The Last Days of Us

by Caroline Finnerty

  The children continued ripping open their presents until the room was a sea of paper and they were squealing and shouting with glee as Santa ticked off everything on their lists.

  Soon all the presents were open, but suddenly Robyn’s face grew serious.

  ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ I asked.

  ‘Where’s your present, Mammy?’ Although she was only four, Robyn was my sensitive child; she was always in tune with how everyone else was feeling.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I have loads of things,’ I said, quickly brushing her off.

  Harry put his remote-controlled car down on the floor. ‘Santa forgot Mam?’ He looked crestfallen.

  I looked over at JP; he was pretending to be engrossed in the instruction leaflet that came with one of Robyn’s dolls.

  ‘Come on, who’s hungry?’ I said, forcing myself to sound bright. I didn’t want anything else to ruin Christmas morning. I climbed back up from the floor.

  ‘Me, me, me!’ the kids chorused, their concern over my lack of presents already forgotten.

  ‘Mam?’ Harry came up beside me as I took sausages and rashers out of the fridge a few moments later.

  ‘Yeah?’ I said, shutting the fridge door.

  ‘How did Santa come down the chimney if Dad was in the room?’

  Here were the questions. I knew they would come.

  ‘Well… em… he must have come before Dad came home.’

  ‘But then why didn’t Dad wake us up when he saw Santa had come?’

  ‘Well… maybe he came when Daddy was asleep?’ I tried.

  ‘But why didn’t Daddy sleep in your bed with you?’

  ‘Look, why don’t I see if have any batteries for that remote-controlled car?’ I said, trying to change the subject.

  I walked past him into the utility room where JP was standing reading something on his phone. He quickly slipped it into his back pocket when he saw me.

  ‘Where were you last night?’ I asked. ‘You said you were going into work for a few hours and then you never came home!’

  He turned away from me. ‘I was out.’

  ‘I was worried about you.’ I was whispering so the kids wouldn’t hear. ‘Couldn’t you have called me and let me know you were okay? I’ve had to field a load of questions from them—’

  ‘Will you stop nagging me – it’s Christmas morning, for God’s sake!’

  I felt hot tears filling my eyes, stinging and burning with their ferocity. I didn’t understand what was happening. I was worried about his behaviour. I guess if I was honest with myself, he had been acting strangely for a while now. He had been short-tempered and disinterested in everything I said.

  ‘Mammy, what are you and Daddy talking about?’ Harry came into the utility room and was looking at both of us for an answer. I could see the worry pooling in his eyes.

  ‘Nothing, sweetheart,’ I said, quickly brushing my tears away, leaving my cheeks damp.

  After we had eaten breakfast, I went upstairs to shower and change before our guests arrived. We were having JP’s parents Joan and Richard for Christmas dinner and my sister Fiona and her partner Seán were going to join us too. As our mother and father were both dead, we always spent Christmas together. I knew JP’s parents would be calling straight after mass, so I needed to hurry.

  I was just putting on a little make-up to disguise my tired eyes when I heard the doorbell go downstairs. A few seconds later, I could hear Harry screaming, ‘Granny and Grandad are here!’

  ‘Mum, Dad! Happy Christmas!’ I could hear JP sing from the hallway as he welcomed them into our family home.

  I took a deep breath inwards to calm myself before heading downstairs to greet them. ‘Happy Christmas,’ I said, forcing myself to smile.

  My father-in-law, Richard, was carrying gifts and we attempted an awkward hug around his full arms. My mother-in-law, Joan, handed me a poinsettia in one hand and her coat in the other without even a greeting.

  ‘Can I get you both a drink?’ I asked, following them all into the living room.

  ‘Well, it is Christmas morning,’ Richard said, in a jubilant tone. ‘Sure, we might as well!’

  ‘You’re looking a little tired, John-Paul,’ Joan remarked. ‘Were the children up very early?’ She only ever called him by his full name, never the abbreviated version.

  ‘Just before six,’ he yawned.

  ‘I remember those days,’ Joan laughed.

