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  I handed my daughter into her stiff arms. It was a strange feeling. On the one hand I wanted my mother to accept Maggie and me, and on the other the thought of placing my precious little bundle into the arms of this woman who had shown me little or no love throughout my life made me feel very uneasy.

  “Hold her properly, Sheila,” I heard my father say and she cuddled Maggie closer to her. “Doesn’t she look like Aoife did when she was little?”

  “I don’t really remember,” my mother said, flustered. “I suppose so.”

  I sat down, the tea forgotten, my heart aching with the news my mother didn’t even remember my newborn stage.

  Mum looked up at me. “What do you think, Aoife? Does she have a look of the father about her?”

  “A little. He’s a bit baldy too.” I laughed nervously, but Mum didn’t join in.

  She may have been holding my child. She may even have looked as though she was actually starting to thaw out her ice-cold exterior and enjoy it, but I was under no illusions whatsoever.

  

  Chapter 22

  Beth

  Dan had offered to take me out for dinner. Who was I to argue? I had been hanging drapes in Karl’s guest bedroom when my mobile jumped into life.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” he soothed down the phone. “How are you?”

  “All the better for hearing your voice,” I answered. I liked these moments – moments when it felt for all intents and purposes as if we didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Fancy going out tonight? I can get us a booking at the new Thai place if you’re up for it?”

  I looked at my watch. It was gone four and the light was starting to fade. There wasn’t much more we could get done here anyway at this stage.

  “I look a bit of a sight,” I warned him.

  “I’m sure you look amazing,” he replied, winning an extra couple of brownie points for his efforts. “Will we meet at six?”

  “Perfect,” I said, hanging up.

  That would give me time to get back to the shop and check in on Heather. I could even nip upstairs to Aoife’s flat and run a brush through my hair and change my top. I always kept a spare set of clothes at her place, just in case.

  Pulling the blinds closed on the old sash windows, I stepped down from the ladder and packed away my bits and pieces for the night. Dinner sounded lovely and Dan sounded so relaxed. He hadn’t managed to sigh once in the course of our conversation. I was delighted with the improvement in his mood.

  Driving back through the traffic, bumper to bumper in the rush hour, I tried to force myself to relax. There was no need to feel stressed. Everything was happening just as it should. The two-week wait and all its constant symptom-spotting could go hang for tonight. I was going out with my man and we were going to enjoy ourselves. A small voice in my head told me that if I was pregnant this month then I’d better make the most of nights like this anyway. God knows once Junior came along there would be no more heading out for dinner at an hour’s notice. No, it would all have to be planned. Perhaps Aoife and I could baby-sit for each other. That could most definitely work. I smiled and pulled into my parking space, noting that the lights were still on inside the shop. I knew I should trust Heather but there just wasn’t the same bond there as Aoife and I shared. I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t just lock up early and bugger off home, turning away whatever potential clients would pop in late in the afternoon.

  I walked in to find Heather closing down the computer, the cash register already cleared of its measly takings. Aoife always said she didn’t know why we needed a register – people rarely actually purchased things in the shop, tending to book appointments instead – but I had insisted on an old-fashioned push-button machine in brass. I loved it – in fact I loved everything about this shop. With a jolt I realised it was just about the only place I was happy these days.

  “Is it okay if I nip off now?” Heather asked as I unzipped my jacket. “It’s only that my tube train leaves in five minutes and I want to nip in for a pint of milk on the way.”

  I nodded absentmindedly and she left, leaving me to lock the door behind her. I sat down on the daybed and surveyed everything around me – the opulent silks, the rich tapestries, the scented candles and the colourful prints. Everything in this room signified that I was a success. To the outsider I had a life to be envied.

  “I will think positively,” I said aloud, trying to convince myself. From the corner of my eye I could see Matilda staring down at me from her perch on the shelf. “I don’t know why you’re giving me that look,” I said. “I know, I know. I’m a very lucky person indeed.”

