The Year that Changed Everything

by Cathy Kelly

  The next morning, both mama and baby were ready to go. No breastfeeding had been managed.

  Instead of feeling like the serene madonna Sam had imagined she would be, she felt on the edge of an enormous panic attack.

  ‘Have you fixed the car seat properly?’ she snapped at Ted.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘The guy came out of the shop when we bought it and made sure I knew how, plus Patrick came over this morning and helped me, OK?’

  ‘Fine.’ Sam sat uncomfortably on the edge of the hospital bed, and knew she sounded like a bitch, not Earth Mother supreme, but everything was suddenly so complicated. She didn’t know what to do, and it was scaring her. Apparently fear emerged as wild irritation and bitchiness. But she couldn’t help it. Today, somewhat less than two and a half days since India had been born, they were leaving the hospital.

  Sam didn’t want to go. Only her long, painful labour had meant she’d been kept in a second night. Today was going-home day, come what may. But she needed this place, despite the noise and screaming babies and no sleep. At least it was safe.

  Here, there were people who knew how to handle babies. The fear that resided in Sam was enveloping her.

  ‘Did Patrick say Joanne was going to be there?’ she asked Ted again.

  Joanne had promised to be at Ted and Sam’s when they got home from hospital. And Ted’s mum, Vera, was going to be there too. Both women understood what to do.

  ‘I thought you’d want a bit of time on your own,’ Joanne had said when Sam asked if some of the family could be there when she and Ted brought India home.

  ‘It’s a celebration!’ Sam had said, injecting excitement into her voice.

  It was insurance.

  Without people around, people who knew about babies, she might cry. Or worse, she’d kill Ted.

  He appeared to expect her to know everything now.

  He looked to her as the baby guru.

  ‘Is this all right, the way I’m holding her?’ he’d asked anxiously in the hospital and Sam had stared at him in annoyance. He knew as much as she did. And he’d had more sleep. Bizarrely, instead of this momentous event bonding them, the birth of their baby made Sam feel that every woman-clouting-stupid-man-over-head-with-rolling-pin cliché was entirely true. She wished she had her own rolling pin around, just in case.

  India cried when Sam shakily woke her from sleep. Despite how tiny she looked, she could make a lot of noise.

  ‘Our little yeller,’ said Ted affectionately, touching his daughter’s downy head with a large, gentle hand.

  How could Ted find India’s screaming to be endearing? Sam found it frightening because she couldn’t decode the yells. Was it normal for a tiny baby to scream when she was woken up?

  All her working life, she’d asked questions and studied to learn how to do her job better. But there was no MBA in being a mother, no book of diagrams and handy hints. It was on-the-job learning. In work, Sam had never minded this. She was enthusiastic and eager. But here, with India, she was such a novice.

  She felt entirely out of her comfort zone, terrified of that fact, and even more terrified that this great abyss of knowledge would harm her precious baby.

  This was no bank division to be run; no charity to oversee. This was a human life she was responsible for and she was singularly unprepared for it. The thought was terrifying.

  She’d asked the nurses so many questions, trying to get some sort of procedural baseline for what was normal.

  ‘All babies are different,’ said one of the older nurses happily, a woman who had two children of her own and had worked in the maternity hospital for twenty years.

  She was an expert and this was her best answer?

  ‘But it’s daunting, isn’t it – trying to work out what your baby wants . . .?’ Sam went on in desperation.

  ‘Ah, Sam, you have maturity on your side. You’ll work it out: mothers do. Now, some of the very young girls who come here to have babies, they’re so young, they’re almost babies themselves: eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds who haven’t the first clue about looking after themselves, never mind a baby. A few years makes all the difference. Of course, they have the energy. You want to make sure you have a good diet and take care of yourself too, because when you’re that little bit older, your age means it can be a bit tougher from the point of lack of sleep and general energy levels. Research shows that the ideal time to have a baby is—’

  ‘Yeah, twenty-five,’ said Sam drily, who had heard this many times.

