by Marian Keyes
If Mum was there for any of Pop’s handymannery, the soundtrack was of stifled laughter, but mostly my memories are of having a knot in my stomach. It’s hardly surprising that I have chronic gastritis now – and that I was in love with Hugh’s entire family: I used to fantasize about growing up in that kind of home.
In our house we lived on baked potatoes and beans because it was all Maura could make. But Hugh’s mum baked cakes and had a different dinner allocated to each day of the week. Sometimes I made Hugh recite it.
‘But you know it off by heart,’ he’d complain.
‘Ah, say it, Hugh!’
‘Okay. Sunday, roast chicken. Monday, curry made with the leftovers. Tuesday, stew. Wednesday, shepherd’s pie. Thursday, spaghetti. Friday, fish and chips and –’
‘On Saturday, cold meats and salad.’ I’d sigh with bliss.
‘But it was so boring, Amy, and Wednesdays were the pits because shepherd’s pie is the worst dinner ever.’
‘Can our life be like that?’ I asked. ‘When we move to Dublin and we’re a family and all grown-up?’
‘Mmmaybeeee. But no shepherd’s pie.’
‘Grand. No shepherd’s pie. But rigid routines, Hugh.’ I was gleeful with anticipation.
Carried on a tide of optimism, but woefully unprepared, we arrived in Dublin in 2000 and into the three-bedroom house in Dundrum where we still live now. Immediately I started my new job, where I found myself working with Tim and Alastair.
As well as having gorgeous parents, Hugh had two older brothers and one younger, all deliciously normal. Neeve was lovingly welcomed, even though she took pains to remind them, ‘You’re not my real granny. You’re not my real uncle.’
‘You’re right,’ Fake Granny Sandie or Fake Uncle Carl would say. ‘We know we’re not the real ones, but is it okay if we love you too?’
‘I suppose,’ Neeve would concede. ‘So long as you remember I’m a chip off the old block.’
(At that time, the only clothes Neeve would let us dress her in were the Rotherham United football kit – a red top, white shorts and red knee socks. Her red-gold hair was cropped and she looked so like Richie that sometimes people recognized him in her. A Rotherham youth in Dublin for a stag weekend declared, ‘It’s a Richie Aldin mini-me.’
‘He’s my daddy.’
‘I can tell, son. You’re a chip off the old block.’
Neeve whispered to me, ‘He thought I was a boy.’ She was buzzing. ‘What does the chip thing mean?’
For years when she was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, Neeve would reply, ‘A professional football player, like my daddy.’)
To my heartbreak, Real Granny, Real Grandpa and Real Uncle Aldin resisted my attempts to introduce them to Neeve. Richie, still playing football for one of those up-north teams, had got married again and the Aldins seemed to have decided on collective amnesia regarding his first marriage. On behalf of Neeve, it was like razors across my soul.
Meanwhile, my brothers and sisters overran our lives, with well-intentioned but non-boundaried interference.
They gave practical help – dinners for the freezer, ladders and buckets to wallpaper the house, a loan of a car until we’d found time to buy our own. More importantly, they offered financial help because – who knew? – buying a house in the same month as setting up a recording studio could leave you perilously short of cash.
Maura lent us money and so did Pop. He offered it – I’d never have asked because if you asked Pop for anything, he automatically refused. He wasn’t a bad man, just innately contrary.
Trying to get the house sorted in time for the new baby while working long hours was insanely ambitious and I was still unpacking delivery crates when my waters broke. ‘It’s too soon,’ I cried. ‘Come on, let’s do one more box, while I can!’
‘No!’ Hugh was wild with panic. ‘No more crates. You’re going to the fucking hospital.’
Kiara was born after a six-hour labour, which was almost pain-free – starting as she meant to go on, always such an obliging child and nothing like Neeve’s entry to the world, which had been a thirty-four-hour torture-fest.
Then I was home from the hospital and, considerate though Kiara was, she was still a tiny baby, and Hugh was setting up the studio, and Neeve was confused and all was chaos. Nothing felt solid – the ground was like sand slipping under our feet, and we never managed the rigid routines of my fantasies.
