“It’s nothing. I’ll be over again soon, I promise.”
“So there is something then. I knew it.”
“Look, I’m not fighting with your mum, honestly. I can promise you that. We just have a difference of opinion on something and sometimes things like that happen but it will all blow over soon. You have nothing to worry about.”
“But what’s it about?”
“I can’t tell you that, Réilt, but you just have to trust me, okay?”
“Is Mum being bossy again? Because I know what she’s like. She never stops organising people and telling them what they should be doing – ask Dad. But it’s just the way she is. She doesn’t mean it really. She likes to be in control. Me and Dad have this thing where we just nod to agree with her because it’s easier that way and then when she’s not there we both laugh about it.”
Isla knew exactly what she meant. She had known Jo her whole life so she knew what she was like but she also knew that sometimes Jo could be overprotective with Ryan and Réiltín because she loved them so much. She had been like that with Isla when they were growing up.
“Look, if it makes you feel any better I’ll call over at the weekend, okay?”
“Good, because I really miss you.” Réiltín leant in and threw her arms around her.
“You know you can call over to see me at any time too, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but you’re part of our family – it’s not the same without you.”
Suddenly Isla felt a huge pang of guilt. Réiltín was right. She had to think of her feelings as well.
“Okay, well, I’ll call over at the weekend then.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“I’d better run. I’ve got piano practice now.”
They both stood up and Isla leant in to hug her. She noticed that her hair smelt of cigarette smoke but she didn’t say anything.
Chapter 27
Jealousy
The following weekend, before she had even reached the door, Jo could hear the laughter. She stopped to let herself listen to it for a moment, to its carefree and unrestrained notes. She couldn’t remember if she had ever laughed like that, really just let herself go without caring what she sounded like or whether she had something stuck in her teeth. Before she even opened it, she knew that the three of them were in there together. She hated to admit it but the three of them seemed to get along better whenever she wasn’t around. The old, deep-rooted insecurity was raising its ugly head again. What was Isla even doing here anyway? She hadn’t told her that she was calling over. She had a downright cheek to sit in her living room with her family as if nothing had happened after the drama she had caused over the last few weeks.
She steeled herself and pushed open the living-room door.
“What’s going on?” She tried to make her tone sound even and calm but she could hear the staccato notes of panic in it. “I didn’t know we were expecting you, Isla?”
Silence fell on the room, like they were all in school and had just been caught in the middle of doing something wrong. Réiltín looked from her mother to Isla and back again.
“Sorry, I only came for a short visit – I promised Réiltín earlier in the week that I’d call in,” Isla said quickly.
“I see.” Jo took off her coat and folded it over her forearm.
“She doesn’t need to tell us when she’s calling over, Mum!” Réiltín was angered by her mother’s reaction.
“How are you? How was work?” Isla said, standing up and gesturing at Jo to sit down.
In my own house, thought Jo – she is telling me to sit down in my own house.
“Did you get the notes on the Gibson case prepared?” Ryan asked, trying to break the tension.
“It took a while but we should be okay for Monday.” Her tone was sharp. “So, what were you all laughing about when I came in? What was so funny?”
“Oh, it was just a joke about a guy on TV,” Isla said.
“What was the joke?”
“Well, it probably won’t seem funny now,” Ryan muttered.
“Well, tell me.”
“Oh, it was just a guy on TV was calling himself an athlete and Dad said the closest he would get to being an athlete was using athlete’s foot powder,” Réiltín said.
Jo knew that she should laugh. Even if she didn’t think it was as funny as they all seemed to find it – which she didn’t – she still knew that she should give them a laugh so that nobody felt awkward. Be part of the gang. Be in the clique. If she laughed it would mean that she was one of them, she would be included in their cosy little gathering, but she just couldn’t do it. It was like some stubborn tie had come over her tongue and wouldn’t let her do it. They were all looking at her, waiting for her to laugh with them even if it was faked. It was expected of her to laugh but she wouldn’t do it.
“So did you eat? We have some takeout leftovers if you’d like some?” Ryan said, changing the subject.
“You had takeaway again tonight? But you had one a few days ago!” She looked to Réiltín for confirmation but she wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Chill, Jo, it’s not like we’re eating it every day,” Ryan said in that same irksome tone again.
It angered her how he could speak to her like that. Strip her down in front of everyone.
“I’ll make myself a sandwich, thanks,” Jo said, getting up and closing the door on the three of them.
She went into the kitchen and flicked on the lights. The paper takeaway bags and the empty plastic tubs that the food had arrived in were scattered across the table. She gathered them up and put them into the bin, separating the unsoiled recyclables and putting everything else in the general waste. Dishes and cups lay strewn across the counter. “Would it have been too much extra trouble to put them into the dishwasher underneath?” she asked nobody as she went over to pull out the drawers and load them into it. She noticed crumbs, probably from the morning’s toast, were sprinkled along the worktop. She felt her shoulders start to tense as she began to clean up the mess.
Isla had some cheek coming over there after the last time she saw her.
