The Secrets of Primrose Square

by Claudia Carroll

  My dearest daughter,

  If you were still here this might make you laugh, or roll your eyes at me at least.

  To think that it all came about because of a block in the U-bend in the upstairs bathroom. Did you ever hear of anything so mundane, my darling? But that’s the truth, pure and simple.

  The loo in the family bathroom had been blocked for days and we were all at our wit’s end. I moved heaven and earth trying to get a plumber, and in the end I could only find a guy covered in tattoos called Martin who charged me the earth just to ‘take a look, love, not promising you nothing, mind’.

  Anyway, Martin told me in no uncertain terms that the only time he was free was in exactly one hour’s time – 4 p.m. one particular Thursday afternoon. Useless my protesting to him that I was stuck in work at the bank at the time; that, as far as Martin was concerned, was his final offer and I could take it or leave it.

  So I took it. I left work early and came home, unexpectedly early. I thought you’d still be at school; you usually were at that time. Melissa, I knew, was getting a lift home from her pal Hayley’s mother after her drama class, so I fully expected to come home to an empty house.

  But I didn’t, did I? Instead I opened the front door and Melissa came running out of the kitchen to meet me.

  ‘Mum! Thank God you’re home, I was so worried,’ she said, the ghostly white face looking up at me.

  ‘Why, sweetheart?’ I asked, hugging her. ‘What happened? Why are you home so early?’

  ‘Drama got cancelled today,’ she said. ‘Because our teacher is off sick. So I came home and . . . oh Mum, I don’t know what’s going on with Ella, but whatever it is, it’s really weird.’

  ‘Darling,’ I said, gripping her thin shoulders, ‘tell me. I’m here now and I’ll fix everything, okay? Just tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘I’m worried about Ella,’ she said, in that quiet way she has when I know the poor pet is out of her mind with stress.

  ‘What about Ella?’ I said, thinking that if you’d upset Melissa in any way, then I really would kill you.

  ‘I don’t know, Mum. All I know is that she’s upstairs in her room now with Josh Andrews.’

  ‘With Josh?’

  Before hearing another word, I felt my stomach start to shrivel.

  ‘And when I knocked on her door, she told me to go away,’ Melissa said.

  ‘Did she now?’

  ‘Except she didn’t say go away, Mum, she said the f-word. And there’s something else.’

  ‘What’s that, pet?’

  I was already halfway upstairs to your room by then. But I stopped dead in my tracks and turned to face Melissa, who was still standing in the hall, her little white hand on the bannister rail.

  ‘They’re smoking something really funny, Mum. And it stinks too.’

  I took a deep inhale and thought . . . bloody hell. Herbal cigarettes? Weed? Marijuana? Whatever it was, I started taking the stairs two at a time till I got to your bedroom door and hammered on it.

  ‘They’re both acting really weird too, Mum,’ Melissa called up after me. ‘All stupid and giggly and . . . like a pair of eejits, really.’

  I didn’t even wait for you to say ‘come in’. Instead, I opened the bedroom door to find you and Josh sitting side by side on the floor, smoking what I later came to wish was hash. But it wasn’t, though, was it, my darling?

  It’s hard to put into words the deep, visceral anger I felt. I remember roaring, shouting, yelling at Josh to get out of my house and warning him never to cross my doorstep again.

  ‘Please stop overreacting, Mum,’ you yelled right back, terrifying me with that glassy look in your eyes, you were so completely out of it. ‘It’s just a bit of PCP, that’s all. It’s harmless, really.’

  ‘Harmless? Did you just say harmless?’

  ‘Please, Mum!’ you said, ‘you’re embarrassing me in front of Josh.’

  ‘It’s okay, Mrs H,’ a woozy, stoned Josh tried to explain, getting up from where he’d been sitting cross-legged on the floor and towering over me. ‘I promise you, PCP is totally safe – and virtually non-addictive.’

  Course I threw Josh out of the house without a second thought and the row you and I had was legendary. PCP? I’d never heard of it. But I bloody well took care to find out exactly what it was. A gateway drug, Google told me. More commonly known as ‘angel dust’. A hallucinogen that almost had the effect of an anesthetic. The very thing that Marc’s mother had warned me about.

