The Story of Our Life

by Shari Low

  ‘But it could also be something more serious?’

  The fear that had been working its way up my spine was now choking my words.

  ‘It could,’ she conceded, again in a very calm, convivial way. ‘What’s concerning you, Mrs O’Flynn?’

  ‘Could it be a brain tumour?’ I could barely get the words out. Yes, it had been on my mind and the main driver in making Colm come here, but I’d been sure I was being ridiculous. Please let me be ridiculous. Please let me be wrong.

  ‘Shauna, it’s not a brain tumour,’ Colm said, like it was the most ludicrous suggestion he’d ever heard. I chose not to remind him about the internet search results on the medical website a few weeks before.

  She paused for a moment, before carrying on. ‘Yes. But that would be highly unusual. In twenty years as an optician I’ve only seen that once before.’

  ‘Once in twenty years. I like those odds,’ Colm told her.

  I didn’t. If it happened once, it could happen again.

  ‘But regardless of whether it’s something minor or something that requires further attention, you do need to get it checked out.’ It was no consolation that she was reinforcing the point I’d been making for weeks.

  Colm was out of the chair now, shaking her hand, then taking mine, leading me outside. Only when we were back in the street, the rain pounding on our heads, did he wrap his arms around me.

  ‘Honey, don’t worry. This will be fine. I promise you. It’ll all be fine.’

  I wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince me or himself.

  There was complete silence in the van as I drove almost robotically to collect Beth, arriving at the school and taking our place next to dozens of other parents. Thankfully the rain had stopped and there was no one close by that I recognized. I was glad on both counts. School-gate chatter was definitely not what I needed right now.

  A couple of minutes after the bell rang, Beth tore out of the door and ran towards us.

  ‘Mum! Dad! I had a fa-a-a-a-n-tastic day,’ she blurted, high as a kite.

  Colm picked her up and spun her around and I forced myself to smile.

  ‘So we were thinking…’ I told her, with gushing enthusiasm. ‘That we’d go to the park and then maybe for ice cream.’

  Her eyes widened with pure excitement. ‘Yaaaayyyyyy. Can we? Can I have strawberry ripple?’

  Our daughter definitely did enjoyment and enthusiasm in equal measure.

  Meanwhile, my internal dialogue was screaming with equal proportions of incomprehension and dread. I felt totally overwhelmed. This was surreal. Couldn’t be happening. And yet it was.

  ‘You can have anything you want, sweetheart,’ Colm told her, placing her back on solid ground. She reached up and took my hand and his, skipping between us.

  ‘This is the best day ever!’

  The best day ever.

  Or the worst.

  I had no idea, but I was praying for my daughter’s verdict.

  After all, didn’t we have blind faith and optimism on our side?

  12

  2001

  When Colm Breaks The News To His Ex-wife.

  I knew the boys would love her. There was never any question, but she sealed the deal by doing the best impression of Buzz Lightyear they’d ever heard. ‘To Infinity and Beyond’ became their very own phrase of endearment the first time we took them out, and now their eyes immediately searched for Shauna when they saw me coming. Great judges of character, my boys, even when they were knackered, as they were now. We’d had two rounds of laser tag and a spin on the go-carts today, after a late night showing of a Shrek video at my place last night. My housemate, Doug, was on night shift, and had offered Shauna his room, while the boys slept in with me, top and tail. Perfect.

  ‘Right troops, time to go home,’ I told them, and was greeted with wails of objections. ‘Nooooo! That’s not fair. Why do we need to go home? Is Shauna coming home with us too?’

  The thing with having twins was that everything came in stereo and by the time you’d listened to every question they threw at you, you’d forgotten the ones at the start.

  Shauna kneeled down and gave Joe a hug. ‘Not today SuperJoe – I need to go to work. Right, let’s fly!’ She picked him up, swung him around, and he was so busy squealing with joy he soon forgot to be unhappy that she wasn’t coming home with them.

  As we left the indoor play centre, Shauna helped them on with their jackets, then slipped her hand into mine. ‘They look exhausted.’

