Conor has to bite his tongue to stop laughing. They go back out to the front.
A man comes in and buys the latest Jeffrey Deaver.
“He only bought one book,” Jack says.
“I know. I sold it to him.”
“But there’s hundreds of books in here!”
“Thousands actually.”
“What happens if no one buys all your books?”
“I pack up my belongings and see if there are any park benches going spare.”
“Huh?” says Jack through a mouthful of sandwich.
“Oh, never mind.”
“Teacher says that reading books is like exercise for your brain.”
“Well, she’s right.”
“So can I read a bit more of the book about the boy in the garden because I want to have the muscliest brain in the whole class?”
“Go on then.” He sighs but he doesn’t mind. “I would hate to stand in the way of you gaining a muscly brain.”
Jack sits down in his usual position on the floor, with his back resting against the shelves and his knees drawn up in front of him. Conor busies himself with his usual jobs. He finds himself staring across the shop at Jack, at his youthful face engrossed in the book.
“Hey, what the fuck are you doing in here?”
Conor looks up to find a thin, wiry man standing in the doorway. His hair is dark and his face peppered with stubborn black stubble. He is looking at Jack, demanding an answer.
“I’m only reading a book, Da,” Jack says.
“Well, you can’t just run off without telling me where you’re going!”
“I was bored!” Jack shrugs.
“I’m after being up and down the street looking for you.”
“Sorry – he just came in a few minutes ago,” Conor says, but the man just glares at him.
“How did you know I was here?” Jack asks.
“I saw your bleedin’ bike outside the window, didn’t I? C’mon, put the book away – your ma’s going to kill me if you’re late home!”
“Right, I’m coming, da,” Jack says, getting up. “See you, mister – thanks for letting me read the book again.”
“No worries, Jack, see you soon.”
Jack’s dad stands on the floor for a minute and stares at Conor through narrowed eyes.
Conor finds himself looking away and searching out the floor.
Then the man steers Jack out the door.
Chapter 22
Ella gets the girls up and ready and the school-run battle starts again. Soon she is parked outside the school alongside the other four-wheel drives, each one bigger and roomier than the last. As they near the school, she can see the other mothers are already getting back into their cars, having been on time for the school run. They are all standing there laughing. A thought flits through her mind that they are laughing at her but then she thinks she is probably being paranoid. She pulls up into the car park, turns off her engine and hops down to let the girls out.
“Want a hand?” She reaches up to help Dot down and then holds a hand out to Celeste.
“I don’t need your help,” the older girl says as she pushes her away.
She unstraps Maisie and puts her on her hip. She inhales a scent that is a mixture of sea salt from the wind coming off the bay and the skin on Maisie’s neck.
It is then that she notices that Dot is wearing her ballet slippers instead of her winter boots.
“Where are your boots?” She can hear the despair in her own voice.
“I didn’t want to wear them today. I like my ballet shoes better, Mummy.”
The thin-soled salmon-pink slippers look wildly wrong with the navy-and-green tartan uniform. And it’s so cold out.
But she can’t face this battle so she doesn’t. “Right, come on, we’d better hurry on!” She leads the girls towards the school gate. She kisses them goodbye and makes her way back to the jeep. She straps Maisie back in and the baby starts to cry once more. Wearily she turns on the engine and starts to drive but even the heavy noise of her diesel SUV can’t drown Maisie out. She is getting louder and when Ella looks behind her in the rear-view mirror, she sees her small red face is angry and wet from tears. She turns up the radio. If she concentrates really hard on what the presenter is saying, she can almost block out the crying.
She feels so alone. She realises that except for a phone call from the alarm company and the lady on the check-out in Tesco yesterday, she hasn’t had a conversation with an adult person for two days now. No one seems to understand what it’s like. She can’t tell anyone about this feeling because she knows herself she sounds crazy and irrational.
The words of the nurse who did Maisie’s vaccinations ring in her head. Maybe she is right. She decides she will give it a go. At least there will be people that she can talk to. It cannot be any worse than how she is feeling right now. She takes a right turn and finds herself driving into the church car park.
She takes a deep breath, swallows hard and pulls open the heavy oak door of the parish hall. She can feel all eyes on her and she blows upwards to take her fringe out of her eyes.
“I’m here for the mother and baby group,” she says to the women gathered inside the door.
“Oh, hi!” they all say.
As she unwraps her scarf from around her neck, she counts eleven women and seventeen babies. She can’t ever remember feeling this nervous before. Even presenting on live TV wasn’t as nerve-racking at this. She can see some of them trying to work out where they recognise her from.
“Are you Ella Wilde?” one of them finally says. Her eyes are narrowed, her brow creased downwards. It is followed by a look of distaste.
“Yes,” she nods. “I am.”
This is met with silence.
