The Family Gift

by Cathy Kelly

  One huge loss makes me fear loss everywhere.

  But I can’t tell anyone this. They’d think I was crazy.

  I can’t tell them I’m scared of going places on my own at night, either.

  Yeah, they’d think I was crazy.

  Why are we all so frightened of other people thinking we’re crazy?

  So I pretend that I am OK.

  ‘Fine!’ I say breezily when I have to travel somewhere on my own. ‘I’m fine!’

  You’re a mess, Mildred points out.

  All my combined fears, which I have linked up and called The Fear, have made me nervy and unable to sleep without sleeping tablets. The Fear has given me anxiety and has ramped up my previously quite benign inner voice to a mental torturer on steroids.

  Yes, I know it’s weird, but calling my inner voice Mildred does help. Honestly. It’s like making friends with your kidnappers. They can’t murder you if you tell them your name. Maybe . . .

  My sister Maura says she totally understands what I am blithely calling The Incident.

  ‘Obviously, your sleep’s going to be a bit wonky,’ said Maura shortly afterwards, ‘it was a dreadful shock. But you’re so strong, Freya. I said it at the time – “if anyone can get over this, Freya can.”’

  Maura, oldest sibling in the Abalone household and four years older than me, is dealing with the perimenopause and is at the stage where she considers ramming cars that drive dangerously in front of her on the motorway. Nobody ever mentions that stage of the menopause but all you need to do is spend half an hour driving to IKEA with Maura, and you fear for mankind and their vehicles because she drives like a woman who longs for bull bars and an assault rifle. Forget your hot flushes and thinning skin in unmentionable places – rage is clearly the number one menopause symptom.

  ‘People who aren’t going through something always say that you should or shouldn’t feel a certain way about it,’ she says grimly and I sense this is about herself and her rioting hormones. ‘You feel what you feel, Freya. You had a terrible shock. But you’re grand now.’

  I practise saying this: ‘It was a terrible shock but I’m grand now.’

  Grand. Sounds suitably mild. ‘I’m fine, nothing to see here. Move along now.’

  Scarlett, younger sister, totally understands that I was seriously shocked by the attack.

  Years of preparing her body for the babies who have never taken seed there means Scarlett is into candlelit yoga, writing namaste at the end of her emails, and cleansing vegetable juices which she and Jack drink every day as part of their fertility schedule. But even she says that after what happened to me, safety would be high on the list of priorities. With enough wine inside her, she even goes so far as to say that I ought to buy a baseball bat, which is very un-namaste. She did not comment on the wild speed with which we put our home on the market and bought this one or how I managed to convince Dan that this little pocket of a village close to the city will be perfect for our children.

  I may have lied about my motives.

  Even though I tell Dan I am fine, I know he doesn’t believe me.

  His chief worry is that if I am fine, then why do I need sleeping tablets?

  ‘Do you think you should still be taking them?’ he asked one night about two months after the mugging as he saw me popping one into my mouth with the ease of a Smartie.

  ‘I need to sleep, Dan,’ I said but I was instantly angry.

  How can he even say this? I bloody need to sleep! Nought to sixty with anger is quite common in people who are suffering from . . . er, who have been victims of crime. He doesn’t understand you, shrieks Mildred.

  ‘Of course, I understand,’ Dan said. ‘But Freya, love, it’s been a while and you can’t go on taking sleeping tablets long term . . .’

  Fury erupted out of me.

  ‘You have to come off these things slowly,’ I yelled at him. ‘Plus I have a cookery book to research so there are new recipes for the TV show, and we have to pay for this house.’

  This is a low blow because it’s my TV career that allowed us to put in a bid for the new house, not Dan’s career. Mentioning that you might have – briefly, or not briefly – earned more than your man is on a par with giving him an instant vasectomy.

  ‘I don’t need to move,’ he says grimly. ‘You want the new detached house. I’m happy where we are.’

  His voice is even but Stone Age men could make tools out of each syllable.

  Interesting fact: we never have screaming rows. Never.