  I still felt lucky when I walked into the restaurant and saw Dan sitting at the table, a glass of white wine before him. He looked tired, stubbly and manly. His tie was loosened a little, his top button was undone. His hair was messed up a little, short blond tufts stuck up like a scruffy schoolboy. I smiled to myself. He really was gorgeous and it amazed me we had been together fourteen years. We had seen each other grow up, supported each other through college and helped each other achieve our dreams. And I still fancied the arse off him. With Dan nothing was impossible, I reminded myself as I walked over to him and kissed him full on the lips.

  “Not that I’m complaining,” he grinned, “but what was that for?”

  “Does there have to be a reason?” I smiled sitting down. “I’m absolutely starving,” I added, picking up the menu and scanning it quickly.

  “Do you want me to order you a drink?” Dan asked, trying to get the waitress’s attention.

  “Just water for me,” I said, adding quickly “because I brought the car.”

  We both knew the real reason was that during the two-week wait I tried where possible to avoid alcohol just in case I was pregnant, but it caused less friction if I just brought the car and we pretended everything was normal.

  Yep, when Dan and I were together, nothing was impossible.

  

  Chapter 23

  Aoife

  “Did you know?” I asked.

  I was sitting in Anna’s living-room. Maggie was sleeping soundly beside me and I stared into the fire as I asked the question.

  “Yes and no,” Anna answered. “Your mum and I haven’t ever really been close and you know her, she doesn’t talk about feelings. It wasn’t really done.”

  “But you knew something was up?”

  “I could see she seemed to be struggling a little with you. But I was only a teenager myself. I didn’t really get how hard it was. I just thought that’s what everyone with a baby and a toddler went through.”

  “But she wasn’t like that when it was just Joe?”

  “God, no. She was like the cat that got the cream. You would have thought no one ever had a baby before – she used to sicken us all bragging on about him.”

  Some things never change then, I thought to myself. She still bragged about him. I felt bitter that her depression hadn’t affected her feelings towards him. He had escaped it all scot-free. The fecker.

  “Don’t take it too personally, Aoife,” Anna said and I snorted with laughter.

  “How could I not take this personally? This is a mother not loving her daughter who just so happens to be me. There is no other way to take it.”

  “But she does love you. She has just never learned how to show it.”

  ****

  On the day I packed up my bedroom and almost all my worldly belongings, apart from my Kylie and Jason tapes which I had since outgrown, my mother had not shown any emotion.

  Daddy drove me to the airport, ready for my new life at Manchester Uni and Mum sat tight-lipped in the front of the car. I don’t quite know what I had expected. Perhaps some tears? Perhaps she should have pressed a crumpled letter into my palm and told me to read it once I had boarded the plane? Perhaps it would have contained an outpouring of love so poetic and meaningful that I would have sobbed loudly the whole way to Manchester and told the world I had the best damned mammy ever.

&nb
sp; As it turned out, she hugged me, loosely. Her lips pursed in a cat’s arse of a pout, brushing my cheek.

  “Take care, Aoife,” she said. “Don’t be making a holy show of yourself or me.”

  She hurried me on through security and I only glanced back once, to see my father waving at me, tears in his eyes. Mum was nowhere to be seen. I imagine she had gone to get the car so she could get free parking for leaving within twenty minutes of arriving.

  I cried on the plane that day, but it wasn’t because I felt loved. It was quite the opposite.

  ****

  As I lay in bed that night I thought about it all. I tried to put those last few weeks in some kind of perspective. It was almost too much to get my head around. Three weeks before I had been this single (albeit pregnant) businesswoman leading a pretty darned successful life in London. One of the presenters of GMTV had even asked me to give her a quote for a refurbishment of her city crash pad. And now here I was, lying in Anna’s floral spare room, my daughter beside me, and dealing with the knowledge that my mother never really loved me because I cried a lot.

