by Aoife Walsh
‘In New York,’ Babi said in a harsh voice, and then coughed. ‘So, why now? What made you both come back now?’
‘Well,’ Harriet said, ‘it’s not a bad time for a change for us, work-wise; Dessie got a promotion that meant he could ask to move back here. But I think he’s been gearing up to this for a good while, getting ready for it. He’s been missing you terribly, you girls. Ever since I’ve known him.’
None of them made a sceptical noise. They wouldn’t be impolite to a stranger. Raymond started banging on the French window, so Minny got up to open it for him. It was after four so he wasn’t going to get sunburnt. Nita came back in then, looking pink and pushing back wisps of her hair, as if she’d walked out on him. Des followed. He had nailed the genial expression back on his face to introduce his new woman to his old one. ‘Well, well, this is all really fascinating. Seeing you all here … and a new little man. Change! Change is good, of course.’
‘And to be expected over a period of three years,’ Babi said to the ceiling.
‘He’s a bonny little fella, I must say.’ Des stood looking through the open doors at the baby, who was throwing sand over the side of his sand table. ‘Very cute. Nita, though, I’ve got to ask – Raymond?’
Minny couldn’t bear it. ‘What’s wrong with Raymond?’
‘Nothing’s wrong with it, nothing at all. It’s just a bit … fruity. I don’t remember it coming up when we were talking about possible boys’ names. I’m pretty sure what I’d have said if you had suggested it though, Nita.’ He sat down there on the little yellow sofa where men never sat, criticising her mother and making fun of her baby brother. He laughed and said, ‘Still, they say bullying is good for the soul.’
Bullying wasn’t something you laughed about in their family. He must have forgotten that. No one said anything.
‘Anyway,’ he charged on, ‘with the house so full – can’t imagine where you’re putting everyone – you’ll be glad to get rid of the girls every now and again, and I’m sure they’d like a change of scene. We were just telling them we’ve got us a flat, in Ladbroke Grove so not too far away, and we’re dying to have them come and stay.’
‘No,’ Nita said in a rush.
‘What?’
‘Of course I don’t mean no. I mean, it’s up to them.’ She looked down at her lap. Selena was bouncing about on the edge of the sofa. Ash was banging her knuckles against the wall behind her chair and humming again.
‘I don’t want to,’ Minny said; the words sort of fell out of her, after all, without her having to psych herself up.
‘Ah, don’t say no, Minny,’ he coaxed. ‘You don’t have to say yes either, but say you’ll think about it.’
Nita coughed. ‘Look, Des, I think this is something you’re going to have to give them time to get used to. I did actually tell you that on the phone. You can’t just ring up, or turn up for that matter, and expect to take up exactly where you left off.’
His eyebrows were drawn down the way they always were when he was simmering; it used to be all he needed to do to get them pussyfooting around him, except Ash, who wouldn’t notice or at least wouldn’t know how to pussyfoot, which is why it was usually her who kicked off his big strops. ‘You don’t have to talk to me as if I’m a child, Nita. I would have thought you had enough actual children to fulfil your maternal needs. Harriet and I have settled here now and the girls can have all the time they need, and everything else they need from me too.’
‘So, what is it you think?’ Minny asked. ‘That we’ve managed nicely without you for three years but you expect us to be thrilled you’re back? Just because you’ve decided you’re ready to play daddy again?’ Her chest hurt.
She wasn’t expecting him to laugh. ‘Well, now that you mention it …’
‘Dessie,’ said Harriet.
‘There is some news we weren’t sure whether to pass on today or not. Harriet thought not, but since I’ve seen your, er, brother, and how much, er, things have moved on around here – yes, we’re having a baby too. Harriet’s pregnant.’
No one said anything, though Selena sort of squeaked. There was dust dancing in the sunlight, and Minny could hear Raymond talking to the pebbles he liked to dig out of the side of the decking and suck. Aisling had her elbows on her lap and her hands over her ears.
Her mother stood up. ‘You point-scoring piss-wipe.’
He looked astonished. ‘Steady, Nita.’
