Too Close to Home

by Aoife Walsh

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Right, right, I didn’t mean to be defending him. The thing I feel most bad about isn’t him or his chances with you now, it’s that you’re feeling like I betrayed your trust and so did he, again, and you’ve got nowhere to turn. I would hate that.’

  ‘Well.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘Tough.’

  ‘Will you talk to me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t know you.’ She was dying to get him off the phone; this was literally painful. ‘I don’t know which emails were from you and which from Dad, I don’t know anything about you.’

  ‘Can we not start again?’

  ‘No. Don’t you get it – you’re … a made-up person. I don’t even know for sure I’m talking to you now – how can I? – to Kevin Molloy, I mean. You could be Dad. You probably are. I’m not doing this.’

  ‘OK.’ There was a silence.

  ‘So – I’m going now.’

  ‘OK. Look after yourself, Minny.’ There was a click. After a minute she hung up too. There was too much confusion. She didn’t understand anyone any more or why they did what they did, and how the good things fitted with the bad ones. Everyone should just pick a line and stick to it.

  They did have one outing with Nita – she seemed to feel she was neglecting them terribly but she only had one day, which meant one half-day as she was rehearsing again from four o’clock. She picked the Science Museum. It wasn’t really a success; it was packed, for a start, with people who didn’t know what to do with their school-liberated children, as well as with tourists from all over everywhere. Raymond found a few buttons he liked. Aisling stood and looked at the rocket for ages. Selena dragged her feet and whined until they ate their sandwiches, and then it was more or less time to go home. The Tube was jam-packed too: Nita shoved Minny on, passed her the baby, then lifted Selena on – she had to actually push her past the threshold because people on the train weren’t getting out of the way for a timid seven-year-old; then she got on herself and by sheer shoving managed to make enough room to be able to drag Aisling on by the arm, through three other people who had pushed past her in the meantime. Then of course the doors tried to close three times before Aisling could be tucked in enough to let them. Minny would have been more in a position to admire her mother’s toughness if she hadn’t been stuck holding the baby till the train emptied enough at Hammersmith for her to pass him over; her back was breaking.

  That was the ‘fun’ day. Then they were on their own again and stumbled along, Minny thought, like they were blindfolded and couldn’t touch each other. It felt like it was going to be a very long summer, even though Nita had promised they’d go away somewhere for a week late in August – she hadn’t had time to organise where yet, and Minny thought they’d be lucky to get Wales, though Selena was fantasising about one of the sunny places with water slides that she’d seen on adverts. The only bright spot was that Minny had, in despair one morning over back-to-back Charmed reruns, forced herself to start reading Jane Eyre and it was excellent. She felt ashamed of her ten-year-old self. She couldn’t read it all the time – it was too intense, and she had to help with the baby a good deal – but it made things just about tolerable.

  Nita left for Edinburgh the following week. She was all excited. She’d been leading up to this day for months and months. Minny thought she was probably happy just to be getting away from home for a few days too, though it sounded like it was going to be manic. Only someone with her mother’s life could see putting on a play starring nine children with special needs three hundred miles from their homes and looking after them at night in rented accommodation in a strange city as a getaway. She was nervous too though, and not just about the play. She kept making Minny promise again and again to keep an eye on things, and on everyone, and to try to make sure no one went missing or got horribly burnt or drowned in the bath. ‘And don’t be away for the night or for completely whole days, OK?’ As if she hadn’t noticed that the only times Minny had left the house since school finished she’d had at least one sibling in tow.

  Her actual leaving, running out the door into the drizzle laden down with bags, was a bit like the scene in Little Women where the telegram comes about their wounded dad and Marmee has to leave them all alone and they’re bereft. Selena’s face was shaking. Aisling had gone silent again. Minny picked up Raymond to give him his morning milk, and hoped no one would get scarlet fever.

  Babi was in a foul mood that day. She hated being in real charge. Minny had to admit that Nita was right, her grandmother did do a lot for them, maybe especially for Nita herself. She always agreed to look after them when Nita needed her to. And even though Nita knew that half the time she might not be knocking herself out to do it tremendously well, Babi always managed to convince her that they’d all be OK. Minny was glad Babi could do that for her, because otherwise she didn’t know how they would manage.

  It got worse in the evening, when Gil came round. He’d been steering mostly clear since Selena had shouted at him, hovering on the doorstep or at most in the hallway to wait for Babi to go out with him. He turned up that day after dinner and Babi brought him straight into the back room. Minny and Selena were sitting around watching TV while the baby played with his magnetic numbers on the floor. ‘Here’s Gil,’ Babi said.

  Minny finished watching the scene, then looked up. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, Minny. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, fine.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Selena,’ Babi said loudly. ‘Here is Gil.’

  Selena muttered a hello.

  ‘He’s come round so that you can apologise to him for being rude.’

  Minny looked up again, with wide eyes, and then at Selena, who was sitting forward so that her hair hid her face. Her ear was scarlet. She picked up two little magnetic threes, one yellow and one purple, and Raymond squawked in protest.

  ‘Selena?’

