by Claire Allan
“I’m Cinderella,” Maisie said. “I dressed up.”
“You’re always a princess to me, Toots McDoots. I love you very much.”
“I love you too, Mammy, but I have to go now. I have to go play. Bye. Bye. Love you, bye.”
With that the line went dead and Ava was left feeling the most-in-love mother in the entire universe ever. It wasn’t lost on her that it was so much easier to feel completely and utterly in love with your child when you were several hundred miles away from them. From a distance all the early mornings, tantrums and food fads were forgotten. There was never a child like Maisie. She was perfection in every way and Ava missed her terribly. Brushing a hormonal tear away, she got up, finished getting dressed and slicked some lip gloss on before setting out for dinner in a French restaurant.
“You’ll be okay if Jean-Luc takes me out for a few hours?” Hope asked, spearing a sautéed mushroom with her fork.
Ava nodded. “Of course. I’ll get on with organising here and I might even go for a swim in that pool and perhaps have a lazy afternoon nap. Don’t underestimate the joys of a sly nap. I don’t often get them with Maisie around. She hasn’t taken an afternoon snooze since she was eighteen months old. It will be bliss. And if Idon’t sleep I’ll sit on that terrace and read Wuthering Heights. Or try and find the missing letter from today. I mean, we pretty much turned that room upside down and nada.”
“Yeah,” Hope said, pulling a face. “She could have left them somewhere a little more obvious. She obviously wanted to make sure we did a good job on her house. No half efforts allowed. For all her quirkiness she was a proper clean freak.”
“Nothing wrong with being a clean freak,” Ava laughed. “All the best people are anally retentive.”
“Not all the best people,” Hope laughed, thinking of the mess she had left at home in her office.
“Okay, some of the best people,” Ava said. “But, seriously,don’t worry about me. I will be fine. It’s really not a hardship.”
“As long as you’re sure?”
“I couldn’t be more sure. The clean freak in me will also get started on the kitchen. I’ll be happy as a pig in the exact opposite of shite.”
“We’ll get the study finished before I go. Jean-Luc said he would pick me up at twelve so we have plenty of time.”
“Grand job!” Ava said, sipping from her coffee.
It had just gone nine and the girls had enjoyed a nice lie-in – anything after six thirty was considered absolutely luxury by Ava these days. She couldn’t quite believe it when she had woken, lifted her phone and looked at the time. She had smiled and snuggled back under the covers for a few minutes, just enjoying the blissful silence. There was no Peppa Pig blasting from the living room or danger of being cannon-balled by an overenthusiastic Maisie ready to greet the morning with her usual enthusiasm. Yes, of course she still missed her but there were some things she was absolutely okay with missing.
Finishing her coffee and lifting the plates to take them to the sink, she turned to Hope and said: “Do you ever wonder why Betty chose us? I mean really? There are so many in our family – she could have chosen any one of them.”
“I don’t really know,” Hope said, adding with a wink, “apart from the fact that we are clearly the best ones. But I’m glad she did. I’m enjoying myself – which, if you knew me, you would be surprised at. I mean, obviously the house is gorgeous and the South of France beats the suburbs of Belfast any day of the week, but being here – sorting through things, making arrangements. It’s not exactly me, but I’m enjoying it.”
“Me too,” Ava said, already looking forward to the day ahead. “Me too.”
Still in her pyjamas and dressing-gown, Hope was going through the last of the drawers in Betty’s study. The room was looking a little bare now – books stacked in piles and stored in boxes. Ava had taken down the sketch drawings of Derry which had hung on the walls and stored them away, leaving a fine trace of where they once were.
