by Claire Allan
Not that it really mattered if her tummy was flabby or not, given the not-so-stylish uniform Mrs Quinn made her wear. She couldn’t help but smile to herself. If Mrs Quinn knew the truth about her precious grandson she would no doubt have Ciara dressed in sackcloth and ashes. He was her blue-eyed boy and make no mistake. Ciara often wondered how, on the few occasions she brought Ella into the shop, the old bag didn’t notice those exact same blue eyes staring back at her? But then, she supposed, the heart only sees what it wants to see which is why she herself fell for that ignorant self-obsessed twat in the first place.
Ella let out a gentle baby snore and lifted her tiny hand to her face to rub at her cheek. Her dummy slipped out onto the pillow and for a second it looked as though she might wake, but instead she rolled over closer into her mum and slipped back into her dream. Ciara could only imagine what was going through her head – probably dreams of fairies and fireworks and bus trips to strange cities. Ciara almost envied her sense of innocence, but then looking around Eimear’s room she kind of envied Eimear’s sense of innocence too. She was leading the life Ciara should have been but then, Ciara remembered, if she wasn’t very careful she would be living the life Ciara was living now. Only perhaps then Ben Quinn would have to take responsibility for something.
Ciara closed her eyes and fell back to sleep – slipping off into the same strange dreams as her daughter no doubt.
When she woke the house was already buzzing with noise. The Quigley twins were obviously awake and she could hear Poppy singing to them. Ella was playing with her hands and feet on the bed and a broad smile broke across her face when she noticed her mammy was awake.
“Morning, princess,” Ciara said, sitting up and lifting her daughter to her. Ella gurgled and clapped her hands with excitement, her eyes wide at the sound of the racket downstairs. “Eight o’clock, Ells. That’s a world record for you,” Ciara grinned. “Now if only you could do that every morning because it would make both me and your Granny Lorraine much, much happier and maybe I wouldn’t almost fall asleep over the buns every morning at work.”
Ella gurgled contentedly, not one bit bothered at Ciara’s plea for a more acceptable morning routine.
She probably likes the distraction of MTV in the background while I burn my toast through exhaustion, Ciara thought with a smile.
She changed her daughter’s nappy and made her way downstairs to where Niamh was cooking bacon for the assembled masses while Ruth sat on the floor doing jigsaw puzzles with the twins.
“Morning, sleepy head!” Ruth called.
Ciara smiled. “How do you have the energy?”
“What do you mean how do I have the energy? You’re the young whippersnapper, you should be bounding around here full of the joys of spring!”
Ciara bit back the urge to grunt. It wouldn’t be very well mannered and she knew deep down that Ruth didn’t mean any harm. Her comments weren’t laced with arsenic like Mrs Quinn’s.
“It’s autumn,” she muttered with a half smile and sat down on the floor beside her friend.
“Here, give that wee woman to me,” Ruth said. “You look beat out and believe me, Ciara, I know how exhausting they are at this age. Go back to bed. Close that living room door as you go and you shouldn’t hear much.”
“I couldn’t . . .” Ciara replied, taken aback by the kindness. She couldn’t remember the last time she got a lie-in. It was probably the night after Ella was born in the hospital.
“’Course you could. Get up them stairs and don’t come down until you are properly awake. I’ve enough experience of this carry-on to keep madam entertained and, besides, young Poppy here is dying to get pushing this one down the street in her pram so we are going to head out in a bit.”
“Are you sure?”
Ruth raised an eyebrow. It was a very mammy eyebrow, one that Ciara knew better than to argue with, so she muttered a quick thank you and climbed the stairs, almost giddy with excitement at the thought of getting another hour or two in bed. This was her teenage rebellion and she was going to enjoy every moment of it.
She kicked off her shoes and climbed under the duvet, feeling the cool sheets around her toes. Plumping the pillow, she lay down and could barely keep the smile from her face.
It was hard to put her finger on what had changed but something had. Her secret was out and she knew that Ben could say whatever he wanted, to whoever he wanted, and there would be people out there who would believe her. And those were the people she cared about – not some big gaggle of teenage girls who she had little in common with any more, apart from her age and her mild obsession with Justin Timberlake. He could bring sexy back any time he wanted. She would gladly give up her self-imposed chastity for a bit of Justin.
The future, Ciara felt, was just that little bit brighter and she didn’t feel so completely alone. She knew – sensed from deep within her – that something was going to change and not necessarily in the usual “all gone a bit shit” way.
Of course, come Monday morning she would still be going to work in the shop and outside of today she was unlikely to see a lie-in this side of 2015, but she didn’t feel completely fecked off with her lot for a change. Even this room and all the paraphernalia of teenagedom didn’t depress her (apart from the skinny clothes). None of them had what she had.
She made a promise to herself, as she drifted off into a gorgeous sleep, that she would try and be a little more grateful for everything. And she would continue to work at making things better with Lorraine. And if she got the chance she would, with the help of the Rathinch A-Team, come up with some way to put Ben in his place and keep Eimear safe from harm.
