“When I see the other girls in my class I can’t stop thinking that they have no problems,” Réiltín said. “Exactly the way that I used to be. I’m so jealous of them. They know who their parents are, they don’t have any dark secrets in their past. Their whole lives aren’t ruined by what their parents did. They start talking about One Direction and about how hard it will be to get a ticket when they go on sale and I’m thinking is that really the biggest of your worries? Is that it? But you know what it is – that is as bad as it gets for them and I can’t stand listening to it. They seem so immature to me now when just a few days ago I was just like them. I can’t stand listening to it so I get up and walk off. When I did it today I heard Sophie Talbot say real loud so that I’d hear: ‘What’s her problem?’ I know they’re talking about me and whispering behind my back but I can’t tell them, I can’t tell anyone. I’m so embarrassed – oh my God, it’s so disgusting to even think about it!” She visibly shuddered on the sofa.
“Hey, you’ve nothing to be embarrassed about! You should see it as a sign of how much your parents really wanted to have you.”
“I just don’t know where I belong,” she sighed. “And please don’t say at home with Mum and Dad.”
Isla raised her hands. “I wasn’t going to say that. I know this is hard on you but you have three people in your life that love you so much – your mum and dad and me. Okay, I get it that this is a big shock but it doesn’t change anything in your life. It’s not the very worst thing that could happen to you.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Isla.”
“Sorry – I wasn’t trying to trivialise it.”
“Don’t you think it’s weird that you’re my mum?”
Isla stopped unpacking the bags and looked at her. Because she was so angry with her parents, Réiltín was letting her mind run away with the idea that somehow she had found her real mother. She wanted a connection. Isla could understand that – she had been uprooted and she wanted something to tether herself to. She wanted Isla to be the stand-in but Isla knew that she was treading on dangerous ground and she had to set her straight.
“I’ve told you over and over again. I’m not your mum – genetically, yes, but that’s it – that’s as far as it goes, Réilt. Your mother is Jo. She’s the one who has been a mum to you. A mother is so much more than just being a biological parent. It’s like being adopted – it’s the people who loved you and raised you that matter. I can’t step in and take credit for everything that Jo has done for you – she has fed you, clothed you, nurtured you, loved you.”
“But you would have done all those things too if I was born to you.”
“But you weren’t born to me, that’s what I’m trying to show you – she has been your mother from day one. If she didn’t use my eggs then you wouldn’t be here today so if you think about it, she did create you. Réiltín, you know that I love you more than anything but I’ve always only been an aunt to you. I could never let you take that away from your parents.”
“So you don’t want me either, is that what you’re saying? Because, if I’m putting you out, I can go and pack my bags and I won’t inconvenience you any longer!” She got up off the sofa.
“Sit down, you know that’s not what I’m saying,” Isla sighed. “Why don’t I make us a hot chocolate before I start on dinner, huh?”
Jo turned and looked out the floor-to-ceiling glazing at the view down over the wide swell of the Liffey. People hurried along to their lives on the streets below. She missed that. She missed hurrying home from work to see Réiltín and Ryan. She missed knowing there were people who loved her, waiting for her to come in the door. She was in a hurry nowhere any more.
She had tried ringing Réiltín, texting her. She had written her a letter explaining everything and how much they both loved her and telling her that, no matter what, she was still their daughter, their very much wanted daughter. She had turned up on Isla’s doorstep but Réiltín had refused to see her. She had emailed her, she had even set up a Facebook account so she could send her messages that way but they all went unanswered. She had begged Isla to try and get her to talk to her but Réiltín was adamant that she didn’t want to see her.
She left the office after four. She knew that people were looking at her as she put on her coat and wrapped her scarf around her neck. She could feel their eyes following her movements. They were not used to seeing her head home at that time, save for when Réiltín had a match on or something which she had told them about. She couldn’t remember leaving that early before without a reason but the truth was that she didn’t want to be there.
Jo’s work life was a disaster. She couldn’t concentrate in meetings – she kept checking her phone to see if it was Isla calling with an update or even better still a call from Réiltín saying she was finally able to talk to her. The other partners would come to her with decisions that needed to be made about the firm, things that needed to be signed off but she just didn’t seem to be able to do the simple things any more. It was like everything in her life was futile now. Nothing mattered any more. It was like the colour had been sucked out of her world and everything existed in shades of grey, if her daughter wasn’t in her life. She was tired. She was exhausted actually. She hadn’t slept since the day Réiltín had left. She went to her doctor for some sleeping tablets but they didn’t work.
Isla had assured her that she was feeding Réiltín well and making sure that she went to school every day and did her homework in the evenings. Jo had had to give in and bring over some more of her clothes and other things like her iPad even though it killed her to facilitate her staying with Isla for a day longer than was necessary. Isla had said that she would come round when her anger faded but she had been saying that since the whole thing happened and Réiltín still hadn’t softened. Jo didn’t know what to do any more. The life that she knew and loved was slipping away from her and she didn’t know whether to fight back with all of her strength and risk damaging her relationship with Réiltín forever or to give her the space that she wanted and hope that Isla and Ryan were right and that she would make the choice herself to come home.