Ella walks away from her and sits down on the edge of a blanket spread out on the floor, like the other mothers are doing.
“Okay, well, why don’t I start the music?” one woman in a paisley-patterned dress says. She gets up and presses play on a portable CD player and the hall fills with plingy xylophone music knocking out ‘The Wheels on the Bus’.
They all chorus “The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round . . .”
The other mothers start doing the actions. They are tooting pretend horns and pulling down on imaginary bells using ropes made of air. Now they are flicking their fingers, doing flashing lights. She can’t do it. She feels ridiculously self-conscious. They are all watching her, expecting her to join in with them.
“The children on the bus go u-up and down, u-up and down, u-up and down . . .”
They are starting to stand up so she makes a half-hearted attempt to stand up too, but by the time she is up, they all sit back down again. She can’t remember ever hearing this many verses. On and on they go. The older babies are dancing and Maisie sits on her knee, batting her little hands. Then the track changes to ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ and thankfully there don’t seem to be any actions for this one but they’re all singing along.
Finally the CD comes to an end and the mothers get up and walk over to a table where there is a kettle and some mugs and a packet of Chocolate Digestives. The toddlers are dashing around the room while the smaller babies play with the toys surrounding them on the blanket. She props Maisie up against some cushions and follows the others over to the table. The women seemed to have grouped into a circle with their backs to her. She looks at them from the outside. They are all dressed how a mother should dress, she thinks. Like if you opened a catalogue from Marks and Spencer’s, these women would be in it. Wrap dresses with thick tights and smart cardigans. Tunic tops are layered over jeans and ankle boots. Ella looks down at her Converse, faded jeans and sweatshirt and feels like a scruffy teenager beside them. She grabbed the first things she found in her wardrobe that morning. She doesn’t have the energy to make an effort with her appearance these days.
“So do you live nearby?” one of the mothers who was late in and has also been left
outside the impenetrable circle, asks.
She has a friendly smiling face and sometimes Ella wishes that she had a face like this. Open and innocent. She obviously doesn’t recognise her.
“Yeah, up on Land’s End Rock.”
“Oh lovely – you’re really living on the edge there!” she jokes and Ella obliges her with a smile. “We’re in The Cedars. Is she your first?” She points to Maisie who is chewing down on a rattle in her mouth.
“She’s my third actually. My other two are ages five and eight.”
“Oh wow.”
“What about you – is he your first?”
“Yes, he is – we were trying for a very long time to have a baby but he was worth the wait.” She smiles over in her son’s direction where he is trying to crawl, pushing backwards on his tummy until he ends up at the wall.
“He’s gorgeous,” Ella says because she isn’t sure what else to say.
“Thanks. Sorry, I didn’t get your name?”
“Ella,” she says. “Ella Devlin.” Devlin is her married name.
“I’m Ger, Ger Rowan.” She reaches out to shake Ella’s hand but is met by a biscuit.
Ella shifts her biscuit into the same hand as the mug and shakes her hand back. “Nice to meet you, Ger.”
“Are you going back to work soon?” Ger asks.
“Eh no . . . not for the next while anyway.”
“I suppose it’s hard with three of them – I’m not going back either – well, I’m hoping to freelance a bit from home, so fingers crossed it all works out.”
“Good for you.”
“It’s hard, isn’t it?”
“It is – you’d think on my third I’d be an expert.” She laughs nervously.
“No, I mean coming to these things.” Ger nods her head at the women behind them.
“Oh yeah.” She feels stupid. Then she whispers, “They’re hardly rolling out the red carpet of motherhood solidarity, are they?”
Ger laughs. “I feel like I’m back in the school playground again. Remember, when you had to ask people to play with you? Well, that’s what it’s like here!”
Ella laughs too. Someone is tapping on her shoulder. It’s the woman in the paisley dress again, “Isn’t that your baby?” she says in an accusing tone.
Ella’s eyes follow the woman’s pointing finger and she sees that Maisie has fallen over from the position where Ella had propped her up with cushions on the floor. She is crying.
She rushes over and picks her up.
Soon after, the mums start to disband and go to wash their cups and pack up their babies under layers of coats, hats and blankets.
“Home time,” Ger smiles. “Will I see you next week?” She struggles to bend her son’s arm inside the sleeve of his jacket.
“Yeah, sure.”
And she feels awful for lying to her because she has been so nice to her but there is no way she will be coming back here.
Later that evening she and Dan are sitting in the living room. He has the remote and is flicking idly through the TV stations. The children are finally in bed. Her shoulders are knotted with tension and she tries to massage them by reaching her hand over her shoulder. He finally settles on a rugby match.
“Please don’t ignore me, Dan. This is horrible. I’m finding the tension between us unbearable.”
“Well, in all fairness, none of the rest of us are exactly having a laugh about it!”
“I just want to talk to you.”