Opening the bottom drawer, Hope pulled out a cardboard box which was a bit battered around the edges. Opening it, she saw it was filled with old snapshots. Faded in colour, a plethora of interesting fashions and haircuts sat before her. Various faces she vaguely recognised as her relatives, only much younger. Babies. Toddlers. Brooke Park in the heart of Derry with Gwyn’s Institute looming large. France. Paris. A faded Eiffel Tower. She lifted one, a younger Betty, her hair swept back off her face, her smile broad, grinning at the camera amidst the flowers of her garden. Turning the picture over she saw Betty’s handwriting, spidery and fading. “Taken by my love, April 1983.” She turned it over again and looked at her aunt’s broad smile. It said everything. Her eyes were warm, her smile glowing, her entire demeanour relaxed. She was clearly at ease with this man in front of her taking her picture. She was clearly madly, passionately in love with Claude and Hope felt her heart lurch. She wanted to look at someone like that and know that they loved her back and that she could trust them to never, ever hurt her. She slipped the picture into the pocket of her dressing-gown and continued looking.
Among the photos was one of a family group – Hope gasped as she recognised her mother and father, holding a bonny baby with a head topped with tight blonde curls which looked not unlike a busted bag of Quavers and an expression on her face midway between extreme joy and a grimace. Hope recognised the baby at once as her smaller self – with the smile wide across her face, the trademark Scottgrin taught to her by her doting daddy.
“Ava!” she called, waving the photo as if shaking it would make it develop more and bring the faded colours back to light.
Looking at it again, she focused on the second, fluffy-headed baby beside her, a solemn expression on her face as she sucked her thumb. And she was pretty sure that was her Auntie Cora grinning with the serious baby on her knee. Oh, this had to be Ava! Oh, this was spooky. She called again before re-examining the photo. Betty, her hair tied up in a ponytail, her faded flared jeans scraping the floor, stood at the side staring at the camera intently – a look of almost defiance on her face. Oh this was precious – all of them together!
“Ava,” she called again, jumping to her feet as her cousin walked into the room. “Is this you? And your mammy? Is this all of us together?”
Ava looked at the photo and gasped, pulling it closer to examine. “Jesus H Christ and the Wee Donkey, so it is! Oh my God! I was a sour-looking wee shite, wasn’t I?”
“Ah, sure we were beautiful!” Hope said, examining the picture yet again. “There’s me like a mentalist with my gummy grin, you looking like you are about to tell us all to sit down and behave ourselves and Betty looking like an ad for Top Shop circa 1977. Gorgeous, the very lot of us!”
“We should get copies,” Ava said, smiling and sitting down. “That’s just priceless.”
“I better make sure not to lose it,” Hope said, resting it on the desk, glancing back at it and sitting down on the floor again to tip out the remaining photographs.
It was the crisp whiteness of the envelope against the yellowing photographic paperwhich caught her attention. “Ooooh! Ooooh! I think . . .” She delved in and turned the envelope over and sure as anything there it was, Betty’s handwriting. “We’ve got it! Oh, I feel all like Anneka Rice when she won one of her challenges. Surely a prize should come with these letters!”
“Ah, the letter is prize enough,” Ava said.
“Easy for you to say, you got diamonds in yours,” Hope said with a laugh. No, she wasn’t really jealous that Betty thought it more likely that a two-year-old would get married than she ever would.
“What does it say?” Ava said, pulling her feet onto the footstool in front of her.
Hope tore open the letter, hauling out two sheets of paper. Scanning them, she saw mention of a wedding and midnight flit and it all seemed terribly exciting.
“Oooooh, more on her and Claude and the big romance!”
My dear girls,
So Claude and I decided we would ma
rry and we would move together to France. We didn’t have much time to get things organised – we didn’t want to wait around Derry any longer than we absolutely had to. Claude had been able to put the boys off a few times but they were starting to get impatient. The threats were less implied and more obvious.
My parents didn’t react well to the news. You’re not to feel disappointed in them or annoyed with them. That was just how things were and, well, I had given them enough trouble in my time. I don’t know how I had expected them to react. I suppose I wanted them to be happy for me – and for us. I was settling down and they had long since wanted me to settle down.
Then again, I wasn’t settling down in quite the way they wanted me to. But I hadn’t done anything the way they wanted me to. I was in their eyes a handful. I can’t deny I made some wrong choices in my life. But Claude, well, he made me want to be a better person. He made me want to make things okay. I wished my parents could see that. But they couldn’t see past the upset that my leaving would cause.
