Still You Read online

  Contents

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  A note on this book

  The First Time I Said Goodbye

  STILL YOU

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Published 2015

  by Poolbeg Press Ltd

  123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle

  Dublin 13, Ireland

  © Claire Allan 2015

  Copyright for typesetting, layout, design, ebook

  © Poolbeg Press Ltd

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-78199-941-7

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.poolbeg.com

  About the Author

  Claire Allan is a reporter with the Derry Journal newspaper in Northern Ireland and one half of The Mammy Monologues.

  She lives in her home city, with her husband, two children and two cats.

  When not writing she loves reading, hiding from her children to binge-watch Scandal or The Good Wife, and escaping to the coast to watch the sunset over Donegal.

  Still You is Claire’s eighth novel.

  You can find her on Facebook, at www.claireallan.com or follow her on Twitter: @claireallan

  Acknowledgements

  This book has been a very personal journey for me – but it was one I could not have embarked on without the support of my family, who encouraged me to write a story which would shine a light on Alzheimer’s. It was a big responsibility – and I can only hope that I have done our family proud.

  In addition, I would like to very sincerely thank Michael McIvor, formerly of the Foyle Alzheimer’s Society, who over the past number of years has invited me to speak with many families living with dementia and allowed me the very great privilege of telling their stories. The many insights I have received over the year, and the support of Michael in always being there at the end of the phone when I had a query, has been invaluable.

  On an even more personal note, this book was written and edited during a particularly trying time for me health-wise and I cannot sufficiently thank those family and friends who supported me when I could not support myself. To Mammy and Daddy, my siblings, my friends, thank you for your endless support – practical, emotional and at times physical. Hopefully we are on the up now!

  To my husband and children – I love you more than words can say. Thank you for allowing me the time to escape into an imaginary world and for teaching me about love.

  A special word of thanks must go to my writing friends, including the Poolbeg girls, for their constant cheerleading from the corners, and to my long-term trusted friend Fionnuala Kearney. Fionnu, you know how challenging this last year has been but you have not allowed me to give up – and you always know the right thing to say to get me back at the keyboard. I am so delighted to see you get the recognition you so richly deserve.

  Thanks to Paula Campbell for putting her faith in yet another Claire Allan title and to Gaye Shortland for services to editing which went above and beyond the call of duty!

  As always, thanks to my agent Ger Nichol – who never allows me to stop believing in myself, even for one moment.

  And to you, lovely reader. You are never, ever taken for granted. Thank you sincerely for reading and allowing me to share these stories with you. It is a huge honour.

  For my grandmother, Anna Davidson, for the love we

  will always remember

  &

  For those who care for her with such compassion, in particular my Auntie Lorraine – who I love and respect

  with all my heart

  Prologue

  Diary Entry: June 21, 1952

  Charlotte says I always have my head in the clouds. She calls me ‘Dolly Daydream’ – says “Áine, you never pay attention to what is going on around you”.

  She says I must live in some pretty fanciful worlds in my head – I imagine she thinks I spend my days dreaming of movie stars and a big house in Hollywood or something really glamorous. She says I would do well to get my nose out of books and into newspapers – see what is really going on in the world. See what is out there – what I can have if I want it.

  But I don’t want to. I don’t daydream about things I know I’ll never have and, if I’m honest, I don’t want. For sisters we are like chalk and cheese. Charlotte has the wanderlust and I’m a home bird. I always have been – and I don’t see it changing. When I disappear into my daydreams I think about the life I will lead – right here. Of the men I’ll kiss. The man I’ll marry. The children we will have and what we will call them. I dream of knitting a soft white Christening shawl, lacing the edges with ribbon and wrapping our baby in it.

  I dream of days at the beach with my family at my feet – long, hot, stuffy train rides out of the town, followed by sandwiches wrapped in brown paper on an itchy blanket by the sea. If I close my eyes for long enough – and if Charlotte gives me peace for long enough – I can almost feel the warm breeze wash over me and I can almost hear the gentle crashing of the waves.

  Maybe I’m silly. My ambitions aren’t grand. I just want a husband, a family, to push a pram, to run my house. Charlotte wants to travel the world. She says women don’t need a man to make them happy. She will only get married if a man looks like Rock Hudson and sweeps her off her feet and has the same wanderlust she has. It makes me feel sad sometimes – that she wants to leave. I can’t imagine this house without her in it – but she’ll never stay, just as I’ll never go. And that’s okay.