“We are talking!”
“I’m just finding it so hard.”
“What do you expect, Ella? And what about everyone else? It’s not just you that is suffering the fall-out here – the shockwaves go much wider than that. You’ve dragged our whole family into this mess. I know the guys in work are talking about it too but no one has the balls to dare say it to my face. Celeste told me that Gilly’s mum told her that she was not allowed to play with her any more? Do you realise now what you’ve done?”
“I know, she told me that too,” she whispers.
She wonders if she should tell him. Maybe now is the time to have it out in the open, once and for all after all these years. She can stop carrying the weight of it around with her.
His eyes are on her and she takes a deep breath in and counts one . . . two . . . if she tells him, she can finally share the load with someone . . . three . . .
She knows that if she tells him about it, things will never be the same between them again. She takes a deep breath and gets ready to say the words that she hasn’t been able to say before. “I –”
“Yesssssssssss! Go on lads, that’s the play!” he roars. The team have scored a try and he jumps off the seat, pulling a clenched fist down through the air.
Chapter 23
“Guess what?” Jack has come running in through the door.
“What?”
“You have to guess!”
“You got no homework today?”
“No!”
“Okay, you found fifty euro on the street.”
“No.”
“I could actually be here all day, Jack – do you want to give me a clue?”
“Da was waiting for me in the kitchen with Ma after school yesterday. I thought I was going to be in trouble because Da told Ma that I was here instead of outside playing with me friends.”
“And?”
“He had tickets to the Ireland versus Portugal match last night for my birthday!”
“No way! Cool!” Conor is genuinely impressed. He had heard people on the radio trying to source tickets but they were rarer than hen’s teeth apparently.
“Ma wasn’t happy and got really cross with Da and said he needs to ask her first and I thought she was going to say no but then me Auntie Libby called over – she’s ma’s sister and she told Ma to let me go because it was my birthday. So she said ‘Go on, but make sure you get changed outta that uniform first!’”
“Well, did you enjoy it?”
“It was brilliant. I know I’m not meant to say it because Ireland lost but I love Ronaldo even more now. He slided across the pitch and tipped the ball into the back of the net and then he ran around like this.” He pulls his T-shirt up over his head and starts running around the shop and crashes into a stand of Mills & Boon paperbacks. “Oh sorry, Conor,” he says, beginning to pick up the fallen books. “Then afterwards Da said he knew where the team were getting on their bus so we went and waited at the gate and waited and waited and it was starting to get dark and I said I wanted to go because I don’t really like the dark and Da said we should hang on for another five minutes and I said I just wanted to go home but then the bus came! The driver didn’t want to stop but Da stood in the middle of the road and waved at him so he had to stop or else he was going to run him over. I thought he might run him over actually because he looked a bit mad. Then he put down his window and talked to Da for a minute and I don’t know what he said but they let me on the bus and I got all their autographs. Look at this . . .” He takes out a carefully folded sheet of A4 paper from the back pocket of his jeans with names jotted hastily in slants across it.
“Wow, that’s amazing! You’ll have to get that framed. Fair play to your dad and all the players. It might be worth a lot of money in years to come.”
Jack beams proudly. “That’s what Ma said. She said I have to mind it and if she finds it squished up into a ball in my pocket after coming out of the wash, she’ll go through me for a shortcut – but there’s no way I’ll let that happen – it’s my most precious thing ever. Then on the way home to celebrate we went for a McDonald’s. I love the chips there and the burgers too but I always throw away the gherkin.” He scrunches up his face in disgust.
“Well, it sounds like you had a great time, huh?”
“I did. Da is all right sometimes.”
“How’s your ma?”
“She’s sleeping more than ever and she’s even still sleepy when she wakes up. Libby made my dinner last night. She made fish – not like
fish fingers, it was a proper fish from the sea. The whole house was stinking – you should have smelt it! I wouldn’t eat it so she laughed and said I was the exact same as Ma when she was little girl because she hated fish too.”
“I see. And you’re okay? You would tell me if you were upset or worried, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah, I’m fine – sure haven’t I all the autographs of the whole Irish team? You should’ve seen all the boys in school – they all wanted to see it but I wouldn’t let anyone touch it in case they damaged it. They said Da was the coolest da and then Teacher taught us the song ‘Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé’.”
Chapter 24
“I love that song!” Ella and Conor are seated in a coffee shop on George’s Street after finishing a quick Sunday brunch before he has to open up the shop, Maisie asleep in her car-seat.
He listens for a minute to hear it over the din in the coffee shop. “Remember when she played in the Student’s Union and you couldn’t get a ticket so I ended up letting you in through the fire escape but then we both got thrown out?”
“Yep. Sorry about that.” She places her mug of coffee down on the table. “That was the night of ‘the kiss’ actually.”
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