Jumping in Puddles

by Claire Allan

  He remembered the day she had told him, or at least the day he came home to find the note by the phone. It was such a fecking cliché. He cringed when he remembered it, and also cringed when he thought of how he had smiled when he saw the letter, thinking it must be some romantic little love note. He had lifted it and walked to the kitchen, pouring himself a tall glass of milk from the fridge and sitting down at the breakfast bar. And only then had he opened the letter, and found himself in the middle of what he could realistically describe as his worst nightmare.

  Dear Liam,

  I’m sorry to do this to you and I’m even more sorry to do it in this way.

  By now you may have guessed something is wrong. God knows, things haven’t been great between us for a long time and you must have felt, like I have, that living here lately has felt like living in a pressure cooker.

  The thing is, I’ve met someone else. I know that sounds awful and you probably won’t believe this, but I didn’t mean for anything to happen. But we’ve fallen in love and I tried, honestly, to fight what I was feeling because you are a decent man and I have never wanted to hurt you.

  I’ve realised though that life is for living and I wasn’t being fair to you, or me, or Poppy, to keep living a lie. She deserves two happy parents and to be raised in a happy home.

  I’ve gone – not to him. I need some time to think.

  I’ve not taken Poppy. I know she adores you and I would hate to mess her around when I’m so uncertain of what is going to happen. Please let her know I love her.

  I hope you understand.

  Love,

  Laura

  It was the “Love, Laura” bit that Liam really couldn’t understand. How could she love him if she was prepared to rip his heart out as he sat at the kitchen counter drinking fecking milk? His heart started to thump as the realisation of what he had just read started to seep in. His stomach sank to his boots as a rush of adrenalin flooded through his veins. He realised, as he knocked the milk over, that he was shaking.

  Now, as the memory flitted through his mind, he wondered just for the briefest of moments why he kept defending her. What she had done was indefensible.

  He hadn’t been aware of any tension, but then he wasn’t perhaps the most sensitive of souls.

  Yes, perhaps Laura had been a little quieter but she had been working longer hours and he thought she was just tired. He had offered to rub her feet, her shoulders or whatever else might have taken her fancy many times to ease the strain and while she had refused, he had just thought this was because she was stressed with work. He never, for one second, thought that she could be in love with someone else.

  Flicking through the TV channels he thought about how deeply unhappy he was with his life and while he was dreading the thought of it, he realised that he didn’t have anything to look forward to apart from the bus run to Derry,

  As long as no one expected him to dress up – because there wasn’t a bloody chance he would be dressing up as anything. He was a grown man, for God’s sake.

  19

  “Sure you can bring the wee one up in her buggy and we’ll all help you mind her,” Ruth urged as she sipped her tea in the community centre.

  Ciara wondered was it extremely sad that she was ridiculously excited at the possibility of a trip out at night.

  Lorraine would probably say she was being very irresponsible – keeping Ella up late and bringing her in the cold night air among the throngs of people who crowded into Derry to see the fireworks. But then, as Lorraine frequently reminded her, Ella was Ciara’s responsibility alone and surely if she wanted to take her daughter on a trip to Timbuktu it was her decision and hers alone.

  “You don’t think she’ll get too tired?” she asked, hoping Ruth would assure her it was not at all irresponsible to go with her gut feeling on this.

  “Well, I imagine she’ll be knackered all right – and Niamh’s two will be as well, but they can sleep on the way back.” Ruth seemed determined. Her face had lit up at the thought of the bus run, which Ciara could understand. She knew her friend wasn’t looking forward to spending Hallowe’en without her children.

  “Is Niamh coming tonight?” Liam asked, looking at the clock. It had gone seven thirty and Niamh would usually have been there by now.

  “I saw her in the shop today, but we didn’t really get a chance to talk,” Ciara said, shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe she wouldn’t be up for a trip to Derry?”

  “Nonsense,” Detta said, sitting down. “Of course she will be, and if she isn’t then we will just have to do our best to persuade her – just like we will you, missus.”

  Ciara smiled. She wasn’t going to need much persuading. Of course all her old school friends were going. Abby had talked about nothing else the whole way home from Letterkenny on Saturday. She was delighted with the sexy schoolgirl costume she had bought, but worried her dad wouldn’t let her out of the house in it. She had schemed with Ciara to leave the house in something more suitable and pick up her real outfit from Ciara’s house before getting on the bus.

  Ciara had felt completely jealous that she was going to miss out on all the craic, and while traipsing up the road with the rest of the village’s lone parents was not the way she really wanted to do it, it was better than nothing.

  “Okay then,” she smiled. “I’ll go. What will I dress Ella up as?”

  “I saw a wee bumble-bee costume in the Post Office earlier. It would be gorgeous on her,” Ruth said with a smile.

  “Well, that’s us sorted then,” Detta said with a grin. “We’ll just check with Niamh when she gets here and then I’ll make sure the mini-bus is ready to go. It should be a laugh.”

