The second we landed, I switched on my phone. To my alarm, I had several missed calls – and a very bad feeling. Rather than listen to the messages, I went straight to the Herald’s site and my heart began to pound as I reached the headline on their landing page: SOAP ACTRESS DRUG SHAME.
With shaking hands, I scrolled through the grubby details of Premilla’s drug bust. Remembering how I’d thought Josh Rowan had been won over by Premilla’s sad story was humiliating. As if heralding the media storm I was facing into, both my phones started ringing simultaneously. Fuck you, Josh Rowan. Fuck you.
24
On Wednesday night, around eight o’clock, I park my car and eye my little house with something close to dread.
It’s not as if my arrival home from London was ever treated with any fanfare – I was mostly only gone for one night and it was a commute that was built into our routine. Hugh would usually hug me, I’d go upstairs and half unpack – a wheely case sat permanently on the bedroom floor with stuff falling out of it – then go back down and he’d make me a cup of tea. Sometimes he’d have dinner waiting and sometimes he wouldn’t, and we’d sit and talk. Not talk talk, no full-and-franks, but we batted back and forth mundane stuff, like was it the week for the recycling bins and was it worth coughing up the money to send Kiara for extra tutoring in maths, the banality of marriage that gets mocked so frequently, but out of these countless threads of bin-conversations and cash-allocation, a life together is woven.
I gather up my bags and resolve to be strong. Hugh would have had the front door opened by now, but we are where we are.
As soon as my key turns in the lock, Neeve and Kiara flood into the hall. Even Sofie is here. What the hell’s up? I’m the head of the household now, and I get to do my worrying alone. ‘Hi! Is something wrong?’
‘Nothing. No. We just thought we’d …’
They flutter around me. One of them takes my wheely bag and another hands me a glass of wine.
‘We emptied the dishwasher,’ Neeve says. Emptying the dishwasher is – was – Hugh’s job.
‘And we got you cheese,’ Sofie says. ‘The worst one on the counter. It smells like death.’
‘It’s really bad.’ Kiara is enthusiastic.
‘You won’t believe how bad.’ Sofie guides me to the kitchen. ‘Come and sit down.’
Kiara pulls out a chair for me and Sofie helps me into it, as if I’m an invalid. It’s not unpleasant.
Neeve opens the fridge and as the smell of the cheese billows out in a chilly cloud, all three girls exclaim, ‘Ouf!’
‘Can you smell it?’ Neeve is so proud.
I nod. ‘It’s appalling.’ It’s really not, but who am I to rain on their parade?
‘I know, right? Sofie nearly got sick in the car on the way home with it, didn’t you, Sofie?’
‘I literally had to roll down the window.’
Gingerly Neeve removes the cheese from the fridge and, holding it away from herself, brings it to the table. ‘It’s a French one,’ she says.
‘Toulouse-Lautrec,’ Sofie says.
‘Camus,’ Kiara says. ‘That actually sounds like a cheese.’ They dissolve into giggles.
‘Get her a plate,’ Neeve orders. ‘And a knife.’
These are produced in short order, followed by a jar of artisanal chutney, a selection of chi-chi crackers and seven pecan nuts, laboriously broken in half. My wine glass is refilled and the girls stand back to admire their handiwork.
‘Now!’ They beam at me, and they’re so very sweet.
‘Enjoy your cheese,’ Neeve says. ‘If such a thing is even possible.’
‘That’s a good-looking plate of food,’ I say, then instantly wish I hadn’t because it was one of the many in-jokes Hugh and I shared.
Neeve frowns. ‘You what? Oh, what they say on Masterchef.’ Then she gasps. ‘The apple! We forgot the apple!’ She flings herself at the fruit bowl. ‘You cut it, Sofie.’ Sofie’s role in the family is to cut things, ever since she did an excellent job on a birthday cake years and years ago. Cutting food makes her highly anxious, but you know what families are like – rules are rules. ‘Thin slices, really skinny, like Hugh does.’ A few tense minutes follow, as Neeve crowds around Sofie and hisses, ‘Fan it. Like a fan. The way Hugh does it.’
