My Mother's Children: An Irish family secret and the scars it left behind.

by Annette Sills

  I suddenly gripped the steering wheel as I remembered what Samira Khan had said that morning. “So cruel to have her son taken from her like that.” She’d given me an intense, searching look when she’d said it. I’d thought she was talking about Mikey but now instinct told me she was referring to the baby Tess gave away. I desperately needed to talk to Samira but she’d left for Pakistan and wouldn’t be back for weeks. Tess’s face came to me as it so often did: the creamy skin, the careful hair, the Mona Lisa smile. She’d always had an air of mystery about her, like she was holding something back. I’d attributed her secrecy to her troubled mind but now it was all starting to make sense.

  I arrived at the cardiology department fifteen minutes late and feeling flustered. After registering at the reception, I hurried along the long corridor to the waiting room. The sky outside the large windows was slate-grey but everything else in the room was a shade of NHS blue: the turquoise walls, the royal-blue chairs, the powder-blue table. I needn’t have worried about being late. There was only one other patient waiting. Joe was sitting by the water cooler engrossed in a copy of the Guardian. He’d taken the afternoon off work and cycled over from his office at Manchester Science Park to be with me.

  I sat down next to him, my chair creaking in the silence. “Sorry. The traffic was horrendous.”

  He looked over the top of his paper then carried on reading. My stomach was churning at the thought of the scan and what it might reveal. I rubbed my sweaty palms down the leg of my jeans and sighed audibly.

  Joe put a hand on my knee. “It’ll be fine,” he said.

  He took off his reading glasses, folded his paper and slipped them both into his man bag on the floor next to his cycling helmet. He looked good. His face was tanned from long cycle rides in the recent spell of good weather, intensifying the blue of his eyes. His salt-and-pepper hair was newly cropped and lightened by the sun. A snappy dresser, he was wearing the Pretty Green khaki jacket I’d bought him for Christmas with jeans and red Adidas trainers. Though craggier now, his round face still had the boyish look I’d fallen in love with when I was twenty-one. He’d aged well. If it wasn’t for his grey hair, he could have passed for thirty.

  I glanced up at the clock. My mouth felt dry so I got up and poured myself a cup of water from the cooler. I’d had echocardiograms before but they never got any easier. I always asked Joe to come with me. Calm and pragmatic, he quashed my irrational “what if’s” with science and stats. We had our ups and downs like any other couple, but at times like this when I was at my most anxious he was like a large oak that I ran to for shelter.

  On the drive to the hospital, I’d made the decision not to tell him about the letter just yet. He’d only tell me to leave well alone and not get involved. Don’t get yourself worked up, he’d say. You’re still grieving for Tess and Mikey, you don’t need any more emotional turmoil. But what he’d really mean was that he didn’t need any more emotional turmoil. And I couldn’t blame him for thinking that way. Life with Mikey and Tess had been one long episode of Jeremy Kyle, especially during Mikey’s addiction years. Joe had put up with so much drama and now all he probably wanted was a bit of peace. Another reason I didn’t want to tell him was because I felt strangely protective of Tess’s secret. She was about to be exposed and I needed to find out all the facts before I was prepared to do that. Part of me felt hurt that she’d told Samira Kahn and not Mikey or me. I could understand why. The guilt and shame back then must have been overwhelming and it’s often easier to talk to strangers about your darkest secrets than loved ones. But I couldn’t help feeling sad and betrayed that she’d never confided in me. She and I had become closer in her later years. Or so I’d thought.

  Apart from the shuffle of nurses’ shoes along the corridor now and again, the cardiology department was very quiet. The other patient was engrossed in his phone. He was sitting under a poster of a smiling heart holding up a plate of fruit and vegetables. He looked like he hadn’t seen an apple or a carrot in a while though. Rolls of fat hung over the sides of his chair like the drop of a tablecloth and his beautiful grey-blue eyes were hidden in folds of flesh and his ballooning cheeks. His breathing was heavy, his body odour pungent. I feared for him and I wanted to warn him. Stop killing yourself, I wanted to say. Your heart is far too precious.