‘How dare you come here, to their own house, and tell them something like that just because you’re still offended that I dared to have a baby of my own? How dare you just turn up after all this time and then treat them like this? You should be prostrate with shame for what you’ve done, not bragging about impregnating …’
Harriet shifted on the sofa. Even her neck and chest were flushed.
‘There’s no reason for anyone to be upset by this. I meant it as good news. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be.’
Babi snorted. ‘Not even for the child?’
‘There’s no need for that.’ He looked upset suddenly. ‘I was a good father for most of their lives, and I’m going to be again.’
‘That’s the point, Des,’ Nita shouted. ‘You can’t take a break and still have been a good father. It’s all or nothing. And you – you gunged it up when you took off and didn’t see them for the best part of three years. Selena had only just started school, for God’s sake; she was a little child. You weren’t there for everything that’s happened at school, or when they got their periods or Selena lost her first tooth or the time Minny got suspended for pushing someone down the stairs …’ Oh good, Minny thought, lovely.
‘I know I wasn’t there.’ He looked plain angry. ‘I can’t apologise enough for that. I want to do what I can to make up for it.’
‘It’s a long road back, Des, and there aren’t any shortcuts.’
‘I know that. But I hope you won’t try to prejudice them against me, Nita. For a start I don’t know why this was sparked off by the idea of me having another child. You had one.’
‘Oh yes.’ She flung her arms in the air. ‘That’s what this is all about.’
‘Not really,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘Not much comparison between our situations. After all, I’m in a relationship, a stable relationship. While you—’
‘Watch yourself,’ Babi hissed.
‘– while you were already a single mother of three, one on the autistic spectrum and needing a lot of attention – all of them needing, and deserving, a lot of attention. Well, it was your right to decide you could cope with another one, a fatherless one.’ Nita was looking at him, aghast. ‘I just hope the girls haven’t been the ones to pay for that.’
‘We were ALL fatherless,’ Minny shouted. It seemed she’d been wrong to worry he would be such a stranger that she would feel forced to be polite and un-angry with him. ‘You sodded off to bloody America without even telling us you were going and never came back; you made Mum a single mother, and now you’re criticising the job she’s done. You’re unbelievable. I never want to stay in your horrible flat. Get lost.’
‘I don’t want to stay in your flat either,’ Aisling said quickly. Selena slid out from between him and Harriet and went to stand in the corner, near her mother, who put her hand on Sel’s back.
‘I think you’d better go, Des.’
‘Don’t make it a choice between us, Nita,’ he said, deflated. ‘I know I can’t win that way. I just want to see my girls.’
‘I know. And you’ve made a start. Not an especially good one. We can talk about it another time.’
Harriet got up in a hurry, riffling through her bag and not looking at anyone. Des looked at them all. ‘I’ll call you,’ he said. ‘OK, Selena? I’ll call you soon.’
When they heard the front door shut they all breathed out at the same time, except Selena who ran upstairs howling. Nita sat down flat on the arm of the sofa as if she needed to brace herself for a minute before she went after her. Babi had sat down too
, sinking together with elbows and knees sticking out like a bayou witch. ‘The girlfriend is different anyway. Obviously he thinks he needs a lot more woman than you, Nita.’
Nita looked cross, as much as she ever did. ‘Mama, is it too much to ask for you not to criticise women, not to speak of pregnant women for their build or appearance in front of my daughters?’
‘Surely these are exceptional circumstances.’
Nita definitely laughed on her way up the stairs.
FOUR
Minny was left alone for the rest of the evening. Nita and Selena got into a pretty heavy chat upstairs, and Minny suspected her mother would have had a crack at getting Aisling to talk about it too – it was so hard to tell when Ash needed to bury something and when it might be the kind of thing to send her into a crashing meltdown any minute. Her mother probably thought that Minny needed to think about it for a while before she was ready to talk. As a matter of fact, what she needed was not to think about it at all, so after she’d sort of done her homework and they’d had dinner she went and sat in the bath for an hour and a half and read Harry Potter.
