My Sister's Child

by Caroline Finnerty

  “Well, I’m on for it,” Greg said. “What about you, Isla? Will you come . . . I mean, if you haven’t already got other plans?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “Where do you want to go? The usual?” Michelle asked.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “I was just thinking, Isla,” Greg said, “If you’re tired and want to head off after the lunchtime rush, that’s okay.”

  Isla saw Michelle looking at them with raised eyebrows.

  “Ah, thanks, Greg, you’re very good. I’ll be fine though.”

  “Wait ’til you have kids keeping you awake at night – then you’ll know all about tiredness!” Michelle said snappily.

  The baby came back to her again that night. He was lying beside her, working hard to make perfect O-shapes with his small mouth. Then he smiled, reached out, took her finger and held on to it tightly. He was calling to her.

  Chapter 2

  A Birthday

  Milk

  Kale

  Washing powder

  Meat

  Reschedule Réiltín’s orthodontist appointment

  Milk

  Kale

  Washing powder

  Meat

  Reschedule Réiltín’s orthodontist appointment

  Jo Kingston’s to-do list for the day kept looping in her head as she pressed the button on her juicer and watched as it angrily buzzed to life. She watched the berries and the kale as they swirled together in shades of purple and green. Suddenly she remembered that she needed to leave cash for her cleaner, Aurelia, so she tacked this onto the end of her list:

  Milk

  Kale

  Washing powder

  Meat

  Reschedule Réiltín’s orthodontist appointment

  Money for Aurelia

  She looked out through the French doors where the wind moved like a silvery wave across the garden. When the juicer stopped, she tipped in a shot of fresh wheatgrass and poured the mixture into two glasses. She drank one herself and set the other on the table beside the empty bowl and spoon which she had set for Réiltín.

  “Morning,” she said as she heard someone come into the kitchen behind her. She swung around to see her husband Ryan there. “Oh, it’s you!”

  “Morning.” He was reading something on his phone. He didn’t look up at her.

  “Any sign of the birthday girl?” she asked.

  “I think she’s just finished in the shower.”

  “How did you sleep?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ve asked Isla over for dinner later.”

  “Great, what time?”

  “Around eight.”

  “So what are your plans for the day?”

  “Meetings all day. Will you be able to collect Réiltín from hockey? It’s just I’ve a meeting at four and I’ve a feeling that it might run on.”

  “Sure.” He was winding the cable of his laptop around the battery pack and putting it into his briefcase.

  Réiltín entered the kitchen then with eyes still half asleep, dressed in her uniform.

  “Happy birthday, darling!” Jo sang.

  “Happy birthday, Little Star,” Ryan said, leaning in to kiss his teenage daughter on the forehead where she had slumped into the chair adjacent to the place that her mother had set for her at the breakfast table.

  “I can’t believe you’re fourteen,” Jo said wistfully, sliding the bowl further down the table to position it in front of Réiltín, followed by the spoon and the glass of juice. “My little baby is growing up all too fast. When I think of how tiny you were when you were born and how we weren’t sure if you’d even make it . . . but here you are, Little Star, amazing us every day.”

  “Mum!”Réiltín groaned in pretend embarrassment but Jo knew that secretly she loved hearing the story of the day she was born.

  “Right, I’d better go,” Ryan said. “Have a great day, birthday girl. I’ll be picking you up from hockey.”

  “See you later, Dad.”

  As Ryan picked up his briefcase, Jo waited as she did every morning for the kiss on the cheek or even just the ‘bye’ that never came any more. Her heart sank as he turned and walked out of the kitchen. She listened to his footsteps over the tiles of their hallway, followed by the slam of the front door.

  It would be nice if he still gave me a kiss goodbye – not every day, just sometimes, she thought.

  “Urrrgh,” Réiltín said as she picked up the glass of green liquid with leafy bits suspended in it, jolting her mother out of her thoughts.

  “Come on, love, it’s good for you – lots of antioxidants. Now, what cereal do you want?”

