The Secrets of Primrose Square

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘well instead of that, how about a sleepover here for your girlfriends? We could order in pizzas and I could even get a chocolate fountain for you?’

  ‘Mum, I’m not a child any more! What are you going to suggest next – getting a magician in to do party tricks for us?’

  ‘Well . . . ’ I said, racking my brains to come up with something else, ‘at your friend Holly’s party, there was a make-up artist who did all your make-up for you. You said it was great fun and you all had a lovely time. How about something like that?’

  ‘I only said it was fun because I was being polite to Holly,’ you said pointedly, abandoning the book you’d had your nose buried in. ‘But the truth was, I came home looking like a panda bear with all the ridiculous eye make-up that had been plastered on me. I looked like I’d been in a fight.’

  I nodded, remembering how loudly you’d complained when it took you a good hour to scrub away the ‘smoky eye’ look.

  ‘Besides,’ you went on, ‘why should woman bother wearing make-up in the first place? To bolster their confidence? To impress boys? You shouldn’t need a mascara wand to do that for you, should you? Confidence is something that should come from within, Mum.’

  I shook my head and smiled quietly to myself. Because you were just so sure of yourself, my darling. So spirited and confident. You’d say things like that and it would almost make me burst with pride to think that you were my daughter. My perfect girl.

  ‘The thing is, though,’ you said, ‘I’ve kind of already decided what I’d really like to do for my birthday. If it’s okay with you and Dad, that is.’

  ‘What’s that, love?’

  ‘Well, some of the members of Riot Grrrl are coming to Dublin soon, to give a talk about the third wave of feminism – you know they’re my total heroines. The tickets are pricey, but I’d love nothing more than to see them and hear them speak. Please can I go, Mum? Please?’

  I knew from other mums at the school that when it came to birthdays, their daughters only ever wanted hard, cold cash to spend in the Dundrum town centre, to splash out on clothes/make-up/nails/spray-tan before they hit whatever disco or party the gang were all heading to.

  But no, not you, my darling. Instead, what you wanted was to see and hear your inspirational role models speak live. I must have done something good in a past life to deserve a daughter like you, I remember thinking, looking at you with such love and pride.

  You were, at the time, all of thirteen years old.

  So what happened, love? My innocent, brave little fighter. What happened to you?

  Susan

  ST MICHAEL’S WELLNESS CENTRE

  ‘The one advantage of being off the sauce,’ Emily said, as she got dressed on her side of the twin room she and Susan were sharing at St. Michael’s, ‘is the sheer amount of weight you lose.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Susan said flatly, hauling herself out of her own bed and facing into the day. Not just any old day, either; this of all days. The day that she’d dreaded so much was finally on top of her and now somehow she had to find a way to struggle through it.

  ‘Are you kidding me? Take a look at this and weep, baby!’ said Emily, oblivious to her roommate’s mood as she twirled around, holding out the too-big waistband on her jeans. ‘When I first checked in here, these actually used to fit. Now look at me – I’m practically a waif.’

  ‘Oh yeah, Kate Middleton, eat your heart out,’ Susan managed to respond, pulling on the same warm jumper she’d been wearing for days. What does it matter what I wear, she thought. Who even gives a shite what I look like?

  She’d known today’s date would come around eventually. She’d been anticipating it for weeks, and now that the day had actually dawned, the best she could hope for was just to get through it.

  Keep putting one foot in front of the other, she told herself. Before you know it, it’ll all be over and time for blissful sleep again.

  That was the one good thing about being in a place like St Michael’s: they were generous to a fault with sleeping tablets – strictly the non-addictive kind, of course – so for at least seven hours every night, Susan could park the thoughts that haunted her during the day. The memories that twisted her over in pain, the deep wells of fucking longing that everyone seemed to think would magically percolate away, just by being in here.

  ‘Keep talking,’ they said to her. ‘Joining in with group therapy is the route to healing. You’ll only get out of this process what you put into it.’ True enough, it seemed to be working for everyone else, but Susan’s grief was different and she knew it. This wasn’t just raw pain she was feeling, this was something else entirely – this was hell. Unbearable, searing hell.

