‘Is that really what you politicians think is a good way to spend taxpayers’ money?’
‘Yes! Everyone hates a sleazy politician, the one who accept backhanders or are just in it for the perks and the free lunches…’
‘It sounds like you are asking for trouble, Michael,’ I said. ‘Setting yourself up as a beacon of respectability.’
‘Well…’
‘You won’t be able to put a foot wrong,’ I said, thinking that life with Michael was just one extended episode of Politics Today. ‘You can’t forget to put something through on the self-service tills or drive in a cycle lane or park in a disabled space…’
‘I have no intention of such things,’ he said. ‘I never go self-service and I am meticulous about staying out of cycle lanes. Anyway, it’s the idea – the ideal! – which is the thing. Striving to be better, that’s it. Upholding common, decent values. Morals are too easily running down life’s plughole.’
‘It seems as though you are setting yourselves a very high bar,’ I said. ‘Beyond reproach? It doesn’t give you much room to be human.’
‘Ah, but we aren’t human. Well, we are, technically. But we are above human… I mean, superhuman…’
I looked at his face. He was entirely serious. ‘As in Superman, super-human?’ I had to make sure he was saying what I thought he was saying. ‘Actually super-human, or just super humans?’
He looked confused. ‘Super-human,’ he said. ‘More than human.’
‘Right. Michael…’ I toyed with trying to discuss this with him but, as I usually did, I gave up. ‘It sounds like a complete waste of EU money, if you ask me.’
‘Well, I don’t and nor do many – very many – of my EU colleagues.’ He sounded annoyed. ‘It’s going to be voted on in a few weeks. Before we break up for summer. It’s the directive that’s going to make my name.’
Not for the first time, I thought that Michael’s pomposity would be his undoing.
‘Hi Dad,’ Rosie came into the kitchen and again I saw how pale she was. She’d lost weight, she was just wearing leggings and a long top, her hair scrunched up onto her head.
‘What are you doing home?’ she said, surprised but not displeased to see him. He was like a forgotten-about lodger, sometimes. We never knew when we would be graced by his presence but neither of us minded either way. Michael didn’t try to parent too heavily or husband too deeply, and we never complained about his peripatetic attitude to the home, so it all worked quite well. He loved Rosie, that was clear, albeit in his own way. She knew it and had, I thought, never felt a particular lack. He just wasn’t one of those rough-and-tumble dads or even the bedtime-story dads… and that seemed okay. Good enough.
‘And how’s Daddy’s little politician?’ He ruffled her hair affectionately.
‘She’s fine,’ said Rosie, flatly. He glanced at me, as though he had heard my concerns. Rosie was normally far chattier and full of life. But this had become her usual way of late, low-enthusiasm and energy.
‘Now, I hope you’re working hard. Mammy says you are.’ He looked at her intently. ‘Is everything all right? Are you eating properly? There’s some Weetabix in the cupboard.’
‘Weetabix!’ she said. ‘Is that your answer to everything?’
‘It’s a good, healthy cereal,’ he said, looking hurt. ‘It’s a good stomach-settler.’
‘Can we just stop the inquisition? Am I working, am I eating? Yes I am and no I would rather chew my own Ugg boots than eat Weetabix. I eat granola. You should know that.’
Michael wasn’t an emotions man. He liked rationality and reason. No crying, slight hysteria or shaky voices. Rosie, being a normal teenager, would display every human emotion in just one conversation, which always had a slightly destabilising and unnerving effect on Michael.
‘I do know that, Rosie,’ he said, a politician’s smile plastered on his face. ‘I just merely forgot your breakfast preferences for one moment. And anyone is allowed to do that from time to time.’ He was desperately trying to bring the conversation back to Politics Today but things were often far more Loose Women.
‘Now, I was just saying to Mammy here that we should pop into Trinity together. I can show you around… the library, the cafeteria, that kind of thing. My old favourite lecture theatre… Trinity’s hallowed gates.’
‘So you keep saying…’ she said, the slightly terrified look in her eyes reappeared anytime Trinity was mentioned.