  Jesus Christ, I thought. No, not this, not you, my darling.

  ‘Everyone is doing it,’ you tried to defend yourself. ‘Josh got a hold of some and . . . ’

  ‘Josh this, Josh that,’ I snapped back at you. ‘You never used to be like this, Ella, until you started hanging around with that bloody user! Do you give me your word that you’ll never do anything as stupid as that again? Your solemn word?’

  ‘Never again, Mum,’ you said.

  ‘You’re seventeen years old,’ I told you. ‘You’re almost an adult, so I have to trust you. Do you understand?’

  ‘You can trust me, Mum,’ you said. ‘And it’ll never happen again.’

  So I did trust you.

  But you lied to me.

  And now I can never forgive myself.

  Nancy

  AVOCA RESTAURANT, DUBLIN

  ‘So,’ Mbeki said, sitting across the table from Nancy and looking over at her, genuinely concerned.

  ‘So,’ Nancy replied flatly, shoving away a half-eaten bowl of rolled porridge oats and honey that she couldn’t face. She and Mbeki had arranged to meet for Sunday brunch, but after the conversation they’d just had, her appetite had wilted like a dead lettuce leaf.

  ‘Thank you for being so honest with me,’ Mbeki said. She had hardly touched her food either. She was normally the healthiest eater going; she was forever the one in the rehearsal room who brought in her own lunches of avocado and tofu, snacking on nuts and seeds while everyone else horsed into packets of cheese and onion crisps. Yet now she was just playing with the egg white omelette she’d ordered.

  She’s worried, Nancy thought. In her shoes, I’d be worried too.

  ‘You’ve been more than kind,’ Nancy said, really meaning it too. Mbeki was cool, she was sound, Nancy liked her – she’d even hoped they might remain pals after the final curtain came down. ‘And I appreciate you reaching out to me like this.’

  Mbeki sighed and sat back, tugging at the sleeve of the electric blue fleece jumper she was snuggled into. On anyone else, Nancy thought distractedly, that jumper would look ridiculous; only Mbeki could carry it off.

  ‘It’s horrible, Nancy,’ she eventually said. ‘What I’m hearing is vile. Unthinkable. The question is, what are you going to do?’

  Nancy ran her hand across her temples, which by then were pounding.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘I thought coming here to Dublin, getting away from London and from everything that happened there . . . ’

  ‘You were running away,’ Mbeki said. ‘But that’s not going to fix this, now is it?’

  Nancy shook her head. No, of course not. How could it possibly? All she’d wanted to do was work, do the best work she could possibly do, and put it all behind her.

  And now this.

  ‘Look,’ Mbeki said, shoving away the green tea she’d been sipping at and locking eyes with Nancy. ‘I like you. I respect you. And I just happened to hear about it from a pal who was over visiting from London. But you can’t contain this for very much longer. Now you’re a smart woman, you know that.’

  ‘I hear you,’ Nancy said quietly, remembering London and everything that had gone down there. In a flash, all the frustration and despair she’d felt came back to her. Pain and white hot anger. A lousy combination.

  ‘Of course, it’s your story to tell, and not mine,’ Mbeki said. ‘But if you take my advice, you’ll stop running away and tackle this head on.’

  ‘But
. . . please, Mbeki . . . ’ Nancy tried to say, but she stumbled over her words. ‘I just need time. We’re so close to opening night and I need to think clearly.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mbeki said calmly, ‘your secret is safe with me. For now at least. But you’re going to have to come clean, Nancy. You can’t keep running for very much longer.’

  Susan

  From the journal of Susan Hayes

  Dearest Ella,

  I’ll never forget it, my darling. It was a sunny Friday afternoon and I had come to a decision. It was weeks after I’d caught you smoking with Josh and you could have cut the tension between you and me with a knife. You swore blind to me that you hadn’t touched any drugs since that awful day, but still – I was watching you like a hawk, still suspicious as hell. Which of course meant you and I only argued all the more.