* * *
Something had shifted in Niamh. She left Ruth’s house and walked back to her own home singing “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” with the twins trailing behind her, skipping and laughing. They clearly liked their new mammy – even if she was slightly manic with a determined look on her face which was kind of like a smile, only with a healthy dose of crazy added for effect.
Opening the huge oak door to their marble-covered hallway, Niamh told the children they could have Smarties and fruit juice and they could eat their treats on the cream living-room carpet. Seán would have turned over in his grave at the very thought but Niamh didn’t give a damn. She was almost tempted to let them run riot with a jar of Nutella and to hell with the shag pile. Putting on a DVD to amuse them, she kicked off her boots and walked into the kitchen where she switched the percolator on and lifted the phone.
“Mum,” she said, almost before her mother had time to answer.
“Yes, darling, are you okay?”
“I am, Mum. I’m doing great. Can you come down today?”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Try as she might, Mary could not keep the concern from her voice.
“Honestly,” Niamh replied. “I just have something to do and I don’t want the kids to come with me and besides I had a few drinks last night. I’m hung-over and I could really do with your help to mind them while I sleep for the afternoon.”
She knew her mother might be mildly concerned at her confession of a hangover, but she hoped that Mary would be happy enough that her daughter was, on this occasion, drinking with other people rather than wailing over her well-worn copy of Ghost on DVD while sinking a bottle of wine.
“Of course, darling,” she replied and Niamh thanked her before walking into the utility room and lifting a roll of black bin bags from the cleaning cupboard.
She poured her coffee and, sticking her head round the door to make sure the children were fine, she shouted to them that Mammy was just going upstairs and they should call her if they needed her.
She went to her bedroom and pulled her hair back under a scarf, before changing into her oldest and comfiest non-designer jeans and an old white T-shirt. Sitting down on the bed, she contemplated what she was about to do next.
There was an energy in her that hadn’t been there before – a fire in her belly. She rolled out bag
after bag and sipped from her coffee cup. She wouldn’t pack everything up. She wasn’t that brave. But by God she was going to start.
Pulling suits and ties, shirts and jumpers from his wardrobe, where they were pressed and hung neatly row on row, she bundled them into the bags. Some came easily off their hangers and some of the hangers decided they wanted a new life in the bin bags as well and she didn’t care. This was the not the precision packing she was used to – this was a life detox.
The shoes were next and then the socks. He had so many socks and one of those anally retentive sock-sorter thingies in his drawer because God forbid there would ever be an unmatched sock in their perfect boudoir. His aftershaves came next. He had more scents than she had. Perhaps that should have given her a clue he was a useless cheating bastard.
Next came his books – reams and reams of really annoyingly boring law tomes and John Grisham-style thrillers. The man, she thought as she piled more books into another bag, was a walking cliché. Lawyer in the city, wifey in the country, mistress in the riverside flat.
She felt some rage bubble up then but she bit it back. This was the new her – the one where her friends in Rathinch were going to help her find herself again and she wasn’t going to be the quiet, well-behaved trophy wife any more.
Hauling five bin bags into the landing, she heard the children call that their granny was arriving.
“Niamh, sweetheart, are you okay?” Mary’s voice called from the hall.
“Just fine,” Niamh replied, walking down the curved staircase to where her mother stood, armed with a bag of chocolates, wine and tissues.
“I’m fine, honest,” Niamh repeated, looking into her mother’s eyes. “But there is something I have to do, so could you watch the children for half an hour or so? I won’t be longer.”
Mary nodded, but she didn’t talk. Niamh would have tried to explain to her what she was about to do, but she doubted her mother would really understand. She would most likely just think her daughter had lost the plot altogether and send for the doctor, or Robyn, or the men in the white coats.
She would explain to her later, Niamh thought as she lifted her coat from the cloakroom and wrapped her scarf around her neck.
“I won’t be long,” she said, waving to the children and heading out down the gravel driveway towards the shore.
* * *
The cemetery in Rathinch sat, as all good Irish cemeteries do, on a hill. It was shielded from the wind coming off the sea by a row of tall and sad-looking trees which were shedding their leaves all over the gaudy floral displays and stony paths.
Niamh was pretty sure that if she tried she could walk to Seán‘s grave with her eyes closed. She had been there often since he died just to make sure the flowers were fresh and the stone kept clean. Seán would not have liked a dirty headstone – nor would he have liked wilting flowers. It would have tarnished his image and he was all about the image.
Standing at his grave she thought of all the times she had cried there and all the times she had hidden her tears because the children were there to leave pictures and presents for their daddy. Still there, on the foundation for his headstone, was a little yellow tipper truck Connor had left the last time they had visited. Normally the sight of one of her son’s toys on her husband’s grave would have made Niamh weep wild and hysterical tears, but today it just made her angry.
“They didn’t deserve a daddy like you,” she muttered, snatching it and putting it in her bag. “And I didn’t deserve a husband like you. All I ever did was love you.”
