Jumping in Puddles

by Claire Allan

  How sad was it that a meeting in a community centre, with people twice her age, had been the height of her social life this month? She thought of Niamh – she seemed lovely, kind but sad. Then she thought of Ruth and Liam – it would be lovely for them to one day get together.

  Chiding herself for having romantic notions, she slid down on the floor beside the sofa and watched Ella sleep – the soft rise and fall of her chest.

  What good would having romantic notions do? She was already spoiled goods. The boys from her school hadn’t looked at her sideways since she’d got pregnant and she couldn’t imagine they would again. She had stretch marks now – dirty big pink lines running up her stomach. There were even a couple on her boobs. And, dare she say it, her boobs sagged. She was fecking seventeen and her boobs sagged. What would they be like when she hit forty? She’d be in serious danger of tripping over them.

  Besides, Ciara was pretty sure she didn’t ever want another boyfriend anyway. Giving birth had put her off any notions of having sex of any description, even just touching anyone again. To be honest, having sex itself – that one time – had put her off the notion of doing it again. No man was ever getting near her again. Ever. It was no big deal. It certainly wasn’t the be-all and the end-all that it seemed to be in the movies. She cringed remembering how she’d tried to make the right noises to sound like she knew what she was doing, but in all honesty it just felt clumsy and sore and not in the very least bit sexy.

  She switched over and watched MTV for a little before getting dressed for work and setting about feeding her daughter – hoping that she wouldn’t sick up on her before they left the house. Her other uniform was in the wash and she was on a warning already for coming to work in her own clothes even though it was only the poxy village shop. It was hardly bleedin’ Tesco.

  Sighing, she strapped Ella into her buggy and walked out into the misty rain – making sure not to bang the door as she closed it. As she walked along the shorefront towards the crèche, she saw school children, some her former classmates, come out their front doors, dressed in uniform and swinging their bags from their shoulders, smiling and chatting with their friends. She put her head down and walked on. She wasn’t in the form to chat to them this morning and have them coo over Ella, saying how cool she was. Ciara knew that babies were far from fashion accessories – in fact, instead of making you super cool, they were more likely to make you the ultimate drudge.

  Dropping her daughter off, she checked her watch to make sure she wasn’t late for work. Then she ran down the street and wondered if she would see him again today.

  She never knew if she really wanted to see him – Ella’s dad – but she had a longing in her all the same. She might feel worse after he blanked her and went on about his life as if nothing had happened between them and they didn’t have a child together, which was his usual tactic. She chided herself once again – romantic notions about the village Lothario-in-training were not going to get her very far at all.

  7

  “So is it all crackpots and loonies then?” Eimear asked, biting into a slice of toast her mother had just buttered for her.

  “No and don’t be so rude,” Ruth chided, buttering another slice of toast for eight-year-old Matthew who was lost in an episode of Ben 10.

  “Ach, I’m only joking,” Eimear replied, tightening her school tie. “I’m sure it was mad craic hearing all the scandal. Was your one whose husband died there?”

  “What happens in the group stays in the group,” Ruth replied, feeling rather proud of herself for refusing to be drawn into idle gossip.

  “Aye, but was she there? That was really sad. We were talking about it in school. She has two wee wains, doesn’t she? But I heard she was loaded and I heard she got mega-bucks after he died. That car she drives is gorgeous. I’m going to have personalised number plates just like hers when I’m older. Lucky cow.”

  Ruth rolled her eyes. “I’m sure she would rather have her husband with her than piles of money.”

  Her daughter snorted. “Aye, right!”

  But she knew it was pointless discussing it further with Eimear – who, given recent experiences in her own life, would have been only too happy to see her own father wiped out in a car accident so she could live off the proceeds of his insurance. Not that James ever had insurance, or made any financial provision for the future – or for the present for that matter. She hadn’t seen a penny off him since he walked out.

  “And was yer man there? Her husband? Poor fecker.”

  “Eimear, language!”

  “I said feck, not the other word,” Eimear said, rolling her eyes. “Calm down, Mother! Seriously, there are worse things I could be doing.”

  Her daughter stood up, pulling her hair into a high pony-tail before taking one last bite of toast and going to call Thomas, who was still spiking his hair in the bathroom.

  “I’m not being late for school today because of you and your hair! No one notices it anyway. They can’t see past your zits,” she shouted at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Eimear, would you leave your brother alone!” Ruth called, her blood pressure rising. Her daughter was sixteen going on forty-three – thought she knew it all and thought everyone else was just enthralled with her opinions. She was a right madam these days and while Ruth loved the bones of her there were times when she secretly fantasised about wringing her pretty little neck. Poor Thomas was only fourteen and hit with what seemed like a double dose of puberty hormones which were raging through his puny body while Eimear had seemed to blossom into puberty – no gawky teenager phase or problem skin for her. Ruth often wished she would cut her brother some slack.

  “You’re a mega meanie!” Matthew called as he put on his school coat and pulled his bag onto his back. “Leave my brother alone!”

  Eimear just stuck her tongue out and called again to Thomas, storming on ahead of him as he wandered down the stairs, half a jar of gel in his hair.