I’d plan to draw up schedules, I even tried to schedule time to do my schedules, but it was impossible. We were short of everything – time, energy and money, especially money, we’ve never yet achieved financial equilibrium – but we did fine.
Hugh was properly hands-on with Kiara (and with Neeve, when she’d let him). He was obedient and good at following orders. ‘I’ll do anything you want, but I need instructions.’
He could cook, sort of, if you gave him a recipe, but when it emerged that he could sew it scared the daylights out of me. There had to be a catch, right? (I don’t mean sewing like the embroidery that hipster-men do, but he could attach buttons to shirts and name badges to Neeve’s school uniform.) ‘Mum taught me to sew so I could take care of myself living on my own.’ (His mum was ‘crafty’ and it was how she and I bonded. She was ‘a great knitter’ and my thing was sewing, but we did a felting course together and for a while every birthday and Christmas present from us was a peculiar felt hat or bag.)
It shouldn’t be worthy of comment that a man helps in the home, but Hugh fulfilled his duties so diligently that there were times I actually felt sorry for him. I remember stumbling down the stairs one night, it was gone two, and Hugh was in our kitchen, dolloping homemade puréed carrot into tiny Tupperware pots to be frozen for Kiara’s dinners.
‘What are you at?’ I asked.
‘You left a note to do them.’
‘I didn’t mean in the middle of the night, Hugh. They could have waited till tomorrow.’
‘But I’ll be gone first thing.’
‘Cripes. Okay.’ I started helping to snap lids on to them and I had to laugh. ‘Oh, Hugh, look at you! It’s not so long since you were a single man with all of Soho at your sexual disposal. Now you’re buried in Dublin suburbia, father to two young girls, one of them not even yours. Aren’t you great to “take her on”?’
The ‘take her on’ was our in-joke because Pop had actually said to Hugh, ‘Fair play for taking on another chap’s child. You wouldn’t catch me doing it.’
And even if no one else articulated it, it was alluded to every time they gave me the full-on heart stare, squeezed my shoulder too hard and said, ‘That’s a good man you’ve got there, Amy. A really good man.’
‘And here you are in the middle of the night, puréeing carrot – where did it all go so wrong?’
He looked up and smiled. ‘Babe, you and me, I’m all in. A hundred per cent. Both feet.’
13
‘Mum!’ Kiara sounds alarmed. ‘Get dressed.’
Blearily I look at her. What day is it? Monday? Time for work? No, it’s still Sunday – I’d fallen asleep, probably because I haven’t slept properly for the past week, but it’s always a mistake to sleep in the middle of the afternoon: it takes ages for me to wake up and then I can’t sleep that night.
‘C’mon,’ Kiara says. ‘Time for the cinema!’
Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. I can’t go. Several Facebook people will be at the cinema, they’ll all have seen my post – I’ll be the centre of attention. ‘Honey, would you mind –’
‘I would,’ she says. ‘This is our last outing as a family for fuck knows how long so, yes, I would mind.’
I spring from the bed. Kiara never swears and she always puts others first. But her life as she knows it is about to be interrupted, maybe permanently. I lurch towards the bathroom.
‘Hop in the shower,’ she says. ‘I’ll make you coffee and choose your clothes.’
‘Thanks.’ My tongue feels too big for my mouth.
&nb
sp; I stand under the hot water, glad Kiara has been straight with me. I’ve been given a loud and clear message: falling apart is not an option. I’m not the only person affected by Hugh going: my responsibilities to Kiara, Sofie and Neeve come before any responsibility to myself.
She’s standing by with coffee and two dresses – a vaguely steampunk midi-length dark blue one, and a vaguely steampunk midi-length dark red one. My ‘personal shopper’ in Help the Aged is a great woman for sourcing Victorian-style items, which is all good so long as I don’t over-accessorize. With a mini top-hat, for example. Or a medicine-bag handbag.
‘Which one?’ Kiara holds up both dresses.