‘Next stop for you, Rosie,’ he pressed, ‘is politics. What do you say?’ But before Rosie could answer there was a beep of a horn outside. ‘Right, time to go,’ he said. ‘Meeting in Drogheda. Right,’ he said, clicking his heels together and giving us a salute. ‘I’m off. Had my Weetabix… your favourite, Rosie…’
‘Da-aad…’
‘I’m joking,’ he said. ‘But I might bring you back a bumper box of 72 when I’m next home. You will like them… much better than fannying around with muesli…’
Rosie was smiling, despite herself.
‘By the way, Mammy,’ he said. ‘Was that ordinary milk I just had?’
‘Supermarket’s finest,’ I said.
‘It wasn’t organic or from goats or anything strange like that.’
‘No... Why?’
‘Just had an idea,’ he said. ‘You don’t get anywhere without ideas.’ He kissed Rosie on the head, gave me a friendly tap on the arm and gathered his briefcase and rushed outside. ‘Remember, lights off!’ he shouted behind him as the door slammed. ‘Standards must be upheld!’
*
The Thomas family was rather different to the Fogarty’s political dynasty bursting with heirs all born to rule. In my family, the only destiny we seemed to follow was having one-daughter. Both my mother, my grandmother and I had just the one girl but Rosaleen, and Nora had their babies out of wedlock. My rebellion was to do it within the conventional confines of marriage.
Rosaleen was an unmarried mother at a time when it was possibly the most shocking thing anyone could do apart from eat garlic or refuse to go to Mass. When she discovered her pregnancy, she told no one anything. Not a word. Not even Nora’s father who was a boy from back home in West Cork… but already married. She left home, saying she was heading off to Dublin to work, but kept her pregnancy a secret, kept her baby and brazened it out. It takes a tremendous amount of guts to do that, to stare down the gossips and the whisperers and the elbow-nudgers. Force of personality and determination got her through.
My paternity was never up for much of a discussion. As far as I know, I was conceived at a music festival so the chances of me discovering who he was were lost in a haze of hallucinogenic substances. Not the most conventional start to my life. But that was Nora. She didn’t do normal.
I thought Nora was going to faint when I told her that I was getting married. To Michael. ‘What?’ She looked horrified and didn’t try to hide her shock. ‘You can’t. Tab, you can’t… he’s…’
‘He’s what?’
‘He’s not like us…’ was all she managed. And she was right. He wasn’t like us, at all. ‘He’s a Progressive Conservative.’ But I wanted a child and he wanted a wife.
And Nora got over it. Not enough to embrace Michael (he wouldn’t have actually embraced her, anyway, as he always said, with a slight shudder, there was the whiff of Oxfam off her), but enough not to go on about it. Anyway, we all had Rosie to think about now.
But whenever I walked on the pier in Dun Laoghaire, I’d look at the couples, the ones who looked like they’d been married for years and years, the ones brimming with love and lustre, chatting nineteen to the dozen, holding hands, and I would feel a tug of loneliness. I used to have that, once, but life had taken a different direction and Rosie was the centre of my universe. Michael and I, when he was home, didn’t share a bedroom and we had used the fact that he had the nasal capacity of a jet engine as the reason for his moving to the spare room. Michael and I weren’t perfect, but it wasn’t bad. Certainly not bad enough to leave.
/>
‘Mum…’
‘Yes sweetheart?’ I said, looking up from the fridge from where I was putting the shopping away.
‘Nothing,’ she said, turning away. ‘Forget it.’
‘No, what is it? Is everything all right?’
This school year hadn’t started well for Rosie when her boyfriend, Jake, ended things. And now, with the pressures of exams, the light had gone out of her. It was awful to see. She had even retreated from her best friends, Alice and Meg.
‘Yeah, fine.’ She turned to go.
‘Have you eaten?’ I said, in an attempt to keep her with me.
She shrugged. ‘I had some granola earlier.’
‘Would you like something else? Poached eggs? I bought some nice bread.’