  “Coco Pops.”

  “Réiltín, you know I only allow that on the weekends! Porridge, Rice Krispies or Cornflakes?”

  “Rice Krispies.”

  Jo walked into the pantry and took down the box from the shelf, came back out and filled Réiltín’s bowl with the blonde cereal grains.

  “I thought we’d have burgers and chips tonight seeing as it’s your birthday?”

  “Woohoo, Mum, we really are celebrating!” Her tone was sarcastic as usual. “Is Isla coming over later?”

  “Yes, I already asked her, don’t worry! So did you get all your homework finished last night?”

  “Yes, Mum,” she answered impatiently.

  Jo watched her daughter as she ate her breakfast: her thick auburn hair that never seemed to sit properly no matter how much it was brushed; her porcelain skin, without a trace of a freckle or blemish; her bright green eyes with their veins of hazel. Every day she would look at her and drink in her beauty. She was their miracle baby and Jo would never forget it.

  “What are you looking at, Mum?” Réiltín asked grumpily, snapping her out of her thoughts.

  “Oh sorry, I didn’t know I needed permission to look at my own daughter!” She smiled indulgently at her.

  “Weirdo.” Réiltín exhaled heavily. “I’m going to brush my teeth.” She stood up and pushed her chair back from the table.

  Jo sighed and started gathering up her papers and putting them into her briefcase.

  “Did you bring your hockey gear?” Jo asked when Réiltín came back down the stairs a few minutes later.

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “Did you remember to pack your lunch bag? I left it in the fridge for you.”

  “No, Mum. I’m going to get it now,” Réiltín said impatiently, going to the fridge.

  “Right, let’s go then.” Jo belted her woollen coat around her waist and slid her hands into her black leather gloves.

  At the school gates Jo applied the handbrake and Réiltín leaned over to give her mum the usual swift kiss on the cheek, so quick that some mornings she missed her face entirely and kissed the air instead.

  “See you, Mum.”

  “Have a good day, my love,” Jo said and then Réiltín was gone.

  Jo didn’t pull out immediately like she usually would in a rush to beat the traffic on her way in to the office. Instead she sat there in the car and watched as her daughter walked towards the school gate, her hair rising up in a wild tangle on the wind. She looked on as Réiltín met a friend, then stopped and chatted easily. Jo admired how easily her daughter could make friends. She wished she could have been like that as a teenager. She wished she could be like that now. Réiltín got that from Ryan. Sometimes her daughter seemed so different from her that it scared her. Being social didn’t come easily to Jo. ‘Introverted’, she believed was the term for it. She wasn’t like her husband; he needed to be around people. Whenever he was driving he had to be talking to someone on speaker-phone. When they went out for dinner, he would charm the waiter and by the end of the night the couple at the table beside them too. When they used to go on holidays before they had Réiltín, they would be friends with the whole resort by the time they came home. Ryan needed to be surrounded by people whereas sometimes Jo would rather eat her own arm than try to make conversation with a stranger. Charismatic peop
le were born with the gift, Jo believed. People warmed to them wherever they went. In shops people were friendlier to them and helped them pack their shopping, people let them jump in ahead of them in queues. They had people eating out of the very palms of their hands. Everyone loved them, she loved them. She felt the familiar wave of anxiety start up in her chest again but she forced herself to silence the thoughts. Then she released the handbrake and pulled out into the traffic with her to-do list looping inside her head all the way to the office:

  Milk

  Kale

  Washing powder

  Meat

  Reschedule Réiltín’s orthodontist appointment

  She had left the money for Aurelia so at least that was crossed off her list.