I’d have been happy in jeans, but Kiara, intuitive as always, sees the power of good clothing.
In fact … ‘Fuckit, get my Finery dress!’
‘Wow. The heavy guns!’
Kiara pulls out an ivy-dark, high-necked, ruffle-bodiced midi, as sexy as a sack. Hugh has never minded me shunning slinky body-con. He’s actively steered me towards shin-length dresses with statement sleeves because he knows that’s what I’m comfortable in. Men like him are rare.
Yeah, I think, so rare that he actually doesn’t exist. After all, he’s leaving me to spend time with girlies who’ll probably be running around in cut-off shorts and teeny-tiny Lycra sheaths. Quite disconsolate, I pull on some tights.
‘Shoes?’ Kiara asks. ‘Your mary-janes?’
I hesitate. A while ago there had been some article saying that no woman over the age of seventeen should wear mary-janes, and ever since I’d felt apologetic about mine. Another article had said you should find your look and stick to it, which is what I’d been trying to do, but the mary-janes piece haunted me.
‘Or your Miu Miu boots?’ She has picked up on my hesitation.
‘The boots,’ I say quickly.
They’re the best boots in the whole world – stompy, chunky-heeled black lace-ups, they’d been a gift to myself to celebrate winning the Perry White contract and even then I’d had to wait for the 60 per cent off sale. In theory I’m at least twenty years too old for Miu Miu but these boots work so I ignore any shouts of ‘Oi, mutton!’
In fairness, apart from my internal voices, the only person who actually mocks me is Neeve and I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel that my feet are two sizes smaller than hers because she steals all my other good stuff. (Then Kiara steals it back and deposits it in my lap like a faithful dog.)
‘This bag?’ Kiara presents a small pretty clutch.
‘Too needy.’ Today calls for a bag that can take care of itself. My hands might be required – a sudden unwelcome image of me shoving my way through a throng, all clamouring to know the grisly details of Hugh’s holiday, flashes like a horror film.
‘This?’ She presents my sturdy satchel.
‘Perfect.’
We aren’t going to a normal cinema, where you sit among a crowd of texting teenage boys chomping their way through giant hot-dogs. This is a cinema club, held in our local theatre at five o’clock every Sunday during the school term. It started up again last week after the summer break. The movies are (you may have suspected this) foreign and, between the craft beers and Basque-inspired tapas, the whole business is mortifyingly middle-class.
But the girls like it. In fact, honesty compels me to admit that I like it. The films themselves are a mixed bag: some are charming and some – particularly the Iranian ones – downright baffling. But the best thing is that Neeve often comes along and observes a ceasefire. After the film, more often than not with Sofie’s Jackson also in tow, we go to Wagamama and discuss how mental the film was (if it had been and, happily, it usually had).
In its ordinary way, the whole ritual makes me grateful for everything, and one short week ago, it had summed up my life. Now it’s horrifying that I hadn’t savoured every wonderful second of it. Like everyone, my focus had been on my worries – Neeve carrying on with ‘My Real Dad is the Best Man Ever’, poor Sofie and her struggles with food, and my perpetual anxieties about money. Instead I should have been full of gratitude.
‘Come on!’ Hugh shouts from downstairs. ‘The car park will be full!’
You know, I’m even nostalgic about his perpetual irritation from living with a household of tardy women.
‘Is Sofie coming today?’ I ask Kiara.
‘I don’t know. She’s not answering Dad’s texts.’
She was ignoring mine too, and I’m suddenly furious with Hugh all over again because he’s not just leaving me he’s leaving all of us. I’ve always found it easier to be angry on someone else’s behalf. Poor Sofie, poor little Sofie …
14
Fourteen years ago
Hugh, Neeve, Kiara and I were lurching on with our new life in Dublin, perpetually exhausted and focused on some far-off day in the future when everything would be under control. Then, just after Kiara’s second birthday, three-year-old Sofie arrived in Ireland.
