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

Sunlight was squeezing its way out from behind the clouds when I spotted Samira Khan at the traffic lights on Alexandra Road. She was heading in the direction of Brantingham Road like she was in a hurry. I felt a stab of guilt. I’d been so caught up with everything that had happened recently I’d completely forgotten to contact her after Conor O’Grady’s attack on Adeel. Conor had been due to stand trial but at the last minute Adeel had dropped all the charges. I sighed. I didn’t particularly want a chat with Samira about the old days. But I gave into my feelings of guilt, pulled up beside her and offered her a lift home.

Samira was delighted to see me and accepted. What had happened to Adeel had obviously had an effect on her. She’d lost weight and the happy carefree sheen in her eyes had been replaced by a wary, subdued look. As I pulled up outside her house she invited me in for coffee but I made an excuse about having plans. We chatted for a while in the car instead.

“So, how’s Adeel?” I asked.

“Completely recovered now. Back immersed in his politics.”

“I heard he dropped the charges against Conor.”

She sighed. “Yes. Conor’s father Tom came to the house one day. He begged me to persuade Adeel not to go ahead. Said his son had been suffering from post-traumatic shock for years after a bomb attack in Northern Ireland had left him in his wheelchair. He said the army had abandoned his son and left him on shitty benefits and without any help for his mental-health problems.” She shook her head. “The poor man kept apologising, Carmel. He was so desperate for his son not to go to prison. He said it would be the end for him. Apparently Conor has already made two suicide attempts. It was a difficult decision to make. Of course I wanted Conor to be punished and go to prison for what he did to Adeel but he is not well in the head. So I asked Adeel to drop the charges.”

“Wow. That’s an incredible act of kindness, Samira.”

I thought about my experience with Conor. I wanted to ask her if she thought he could go on to attack someone else, but I held back.

“Adeel refused at first. So I said he could look after his own bloody kids then. He soon changed his mind.”

I laughed. “You are terrible, Samira.”

She grinned and the old Samira was back.

“I know. Anyway, how are things with you?” She squeezed my arm. “You are so pale and skinny. You need to eat more, Carmel.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

After she’d gone into the house I suddenly remembered about her chats with Tess and what she’d said to me the day I found Dad’s letter. “So cruel to have her son taken from her like that.” I’d been so consumed by what had happened with Joe and Karen I’d completely forgotten to ask Samira if Tess had ever confided in her about the baby she’d given away. I thought about knocking on the door and asking her but the moment had gone. Only a few weeks before, I would have dived in there straightaway with a list of questions. Finding my brother had obsessed my every waking hour then. But now the bottom had fallen out of my world and I simply didn’t have the energy any more.

I started to drive off but pulled over again as I passed the old house. I stopped and stared. It had been completely transformed and was barely recognisable. Grey PVC windows had replaced the cracked wooden ones, the roof was newly tiled and the brickwork plastered over. The porch had gone, Tess’s garden had been completely gravelled over and a Mitsubishi four-by-four filled the driveway. I was overcome by a strange mixture of loss and awe.

Then the front door opened and a dark wiry man in a pale denim shirt came out followed by a girl of about six or seven. She had ebony waist-length hair and was wearing a lemon dress. She stopped on the step and called out to her father, pointing down at her foot. He turned round, walked back to her then bent down to fasten her shoe. He straightened up and as he kissed the top of her head I heard myself say “Daddy”, and something broke inside me.

Chapter 28

In the days that followed the darkness slipped through the front door when I wasn’t looking and made itself at home. Inconspicuous at first, it started to follow me around then before long it was forever by my side. The darkness had a voice too.

“You are worthless,” it said, as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. “You are neurotic, you have no friends and everyone has left you. Nobody cares whether you live or die.”

Getting out of bed and putting one step in front of the other to go downstairs became a monumental effort. As did showering and eating. I nibbled on bread and cheese, crackers and the odd apple. My appetite for wine did not diminish and I guzzled a bottle most days. I lost track of time. Hours would pass and I’d realise I hadn’t stirred out of bed. I was sleeping up to fourteen hours a day and I spent a lot of that dreaming about the dead. I was clinging to Tess’s lifeless body in the room where I found her, I was watching Mikey writhing in the road at Old Trafford and I was watching Peggy step off the road into the path of a speeding car. But when I dreamt of Dad he was very much alive. We were running on the beach hand in hand in Achill and laughing, I was snuggled on his knee in front of the gas fire, he was helping me unwrap a doll’s pram on Christmas Day. Whenever