  ‘They’ve had a great time,’ I told her. ‘Thanks to you.’

  It was true. It was hard to believe she’d only known them for a few weeks. To any outsider we probably looked like mum, dad and the kids out for a Sunday day trip. I liked that idea. She was a natural at this kids stuff. It helped that the boys were easy going little dudes, but she just always knew what to say to them. She claimed it was all the parties she catered, but I reckoned it was just her personality. Who wouldn’t love her?

  Out on the street I flagged down a cab, then turned to see Shauna crouched down, arms outstretched. ‘Right boys, I’ll see you soon,’ she told them, then almost toppled as both of them pounced on her. Their goodbyes and lists of things we’d do next week were taking so long I could see the driver getting restless. I scooped the boys up. ‘Let’s go, tigers.’

  ‘Not tigers!’ Davie insisted.

  ‘I’m Buzz! To Infinity and Beyond,’ Joe yelled.

  The driver was probably wishing he’d driven on past and picked up the next person standing on a street corner.

  I kissed her. ‘I’ll come over later, let you know how it goes.’

  ‘Okay. I’m going to go meet my gran for a coffee, but I’ll be home by about six. Good luck,’ she said. ‘And if it doesn’t feel right, you don’t have to tell Jess – we can wait.’

  That wasn’t an option. ‘I do and we can’t,’ I told her.

  The boys were still hyper when we reached their house and charged in the door ahead of me, leaving a trail of jackets, hats and shoes in their wake.

  ‘Hello?’ I shouted, out of courtesy. This had been my house once, but not any more. Jess had completely redecorated, so it didn’t even feel like the same house. Now I lived a few streets away and this was all Jess’s, so I was conscious not to overstep the boundaries.

  ‘I’m in the kitchen,’ Jess shouted. ‘Come on through.’

  I’d be lying if I said it didn’t still feel a bit weird, coming in here as a visitor, instead of kicking off my shoes and announcing that I was home. Not that I wanted to go back there. Definitely not now.

  Jess was sitting at the white wood kitchen table, cup of coffee in hand, a magazine open in front of her. She always did like to keep up with fashions. Her auburn hair was cut like a model’s. What was it called again? A bob. Yeah, that was it. Cut straight across in a fringe at the front, and then a sharp cut at the chin.

  She always looked great, I’ll give her that. She was wearing a red plaid shirt that I recognized. We’d bought it on a day in town a couple of years ago, on one of our last days out together. Some bloke had accidentally spilled a drink on her in a bar, so we’d nipped into a shop along the street and she’d picked this shirt out. She’d put it on right there and then, tied it at the waist, and we’d gone back to the pub. I had no idea the next time I saw it we’d be divorced and I’d be asking permission to come into my own house.

  ‘They sound like they had a great day,’ she said. ‘Want tea? Coffee?’

  I climbed on to the bench at the other side of the table. ‘Sure. Thanks.’

  We made small talk while she brewed the tea, mostly about the boys, their week at school, what they wanted for Christmas, and what we’d done this weekend. I’d got as far as the Shrek video when she sat back down, passed me the tea and cut me off with, ‘Was Shauna there?’

  I know she was trying to keep it friendly, but there was definitely a shade of annoyance in there.

  ‘She was.’

  I let
that one sit for a moment, unsure where to go with it next.

  ‘The boys seem to like her,’ she conceded, calm again.

  ‘She’s great with them.’

  Another pause. Problem is, I’ve never been good with awkward situations, so I decided to cut right through it.

  ‘Is this weird? Are you okay talking about her?’ I asked.

  She put her cup down and sighed. ‘Sorry, Colm. It shouldn’t be strange and I didn’t think it would be, but somehow it is.’

  ‘I get it. It’s another woman with your boys…’ I let that one hang, not wanting to emphasize it.

  For a few moments she didn’t say anything, then… ‘And my husband.’

  That one took me by surprise. I thought about correcting her – ex-husband – but decided against it, choosing to take the opening that gave me.

  ‘Actually, I kind of wanted to have a chat about that.’

