by Claire Allan
“You all set for Gretna?” he asked, kissing my head and I snuggled closer to him.
“Yes. More or less. Sure we don’t need much,” I said sleepily.
“No doubts?” he asked, his hands still intertwined with mine, my back still lying against his chest so that I could feel his heart beating close to mine.
Yes, I know that sounds terribly cheesy and I was more than likely romanticising the memory as I sat at my desk looking at the picture but that was how I remembered it. There were so many of the memories of Ian which I had re-coloured over the years – but that one, that moment? That day and that night? Still perfect. Well, almost perfect.
“No doubts?” he had asked and I had turned to kiss him, to show him with the deepness of my kiss and the urgency of my hands that I didn’t have a single doubt in my head. What was to doubt? We worked in every way. The passion was there – God, it was there – he had only to look at me for me to want to have sex with him, no matter where we were or who was with us. We were one of those sickening couples who groped in the supermarket, who fondled in the fresh-fruit aisle, blissfully unaware of who was near and who may have been watching. We were the kind of couple who spent hours, days, entire weekends in bed only getting up to go to the bathroom or to answer the door to the pizza-delivery man. We used to joke about it, how we were inseparable, literally. How even when we were together we weren’t physically or emotionally close enough unless we were at it.
We talked – God, we talked, morning noon and night, phone calls and emails and conversations about everything and nothing. We had the same goals – the same ambitions – the same silly early-twenties’ ideals. We had the world at our feet and that world was going to start with our unconventional Big Day in Gretna Green.
“Doubts? Not a one,” I whispered as my hand moved lower and he groaned with pleasure. “No doubts at all.”
Blushing at the memory, I closed the magazine and sat back in my chair. I must not allow myself to think about Ian in that way. I must not allow myself to romanticise what we had in any way, shape or form because ultimately Ian was a pig. And, I reminded myself, even though he was doing my head in at that moment, Paddy was a better man than he was. I tried not to allow myself any time to think about things that had been so much less complicated back when that photograph had been taken. When I had been young, thinner, naïve. When I had never learned how life could be rubbish, or cruel or have a tendency to throw you curve balls when you least expected them and least wanted them.
I needed some air, I needed some space to just breathe and try to stop these confusing thoughts flying through my head.
Chapter twenty-seven
Kitty
We agreed to meet in a public place. A neutral venue, a small voice in my head had said. A place where there couldn’t be a scene. Not that I was looking for a scene. I was just looking for my mum. I had spent the rest of the day in work feeling marginally guilty about it all. I didn’t tell Rose I was going to meet my mother. I didn’t tell Rose I had slept with James, nor did I tell her that it was James who had sent me at least five text messages that day. It felt strange to keep a secret from her, but thankfully the shop was busy and we were kept on the go. That made it easier for me to keep my nerves under wraps as well. It was strange that I felt nervous about going to meet my own mother, but it wasn’t often we talked, let alone shared secrets. I was grateful when the time came to shut up shop, kiss Rose goodbye and tell her that I was fine and would be right as rain the following morning after a good night’s sleep – and no, I wasn’t doing anything more exciting than just going home for an early night with a good book and a glass of wine.
She smiled and reminded me, once again, that both she and my dad were there for me if I needed them. I smiled, lied through my teeth and said again that I was fine and sure I would absolutely and definitely call them if I needed them. Rose had looked at me – her eyebrow slightly raised as if she knew I was lying – and paused for a second before moving on again and climbing into her Smart car and driving off, the trails of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s greatest hits hanging in the air along with her exhaust fumes. I glanced back at the shop, pulling at the door to double-check it was locked, and set off down the street towards the café bar where I had arranged to meet my mother.
Pushing the door open, the smells of spices mingled with fine wines assaulted my nose. Although the day was bright outside, the restaurant was dimly lit with rich colours on the walls and music playing softly. My mother was sitting towards the back of the room, a bottle of wine in front of her with two glasses. She was sipping gingerly from her glass, readjusting the soft woollen shrug cardigan she was wearing. Her hair was perfectly set, pulled back from her foreheadby a pair of sunglasses sat on top of her head. She looked young enough to be my sister. I suppose she had become a mother young – at just gone eighteen. Rose, in an uncharacteristic jealous moment, had commented that it was no wonder my mother had few wrinkles as she hadn’t been raisingIvy and mein our teenage years. Rose had pointed to the crow’s feet around her eyes. Pointing to her right eye she had said, “That was the night Ivy stayed out until 4a.m. and your daddy was on the verge of calling the police” and, pointing to her left eye, “That was the time you smoked five cigarettes in a row trying to teach yourself not to choke on them, but instead you ended up violently ill all over your bedroom – and I mean all over your bedroom.” I had laughed, shamefaced, remembering the projectile incident. Rose and my father had been relatively calm about it all – considering the mess of the new carpet and the fact I had been smoking in the first place. I wondered would my mother look different if she had stayed around? Would she look older or wiser? Would she not play with her coaster in the same uneasy way? Would she and I have walked into the restaurant together, arms linked, weighed down with shopping bags, laughing about the day we had just had? Would it all seem less awkward? Would she have been the one to help me make sense of it all? Would I have had sex with James? I stood at the door, gently nudged forward by someone else coming in behind me, and wondered if I was doing the right thing. I looked again, at her holding the stem of her wineglass and sipping again, a little deeper this time, and I matched that deep sip with a deep breath and crossed the room. She looked up and smiled and I smiled back, a nervous smile, and waved limply. I watched my mother stand up to greet me, patting down her dress and reaching her arms out to me. I allowed myself to step into her hug and put my arms around her. It struck me, as we stood there, that I could not remember the last time my mother had hugged me or I had returned her hug. Perhaps it had been that time when I had realised Matt Goss was never going to love me back. Her perfume was different now, but the softness felt the same and even though I was angry with her, even though a part of me would never understand why she had left, I felt tears spring to my eyes.
