Stuck drinking with clients after work. Back late. Enjoy your evening. X
I texted him back immediately.
What was Karen doing here today?
I sat on the stairs, trembling and waiting for him to text back. Nothing, but I knew he’d seen the message. I texted again.
Where the fuck are you? What’s going on?
Again nothing, except the blue ticks at the side of my message telling me he’d seen it. I put my head in my hands and felt myself start to crumble. His silence told me it was true. I took a deep breath and sat up. I’d run away from difficult situations all my life but I couldn’t run away from this one. I needed to know the truth and I needed to know now. If Joe wasn’t going to tell me, Karen was. Summoning every sinew of strength I could find, I put on my jacket, grabbed my bag and headed out of the door.
It was almost ten. The sky was murderous and steely grey and a fierce wind had wrapped itself around the streets. I’d drunk too much to drive so I’d have to walk. Emboldened and enraged by the wine, I pulled my hood up and headed off towards High Lane. As I emerged onto Edge Lane, I decided to take a shortcut through Longford Park so I crossed over and headed up through the gates by the parkkeeper’s lodge. I started to regret my decision immediately. I loved the park and had spent a lot of my life in it but recently it was getting a reputation for gang-related crime at night. There’d been a shooting not long ago and a man had hanged himself by the tennis courts a few weeks previously. Yet I ploughed on, quickening my pace and keeping to the wide treelined path as the wind roared around me. Willow branches hung overhead like widow’s veils and tar-like puddles shone in the fields either side. I hurried past the playground and Pets Corner where Karen and I had spent so many happy mornings with Alexia when she was little. Then up by the Scout hut where the pair of us had smoked our first spliff with Kevin Cave and his cousin when we were fourteen. Then over the football field where we’d cheered on Alexia in her green-and-white club strip on Sunday mornings. Ahead of me the zip wire dangled like a noose against the night sky and I jumped at the hiss of a bat. I finally exited onto Kings Road not far from Morrissey’s childhood home where we’d once entwined gladioli around the gate for his birthday.
I made my way over the Quadrant roundabout towards Old Trafford, exhausted and slightly delirious. My thoughts ran on ahead of me. How long had it been going on? Where? When? So that’s why she’d distanced herself and excluded me from her plans to move to Italy. I knew she was seeing someone but I’d assumed it was Simon Whelan. She’d been overly emotional that day when we’d met in Central Library. I gasped as I recalled her parting words. “Sorry for everything,” she’d said. Then there was Joe’s recent “he loves me he loves me not” behaviour. But why was she going to live in Italy if they were in the middle of an affair? Unless he was planning on going with her?
I stopped for a moment, leant against a wall and bashed my fist against my forehead.
Betrayal. It was everywhere I looked. Though I could understand why she’d done it, Tess had betrayed me by keeping Donal’s existence from me. She in turn had been betrayed by everyone, her family, the Irish State, the Church and all the others who worked the adoption machine. And now Joe and Karen had betrayed me.
My mother, my husband and my best friend. The people I loved and trusted most in the world had kept secrets from me for God knows how long. My whole life was starting to feel like one long extended lie. I finally made it to Karen’s road. As I walked up the empty street, I’d never felt so lonely in all my life.
Chapter 24
I knew she’d already gone when I saw the front lawn. Old IKEA chairs, Alexia’s battered desk and Springer Bell’s tartan dog bed were scattered among black binbags. A framed poster stuck out of one. Last year’s Liverpool Fleadh. We’d had the best time. Stoned and drunk, the pair of us had danced front of stage to Van the Man singing “Brown Eyed Girl” like we were eighteen again.
The rain had turned to a light drizzle as I knocked on the door. A middle-aged man with a ruddy face in a crumpled linen suit answered.
I shrugged off my hood. “I’m looking for Karen,” I said.
He stroked his goatee. “Ah, I’m afraid you’ve just missed her. They left for Rome a couple of hours ago.”
I stiffened.
“Sorry. By ‘they’ do you mean Karen and her daughter?”
He shook his head.
“No. Her daughter’s already there. She was with a friend. Joe, I think he said his name was.” He pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket and jangled them like a prize. “I’m the new owner. She left me a forwarding email address if you need it.”
“I’ve got it but thanks anyway.”
He gestured skywards as I turned to go.
“Lucky woman, escaping this weather, eh?” he said.
I gave him a weak smile then walked down the path and out into the street in a daze.
Lucky woman. Oh yes. That’s exactly what Karen Obassi was. She’d got away with it yet again.
Once, I was babysitting Alexia. She was about eight or nine and I was teaching her to play badminton in the garden. At one point she got frustrated, whacked the ground with her racket and broke it. I gave her a lukewarm telling-off and we stopped the game.
“You should have followed through with a punishment,” Karen said afterwards when I told her what had happened. “It’s so important for children to face up to the consequences of their actions. It’s how they learn not to repeat bad behaviour. At the end of the day it’s what makes them decent adults.”
Her words had stayed with me and, as I walked down her street in the drizzle, I thought about them again.