  Selena muttered something and ran out of the room.

  Gil sighed.

  ‘She had to apologise, Gil. If no one makes a child apologise then they will stop knowing when they have done wrong.’

  ‘You’re not big on saying sorry yourself though, are you?’ Minny said, gathering Raymond up and taking him into the front room.

  Later she passed the back room and heard them talking about holidays. ‘I would not dislike seeing Copenhagen.’

  ‘Or Reykjavik.’

  ‘Or Reykjavik, certainly. But can we afford it, Gil? These are very expensive.’

  ‘Well. Not if you go last minute, you see. Right now, anyway, there’s this deal on – but we’d have to go by the end of this week.’

  ‘But I can’t. Nita isn’t back until Sunday, or possibly Saturday.’

  ‘We’d have to go by Friday at the latest.’

  ‘Then we cannot go.’

  ‘What about the father? That’s no go?’ Babi must have shaken her head. ‘And what about his mother? I thought they all got on well with her. Couldn’t she have them for a night?’

  ‘She is an old woman, you see, older than me. And of course she has this child, this boy living with her now.’

  ‘Yes, but just for one night …’

  ‘And she is not the baby’s grandmother. You see. Nita doesn’t feel able to send him to her, or to have her babysit, since he arrived.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose. So not even for one night.’

  ‘I cannot, Gil. If Nita hadn’t left already I might ask her to consider these things, but I promised her to take care of them. We can go later, perhaps in September when everywhere will be less crowded.’

  ‘Of course. Only it will be getting colder.’

  ‘Well, then we will go to Bologna instead.’

  ‘What’s at Bologna?’

  ‘Or wherever you would like.’

  ‘Bologna sounds nice.’

  Minny aimed the ba
by at the back room, watched him crawl in and then went upstairs. Selena was lying on her bed sobbing. Minny pushed the giant rag doll off the chair and sat down.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ she said after a while.

  ‘Why not?’ Selena shouted into the mattress.

  ‘It’s not worth crying over.’

  ‘Yes it is. I want Mum back. Why does she have to be in Edin-berg?’

  ‘Edin-borough. It’s not for that long.’

  ‘She shouldn’t have gone. Can we go there?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Why not? We could help.’

  ‘No, we can’t. It won’t be long.’

  ‘It’s already long. Can we go and stay with Granny?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because we’ve got to look after Raymond and Granny’s not his granny, is she?’

  ‘I could go. Just on my own.’ Selena rolled over and looked at her eagerly.

  ‘No, we should stay together. And anyway she’s got Franklin to look after, hasn’t she?’

  Sel’s face clouded again and she began to sob.

  ‘Oh, don’t, Selena. I don’t suppose Gil will be round that much. Tell you what – you could call up Victoria or one of your mates and ask if you can go and stay there one night again. That would be OK, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘But Mum said that Victoria would come here next because I’ve just been to her house. She said I could have a sleepover next week maybe.’

  ‘Right. Well. That’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?’

  Selena quietened down. She lay still watching Minny tidy up a bit – stuffing some scrunched-up papers into the overflowing bin and throwing the Sylvanian Families back in their box. ‘Couldn’t we go to Dad’s?’

  ‘No.’

  She was completely silent and in the end Minny looked up from the bin. ‘I just can’t, Sel. Not yet anyway. And – this is our house, it’s where we live, we shouldn’t leave it just because …’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He’s not – we couldn’t take Raymond there either.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘They’re so … untrustworthy. You don’t know what they’re going to do next, and I don’t want to owe them anything. I know Mum wouldn’t want us to either.’

  ‘Yeah, I said.’

  ‘I mean. I suppose you could go. On your own, if you really wanted to.’

  ‘No, I CAN’T.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘As if they’d want just me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They don’t even know me. They don’t love me like you two.’

  ‘That’s a funny thing to say.’

  ‘No, it’s true. I was only little before Dad left. He doesn’t know me and he didn’t like me very much even then.’

  ‘Selena, what do you mean?’

  She gave a great sniffle and a shrug. ‘He left because of having too many children, didn’t he? So it was me, because he didn’t leave when he only had two.’

  Minny gaped. ‘You don’t really think that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Minny didn’t know what to say; she wondered if it might be best to laugh it off. Instead she pulled a sensible face. ‘Sel, that’s ridiculous. First of all you were four years old, how’s it going to have been your fault? You were probably the least of his worries. Secondly he was depressed, like mentally ill, and none of us was to blame for that. Thirdly it probably had a lot to do with him and Mum, their marriage and all.’ She felt she had put it well. Selena didn’t look convinced. They gazed at each other. ‘Listen, of course it wasn’t our fault. It probably had nothing to do with us, personally, at all, except that maybe he wasn’t ready for the responsibility of us and in that case he’d been fighting it since way before you were even born and he just bolted when he bolted. But if it was anything about any of us, Sel, it’s hardly going to have been you, is it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, if there was – is – one of us who’s more trouble and makes life a bit more stressful than the rest and is going to send him off to America, it’s Aisling, isn’t it, not you.’