  As Ruth pulled on her coat to take her youngest son to the school at the other end of the village she wished for one moment that she had someone else there to act as peacekeeper between her brood – not that, when she thought about it, James was ever much of a peacekeeper – in fact it was usually the exact opposite.

  Once Matthew was deposited at school, Ruth walked home and let herself into the blissful peace and quiet. She wasn’t due to start work for another two hours and so it was the perfect time to catch up on some housework, or sort out the mountain of bills piling up on the hall table. But all she wanted to do was sit down, put her feet up and cry into a cup of tea.

  Most of the time she stayed strong, but when push came to shove she was a thirty-seven-year-old woman cast out on the world again – single, with three children, a mountain of debt and a plethora of grey hairs which seemed to be on a mission to multiply on a daily basis. Thirty-seven wasn’t old, she knew that, but on days like today, even though last night she had felt so positive coming away from the meeting, she felt ancient.

  She had been so convinced she was headed for her happily ever after when she married at twenty-one. Her mother had told her, the very morning of the wedding, that it wasn’t too late to call it off and Ruth had laughed. She loved James – so madly and deeply that she knew she could never love anyone like that again.

  And she had beamed all day. In every photograph of that day she was glowing amid her layers of lace and netting. Everyone commented that she was a beautiful bride, that she had never looked better. Yet now when Ruth looked at the pictures she saw a child staring back at her. When Eimear started with her teasing and flicking of her hair Ruth could see in her the same hopeless naïvety that she’d had at that age and it scared her.

  Ruth sat back in her seat, switched on the TV to watch some warring couple battle it out on the Jeremy Kyle Show so that she could at least comfort herself with the knowledge her life wasn’t as much of a train wreck as that of those poor souls. The washing could wait until later, and as for the bills – no
amount of number-crunching was going to change the fact that financially she was up a creek without a paddle. Ruth knew she would have to start making begging phone-calls to lenders soon and that she would in all likelihood have to give up her part-time job in the doctor’s and find something which paid more – a lot more.

  Ruth couldn’t believe her life had come to this. Her pocket-money job – the one that was supposed to pay for her luxuries – had now become her sole source of income. No doubt if the good people of Rathinch knew that James Byrne – him in his high-fallutin’ office – wasn’t offering a bean to his family they wouldn’t believe it.

  She rubbed her eyes and stared around her. If the worst came to the worst she could Ebay some stuff – God knows they had enough tat lying around here. Her wedding ring was worth a few quid, as were the many bracelets and necklaces he had bought over the years as peace offerings. They could go. She had no need for them any more and could take no joy from wearing them.

  If things got really bad she could sell her car – battered and bruised (mostly of her own making, admittedly), it was her pride and joy. But she would do what she could to keep her family provided for until she got the courage up to drag James through the courts for child support.

  Watching the latest row erupt on the TV, Ruth allowed herself to smile. She wondered if Rathinch was ready for its first hooker yet.

  She could just imagine the neighbours’ faces as she touted her wares in the front-room window – all fishnet stockings and tarty red lipstick and then maybe she could get herself a slot on the telly with all the old biddies from the town shouting at her for scaring the tourists away.

  She shuddered as she imagined the clientele – a couple of farmers and Billy the fisherman who always smelled of haddock. Nope – she would pick up the paper later and scan it for a job a little more suitable and she would phone James again, and try and bring up the tricky subject of child support again – just as she did every week. Maybe, she thought with a smile, she should enlist Eimear to ask for her. Her bolshy daughter wouldn’t take any nonsense from her father, or anyone for that matter. Ruth wondered where on earth she got her gutsy personality from. It certainly didn’t come from Ruth, and that was for sure.

  She rinsed her cup under the tap and made her way upstairs to start getting ready for work. Glancing in the mirror she shuddered. She was certainly a far cry from the gorgeous young bride she had been years before. Her hair was cut in an unflattering bob, greying at the temples. It was not a good look – and not at all helped by her growing mountain of wrinkles. When she smiled she realised she was in danger of her eyes disappearing entirely amid a mass of loose skin. Her clothes were a little too tight – something she was not at all impressed with, given that the label read a 16. And, to add to her woes, she had one of those apron-type bellies thanks to three pregnancies and an addiction to Maltesers. She gave it a good jiggle for good measure. Sure wouldn’t she look just sweet in red nylon stockings and suspenders as the village tart?

  8

  The postman arrived while Niamh was cooking breakfast on her AGA. As usual the twins tore off, falling over each other to get to the letters first.

  “Calm down!” Niamh called as the stampede battered towards the door.

  “But, Mummy, it’s my job to bring in the post!” Connor yelled.

  “No, Mummy, it’s mine, it’s mine!” Rachel yelled back and Niamh couldn’t help but smile even though she knew that it was all bound to end in tears, just as it always did.

  “Can you not share?” she shouted, walking to the hall in time to see their three-year-old heads collide over a pile of letters.

  The three-second silence came next, followed by a joint wailing and screaming as both toddlers scampered down towards their mother at lightning speed, clutching their letters in their podgy hands.

