’
‘Yeah, well, they are dysfunctional. That’s why we have nothing to do with them… that’s why we’re contesting the power of attorney. It doesn’t mean this little shit can blow in out of nowhere and take my nephew away from his mother—’
‘You’ll have to calm down. If I’m going to call you as a witness you will need to be calm and rational… reliable.’
‘So what does he want?’
‘Fifty–fifty.’
‘Access?’
‘Fifty–fifty access, yes. I mean he probably won’t get that. He’ll probably get weekends…’
Freya has a sensation of being thrust back and forth very fast. She closes her eyes. When she opens them, she sees her solicitor and she sees her sister but it’s like looking at them through thick glass. She is going to faint. She thinks of the word ‘swooning’. She is swooning.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ says Cara. ‘He has been through enough. He is five years old; he is not moving back and forth between two homes. That man is a piece of shit. He locked him in a room. Tell her, Freya – tell her what happened when you let him see Jem!’
‘Hang on,’ says Barbara, listening to a voice over the intercom. ‘Sorry, I have another client here. He’s up. Hang on. I’ll be back. Get your blouse on. We might be soon.’
She closes the door, and for a moment all Freya can hear is the extractor fan. She feels very cold. ‘I shouldn’t have shown up.’
‘Now listen, Freya, you need to cop on,’ says Cara. ‘Listen, you can’t be coy about this, you need to tell the judge exactly what he’s up to, okay?’
‘I can’t believe she has done this.’
‘Well she has, so you need to get yourself together, Freya. Here, have some water.’
Freya drinks. The water is very cold: ‘I’m cold.’ She’s sweating again.
‘She’s not taking Jem. I don’t want her laying eyes on Jem. Neither of them are. Neither of them are getting their hands on him.’
‘She won’t, Freya. She hasn’t a hope. Now come on, you need to hold it together for this.’
‘I can’t believe—’
‘We’ll get them to call me to witness, okay? I can witness. I can tell the judge she was abusive, I can tell the judge everything.’
‘What proof do we have, Cara? And what is there even to tell? She was a bit of a bitch, that’s all. And you were gone. You weren’t there for it.’
‘What?’
‘You weren’t there when she was being crazy. Oh, except the time you helped her.’
‘What? Freya, what are you talking about? It was me she had it in for. I know she did that cancer stunt with you, but it was me she thought was evil. It was me she tried to exorcise. She tried to get me arrested for beating her, Freya, when I was seven. I was seven. She smashed her own arm in with a rolling pin to try to get me arrested! Bonkers stuff. What do you mean, I wasn’t there?’
‘Well, except when you were. Except when you helped her that time.’
Cara is looking into her coffee with irritation. She shakes her head.
‘What time?’
‘With the bath.’
Cara is drinking the cold coffee. She scowls as though to shake off Freya’s voice, and Freya can feel herself blush.
‘I don’t understand, Freya.’
‘When she had her friend over. That loud lady. They used to laugh really loudly together. They laughed at us. They watched us playing together and laughed. She said, “You’d want to see the rolls on Freya. You have to see her thighs.” She wanted to show her. And I wouldn’t take my clothes off, so she tricked me. She ran me a bath and then when I was in the bath you came in with her and pulled me out and she was laughing. You helped her. You helped her to pull me downstairs and she was saying, “Look at the rolls on her”.’
‘Freya. I don’t remember that. I don’t think that happened, Freya. When was this?’
‘I was little. You were still living with us. I don’t know. Look, whatever, anyway. I don’t blame you or anything. It’s not a big deal.’
‘I – I can tell them about what I remember. I can tell them about her waking me up every hour to do my violin…’
‘That’s nothing, Cara. Jesus. It was so much worse. It was so much worse than you remember. She’s not laying eyes on Jem.’
‘I know. I agree with you…’
There is another announcement over the intercom. The solicitor comes in.
‘We’re up,’ she says. ‘I can tell them we want more time to try and settle, will I? Tell me quickly. Your mother didn’t show, by the way. So maybe now is best.’
‘I’ll go. I’ll go now.’
‘Tell them everything,’ says Cara. ‘Tell them about the blowjob and everything.’
*
The courtroom is much smaller than Freya expected. It is like a classroom – cheap chairs, cheap table, blank walls. There are no windows. The judge enters through a door behind the stand, with an air of grandeur incongruous with the frigid decor.
It’s a woman. The judge is a woman.
Dermot makes a point of staring very hard at Freya the whole time, even when he is on the stand.