  I hate those people why say fighting makes a relationship stronger. Utter rubbish, in my opinion. Fighting makes you say things you regret.

  But when I think back to that evening, the car park, the feeling of someone’s dirty hand over my mouth . . . I can barely breathe thinking about it. Which is why I don’t think about it except at night, when I can’t sleep. Cue sleeping tablets. Cue hating being on sleeping tablets. Cue not being able to stop being on sleeping tablets, but I can’t tell Dan.

  Worse, I’m nearly out of them and I have to face another trip to the doctor where he will do his best to tell me that I can’t continue on a diet of sleeping pills. Or that he can’t continue prescribing them.

  ‘I’ll come off the sleeping tablets when my sleep is back to normal,’ I said to Dan, anger – yes, anger! – rising in me. ‘As if you care.’

  ‘How can you say I don’t care,’ he yelled back angrily. ‘But you won’t talk to me about it. You act as if you’re fine most of the time, so how do I know when you’re not?’

  ‘Because . . . because . . .’

  Because you’re supposed to know without me saying anything, I said silently.

  ‘I think you haven’t dealt with it all and you’re fuelling your own stress with taking stupid drugs at night,’ he said harshly, ‘because you won’t let go of it.’

  I had the sensation of being punched in the stomach. Dan. Saying this. Being winded is a horrible thing and I should know.

  I wouldn’t let go of it?

  It wouldn’t let go of me. That was the problem.

  I solved the whole argument in the most adult way possible that night. I went to bed immediately, taking my precious sleeping tablet and letting him face my back the way I’ve faced his so often when I wake in the wee small hours. So there.

  That’s the tricky thing with sleeping tablets: they hit you with their chemical cosh for a decent five hours and then, bingo, you are wide awake again.

  Just thinking about how little I sleep despite the tablets, I realise that I need coffee badly.

  Five damn hours. Zimovane is supposed to give you six hours but I am bucking the trend. My mind fights its way out of sleep, no problem.

  Sleep comes second to peace of mind in the list of casualties in my life.

  Peace of mind cannot be bought, even pharmaceutically.

  I used to worry over my father and how my mother would cope, now I worry over my own fear as well. I also now worry about not being able to come up with the recipes I used to magic out of thin air. I worry over Scarlett who surely cannot face another round of fertility treatment, even if she and Jack could manage to fund it. I worry about the children, naturally.

  I worry full stop.

  Lorraine is on the phone first thing.

  ‘How’s Freya the Slayer?’ she says, and I hear the grin in her voice.

  ‘That’s got a good ring to it,’ I say, putting down my sixth cup of espresso that morning. I have the headache from hell and am blasting it with paracetamol and ibuprofen. ‘Freya the Slayer, perhaps we could put that on the cookbooks? Freya the Slayer has new recipes for you: photographers’ intestines served en croûte.’

  Lorraine laughs.

  ‘Yeah, you told them. I almost felt sorry for him.’

  ‘So do I now,’ I admit. ‘I was thinking of phoning and apo
logising.’

  ‘Don’t bother doing any such thing,’ says Lorraine crisply. ‘I said I almost felt sorry for him – not that I did. He was there to do a job and he went off mission. He thought he was back in art school. You were right to stop him and you know it’s good to change the old Freya sweet and cuddly image into something a bit tougher. Like I said, you have turned the corner.’

  ‘I have not turned any corner,’ I say, thinking that this corner must involve becoming Maura and getting all perimenopausal and a danger on the roads. ‘I’m only forty-two, you know.’

  ‘Speaking of which, we’ve got a request in to do a Fabulous Over Forty thing for one of the Sunday papers. Nina was on to me, said you had to do it and I said yes, we can fit it in, once you agree. It will be a full shoot and they wanted to do it in your house, but—’

  ‘No,’ I say, horrified. ‘The only part of the house that’s fit for cameras is the kitchen. The rest of it . . . Nooo. We have too much stuff, I’ll never get all the boxes unpacked and we haven’t painted a single wall . . .’