  I stared at Maggie and I couldn’t resist lifting her from her Moses basket and cuddling her close to me. I didn’t know what the future held for us. I didn’t know that she wouldn’t one day become a mad colicky screaming brat and that my head wouldn’t explode and I’d get an awful dose of depression myself.

  But I knew that if I did, if that did happen, I’d do my damned best to sort it out and not let it fester for years.

  I felt sad for my mother, sad for her experiences but also bloody angry. Mothers are not supposed to act like that. In thirty-one years she hadn’t sorted her head out. What made me think that she would now, just because I was a mother myself?

  ****

  “You look tired, love,” Anna said as she poured me a cup of tea. “Did this little madam keep you up all night?”

  “She was as good as gold. Just two feeds and went straight back off after.” I cooed down at Maggie. Was that a hint of smile on her face or just wind? I liked to think it was a smile. “But yes, I am tired. I’ve been thinking a lot of things through.”

  “Your hormones are all over the place right now, but I promise you all of this will get easier. Don’t give in to bad feelings. You are dealing with a lot, but stay strong and give it a little time.

  I nodded. “I’ll stay a week.”

  “Or two,” Anna said. “You know this house will be lonely without you.”

  I smiled, reaching out for her hand. “You’ll never be lonely, Anna. Sure I’ll never be off the phone. How else am I going to learn how to be the best mammy in the world?”

  She smiled, and lifted her chart.

  “Now,” she said with a wicked grin, “I know you aren’t going to like this, but Joe phoned earlier. He wants us to come over for dinner with him and Queen Jacqueline tomorrow.”

  “Can I change my mind about leaving?” I deadpanned.

  “What, and not fulfil the ‘wipe the smug grin off Jacqueline’s face’ part of the chart?”

  She had a point.

  *****

  Driving into Joe and Jacqueline’s perfect estate (or should I say ‘housing development’ as estate was just “so working class” according to Jacqueline), I could almost smell the money. Sure enough it was just buttons compared to the financial dealings of our clients in Richmond, but compared to me and my flat above the shop this was luxury living.

  The lawns were all perfectly, uniformly manicured. The hint of frost on the grass made it all look just so ethereal and dreamy. This was luxury living, Derry style, and my mother was hugely proud of how well her son had done.

  Parking in my brother’s driveway, in front of their double garage, their brand-new people carrier, I breathed in deeply.

  Dinner with Joe and Jacqueline – my idea of hell – and yet, I knew if I was to make the most of this time at home at all I would have to face my demons, and demons don’t come any bigger or nastier than my sister-in-law.

  Anna lifted Maggie from the car while I straightened down my top. I’d done my best to look presentable but there was no way that I would have been able to fit into the one or two designer items that I owned from my pre-pregnancy days. However, I reminded myself, it was a miracle I wasn’t still wearing my maternity clothes.

  I pushed a stray curl behind my ear and walked to the door, glancing down at my daughter and praying she would behave herself for the next two hours.

  I rang the doorbell and Jacqueline answered, in a perfect cream linen suit, standing on her cream carpet with her cream walls surrounding her. I wondered if she allowed her child to touch her or anything around her for fear of him leaving a mark.

  “How absolutely delightful to see you,” she chimed and both Anna and I made an unconvincing “Hmmm” sound in unison. “Do come in, but could you leave your shoes at the door?” she said before walking ahead of us up the hall towards the kitchen.

  “The decontamination chamber is on your left,” Anna stage-whispered in the same clipped tones Jacqueline used, “and your sterile overalls are in the vestibule to the right.”

  I bit back a giggle as I kicked off my shoes and donned the slippers available, and continued to the kitchen where Jacqueline had taken a seat at the breakfast bar. Odhran was sitting on the floor, piecing together a puzzle, and Joe was wearing an apron emblazoned with the words “All this . . . and he cooks” while he cooked up a storm on their cream range in the middle of their cream Shaker style kitchen.

  Whatever I thought of my sister-in-law, she obviously had the two men in her life trained well.