  She was looking at me intently now, eyebrows raised in curiosity. Or perhaps it was wariness. I’d never been much good at reading Jess – one of the fundamental reasons we were now divorced.

  ‘Shauna and I, we’re… getting married.’

  Crap, bad timing. Should have waited until she didn’t have coffee in her mouth. She immediately started to choke and splutter, taking a few pats on the back and a good twenty seconds to stop – twenty seconds that felt like half an hour.

  ‘Holy fuck,’ she finally managed. ‘Married?’

  ‘Yeah, sorry to spring it on you like that, but didn’t really know how else to tell you.’

  She was visibly bristling now. ‘Married?’ she repeated. ‘Weren’t you the guy who said you were never getting married again?’

  ‘Now that you mention it…’

  Her voice was raised and I found myself wondering if I could use my mug in a shield-like function. Then I decided I shouldn’t be having infantile thoughts like that at a moment like this. Sometimes it was very easy to see why I was divorced.

  ‘So what changed?’

  ‘Shauna,’ I said simply.

  ‘But you’ve only been seeing her for five minutes!’

  ‘Ten weeks,’ I corrected her. This wasn’t going well. It was unlike Jess to be so antagonistic. But then, clearly I wasn’t great at reading her or else we might still be together.

  ‘And you’ve already decided to get married?’ Irritation had morphed into incredulity. ‘When did that happen?’

  Sod it, may as well get it all out there. ‘I asked her four weeks after we met.’

  Thankfully, this time the shock got to her right before she took another sip of her coffee, and her cup froze in mid-air. For a moment I wondered if she was thinking about throwing it at me.

  ‘Look, I’m only telling you all this because I didn’t want the boys coming home with half stories. I’d rather tell you myself.’

  That seemed to mellow her a little. ‘I just… I can’t believe all this, Colm,’ she said, but there was no anger there, just disbelief. Okay, we were making progress.

  ‘So when’s the big day? I hope you’re giving yourself some time and not rushing into anything.’

  ‘Next Saturday.’

  ‘Oh. Wow.’ The last word was a whisper, then she got up and headed back over to the kettle, flicked it on and stood staring at it as it boiled. She still had half a cup in front of her so I had a feeling this was just a stalling tactic, a distraction from the conversation. I decided to say nothing, give her time to process everything. At least, that’s what I was telling myself. The reality was that I had absolutely no idea what else to say. Since the day we’d separated, we’d kept the discussions friendly, purely superficial and only about the kids. I had no idea if she was happy, sad, seeing someone, nothing. I had absolutely zero to lead with here so the silence bounced off the walls.

  It was several long minutes before she refilled her cup and sat back down again.

  ‘Are you going to throw that at me? Only I want to be ready to duck.’

  ‘Christ, Colm, not like you to use humour to deflect a tense situation.’ Shit. Bristling again.

  ‘Sorry, I…’

  She cut me off. ‘No, I’m sorry. That was just bitchy.’

  I wasn’t going to argue, so we just indulged in a few moments of respective mug-staring.

  Eventually she took her gaze away from her cup. ‘I’ve got absolutely no idea how to feel about all of this. I mean, I probably knew on some level that it would happen one day, but I never expected it to be so soon. We’re barely divorced four months.’

  ‘I know. Honest to God, Jess, I didn’t plan this, I just fell in…’ Using the premise that I’d rather say nothing than the wrong thing, I decided to leave that one there. Jess did too, moving swiftly on to the next question.

  ‘Where’s the wedding?’

  ‘A tiny church in a village near Wimbledon. Her folks live out that way. It’s not a big fancy do…’

  ‘Like ours, you mean?’

  I didn’t, but she had a point. Jess and I had met in the first year of college, got engaged in the second, married in the third, in a cathedral in York, with 300 people there, including my whole family – aunts, uncles, cousins, the lot – over from Dublin.

  This time around, my ma and my brother Liam would come over, but that was it. Small. Special. In truth, I’d be happy for just the two of us to go to a registry office, but it was the first and last time Shauna would be married so I got that she wanted to have the people she loved around her.