Earlier that day she had called into Réiltín’s school to speak with her year head. Without going into all the details, she told her confidentially that they were having some family problems. Jo could see that the rotund woman who sat across the desk from her, nosiness propelling her forward, was almost salivating to hear more. She wanted to know what goriness could be going on beneath the surface of their outwardly perfect family but Jo didn’t say any more. Jo asked her if she could keep an extra close eye on Réiltín in case it was affecting her schoolwork and the year head had promised her with a scowl, which Jo had taken as disappointment, that she would. Jo had stayed in her car afterwards and waited for the home bell to ring. She finally saw Réiltín coming in the distance and savoured watching her from afar. Her tie was loosened in a way that usually made Jo want to tell her to tighten it up but it didn’t matter now. Her reddish, wispy curls hung loosely around her face as usual. Jo smiled. As she got nearer to her she had seen Jo watching her and had looked back at her with burning hatred in her eyes and gone in the other direction. Her own daughter.
Jo arrived home and switched on the lights. The house was chilly, having been empty for most of the day. She saw a note on the worktop from Aurelia asking her to buy bleach and bags for the vacuum cleaner. Damn it, she thought, that was the second time that Aurelia had asked her to buy them. She never usually forgot things like that. She put a reminder into her phone so that she wouldn’t forget again.
She looked around the kitchen and saw that Ryan still wasn’t home. He had been doing that a lot in the days after Réiltín had left – it was like he couldn’t stand to be in the silence of their house. It felt eerily quiet and empty without Réiltín’s music resonating off the walls or the sound of her moving about upstairs. Time seemed endless in their house with her gone. Ryan and Jo were barely on speaking terms. They couldn’t mee
t each other’s eye; it was like they were afraid of what they would see reflected there. He had barely said two words to her since the night that he’d driven Réiltín over to Isla’s place. With Réiltín gone, she had become painfully aware of the fact that she had been their sole topic of conversation for a long time and without her they were just two people sharing a house. Réiltín had gone and she had taken the heart from their home. She knew Ryan was heartbroken but her heart was hurting too much from Réiltín’s absence to have room to let his pain come in as well. The soul of their lives had been stripped out of it. As their marriage went, she knew that they were not in a good place. Like all couples they’d had their ups and downs through the years. There were times when they were getting along brilliantly and other times where they got on each other’s nerves, but this was the very worst. Since Isla had started the whole drama about the embryo, things had been very strained between them and now, with Réiltín gone, he wouldn’t even look at her. When she tried to talk to him, just general chitchat about their day, his eyes wouldn’t meet hers. Jo would tell him that she had made shepherd’s pie if he wanted some but he wouldn’t even turn around and answer her. Then later she would listen as he moved around the kitchen fixing himself a sandwich.
Jo knew that he blamed her. Of course he did – she blamed herself too. She knew that he would never admit it but she was sure that he was thinking that if it weren’t for her faulty eggs, then they would never have needed to use a donor and wouldn’t be in the awful situation they now found themselves in. It was her infertility that had brought them down that road initially and while he had been unsure about using a donor, Jo had pulled him along with her and convinced him to come down the path of using Isla’s eggs. Then it was her unwillingness to be upfront with Réiltín from the start about her conception that had became a moot point between them over the years so she knew that Ryan believed that the situation that they were in was all down to her.
She looked around the room with its dark wood furnishings. It all looked like someone else’s life. It seemed foreign to her. The wallpaper that she’d had made in a replica of the period that would have originally been hung on the wall, the furniture she had bought at auction. She traced her fingers over the jacquard fabric of the bolster cushion. To think she had spent hours of time choosing between fabrics and colour schemes. Had she really dithered so much over patterns and textures and period detailing, like any of it was of any consequence? It seemed unbelievable that they were the things that had once mattered to her.
The last of the evening light had faded purple pink and, as she walked over to the French doors to draw the curtains, she caught sight of a blazing trail of yellow light tracking across the sky. It was so bright that she assumed it was a firework and waited for its customary explosion into millions of smaller lights. But then it was gone again just as fast. A shooting star. She made a wish for her own star to come home.
Jo moved away from the window and looked around the cool sitting room which just four weeks ago was echoing with noise and laughter and happiness. It seemed so long ago now. It was like a movie playing in her head that she had watched years ago. It seemed so distant to her now. The people seemed so different to her, like they were all actors. She didn’t know them any more. How had this happened? How had they ended up here?
She felt an overwhelming sense of tiredness. She felt so worn out by it all. She was sick of fighting battles that she wasn’t winning. She poured herself a glass of wine and sat down into the wingback armchair. She let the wine warm her and soon felt herself slip away into a distant fuzziness where she was in a subdued world just beyond the pain that simmered at the surface.
As the wine soothed, she had hazy thoughts about all of them. Her eyes felt heavy and she let them fall closed. She saw Isla laughing – she was in Mr Taylor’s house, she was calling to her but she wouldn’t come out to her. But when she looked again it wasn’t Isla but Réiltín. She was calling her: Mamma, Mamma, help me, Mamma, help! She ran towards her, her heart thumping. She was almost in touching distance of her when Isla came in through the back door behind them and threw her arms around Réiltín, pulling her in close against her chest. They were both smiling at her serenely like the statue of the blue-cloaked Virgin Mary holding Baby Jesus in her arms outside the principal’s office in their secondary school. Then the two of them started to laugh at her.
