Ella tries her best to keep the emotion out of her voice. “But . . . but why would she do that?” The words sting her. She knows why. It’s one thing treating her like that but not her daughter.
Celeste shrugs. “I don’t know, Mum,” she says sadly.
“Aren’t you Ella Wilde?” the woman who had been staring over at her for the last ten minutes says on her way out the door.
“Yes, I am.”
“Well, shame on you! You’re being paid a six-figure salary out of my money and it still isn’t enough for you – that’s pure, scandalous greed in my book!” she hisses and tiny drops of spittle fly from her mouth and land on Ella.
Celeste and Dot are listening to the exchange with horrified faces.
“Look, I’m sorry but I’m just here with my kids and –”
“You should be ashamed of yourself! With you meant to be a role model for the people of Ireland!” she says scornfully.
“Mummy, what is that lady saying?” Dot says.
“It’s okay, love. Come on, girls, put on your coats.”
“But what about my cake?” Celeste says in protest.
“Come on, Celeste, we have to go.”
“That’s not fair! You said we were getting cake!”
“I said come on!” Her voice is raised.
The woman’s eyes are burning into her.
She gets the buggy and steers the children out through the door. Once outside she pushes the buggy over towards the low harbour wall and stares at the oil forming abstract patterns on the water. Pinks, blues and greens trail lazily across the surface.
That afternoon Ella is lying down in her bedroom and the sound of American canned laughter filters down to her from where Celeste and Dot are watching TV upstairs. An overtired Maisie is in the nursery having a nap. Ella has been crying for two hours now and she just can’t seem to stop the tears. They just keep streaming down her face and her skin is raw and sore. She can’t keep this going any more. It’s as if she doesn’t know herself any more. She is a mess. A failure and a mess. Soon she can hear Maisie’s cry start up on the monitor. She pulls herself up and goes into the nursery.
“Shush, little one, it’s okay, it’s all going to be okay,” she repeats as she lifts her up.
Maisie’s small body clings against her mother’s as she gasps breathy tears. Ella tries rubbing her back in case she has wind but Maisie arches against her so she walks around the room with her. But the baby grows hysterical. Her body is rigid and her face is puce from exerting herself with tears.
“I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry that I never know what to do with you,” Ella whispers into her milky neck. She can’t do this, she is just no good at it. Tears start to stream down her face again and fall in wet droplets on her daughter’s silky hair. She feels helpless and doesn’t know what to do to calm the baby down. She never knows the right thing to do.
She puts the baby in her cot and, trembling, goes back into her bedroom. She can hear Maisie screaming through the walls and whatever primitive force or small amount of maternal instinct that she has pulls her to go back to her, but she doesn’t trust herself to pick her up. She is paralysed from helping her own daughter.
She decides to ring Dan. She needs him to help her. She is ready to tell him everything – how hard she has been finding it lately, how she can’t cope and she doesn’t understand why. How she finds herself crying all day long, every day, and the tears never seem to find an end. She’s ready to tell him about all of it. She dials his number and her heart is racing, thump, thump, thump. While it rings she practises what she’s going to say to him. She is going to tell him exactly how she is feeling, once and for all.
“Ella?”
She can’t get the words out. They are a fragmented mess inside her head and she doesn’t know how to put them together.
“Ella, are you there?” he says impatiently.
“I . . . I can’t do it – I’m sorry – I need you to help me.”
“Sorry, Ella, but is this urgent? I’m up the walls here.” He starts to have a conversation with somebody in the background – she hears him say, “Get him back in again – we need to redo that layer.”
I can’t cope. I want you to help me. But she doesn’t say any of these things and instead says, “It’s nothing . . . I’ll see you later.”
She hangs up and lies down. She can feel yet more tears fall down her face. She needs help.
Chapter 20
Two weeks have gone by and Rachel and Marcus haven’t contacted each other. She finds the evenings are the worst. She was meant to go to the gym tonight but she couldn’t face it. She can’t seem to face anything at the moment. When she was with Marcus, they might get a takeaway or go to the cinema together but since they broke up she finds the time so long. She knows she could give Shirley a call but, since she has had Tiernan, understandably she doesn’t have the same freedom to go places any more and Rachel doesn’t want to burden her. She has lots of friends at home in Antrim but it’s only now she realises that in Dublin she just has Marcus and Shirley and now they are both out of action.
She is frighteningly lonely. She has resisted the urge to ring him several times a day and, in the evenings, when she is at her most vulnerable, she has purposely put her phone in another room to stop herself from picking it up and texting him. It has been so hard to make that break.
It is her birthday tomorrow and there is something about her birthday that always makes her feel a little bit sad, a little bit vulnerable. Even when she and Marcus were very happy together, she never really liked her birthday. She is not sure if it’s a getting-older thing or not but it always makes her take stock of her life to date. It’s a day where she has always found herself turn the magnifying glass of self-inspection inwards, where the flaws and things that she isn’t happy about in her life look bigger.