  ‘Yeah, I figured,’ says Lorraine, who seems to be on top or everything without actually being told. Sometimes I think she sees my bank statements even though they get delivered to my house.

  ‘So,’ she continues, ‘I suggested that because it’s summer, we do a romantic picnic-style thing in a lovely hotel garden.’

  ‘Romantic picnic-style thing,’ I repeat as if I’m saying ‘gastroenteritis – both ends.’ ‘OK.’

  I hate the sort of summer clothes newspapers and magazines like you to wear for summer shoots: they’re all flowy and frou-frou and if you have any sort of boobs at all, carry weight on your hips, or basically, like food, you look like a flowery sack-person who never saw a cake she didn’t like.

  ‘I would have said no, that you only like indoor photographs and sleek clothes, but they are all set on this outside shoot. And Freya, it’s May.’

  ‘Not that you’d know today,’ I reply, looking out at a day devoid of sun.

  Lexi’s school term will be finished soon, end of the month. She’s about to start her end-of-year exams and the grand meeting with Elisa and eight stone of Surella products is not happening until she’s on her summer holidays. Or at least this is what I have told Dan to explain in the messages to Elisa and her mother. That’s another source of great annoyance. All the messages come to Dan. It’s as if I don’t exist. The whole crime-of-passion scenario has shifted and I’m now idly wondering whether I’d get jail time for nail-gunning Elisa. Only most of the time it’s Elisa and her mother.

  Why are they here now? When everything in my life is so chaotic?

  But I control the anger. I can’t see there being much of a TV and cookery book market out there for homicidal chefs.

  ‘Yes, I used this knife on my victims. So, first we dice the meat . . .’ Ha!

  ‘OK,’ I say to Lorraine. ‘When did they want to do it, do we have any sort of date?’

  I’m thinking of my endless lists in my diary which are always full of things I have not ticked off as ‘done.’ Another place I’m failing.

  Then, there’s the appointments. Liam needs to go to the hairdresser and Lexi has another trip to the orthodontist, which I’m not looking forward to, especially since the last time when I, jokingly, remarked to the dental assistant at the outside desk that I’d have to sleep with the orthodontist instead of paying because it was all so expensive.

  Something dropped in the inner office where the orthodontist worked. The nurse went whiter than her lab coat. He’d clearly heard.

  ‘It was a joke,’ I said feebly.

  I mean, come on, how could that not be a joke?

  Sometimes my mouth gets me into trouble.

  I must have said that last bit out loud because Lorraine laughs.

  ‘Yeah, that mouth gets you into trouble,’ she agrees.

  ‘Kick me when I’m down, why don’t you?’

  Lorraine laughed her evil cackle. It’s exactly the same noise Teddy makes when she’s planning mischief.

  ‘Sorry, Freya, but you’d be lost without me.’

  ‘I know, you’re brilliant. But too sassy.’

  ‘Pot. Kettle. Black,’ she shoots back.

  ‘Do you want to come out to the house this morning and see what it’s like? There’s a lovely coffee shop around the corner. So Italian, you’ll adore it. It’s run by these two fabulous guys, one of whom pretends to be Italian, but we are not telling anyone that. We’re all just going along with it because it makes him happy.’

  Lorraine isn’t a bit fazed by this unusual concept.

  ‘Sounds great,’ she said, ‘I can do pretend Italian as well as the rest of them. Spaghetti alle Vongole, Frittelle di Mele, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Perfect,’ I say. ‘If you’re here for twelve, we can go in just before the lunchtime rush and have coffee and one of their beautiful cakes.’

  Normally, I’d bake but I am not up to cooking today. I don’t say that in the last four months, my cooking brain seems to have abandoned me. I feel sure that Lorraine has already figured this out and is saying nothing. I am supposed to be working up recipes for a cookbook for which I’ve already been paid a signature advance. Which means I’ve been given some of the money up front and have done none of the work.

  Stress number one.

  Some of these unwritten/untested recipes will go in to the TV show I’m booked to film in the autumn, for which I have also been given a signature fee. Stress number two.