  At twenty-five, she’d been trying not to get pregnant.

  At forty, she was apparently too lacking in energy to take care of a baby.

  Nobody had mentioned the fear that came with facing this exquisite little human being who would be in her sole care soon.

  The fear that was overwhelming her.

  Ginger

  Ginger woke late and her head felt as if she had a hangover, even though all she’d had to drink the previous day was half a glass of champagne and a glass of red wine. It was an emotional hangover, she thought miserably, lying in her bed, the beautiful bed that nobody was ever going to share with her.

  She should have been staying in the hotel and going down to breakfast with all her friends, happy in the aftermath of the wonderful wedding of her best friend Liza. And possibly – how had she even thought this was possible? – she might have been there holding hands with Stephen, finally part of a couple.

  Instead, she was in her lonely bed and her only accompaniment in the tiny house was the sound of her guinea pigs rattling around in their duplex.

  Perhaps, if reincarnation was really where it was at, she could come back as the small pet of a lonely woman. Miss Nibbles and Squelch were treated like princesses, adored. She’d quite like a cat, too, but knew that Miss Nibbles and Squelch would then need a mini-defibrillator as cat/guinea pig relationships were rarely good ones. But a cat could sit on her lap, purr, help in a way that the guinea pigs – whom she had not been able to house-train – could not.

  Ginger reached over to her cluttered bedside table to pick up her phone, wondering would Liza have texted her with any sort of apology.

  Over the twenty-six years of their friendship, they’d fallen out before, but they’d been only small things. Apart from that horrible time after their final school state exams when Ginger got such fabulous results and Liza was shocked to have only scraped by.

  Or recently, that time Ginger had had a big work event – the relaunch of the digital paper – and hadn’t been able to go out with Liza on the spur of the moment to comfort her because she’d broken up, briefly, with James.

  Liza hadn’t spoken to her for an entire week.

  It was always Liza that did the falling out, Ginger reflected now. That should have been a warning sign. Really, how dumb was she? Clever at books, an idiot at humans.

  But there were no texts from Liza.

  Instead there was a raft of happy birthday messages from her crew in work sent the day before, some with bits added on late last night:

  Hope you’re having a marvellous time! Happy Thirtieth!

  Catch yourself a hot man. That was from Paula, who felt that a hot man was the main requirement for happiness in life.

  Don’t go too wild. Busy week in work next week!!! and a few exclamations marks from Brian, her boss. Given that Brian was a curmudgeonly sort of guy, that was almost a hug, a kiss and a birthday cake with sparkles from him.

  Ginger smiled.

  We’ll have cake on Monday! was the text from Deirdre, one of the researchers with whom Ginger was friends. Big gooey chocolatey with cream in the middle!!

  Wow, reflected Ginger.

  Was that the sum of her parts to her friends? Either into cake or men?

  Or was that just Deirdre and Paula?

  She
’d have to stop everyone assuming she was a cake- and man-obsessed woman. Besides, how could she be madly into sex when she’d never had any?

  She imagined the email to her own agony column.

  ‘Dear Girlfriend, my pals all talk about sex all the time – I have not had sex. Ever. And I am thirty! Is this normal, because there is nobody else I can ask without being humiliated?’

  ‘Normal is a setting on the dryer,’ Girlfriend would reply. ‘You can be into what you want to be into, and if anyone asks, tell them all you are a Christian woman and you are waiting for marriage before you give the precious gift of your virginity to anyone.’

  Ginger lay back on the bed and started to laugh. Maybe that’s what she might tell everyone in future. She was a truly Christian woman who didn’t believe in sex before marriage or dating before marriage or even having a boyfriend before marriage.

  Yes, it was the perfect excuse.

  Or else, she could become Amish. Or did they have arranged marriages? Still, a husband . . .