Jo had never told anyone before, because she was too afraid of what they would think of her, but there were times over the last few years when she had almost hated Isla. She had hated her for what she had done for them even though that was completely illogical. Jo knew that she had given them the best gift they could ever have hoped for but she had been so caught up in the excitement of finally being pregnant that it was only after Réiltín was born that the reality of how she was conceived had started to hit her properly.
When Jo had initially got the two pink lines on the pregnancy test she was so elated to finally be at that stage that she didn’t care how she had achieved it. She was ecstatic, on a high, and everything was finally good in her world. When Réiltín was growing inside of her, she was her baby. Ryan would ask her how she was doing and she would tell him if she was having an active day or a quiet one. She was the one to tell him when the baby was kicking. Whenever Isla had felt her bump, Jo was able to tell her which way the baby was positioned. Jo could tell her which mound was a head and which was a bum. But when Réiltín was born, she was out there in the world. Suddenly she was everyone else’s baby too. Isla or Ryan could just walk in and lift her out of her crib and Jo hated that. She knew it was horrible but there were times where she desperately wished that she could fold Réiltín up neatly and tuck her back inside herself, away from everyone else, where she was hers and hers alone. She would lie in bed at night, wide awake, thinking about it. She felt as though her role was obsolete once Réiltín was born. While she was pregnant, she was doing something – by carrying Réiltín she felt she was contributing to the trio. But she gradually realised that, instead of them being a family on their own, Isla was now intricately involved in their lives forever more whether she liked it or not. She was woven into the fabric of her family – there were four of them in the relationship. While
Isla was there, Jo could never forget how they came to have Réiltín. Jo was soon to learn that there were always reminders. Even though they never discussed what they had done all those years ago, something would peep its head up and remind them that they could never forget how Réiltín had come to be.
One time, when Réiltín was about three, Jo and Isla had taken her for a walk along the beach in front of Jo’s house. They were walking along the sand, crumbly from the rain the night before. Réiltín was gathering shells and running back to put them into the bucket that they were holding for her. Some were smooth, others were ridged and gritty.
“’Ook I got, Mamma!” Réiltín had said.
They made their way over to her and looked at what she wanted to show them.
“Wow, you got a shell! That’s so pretty, sweetheart,” Jo said, crouching down to inspect it.
Réiltín threw it into the bucket where it rattled off the other shells she had collected. Just then they saw a woman with a small dog approaching and Réiltín ran across the flattened sand over to it. She bent down and put out a hand to pat the dog. They watched from a distance as it started to snarl at her, its lips rising to show bared teeth. She quickly took her hand away and came running back over towards them, her small face red and streaked with tears. Jo crouched down on the sand and opened her arms wide, ready to take Réiltín into them, but Réiltín’s small body collided with Isla’s legs and she wrapped her two arms around her knees.
Jo had stood up again, came over to them and said, “I’m here, Little Star, Mummy’s right here,” but Réiltín still stayed clinging to Isla’s legs.
Obviously feeling awkward, Isla had finally managed to prise Réiltín’s small arms off her legs and bent down to her level. “Are you okay, Réiltín? Did the bold doggy scare you?”
“Me go home, I-ya. Me no like here,” Réiltín had said with her bottom lip quivering.
They did go home. Jo had felt humiliated. She had stormed off down the beach and climbed the steps back up to her house.
Jo felt that if they had used an anonymous donor it would have been much easier to forget and to get on with things but Isla was her sister and she was going to be there every single day for the rest of their lives. Jo could never cut her out even though, if she was really honest, she wished she could at times. She hated herself for feeling like that about her own sister because she loved her so much as well but it was so complex and awful and she felt too ashamed to tell anyone about her thoughts. She was so disgusted with herself for feeling that way. She knew that Ryan would never have understood it if she had told him. From the moment Réiltín had been born, he had placed Isla up on a pedestal of gratitude. Sometimes over the years she’d catch him looking at Isla. She couldn’t put into words exactly what it was that she saw but it was a look of admiration, maybe even desire. Ryan had a protectiveness towards Isla that she just couldn’t figure out. He seemed to feel it was his duty to mind her. If she needed a lift somewhere, he would be the first one to offer, if her tap sprang a leak he would be straight over there with the toolbox to fix it. Jo couldn’t decide if it was a brotherly type of feeling or if it was something else. She didn’t like letting her head go there but she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because she had given him a child, the much longed-for child that Jo had been unable to give him. She hated seeing the three of them on their own together. She would look at them like a stranger might and let herself imagine that they were a couple and Réiltín was their child. How would their family look to the outside world? Did Réiltín look like them? She didn’t want to see it, if she did. She imagined that the three of them had a stronger bond, like a radio fence where you couldn’t see it but it was there all right. Sometimes Jo wanted to rip Isla out of their lives like you would tear someone that you didn’t like out of a photo and she hated herself for that because she knew that they wouldn’t have ever had their baby without her. It was an insane jealousy but she couldn’t stop thinking like that. Whenever she watched Ryan and Isla laughing and joking together it made her wonder if anything would ever happen between them. She used to worry that they would have an affair behind her back and run away with Réiltín, leaving her on her own, so she refused to leave the three of them alone together. Then she would feel awful for not trusting them. She knew that she wasn’t thinking rationally.