The apple appears, cut a little raggedly.
‘Okay,’ Neeve says. ‘Each of us has made a list of things you might like to do while he’s away. Kiara, you go first.’
‘No,’ I protest. ‘No! I’m fine, totally.’ I’m the adult here, and no matter how bad I feel, they cannot know. They need to trust me to take care of them: their world has been upended enough, they need one parent they can depend on. ‘I am fine. I’m here for you three. That’s my only plan for the next six months.’
‘We know you’re there for us,’ Sofie says. ‘But we have lives. We’re good.’
‘Yeah, we’re good, Mum.’
In fairness, I have a life too, sort of. ‘But I’m the adult.’
‘If we find it weird without him, we’ll tell you,’ Kiara says. ‘Communication is key. But you need to know that we’re here for you too.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Shush now.’ Kiara begins with a little speech: ‘Most people in a long-term relationship never get an opportunity like this. If both of you use this time wisely, your relationship will be enriched by what you learnt while you were apart. It will be better.’
It seems churlish to mention that it had been fine as it was.
‘Here is my list,’ Kiara announces. ‘Mindfulness. Meditation. Read a classic you’ve been curious about. Listen to inspirational podcasts while going on long walks alone.’ All of Kiara’s choices are solo activities because she doesn’t want me meeting another man.
She needn’t worry. ‘Be open to personal growth,’ she finishes.
The thing about personal growth, I’ve discovered, is that you rarely get any choice in it. It only ever happens as a side-effect of some loss or trauma. Judging by how shit all this is making me feel, I’ll be a personal Colossus at the end of it.
‘Okay, here’s my list.’ Neeve starts reading from her iPad. ‘Get Botox.’
‘I’d love to, but I don’t think Irish doctors accept payment in pebbles or old lipsticks.’
‘Sucks to be you, Mum.’ Neeve shakes her head in pretend sympathy. ‘Next suggestion, take up running.’
That will never happen. I’m the wrong body shape: my Celtic thighs are too short.
‘I’ll run with you,’ Neeve adds.
Even though her thighs are as short as mine, the fact that she’s offered to do anything with me is heartening. Perhaps I’ll use this time to strengthen the bonds with the people already in my life.
Although the irony is that the one thing I won’t have is time. I’d almost none when Hugh was around, picking up a lot of the slack, so I’m going to have even less now that he’s not here.
‘Maybe I should go on Tinder?’ I’m aiming for jokey.
‘You?’ Sofie hoots. ‘Tinder?’
All three dissolve into helpless laughter. ‘Sorry, Mum,’ Kiara tells me. ‘You’re too old.’
‘Anyway,’ this from Neeve, ‘you’d probably swipe the wrong direction and end up with all the eejits.’
Young people are so patronizing.
‘Okay, Sofie,’ I say. ‘Let’s hear your list.’
‘I could only think of one thing. Get cushions for your bed.’
‘Ah?’ What the actual?
‘You love lots of cushions on your bed and Dad doesn’t.’
This is true.
‘So here’s an opportunity to do something you enjoy.’
You know, there might actually be something in this.
‘You could, Mum!’ Kiara is suddenly enthused. ‘Go on your sites and buy those embroidered fairy-tale things you like.’
‘Handcrafted by blind peasant girls in the wolf-inhabited forests of Moldova.’ Neeve is sneery.
‘It gives work to people who desperately need it.’ Kiara stares coldly at Neeve. ‘Go on, Mum, do it.’
It’s not as if I need any encouragement to spend money.
‘But when Hugh comes back?’ Neeve asks.
‘She can move them to the living room.’
‘I don’t want to be looking at her twee cushion covers.’
This can’t be allowed to pass. ‘Not twee! They’re naive.’
‘Twee.’ Neeve gives me a side-eyed smile.
‘Folksy renderings of idealized peasant life.’
‘Twee.’
And I laugh.
25