“Mum,” I said into her hair and she pulled me a little closer, “I need you.”
“I’m here,” she whispered – and, even though we were in a very public place and this was probably entirely inappropriate, I let her hug me a little tighter and a little longer and when we eventually pulled apart and sat down she kept a hold of my hand, even as she poured me a glass of wine and we chinked our glasses together.
With half a glass of wine in me, my tears dried, and our reassurances made that wewould try our best to move on together, we started to talk.
“Was it really insensitive of me to come to the shop for a wedding dress?” she asked, blushing. “But, you see, I didn’t know how else to get through to you. Charles said it might be a bit full-on – to just swan in and ask you to help me get our wedding organised but I kind of thought ‘in for a penny’ and all. I thought it better to jump in at the deep end and I convinced myself it was a good idea – so much so that I was almost giddy when I first showed up. I know now it was stupid and Charles was right. I knew it was stupid the minute I saw your face but then it was started . . .” She giggled nervously and drank from her glass again before looking up at me from under
her eyelashes – a coy Princess Diana style pose which allowed me to see that she hardly had any crow’s feet at all.
I felt sorry for her that she was so unsure of herself in front of her own daughter and then again there was a voice in my head – which actually sounded remarkably like Ivy’s voice – which was saying that of course she would be nervous. She had severed our relationship. I shook my head, trying in some way to dislodge that voice and let the part of me which felt for her, which wished things had been different, to surface again while she rambled on nervously. She was asking me if I thought it was all too much but she was not letting me answer.
“At that stage I wondered whether to just disappear again but Charles said, you know, I had started so I might as well finish. You know, like the TV show . . . oh, what is it?”
“Mastermind,” I offered and she nodded.
“Yes, Mastermind. So I had started so I thought I might as well finish and, well, the dress was lovely . . .”
“It is,” I said. “You will be beautiful.”
“You’ll be there on the day? Won’t you? I know it is a big ask and I know that Ivy is probably a lost cause. But you will be there – you and Mark of course?”
At the mention of Mark’s name, I felt what little resolve I had waver further and I bit my lip to avoid yet another over-emotional display. But it must have shown. My face must have fallen – my crow’s feet must have multiplied or something – because my mother stopped talking and looked at me.
“Kitty,” she said, “are you okay?”
“I’m fine . . . I’m okay . . . I’m, well . . . Mark . . . Mark and I . . . we split up.”
“Oh Jesus,” she said, holding my hand tighter and swivelling in her chair so that she was closer to me. “When did this happen?”
“A few weeks ago.”
“And why? What happened?” She sounded genuinely shocked and in a weird way that comforted me.The whole how-the-feck-did-this-happen response of people who knew us, even a little bit, made me feel like the last few years hadn’t just been one big lie even if it seemed that, on his part anyway, they had been.
“He left. He’s off to find himself. It just wasn’t working.” I half-laughed and half-cried and waited for the reassuring hugs and requisite referral to my husband as a useless fecker.
My mother, however, just shook her head and looked downwards.
“Out of nowhere,” I continued. “He just decided that I wasn’t enough anymore. And he went.”
She looked back at me, her face flushed.
“I thought we were happy, all this time. I thought we had it all together. We were even talking about starting a family – and please don’t tell me that at least it is a blessing that we didn’t get that far because I don’t want to hear that. So, I thought I was putting my whole life back together again. But he’s back – and he wants to talk. And I don’t want to talk because what is there to say?”
“Maybe he needs a chance to explain himself?” she offered.
“He did that, in a note. He left it for me and then left me, without warning. He just went. Walked out on our lives. How could he do that? How could anyone do that? Just walk out on their life? Walk out on the people who care about them?”