  ‘You want know something else?’ Emily said, as both women made their way down to the canteen on the ground floor, Emily chatting away while Susan stayed resolutely silent. ‘I think my skin is starting to look a little bit clearer too. Honestly, they should stress these things far more at AA meetings. It’s torture giving up the booze, but I will say this much: you do come out of a place like this looking like you’ve been at a luxury health spa. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still strangle my own granny for a bottle of vodka if I could get my paws on one, but on the plus side, my zits are gone and I’m down to a size ten. Every cloud, is all I’m saying.’

  Sadly, there’s no silver lining when you lose your eldest child, Susan thought, as the two of them tripped down a lino-clad staircase that stank of Dettol. You were just expected to keep on keeping on, in spite of the fact that your insides felt like they’d been ripped out and splattered up against a brick wall. One minute you’d thought you were fine, that you were coping, that you were actually functioning like a normal human being in the world again. But then a day like today came around and suddenly you were right back to square one. If you’d asked Susan how she felt just then, the answer was like a raw, walking mound of open flesh, which some sadistic bastard kept throwing fistfuls of salt over. When, she thought in despair, would she fucking well start to feel better? Wasn’t that the whole point of being in a place like this? So when would her so-called ‘treatment’ actually begin to work?

  God, she missed her family so much it hurt. She couldn’t even bring herself to think about Melissa, her little princess, the one good thing in her life that hadn’t been ripped away from her. And the crippling fear that she didn’t know how to reach her any more. That she’d forgotten how to be a mum.

  No, Susan thought firmly, shoving the thought away. Can’t go there today.

  She desperately missed the comfort of Frank’s face on the pillow every night, holding her tight and kissing away her tears as they both talked about Ella, remembering. But then a sudden wave of hot fury came over her, at the thought of him so far away at a time like this.

  The fucking Lebanon, she thought. Right now, Frank is in the desert heat, distracted with work and his army buddies and his job as an engineer. He’ll probably have a beer after work this evening with the lads. He’s probably sleeping at night and eating three square meals a day. He’s probably getting a fucking suntan. He’s just drawn a line under this and buggered off, when we needed him most. Worst of all, before he left, he begged her to let the whole Josh Andrews thing drop. Fixation, that was the exact word he’d used. As if Susan would – as if any mother ever could.

  Emily babbled away and Susan let her. Not talking suited her. Besides, she’d talked enough at that meeting the other day to last her for a while. One tiny blessing, though: ever since she’d tried to open up a bit to the rest of the residents at St Michael’s, they were certainly all being a lot nicer to her.

  Bungalow Bill, for one, and that big, blowsy older woman who described herself as a survivor of ‘three daughters, two suicide attempts, and one alcoholic ex-husband’. Everyone called her Bunny, she was a true-blue salt-of-the-earth Dub and Susan was starting to warm to her. Bunny had a motherly way about her and was constantly at Susan to try eating more.

  ‘You n
eed to keep your strength up, love. The food in here mightn’t exactly be Michelin-starred, but it’s not the worst.’

  Susan’s own parents were long since retired and now living in Toronto with her younger brother, so apart from Skype calls and the odd flying visit, that was as much as she got to see of her own family, really. Yet as the days passed at St Michael’s, slowly but surely she was starting to feel like a part of a sort-of family, albeit a highly dysfunctional one.

  But could anyone really help her on a day like this?

  Side-by-side, she and Emily walked into the canteen and found two free places at a long, rectangular table, beside Bunny and the huge, hulking frame of Bungalow Bill. What passed for breakfast was plonked down in front of them as Susan slid into a seat, hoping that no one would notice her or the fact that she could barely even look at food, never mind eat it. All she asked for was just to sit there, untroubled and in peace.

  No such luck, though.

  ‘So, Susan, love,’ said Bunny, talking with her mouth full as she horsed into the remains of a sausage roll. ‘You still haven’t really told us why you’re in here. It’s not good for you to keep it to yourself, you know.’