  I disappeared into the kitchen, glad at the opportunity to have a moment alone to compose myself. I had to get it together. It was Christmas Day; I couldn’t let what had happened earlier ruin the whole day for everyone.

  I plastered a smile on my face and returned to the living room a few minutes later with a bottle of champagne and the flutes I kept for special occasions. I noticed they had already started exchanging gifts without me.

  ‘Look, Mammy, look what Ganny got me,’ Robyn cried, holding up a Frozen board game.

  ‘Oh wow, that’s amazing. Say thank you to Granny.’

  ‘Thank you, Ganny,’ she repeated.

  JP took the bottle from me and began uncorking it. The kids squealed as the cork popped and golden champagne frothed over the rim of the bottle. He began to fill everyone’s glasses.

  ‘To family,’ he toasted. And for a moment we almost looked happy.

  3

  We had just seen off our guests and I was in the kitchen with the lights dimmed low. JP was tucking the kids up in bed; they were exhausted from the day. Robyn had fallen asleep on the sofa, clutching her new Baby Annabell doll in one hand and her beloved Mr Bunny in the other, and Harry’s eyes had been drooping closed as he tried his best to stay awake.

  I was standing at the sink, my sleeves pushed up, scrubbing the roasting tins with Brillo pads. My shoulders burned with knots and I was drained from the day, not helped by the lack of sleep the night before. Sinéad O’Connor was softly crooning her version of ‘Silent Night’ on the radio in the background and the hairs on my arms stood to attention as her voice soared to catch the high notes.

  JP came back down the stairs and I swung around from the sink.

  ‘That went well then,’ I said sardonically as he entered the kitchen. I was referring to our Christmas dinner when I had noticed my mother-in-law using her knife and fork to lift up her meat. She had flipped it over on the plate, examined it and then done the same again on the other side.

  ‘Maybe it’s my eyesight…’ Joan had said, raising her glasses to her eyes. ‘I’m not great if the light is a bit dark, but mine’s looking a bit pink. Here, have a look, John-Paul,’ she’d said, sliding the plate towards him. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Yeah, I see what you mean, Mam,’ he had said, peering down at the plate.

  ‘Really?’ I’d said, trying to keep my cool. JP rarely cooked so he wasn’t the best person to judge. I had spent hours preparing this meal for our family with very little help and I was tired. ‘I don’t think I undercooked it…’ In fact, the opposite was true, I had overcooked it; it had been a bit on the dry side, if I was being completely honest with myself.

  I had leaned across the table to look at her meat, which to my eye was perfectly cooked. It was milk white.

  ‘I think it’s okay,’ Richard had said, taking another bite.

  ‘It’s delicious, Sarah,’ Fiona, my ever-loyal sister, had added.

  ‘It is,’ Seán had agreed.

  ‘I won’t risk it,’ Joan had said, shaking her head and pushing the plate away. ‘An undercooked turkey is very dangerous, you know.’

  ‘Well, I can see if I have another slice…’ I had offered, pushing my chair back and standing up to leave the table.

  ‘No, you’re okay.’ She had sat back and folded her arms across her lap. ‘I’m not very hungry now…’

  ‘I’ll eat the meat, Mammy,’ Robyn had said, sensing the tension in the room.

  ‘Why didn’t you stick up for me earlier?’ I demanded now from JP. ‘You could see that that turkey was
perfectly cooked!’ I looked at him, willing him to say something to acknowledge what had happened during dinner earlier, but, infuriatingly, he just shrugged his shoulders at me. I felt anger warm my veins.

  ‘That’s it?’ I asked in disbelief. ‘That’s all you’re going to say? I put so much effort into this day; making sure everyone had the presents they wanted, cooking for us all. You should have backed me up, you knew the meat was perfectly fine!’

  ‘Stop playing the martyr, Sarah. Can you just leave it out for once?’ He sighed heavily, walked over to the fridge and took out a beer bottle.