Joe had left Urzula when Sofie was only a few weeks old. Urzula had done her best to support herself and Sofie in Latvia, but it had proved impossible. After three years of hardship, she’d got a job waitressing on a cruise ship (this was before she’d discovered her true calling as a fatso-botherer). She’d make money but she couldn’t take her daughter with her.
So Sofie was despatched to Joe, who had moved back to Dublin.
She arrived semi-feral – she hadn’t been potty-trained, she barely spoke, wouldn’t make eye contact, and if she ate at all, it was with her hands. It was appalling and shameful: this was my niece. I should have known about this and done something to help.
Super-quickly, Joe discovered that he couldn’t hold down a full-time job and take care of his little girl. Which was utter bullshit because if he’d been a woman he’d have been expected to make it work. Lots of women did. Lots of men too, in fairness. But not Joe.
He took to foisting Sofie on Maura, Derry or me. Even though we all made fun of Maura, she had a heart of gold – but being in charge of young children distressed her. ‘It re-triggers my traumatic childhood. It’s why I’ve had no children of my own.’ (Maura has had a lot of therapy. For all the good it has done her. Well, at least she understands her rages. That must count for something.)
As for Derry, she correctly intuited that, as a single woman with no dependants, she was the likeliest candidate to pick up most of the slack – and no way was she having it. Derry’s most prized asset was her independence.
Which left me. And Hugh, of course. And from the word go, the only person Sofie seemed to trust was Hugh.
There are some people who have that quality – dogs can usually sense them. Like, if I was with Hugh in a roomful of people and a dog walked in, you’d almost see Champ thinking, Hey, I like this one, and heading straight for Hugh.
So, when Joe dropped Sofie off at our house, she’d stand in the corner, staring at the floor and slowly, on stealthy little feet, she’d move closer to Hugh. She’d climb on to the couch and lean against him and, after a while, he’d lift his arm and she’d press her tiny bones against his T-shirted belly. Hugh was the only one who could persuade her to eat, and no one but Hugh was permitted to comb her tangled white-blonde hair.
When Joe returned to pick her up – always late and often very late – she’d put her little hands on Hugh’s beardy face and cover it with kisses, then, weeping silent, alarmingly grown-up tears, let herself be led away.
‘How is Hugh so good with kids?’ Steevie asked me.
‘Haven’t a notion. He’s the second youngest in his family, so it’s not like he’s learnt by taking care of littlies.’
‘Maybe he’s just kind.’ Steevie sounded doubtful.
‘Maybe he is …’
A solution for Sofie was a constant worry. She spent so much time in our house that the notion of her officially becoming part of the family was looking inevitable. But Hugh had already ‘taken on’ another man’s child – not that he ever made it seem that way. From the word go, he’d approached N
eeve with an open heart (which was far from reciprocated, let me tell you).
But Hugh and I seemed to share the same brain, so it wasn’t a huge surprise when, early one Saturday morning, he gently shook me awake. ‘Let’s go now before it gets too busy,’ he said. ‘We’re buying Sofie a bed. She needs to live with us.’
I thought my heart would burst with love for him.
We decided she could share Kiara’s room until we had the cash to convert the attic, then bought a little white bed, which we painted pink because Sofie was very, very girly. A suitable duvet cover was harder to come by: nothing was pretty enough.
‘Could you do your Amy magic?’ Hugh asked. ‘Could you make one with the shiny, sparkly stuff in your sewing box?’
I hoarded offcuts of lustrous fabric and items that could only be called ‘haberdashery’ – spangly flowers, glittery ribbons and crispy tulle. They’d been gathered at car-boot sales and school fêtes in the hope that they’d come in handy one day. As I created a Wonderland of a duvet cover, it felt good that I’d been finally proved right.
When Sofie saw her winking, twinkling pink bed she stared at it, then stared at us, and whispered, ‘Mine?’
‘Yours,’ we said.
She approached it as if it might bite, then slowly climbed up and started to take in the details of the duvet, cooing and exclaiming as she discovered butterflies, ladybirds and roses. ‘Fairy magic!’ she announced, with a wide smile.