  None of these projects will happen if I can’t get out of the quicksand of my own head.

  Lorraine keeps going: ‘I’ll send over all the emails and a list of what we have to do. Now we need your autograph on a few books from the publishers and we’ve got a demo on Saturday in two weeks with that special tasting festival.’

  ‘Oh,’ I wince.

  It’s in West Cork, a place I adore, but I feel a little fragile at the moment, not really able to go anywhere and it’s a long enough drive.

  Stop being a wimp. This is your job and you need the money.

  Shut up, Mildred.

  ‘OK, put it all down on the list. Will you drive this time?’

  ‘Sure,’ she says. There’s a pause. ‘You could talk me through the recipe ideas you have for the new book,’ she says gently.

  I can feel my eyes narrow. Thinking of what I need to do but haven’t puts me on a stress level from hell.

  ‘Do you have a psychic granny hidden away in the cupboard?’ I ask grimly.

  ‘No, I’m just the person who sees all the recipes you write down in the middle of the night that you send to yourself to remind you. And if I don’t see them, I know they’re not happening. Also Nina wants a meeting about your social media. A catch-up.’

  ‘Oh.’ I actually wince. A catch-up means Nina wants to berate me for wasting my career chances by not being a social media guru. My agent in London, the old school gentleman, Paddy Ashmore, is much kinder. I think Nina is angling for his job. As if. Paddy is a great agent because he’s brilliant, understands the business and charms people. Nina is super clever but devoid of charm.

  ‘I wish you could do more of the social media stuff for me,’ I plead at Lorraine, a bit like Teddy when she’s looking for more ice-cream.

  ‘It has to come from you, be your voice,’ says Lorraine. ‘Believe me, I’d do more if I could. I upload everything I can but your voice is so funny. Although, you don’t take beautiful pictures, it has to be said.’

  ‘Ah well, I know a photographer who could help with that,’ I say back. ‘Arty, moody shots are right up his street . . .’

  We both laugh.

  ‘See you at twelve. Send directions.’

  That night, I phone Maura and we discuss our rota over helping Mum.

  ‘I’m just joining up some African flower crochet octag
ons,’ she says, sounding harassed at the interruption.

  Maura is a crafting person. She is always knitting, crocheting, sewing or embroidering things. She never finishes anything, mind you.

  ‘I’m too busy,’ she tells anyone who wants to know what she actually makes.

  Privately, she tells me it makes her happy to sit in front of the TV and make roundy crochet bits and bobs.

  She has lots of what crafting people call UFOs in the house. This means Unfinished Objects. Oh, yes, and lots of wool. She buys wool like I buy shoes.

  ‘You finished that scarf for me and one for each of the girls,’ I point out loyally.

  ‘Never again,’ says Maura. ‘That wool was so thin. It was murder and I had to pay attention instead of watching Madam Secretary properly.’

  She has now got involved in something called the slow sewing movement, which is what all my attempts at sewing have always been. Slow sewing, she explains, is when you enjoyably stick stitches into bits and bobs of fabric, attaching bits, buttons, designs, whatever floats your boat. You do not have to make anything. This is what she likes best about slow sewing – you aren’t supposed to be actually making anything.

  ‘I think they come round and remove all your crafting supplies if you actually finish a project,’ she said joyfully, when she told me about it.

  But tonight’s conversation is evidence that the slow sewing is now boring her and she’s back on the crochet.

  I avoid the subject of what she’s making because, obviously, she isn’t making anything.

  ‘I can go tomorrow in your place because Lexi starts her first-year summer exams the day after and I have to pick her up from school, can we swap?’

  ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Talk tomorrow. I have to join this bloody yoke up.’

  10

  The happiest people know they have to work at happiness

  My mother’s house should resemble a cottage hospital, containing as it does three people who can be classed as invalids, one a severely disabled person, but it is not.

  It is awash with colour and crafts. Maura inherited my mother’s ability to make things, although my mother actually finishes them. The red gingham curtains in the kitchen and the adorable kitchen-themed bunting: she made them.