  “There, there,” Niamh soothed, smothering their heads in kisses until the sobs subsided and they dropped their letters in favour of the brightly coloured characters jumping around on the TV screen in the playroom.

  Still sitting on the hall floor Niamh flicked through today’s haul. Thankfully she was no longer reduced to a sobbing wreck by letters addressed to Seán, and due to the insurance payouts the credit-card bills didn’t fill her with dread. In fact, ironically, she could now spend more money than she had ever had in her life. In any other circumstance she would have been happy as a pig in the proverbial, but now even the allure of a guilt-free Lulu Guinness purchase failed to lift her spirits. In so many ways, it felt as if her life was meaningless. Apart from the children there was no one who wanted anything from her. She sighed as she sorted through the post, stopping at the handwritten note in a floral envelope.

  Caitlin’s handwriting was as recognisable as her own. She took a deep breath and tore it open, wondering if it could offer some sort of explanation for her off-the-wall behaviour lately.

  Trying to focus on the words written in front of her Niamh started to feel very, very angry. How dare she? How fecking dare she?

  Lifting the phone she furiously tapped in Robyn’s number, her anger rising with each second. She walked into the kitchen, away from the children so they wouldn’t hear her tirade of expletives.

  “The cheeky fecking bitch wants me to stay out of her life,” Niamh said as she heard Robyn lift the receiver. “She hasn’t spoken to me in three months and then I get a fecking card to say she wishes me well but she wants nothing more to do with me! No explanation – just a fecking card with a fecking flower on the fecking front saying she wishes me well. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Wishes me well? She can stick her fecking good wishes up her fecking arse. In fact, feck that, I’m so annoyed right now she can stick her fucking good wishes up her fucking hole!”

  Robyn sighed. Niamh could hear the squeak of her chair as she sat back in thought. That was just so Robyn, Niamh thought. She didn’t leap in, all guns blazing, shouting the odds. Maybe that is why Caitlin hadn’t taken Robyn off her Christmas-card list just yet, while it was clear that Niamh herself was never going to be invited around for drinks and nibbles again.

  “I don’t know what is going on with her,” said Robyn. “I can talk to her if you want, but I’m not sure it would do any good. She hasn’t given me any hints either.”

  “But why?” Niamh said, cringing at the whingeing tone in her voice – aware she sounded like a spoiled child. To her disgust tears sprang to her eyes. This was all getting to be too much. It was bad enough she had lost Seán – why did it feel like everything else was slipping away from her too, most of all her sanity?

  “I’m going to have it out with her. Right now. I’ll phone you back.”

  Niamh was vaguely aware of her friend protesting wildly on the other end of the phone as she hit the end-call button but she didn’t care. The red mist had descended and she wasn’t going to put up with this any longer. She had done nothing – absolutely nothing – to deserve being treated like a cold snotter by the person she considered her oldest and dearest friend.

  That friend should have been making herself available, as Robyn had been doing, to listen to sobbing mad phone calls at all hours of the morning and night. That friend should have worn a track between Derry and Rathinch over the last three months with an endless supply of wine, chocolate and Balsam tissues.

  That friend should have been a friend. Full stop.

  With her hands shaking, she battered the number into the phone and waited for Caitlin to answer. After four rings it went to answerphone. The same happened when she called her mobile. Damn fecking caller ID. If she hadn’t been worried about scaring the life out of the children she would have bundled them in the car, driven at full pelt up the road to Caitlin’s riverfront offices and demanded that she explain herself.

  The last time they had spoken to each other had been at Seán‘s funeral. Caitlin had been perfectly turned out as always. Even through her grief, Niamh had felt like Nora Batty, sagging in her mourning clothes beside the perfectly preened and coiffe
d Caitlin in her Armani suit.

  Caitlin had been upset. Niamh could still remember the look of devastation on her face – how she had dabbed at her eyes with a delicate lace hanky while all Niamh had was a crumpled Kleenex which was in danger of disintegrating in her hands.

  “I can’t believe he is gone,” her friend had muttered, air-kissing her, and Niamh had wanted to scream.

  She was all for air-kissing – in the right place at the right time. She had attended plenty of parties and business conventions in her day when kissing was de rigueur, but you do not air-kiss your best friend on the day she buries her husband.

  She picked up the phone and dialled another number: the switchboard of the PR firm Caitlin worked in.

  “Can I speak to Caitlin O’Kane please?” she asked, drumming her fingers against the worktop viciously.

  The receptionist replied politely and patched the call through and again it went to answerphone.

  “Hello, Caitlin. It’s Niamh here. Niamh Quigley. Remember me? I just wanted to say, you do not fecking air-kiss your best friend on the day she buries her husband.”

  She slammed the phone down and poured a glass of water, hands still shaking. She wasn’t sure what that had achieved but she at least felt better for it.

  9

  Liam stood in the bathroom of his offices at the builder’s yard and looked in the mirror. He noticed the slight spread of his stomach and vowed to get back to the gym when he could. Just because Laura had left there was no need for him to let himself go. And the better he looked, the more she might want him back. Sure, hadn’t she found him the sexiest man in Rathinch at one stage?