‘Please address your answers to me, Mr McNally,’ says the judge, ‘and please speak up.’
He mentions her mother only once and when he does, Barbara stands up. ‘Objection, your honour, my client was raised by her grandparents. My client has no relationship with her mother. She was removed by social services as a child.’
‘Mr McNally, I fail to see the relevance of this,’ says the judge wearily. ‘Please get to the point.’
‘I’m sorry if I’m chewing the ear off you, your honour,’ says Dermot, ‘but this is the only time I get to speak. She won’t let me speak to her; she doesn’t listen to me. She doesn’t care how I feel.’
‘Mr McNally, we are here to decide what’s best for the child. Not to provide you with a listening service.’
‘I’ve been speaking to her aunt,’ he says, ‘and she agrees that Freya is very manipulative… and Freya is rich. She’s a spoiled child.’
‘So, you’ve been speaking to the aunt now? Is there even a maintenance order here? Why is any of this relevant?’
When it’s Freya’s turn to speak she is surprised to find that she isn’t shaking. She can feel Dermot looking at her but she keeps facing the judge. She tells the judge about the paper Dermot wanted her to sign, that he threatened to apply for custody if she didn’t. The judge looks down the room at Dermot, who lifts his chin and tenses his cheeks. He cracks his knuckles, clears his throat. Freya fancies she sees the judge flinch. She says she tried access, and her son was upset. She says he was locked in a room. He’s been wetting the bed since. Dermot wouldn’t let him out unless she did what he wanted.
‘And can you tell the court what that was, please?’ says Barbara.
But Freya can’t.
‘I can’t,’ she says.
The judge raises an eyebrow.
‘The papers,’ says Freya, ‘he wanted me to sign them, and…’
Barbara nods at her. ‘Please tell the court.’
‘… I can’t.’
*
The judge says she wants to think about this. She says she wants a child psychiatrist’s report on the child. She says she is not at all comfortable granting access just yet. The case is adjourned until June. She suggests to Barbara that her client puts in a maintenance order before then. She hasn’t even given him guardianship.
Freya begins to shake again as soon as she leaves the courtroom. In the lift, Barbara says, ‘I’ve never seen that before. No guardianship. The fathers’ rights lot will be up in arms. You froze a bit there but you’ll be better next time.’
‘I have another client down here. Tell your sister it was nice to meet her.’
Freya presses the button and the lift closes before Dermot can see her. Cara will be pleased. Cara will be so proud of her. Grandma would be proud. Freya loves the judge. She loves her, she will always be grateful to her.
There is someone else in room 4A – a man and his solicitor, and they both look up silently when she opens the door, waiting for her to close it. The ‘for a greener tomorrow’ cups are still on the table, and the mesh bag-for-life, scrunched into a ball.
‘Sorry,’ says Freya, ‘sorry, they’re mine. I’ll just take them.’ The men don’t speak. They watch her put the cups into the bag. They watch her close the door. Does she have her purse? Money for the car park?
She leans against the wall. There are three people in the corridor, speaking quietly and hurriedly. One of them, an older man in a tracksuit, eyes her suspiciously, as though she might be spying.
Where is Cara? What about all her passionate promises? What if they had tried to call her as a witness?
She takes her phone from the pocket of this silly blazer. She switches it on. Waits. Puts in her password. Waits. A text says:
SO SORRY have to go Megan in hospital st Vincents call you when no more call me when you get out can u get kids from school? hope it went okay?
52
THE CORRIDOR IS SUDDENLY empty. In front of Denise there is a white-green wall with Winnie the Pooh painted on it, and a princess with birds flying around her head. There’s something wrong with them though. Someone copied them from a picture, but they haven’t worked out. The black lines are too thick, the colours are too simple. It’s their faces. Their faces are a bit wonky, like they know they’re not real; just a copy of someone else.
She looks all around the wall for a clock, but it must be too late by now. She must have missed it.
‘Not to worry.’ She strokes her violin case – it is covered in brown fabric, not plain black plastic like everyone else’s. ‘Not to worry.’
A rolling sound, and a nurse walks by pushing a trolley with a baby on it. At first the way the nurse looks past the baby makes Denise think it’s just a doll or something. It’s a bit smaller than Baby Peig. It has colourful wires in its nose, and blue knitted socks on. It lifts one of its feet, and turns its head, pulling the wires with it, and that’s how Denise knows it’s a real baby.