  But how would she cope with no TV? No Starbucks’ hot chocolate. No lipstick.

  OK, maybe not.

  Finally, she dragged herself out of bed and went into the living room to where Miss Nibbles and Squelch were scooting around in their duplex. They were genuinely delighted to see her, pushing their little pink guinea pig noses at the tiny bars of their cool perspex and cage home.

  ‘Come on, my little babas,’ she crooned, taking them out for a little meander. They were sweethearts and liked to sit on her and snuffle her instead of running off like the clappers, which was what they’d done before she’d socialised them enough to enjoy being held. Miss Nibbles was apricot-coloured and Squelch was a misty grey. They were affectionate, although once at the vet’s Miss Nibbles had managed to bite both the vet and Ginger in a one-off fit of temper.

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you both,’ she said. ‘Otherwise I’d be talking to myself, and isn’t that the first sign of madness? Can I take you both to my birthday family lunch as my guests? I will pretend I don’t want dates ever: just you two.’

  The house Ginger had grown up in was out in the country, although the city was encroaching now with several housing estates coming closer and closer. Her mother had come from a small town much further down the coast called Ballyglen, but there was no family left there anymore and Ginger could barely recall ever having been there.

  Her father still went, though: to visit their mother’s grave. Declan and Mick did too, but not Ginger.

  ‘I don’t believe in that visiting grave stuff,’ she’d told Aunt Grace. ‘You can remember people without seeing where they’re buried,’ which was a handy way of saying she had nothing to remember because her mother had died when she was so young. And it was easier not to remember, anyhow.

  For all Ginger’s life, the Reilly family home had been a true country farmhouse, although nobody had farmed the land for a long time, but still a kitchen garden sat to the back of the house and, behind that, a large meadow around which, on summer days, the young Reillys used to gallop and play games. To the right of the house was a large barn converted into a work shed which had once housed just a kitchen-renovating business. Then, about fifteen years ago, Michael Reilly got his hands on a wonderful old table with incredible decorative legs.

  Ginger could remember his absolute delight as she was wearily studying and he’d come in brandishing an exquisitely carved leg with delight.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I had this amazing idea, Ginger, darling! I could turn this into a wizard’s chair! Imagine these posts coming up the back with roundels on the top. I could carve a beautiful back around them and then the other posts could be the armrests and – don’t worry,’ he added, mistaking Ginger’s surprised expression for one of disbelief. ‘You know I’ll still be doing the kitchens.’ Putting in kitchens was his main job, the job that had kept them all going since Mum had died.

  ‘But this . . .’ His face lit up as he looked at the old table leg.

  ‘Dad, whatever makes you happy,’ said Ginger.

  And he was off to his workshop, singing, delighted.

  Now he still did the odd kitchen, but his heart was in those special commissions where he made beautiful, one-off furniture, working away for hours in his big shed, music on in the background.

  In the true style of the shoemaker, while Michael Reilly had been fixing everyone else’s kitchens and bedrooms, his own home had been left to itself in later years.

  The house itself was a bit higgledy-piggledy but there was a lovely wooden porch her father had made. And in June, the climbing roses were clambering all over it with amazing old floribunda blooms clustering around it.

  Seeing all the cars parked in front of the house as she drove up made Ginger realise that everyone else had arrived before her. Taking a deep breath, she used her key and went in. The scents of her childhood home assailed her. Beeswax polish because her father thought it was the best thing for wood; wet dog as the family’s old sheepdog, Ronni, could never resist a roll in the river every day; and just . . . home. It was here that Ginger felt safest and most loved.

  Yet she’d wanted to be a journalist, wanted to get out into the big world all those years ago because she had done so well at school and she’d wanted to write.

  Moving into the city when she’d got her first job had made so much sense and she’d thought a whole new life awaited her, a life away from being the chubby girl in St Anne’s secondary school, always the third wheel in every party. And yet only some of that wondrous new life had happened. She had her beautiful little house, even though the mortgage was murderous, and she had her tiny little car, old banger that it was.