  ‘I’m sick of all the constant rows,’ I said to your dad, who was home on leave at the time, as good luck would have it. ‘It’s wearing me down and I’ve had enough of being bad cop. So just for tonight,’ I told him, ‘as far as Ella is concerned, I’ll try being good cop. Let’s see how far that gets me.’

  I had another motivation for this sudden about-turn, though. There was a big party on that night and you’d been at me for weeks to go but, of course, I’d been saying no to you all along.

  ‘You’re meant to be studying for your Leaving Cert!’ I’d been hammering home to you for days. ‘And instead you’re upstairs in your room on the phone to your new best friend Josh and messing about on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram – and now you want to skive off to go to a party? Ella, when are you going to start taking responsibility for your own future?’

  ‘It’s my life!’ you yelled back at me at our kitchen table. ‘So I’ll do as I like. And you know the first thing I’ll be doing as soon as I leave school? Getting as far away from you and your constant nagging as possible . . . I fucking hate you, do you hear me? Get off my back and just leave me alone!’

  I think those words broke my heart, my darling. All I ever wanted was what was best for you, and it stabbed at me to see you, day in and day out, growing ever thinner and moodier, and distancing yourself from your family more and more.

  Well, this ends here, I thought, that sunny Friday afternoon, as I walked back home to Primrose Square after work. I’d change tack, I told myself. Show you that I did trust you to behave like a responsible adult, even though I was far from convinced of it myself.

  What you didn’t realise, though, was this: I’d had help to come to this decision. I’d taken advice. Worried out of my mind, I’d arranged to see one of the staff at Narcotics Anonymous earlier that same day. I’d even been to one of their meetings, held above a coffee shop on Gardiner Street, not far from where I worked.

  There I met with a lovely woman in her late twenties called Lucy, who, she openly told me, had been through hell and back with her own addiction. But Lucy wasn’t the type, I remember thinking. She seemed middle-class, well-spoken and obviously well-educated too. How could someone like her have ended up on drugs? She looked more like the airhostess type, rather than a hardcore user. Then came the more frightening, tacked-on thought. If it could happen to someone like Lucy, it could happen to you too, my darling. All too easily.

  ‘I’ve got no rock-solid proof that my daughter is still using,’ I told Lucy, pouring out my heart over a lukewarm, watery cup of coffee, dizzy with the relief of finally talking to someone who’d actually get it.

  ‘Parents of users seldom do,’ Lucy said, with a wry smile.

  ‘But I’m as close to being sure as I can be,’ I went on. ‘It’s the crowd that Ella has taken to hanging around with, you see,’ I added defensively. ‘Before my daughter fell in with this gang, she’d have been the last person alive to get involved with drugs. She never even drank, for God’s sake. But I know for a fact that the crowd she’s in with are all users. I caught Ella in the act once, and she swore to me she’d never do it again.

  ‘But I know she’s lying to me, the way a mother just knows. We’re rowing constantly and it’s slowly tearing my family apart. So I’m here in desperation, really, and my question is: what should I do?’

  ‘In my experience,’ Lucy said, shaking her pretty head of blonde hair, ‘drug use is rarely because of the crowd you happen to be hanging around with. People don’t fall into drugs just because all their friends are doing it. They start doing drugs for one reason and for one reason only. Because they want to.’

  I had to pause and really give thought to that one. Lucy, however, was completely practical and gave me great advice. Or certainly what I thought at the time was great advice.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I fought with my parents bitterly too, till in the end I ran as far away from them as I could. I ended up in a squat in London, begging during the day, to scrounge together enough to go out and score that night. I’ve got myself clean now, but it took every gram of strength I have to get me out of the vicious circle.’

  ‘Ella is clean at the moment,’ I told her.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Because her dad and I took her to our family GP, who ran all sorts of urine tests on her. Everything came back clear as crystal.’

  It had been a huge relief at the time – one less thing Frank and I had to worry about.

  ‘Oh please!’ Lucy snorted into her coffee. ‘And you seriously believe that? You do know that’s the first trick any self-respecting user will learn? How to fake a test.’