She sat down on the damp grass.
“How could you hurt me?” she asked. “How could you deceive us? Why was I not enough? I did everything you wanted! I was the perfect wife. I cooked. I cleaned. I gave you as many blowjobs as you wanted. I polished your shoes. I never showed you up in front of any one. I never told Kevin to fuck off, even though I wanted to on many, many occasions. I loved you!” She realised that with every word she had been tearing flowers from his grave.
He loves me. He loves me not.
Standing up, she dusted herself off and looked at the gold lettering again: Beloved husband and father. She wondered how much it would cost to alter and then, knowing she would only ever come back when her children asked her to, she walked through the weeping willow trees and onto the beach.
She didn’t feel sad – disappointed maybe, but not sad.
She had loved him. She knew that. She loved him from the moment their eyes had locked over the daily post delivery in his solicitor’s firm on her first day as his PA. It wasn’t the most romantic meeting in the world but she noticed almost straight away how he sat that little bit taller and smiled that little bit broader when she came into his office.
It had taken him three weeks to ask her out. Well, to be honest, he hadn’t really asked her out – more told her that they would be going out and she should wear something nice. Something just like the black pencil-skirt and satin blouse she had worn with her killer heels the day before.
She had been flattered. He was gorgeous – tall, dark, handsome, perfectly groomed with an ass that fitted snugly in his tailored suits and hands that were tanned and worn and perhaps the sexiest things she had ever seen.
He had taken her out to the Exchange for dinner and plied her with champagne and it was all she could do at the end of the night to resist the urge to pull him into her apartment and ravish him.
He, however, was a gentleman. He kissed her softly on the cheek – just long enough for her to breathe in the smell of his aftershave and be told he couldn’t wait to see her at work that Monday.
Thence followed a grand wooing. Before she met Seán, Niamh was pretty sure no one was ever wooed any more. It was old-fashioned and everyone she knew fell in love in the bog-standard, snog-outside-the-pub kind of a way. But, as with everything else in life, Seán even did romance perfectly.
He sent flowers, lots of them, and bought chocolate (but not enough to increase her waist size). He planned weekend trips to country-house hotels and overnight stays in plush five-star retreats. He bought jewellery – bespoke from Thomas the Goldsmith – and delicate slips of satin and lace which made her feel feminine and horny.
And, to top it all off, he told her he loved her and proposed in the poshest hotel she had ever set her eyes on. Her stiletto heels had sunk into the plush carpet as she walked across the restaurant floor. Their table had been waiting – stuffed to the gills with more cutlery than she could ever use and an ostentatious display of candles and flowers that almost blocked their view of each other.
He had ordered the most expensive bottle of champagne on the menu and insisted on having oysters for starters. She declined. She was about as much a fan of oyster as she was of pea and ham soup. All snotty-looking foods turned her off – but he had gulped them back and washed them down with champagne before telling her they had aphrodisiac properties.
She would have found it endearing and funny if three slightly bored-looking waiters hadn’t been hovering around them, topping her glass up as soon as she took so much as a sip from it. However, she brushed her concerns aside and screamed with delight when he told her loved her and presented her with a rock the size of an island.
She looked at it now, glinting in the autumn twilight, and she looked at the band of platinum and diamonds behind it. She wondered should she be melodramatic and toss them into the sea. She had contemplated that as she stormed across the dunes. It would be so very Scarlet O’Hara of her to toss the rings into the foamy water and shout that she was free of him now. It would make a great story to tell her friends over a glass or ten of wine, but she was a realist.
And she liked diamonds.
So she blew a kiss to the sea, smiled, and walked home.
* * *
When she got home Mary was cuddling the children on the sofa, with a distinct look of confusion on her face.
Niamh sat down beside her and rested her head on her mother’s shoulder.
“Please
tell me what is happening, Niamh, because I’m really worried about you.”
“Mum, you have no need to worry.”
“But you’ve been through so much, especially this last week,” Mary was whispering now, her eyes darting between the children and Niamh, afraid of upsetting anyone.
“I’ve been through a lot these last five years,” Niamh said stoically. “And I’m going to change. I’m going to make this all work, Mum, for me and for the children.”
“I see you have bin bags at the top of the stairs?”
“Charity shop,” Niamh said. “All of it. And tomorrow I’ll be starting on his office. You can help if you want, or you can just keep the kids out of my hair while I do it. Now, who’s for dinner? I fancy chips.”
29
Ruth’s house was quiet too – much too bloody quiet. Her last guest had left just after lunch and she had spent a couple of hours tidying up and cleaning. Then she had sat down, cup of tea and chocolate biscuit in hand, alone with her uneasy thoughts and an increasingly guilty conscience.
Everyone had left her house in great form. She’d had a lovely morning with Niamh, the twins, Ella and Poppy. Ciara had looked like a new woman – or new teenager – after her extended lie-in and Ruth was delighted to see someone walk down her stairs with a smile on her face as opposed to the usual sour grimace her daughter wore these days.
