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

“None of that excuses what you did, though.”

His head dropped forward onto his chin. “I get it, Carmel. I really do. I didn’t just sleep with anyone, I slept with your best friend and it was something you can’t forgive. I know I’ve blown it. But you have to know this. What happened with Karen was only ever about sex. Nothing else. With you it was only ever about love. And sex.” He stood up slowly. “I’ve loved you since the day I met you and I always will. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go for a slash.”

As he disappeared down the narrow corridor into the bathroom I got up and went over to the sliding door that led onto a tiny balcony. I opened it and stepped outside, clenched by the cold night air. Frost shimmered everywhere and the lights from the Millennium Bridge reflected in the dark water, forming a turquoise shape like a giant peacock feather. A tall thin woman in a long coat was walking her dog along the canal bank.

I turned at the sound of voices. On the balcony to my right a young couple were pouring something from a bottle into glasses and laughing. For some reason I thought of Billy O’Hagan. We’d sat on the rooftop terrace bar that evening after the conference on a night not too dissimilar to this one, huddled in coats and drinking tequila shots. I was warmed by the memory. I looked back at the woman walking her dog. She reminded me of Lowry’s matchstick figures. She was looking out over the river and there was something desperately lonely and sad about the way she lingered with her head bowed.

I looked back into the room. Joe was shuffling back through the piles of boxes in the direction of the sofa. As I stepped back inside The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” was playing on the radio. It was our song; we used to listen to it on the Friday train to Euston or Piccadilly when we first met and were travelling to visit each other. Joe caught my eye briefly then bent down and turned the radio off.

I started picking up plates and glasses from the table.

“You off then?” he sighed, lying down on the sofa and tucking the blanket around him.

He closed his eyes and I stared at him as I’d done so many times over the years as he slept next to me.

“Why don’t you go and pack a bag?” I said. “Then we can go home.”

Chapter 41

There’d been showers on and off all morning but they’d stopped just in time. A mild September sun crept out from behind the clouds, honey-coloured rays dropping through the side window onto the worktop. I picked up my champagne flute. A mountain of gaily wrapped presents, cards and gift bags were piled high in the corner and a pink balloon saying “On Your Christening” was floating above the hood of the stove.

“See you’ve tidied up at last,” I said, holding up my glass to my brother.

“Cheeky.” Dan grinned and topped me up from the bottle in his hand. He was wearing a crisp white shirt and blue polka-dot tie that Ellie had forced on him. With his hair neatly greased back, he looked like a schoolboy uncomfortable in his Sunday best.

The large open-plan kitchen was humming with Dan and Ellie’s bohemian friends and Ellie’s family who were over from Achill. They were a garrulous lot, a mixture of hoteliers, academics and musicians. We’d spent the previous night carousing in the bars in the Northern Quarter in town and I was slightly the worst for wear. Dan and Ellie’s seventies pre-fab was tucked in a cul-de-sac behind an industrial park in Altrincham. The house looked much healthier now than when they’d moved in. I’d helped them paint a couple of the rooms including this one. Gone were the piles of Ellie’s score sheets and cello cases, sample paint pots and brushes. The boxes of books lying everywhere had found shelves, the baby toys had found a home in a lovely oriental trunk, and the posters and prints stacked by the door had been mounted on the sunflower-yellow walls. My favourite, a splash of vivid greens and yellows called Achill Horses, hung over the bright orange sofa that Ellie and I had found in a charity shop in Chorlton. Neither Dan nor Ellie were particularly enamoured with the house. Ellie earned very little as a jobbing cellist and with Dan’s teaching salary it was all they could afford in the catchment area of the local grammar where they hoped Archie was heading.

Dan headed to the door to greet a woman with dreadlocks carrying a baby in a sling. She was wearing hiking boots despite the heat. They hugged and she handed him a cloudy bottle of something home-made which he put in the fridge. Children ran in and out of the garden barefoot and I’d detected a faint whiff of dope from the front room earlier. The talk all around the room was of Brexit and the EU referendum. Three months on after the June vote, everyone was still reeling with the shock and uncertainty of it all.

Ellie’s cousin Declan picked up his guitar and started singing Elvis Costello’s “Oliver’s Army”. He had a great voice and everyone stopped talking and listened. I was immediately transported to Karen’s living room in Hillingdon Road when we were in our teens and a wave of sadness and regret dropped over me. It was in her top five all-time favourite songs. When Dee was at the pub she’d put it on and we’d drink Merrydown cider and pogo around the room singing at the top of our voices. I sighed heavily as I recalled our recent encounter in town.

It was mid-August and Joe and I had just come from an appointment at the baby clinic. He’d taken the bus into his