‘It’s chilly out here tonight, girl.’
‘I know. I was out here earlier on. It’s always cold in the evenings.’ Josephine looked at her husband; he was still a very handsome man. ‘Will you do me a favour, Michael? Will you ask our Jessie if she is really going to come on Sunday? Only Jake is expecting her, and I don’t want him to be disappointed. Waiting all day and then she doesn’t bother to show up.’
Michael nodded. He knew only too well what his daughter was capable of. ‘I’ll ask, but you know what she’s like. She’s so fucking unreliable. The only time I can guarantee her presence is when she picks up her money. Funny how she never sleeps in on a Thursday, isn’t it?’
Josephine didn’t respond to that; she knew how angry Michael could get over Jessie.
Michael sipped his wine, savouring the taste. He was looking over the gardens; he had turned the outside lights on earlier, and he was enjoying the view. So much had gone into making the gardens look beautiful, but his wife didn’t seem to notice them any more. It was so sad. She took no pleasure in anything these days. How could she? All she did was sit out the days – and that was all she was capable of doing. She was unable to sleep at night, unable to enjoy her life in any meaningful way. His lovely bride, his Josephine, had gradually lost the knack for living life, and she didn’t seem to want to find it again.
Josephine sighed; she missed her daughter so much, but there was no way Jessie was coming home again. She avoided them all like the plague, especially little Jake. Josephine blamed herself for her daughter’s actions. Jessie had needed her, and she had not been there for her daughter – she had put her husband first and done what he wanted.
‘Do you think we were wrong to make her have little Jake? She was so young, Michael.’ She watched her husband as he shook his head in swift and angry denial.
‘How can you even think like that, Josephine? He is a lovely little lad. If we had let her have her way he wouldn’t even fucking be here. For all her fucking antics, and her fucking determination to act like he doesn’t exist, the day will come when she will realise that she did the right thing by having her baby, and that we did the right thing by making sure she gave the child a chance at life. She needed to understand the seriousness of what had happened to her. She needed to learn that having a child isn’t a fucking game. As a Catholic, she had only one choice open to her. There would be no abortions in this fucking house, I made that perfectly clear to her.’
He was getting angry, so he drank some of his wine, and willed himself to calm down. His daughter’s treatment of her son still rankled with him. ‘The worst thing is, Josephine, I actually thought it might make her grow up, you know? I thought it might make her realise that eventually everything has to be paid for. But I was wrong. All it did was drive her further away.’
Josephine busied herself lighting a cigarette, even though she knew that Michael hated her smoking. She didn’t know how to react to her husband’s words. Michael was always so sure of everything, but she wasn’t as sure as he was about her daughter. She leant forward in her chair and, looking directly at her husband, she said seriously, ‘Do you know what I think, Michael? I think the night the Cornels came here ruined her. It was such a big trauma for all of us, but she never seemed to get over it, did she? She just went off the rails afterwards, and then with the baby on top of everything else, it was all too much for her. She was a mother at sixteen years old, that’s a really big event for anyone, Michael, let alone a young girl like Jessie.’