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘Do you fancy doing something? A walk? Or we could go the farmers market? Or into town? Do some shopping. Get you something nice?’ The bribe fell flat.
‘No, you’re grand. I’ve got to get back upstairs.’
‘Ro…’ I eyeballed her, parent face on. ‘You don’t go out. I can’t remember the last time you left the house… what about Alice, Meg… I bet they are still going outside…’ I smiled, to let her know I was still on her side.
‘So?’ Suddenly, she was furious, on the brink of tears. ‘I’m trying to work, okay? That’s all. I’m just trying to work.’
‘I know, I know,’ I soothed, quickly. ‘But don’t you think it might be nice? Why don’t you go and see Alice? I’m sure she could do with a break too.’
She held up her hand. ‘Mum, can’t you just give me a break. Leave me to it. Okay? Everyone’s doing it,’ she told me. ‘We’re all working away. Stop fussing.’
‘Stop fussing? I’m your mother. This is what we do. We fuss. And if mothers stopped fussing, where would we be then?’
‘Happier?’
I pressed on. ‘Have you even talked to Alice? Texted her?’
‘You should be pleased I’m working so hard. Not nagging me. God, anyone would think you would want me to fail.’
‘Of course I don’t want you to fail but…’ What exactly did I want? I liked the fact that she was a hard worker. This very fact had made my parenting so much easier. She was the kind of child you didn’t have to worry about. Conscientious, successful. She made me look good. But… but… something was nagging at me, something wasn’t quite right. It was too much. ‘You need a break,’ I said. ‘At least from time to time. You’ve shut yourself away like…’
‘Like what? A madwoman in the attic?’ She had her arms crossed, challenging me.
‘No…’ I tried to keep it neutral. These days all I seemed to do was upset her. I was losing her. ‘You’re hibernating, like a… like a…’
‘Squirrel?’ She almost laughed.
‘Like a hermit.’
‘Mum, hermits don’t hibernate. Maybe you should have studied harder.’
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘obviously, I’m not quite sure what I’m trying to say but I don’t want you to stop being you. Having fun. Seeing your friends. It’s like life is on hold. There’s no such thing as a pause button. Not when it comes to being alive. However much you might want there to be.’ For a moment I thought of the times when I wished I could press pause, when life seemed to move too fast for me. ‘What about seeing if Alice or Meg would like to go to the cinema with you,’ I persisted. ‘I’ll drop you. And collect. I’ll give you money for sweets.’
She rolled her eyes, defiance and anger had returned. ‘Mum, I’m doing my Leaving Cert. And you want me to go and eat sweets. Or press pause. Or be a squirrel…’ She was looking at me as though I was mad.
‘Forget the squirrel bit…’
‘Have you any idea how stupid you sound?’
‘No… I mean I just think you deserve a bit of a break. You don’t leave your bedroom. Surely, you know it all by now.’
‘You see! That’s typical of all of you. None of you get it. I can’t just take time off.’ She began to cry. ‘How else am I going to get to Trinity? To do Law.’ She spat it out. Up until this moment, I had thought she wanted it just as much as Michael. But maybe it was just pre-exams nerves, the fear of this huge culmination of 14 years of full-time education… the feeling of being out of control. Inevitably she was going to doubt herself and her choices.
‘You don’t have to,’ I said. ‘If you’ve changed your mind about Trinity or Law or anything, it’s not too late.’
‘Oh yes it is!’ she said. ‘But there’s nothing I can do.’
Chapter Two
I’d been principal of the Star of the Sea girls’ primary for the last five years. Every day as I drove in to work, I couldn’t believe that I was leading the school where I had been a pupil – as had Rosie and even my own mother.
Every single day our pupils made me proud, from hearing them sing in assembly, to just seeing them dressed in their uniforms, eager to please and to learn. The school had seen many changes since I played skipping games and wrestled with my times tables to when, years later, I was made school principal. So far, we were doing well. We retained our 100% approval rating from the local authority year on year and had several commendations, including those for our anti-bullying attitude and the green school scheme.
