Together Forever

by Siân O'Gorman

  ‘Is that about soufflés?’ I said, giving Mary a wink, ‘because if so, your Dad will want to come along.’

  ‘Is he still going on about soufflés?’ said Red. ‘Honestly. He’s always fancied one but has never had one.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘He doesn’t go to restaurants that are posh enough for a start,’ said Red. ‘And I can’t make one. I mean, I could try but I’m not into precision cooking.’

  ‘I could make one for him,’ I said. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t mind having a go…’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘How difficult can they be?’

  ‘Very,’ said Mary. ‘It’s getting the eggs right, they need to be exactly three days old and at room temperature. It helps if you are making them in a French farmhouse kitchen because of the thickness of the stone walls creates the perfect ambient temperature. And then it’s all in the wrist action...’

  Red whistled, impressed. ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘I did a cordon bleu course in Paris,’ she confessed modestly. ‘Years ago. I do know how to make a few classic French dishes.’

  ‘Johnny Logan and soufflés. You are quite the catch Mary Hooley,’ he said, teasing her.

  ‘I just happen to be a Europhile,’ she said. ‘I’m quite envious of my young cousin Lucy, living in Brussels, being at the centre of Europe,’ she said.

  ‘I think you might be getting Eurovision mixed with the European parliament,’ said Red, ignoring the reference to Michael. I wonder what he thought of him when they met. ‘Easily done.’

  Mary laughed. ‘Did you know that Red eats sweets in the cinema?’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ Red was laughing. ‘Anyone would think that there was something wrong with a small sweet now and then. Mary, however, frowns at anyone who dares to rustle a wrapper or crunch their popcorn. I bought some pick-n-mix and Mary almost fainted with shock.’

  ‘I never had you down as a pick-n-mix kind of person,’ she insisted, laughing. ‘I didn’t know that grown men ate sweets.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Mary,’ he said. ‘Real men do eat sweets.’ He turned back to me. ‘Anyway, so I had to eat each one so slowly and carefully so as not to make any noise. I was terrified that I would be subjected to the Mary death-stare. In the end, I was sucking on them as if I had no teeth.’

  They were both laughing now, behaving like two old friends. He was always good for a laugh, was Red.

  ‘A Bout de Souffle, next Saturday.’ Mary gathered up files and went to leave. ‘Don’t forget. Now, I must be off, and stop all this gassing.’ She turned to me. ‘Tabitha, I wonder would it be possible if I made a long-distance call? Just with the time difference and everything, I have to make it now. I can leave the money. I wouldn’t like all our fundraising to go on phone bills.’

  ‘Would you like to use my office? For privacy?’

  She hesitated. ‘No, no, it’s all right. It’s not a big deal. It won’t take long.’

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She smiled her bright efficient smile. ‘Everything’s fine. Just something I need to do… that’s all. I’ll be quick as quick.’

  Before she left my office, I noticed that Red gave her a look, an encouraging ‘go on’ kind of nod. She gave a short tilt of her head and she was gone. Red knew what was going on, I realised.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘what did you want to talk about?’

  ‘Annie. I was hoping we could perform some of the songs at the last school assembly.’

  ‘That sounds good. Who’s playing Annie?’

  ‘We’re working on it, everyone wants the lead role. I think I might share it out a bit. Have lots of Annies. Just need to buy a job lot of red curly wigs on eBay.’

  I smiled, feeling better already. ‘Annie is theatrical catnip to girls. Annie is their Lady Macbeth, their Medea.’

  He laughed. ‘Totally. I remember at school, we all wanted to be the Artful Dodger. All of us, practising our cockney accents in the playground. It was given to someone who didn’t want it. He wanted to be Fagin and was furious. The rest of us had to be nonspeaking urchins. Hours of accent-practising wasted.’ He grinned at me. I found myself grinning back.

  ‘How’s your cockney accent now?’ I said.

  ‘As bad as it was then. No wonder I didn’t get the part. Dick Van Dyke’s was better.’