  Familial Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. I half expected to see the words illuminated on the neon sign opposite, the way they were illuminated in my mind after the coroner’s report into Mikey’s death. HCM, as it is commonly known, was the heart condition that had killed my brother. HCM this, HCM that. In the weeks and months after his death I became so obsessed with the details, I almost forgot to grieve for him.

  “It’s genetic,” I explained to friends and family when they asked. “Some carriers have no symptoms at all and it never surfaces and other people have mild symptoms. But at its worst it can suddenly cause the heart muscles to thicken to the point where it stops the flow of blood from the heart. And that’s what happened to Mikey.”

  HCM was an autosomal dominant condition which meant children of a carrier had a fifty-per-cent chance of having the gene. I had no symptoms and it looked like I was OK but any children I had would have a 50/50 chance of getting it. Tess was distraught to discover she had passed it on. Her symptoms went unnoticed. For years she had palpitations and breathlessness which we put it down to her twenty-a-day Silk Cut habit and the medication she was taking. She had a fear of going to the doctor’s, probably the result of the harsh way she had been treated for her mental-health issues. I was overwhelmed with guilt when we found out she was a sufferer. If she’d been checked out, they might have discovered she had the gene and Mikey could still be alive.

  His body stayed with the coroner for three weeks before we brought him home. Though he’d have hated it, Tess insisted on a traditional Irish wake. She sat and slept next to his open coffin for twenty-four hours. After the funeral she slept in his old room, rarely venturing out, eating very little and wandering around the house talking to him. She kept saying it was her fault, that God was punishing her, that she should never have had children. In her mind she’d killed the thing she loved most in the world and there was no persuading her otherwise.

  “I hate these ultrasounds,” I said. “All that prodding and they keep you in for ages.”

  Joe turned his face to the window and stared out at the leaves skittering across the courtyard in the wind. I’d been thinking about that other waiting room and that other scan and I wondered if he had too. It seemed like a lifetime ago now. I got pregnant a year into our relationship. I didn’t know until I was almost three months gone and I was surprised and disconcerted when Joe said we should keep it. I started bleeding a few days later and he cried in the hospital corridor after the scan showed no heartbeat. I stood next to him awkwardly, not quite knowing what to do. I was relieved. I was twenty-two and I didn’t even know if I wanted kids. At thirty-nine I was even more unsure, especially after what had happened to Mikey. Any child of ours could inherit HCM.

  A door swung open and a stout nurse appeared with a clipboard. Squinting behind John Lennon glasses, she called out the other patient’s name. I watched him shuffle down the corridor. He might be OK. After all, Mikey’s heart had held up throughout the addiction years. But then, when he’d finally got rid of his demons, HCM came along and mowed him down.

  Five minutes later I lay in the examination room, a young sonographer rubbing gel on my chest. As she pushed the probe down and moved it around, my heart pulsated inside a black-and-white triangle on the screen like a dancer on stage in a spotlight. Its beat echoed around the room. I thought about that tiny heart beating inside Tess more than fifty years ago. Could it really be true? Had she and Dad really handed their baby over to strangers?

  “Try and relax.” The sonographer frowned and probed some more.

  I shifted around on the bed. “Everything OK?” It all seemed to be taking much longer than usual.

  “Keep still and ta
ke deep breaths.”

  She had an Eastern European accent and drawn-on eyebrows that gave her a permanent look of surprise. Not a great look for a sonographer.

  After a few more minutes she took the probe away, handed me a paper towel to clean myself and told me to get dressed.

  “Everything looks fine. Full results in post in couple of weeks.”

  My dancing heart did a backflip. I was well. I was healthy. Tension and relief drained from me into a pool on the floor. I hopped off the examination table, wiped myself down and hummed to myself as I got dressed. But then, as I made my way back to the waiting room, guilt crept up behind me and threw itself over me like a dark cloak. My mood went from elation to deep sadness. I’d survived but Mikey hadn’t. The odds were 50/50 and he’d drawn the short straw in the gene pool.

  In the waiting room Joe picked up his bag and cycling helmet and looked at me expectantly. “Everything OK?” he asked.