  ‘What did you say?’ I asked, slowly beginning to grow frightened.

  ‘Susan, a committed drug user quickly learns how to pass someone else’s blood and urine samples off as their own. There’s quite a roaring trade online in clean samples. You’d be amazed.’

  ‘So . . . what should I do?’ I asked, in a very small voice, kicking myself for being so bloody stupid. So willing to believe what I wanted to.

  ‘Show your Ella that you trust her,’ Lucy said out straight. ‘Believe me, if you start treating her like an adult, she’ll respond accordingly. You say you row all the time? So let that end here and now. Cut her some slack and let her start taking a bit of responsibility for her own actions. The constant fights with my own family drove me away and, from then on, it was a downward spiral till I almost drove myself to an early grave. So don’t repeat my family’s mistakes, Susan, do you hear me? Because remember – you don’t have to.’

  You were sitting out on the square when I got back, pretending to study, as you so often did, but really on your phone to Josh Andrews, who you seemed so inseparable from back then.

  ‘Oh hold on,’ you said, putting down the phone as you saw me approach. ‘Here comes trouble.’

  But I was determined to do as Lucy advised, so I stuck to my guns.

  ‘I come in peace,’ I said, holding up my hands in mock surrender. ‘Just to say that I’ve thought about it, and I’ve decided that you can go to your party tonight. So go, Ella. Get all dressed up. Enjoy yourself. Have fun. You’re old enough and I can trust you and I only hope in return you’ll trust me?’

  You looked at me, scanning my face up and down, waiting for the catch. But there was none.

  ‘Go back to your phone call,’ I said. ‘And tell Josh he’s very welcome to call to the house beforehand to collect you. It would be nice for your dad and I to get to know him properly. Think about it, honey, and I’ll see you back at the house, okay?’

  You went back to your phone as I walked away, but I heard what you said, heard you loud and clear.

  ‘Jesus,’ you said. ‘Did you hear that? Has to be early onset menopause. There’s no other reason for the mothership’s mood swings.’

  That stung like merry hell, but I didn’t let it show. I even bit my tongue when you came downstairs, ready to go out, dressed like an over-made-up scanger, in too-big jeans and a bra top that the Ella of old would have set fire to and laughed at while it burned.


  ‘Now your dad will be outside the party to pick you up at midnight,’ I told you. ‘That’s the deal, all right?’

  You looked right through me, trying to figure out this about-turn in my attitude towards you.

  ‘Ella, love, do we have a deal?’

  ‘Whatever,’ you said with a dismissive shrug, as you turned on your heels and went out the door.

  I let you go, thinking, from here on in, I’d turn over a new leaf with you. I’d have a lovely, healthy breakfast waiting for you in the morning. Then maybe you and I could go for a walk in the square, or else I’d whisk you off to a movie – whatever you wanted. I was losing my daughter, but I was determined to fight with every gram of strength in me to win her back.

  But it wasn’t to be, my darling, was it?

  Because those were the last words you ever spoke to me.

  And we never even got to say goodbye.

  Nancy

  KELLY BURKE SOLICITORS, DUBLIN

  My solicitor’s office address is below. Appointment is for tomorrow evening. Your presence is urgently required. Sam Junior will be there too.

  Thus ran the snotty text message Nancy received from Sam Williams Senior. So straight after work that day, she didn’t so much walk to the address she’d been given as march there. Fuelled by silent fury, she mentally dress-rehearsed every cutting remark she planned on saying to Sam Williams, the younger, whatever his lame excuses were. She was still reeling from her conversation with Mbeki the previous day and now Sam arsehole Williams would be on the receiving end of all her wrath and frustration. Serves him bloody well right, too, Nancy thought crossly.

  She hadn’t discussed this with anyone in work, mainly because it was almost too embarrassing to admit why this was such a blow. But the hard, cold truth was she had almost come to feel like she was in a sort of virtual relationship. And who knew? Maybe even that Sam would get back from Shanghai and they’d eventually meet and the spark between them might lead to something.

  And instead, what did she get?