  Susan looked blankly back at her.

  ‘Yes she did!’ said Emily stoutly. ‘You just weren’t listening properly.’ Then she dropped her voice and mouthed, ‘Because of the daughter who died.’

  ‘Ella,’ said Bungalow Bill gruffly. ‘That was her name, wasn’t it? You see? At least I was paying attention.’

  All three heads turned to face Susan, but she didn’t answer them. Instead, she just fiddled with the black coffee on the tray she’d been given and stared blankly at a dry-looking piece of wholewheat brown bread.

  ‘Oh yeah, now I remember,’ said Bunny warmly. ‘So what happened to your Ella, love? You can tell us, you know. You can say anything you like in here. We’re unshockable.’

  ‘“At the circle of trust, we all come together to form a secure place,”’ Emily chirruped, doing a reasonably passable impression of Dr Ciara.

  Susan shook her head and kept her eyes down, praying they’d take the hint and just leave her be. Pity there’s no polite way to tell people to fuck off, she thought. Tomorrow, maybe tomorrow she’d be able for all this. But today was different.

  ‘If the woman doesn’t want to talk, then she doesn’t want to talk,’ growled Bungalow Bill defensively, the only one of them who seemed to sense her mood. ‘And by the way,’ he said to her, ‘if you’re not eating your breakfast, love, can I have it? This cereal tastes like crappy birdseed and the portions they give you in here wouldn’t feed a fly.’

  Susan nodded and shoved her food his way, but Bunny still wouldn’t let the subject drop. ‘Oh, now come on,’ she insisted, ‘I’m not taking no for an answer. There’s nothing you can say to me or to anyone else at this table that we haven’t heard before, you know.’

  ‘We’re only trying to help you,’ Emily said encouragingly. ‘It’s all part of the ethos here. Be open about everything and it’ll heal that bit quicker.’

  A long pause as all eyes turned to her and Susan knew she’d have to come out with something. Anything. Just to get them off her back, if nothing else.

  ‘Look, I do appreciate your concern,’ she sighed, ‘but I just . . . I just can’t. Maybe another time, but not now. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Ahh, go on out of that!’ said Bunny. ‘You couldn’t possibly tell us anything new. Sure, look at me,’ she said, thumping her pudgy hand on her chest. ‘In here, it may seem like I’m fine and functioning and everything, but the trouble starts when I get home and the Black Dog starts at me again.’

  ‘Depression?’ Emily asked her matter-of-factly.

  ‘Oh, don’t talk to me. Like you wouldn’t believe, Emily, love. There are plenty of days when I just can’t get out of bed, while my three girls are downstairs tearing strips off each other. And back when my husband was drinking . . . ’

  ‘You needn’t tell me about drinking,’ Emily said sympathetically, rolling her eyes. ‘I always say I drank half a house.’

  ‘How can you drink half a house?’ Bunny asked, and Susan looked up, intrigued in spite of herself.

  ‘Well, when my marriage first broke up, my ex and I sold the house,’ Emily said bluntly. ‘We split the money fifty-fifty, as per our separation agreement, but when I got my cut of it, I went on the bender to end all benders.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Bunny. ‘You mean you drank your way through all of it?’

  ‘Why do you think I’m in here?’ Emily replied with a shrug. ‘I’m almost two months sober now, but none of you wouldn’t have liked me when I was boozing. Trust me. I’m working on myself now, but back then, I wasn’t a nice person to be around.’

  ‘And as for poor old Bill there,’ said Bunny, nodding in Bungalow Bill’s direction, and talking about him like he wasn’t there. ‘What can I say? Bill’s been in here the longest and he’s probably the least shockable of any of us. You can tell him anything that’s going on with you, Susan. There’s no judgment at this table, trust me.’

  Bill looked up, aware that the focus was on him now, abandoning the dry brown bread he’d been wolfing back. Then, almost like it was a ritual, he held out the palms of both his hands facing upwards, so Susan could see them for herself up close. The burn tissue on both was so severe and the scarring so vicious that she winced at the sight of it.