  I felt as though my heart had stopped. Something had changed between us and I hadn’t noticed when. The way he was looking at me right now, it was almost as if he hated me, but I couldn’t recall doing or saying anything that might have offended him.

  He raised the beer to his lips and took a long, slow gulp.

  I peeled off my rubber gloves and tossed them onto the draining board. I turned around to give him my full attention.

  ‘What’s going on with us, JP?’ My voice trembled. ‘I don’t understand why you’re acting like this.’

  He opened his mouth to speak, but the words seemed to stick on his lips, and he swallowed them back down again.

  ‘What is it? What’s happening here?’ I pushed again, taking a seat at the table. I needed to sit down; my body seemed so heavy. ‘Is there something on your mind? If you tell me what is wrong, then maybe I can help?’ My tone was softer now.

  He rubbed his hands down his face before shaking his head.

  ‘JP, what’s wrong? You’re scaring me, this isn’t like you. I’m so worried about you. I can’t keep living like this… it’s horrible.’ I felt as though I was a passenger in an out-of-control car and didn’t know the destination.

  ‘Me neither,’ he said, shaking his head.

  There was something in his tone warning me. I was crossing a line and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for what awaited me on the other side, but I had no choice but to continue.

  ‘Wh-what do you mean?’

  ‘I’m not in love with you any more, Sarah,’ he mumbled so low that I wondered if I had misheard him.

  ‘Sorry?’ I said, thinking I couldn’t be hearing him right. It was like his words had come out all jumbled up. All wrong. I needed to hear them again so I could put them the right way around.

  ‘I haven’t been in love with you in a very long time.’ He was looking down at the floor, pawing at the tiles with the toe of his shoe.

  The words hit me with the sudden shock of a wasp sting as I realised what he was saying to me.

  ‘But why? Why are you saying this?’ I was reeling. His words were rubber ping-pong balls and they were bouncing off my brain because my head couldn’t process them.

  ‘I don’t want this any more, I think it’s best for everyone if I move out – give us both some space to figure out what we really want,’ he continued.

  ‘But you can’t! We’re your family, JP! Me, Harry and Robyn – we’re your family! You can’t walk out on us!’ The whole thing seemed preposterous. What was going on inside his head? It didn’t make sense.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Sarah – I really tried. For a long time, I’ve tried to make it work, but I can’t do it any more…’

  ‘You can’t do what?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sarah, I didn’t want to do this on Christmas Day, but I can’t keep on living a lie – I think it’s best for everyone if I move out for a while.’

  I felt panicked, as if I was slipping further down under currents of oily water and I couldn’t break through the surface as I thought of the implications not just for me but for the kids too. They were my world. Why wasn’t he being rational? If something broke, you fixed it; you didn’t just cast it out, especially when you had spent fifteen years of married life with that person. ‘Please, JP, please, I don’t understand? Just tell me what I’ve done – we can work it out! Whatever is wrong, we can try to fix it!’ I begged.

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve made up my mind—’

  ‘But what about the kids? What are we meant to tell them? How are we going to explain it to them?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he admitted, ‘but kids are tougher than we think. Yes, it will be hard on them at the start, but they’ll be okay. We’ll sit them down in the morning and explain it to them.’

  I couldn’t understand why he was being so heartless, so cruel. This wasn’t like him. This wasn’t the JP that I knew and loved. Was this some kind of midlife crisis?

  ‘But where will you go?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet…’

  ‘You can’t do this – they need you – we need you. We can try counselling… loads of couples need counselling… why can’t we try that?’ I pleaded in a small voice that didn’t even sound like my own. Although we hadn’t been getting on for some time now, I just hadn’t seen this coming. I felt totally blindsided. The room was spinning around me. A juggernaut had jackknifed through my life, my world, my family, my heart, and I couldn’t stop it. ‘Please, JP, don’t do this,’ I wailed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sarah – I can’t—’

  Then it suddenly hit me; his unexplained absence the night before, the way he was always checking his phone. The way he wouldn’t look me in the eye lately. ‘Is there someone else? Is that what this is about?’