  I laughed. I wondered if he and Mary would mind if I asked to go to the cinema with them. Maybe they would. Maybe they wanted it to be just the two of them. But… I couldn’t just be friends with Red. It wasn’t that simple.

  ‘By the way,’ he said. ‘I was wondering about Rosie. How is she?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘She keeps saying she’s okay and for me not to worry. I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘She’s obviously under a huge amount of stress. Have you talked to your… your husband about it?’

  ‘Well, he’s very busy. Very busy. He’s very rarely around and…’ I looked at Red. I wanted to tell him everything about Michael. But it was all so pointless. Red wasn’t just some friend I could confide in. ‘Michael is… well, he’s determined that Rosie will do Law in Trinity, like he did… but I am starting to wonder if it’s what she wants. Or is she just doing it for him. And for my mother-in-law.’

  ‘Well…’ There was nothing he could say. He couldn’t pass judgment on any of us. He’d only briefly met Michael, but Celia not at all. ‘I hope,’ he said, ‘she’s feeling better, soon.’ He went to go. Oh, but I wanted him to stay. There was so much I wanted to chat about, innocuous things like cockney accents but seismic life-altering events as well. Everything.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, pausing, gratifyingly, at the door. ‘I know it’s none of my business, I know that. I’m just a supply teacher who is pushing my nose into places where I shouldn’t and I have no right. None whatsoever. So please tell me to butt out or whatever. But…’ He stopped, and looked at me, right into my eyes. ‘I was just wondering if you were all right. I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Worried. About me?’ I said, swallowing. ‘I’m all right. What makes you think I’m not?’

  ‘Listen, forgive me if I’m overstepping the mark. You look so different, Tab. I mean, you look the same, as though not a day has passed, but I can see it in your eyes, how much you’ve got on your plate. There’s a lot going on. And you keep on going…’

  For a moment, I thought I was going to cry. When was the last time anyone cared how I was doing? ‘I’m fine,’ I said, sounding just like Rosie. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’

  He took a pen out of the inside pocket of his jacket. And ripped a corner from a little black Moleskine diary. ‘Here’s my number,’ he said, writing it down. ‘Call me if you need a friend.’ He handed it to me. ‘I’m still that, you know.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I didn’t trust myself to say anymore.

  ‘She’s the image of you,’ he said. ‘Rosie.’

  ‘Really…’ I suddenly felt embarrassed. ‘I can see Rosaleen in her but I thought she was like her dad, but maybe… maybe she isn’t as much as I thought.’

  ‘There’s a definite look of you in her, it’s like going back in time,’ he said. impassively, betraying no emotion.

  And then he smiled, the kind of smile that makes you feel as though someone is on your side. Encouraging you, cheering you on. And there he was being nice to me, when I hadn’t been nice to him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rosie had been upstairs, as usual, but I brought her up a cup of relaxing tea.

  ‘Sweetheart?’ I called gently through her door. ‘How’s it going in there?’

  Silence. I pushed open the door.

  ‘Rosie, I have some nice camomile…’

  She was asleep on the bed, her breathing light and steady. For a moment, I just gazed at her. The poor girl. Fully dressed, her long hair falling over the pillow.

  I remembered when she was a little girl and we’d walk to school together, knowing so clearly that t
his was a golden moment in my life. You, as their mother, define their world, you shape it and make sense of it for them, sharing the life so intimately with your small child. I stayed in my marriage for her, I became a teacher because I thought it was more family friendly, I wanted to make the world perfect, or as near perfect as was possible, for her but it seemed it was never quite enough.

  I hovered for a moment with the cup of camomile tea. Should I leave it or bring it downstairs? Leave it. I went to her desk to place it down.

  One notebook was open, the pen lying across it, as though she’d been writing and, overcome with tiredness, had fallen asleep. It was just a glance, but something made me take a second look. It was the uniform look of the writing, the fact that it looked so unlike a piece of revision work or an essay of any kind. It was Rosie’s handwriting, though, her loopy biro, the way she did her a’s, the slightly embellished f. But it was the same sentence, over and over again, the same phrase, over and over.