  “If you want,” Ruth offered, “you can come and stay with me after – you know, if your mother wouldn’t mind? Detta, you could come back too? I hate being in the house by myself and sure we could make a night of it.”

  Ciara wondered was there something actually wrong with her, a seventeen-year-old feeling a flurry of excitement at the thought of a night out of the house with some middle-aged women.

  “Oh fine then,” Liam chirped good-heartedly, “you plan your girly night and I’ll see to myself.”

  “Sure can’t Liam come too?” Ciara asked, cheered by their banter. It was refreshing not to be wailing over notepads and writing letters to themselves for once. The only thing taking away from the craic was that Niamh still hadn’t arrived.

  “Everyone can come,” Ruth answered. “We’ll even bob for apples if you want.”

  “I’d prefer to bob for vodka,” Detta grinned.

  Ciara laughed and wondered would it be at all possible for her to sneak in a couple of Bacardi Breezers. Though Lord knows, since Ella was born eleven months before, she had rarely touched a drink and she was likely to pass out after half a glass. A cheap date, and old before her time – this wasn’t exactly how she had imagined her teenage years.

  “Right, well, it doesn’t look as if Niamh will be joining us tonight, so we might as well get started,” Detta said, cutting through her thoughts.

  Ciara was relieved to see no sign of the dreaded notebooks.

  “Well, you’ll be delighted to know that tonight we won’t be writing letters,” Detta said. “I thought that, as well as talking about Hallowe’en, we could also have a good old natter about what brings us here anyway – our kids.”

  “God, I thought I was coming here to escape all that,” Ruth said, a grimace on her face.

  “Things not so good?” Detta said, sitting down opposite her and adopting her best listening-ear pose.

  “Well, to be honest, they aren’t awful but Eimear is giving me a few headaches at the moment. She seems intent on going off the rails.”

  Ciara felt herself blush. The memory of her conversation with Abby was still fresh and she was willing to bet that whatever Ruth thought her daughter was up to, things were likely to be much, much worse than that. If Abby was right, and Eimear was throwing herself at Ben Quinn, then she, Ciara
, had a notion Ruth would have more than headaches to deal with in the near future. Baby-shaped headaches, most likely.

  Ben Quinn was gorgeous. Every girl in school was madly in love with him and on the outside he could be charming. Ciara had been flattered when he’d shown an interest in her, but she’d found out quickly he was just using her. He treated her appallingly and she still burned with shame when she thought of their last encounter.

  He’d called her a slut, a slag and a whore. He hadn’t wasted the opportunity to throw in as many insults as possible and he’d left her crying on the beach. She had known, of course, he wasn’t going to be happy about the baby but she couldn’t have guessed just how unhappy he was going to be.

  As she had dressed that night, she had planned it all out. She would tell Ben and he would offer to support her and then they would, together, tell her mother and while there was every chance there would be some screaming and shouting, it would all work out in the end.

  She had tied her hair back from her face and put on her nicest, most flattering pink T-shirt with Little Miss Naughty on the front. She thought it was rather ironic really, the T-shirt, but she figured if she approached it all like it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, it might not be.

  They had strolled hand in hand up the beach and he had told her how much he loved kissing her. She had smiled, and run her fingers through his hair which did, she remembered, have just a little bit too much gel in it.

  When they were far enough away from their friends she had told him, in awkward, short sentences, that she was pregnant and he had erupted with rage.

  “I’m not going to do this,” he said, his face dark. “I have plans. And don’t even think about telling anyone I’m the daddy ’cos I’ll tell them all you’re a slut.”

  And he had wasted no time in doing just that: in a pre-emptive strike of extreme shit-headedness he told all their friends he had dumped her because she had been sleeping around. She didn’t have the strength to argue that she hadn’t been and sure wasn’t she carrying his baby to prove it. She just got on with it.

  No, Ben Quinn was Bad News. With a capital B and a capital N.

  Looking at the worry on Ruth’s face, Ciara knew she was going to have to say something – but she didn’t know that anyone would believe her. Only the very unlucky few saw the side of Ben she had seen that night on the beach – the rest of them thought he was the catch of Rathinch.

  She took a deep breath, vowed to sleep on it, and proceeded to tell the group how Ella had been a wee dote that evening.

  * * *

  “Did you have a good night?” Lorraine asked as Ciara walked through the door. She was sitting on the sofa, feet up on the battered footstool, drinking from a bottle of beer.

  Ciara flopped down beside her and looked at the TV. Some cheesy American-style soap opera was on and Lorraine was clearly engrossed.

  Cuddling close to her mother, putting her own feet up on the sofa, Ciara replied: “It was fine, Mum. They’re going to have a Hallowe’en party on Friday. I think I’m going to take Ella and I might stay over in Ruth’s after.”

  She looked at her mother and chided herself. She felt as if she was asking for permission, which was completely nuts. She was a mother herself – if she wanted to go to a party with her middle-aged friends then she would go to a party with her middle-aged friends!

  “Sounds nice,” Lorraine answered, gazing at the TV.

  “It does, doesn’t it?”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes more.