Karen the therapist sat in her chair every day telling vulnerable people to face up to their demons. Karen the tough parent insisted on following through with punishments and consequences. But when it came her own life and relationships, things were very different. When had she ever once faced up to the ramifications of any of the emotional car-crashes she had caused? And there were many. I shook my head as I remembered the time Simon Whelan’s teenage twins arrived on her doorstep looking for their father. She hid upstairs until they were gone. Then there was the episode in Julia’s village when she’d absconded with Luke O’Connell to the festival. After she returned, Karen refused to enter Julia’s house for fear of rebuke and she made me meet her down the road with all her belongings instead. And when the wives of the numerous married men she’d fucked over the years landed at her front door, she escaped out the back. Karen was a hit-and-run driver, pure and simple. She never stayed around to face the consequences of her actions. She lived her life with impunity.
Why oh why was I so naive? Why had I never thought she would do it to me too? But she had. I knew it. And now she’d escaped like a thief in the night with a chunk of my heart.
Ash-coloured clouds floated in a smouldering orange sky above the Manchester skyline as I walked away from the house. Then I heard the sound of a car pulling up on the other side of the road. I turned, narrowed my eyes and looked. I could just about make out Joe in his black BMW leaning over the passenger seat and opening the door. I clenched my fists. I wanted to carry on walking and never stop. But I did stop, a pathetic dripping statue on an Old Trafford pavement. I had too many questions that needed answers and my head would burst if I didn’t get them. So I crossed the road.
Chapter 25
I got into the car.
Joe said nothing.
“I found her bracelet in the front room.”
I closed my eyes, imagining I was driving at a hundred miles an hour and he was flying through the windscreen.
He stared out of the car window at the puddles of polished silver in the road ahead.
“How long has it been going on?”
He swallowed. In the dim streetlight his face looked pale and sunken, his neck blotchy.
“Once. It happened once.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.”
“When?”
“In April when you were at the Spa in Cheshire for the night. I was out drinking on Beech Road and I bumped into her in one of the bars. We were having a laugh, we were both very drunk and I asked her back to the house and it happened.”
“In April?” My voice sounded small. “That recently?”
In the silence that followed a car swished past, spraying the pavement in front like a wave. Joe put his hands on the steering wheel then lowered his head onto his hands.
“I’m so very sorry, Carmel.”
“So you fucked her one night out of the blue? Just like that? I don’t believe you. You said you didn’t even like her when you first met her.”
He shook his head and sighed.
“I used to see her at the gym and we’d chat. Mainly about you. Sometimes we’d have a coffee. You were in bits about Mikey and Tess and we were both worried about you. I suppose we bonded.”
“How lovely for you both. So that’s why she cooled off our friendship. Because she was bonding with you.”
“Let me finish. Nothing happened. We just talked. Then we bumped into each other that night and it just happened. We both regretted it immediately. It was just sex. You have to believe me.”
I slammed my hand on the dashboard and his head flew up.
“What about today?” I yelled. “The new owner of the house just told me you took her to the fucking airport! Don’t tell me nothing happened!”
“It didn’t. I swear. We just talked. ”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
“It’s true. She texted and said she was leaving for Italy today. She asked if she could come round. I hadn’t seen her since that night. She was really upset and begging me never to tell you. She wanted to say goodbye but she couldn’t face you.”
I gave a high-pitched, brittle laugh. “I bet she couldn’t.”
“She cares about you, Carmel.” His voice lowered. “We both do.”
I laughed again.
“I offered to give her a lift to the airport. Nothing happened. I swear.”
I looked at him, a vat of pure hatred boiling inside me. I badly wanted to tell him what had happened at the conference that time, to make him hurt like I was hurting.
“Where did you fuck her?”
He looked at me sharply. “Don’t do this.”
“I need to know.”
He shook his head. “No, you don’t.”
I stuck my face inches from his.
“Yes, I fucking do!” I screamed.
“In the front room!” he yelled back, recoiling.
“What position?”
“For fuck’s sake!”
“I need to know.”
“Christ. I don’t know. I was on top.”
“Was it good?”
“Not particularly.”
I dug my hands into the pockets of my jacket, tears streaming down my face. A man and woman were kissing goodbye on the doorstep of a house opposite. They lingered then he walked down the path and she blew him a kiss, laughing. I leaned my head against the window and drew a large question mark with my forefinger on the glass.
“Why?” I asked.
He leaned back and sighed. A fly was slowly making its way along the shoulder of his jacket then up his neck. If I had a knife I’d have sliced it in half, stabbing into his jugular.
“It was a moment of weakness. I swear it meant nothing. But I will say this. It’s never been easy being married to you, Carmel. For years I was always at the bottom of your list of priorities. Everything was always about Tess and Mikey and their problems. Sometimes it felt like there were four of us in our marriage.”
“Oh, come on! You can do better than that.”
“It’s true.”
“So let me just recap for a minute. Tess was mentally ill and Mikey had a drug problem. They were vulnerable adults who needed me. I was a bad wife because I spent time with them, so you slept with my best friend?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I slept with Karen because I was weak. But I’m just trying to explain how I felt about you and your family. Yes, Mikey and Tess needed you. But a lot of the time they could have managed without you. In some ways you enabled them.”