  When I Grow Up

  By Georgina Wright, Aged 9 and 2/3rds

  Summer 1985

  When I grow up I will work two jobs. I will be a nurse during the week and at weekends an air hostess so I can see the world. I will always wear pink nail polish and my hair will be yellow. I will wear high heels which clip and clop when I walk. I will get married to a man called Chris or Steve and live in a house with a big garden and a swimming pool. I will have three babies – two girls
and a boy – and I will have my ears pierced.

  Chapter 1

  “Did you ever see that picture on Facebook? One of those e-card things – the funny ones. It says ‘I miss being the age where I thought I would have all my shit together by now’?”

  Sinéad snorted and sipped from her wineglass. “I don’t think I have – but I like it.”

  “Well, that,” I said, “is pretty much how I feel now. I really, truly thought that by the time thirty-nine reared its head I would have it all in place. You know, like that article I wrote for the primary-school magazine?”

  “Where you wanted to be a nurse during the week and travel the world at the weekends?”

  “Yes . . . that one. I pretty much thought I would be there by now.”

  “You do wear shoes that clip and clop when you walk,” Sinéad said with a smile. “And your ears are pierced . . .”

  “But I’m not jet-setting, am I? My weekends are spent doing the grocery-shopping and cleaning the house. Not to mention the occasional bout of weeping with loneliness.” I pulled a face which I hoped conveyed the message that, while I wanted her to feel sorry for me, I did not want to appear to be a miserable cow who felt sorry for herself. I wanted to pretend to be one of those women who laughs at her own misfortune – all ‘look at me, I can cope even when it’s all going south’.

  “You have a lovely home. You have two lovely, if occasionally challenging, teenage daughters and you have wine,” Sinéad offered, shaking a bottle of white in my direction in the universal sign language for ‘want a top-up?’.

  I shook my head and put my hand over the top of my glass. “I’m fine,” I said. “I suppose I’m just feeling old. You know, I saw Louise from our class in school in town today.”

  “Ah, did you?” Sinéad asked, topping her own glass up.

  “She’s great, I think. But she looks . . . she looks grown up. You know, like a proper adult. Like a mammy. We don’t look like proper grown-ups, do we? In my head we’re still twenty-five – or early thirties at the very most. We don’t look grown up.”

  Sinéad laughed. “I think we look amazing. Of course we don’t look thirty-nine!”

  I smiled back. “I bet Louise has it all together. I bet she wears pink nail polish and travels at the weekends.”

  “I bet she sits around in her pyjamas binge-watching Real Housewives like the rest of us.”

  “Sinéad, you have never sat around and binge-watched anything. Two episodes in a row is not proper binge-watching. You have to watch the seasons change without shifting off the sofa to properly qualify. You know, I shouldn’t really be having this conversation with you – you are the ‘have-it-all friend’ that I would hate if I didn’t love you so much.”

  “Have it all?” she grinned.

  “You have a bespoke kitchen,” I offered weakly. “One you ordered yourself and which didn’t just come with your house. Your dinner sets match – not like the mismatched collection you get in my house. For the love of God, the twins are almost sixteen and we’re still eating off melamine plates! Your bed sheets are Egyptian cotton and not Primark’s finest and you drive a car which can be described much more favourably than my ‘skip on wheels’.” I laughed again, but I was sure there was a more hollow tone to it.

  “You’re in a bad place tonight, aren’t you?” Sinéad said. “What prompted this? The silly Facebook card? Seeing Louise from school? Because she always looked freakishly old anyway. Remember, we used to send her to the off-licence for us? Everyone did.”

  I took a deep breath and said the words I hadn’t wanted to say out loud until now because saying them out loud made them real and I was definitely not sure I could handle them being real.

  “Matthew is seeing someone,” I said, not meeting her eye and reaching across the table to grab the bottle of wine I had previously shunned, to top my glass up.

  “No!” she exclaimed. “You’re not serious?”

  “Well … I think so. I don’t have conclusive proof but the girls were at his house at the weekend. When they came home they were quiet – which as you know is not like my girls at all. Eventually I was able to break Sorcha’s silence and she told me they had found a pink bra amongst their father’s laundry when they were helping him to tidy up.”

  “And they’re sure it’s not one of theirs?” Sinéad asked, parroting what I had asked Sorcha myself.