There was one time that Jo would never forget. Réiltín had been three months old. She wasn’t long out of hospital at the time and the months of worry were starting to catch up on Jo. The sleepless nights had started and she would fret over every little thing because she was so fragile. She was afraid that she was doing it all wrong. Maybe it was the hormones but she couldn’t sleep and would lie there all night long with her stomach churning, worrying about how she was going to cope with tomorrow. Ryan saw the dark shadows on her face, the exhaustion in her body and he said he’d take Réiltín off for a walk and ordered Jo to go back to bed to sleep for a while. She did as she was told without any argument; she was too weary to fight. She climbed back into their bed and slept for hours. When she woke she could tell by the pinky-orange light that was making its way around the curtains that it was nearly dusk outside and that she had spent most of the day asleep. She listened out for sounds in the house but she couldn’t hear anything coming up from downstairs. She jumped out of bed, feeling a sensation of wild panic flooding through her. Something was wrong. She could feel it deep inside. She ran down the stairs, taking two steps at a time and ran between the rooms but there was no sign of them in the house. She tried ringing Ryan on his mobile but he didn’t answer. Something has happened, something has happened, that voice which had been tormenting her since Réiltín was born kept on repeating. They should be back by now, it said. She didn’t know if it was the hormones or some kind of feral protectiveness of her family but the urgency to find them and find out what had happened was overwhelming.
She threw on her coat over her pyjamas and drove over to Isla’s house. She knocked on the door in a panic.
“They’re gone,” she said. “Something has happened to them!”
“Who is? What are you talking about?”
Jo had looked past Isla and her eyes landed on the pram in the small space behind the door. Réiltín’s pram. She felt the blood rush into her ears. Why had he come here? Why was this the place where he had chosen to go? She pushed past Isla and ran up the stairs and straight into the kitchen where Ryan was sitting with Réiltín on his knee, just about to bring a biscuit up to his lips.
“Jo!” he had said, looking startled.
“Don’t lie to me!” she said. “I know what’s going on here.” She looked from Ryan to Isla and back to Ryan again.
“What are you talking about, Jo?” Ryan asked, clearly annoyed. “There’s nothing going on. I took the baby for a walk, then went home and saw you were still sleeping – so I said we’d leave you to it, you were obviously exhausted. We went back out again but I needed somewhere to change her and feed her so we called over here. That’s it. What has got into you?”
Isla looked bewildered, standing with her mouth open in her kitchen. Well, Jo had thought to herself, I’m certainly not going to let you two play happy families without me. So she walked over and lifted Réiltín, her daughter, up out of Ryan’s arms. She carried her downstairs where she placed her gently into her pram. She covered her up with blankets to protect her from the elements and then left them to it. She didn’t have her car seat so she left her car behind and walked her all the way home in the drizzle in her pyjamas and slippers.
Ryan had driven her car home later and ignored her for the rest of the evening. She was sorry by that stage of course. She’d had time to calm down and even she could see then that her behaviour was irrational. She apologised to him, blaming the tiredness and the hormones and the worry that seemed to creep its way around every thought that she had. He had nodded and taken her in his arms. He whispered into her ear that it was okay. Isla never mentioned it again.
She knew i
t was an ugly emotion, jealousy, but that was why she could never give Isla that embryo. If she did, she would be strengthening those triangular bonds, which were invisible to her but which she was pretty sure were binding the three of them closer together.
Chapter 28
The Outsider
The bird swooped down on the diagonal. A large gull. He swept down to the green-grey water, picked something up before swooping back upwards again. It was too small for Jo to make out what it was that he had picked up. She noticed that Ryan’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Surely they should be home by now, she thought. She pressed the button to lock her car and made her way across the gravel to the house.
She opened the door and Oscar rushed out to greet her. She rubbed his silky ears before bending over to pick the post up from the mat. She went into the kitchen and fed Oscar before ringing Ryan’s phone to see where he was. There was no answer so she tried ringing Réiltín next but she didn’t answer either.
He was meant to be picking her up from piano practice that day. She felt that familiar wave of anxiety winding itself around her, the one that never went too far away. It was always there simmering below the surface. She told herself that she was being ridiculous and began pulling ingredients out of the presses to make dinner. She began slicing a courgette into spiral slices and adding them to the saucepan where they hissed in the olive oil. She added the garlic and waited until it started to dance before lowering the heat. She set the table and then looked at the clock on the wall and wondered where her husband had got to. She dialled his number again but it went straight to voicemail. Anxiety knotted in her chest. She felt her breathing tighten like someone was pushing down on her chest. What if something had happened to them?What if he had crashed his car? Then a rational voice chastised her: Stop being so ridiculous. She knew that she needed to calm herself down and not to let the old insecurities start causing trouble for them again. She took a deep breath in and let it fill up her lungs. Sometimes she felt as though she was going crazy. She had been doing well for so long and now the thoughts and fears and anxieties were back and they were starting to scare her. Sometimes what worried her even more, though, was that she was turning into her mother.
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