On her last birthday Marcus had woken her up with breakfast in bed and on the side of the tray was an envelope. When she opened it up, she realised that it was the first clue of a treasure hunt that he had planned out for her.
“Lions and tigers and bears oh my,
We’ll be watching the animals you and I,
Like a wide-eyed child with an eager grin,
Hop in the car and I’ll take you for a spin.”
She had guessed it was the zoo and after she’d finished the breakfast, they had gone there. Then the next clue had led to the Guinness storehouse.
“Where the drink is dark and vats are deep,
I hope the smell of hops won’t send you to sleep,
As we zoom to the top, to take in the view,
We’ll clink our glasses to me and you.”
Finally, just as dusk was descending on the city, they’d ended up in a lovely gastro pub on the waterfront in Howth, sitting by the fire cuddled up in a snug, eating seafood. It had been the perfect day.
It is so hard to accept that all of the good times that they’d had together are over, and not because they don’t love each other – in fact, she knows there are few couples who could be more in love than they are – but it’s a case of ‘right person, wrong time’.
It is always when she is feeling a little low that memories creep up on her and remind her of the fun that they used to have. They’d had a lot of good times together and that’s what makes the break-up so hard to accept.
There are flowers waiting for her on her desk when she gets in to the office the next morning.
“Who are these from?” she asks her colleagues but they just tell her that a courier delivered them shortly before she got in. She takes out the card from its envelope. It reads: ‘Happy birthday, my love, missing you every day.’
She finds herself looking up at the ceiling because that is the only way she can fight back the tears. She takes a few breaths to compose herself before sitting down at her desk and turning on her computer and going about her work.
She goes to an appointment with a juvenile liaison officer and then she has a court hearin
g to attend in the afternoon.
On her way home that evening she knows that she definitely needs wine. She knows she is drinking too much but today it’s her birthday, so she pulls into the filling station a few minutes from her house. She goes into the shop and buys a bottle of Pinot Grigio and a vegetarian lasagne ready meal.
She arrives home and puts her handbag down on the breakfast bar. She opens the wine, pours herself a generous glass and drinks it fast. She doesn’t bother with the ready meal and after a while the wine makes her feel pleasantly light-headed and the hunger has gone. Exactly how she wants to feel.
A while later the intercom goes and she hears Shirley’s voice sing “Happy Birthday” down the line to her.
“Thanks,” Rachel mumbles, buzzing her in.
“I’m taking you out for some birthday drinks tonight!” Shirley announces as soon as Rachel opens the door to her. She is wearing a patterned wrap dress and court shoes and Rachel notices that she has got her hair done.
“Do you mind if we don’t, Shirl – I’m not really feeling up to celebrating.”
“Nonsense!” Shirley says with a wave of her hand, in her uniquely bossy way. “You need to stop this and pull yourself together – moping around here in this apartment won’t do you any good!”
“It’s a duplex,” Rachel says defensively. Shirley is forever calling it an apartment and it grates on her nerves. Just because Shirley and Hugh had enough money squirreled away to buy their four-bedroomed house years before the crash.
“Okay, ‘duplex’ then – stop being so pedantic.” Shirley softens. “Come on, Rach, there was a reason why you two broke up.”
“I know but it’s just really, really sad and my birthday always makes me feel a bit teary.” She can’t stop thinking of the song, “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To” by Lesley Gore. It’s been worming its way through her head all day long.
“Now go on into your room and get changed – we’re going out.”
When Rachel reappears Shirley tells her that her shoes are too high and she will break her neck in them so she makes her wear a pair of her work shoes which are lower and more sensible and that makes her feel even more pathetic. They go to a dimly lit wine bar on Suffolk Street but Shirley isn’t drinking because she will be feeding Tiernan during the night – “But you go on – don’t let me stop you,” she says.
So Rachel orders a sixty-eight-euro bottle of Barolo, not because she knows a lot about wine but because it is one of the most expensive ones on the list and she feels like she deserves it.
“Jesus, don’t hold back!” Shirley says.
“I’m not.”
“So how are you doing?”
“I’m just really sad, y’know?”
“Oh, of course you are, darling. It’s going to take time.”
Rachel takes a tissue from her bag and dabs at her eyes. The kindness from Shirley has brought the tears close to the surface. “God, I can’t believe I am going to cry here.”
“You’re such an embarrassment.” Shirley is smiling at her.
She sniffles. “He sent me flowers today.”
Shirley nods. “Thoughtful. So that’s it – he’s not going to change his mind?”
“Nope,” Rachel says in a whisper. “That’s it. I suppose a small part of me had secretly hoped that the break-up would be enough to make him change his mind but deep down I know that that is never going to happen.”
After half an hour Shirley declares that she has to go ‘pump’ because Hugh has sent her a photo of Tiernan dressed for bed and it made her milk come in when she looked at it.
