My Mother's Children: An Irish family secret and the scars it left behind. by Annette Sills (epub e reader .TXT) 📗

can suddenly cause the heart muscles to thicken to the point where it stops the flow of blood from the heart. And that’s what happened to Mikey.”

HCM was an autosomal dominant condition which meant children of a carrier had a fifty-per-cent chance of having the gene. I had no symptoms and it looked like I was OK but any children I had would have a 50/50 chance of getting it. Tess was distraught to discover she had passed it on. Her symptoms went unnoticed. For years she had palpitations and breathlessness which we put it down to her twenty-a-day Silk Cut habit and the medication she was taking. She had a fear of going to the doctor’s, probably the result of the harsh way she had been treated for her mental-health issues. I was overwhelmed with guilt when we found out she was a sufferer. If she’d been checked out, they might have discovered she had the gene and Mikey could still be alive.

His body stayed with the coroner for three weeks before we brought him home. Though he’d have hated it, Tess insisted on a traditional Irish wake. She sat and slept next to his open coffin for twenty-four hours. After the funeral she slept in his old room, rarely venturing out, eating very little and wandering around the house talking to him. She kept saying it was her fault, that God was punishing her, that she should never have had children. In her mind she’d killed the thing she loved most in the world and there was no persuading her otherwise.

“I hate these ultrasounds,” I said. “All that prodding and they keep you in for ages.”

Joe turned his face to the window and stared out at the leaves skittering across the courtyard in the wind. I’d been thinking about that other waiting room and that other scan and I wondered if he had too. It seemed like a lifetime ago now. I got pregnant a year into our relationship. I didn’t know until I was almost three months gone and I was surprised and disconcerted when Joe said we should keep it. I started bleeding a few days later and he cried in the hospital corridor after the scan showed no heartbeat. I stood next to him awkwardly, not quite knowing what to do. I was relieved. I was twenty-two and I didn’t even know if I wanted kids. At thirty-nine I was even more unsure, especially after what had happened to Mikey. Any child of ours could inherit HCM.

A door swung open and a stout nurse appeared with a clipboard. Squinting behind John Lennon glasses, she called out the other patient’s name. I watched him shuffle down the corridor. He might be OK. After all, Mikey’s heart had held up throughout the addiction years. But then, when he’d finally got rid of his demons, HCM came along and mowed him down.

Five minutes later I lay in the examination room, a young sonographer rubbing gel on my chest. As she pushed the probe down and moved it around, my heart pulsated inside a black-and-white triangle on the screen like a dancer on stage in a spotlight. Its beat echoed around the room. I thought about that tiny heart beating inside Tess more than fifty years ago. Could it really be true? Had she and Dad really handed their baby over to strangers?

“Try and relax.” The sonographer frowned and probed some more.

I shifted around on the bed. “Everything OK?” It all seemed to be taking much longer than usual.

“Keep still and take deep breaths.”

She had an Eastern European accent and drawn-on eyebrows that gave her a permanent look of surprise. Not a great look for a sonographer.

After a few more minutes she took the probe away, handed me a paper towel to clean myself and told me to get dressed.

“Everything looks fine. Full results in post in couple of weeks.”

My dancing heart did a backflip. I was well. I was healthy. Tension and relief drained from me into a pool on the floor. I hopped off the examination table, wiped myself down and hummed to myself as I got dressed. But then, as I made my way back to the waiting room, guilt crept up behind me and threw itself over me like a dark cloak. My mood went from elation to deep sadness. I’d survived but Mikey hadn’t. The odds were 50/50 and he’d drawn the short straw in the gene pool.

In the waiting room Joe picked up his bag and cycling helmet and looked at me expectantly. “Everything OK?” he asked.

I nodded and we walked along the corridor in silence. I was healthy, I told myself. I had every reason to be happy and Mikey and Tess would have been looking down on me and smiling. Yet the darkness pressed down on me like a boulder.

Joe took my hand. “Let’s eat out later to celebrate the good news.”

I pulled it away. “Mikey’s dead. He got the bad genes and I didn’t. What the fuck is there to celebrate?”

Chapter 8

Mikey’s debut for England took place on a sweltering hot Saturday on June 6th 1999. It was a day I’ll never forget. For all the wrong reasons.

The match was at Twickenham against France. Afterwards he’d arranged to spend the night in High Wycombe at the family home of his school pal, Julian Hammond. Julian was a boarder at St Bede’s. Gawky and foppish, he was a little in love with Mikey. His barrister parents were away for the weekend at the family’s second home in France and Julian’s older brother Toby was in charge of the boys that night. Toby was a rugby fanatic who was keen to be seen in the company of the country’s most promising fly half.

Mikey rang after the match from the train on the way to High Wycombe. He was using Toby’s mobile phone but it was hard to hear what he was saying because of the roaring and singing