It was funny next morning, it felt like something major had happened and things were all new, but it was just a Tuesday morning. Minny didn’t have to worry about dodging any conversations because there was never time to have one before school; it was all banging on bathroom doors and shouting because someone had left the jam out and someone else had wasted five minutes searching the fridge for it; stuff like that. Aisling wanted to walk to school with Minny and she said, ‘Fine.’
As it turned out, once Penny had arrived and they’d all three set off, most of the journey was spent being questioned about Franklin. Penny had gabbed compulsively for five minutes without drawing breath about how she and Jorge had made up their row and were fathoms-deep again, and Minny brought up Franklin in desperation.
Penny listened in silence to Minny’s brief rundown on why he was around, and then she exploded. ‘I can’t believe you’re hanging out with Franklin Conderer. He was always awful.’
‘We’re not exactly hanging out,’ Minny protested. ‘I mean, he’s moved in with my grandmother. What are we supposed to do?’
‘Yeah, now he’s been ASBO’d out of North London. God. He’s probably planning to run off with her pension book or something. And trying to get you to smoke!’
‘He didn’t,’ Aisling said.
‘That is so like him. You didn’t, did you? Minny?’
‘No, I didn’t, Penny, but I don’t see what the big deal is. It was a cigarette, not a crackpipe.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s gross and filthy and I don’t like hearing you say it’s not.’
‘I didn’t say it’s not.’
‘I bet he smokes other stuff too.’
‘Oh, Penny. You’re such a square.’
‘I am not, I just think … I just don’t like him.’
‘You haven’t even seen him since you were seven.’
Just then Aisling started chuckling uncontrollably. Minny and Penny glared off in opposite directions, until Ash was actually bent double laughing, and saying, ‘Mrs Seagull.’
Things were a bit uncomfortable, so after school Minny agreed to go round to Penny’s house for a while. It was ages since she’d been there. She’d always loved it; it was everything her own home never was – empty and peaceful, with big clean bright cushions and a gracious white staircase. Penny’s bedroom had a double bed in it and a white lacy duvet cover. There was a piano downstairs, and a big tiled kitchen, and the bathroom was always clean. Penny’s mother wasn’t usually there after school; she was a bit remote but seemed well disposed towards Minny.
Unfortunately today her mother’s girlfriend was working at home, which Penny only told Minny when they were on the front doorstep. Alison was the opposite of Penny’s mother, Cora – she never left you alone. She always wanted to talk about what you were into at the moment. Minny felt her flesh crawl when they came into the kitchen to get something to eat and Alison was sitting on one of the high stools absorbed in Twilight. Hideous. She looked up at them with a start. ‘There you are! Wow, Minny, I haven’t seen you in ages! How are you? How’s your sister? Is she? Did you have a good day at school, Pen? Cora’s not home yet. I thought we’d get a takeaway later, do you want to join us, Minny?’
‘Er –’
‘You said you’ve got to get home for dinner,’ Penny reminded her. ‘Do you want a biscuit?’
So they had to sit around the marble-surfaced island in the kitchen on high chairs and drink tea and eat biscuits. It was more or less what they always did, and always had done, at least since they grew out of watching The Princess and the Frog on repeat, only Alison was there so it was challenging. Normally they had the place to themselves. If Penny’s mother was in they would be in Penny’s bedroom, watching nonsense TV and talking over the top of it. Before Jorge, even considering Penny’s massive tendency to bang on about herself, that had been OK. Hardly anyone could make Minny laugh as hard as Penny could sometimes, and no one ever laughed as much at Minny as Penny did. Minny had been half thinking that, if they could get some time together when Penny didn’t happen to be in crisis mode, that might happen again, but now it was scuppered because Alison was there and she hadn’t been living there that long and Penny was completely fine about her moving in and really, everything was fine; which all apparently meant that they couldn’t leave Alison downstairs on her own. Penny didn’t actually get on all that well with her mother, but she never talked much about it. Minny respected that. She wondered if she opened up about it all to Jorge.