I felt my mother let go of my hand as I talked, saw her lift her glass and sink what was left in it before lifting the bottle and topping it up again. Her hand didn’t come back to rest on mine as I chattered on about my feelings of betrayal and it was only when I saw her sniff and wipe a tear from her eye that it dawned on me that, as much as I was talking about Mark and what had happened between us, I was also ripping apart old wounds.
“Jesus,” I said, stopping and not quite knowing where to go from there. I didn’t want to simply say that it was okay and of course I didn’t mean her and of course I understood how her circumstances were completely different, because I didn’t believe that. Oh Christ, we were both making an absolute arse of what was already a pretty arsey situation.
“I didn’t want to do it that way,” she said softly, her body language changing, her demeanour suddenly bristly. “I didn’t know what I wanted. I know I messed up. There hasn’t been a single day since then that I don’t wish that I’d done things differently. Your dad is a good man. You and your sister were good kids. I wish I had something deeper to say than it just wasn’t enough . . . but it wasn’t enough. I tried for a long time to pretend that it was – to settle down to motherhood and being a wife. I tried but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to hurt any of you but I couldn’t go on hurting myself. I know that sounds selfish.”
I let her words sink in. It sounded selfish because it was selfish. We weren’t enough? We were her children. She had committed to having us, she should have gone on and committed to raising us. Just like Mark had committed to me, to us and to our future. Just as he had sat and talked through his dreams and hopes and everything else with me and then just walked away. I shook my head and realised this had probably been a bad idea to begin with.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “This was too soon. Too much.”
I lifted my bag and stood up and she reached out to my arm.
“Kitty, please. Sit down.”
“Mum,” I said, vaguely remembering when I used to call her mammy and she was my be-all and end-all, “you don’t get to ask me to stay. Not now. I asked you to stay. I wrote to you and asked you to come back. To please come back but you didn’t.”
She looked wounded and, while I didn’t like to see her that way, I thought about how wounded I was. I was then and I was now and I didn’t have the emotional energy to try and make her feel better.
“I had to get out. I needed to get away.”
“Why?” I said, my anger building. “Why? Were we bad people? Did we do something wrong? Did we treat you badly or make you miserable? For years I blamed myself. I thought, if only I hadn’t been so grumpy. If only I had helped more around the house. If only I hadn’t sneaked the last of your favourite biscuits or if only I hadn’t told you that one time that you were the very worst mother in the world . . . Do you know what that is like, Mum? To be abandoned by the one person who should be there for you? And what about what you did to Dad? How you left him?”
“It’s not as simple as you make it out, Kitty,” she said, her eyes fixed on me, her voice a gruff whisper, clearly shocked that I was making a scene, that I was telling people in a public place that she was a horrible mother.
“Yes, I’ve heard the whole needing-to-know-who-you-were speech. I’ve heard it from you and I’ve heard it from my husband. And you know what? It’s a cop-out. A big fat selfish cop-out. You found yourself – you made your life. You made your choices. You can’t just walk away when it doesn’t feel perfect. Jesus, you stay and you work at it because it deserves to be worked at. I deserved to be worked at – and here you are, smiling and choosing a flipping wedding dress in my shop, and expecting me to be some sort of big fat ageing fecking flower girl watching you get your happy ending. Well,” I said, my voice filled with vitriol, “shove your happy ending! Shove finding yourself. Shove putting yourself first for once. What about us? What about me?”
Her mouth opened and closed and I didn’t care because at that moment I was just sick, sore and tired of people using excuses as to why it was okay, why I should feel sorry for them, for abandoning me. Was I really just supposed to smile and comfort them and say that it was okay, as long as they didn’t feel trapped anymore? What was it about me that made people feel suffocated? In my adult life I had rationalised all those feelings I’d had as a child – those strange feelings that I had pushed my mother away and that it had been my fault. I had told myself that was daft. Mark had helped me believe I was daft – he had held me as I cried about her ongoing selfish behaviour and made me realise this was about her and not me. And yet, he was the one who had walked out as well – who had abandoned me. To be abandoned once was bad luck – but to be abandoned twice? Well, that was no mere coincidence. Clearly I was very much faulty goods. Th
is, all of it, had been a terribly bad idea. Suddenly I had the urge to be back in the small, humid bedroom where I had spent the long weekend after Mark’s departure. I felt safe there. I would be okay there.
“Kitty, please,” she offered again and I just held my hand up, turned and walked away and vowed that I was not going to look back. She hadn’t.
Ivy and Michael were watching Coronation Street when I battered on their door. Both were in their pyjamas – which of course were ironed. Thankfully, they weren’t matching.
It was Michael who answered the door and looked mildly alarmed to see me standing on his doorstep looking more than a little dishevelled, the make-up streaked down my face from the tears I had shed in the car on the way over. I sniffed – a loud, snottery sniff which made even me wince. The sound was not pleasant and I fully understood why Michael might look a little green around the gills as I dragged the sleeve of my cardigan across my face and asked if Ivy was in.