  Sorcha had raised one perfectly drawn-on eyebrow at me and told me she was sure she would know if she owned a lurid, pink, lacy bra with strategically placed holes in the cups.

  When I relayed this to Sinéad, she got up, turned her back to me and I watched her head disappear into her drinks cupboard.

  “Before we go any further,” I heard, “it has to be said that we need a bigger boat …” She turned around and sat a bottle of tequila on the island. She quickly produced two shot glasses, salt and started to slice a lemon. “So … shit … a lacy pink bra? I’m assuming they didn’t ask him about it? What did they say to you? Did they really mention strategically placed holes?”

  She grimaced as she asked – and I grimaced as I heard the words again. It all seemed so very sordid. Matthew was my husband – or ex-husband, or maybe-ex-husband – and the thought of him getting up close and personal with anyone wearing lurid underwear made me feel nauseous.

  I took a deep breath, and eyed the tequila suspiciously. Tequila and I were not traditionally good bedfellows. “No, they didn’t ask him. They just told me what they found. And they were mortified, absolutely mortified, about the bra – and to their credit they blushed a lot. I can’t really ask him about it, can I? Is it my business? I mean, we are separated. Although when he suggested a trial separation I didn’t think that meant he would want to try different things – things which didn’t include me …”

  Sinéad pushed the glass towards me over the kitchen island and took a deep breath.

  I knew she felt conflicted. She wasn’t a member of the Matthew Casey fan club and was never likely to be – but for me she had maintained a respectful silence over the years. Even when we had separated – at his suggestion, it has to be said – on the premise that it would allow us to see how we felt apart. Because, he said, we had been together since we were sixteen and he was worried he might have missed out on life. It was probably just a mid-life crisis of sorts, he had laughed. A small one. Nothing serious. Just the chance for a bit of space. Sure we didn’t have much time for each other these days anyway and wasn’t it better – before we entered our mid to late years together – to know we really, really still loved each other and weren’t just together out of habit?

  I had been stunned by the conversation – but Matthew had a way of talking, a Jedi mind-trick kind of skill, which had me nodding in agreement as he spoke even though there was a tiny voice, buried deep inside, screaming for a celestial pause-and-rewind button.

  But he had left – and I had, for a while, really believed he would come back in a matter of a few weeks telling me he realised how good he had it.

  Sinéad had tried to prepare me for what might happen, but of course I had pushed her concerns away and she hadn’t pushed me harder to pay attention. She knew that the one way to put me offside was to launch an all-guns-blazing attack on my husband. She had done that once, when the twins were small and he was being a feckless eejit, and I had gone on the defensive and our friendship had been severely dented for a few months.

  “Well, if he’s leaving items like that around for the girls to see, you could ask him that way?” Sinéad finally said. “Play the concerned mother? I mean, it isn’t the most appropriate thing he could be doing. But you have to ask yourself if you are ready for the answer.”

  I threw back the shot of tequila, the warm amber liquid burning the back of my throat. It hit me just how much I hated the taste of tequila and I reached for my glass of wine to wash it down before spluttering as I tried to catch my breath. Sinéad, who had followed my lead, was expertly sucking on her slice of lemon like a pro without
a hint of a splutter or cough. I knew she had it all together.

  “I think I know the answer,” I told her when I composed myself. “But I think I can live without having it confirmed just yet.”

  I supposed I needed to get my head around what I wanted from him. I never thought we would break up. I thought we would be one of those smug couples who sit holding hands on their fiftieth wedding anniversary, nodding and saying they have been together since they were sixteen. That their marriage worked because they made it work blah blah blah and young ones today give up too easy.

  Also there was that huge, massive, all-encompassing fear of being single and being out there again. Being the kind of woman who looked like a proper grown-up – like Louise from school – but who had to bother herself with buying pink bras which were sexy and exceptionally uncomfortable. My poor nipples shuddered at the thought.

  “More tequila?” Sinéad offered.

  I shook my head, my stomach turning. “You know, I should probably head on. I have a new client tomorrow and I want to be in top form for her. Mrs Brightly says she’s some big name – or her family is or something – and they’re high maintenance, so I’d better put my best foot forward and not smell of intoxicating liquor.”

  “You know how much I admire you,” Sinéad said. “I’m not sure I could do what you do – looking after the elderly and infirm.”