She went home for dinner, salivating because they’d had the Chinese menu out at Penny’s house before she left. It was unnaturally quiet as she opened the front door, although Raymond’s face appeared around the corner and he came crawling to greet her as she was taking off her shoes. Minny picked him up and poked her head round the door of the back room. Selena was sitting huddled on the sofa, watching a very brightly coloured cartoon about ugly animals with the sound turned low. ‘Where is everyone?’
‘Babi’s in the kitchen cooking. Mum’s upstairs.’
‘Where’s Ash?’ She should have been gearing up for Pointless by now, nagging Selena about switching channels in time.
Sel sniffed. ‘She’s in the front room,’ she said, turning the volume up.
Minny had put Raymond down and he was banging on the front-room door. She opened it for him. Ash was sitting in there with her elbows on the table, watching Franklin, who was beside her tuning Nita’s guitar.
‘Hello,’ Minny said.
‘Hi.’
‘I didn’t know you were here.’
‘I met Ash on the way home,’ he said, not stopping what he was doing. ‘That’s better, I think.’
‘Yes,’ Aisling agreed. ‘Are you going to play another one?’
‘No, I’ve got to go.’
Her mother was tripping down the stairs behind her. ‘Oh, really?’ she said, overhearing. ‘You won’t stay for dinner? Hi, Minny.’
‘I can’t,’ he explained, laying the guitar on the table. ‘Judy said she’s making tea for half five so I’d better get back.’
‘All right then, fair enough. Come round another time though.’
Minny stood quietly while they were all saying goodbye. She thought there might be some further explanation once he’d gone but there wasn’t; Ash just went off to watch her programme, causing screaming hysterics from Selena, who’d ever-hopefully started watching something else. Nita took the baby upstairs to change him. Minny went out into the garden and found Guts the cat, who was more than happy to have his head stroked as he lay with his paws tucked neatly under in a fall of sunlight.
Dinner was fairly quiet; no one seemed in a chatty mood, not even their mother who could usually be relied upon to keep a conversation going, even if it was with herself. ‘How come Franklin was round?’ Minny asked in the end, forking up the last meatball.
‘I don’t kno
w,’ Selena muttered.
‘I met him,’ Ash said, when no one else answered, ‘on the way home. He said did I want to sing some more, and I said yes, so he came round.’
Minny wiped her chin. ‘You didn’t … make him come round, did you, Ash?’
‘Of course she didn’t,’ her mother snapped.
‘I only meant … he might have not felt able to say no, or whatever. It’s just we don’t know him very well or anything, he might have been embarrassed.’
‘It was his idea. He obviously enjoys Aisling’s company.’
‘Bit weird,’ Minny said, under her breath.
Aisling squeezed out more ketchup into the sea of it on her plate. ‘I didn’t make him come round.’
Selena went to bed early, even before Babi had left for her evening with Gil. Ash had some documentary to re-watch on her computer. After the baby had settled for the night things were very quiet and Minny started watching a sitcom. Then Nita came in, shut the door, turned the TV off without asking and sat down on the coffee table.
‘Minny,’ she said, ‘I got a call this afternoon from Ms Lynley at your school.’ Ms Lynley, the deputy head, was actually Mrs Lynley, but Nita converted everyone to Ms. ‘She said she found Aisling eating her lunch in the toilets.’
Minny was surprised. She thought she had Ash convinced to avoid the toilets except when strictly necessary.
‘Can you see that that’s really bad, Minny?’
‘Yes,’ Minny said, and moved to the other corner of the sofa, a little further away from her mother.
‘Quite apart from hygiene, and even apart from safety – look what happened the last time – what does it say about how lonely she is, and intimidated. It’s heartbreaking. And I can’t get my head around how alone she is at that school when you go there too. I know you’re in a different year and you can’t do anything about lesson time, but couldn’t you sit with her at lunch or something, spend some breaks with her?’
Minny wished her mother would stop looking at her. She could see Nita was upset, and that fobbing her off wasn’t going to work – her mother had a fairly reasonable grasp of the way things were, normally, so she tried to explain. ‘No. Not really. I’m not in charge of everything that happens at school, and I’m not – you know – an island. I can’t just … inflict Aisling on my friends all the time. I couldn’t really do that even if she wasn’t the way she is, it would be weird.’