  “Odhran, look who’s here!” Joe cheered and his son looked up – rather blankly – at me. In fairness it had been a while since he had seen his Auntie Aoife and I was a stranger to him. He looked at Anna and smiled, running to give her a cuddle, and then peeped his head over the edge of the car seat.

  “My mummy has one of those in her tummy,” he said proudly as Jacqueline smiled beatifically, one hand resting on her growing bump.

  I fought the urge very hard to reply: “Yes, but your mummy’s baby has horns and answers to the name of Damien.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Jacqueline said. “Mummy and Daddy are having another little baby together, aren’t we?”

  She was smiling, but she was spitting pure venom. Mummy and Daddy. Another baby together. Bitch.

  I started to hope there would be no sharp cutlery on the dining- table or I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions.

  “So,” Jacqueline said as she took her place at the top of the table, “Mum tells me you’re going to be going back to work quite soon.”

  “Your mum? How does she know?” I stuttered.

  Jacqueline laughed, throwing her head in exaggerated glee. “Oh sorry, when I say ‘Mum’ I’m talking about your mother. Joe and I decided it would be nice for her to have me calling her Mum after all these years. After all, I’m like a daughter to her.”

  I looked at Anna who shrugged her shoulders to let me know she hadn’t been aware that my mother had in fact developed maternal instincts towards someone other than me.

  “That must be nice,” I said.

  Jacqueline grinned. “Oh, it is. She was absolutely delighted.”

  Yes, Jacqueline was like a daughter to my mother, the daughter she never had.

  Joe cleared his throat and walked to the table where he set down a roast chicken and started to carve. For the briefest of seconds I wished I was the chicken.

  ******

  We survived the dinner, but simply because I soon realised that having a baby could have its benefits. Shortly after dessert I made my excuses that I really had to be going because I wanted to get Maggie settled down for the night.

  “But don’t you want a wee look at our spare room?” Jacqueline had asked.

  “No, we’d rather sleep back in Anna’s. All our things are there.”

  “No, I don’t think you understand me,” Jacqueline said. “I was wondering if yo
u could come up with a few ideas for our nursery.”

  I looked at her, giving her a kind of death stare, and then turned to Anna. “Come on, Auntie Anna, I’m really, really tired now.”

  And we left.

  No doubt this would not curry favour with my mum (or should I say Jacqueline’s mum?) but I didn’t care. For the love of God, I was a new mother, I didn’t need this annoyance. I had enough annoyances in my life as it was.

  *****

  The following week passed in a flurry of sameness. Joe and Jacqueline didn’t invite us back to their cream house and my mother didn’t thaw. She would hold Maggie and occasionally coo in her direction but she felt no more affection for her than she did the neighbour’s dog. She felt even less for me. She would talk to me, be courteous even, but the conversation rarely extended beyond the weather. If she saw me wince as I tried to latch my daughter on to my breast she would mutter about bottles. If a nappy needed changing she would leave the room or encourage me to go upstairs to do it. We didn’t even have the usual safe topic of my work to turn to. I wasn’t doing anything at that moment to make her proud. There were no yoga rooms to talk about, no TV presenter homes to boast to her neighbours about. There was just me and my baby and the problematic lack of a partner.

  We went through the motions – me trying to engage her in conversation, her answering in monosyllabic sentences, and all the while my mind was thinking of that lack of the partner and the fact that if I could go home, Jake could well be waiting to see me. God, I wanted to see him. I wanted to make at least one aspect of my life better.

  When my two weeks were up, and my progress no further forward, I went back to London and for all intents and purposes it felt as if I was going home. Yes, I cried when I kissed Anna goodbye. I didn’t relish the thought of doing this alone. I had become used to her support. I had loved that she had taken Maggie overnight on several occasions to allow me a good sleep. When I was feeding, she would bring me glasses of water to make sure I stayed hydrated and when the hormonal rages came, she would hug me while I cried and help me feel more human.