  ‘See that?’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘The doctors didn’t think I’d ever be able to use either one of my hands ever again, not after what happened. They thought they’d have to amputate and that all I’d be left with would be two stumps where my hands used to be.’

  Susan was momentarily shocked out of her own pain, hoping it didn’t show on her face how horrified she was at his poor, mutilated hands. Instead, she nodded in sympathy, remembering that she’d heard Bill had set fire to his house, with his wife and mother-in-law inside.

  ‘They thought I’d be upset about losing limbs, but do you know what?’ Bill told her, shoving away the food on the tray in front of him. ‘Actually, I would have welcomed it. Physical pain would have been nothing to me, compared with the mental torment I had to deal with. And that I have to deal with for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Your wife?’ Susan asked him as gently as she could, putting aside her own troubles for the minute. ‘And your mother-in-law? Were they okay?’

  Please say yes, she thought. Please tell me they made it.

  ‘She’s now my ex-wife,’ he grunted, ‘and she now has first-degree burns and scar tissue that no amount of treatment seems to be able to shift. But at least she and her mam got out alive. No thanks to me, though.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Susan said under her breath. ‘If it’s not too cheeky of me . . . can I ask you what happened?’

  ‘I just snapped,’ Bill told her bluntly. ‘I was going through a separation from my ex, and she was barring me from seeing the kids. So one day I lost it, simple as that. We had a vicious row and, well . . . I hardly have to spell the rest out to you. So now, I’ve got two daughters living with their mother, on record as saying that they’ll never talk to me again as long as they live.

  ‘Meanwhile,’ he went on, ‘I’m in here with not much chance of getting out. I’m a diagnosed manic depressive and it’ll take me a lifetime to try and build bridges with a family that wants nothing to do with me. Last Christmas was sheer hell, it nearly drove me over a cliff edge. So I checked in here and I’m not leaving till I can function again. I’ll never get over it, but if I can at least get well enough to make it up to my family, then that’s as much as I can hope for.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Susan said quietly, sliding both her hands into his. ‘There really are no words to say how very sorry I am.’

  ‘So how old was your Ella when she died?’ he asked her, with kindness in his eyes, as he gripped her thin, white hands in his. Susan could feel all the lumps and bumps of his scar tissue and willed herself not to wince.

&n
bsp; But she couldn’t answer that one. Instead she just massaged Bill’s poor swollen, puffy hands and kept her head down.

  ‘Had she been sick, love?’ Bunny asked her gently, from across the table.

  They were all looking at Susan, but instead she kept her focus on Bill’s big, gnarled, knotted hands, fighting back the urge to cry.

  Don’t start, she thought. Because once I start, I might never stop.

  ‘You mentioned someone in our group session the other night,’ Bill said quietly.

  Susan looked up at him.

  ‘Did he have something to do with what happened to your girl?’

  She looked into his blood-red eyes that looked like they’d been through a hundred lifetimes.

  ‘He had everything to do with it.’

  She could trust these people, she instinctively felt. They all got it – they’d been through as bad, if not worse. Could she maybe bring herself to say more?

  Next thing: an announcement came over the hospital tannoy.

  ‘Paging Susan Hayes. Will Susan Hayes please make her way to the day room on the ground floor.’

  ‘Oh, a visitor!’ said Bunny, brightening up as the quiet, intimate mood around the table instantly shattered. ‘Well, now, that’ll cheer you up, won’t it, love?’

  ‘I wish someone would come and visit me,’ said Emily morosely. ‘If only so they could smuggle me in a few bars of chocolate.’

  Susan scrambled to her feet, mystified as to who this could possibly be, and anxious that she wasn’t really able to face anyone, today of all days. Lovely, sainted Jayne was bringing Melissa to see her at the weekend – but Saturday was still three whole days away. She couldn’t think of another soul who’d make the trek all the way out to St Michael’s, just to see her. She’d long since cut herself off from her old pals at the bank and apart from Hayley’s mum at the school, none of the other parents had the first clue what to say to her.