The week I spend waiting to have that conversation is the toughest so far. I’m fairly certain I feel worse now than I did in the beginning, after he first left, and that’s weird.
But back then I was in shock. That’s obvious now. Stunned and reeling. The full depth and breadth of his departure hadn’t revealed itself to me. That’s how humans bear the unbearable: we expose ourselves to just as much pain as we can take in a day or an instant. Only when we’ve processed that can we absorb some more.
It might explain why life’s big losses take so long to metabolize.
However, I am moving through this. At times my progress can be measured – the initial disbelief has gone and the out-of-control shopping has calmed to normal levels. I’ve stopped trying to behave as if nothing is wrong so when I meet people, such as Bronagh Kingston, I don’t slap on an exhausting veneer of fake cheer. Instead, without weeping all over everyone I meet, I indicate that my circumstances are still a struggle.
Even my incendiary rage has abated – at least for now. At the moment my overwhelming emotion is sorrow, and that will eventually pass too. The end of my marriage will never not be sad, but the grief won’t cripple me the way it does now.
Sometimes I look back and wonder how this all happened. From the outside, you’d never have thought that Hugh and I were likely to split up. We never exchanged a cross word, like, not really, we weren’t that kind of shouty couple. But I suppose things don’t have to end with a bang, they can also expire with a whimper.
Other times it seems entirely inevitable that Hugh and I wouldn’t last. Not just the double-whammy of Gavin dying so soon after Hugh’s dad and the existential impact it had on Hugh. But I had to look at my caper with Josh the summer before last. Like, what was that all about?
I still can’t make sense of it. The best I can come up with is that I’d felt like I had nothing, ever, to look forward to. But billions of people have hard lives – mine was hardly tough – and they don’t start flirting with someone they shouldn’t be flirting with.
I had loved Hugh, I had loved the family we’d created, and still I had wanted extra.
We’re meant to learn from our mistakes, but if I don’t understand why, there’s nothing to stop me doing it again.
‘So.’ I try smiling at Kiara and Sofie. ‘We need to have a talk.’
‘Shouldn’t we wait until Neeve gets here?’ Sofie asks.
‘Neeve isn’t coming.’
‘Oh,’ Kiara says. ‘Anyway, we know what you’re going to tell us.’
Both Hugh and I tense.
‘Dad won’t be moving back in with us, will he?’
‘No, honey,’ I choke out.
‘It’s okay,’ Sofie says softly.
But this is all wrong. Hugh and I were supposed to do our reassuring two-hander.
‘I kinda guessed,’ Kiara says. ‘We all did. We understand. We’re sorry you’re both so sad.’
‘Don’t.’
‘We’ve had time to get used to living without you,’ Sofie says.
Well, that’s good. That had been the idea, after all.
‘But we’re totally going to see you all the time, right?’ she asks.
‘Totally,’ Hugh answers. ‘Of course, honey, any time you like.’
‘But we want to see you and Mum together,’ Kiara says. ‘Not just us with you, then us with Mum. All of us together.’
‘Ah …’ Hugh glances at me for the right answer.
‘Um, sure.’ My tone is horribly jovial. ‘For birthdays and those things.’
Sofie and Kiara exchange a look – it seems Hugh and I weren’t the only ones to have prepared for this.
‘Not just those,’ Sofie says. ‘We want us to do regular family stuff.’
‘Like, watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend together on Mondays,’ Kiara says. ‘The way we used to.’
‘But –’
‘We’ve been chill about this,’ Kiara reminds us. ‘Really chill. But there are conditions.’
Helplessly, I look at Hugh. He seems as flummoxed as I am. ‘Okay,’ I say, because it seems there’s no choice.
But it’ll be strange and exhausting.
‘Where will you live?’ Kiara asks Hugh. ‘With Carl and Chizo?’
‘Um, no. I’m looking for a flat.’
Is he? Well, what had I expected?
‘Good luck with that,’ Sofie says. ‘Maybe Richie Aldin will rent you one of his.’
‘I know, right!’ Kiara says. ‘From his “property portfolio”.’
‘And he’ll only charge you half the market rate!’
‘Such a cool guy.’
‘Totally such a cool guy.’
Sofie and Kiara laugh and bump fists and, I must say, it lifts my heart to hear them bitch about Richie.
‘So, don’t worry about us,’ Kiara says. ‘So long as we act like a family a lot of the time, then we’re good.’
‘Oh-kay.’
‘I love you both to the moon and back,’ Kiara declares.
‘Me too,’ Sofie says. ‘I love you to the sun and back.’
‘Well, I love them to, like, Venus and back.’
‘Venus is nearer than the sun, you dumbass.’
‘Is it? No!’
‘It totally is! So are we done here?’ Sofie asks. ‘Because I’ve got to study. And so do you, Kiara. Like, you really do – “Venus and back”!’
‘Sure, yes, fine, absolutely.’ Poor Hugh is trying to gather himself.
‘See you tomorrow,’ Sofie says.
‘Yep. Tomorrow. That’s right. Physics tutorial,’ he reminds me.
Sofie and Kiara make for their rooms, and Hugh and I look at each other.
‘That went well,’ I say.
‘Yeah.’ He’s stunned.
‘They’re so mature,’ I say. ‘And calm.’
‘More calm than me,’ he says.
‘Me too. I suppose they’re adults now.’
‘Even though they’ll always be our little girls.’
‘Oh, Jesus Christ, Hugh, stop!’ The high of it having gone smoothly has suddenly disappeared and now I want to die from sorrow.
‘I hate to do this, Amy … We need to talk money.’
Mutely, I gaze at him. Then, ‘This never stops, does it? The separation that keeps on giving. Okay, when? The weekend, it’ll have to be. I’m too busy at work.’
‘Saturday?’
‘Grand. Saturday.’
112
Friday, 10 March
Four days later, Mum’s EverDry ads are rolled out. Suddenly her smiling, slightly airbrushed face appears on bus-shelters and in railway stations across (some of) Ireland and Britain, with the immortal tagline ‘Still Having Fun’.
I see one when I race out at lunchtime to buy a new blur serum and the shock almost ends me. I’d known it was coming – after all, it had been me who’d negotiated with Adshel – but it’s beyond weird when your elderly mother crosses over into being public property.
It’s only two months since she became the ambassador, but as it’s a quiet time of year in advertising, it was easy to fast-track the whole business.
I text Neeve to make sure she knows. To be honest, I’m just using it as a lame excuse to contact her. Too many times now I’ve left pathetic messages, where I laugh weakly and say, ‘Are we ever going to see you again? Ha-ha-ha. Your sisters miss you.’
So it’s nice to have something concrete to convey.
Mostly she ignores my missives. Sometimes she shoots back a couple of kisses or hearts. The only time I’ve had actual words from her since she left was after I told her that Hugh wouldn’t be moving home. Good, she’d texted. Then, Watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend with him every Monday? Prefer to eat glass.
Well, I wasn’t wild about the idea myself. In fact, I was so unhappy about it that on Monday evening, waiting for him to show up and play happy families, I’m unable to eat my dinner.
I can’t do this, I thought. I really can’t do this.
But I had to. That was the long and the short of it. I would get used to it. People eventually become inured to the most appalling circumstances. Like, sometimes I think about what it would be like working in an abattoir or chopping the heads off chickens – jobs no one yearns to do. But if you have no other option, you get on with it. And your revulsion couldn’t stay at its original sky-high level, could it?
I’m watching a giant bowl of popcorn rotating in the microwave when Kiara says, ‘Here’s Dad.’
And, yes, indeed, here is Hugh, letting himself in with his own key, as instructed.
‘Hello again,’ he says to me.