  I hate my life. I hate my life. I hate my life.

  The same words covered the page. I flicked through the whole book. Everywhere, the same sentence, filling the pages. This must have taken weeks and weeks. Months.

  I hate my life. I hate my life. I hate my life.

  I looked through other papers on her desk, the ream of foolscap, all covered with that phrase. The same, page after page after page. Months of work, the careful writing of this horrible sentence. She hadn’t been revising, she had been filling notebooks with this one thought.

  I hate my life, I hate my life.

  On the shelf above her desk were other A4 pads, I flicked through them, all of them, the same.

  I hate my life. I hate my life. I hate my life.

  My darling girl. My beautiful girl. The person I loved more than anything, my absolute pride and joy, the girl who had everything, was good at everything, the person who had the world at her feet, laid out like the finest carpet, hated her life, and had become stuck on this one thought and couldn’t move forwards. She must have been so terrified. Why hadn’t I realised? Why hadn’t I checked, helped her, asked more about how she was getting on… there were so many signs. So many obvious signs and I just assumed – hoped – that it would be okay.

  I stood there, for a few moments, not quite knowing what to do. I thought back to Celia’s party, and then when she called me at the cake sale. And the fact that she hadn’t gone to see any of her friends for months, or been out of the house.

  But all the time, I had thought she was getting closer and closer to the end, when in fact she was getting further away. Because the one thing I wanted for her was for her to love her life. That’s all I had ever wanted and if she didn’t, then I had failed.

  ‘Mum. What are you doing?’ Rosie was sitting up, furious.

  ‘Rosie… why didn’t you say?’

  She stood up and angrily grabbed her notebook from my hands. ‘Why are you going through my things? I can’t believe you’d do such a thing!’

  ‘Rosie, wait…’

  ‘Everything’s fine, Mum. Don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘You can’t keep saying everything’s fine when obviously it isn’t. You should have told me. I could have helped. I could have helped you.’

  ‘And done what exactly?’ Rosie started to cry, great rackety sobs, the kind I hadn’t seen her take since she was tiny. They were filled with hopelessness and devastation, as if her life had come to an end.

  ‘Rosie… Rosie…’ She stood trembling and shaking in my arms, her head pressed onto my shoulder.

  ‘Mum…’ was all she managed. ‘What am I going to do?’

  I pulled her onto the bed and we sat side by side, both her trembling hands in mine, and we waited until her breathing slowed down.

  ‘Right, Rosie, whatever you are thinking now, that none of this can be fixed, it can. It’s a case of how you recover. Setbacks are just that. Until your comeback. You get up again, you move on and you learn. Do you understand?’

  She nodded, her lip wobbling.

  ‘Because it doesn’t matter. Exams don’t actually matter. Going to college doesn’t matter. None of those things will make you happy. Not really. Well, they will but true happiness is something that comes from in here.’ And I pressed my hand to her heart. ‘Get that right, and the rest is easy.’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’

  ‘I was doing all right… I thought. All last year, I kept up with everything. All the work, the study events. I did well in my mock exams… remember?’

  ‘You did brilliantly.’

  ‘I thought I was going to be okay even though there was this feeling starting to spread inside me. It was like it had taken root and every day I could feel it getting bigger. Not hugely but there was a feeling every morning, when I opened my eyes.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Like a ball or a knot or stuff, right in the middle of me. And I couldn’t concentrate. Or eat. It was like it was this alien inside me…’ She gave a wonky smile. ‘That sounds weird.’

  I shook my head. ‘No it doesn’t. Nothing you say ever sounds weird. Go on.’

  ‘Well, I first felt this thing, this alien, last summer. All I could think about was September when this year would start. The last year. The most important year. No one has been able to talk to me about anything but the exams for ages now. It was all, when are you doing the Leaving, what subjects are you doing? What college? I felt like screaming and all the time I had to be nice and polite and tell them over and over again. Everyone asks you, Mum. Not just family members but people in the shop, the guys down in the sailing club. Even the postman asked me!’

