‘How do you propose explaining the fact that you’re living with her?’ she’d asked Neil, still unable to mention the other woman’s name.
‘I’ll just tell them I’m staying for a while,’ he’d replied. ‘It’ll help that they already know her.’
The words had sliced into Sarah as deeply as a blade. The youth and innocence of Martha and Stephen would allow them to accept the situation now, but when would they need the truth spelt out, and what would the discovery of it do to them?
She’d face that when she had to. For now, there was a more immediate problem, and the thought of solving it brought little pleasure.
Without Neil or Noreen she had no regular access to a car, and since the house wasn’t on a bus route it meant that for the past several months her father had been setting his alarm in the mornings so he could bring Martha to school, a journey of just two miles from Sarah’s house, but a round trip of almost fifteen for him.
‘I really don’t mind,’ he told her, whenever she brought it up. ‘It’s something for me to do.’ But she couldn’t expect him to keep doing it indefinitely, and with the children getting older, it was inevitable that there would be more demands on a driver. They couldn’t be dependent on him all the time: it wasn’t fair.
She would have to learn to drive, even if the thought brought her out in goose pimples. She suspected she’d be useless at it, far too nervous to be safe, but she had no choice. When the weather improved and the days got longer, she’d find a driving school, take some lessons and hope that she didn’t kill anyone.
She left the hall and returned to the kitchen. The aroma of baking buns wafted to meet her when she opened the door. She stood on the threshold, taking in her daughter as she flicked through the pages in the cookery book, her son as he played with his train set.
She thought back to the years when she’d imagined just such a scene, when it had seemed as if it would be denied to her forever. Now it was here, and she was looking at it through such different eyes.
But she had a lot to be thankful for. She had two healthy children, family support and a job she loved. She would appreciate it all, and not look back. And if she felt desperately lonely sometimes, that was only to be expected, and would have to be endured.
Helen
‘Well,’ Helen said, looking around, ‘this is nice.’
It was horrendous. Exposed silver pipework – was that supposed to be trendy? – running along the orange walls that clashed with the drab mustard units in the tiny kitchenette. A dark green Venetian blind on the little window above the sink, a brown Formica-topped counter that separated the area from the rest of the room. Plenty of colours, none of which looked remotely comfortable together.
She glanced down at the navy carpet, eyed its suspicious dark splotches – how long since it had been put down? Probably just as well it was navy. And no dining table or chairs: they must eat all their meals standing at the counter, or sitting on the couch. A bright purple blanket thrown over it, hideous against the orange walls, and hiding God alone knew what.
And everything was open plan, an entire living space for two people in one not particularly big room, with no effort made to hide the ancient-looking double bed pushed against the opposite wall. She tried not to think about how many had slept in it, or not slept, before Alice and Jackie had got to use it.
There was a smell too, an underlying thick odour that brought to mind boiling cabbage and wet socks. She longed to fling open the long, narrow window, despite the ice-cold biting wind that had met her at the airport. Wales in April was even colder than Ireland, which was saying something – and this horrible little space felt no warmer than the street outside.
But none of that mattered. None of it made her regret her decision to come. As soon as she’d read Alice’s invitation, which had arrived out of the blue a fortnight earlier, she’d realised she’d been waiting for it. Hoping for it.
We thought you might like to come and see the flat, Alice had written, if you feel well enough to travel. You could check out Cardiff, stay a couple of nights. We’d have to book you in to a B&B, we’ve no spare room, but there are plenty of cheap ones nearby.
And Helen, who was becoming mightily fed up with convalescence, had thought, Why not? And here she was, fresh off the airport bus – which had dropped them, thankfully, less than five minutes’ walk away.
‘Have a seat,’ Alice said, pushing buttons on a gas heater that looked at least as old as herself. ‘I’ll put the kettle on for coffee.’