  Ciara looked at her mother who had one hand resting on the remote control and the other wrapped around her bottle of beer. Her hair was curled, hanging softly around her face and she had a look of concentration on her face. There were lines there – but she was still young. Still up for a bit of craic. It suddenly hit Ciara that it was wrong that she’d even been thinking about telling Ruth all about Ben when her own mother didn’t know.

  “Mum?” she started, her heart thumping in her chest.

  “Yes, pet.”

  “Can we talk, please?”

  “Just give me fifteen minutes,” Lorraine said, raising the bottle to her lips. “I want to see the end of this. And then I’m all yours.”

  * * *

  Ciara remembered the last time she had a big talk with her mother. She still cringed at the memory – at just how awkward it had been.

  “Can I make you a cup of tea, Mum?” she’d asked, her mouth dry. She fancied a cup of tea herself. It was what you did in stressful situations, wasn’t it? Drink tea. Sweet, milky tea.

  “I’m grand, love,” Lorraine answered, staring up from the novel she was lost in. “I’ve just had one.”

  “Are you sure?” Ciara asked. She realised she was putting off the inevitable but right now the inevitable was giving her the heebies.

  “I’m sure,” Lorraine replied, putting her book down and looking at her daughter. “Are you okay, love?”

  Ciara instinctively put her hands to her stomach and then realised that might look completely obvious and returned them to her hips. But her hands felt like butter and slid across her body uncomfortably, trying to find a place where they gave nothing away. She realised, of course, the irony in not wanting to give anything away considering the bombshell she was about to drop.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but instead of a coherent sentence she bubbled out a huge watery sob.

  “Oh Jesus, Ciara, what’s wrong? Are you hurt? Has someone hurt you?” Lorraine’s eyes flashed with protectiveness and she jumped from her seat and grabbed her daughter into a hug.

  It should have been comforting, but it was mildly suffocating. Between the fluffiness of her mother’s blue jumper and sobs wracking her body, Ciara wondered if she was just about to pass out. She pulled her head back and swallowed hard, gulping at air. She had to do this, and she had to do it now. There was no easy way to get around it.

  “I’m okay, Mum,” she said, sitting down.

  Lorraine sat beside her on the faded leather sofa and took her hand. “You don’t look okay, or sound okay,” she said softly.

  “Oh, Mum,” Ciara replied. “Don’t kill me. I’m pregnant.”

  * * *

  There was no blue jumper this time. Ciara guessed her mother was fully expecting her to tell her she was up the stick again. Much as she tried to be supportive and understanding, Ciara always felt her mother was waiting for the next disaster to strike.

  “I want to talk to you about Ella. And Ella’s daddy,” she said.

  Lorraine switched off the TV and looked at her. “I was wondering when this would come up.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry, Mum, for not telling you. But he told me no one would believe me.”

  Lorraine looked aghast. “He didn’t, you know, rape you? Did he?”

  “No, no, Mum. Nothing like that,” Ciara said, fiddling with the zip on her fleece jacket. She watched her mother sag in relief. “But he told me that he would make sure everyone knew I was a slag and you were disappointed in me enough, Mum. I didn’t want you taking his side too.”

  “As if I would,” Lorraine said, dejectedly.

  “You were pretty mad.”

  “And so would you be, madam, if Ella there came home one day and told you the same.”

  The thought made Ciara’s stomach turn. “I suppose,” she said. “But I did think I loved him, Mum. And yes, I was stupid. I can’t say I wouldn’t do it again because then I wouldn’t have Ella but, you know, I wish it wasn’t him and I wish I was a whole lot older.”

  “No point in wishing,” Lorraine said. “I wish I was a size 12 with Cindy Crawford’s body and Julia Roberts’ smile but it isn’t going to get me anywhere.”

  “But he’s a pig, Mum. He’s a selfish pig.”

  “Does he – this pig – have a name then?”

  “It’s Ben, Mum. Ben Quinn.”

  Ciara had obviously heard the expression “you could have heard a pin drop” before, but now she knew what it meant. He
r mother‘s jaw dropped in an exaggerated manner. The shock was plain to see and she knew what was coming next.

  “But he’s such a nice boy.”

  “No, no, Mum. He’s not a nice boy. He is a pig. Can I swear?”

  Lorraine nodded silently.

  “He is a fecking pig. He told me that if I told everyone he was the father he would tell them I had slept my way round the school. He would kick up such a fuss and no one would believe me. He was nasty, Mum. He called me every name under the sun.”

  The silent nodding had turned to a silent shaking of the head.

  “The wee bastard,” Lorraine said, eventually. “I’ll kill him. I’ll fecking kill him.”

  She stood up and for a moment Ciara wondered if her mother was indeed going to rush out and kill him, right there and then.

  “Much as I would love you to kill him, Mum, please leave it. He’s not worth it. And I’ll tell you something, Ella does not need him in her life – not when she has us. I’m only telling you because he is working his charms on someone else and I have to warn her. I didn’t want to let you down by leaving you out in the cold on this.”