  I nodded and we walked along the corridor in silence. I was healthy, I told myself. I had every reason to be happy and Mikey and Tess would have been looking down on me and smiling. Yet the darkness pressed down on me like a boulder.

  Joe took my hand. “Let’s eat out later to celebrate the good news.”

  I pulled it away. “Mikey’s dead. He got the bad genes and I didn’t. What the fuck is there to celebrate?”

  Chapter 8

  Mikey’s debut for England took place on a sweltering hot Saturday on June 6th 1999. It was a day I’ll never forget. For all the wrong reasons.

  The match was at Twickenham against France. Afterwards he’d arranged to spend the night in High Wycombe at the family home of his school pal, Julian Hammond. Julian was a boarder at St Bede’s. Gawky and foppish, he was a little in love with Mikey. His barrister parents were away for the weekend at the family’s second home in France and Julian’s older brother Toby was in charge of the boys that night. Toby was a rugby fanatic who was keen to be seen in the company of the country’s most promising fly half.

  Mikey rang after the match from the train on the way to High Wycombe. He was using Toby’s mobile phone but it was hard to hear what he was saying because of the roaring and singing in the background. I could tell he was already drunk.

  “This phone is proper mint,” he yelled. “I want one.”

  “What about the match? How did you get on?”

  “Man of the Match. I scored twice.”

  Pandemonium broke out in the background and the line went dead. I ran into the garden to tell Tess. She was on her knees doing some weeding. When I told her, she held her face up to the sun and a wide smile spread across her face.

  Toby Hammond was a city trader. At twenty-four, he had a flat in Battersea, a Porsche Carrera and a six-figure salary, a lot of which he snorted up his nose.

  After drinking vodka and champagne all afternoon, Toby gave Mikey his first taste of cocaine then took him for a drive around the dark Buckinghamshire lanes in the Porsche. Losing control on a bend on an unlit lane, he wrapped the car around a tree. Toby escaped with a few minor cuts and bruises, a month in rehab and a fine for drink-driving that barely touched his bank balance.

  The cost to Mikey was immeasurable. Three broken ribs, concussion and severe ligament damage to his right leg. When he woke up in hospital the next day the doctor told him he’d probably never play professional rugby again.

  In the months and years that followed, my brother changed beyond recognition. The happy-go-lucky escape artist I knew and loved was left behind by that tree in that Buckinghamshire lane. His rugby dreams snatched away, he became despondent and indifferent to life. He left St Bede’s without sitting his exams and lost the place he’d secured at London University. Throughout his twenties he limped from job to job on building sites, drank heavily and then abused drugs during the noughties. He became a small-time dealer in the Manchester clubs, narrowly escaping custodial sentences on several occasions. His relationships with women were destructive and always had drink and drugs at their core. Whenever he was drunk or high, he’d tell people that the drag in his leg was the result of a bad tackle when he played rugby for England.

  Julian Hammond followed his brother Toby into a career in the city. When Mikey died he sent a letter of condolence on headed paper with a Kensington address. Julian wrote effusively about Mikey being a loyal friend, a legendary sportsman and a superb drinking buddy.

  I wrote “Fuck you and fuck your brother” in red ink over it then returned it to sender.

  At the time of his death Mikey had finally overcome his demons. Things were on the way up. He’d been sober for three years and had a flourishing personal-trainer business. Innovative surgery had repaired his leg and rid him of his limp, he was playing rugby again locally and he and his beautiful partner Maria were trying for a baby. When I asked him to join me on the BUPA 10k, he jumped at the chance.

  “Let’s do it for MIND, the mental health charity,” he said. “Let’s do it for Tess.”

  On the day of the race, blustery winds and heavy rain swept over the Atlantic and Ireland and landed in Manchester town centre just before the start. It was like the winds had come to claim Mikey, to whip him up and steal him away. By afternoon they’d gone, leaving behind an eerily silent city and a hole in my heart.