  ‘And then…’

  ‘Well, I didn’t do any work all summer. I kept convincing myself that I would start in September and that I would be brilliant, keep to study timetables and go for walks and just be… you know… methodical. Cool. But… I don’t know. I just didn’t. And then Jake finished with me…’

  ‘It’s not easy, is it? A relationship ending like that.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. No, it’s not. And, it didn’t help my alien. It just kind of doubled in size overnight. Sometimes I would feel as though it was going to take over my whole body. I felt so scared. I mean, we haven’t had to be in school since January. All the study events were optional, if you were able to do it at home, then they didn’t bother you. And I just let it all get on top of me.’

  ‘Don’t they have counselling services? Someone you can talk to?’

  ‘Yeah, they are always saying, if you need help, you can go and talk to Miss Byrne.’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart, why didn’t you?’

  ‘I felt ashamed,’ she said. ‘Embarrassed. Like I was a failure. Which I am.’

  ‘You’re not. You’re absolutely not. Doing well in exams does not signify success in life, just in exams. It’s how you deal with things when they go wrong. What you learn, how you bounce back, what you take with you to the next experience. Do you see? But why didn’t you talk to me? I could have helped…’

  ‘I kept thinking, if I could just get working, I’d be all right. I kept thinking, I would start tomorrow. It wasn’t too late. And then it was Christmas…’

  ‘Christmas!’

  ‘Yeah…’ She hung her head. ‘It goes back as far as then. But I thought, I’d just take that time off and then start in January. It wasn’t too late. But I just couldn’t do it.’

  ‘And the hating your life… when did you start doing that?’

  ‘Once I wrote it, and then wrote it again, I swear it helped… just naming what I felt was good for me.’

  I put my arm around her and squeezed her. ‘Couldn’t you have talked to your friends if you couldn’t talk to me?’ I said gently.

  ‘It was easier not to see them. I couldn’t do with all their exam talk and college talk. So I said that you had said I couldn’t go out or contact them…’

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘It wa
s just easier that way.’

  ‘Okay, let’s not worry about any of that now. You’ve got your first exam in a week.’

  ‘Oh mum,’ she wailed. ‘I can’t do them.’

  ‘Really? You could try and just see how you get on?’

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t make me. Please don’t make me.’

  ‘First thing’s first, I’ll call the school and chat to them. Miss Byrne for one, okay?’

  ‘I can’t do them,’ she said. ‘I’m going to fail everything.’ And she began to cry again. ‘And I’m never going to go to Trinity. Or do a stupid internship. Dad’s going to be so mad.’

  ‘No, he’s not… he’ll be fine about it.’ I hoped he would, anyway.

  ‘But, Mum, I didn’t actually want to go anyway. I don’t want to do Law. It’s not me. It never was. But Dad’s never shut up about it. Ever.’

  ‘He just wanted something nice for you and this is what he thought was something nice.’ Bloody Michael, I thought, though. Not only has he compounded her stress and panic by talking incessantly about Trinity and the following in the Fogarty footsteps, but he was never around. He hadn’t actually taken a proper interest in how she was going to get there. ‘Well, thank God for that,’ I said. ‘It took this, all of this, for you to admit you don’t want to go to Trinity to do Law. Bit of an elaborate way of going about it…’

  ‘Yeah…’

  ‘I got stuck, just like you have, once. And you think that you are never going to be unstuck or even how on earth you are going to move on… is that how you feel?’ She nodded. ‘I think finding that way of writing something down, like you did, was really clever of you, because I didn’t do that, when it was me. I just stayed indoors for weeks and weeks.’

  ‘What happened?’ Her eyes were wide, listening.

  ‘Oh, it was a long time ago. A really long time. Before you were born. But it changed me, that experience. Reshaped me. My life wasn’t the same again. Couldn’t be.’

  Before

  Nora was at home with me, taking care of me as I lay in bed, facing the wall. She’d never been particularly maternal before and neither of us knew if she even had it in her. Seemingly she did.