‘Actually –’ Helen unzipped her case and lifted out a bottle of whiskey ‘– I might have a drop of this instead, but do boil the kettle because I think I’d like it hot.’ Maybe one or two toddies would thaw her out, stop her gut clenching with the cold, take the numbness from her toes.
Alice looked at her. ‘Are you OK? You’re very pale.’
‘Just a bit chilly, I’ll be fine once I warm up.’
‘Go and stand by the fire – it’s actually quite good once it gets going.’ Alice filled the kettle and plugged it in. ‘I hope this trip wasn’t too soon – after you being sick, I mean.’
‘It was months ago. I’m well over it.’
It was five months ago, and she wasn’t completely over it. Her chest still hurt slightly when she breathed. ‘It’ll take a while,’ the doctor had told her, ‘before you feel back to full strength. Just take it easy, let others do the running around for you.’ So she’d scaled back on the writing, doing just enough to remind people that she was still out there.
To her slight alarm, her mother had taken to visiting every few days, bringing fruit and wedges of quiche and slivers of smoked salmon, and insisting that Helen not call to see her until the weather softened. And of course Frank had been in his element, keeping her supplied with chicken soup and oranges, fussing over her as much as he was allowed to.
Christmas had been interesting, for two reasons. It was their first without her father, and it was Frank’s introduction to her family. Amazing that he and her mother hadn’t already met, particularly during Helen’s week in hospital, with both of them visiting daily – they’d missed each other by minutes once – and in the immediate aftermath, when Frank had been a frequent caller, watching Helen like a hawk to see if she showed signs of getting sick again.
But they’d never come face to face, until finally it was unavoidable.
‘I’d like to bring a friend to dinner,’ she’d said to her mother, the week before Christmas. ‘He’s a man I’ve been seeing for a while.’ Her mother had agreed so readily that Helen had been thrown – had the prospect of just Helen and Alice at dinner been so distasteful that anyone else would have been welcomed? – until the thought had struck her that a male presence, whoever the male, might make it a little easier for a woman’s first Christmas without her husband.
For whatever reason, Frank had been duly invited – and he’d been a godsend. He’d turned up in a suit, which of course had impressed her mother right away. He’d presented her with a jar of hand cream that smelt wonderfully of lavender – ‘Organically made by one of my suppliers,’ he’d told her – and he’d praised every course of her immaculately presented dinner.
Afterwards he’d pulled crackers with Alice – the two of them having hit it off, thankfully, when they’d met the night before – before treating them to a rendition of ‘White Christmas’ in an unexpectedly tuneful baritone that Helen hadn’t previously encountered.
He’d charmed her mother on a day that would have been far more poignant without him; he’d prevented them dwelling on the fact that one of their number was missing. He’d delighted Alice, he’d made them all laugh. He was still perfect on paper, and Helen was still waiting to fall in love.
‘You wouldn’t have a lemon, I suppose,’ she said now. Hot whiskey without a slice of lemon was like a boiled egg without salt.
Alice opened the fridge. ‘Actually, we do. I sneak them home from the pub. Can’t have a G-and-T without lemon.’
> Helen raised an eyebrow. ‘You drink gin, at your age?’
Alice laughed, pulling a knife from a drawer. ‘For one thing, you probably had your first drink at ten, and for another, I’m twenty, as you well know, which means I’ve been perfectly legal for two years. I’m even going to join you in a hot toddy, so there.’
Helen stood in front of the hissing fire and watched her cutting the lemon into slices, taking two glasses down from a press. An adult, no longer the child who’d defied her mother at every turn. Helen’s mothering, such as it had been, was done.
‘For your information I was sixteen before I tasted alcohol. And it was cider, not whiskey. I didn’t graduate to spirits until I met your father in my late twenties.’
‘And I probably drove you to more drink,’ Alice said cheerfully, unscrewing the cap of the whiskey bottle. ‘I didn’t make it easy, did I? With you having to cope on your own, I mean.’