  Chapter 3

  A Gift

  It was somewhere around two years after they had first started to try for a baby that Jo realised that something was up. Her periods had always been regular so she’d never thought there would be anything wrong with her. She was in her twenties; she hadn’t left it too late. She had gone along to her doctor who referred her for more tests and scans which showed that she had severely polycystic ovaries and the eggs were just not getting to where they needed to go. She had tried various treatments and fertility drugs unsuccessfully until she was advised that their only other option was to try IVF. So Jo began injecting herself with hormones to switch off her pituitary gland; the medical term was ‘down-regulation’. Then there were more hormones to start it back up again so they were in control of her cycle and could extract her eggs, mix them with Ryan’s contribution and wait to see how many embryos were made. The first time they made two embryos and they decided to implant one so that they had a backup if it didn’t take, which it didn’t. She was upset obviously but she also knew that only one in four IVF cycles were successful so they put it behind them and said they’d try again with the remaining embryo that was frozen in a straw in a tank of liquid nitrogen at the clinic. But it didn’t happen for them. It was third time unlucky as well. Jo had had to go back through all the drug-taking to stimulate her ovaries and the egg-harvesting stage again. The in-vitro fertilisation resulted in three embryos. They decided to transfer two that time to try and boost their chances but that didn’t work either. Then came the jackpot or so she and Ryan thought: they had their fourth round of IVF and both felt really positive about that one. That was the one where on the law of averages it was going to work for them. Statistics were in their favour. And it did work until Jo developed a bad pain and a scan showed that the baby was ectopic so she had to have emergency surgery and was lucky not to lose her ovary. But despite all that she still felt strangely positive because of the fact that they had been able to get pregnant. She felt they were finally on the right track and that soon it would be their turn. But it wasn’t to be that way.

  They were already several years down the line of trying to conceive a baby by the time Isla had become aware of the situation. It was a few months after their father had passed away and things were still strained between the sisters. Their dad’s sudden death had created a rift between them.

  Isla, who was still living at home at the time because she couldn’t afford to move out, had got up as usual that morning. Then she had noticed that her dad wasn’t up for work, which she’d thought strange, as he was normally an early riser. She had let herself gently into his room to check on him. The room was tidy as it always was. His clothes from the day before were hung neatly over the back of the wicker chair and light flooded in around the edges of his curtains. It was then that she saw that he had passed away in his sleep. A massive heart attack, they said.

  Isla was devastated. She had been very close to her dad. Of course Jo was upset too but Isla took it particularly badly. In fact, the depth of closeness in their relationship had only become fully apparent to Jo after he had died.

  Jo had always felt that her dad and Isla were as thick as thieves; they had a similar calm personality where they would weigh things up in their heads before speaking them. They were more sensitive too – it was like their hearts rested just under their skin and could bruise more easily than most.

  Isla was annoyed with how Jo began to put their dad’s affairs in order after he died, like life just moved on, but Jo was annoyed with Isla’s monopoly on the grief. It angered her that Isla didn’t seem to think that anybody else might have been grieving for their father because she was so completely absorbed in her own world of grief.

  Then Isla had lost her job in a busy office. After their dad died, she just hadn’t shown up and eventually after several months they’d had to let her go. Jo couldn’t believe it; she was grieving too but after taking a week off she was back at her desk again trying to keep it together, whereas, to her, Isla was wallowing in it.

  One day Jo had called over to tell Isla that she thought that they should sell their childhood home, 6 Lambay Grove. Isla had pulled back the door to let her in and barely responded to her greeting. Jo had noticed that her hair was looking wilder than usual and her thumbs were poking out through the holes that she had made in the bottom of the sleeves of her ancient grey cardigan. Their dad had bought it for her when she was fourteen. Like all of Isla’s clothes it was well worn to the point of being threadbare but she only seemed to buy new clothes out of necessity.

  When Jo told her why she had come, Isla had gone ballistic. She couldn’t believe that Jo would sell their childhood home. Jo’s response was to ask how she intended to pay her share of the inheritance tax due on the house, especially now that she had no job. So the house had gone on the market and after solicitors’ and agents’ fees and taxes were paid, Isla’s share of the proceeds were transferred into her bank account. Isla didn’t know what Jo had done with her half of the money – she guessed that she probably bought stocks and shares or did something equally sensible.