Daddy didn’t come with me to the church. Your parents did, girls. They came and they stood beside me. But there was a gaping hole where Mammy and Daddy should have been. We didn’t even get married in Derry. We didn’t want any fuss. We didn’t want people talking – surmising that a shotgun wedding meant I had got into trouble.
So we went over the border to Donegal. And I wore a dress I picked out of a charity shop the week before. Cora told me it was “dootsy” but I loved it. I’m sure it was about twenty years old, with little lace-covered buttons and the daintiest of detailing around the neckline. Cora made me a bouquet – I swear the flowers looked like they had been picked out of someone’s garden but I felt like a million dollars all the same. There was none of that going to a salon to have your hair done in those days, or your make-up, or false tans. I did my own hair, dressing it with some silk flowers, and slipped my feet into a pair of cream shoes which were the only new items I wore on that day. None of that mattered, though.
Standing at the top of the aisle, before the priest spoke, Claude asked me was I sure. He knew he was asking a lot. I think for that one millisecond the thought crossed my mind that this might be the wrong thing – that this was going to make things tough.
I looked atCora, and she smiled at me. Ava, you know your mam’s smile. It makes everything okay and I knew I was doing the exact right thing and that everything would be as well as it could be at home.
I took a deep breath and we did it – we got married.
God, I remember the glint of the sun off my wedding ring when we stepped out into the sunshine. My hand felt heavy. I felt a bit like a child playing dress-up but it felt right. Hope, your daddy doused us in confetti. I was still finding it the next day. That stuff gets everywhere. I tried my best to ignore the fact our parents weren’t there and Claude kissed me.
There was no fancy reception. Just a plate of chips in a nearby café. Sure they looked at us like we were cracked in the head when we walked in. Me in my old wedding dress. Claude in his best suit. Clattering our chips in red sauce and vinegar and laughing as we ate them.
You girls would have been so proud of your parents. They paid for us to have a honeymoon of sorts – a night in a hotel in Moville which had a squeaky bed. We didn’t even have to do anything bar sit on it and it would squeak as if we were having an orgy. Which would have been okay, had the two matronly ladies staying in the room next door not started saying the Rosary loudly if we so much as breathed on the damn thing. Still, we always laughed about it. We dined out on that story for a long time afterwards.
When we came back to Derry we visited my parents. I suppose I was still looking for their blessing. Our flights were booked – from Dublin to Paris. All my worldly possessions had been packed up. I suppose I wanted them to say they understood. And that they loved me. And they wanted me to be happy.
My mother, she wouldn’t talk to me at first. Daddy, he just sat, waiting for her lead I suppose. When she spoke she said she would never understand how I could walk away without looking back.
She didn’t know that I was always looking back. Always. But I can’t say I regretted it – not in that way. I often wondered what would have happened if things had been different. God, I thought about it. Claude and I, we talked about it. Bu we knew we had done the only thing we could.
I told her I loved her, and then, Hope, I went to see your parents. I told your daddy how I loved him and how he was so very lucky to have you and that he bloody well better keep in touch because I wanted to hear all about you.
Then, Ava, I went to see your mam and you and say goodbye and I’ll always remember this . . . always . . . you climbed up on my knee just before I left and gave me the biggest, sloppiest kiss and told me you loved me in your baby babble. After that, I cuddled your mam. Sure you know what sisters are like . . . and we cried. I cried like I thought my heart would split in two right there and then until Claude told me it was absolutely time to go.
So we went and we came here . . . and we were happy. God, I know this is all sounding like a very sad story but we were happy. So happy. And I kept that dress and I’m sure there is probably still confetti caught up in the lace somewhere.
It wasn’t the fanciest of weddings but it was perfect for us. And I wouldn’t change it for the world.
I suppose, that is enough for now. Until the next time . . .