“But where’s your pump?”
“I have a manual one in here.” She pats the side of her leather tote, giving Rachel a wink.
Rachel studies her bag wondering where this ‘pump’ is. She is half expecting to see something resembling a bicycle pump sticking out over the top or something. She pours herself a second glass while Shirley is gone and drinks it down.
She notices a man and woman arguing two tables up from her. The man slams down money for the bill on the table before leaving the mortified woman on her own. It makes her sad. She tries to flash a sympathetic look at the woman but she won’t make eye contact and instead gets up straight away and follows after him.
“Such a waste,” Shirley tuts as she sits back down at the table again.
“What is?”
“The milk – I spend all that time eating well and drinking enough water to give Ballygowan supply issues, to make enough milk for Tiernan, and then I stand pumping it in a dingy toilet and pouring it down the sink.”
“The glamour of motherhood, eh?” Rachel wonders if she will ever get the chance to experience it. She had always taken it for granted that children would be in her future but now, after everything that has happened with Marcus, she isn’t so sure. What if she never meets anybody else? Or what if she does and she discovers that she can’t have children? And then at the age of thirty-three there is the well-worn cliché of her biological clock ticking loudly to contend with. Time isn’t on her side.
Rachel has just finished the bottle and is feeling nicely drunk. She is about to order another when Shirley says that she had better go home in time to do Tiernan’s ‘dream feed’ at eleven o’clock.
“I’m sorry – you don’t mind, do you?”
“No, no, of course not – I’ve had enough anyway.”
“I’d say you’ll feel it tomorrow.”
Shirley drops her off outside her flat. She walks across the car park and climbs the stairs to her duplex. She watches the headlights of Shirley’s car in the darkness as she turns around to head back to her little family.
Chapter 21
Conor is standing outside on the path, checking that his new window display looks all right, when he sees Jack coming along on a bike, using the tips of his toes to slow himself down. He has to use all his strength to stop the bike and for a second it looks as though he won’t be able to. Finally its front wheel stops dead, right between Conor’s legs.
“Sorry, me brakes aren’t working, mister.”
“I can see that . . . hi, Jack. Nice bike. And please stop calling me ‘mister’!”
Jack leans the bike up against the shop front and they go inside.
“Where are you coming from?”
“I was in the chemist with me da – he’s getting his Fairy Liquid – I was bored so I said I’d come and visit you.”
“Well, thanks, I guess. But why’s he buying Fairy Liquid in a chemist’s?”
“It’s green stuff that Mr O’Shea gives Da to drink every day. He gets really thirsty if he doesn’t have it.”
Conor hasn’t a clue what he is talking about. “Won’t your dad be looking for you?”
He shrugs his shoulders.
“Maybe not then,” Conor says. “I was just about to get a sandwich – do you want one?”
“I’m starving.”
Conor butters bread and assembles a ham-and-cheese sandwich for himself and one for Jack. He watches as the boy devours it.
“Do you want another one?”
He nods. “Yes, please.”
Conor sets about making another sandwich.
“Can I have a drink too? I’m really thirsty. I asked Da if I could have some of his green stuff because I was really thirsty too but then Mr O’Shea in the chemist’s went mad, saying I could never, ever drink it. Ever. So I asked him ‘Not even if there was no water left in the whole wide world?’ which I think would be kinda hard because there’s all the rivers and lakes and the oceans. Even the Liffey has a lot of water and that’s not the world’s longest river, Teacher says it’s the Nile, but I wouldn’t drink the water in the Liffey because it looks all brown and slimy and gross. But Teacher was telling us about the Ice Age yesterday so that could happen again and all the water would turn to ice and I’d have to ice-skate to school. But Mr O’Shea looked really mad then so I didn’t say anything else.” He takes a deep breath. “So can I have
a glass of water?”
“Sure.” Conor fills him a glass from the tap. “Where’s your mam today?”
“In bed.”
“Again?”
Jack takes another bite of his sandwich and nods. “She sleeps a lot.”
“Yeah, I can see that . . .” Conor says. “Doesn’t your mother worry about where you are?”
Jack shrugs his shoulders. “She thinks I’m out playing with me friends.”
“Well, why aren’t you?”
“Because they’re always doing silly things like playing knick-knacks on Mrs Morton. I don’t think it’s nice and then she comes out and says ‘Do you lot think I came down in the last shower or wha’? I know it was yous!’ and then I go all red. Anyway I like reading Tom’s Midnight Garden and your sandwiches are all right too. I wonder if Mrs Morton was around at the same time as Hattie?”
“You mean in the Victorian era? Oh, I don’t think she’s that old, Jack.”
“Are you sure? Because she is so old, like really, really old. She smells old and she wears shorts for her knickerses – I know because I’ve seen them over the wall hanging on her washing line – ma says they’re called ‘bloomers’ and everyone wore them in the olden days.”
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