  ‘No, not like ours.’ I didn’t elaborate. Keep it simple. Less chance of a riotous fuck-up.

  Another pause.

  ‘Does she know why we split up?’

  I shook my head, but said nothing. I wasn’t going to get into this again. If there was one subject that I’d happily never talk about again until the end of time, it was the demise of our marriage. No good could come of going back there and picking through the pieces. Never again.

  ‘Okay. Right.’ She seemed to be summoning up some acceptance from somewhere. I didn’t push it. Hopefully, we were done chatting and I could make an exit before it all went horribly wrong. We’d survived this, let’s leave it at that.

  ‘So why her? What’s so special about her?’

  Fecking bollocks. Hello rock, hello hard place.

  ‘Does it matter?’ I asked, genuinely trying to avert any kind of comparison situations. I may not have the highest degree of emotional intelligence, but I realized that telling your first wife how incredible your second wife was could be a life-shortening episode in stupidity.

  ‘I guess not,’ she shrugged, then fell to silence again, until, ‘Have you told the boys?’

  ‘No. I wanted to speak to you first, see how you wanted to handle it.’

  ‘I think you should be honest with them. Do you want to tell them with Shauna?’

  I should have an answer for this. A really good answer. But I didn’t. ‘I don’t know. What do you think would be best?’

  ‘Why don’t we tell them now? Make it like it’s no big deal.’

  ‘Sure. Whatever you think.’

  She stretched over to the door. ‘Boys!’ she shouted.

  There was a thunder of approaching feet, before Davie and Joe appeared and climbed on to the table. I’d normally point out that they weren’t allowed there, but decided this wasn’t the moment and like I said, this wasn’t my house anymore.

  ‘Dad has something to tell you guys.’

  Shit, that was sudden. I didn’t know whether she was encouraging me or ambushing me in the hope that I’d bottle out.

  Two gorgeous little faces looked up at me. ‘Are we getting a Scalextric?’ was Joe’s opener.

  It was the perfect ice-breaker. Even Jess laughed. These boys were class.

  ‘No. Well, maybe if you’re good before Santa comes. But that’s not it.’ I really wished I’d looked up how to do this. There must be a manual somewhere. Or a book. Some self-help guide to moving on after divorce and re-marrying. I didn’t even care if I d
idn’t do it perfectly, just as long as I didn’t scar them for life. ‘Guys, we just wondered how you would feel if daddy married Shauna?’

  Davie just carried on playing with his Rubik’s cube, but Joe’s eyes widened. ‘Will she be our new mum?’ I saw Jess wince and immediately shut that one down.

  ‘Of course not buddy. Your mum will always be your mum. It just means that when you’re with me, Shauna will be there too. Is that cool?’

  ‘Yeah! She’s like the real Buzz!’ Joe cheered. ‘Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool…’

  He went off on a mantra, before suddenly stopping, yelling ‘To Infinity and Beyond!’ and jumping off the table. Quick reflexes caught him, and I scooped him up and tickled him. Over his shrieks, I checked with Davie. ‘Bud, is it okay with you?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, always the more understated of the two.

  Jess spoke up. ‘Okay, boys, well say goodbye to your dad and go wash up. Dinner will be ready soon.’

  They scrambled over me, delivering hugs and kisses before running off upstairs to the bathroom.

  ‘That went ok?’ It was more of a question than a statement. I could see she looked a bit deflated

  ‘Yeah, but I’m glad they’re happy. I am. Sorry, I was a bit of a cow earlier. Just surprised.’

  I stood up, put my mug in the sink and turned back to face her. ‘No worries. I appreciate you helping me tell them. I should go.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Thanks Jess.’ I wasn’t sure what I was thanking her for, but I just knew this could have been a lot worse. I was halfway to the door when she stopped me, putting her hand out as I passed her.

  ‘Colm, are you sure?’ She looked up at me with the huge brown eyes I’d once stared into every day. ‘It’s just that…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess I just always thought we would…’

  Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Not now. My internal alarm was ordering me to evacuate the premises.

  She shook her head, changing tack on what she was about to say, ‘…doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Okay.’ Relief.