  We set off in the morning from Deansgate under a charcoal sky. Rain stoned down on our exposed limbs and faces and gusts buffeted us into other runners. But we buoyed each other along the way. We passed a DJ stand playing “Things Can Only Get Better” and crowds cheered us on from the pavement. I grinned at Mikey who was running slightly ahead of me. The wind had blown his hair to one side and I noticed he had a bald spot. For the first time it occurred to me that my kid brother was getting old. As we approached the 5K mark at Old Trafford, I started to flag. We passed White City Retail Park and I lengthened my strides to keep up with him. Then, as we turned towards the stadium near the row of shops and takeaways, he spurted forwards into a gap between runners. Flinging both arms into the air he started to sing. “We love you, City, we do – we love you, City, we do!”

  A few of us joined in and whooped. I raised my arms in the air. As I did so I looked upwards and gasped. Above the roof of one of the takeaways was a murmuration of starlings, rolling and unfurling like a grey ghost against the dark sky. The incredible sight took away what little breath I had left. I looked round for Mikey, pointing skywards and shouting excitedly. And that’s when I saw him stagger and fall.

  I elbowed my way through the current of runners to get to him. Some circumvented him with outstretched arms, others hurdled over him. A space had cleared by the time I got there and he was clutching his chest and writhing like a bad break-dancer among the discarded water bottles and litter. The sight of his bloodless face sent a slither of cold through my core. I crumpled to my knees, blocking out most of what happened next. Only fleeting images remain: the shoulders of the young doctor in a Christie’s Hospital vest rising and falling as he attempted resuscitation, the blue lights of an ambulance dancing in a puddle and the long eyelashes of the paramedic when she lowered her eyes and told me he’d gone.

  “No!” I pleaded and grabbed her arm. “No. It’s not true. He can’t be dead. He’s only thirty- four.”

  A foil blanket rolled by in the wind and wrapped itself around my feet like a silver shroud.

  “What am I going to tell Tess?” I heard myself say then I felt a stone fall from my heart.

  Chapter 9

  I sank back into the sofa in the kitchen extension, laptop on my knees, waiting for the internet to download. I picked up my glass of Riesling and sipped. The wine hit the back of my throat, chilled and fruity. It had been one hell of a day.

  Joe had gone out. After I said I didn’t want to celebrate the scan results he got the hump and we exchanged words in the hospital car park. He said he was only trying to cheer me up and called me a doom-and-gloom merchant.

  He yanked the lock off his bike and shook his head. “You used to be such a la
ugh.”

  “So did you.” I clutched my car keys tight. “Until you became one of the dull-as-fuck Lycra lads.”

  He hopped on his bike and rode off in anger, narrowly missing a bollard on his way out.

  When I got in, he’d left a note saying he was going out for a drink with a crowd from the cycling club. The other day he’d mentioned that one of them had recently become a dad and they were planning a pub crawl to wet the baby’s head.

  Dusk was falling. Despite the squally weather earlier, there were signs of spring in the garden. I could just about make out the milky-white snowdrops by the apple tree and a bunch of flame-coloured tulips had appeared in the flower bed. I’d also spotted a swallow on the telegraph wire earlier and the daffodils Karen had helped me plant the previous year were in full bloom.

  I hadn’t heard from her since my visit that morning after the fundraiser. Though I was reluctant to tell Joe about Dad’s letter, I was desperate to tell her. Not that long ago I’d have simply turned up on her doorstep waving the letter in the air like an excited child. She’d have pulled me through the door and we’d have examined every word for hours over glasses of wine. She’d never tell me to leave well alone like Joe would. But something held me back from sharing my news with her. Fear of her indifference, mainly. I was scared she would feign interest and I’d come away feeling I was wasting her time. It saddened me to think that after all our years of friendship things should come to this.

  I clicked my nails impatiently on my wineglass. Despite Joe working in IT we had the world’s slowest internet connection. I finished the last of my wine then headed to the fridge for more. Our gigantic American fridge that Joe had insisted on buying was half the size of the galley kitchen in our last house in Old Trafford. I closed the door of the fridge and surveyed the room. The glass-box kitchen extension, the sprawling Habitat corner sofa, granite worktop and underfloor heating. I constantly had to pinch myself. Did I, Carmel Doherty, who was raised with no central heating and a pay-as-you-go meter, really live here? In a three-storey town house with a loft conversion and wine cellar on one of the most desirable roads in Chorlton?