Helen felt the echo of a long-ago sorrow, remembering the wretch she’d been after Cormac’s death, the resentment of Alice she’d struggled to overcome as they’d muddled their way through her childhood.
‘You don’t remember him,’ she said. ‘Your dad.’
Alice shook her head, spooning sugar into the glasses. ‘Not really. I mean I know what he looked like from photos, but I can’t … picture him, or hear his voice, or anything.’
The kettle boiled. She made the toddies and handed one across the counter to Helen. ‘So what’ll we drink to?’
‘You,’ Helen replied, cradling the glass in her frozen hands, inhaling the blessed warmth of the steam that rose to her face. ‘All grown-up.’
‘And you,’ Alice replied, ‘for getting me there.’
The conversation was bittersweet. Helen swallowed a lump in her throat: a legacy of her illness, tears threatening more easily these days, not that she gave in to them much. They clinked glasses and drank, standing in front of the fire. The sinking wintry sun hit the exposed pipes and made them glint, which didn’t improve them much but brightened the room a little. The gas fire popped softly as it struggled to banish the chill.
‘So where’s Jackie?’
‘Out with friends.’
Jackie had long since left the grocery-delivery business behind. These days she worked behind the counter in a little wholefood self-service restaurant whose proprietors didn’t mind her taking home the leftovers at the end of the day. We never have to buy dinner, Alice had written. It’s great, all very healthy stuff. But once a week we get a takeaway, when we’re both craving a bit of junk food.
‘Actually,’ Alice said, looking into her glass, ‘I kind of asked Jackie to make herself scarce this evening.’
Helen heard the new note in her voice, and some tiny alarm sounded in her head. She sipped her drink and waited.
‘Well …’ Alice looked up, and the expression on her face sent Helen’s mind flying through possibilities. Alice was pregnant. It was always that, wasn’t it, when a daughter had something difficult to say to a parent? Or she was emigrating to Australia. Or she was sick, with something bad.
The gas fire gave a sudden loud splutter, making both of them turn towards it.
‘The thing is,’ Alice went on, still watching it, ‘I have a new job. I started last week.’
Relief washed through Helen. ‘What kind of a job?’
Alice turned back, smiling. ‘I’m working for a design agency as a graphic artist. I saw an ad and applied, and I did a test for them and they took me on straight away. They’re paying me peanuts but I love it, and I don’t care.’
Not sick, not pregnant, not emigrating. Working in design, using her talent. All good. Helen began to speak, but Alice hadn’t finished.
‘I’m keeping on the pub work. It’s just three nights a week and I enjoy it. But the agency job is permanent, Monday to Friday, and they’ll review my position after six months, and I might get a rise.’
A new job, one that paid her so little she had to keep pulling pints three nights a week. But she loved it, and she was waiting for her mother’s approval.
‘That’s great,’ Helen said. ‘Well done. I’m happy you’re doing something artistic. You should be. You never said you were applying for jobs.’
‘I wanted to keep it a surprise, in case nothing came of it. Then when you said you were coming over, I thought I’d save it and tell you face to face.’ Alice’s smile brought out her dimple. ‘Mum, it’s really brilliant. I’m working with a copywriter, and we’re in a studio with three other teams. There’s a great atmosphere, and everyone’s been so nice and welcoming.’
She looked younger than twenty, with her father’s grey eyes and pale skin, and limbs that had gone from gangly to graceful somewhere along the way. Her hair was the longest it had ever been, beyond her shoulders now, falling in gentle waves rather than Helen’s wild curls before she’d taken the kitchen scissors to them.
Alice was beautiful. The realisation came to Helen like a key slotting quietly into its lock. Her daughter was a beautiful young woman.
‘There’s something else,’ Alice said then, fishing the lemon slice from her drink to press it against the side of her glass. ‘I have another thing to tell you.’
Helen’s fears came tumbling back. Alice had given her the good news first. She’d saved the bombshell for after.
Alice raised her head and looked directly at Helen. ‘Mum, I’m … gay.’