  There was a noise and they both whipped their heads round. Aisling was standing at the door. She looked at them for a few more seconds before her face crumpled and she went away.

  ‘Oh crap,’ Minny said. She felt almost too terrible to go after her, but she couldn’t not. She’d gone into her room and shut the door. ‘Can I come in, Aisling? Ash, I didn’t mean it like that. Honestly. It’s not true, what I said. Can I come in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t be upset. I was just … talking rubbish, I didn’t mean it. You know that, right?’ Her phone bleeped in her pocket and she glanced at it in case it was her mother. Penny.

  You might be pleased to know me and Jorge broke up.

  Minny rolled her eyes. She texted back – Good – and knocked again. ‘Ash, please let me in so I can say sorry properly. I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Go away.’

  She did in the end. Not that there was anywhere to go to.

  Minny didn’t begrudge this Edinburgh trip to her mother, or to her drama group – obviously it was really important and empowering and all that – but things had gone downhill quite fast already; the house was full of sulkiness, and Gil, and the baby was missing Nita and crying a lot more than usual, and for the summer holidays it really sucked, especially as there was practically nothing else she could actually be doing – if she could look forward to next week when her time would be her own again it would be one thing, but she seemed to have no friends at all right now, one way or another. Penny’s text had sounded totally unfriendly, and her own reply probably wouldn’t have helped smooth things over. Besides she was still angry herself and not keen to make up and that more or less cut her off from the other girls in their year who were sort of her mates, because she didn’t want to have to talk about Penny. She hadn’t heard from Franklin since Veronica’s party. The other people from his year she’d been chatting with were only really acquaintances. The whole summer stretched ahead, looking as friendless as it must look to Aisling.

  She did try, next day, with her family. During the rainy morning she played the guitar for at least half an hour, trying to lure Ash out of her room; she only stopped because the baby kept taking the pick away and posting it inside the guitar. She didn’t even put in her stock complaints about having to schlepp to Babi’s Weight Watchers meeting at lunchtime – again. Babi insisted that she couldn’t leave Raymond and Selena at home, and so Minny had to go too to look after them while she did her weighing and her inspiring words of wisdom. She didn’t want to, partly because it was so tedious, but mostly because she didn’t want to leave Ash on her own. Minny put her head round her door before they left, expecting her to be watching a film or TV or something on her laptop, but she was just sitting on the bed.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We’re off to Babi’s meeting now. Do you want to come?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure? It’s not that bad – we can laugh at the fat people.’ Aisling didn’t smile. ‘It doesn’t take too long.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Why not? We get to eat the horrible snacks and everything. Please come. You’re not doing anything.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And I could do with the help watching Sel and Raymond.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ Ash said. She was gearing up for a meltdown. ‘I don’t want to talk to you. I want to stay here. So leave me alone.’

  ‘Fine,’ Minny said, and stomped downstairs.

  ‘It’s probably just as well,’ Babi remarked, when they were all finally installed in the car and on their way. At least Ash not coming meant Minny could sit in the front again, not jammed in the back with Raymond’s car seat digging into her thigh and Selena elbowing her on the other side. ‘I don’t really want the place filled up with skinny teenagers. It would put my women off.�
�

  ‘Every cloud,’ Minny said sourly.

  She sat and fretted, reading stories to the baby at the back of the church hall while everyone queued up to get weighed. What she’d said the other night – it could be a really bad thing for Aisling to have overheard. Mainly because, being Aisling, she might believe it. In the same way that Sel could apparently believe that it had been her fault Dad left. Or, even if she didn’t believe it – she might think that that was what Minny believed – that Minny blamed her. She might very well think that. And it wasn’t true, not now, not ever really. But she didn’t know how to get that through to Ash.

  It couldn’t have been more boring: women – almost all – coming into the church hall looking timid and ashamed, various degrees of fat or in some cases quite thin, but mostly pretty lumpy, standing on scales talking to Babi of all people and her little old ladies. You would think nothing could be worse, but actually the first couple of times Minny had been she’d found it interesting how Babi became a different person the moment the first weighee stepped through the door. She made them laugh, exhorted them to be positive, even grabbed handfuls of flesh at her own hips to wiggle at them if she was talking about how she used to be large. When the actual meeting began and everyone sat down in their circle of orange plastic chairs Minny let Raymond play with the buttons on one set of scales while she weighed herself on the other. She weighed a pound more than yesterday, which seemed impossible. Then she sneaked a minute speed-reading a page of Jane Eyre so she missed what happened next, but it seemed Babi must have paid the price for living her life on four-inch spike heels; the floor was wet from feet, she slipped and the heel of her shoe broke and pitched her down onto the wooden floor on her derriere.

  Of course she was surrounded in seconds by elephant legs, and Minny had to look after the baby and stop Selena running to add to the chaos. The next time they saw Babi, a minute later, she was easing herself down onto a chair. ‘Shall I ring for an ambulance?’ one old lady quavered, the one who sat behind the table and took half the meeting to figure out how much change to give someone from a fiver when they bought a one-pound snack.