I put my head in my hands. “You have no fucking idea. You never got it, did you? You’ve never had to care for anyone in your life. Mammy and Daddy did everything for you. They threw money your way whenever you wanted it and acted on your every whim. Enable them? I was doing my best to keep my brother and mother alive. Someone had to.”
“And the day of Dad’s funeral?”
“Oh, here we go again!”
“You left me to grieve alone. I’d just lost Mum and instead of staying with me you fucked off back to Manchester to watch your good-for-nothing brother get fined in court for drug possession. That’s exactly how high up I was on your list of priorities.”
I folded my arms across my chest.
“Tess was convinced he was going down and I thought she might do something stupid. I had to be there to stop her.”
“That one day I needed you. But you couldn’t give me that one day. You always put them first.”
“So you slept with my best friend.”
I yanked down the window, breathed in the damp night air then turned and looked him in the eye.
“Did you do it because I wouldn’t give you a child?”
He shook his head and tutted.
“What the hell is it about her? Why do men want her so much when she treats you all like scum? Does she give twenty-four-hour blow jobs? Go on, tell me.”
“I’m not doing this.”
I pummelled his shoulder with my fist.
“Yes, you are! You fucked my best friend. I deserve to know why.”
He grabbed hold of my wrist and held me still, his eyes burning.
“If you want to know why she’s attractive it’s because she grabs life by the throat and lives it. Because she’s not neurotic and not always worrying about the what-ifs. Because she doesn’t overthink everything. Because she lives for the moment. Because she’s fucking brave.”
He let go of me and I fell back into the seat, feeling like I’d been shot.
I fumbled for the handle and opened the door.
“I want you out of the house tonight,” I said, stumbling out on the wet pavement and slamming the door behind me.
Dazed and numb, I hurried down the street. Then a train suddenly hurtled past on the track behind the row of terraces, shaking the ground beneath my feet.
Chapter 26
After Joe left my world came tumbling down. I went about my days feeling like I’d been buried under a pile of rubble, numb and devoid of light and sound. The days turned into weeks. By the end of June rain was coming down in torrents and high winds surged all over the country. On the TV news woeful staycationers dripped on flooded campsites and the downpours and gales brought public transport to a halt. The political party UKIP and its leader Nigel Farage seemed to be on every channel spouting anti-immigration rhetoric and brewing a storm of their own. Conor O’Grady came to mind. The world was becoming such a dark and ugly place.
At work I just about managed to crawl to the end of term. I struggled to concentrate on my end-of-year marking and walked up and down the exam halls like a zombie. I attended leaving parties, thanking students for presents and cards with a feeble voice and vacant smile and I avoided the staffroom and Mary’s concerned enquiries about my mental health.
July dragged by. I stopped going out and I ignored texts and calls from colleagues and friends. I became convinced everyone in Chorlton knew about Joe and Karen and my fucked-up life. I hung my head in hurt and shame and wore sunglasses when I went out even though there wasn’t a hint of sun. I started shopping late at night in the twenty-four-hour Tesco in Old Trafford to avoid bumping into anyone I knew. I stocked up on weed and curled up on the sofa every evening with a fat spliff, Merlot and Johnny Cash at his maudlin best for company.
I ruminate
d a lot on what had happened in Ireland but decided to shelve any further plans to search for my brother. I was starting to lose the motivation to do everyday things. The thought of getting back on that emotional roller coaster seemed a daunting insurmountable task.
Joe moved into a friend’s house on the other side of Chorlton. The only contact we’d had since our conversation outside Karen’s house was a couple of perfunctory emails about stuff to do with the house. He sent another saying he had accepted a two-month project in Madrid. He’d found a flat in Salford Quays and the tenancy was due to start in September. He said it was for the best, that we needed time apart to decide what we really wanted. I replied saying I knew exactly what I wanted and it wasn’t being married to someone who’d shagged my best friend. I made sure I was out when he came round to collect his stuff.
Though Joe had often worked away, it had only ever been for short trips. I started to feel the loneliness. As August dragged on, the big house became hollow with only me in it. I found myself daydreaming about being pregnant and hearing children’s laughter filling the empty rooms. I saw Tess sitting on the sofa in the extension with a grandchild in her arms. I saw Mikey pushing another on a swing. Late one evening I was smoking in the garden when I thought I heard Joe laughing at the TV in the front room. I leapt up and hurried inside. The laughter was coming from a group of revellers in the street outside and I sat on the sofa and cried.
I browsed for last-minute breaks online in the Spanish mountains and walking holidays in Greece. I thought I’d give Italy a miss on account of Karen being there. But lethargy took hold, guiding me to the fridge and the wine then back to the sofa and the TV remote and I never went anywhere. I did consider going back to stay with Julia in Westport. But I’d have to tell her about Joe and Karen and I wasn’t ready to do that. It was too raw. Putting it into words would make it real.
My Mother's Children: An Irish family secret and the scars it left behind. Page 14