Helen stared at her, dumbfounded. The words sat in the space between them, the last thing she’d been expecting. For what seemed like an awfully long time, neither of them spoke. A toilet flushed somewhere. A woman, or maybe a child, shouted something. A siren sounded distantly, three floors below them.
Finally, Helen found her voice. ‘Oh …’ she began, the word scratching in her throat, making her cough. She was aware of Alice’s eyes glued to her face as she caught her breath, trying to gather her thoughts.
Her daughter was gay; she liked women. The news wasn’t going to cause the earth to topple off its axis. Get a grip, Helen told herself fiercely. Whatever you say, don’t fuck this up.
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ she said. ‘I thought you were going to tell me you were pregnant.’
Alice blinked. Her anxious expression didn’t change.
‘That was a joke,’ Helen said. ‘It’s OK, I’m fine with it.’
‘Seriously? You don’t mind?’
‘Of course I don’t mind. You think I give a damn about that, as long as you’re happy?’
Alice’s eyes brimmed suddenly. ‘Wow,’ she said softly. ‘That might just be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’
Helen watched her thumbing away the tears, listened to her blaming them on the whiskey. She refused Alice’s offer of a second drink, still trying to feel her way around the revelation.
Alice was gay. Her daughter was gay. Why had the possibility never occurred to Helen? How could she not have guessed? No boyfriend all through her teens, not even a hint of one. Plenty of female friends, the odd male now and again, who never seemed interested in Alice that way. Had they all known? Was Helen the only one who hadn’t?
The news brought her little joy. How could it, when she knew the prejudices Alice would inevitably face, the ignorance she was bound to come across over the years? In a heterosexual-oriented world it was harder to be gay than straight, a lot harder.
And another realisation struck her, taking her by surprise: she’d expected, one day, to become a grandmother. Not for years, of course, not for at least another decade, but she’d assumed it would happen sometime. And she’d wanted it to happen, to see echoes of Cormac and herself in brand new little faces, to feel that they were being carried on into the next generation. Who would have imagined that she, of all people, would feel that way?
But whether she wanted them or not, grandchildren didn’t seem very likely now. A feeling of heaviness settled in her chest.
‘Why didn’t you tell me when you were home at Christmas?’
�
�I wanted to, but Frank was around, or Granny … and, anyway, you were still getting over being sick. It just didn’t seem like the right time.’
‘Well, I’m glad you’ve told me now.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’ Alice found Helen’s hand and squeezed it briefly. ‘For taking it so well, I mean.’
The two of them would probably never share a home again, but in due course Alice and Jackie, or whoever she ended up with, might move back to Dublin – or Helen and Frank, in the fullness of time, might buy a little holiday cottage in Wales. There were always ways of keeping your important people close to you.
‘Come on,’ Helen said, setting her empty glass on the counter. ‘We’d better find my B&B or they’ll give away my bed. And then you can take me to a nice restaurant and let me buy you dinner.’
And it wasn’t until much later – after they’d eaten bowls of pasta, after they’d taken a taxi back to the B&B, Helen’s tiredness making a walk impossible, after she’d waved Alice goodnight and watched her being driven off, after she’d climbed the stairs to her small single room – it wasn’t until then that she allowed herself to give vent to the tears that had been waiting to fall ever since she’d seen Alice standing in the arrivals hall at Cardiff airport, waiting for her mother.
And after they’d been shed for Alice and herself, for all the useless, angry years between them, the heaviness in her chest lifted and she fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
Sarah
‘I’m writing a cookbook for children,’ Sarah said. She couldn’t think why it hadn’t occurred to her. The minute she’d read Helen’s letter, it had seemed so obvious a solution.
You’re a trained cook. You cook for a living, for God’s sake. And you have two young children, so you know your target market, and exactly what level to pitch a cookbook at. What are you waiting for? If nothing else, it’ll keep you busy, take your mind off the crap that happened.
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