Chapter 32
Stubborn
The day went past in a blur of buttered bread and steaming mugs of tea as Greg, Fran and Isla worked in the café. Isla barely had time to think, for which she was grateful. She was wiping down a table later that afternoon when the café door opened andJo strode in through it. She could tell instantly by her brusque manner that she was going to go off on one.
“I want to see her, Isla,” she almost hissed at her across the tables. “Come on, it’s going on too long now!”
Heads swung around to watch the scene. From the corner of her eye Isla could see Fran nudging Greg behind the counter and she knew that Greg was wondering whether or not he should intervene.
“Not here, Jo. Come out the back with me.”
Jo followed Isla through the kitchen, passing the stainless-steel ovens and the open shelves stacked with crockery. Isla opened the latch on the fire-exit door and stepped out onto the back lane.
“What more do you want me to do, Jo?” Isla said. “I didn’t tell her to come stay at my place. I’m not stopping her from leaving.”
“You have to do more to get her to come home. Can’t you talk some sense into her?”
“Look, I know you’re frustrated but I’m doing all that I can. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to throw her out on the street and hope she goes home to you, Jo?”
“Of course not,” she mumbled.
“Look, you need to give her time. I’m doing all that I can, believe me.”
“I know,” Jo sighed. “I know.” She ran her hands down over her face before softening her tone. “I’m sorry – I shouldn’t be going off at you. I’m at my wits’ end, Isla – I can’t sleep, I can’t eat – I don’t know what to do.” She found herself in the position of being angry beyond reason with her sister for making this whole business raise its head again but also needing her, as she was the only link to her daughter at that moment.
“I know, I know . . .” Isla came closer and put her arms around her.
“You said she’d be home by now!”
“And I thought she would be but your daughter is stubborn.”
“How much longer is this going to go on? If she would only just talk to me at least . . . it’s killing me, Isla! I miss her so much . . .” Her voice broke off into tears. “She’s my daughter, no matter what she thinks!”
“I know,” Isla soothed.
“Her school play is on in a couple of weeks – did she mention anything about it to you?”
“Well . . . she’s been doing rehearsals most days after school.”
“No, I mean about Ryan and me going to it?”
“Oh, well, I don’t know . . .”
“Are you going, Isla?”
“Well . . . I said I would,” Isla admitted hesitantly.
“Ryan and I should be there too, you know.”
“Of course you should. Why don’t I sound it out with her tonight?”
Jo nodded.
“Here, come on back inside for a cup of tea.”
Jo shook her head. “I need to go. I’m supposed to be having a meeting with the other partners but God knows I’m going to be so ineffective. I haven’t prepared a thing for it. If it were anything else, I’d just cancel it. I can’t concentrate on anything – I can’t sleep at night, then I’m wrecked all day long.”
“Look, I’ll talk to her again tonight. I’ll tell her how upset you are – maybe that’ll make her come round.”
She nodded. “Please, Isla, I need her back at home. I can’t bear it any longer.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I
s she eating okay? Taking her inhalers? Doing her homework at night?”
“She’s doing fine.” Isla didn’t tell Jo that her behaviour was nearly too normal. That the whole debacle didn’t seem to be disturbing her nearly as much as it was her parents. In fact, if Isla was honest, Réiltín actually seemed quite happy with how it had all worked out. Isla knew that in Réiltín’s head she almost saw them as flatmates. Réiltín knew that Isla wasn’t going to assert the same authority and protective parenting style of Jo and she was enjoying the freedom. Not that Isla was letting her do anything that Jo wouldn’t but Isla believed that it was a temporary arrangement so she wasn’t taking on the full responsibility that a mother would, like keeping an eye on her grades in school.
“Watch her maths – make sure she’s not falling behind on it. She has to work hard at that.”
“I’m the last person you want helping her with her maths homework.”
The corners of Jo’s mouth turned up in a smile at that.
“How’s Ryan?”
“He’s barely speaking to me. It’s horrible. The atmosphere in the house is so tense. I just think if she comes home we’ll be able to sort it all out but the longer she’s away the more things are getting worse between the two of us.”
After she had gone Isla felt terrible. She knew that Réiltín wasn’t going to back down and now Jo had gone home with a small chink of hope that maybe Isla would be able to convince Réiltín to talk to her. She felt totally caught in the middle and she didn’t know how to get out of it.
It was only when they had closed the door behind the last of the customers and she was sweeping the floor that she had time to think. She knew that she and Jo were on dangerous ground. It saddened her that Jo was the only family that she had left in the whole world and yet there was a massive gulf between them. Réiltín was adamant that she wasn’t going home and Jo blamed her for bringing the whole thing up. She was also trying to accept the fact that she was never going to have a child of her own. It was all getting too much for her. She felt the weight of tears building behind her eyes, threatening to push forward and spill down her face.
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