  ‘I’ll sleep on the sofa.’ And then he turned and walked out of the room.

  4

  I woke to find my head pressed against the table. It took me a second to work out why I was asleep in the kitchen, and then the crushing realisation of what had happened the night before hit me like a punch. I had sat at our kitchen table crying until everything was raw: my skin was raw from salty tears; my throat was raw from heaving sobs; my heart was raw from the slash of JP’s words. The washing was still piled up in the sink from when it had been abandoned the evening before. JP had taken up residence on the sofa and, as I heard snores coming from the living room, I’d wondered how on earth he was able to sleep?

  I’d stayed sitting at the table until the light outside changed from the black dark of night to the pinky-orange shades of dawn. How I wished I could stop time from marching forward. I longed to be able to hold back the day because I knew what was awaiting our children when they woke.

  Our children who were our world – or, at least, I had thought they were.

  We weren’t just husband and wife, we were parents. I always believed we had had an implicit, unspoken pact that we would never do anything to hurt them. Whenever we heard stories about marriages disintegrating or people walking out on their families, I thought we were both in agreement that we would never do something like that, we could never do such a thing to our children. We were better than that. So, where had it changed for JP? Was our unspoken agreement just in my head? Maybe it had been one-sided; had it been only my pact all along? They say that infertility is one of the biggest stresses that a marriage can face, but not for us it wasn’t. We rode that storm out together, so as I sat at my kitchen table, I was wracking my brain to figure out where it had all gone so wrong for us. How had we fought our biggest battle and won, but defeat was yet to come?

  The dawn sky was now alive with the chorus of morning song, the birds welcoming the arrival of a new day. A new day that I wished my kids didn’t have to face. This was to be a turning point in their lives, a watershed moment that would define everything from here on in. This would be the day that they would learn that their mother and father were not the rock that they had once thought. The core was about to be ripped out of their world.

  Just after seven, I heard footsteps on the stairs and Harry came into the kitchen, his sandy hair sticking up chaotically from sleep.

  ‘Mam, you’re up before me?’ He was usually the first person up. He would normally stick on the TV or play on his tablet for a little while, sometimes helping himself to biscuits, while JP and I slept on a bit longer.

  ‘You know I love you so much, don’t you?’ I sai
d, hearing the emotion thread my voice.

  ‘Of course,’ he wrinkled his nose in that way he had that was so like his father as he tried to figure out what was going on.

  Robyn came down the stairs next. She burst through the door and when she saw me sitting at the table, ran straight into my arms and climbed up on my knee.

  ‘Did you sleep well, Robby-roo?’ I asked, brushing her hair back off her forehead.

  She nodded sleepily in my arms. She was wrapped in her big, fluffy dressing gown and was clasping Mr Bunny tightly to her chest. I had placed that teddy comforter into her cot on the day she had been born and she had slept with it every night since. I snuggled my face into her warm neck. She was divine.

  I looked beyond the patio door to see a robin pecking at the ground.

  ‘Look, Robyn,’ I said, pointing at the small bird.

  ‘My birdy!’ she cried, leaping up and rushing to get some bread out of the press to feed him. ‘Me want the story, Mammy.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Did you know that we called you Robyn,’ I began as tears welled in my eyes at the memory, ‘because on the day that you were born, a robin fluttered down and landed on my windowsill in the hospital and he looked at me with his dark eyes.’ I choked, trying desperately to keep my emotions in check. ‘And I knew then that he was telling me that we had to call you Robyn.’

  She smiled at the familiar story; she never tired of hearing it.

  JP came into the kitchen then. I still hoped that maybe it had been the alcohol clouding his judgement; he had drunk several glasses of wine with dinner and then had poured himself a large tumbler of whiskey after our guests had gone home. Perhaps he hadn’t been thinking straight.

  He didn’t look at me as he walked over to the fridge and filled a glass of water for himself. As the cool water rushed into the glass, I wondered if having the time to think during the night had helped him. Helped him to see sense. Maybe he had changed his mind. Had realised that what he had said was madness – complete madness.