With all my love,
Betty
xxx
When Hope finished reading, they sat for a few minutes. Each lost in her own thoughts. Each thinking of the lace wedding dress, and the emotional goodbye, and thinking Betty did the absolute right thing and thinking they just wished she was there so they could tell her, face to face, that they would have been right behind her.
Standing in her room surveying the clothes she had packed and wondering what would be a suitable outfit to wear for the first day of the rest of her life, Hope selected a pair of dark-grey jersey harem pants, a white string vest, some chunky beads and bangles and a pair of gold gladiator sandals.
She dressed, letting her hair dry naturally and settle into soft curls. With her sunglasses perched on her head and a wee dash of perfume between her breasts she felt empowered and even able to push all negative ‘I’m going to die alone’ feelings to the back of her mind. This was it – a new her. Betty had balls and so would she. She did a little happy dance as she slicked some Urban Decay Sin across her eyelids, then she skipped down the stairs and waited for Jean-Luc to arrive and the rest of her life to start.
Chapter 22
The house was blissfully quiet as Ava worked her way through Betty’s large kitchen. I would kill for a kitchen like this, she thought to herself, all big and homely with a dresser filled with mismatched and colourful crockery which screamed that this room had been the centre of the house.
Ava wasn’t much of a cook. It wasn’t that she couldn’t. She just didn’t often get the time. She tried – about once a month – to throw herself into whatever recipes Jamie or Nigella were spouting at the time but, after an hour and a half making a soup or stew that Maisie would turn her nose up at in favour of potato waffles or plain mashed potato and gravy, she would give up. At last count she had seventeen cookbooks gathering dust in the cupboard beside her cooker which she rarely looked at. Toast though. She did good toast and sure everyone loves toast.
Maybe, she thought, if she had more time she would have one of those kitchens she always dreamed of. One that smelled of freshly baked bread and percolating coffee and was the kind of place where peoplegathered over a kitchen island to laugh, share secrets and oooh and aah at her culinary skills.
If the study was Hope’s favourite room, this was without a doubt Ava’s and she was kind of glad that she had it all to herself. She was loving opening every cupboard and drawer and seeing what she could find. It seemed Betty didn’t have a cookbook, or seventeen of them for that matter. She did have a notebook, scrawled on in French and English with occasional doodles and splas
hes of whatever sauce she had been working on. Ava flicked through it and her mouth started to water. She would keep that book and she would, she vowed, use it to inspire her to be more adventurous in her kitchen and Maisie would just have to widen her tastes too. Smiling, she sat the book on the worktop and started working through the drawers, the second of which contained nothing but two letters –eureka! – another letter! Although after the emotional rollercoaster of the last letter she could have done with a little reprieve.
Seeing Betty’s trademark handwriting, she smiled and looked upwards. “I could do with a day off! I’m pregnant, Betty. And emotional. And you have a way with words.”
But she was intrigued. This time, instead of being addressed to ‘My dear girls’, each letter bore a name. Ava felt a swell of emotion as she saw her own name because she knew, just absolutely knew, that this was going to be something special and personal and a link to the aunt she didn’t really feel she deserved.
Her second instinct, after begging for a day off, was to tear open the letter and devour it as quickly as she could but then she thought, no, stop, wait, savour it. She boiled the kettle, standing staring out the window as it rattled and hissed to its climax. Dropping a tea bag into a delicate china cup from the dresser, she poured in the milk and hot water and waited for the liquid to turn the required murky shade of beige.
She lifted both it and the letter and walked to the terrace where she sat for a moment, allowing the sun to warm her face. Then slowly she opened the letter and pulled out the latest find from Betty. This one was different. It was special.
My darling Ava,
I’m glad you have found this. I know it was kind of a bit silly of me to leave so many letters around the house and hope you would find them. Jean-Luc said I should have left them all out – or in fact just written one big long letter which said it all. But I didn’t want to do that. Writing these letters has become a little hobby for me lately. They are my way of writing it all down – my life, what happened, my regrets, my joys. And I know I can share all of that with you and Hope and you won’t think I’m just a mad old woman.