She taps her left-hand fingers on her violin case, the fingering for ‘Animal Parade’. She can play it perfectly now, with all the feelings – the heavy elephants and the cheeky, chattery monkeys. Imagining the animals – a different one for each repetition – that’s what makes it special. That’s what Mo says. She hums the tune very quietly, inside her mouth. She taps the beat with her right foot.
Sometimes the music scoops her up and takes her with it. Even if she is just playing the scale of G; lovely dark honey at first and then up to the silver E and F and the sparkling golden G at the top, and down again. A tumbling water sound. The little stream that time when she went for a walk – just Den and Daddy – and saw it there, jumping out of the rock and the sun on it as it trickled down the stoniness and around the scraggly little bushes – even if it’s just a scale it can take her with it and all the notes are right and the sound is good, like earth and wood and water and sun. That’s since she got to use the bow. Before the bow, she always had to pluck and it sounded like raindrops and marbles.
Soon, Denise will learn vibrato. Sometimes, Mo does it when she is showing Denise how to play something, and Denise asks, ‘How do you do the wobbling? I want to do the wobbling.’ And Mo says, ‘Don’t worry about that yet, Denise,’ but Denise wants to learn it. Mo says she can exercise her fingers by wobbling them on her hand, but not the finger board, and then, when she is six, and after she has played ‘Animal Parade’ really, really well at the Spring Show, where she will be the star, she will teach her how to do vibrato for real.
And the problem is, she’s missed the Spring Show now.
Denise should be worried, but mostly she is bored. If Megan is dead she knows she’ll feel really bad. But if she’s okay then it’s Megan who should feel bad because of Denise missing the Spring Show. And Daddy too, cause he’s the one who didn’t bring her. They were on the way there, just Den and Daddy, when the school called about Megan and Daddy started saying about allergies, really calm and then not at all calm and then he just forgot about her concert and went to the hospital.
So now the Spring Show is happening without her. She should be playing ‘Animal Parade’ right now, but she is sitting here instead looking at the wonky princess.
Her mammy was already here when Denise and her daddy arrived. She came rushing to them and her face looked weak. After her birthday party the balloons were left lying around and they got soft and weak.
‘Oh, Pat,’ Mammy said. ‘She’s all swollen. Don’t get a fright…’
It was Mammy who sat Denise down here and told her to not move. Daddy went in. He took Baby Peig in with him, and left Denise here alone.
It is a pity about the concert. Daddy spent a long time getting all the bumps out of her hair. And Denise spent a long time practising.
She’s very bored. Just when she is about to get up and start looking, Mammy is here with a frightening face
saying, ‘Sorry Denise, sorry, darling.’ In a clap of anger Denise sees that her mammy has been crying, is maybe even still crying.
‘Mammy…!’
‘I’m okay my love. I just got a big big fright.’
‘Where is Megan?’
‘She’s just in here, I’ll bring you to her. Oh my goodness, Denise, that was a big fright, wasn’t it?’
Denise shrugs.
‘So it turns out Megan is very allergic to chickpeas.’
‘Even more than egg?’
‘Even more than to egg, yes. Her tongue swelled up and she couldn’t breathe, but she’s okay. They gave her an injection and she’s okay now… we just have to be careful not to let her near chickpeas…’
Denise is afraid to see Megan with her mouth stuffed up with tongue.
‘Will it go back to normal?’
‘Will what go back to normal?’
‘Her tongue.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it your fault, Mammy?’
‘I suppose it is, darling. Sort of.’
Megan’s ears have been stuffed for ages. That’s all Mammy’s fault because Mammy said no to anti-bs and put castor oil in her ears instead and it was an infection. Denise knows that because she sits on the bottom step some nights after bedtime to hear Mammy and Daddy relaxing with a glass of wine, and one night, Daddy got angry about vaccinations and said about grommets and antibiotics. Denise thinks Mammy is scared about Megan’s grommets, because she heard a little cheep cheep inside her mammy’s voice then, like a frightened baby bird.
Grommets sounds like small people with wool for hair, and boots, and spanners for fixing ears, but that can’t be it. Denise will ask someone what are grommets. She asked her cousin Jem, because Jem is a know-it-all-boaster, but Jem doesn’t know either. Maybe Mo knows.
Megan is in a room with lots of other beds and they all have bath curtains hanging down beside them. Daddy is standing beside the bed holding Baby Peig, and Megan is there but her face is blurry.
53
CARA HAD FORGOTTEN THAT this happens. Breath clutching in her throat, ears fizzing, a muffling, like something being pushed over her face. She can see her hands on the wheel, but they are numbing and prickling the way they would when she was a child, sitting in the back of Grandma’s car on the way to visit her mother.