  After the house was sold Isla had nowhere to stay so she lived in Jo’s seafront house at Sandymount Heights for about three months until she found her own place. But, although they were under the same roof again, it was hard not to notice that something had shifted between the sisters.

  One time Jo was late home from work and Ryan and Isla were drinking cans of beer in the sitting room when she came in. Jo had been horrified.

  “What’s going on?” she had said. “It’s like a student squat in here!”

  “We’re just having a few drinks, Jo,” Ryan said, straightening in his chair.

  “Every evening this week I’ve come home to find you two drinking and laughing in here.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t realise there was a law against laughter!” Ryan had said sardonically.

  Jo rounded on Isla then. “I can see you’re working really hard on job-hunting!”

  “I sent out a few more CVs earlier –”

  “Jo – it’s seven thirty on a Wednesday evening – how could she be out job-hunting?” Ryan said. “Leave her alone.”

  She had stormed out of the room, up the stairs and into her room. Ryan had followed wearily and had eventually managed to calm her down.

  The next day Isla had gone out and got a job doing face-painting in the play centre near to Jo’s house. The money was dire but she wanted to show Jo that she was making an effort. She had been working there for two weeks when she was on her way home from work one day and saw Jo’s car in the driveway. It was only half past three, which was odd because Jo was never home before she finished work. She let herself in with her key, walked down the hallway and straight into the kitchen where she saw Jo sitting at the table with a pregnancy test in her hands. Her eyes were red and puffy and her cheeks shone with tears.

  “What’s wrong, Jo?” she asked gently.

  “I can’t do this any more,” she had said. “This is hell.”

  “Are you and Ryan trying to have a baby?”

  “Trying, but failing spectacularly. I really thought that this would be my time.”

  “How long have you been trying?” Isla had asked.

  �
�Four years now – we’ve had five rounds of IVF and it hasn’t worked. You always have it in the back of your mind when you can’t conceive – ‘Oh well, at least there’s IVF – that’ll sort us out’. It’s like a safety net waiting for you . . . but what I hadn’t expected was that it wouldn’t work for us.”

  “Oh, Jo!” Isla had put her arms around her sister.

  “I really thought I would have had a baby or at least be pregnant by now!” Jo had sobbed into Isla’s hair.

  Suddenly it had all clicked into place for Isla. Jo’s terrible mood-swings, her tears and depressions, her secretive behaviour when she was trying to hide that she had an appointment. The mysterious tablets and nasal sprays she’d been taking.

  “I’m sorry, Jo, I wish you had told me earlier – you shouldn’t be going through all of this on your own. It will happen for you – chin up, you have to stay positive.”

  Isla had hurried up with her flat-hunt and moved out, because she knew that Jo and Ryan needed space as a couple to work through it alone and she was sure it didn’t help having her living in the house with them. She could tell that their marriage was starting to suffer. She watched the distance grow between them as Jo ploughed ahead with treatment after treatment while he stood idly by, afraid to even suggest taking a break. Jo became obsessed with research papers. She would spend hours trawling through scientific journals seeking information, which might give her some new insight into why she couldn’t get pregnant. Then she would bookmark their pages and present them to her consultant at her next appointment. She liked to be in control and Isla knew that was her way of coping.

  Isla had watched as Jo kept her chin up and stayed positive but it still didn’t happen for them. She had watched as a broken Jo picked herself up again and again as another cycle failed, until Isla couldn’t bear it any longer. She didn’t know how Jo, as the person going through it, was able to cope with the disappointment.

  They had become closer once again after Jo had confided in her. Their squabbling after their father’s death was put to one side and Isla made an effort to be there for her sister. She watched Jo injecting herself directly into her stomach and it made her want to hurl. Jo had told her that that was the easy bit – it was the awful wait to see if it had worked that was so much worse. Isla had a new level of respect for her sister. Back then she could never have imagined feeling such a desperate need to have a child that you would put yourself through all of that, almost to the point where you became a different person.