  The job was going well and she was making more money because of the Girlfriend column. Professionally, everything was good. Personally, everything was dreadful.

  She caught sight of herself in the hall mirror and knew she’d done a good job hiding the ravages of a face ruined from crying the night before. Her hair was washed, rippling like copper. She’d worn a coral top and a turquoise necklace that made her look bright and sparkly. Just because things had gone so hideously wrong yesterday, she was not going to ruin this party for the people who loved her.

  In other words, she was going to fake it.

  ‘Hello everyone,’ she said, striding into the big open-plan kitchen sitting area to find her father and her sister-in-law Zoe busy in the kitchen and her brothers Mick and Declan standing up with a glass of beer each, shooting the breeze, while Margaret, her soon to be sister-in-law, sat on the couch and knitted.

  Margaret looked like an advert for kitesurfing – tall, leggy, tanned – yet she was a mad crafter, always knitting, always had needles and a ball of wool attached.

  ‘Easier than meditation,’ she kept saying to Ginger, encouraging her to get into it.

  ‘It’s the birthday girl,’ said Dad, delightedly putting down his wooden spoon and racing over to grab his daughter and twirl her around. Mick joined in and then Ronni, clearly recently dried from the pungent wet dog scent of him, jumped up on his back paws and tried to help.

  It was beautiful to be home, Ginger thought, and she almost let herself go, almost let the tears fall, because now that she was here and in the warmth and the comfort of their love she could tell them and . . .

  ‘Did you have a great day yesterday?’ said her father, going back to the saucepan. ‘Sorry, I can’t let this burn. It’s a special sauce I’m making for your birthday. I know you love the old hollandaise and it’s a nightmare.’

  This reality check made Ginger convinced she couldn’t tell them all about the day before and how betrayed she’d felt.

  ‘It was great,’ she lied, feigning happy exhaustion. ‘Just brilliant. I’m so tired though. We were all up late – it was a fabulous day.’

  ‘Do you have pictures?’ said Zoe eagerly, ‘I bet Liza looked amazing
.’

  ‘Goodness, you know I didn’t really take that many pictures of the afters. I took a few early on, but not that many later,’ said Ginger, deadpan. ‘But you know, loads of other people will have and I’m sure they’ll be up on Facebook later. Yes, Liza was beautiful and, yes, her dress was fabulous.’

  ‘And yours?’ said Zoe anxiously, knowing how worried her sister-in-law had been about the whole bridesmaid as battleship in full Scarlett O’Hara dress.

  ‘Perfect. The colour was really nice after all,’ said Ginger.

  Another lie. She would go to hell, or whatever sort of hell there was for people who lied through their teeth and were good at it. Although there had been many times when she’d been in this very house and she’d lied about things: yes, school was grand; yes, the disco was fun.

  All those things that came back to not fitting in and feeling like the fat girl. Nothing changed, did it?

  ‘Where’s Aunt Grace and Esmerelda?’ she asked. ‘They’re not here?’

  ‘Grace has got the flu,’ said her dad. ‘She’s hoarse and she can’t talk, which means there is no point to her existence.’

  Everyone giggled. Grace was a fabulous talker.

  ‘But she wants you over soon because she’s got a special present for you.’

  It was handy that Aunt Grace wasn’t here, because Grace had gimlet eyes and could search out a secret faster than a bird could pick a worm off a lawn. Grace was the one who’d scrutinised Ginger when she was a teenager and said things about not believing in standing at gravesides.

  Ginger was aware that Mick was watching her now. He was a bit like Grace – very perceptive.

  ‘All right, sis?’ he said, leaning over and squeezing her shoulders.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, trying to channel exhausted-thirty-year-old vibes. ‘Just weary.’

  ‘Sit down there,’ interrupted their father, ‘birthday lunch is about to begin.’