We did, however, have one problem. Well, two, if you counted the fact that Sixth class didn’t actually have a teacher, since Ms Samuels had disappeared after winning €50,000 on the lottery and was last seen heading for Departures with a copy of Let’s Go South East Asia.
But the other big, equally pressing, problem occupying my waking thoughts was cash flow. Or rather the lack of. We weren’t a private school and relied on the local authority, whose budget seemed to decrease every year. Instead, we were encouraged to do as much fundraising as possible. But however many cake sales, bring-and-buys, raffles or parents’ cheese and wine evenings we enthusiastically held, we never had enough money to fix the things that we really needed. The other local school, Willow Grove had recently presented each child with their own iPad. Willow Grove was a private school and the fact that the fees had recently been upped by a whopping €2000 a year might partly explain where the extra dosh had come for to pay for all this. Our parents’ committee had even held a whole meeting on this very subject, and the result had been retuned that we had to provide our children with the very same. We just had to keep on fundraising. More cake sales were prescribed, along with sponsored walks and swims and no school uniform days. Anything sponsorable was in. Except for the human pyramid idea suggested by one pupil which would definitely end in tears, broken bones and probably a barring order from never running a school again.
We just couldn’t stand there and allow Willow Grove kids to become the world’s future software billionaires. But also, as well as the new iPads, we needed money for our leaky roof and for resurfacing the playground … My wish list of improvements was long and constantly growing and each sponsored event inched us forward. What we needed was a leap. We needed someone to invest in us.
With the school teetering on the edge of sponsor fatigue, one idea was gathering enthusiasm from me. It had been proposed by one of our board of governors, Brian Crowley. It was always a struggle to find a parent with enthusiasm coupled with spare evenings to join our not-particularly merry throng, but Brian, when he joined in January, seemed very eager. Very eager indeed. He had come up with a cunning plan and it didn’t involve sponsor forms or baking cakes or reading piles of books or sitting in a bath of baked beans. He wanted us to sell a slice of school land, the Copse, a wooded area, at the far end of the school, beyond the hockey pitch.
When I was a pupil at the school, I remembered playing there, but now it was overgrown with brambles, the trees covered with ivy, the odd squirrel darting from branch to branch. It was part of the school grounds that I admit I didn’t give much thought to. It wasn’t out of bounds to the children, but neither did we encourage them to play there. So selling it, went Brian’s logic, made perfect sense.
The tricky part, he said, was finding someone who would take it off our hands. The land was a worthless, odd-shaped site, and it would be difficult to find a buyer, but he had to try. And he’d succeeded. He’d found someone.
*
At his very first board of governors meeting during the winter, Brian Crowley had spotted Sister Kennedy was the one to butter up. There were only five of us: Me, Sister Kennedy, (nun and former school principal), retired teachers Noleen Norris and Brendan Doherty, Mary Hooley (school secretary and friend) and Brian Crowley, spokesperson for the parents.
Sister Kennedy’s faith tended to dominate her conversation as she found God to be a reliable source of talk, both small and large, and introduced Him into most conversations, how He always found a way and worked in mysterious ways.
At that meeting, Brian first raised the idea of selling the Copse. He waited - impatiently (drumming fingers, looking around the room, reading the small print on the wall posters, checking his phone for messages) - until I had run through points of interest, the relative success of a recent tombola raffle to the trialling of a new healthy eating campaign.
‘God,’ said Sister Kennedy in approval, ‘has found His way again.’
‘We are edging closer to our €20,000 target,’ I said. ‘Mary, what are we up to now?’
She glanced down at her notes. ‘More than €3,156 is in the kitty. Some of that could be used to buy a complete set of Harry Potters for the library but, yes, Tabitha, you could say we are edging closer. But, I should say, at a rather subdued pace.’
Finally, Brian saw his opening. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that brings us to my rather interesting - though I may say so myself - proposal. Plan. Plot. Call it what you will but it’s big, it’s bold… and it’s beaut-i-ful.’ He beamed at us all, confident in our imminent excitement. ‘Sister Kennedy, if I may be so bold, I think God may have found a way. He may well be the source of my inspiration.’
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