Aidan was standing in the kitchen trying to brush Milly’s hair. He pulled the hairbrush down through the dark strands where it snagged on a knot and she let out a yelp, ‘Owwweee, Daddy, op! Op!’
‘Sorry, love, I'm trying not to hurt you. I promise I’ll try to be a bit gentler.’
Brushing Milly's hair was the one thing Aidan dreaded. Over the last few weeks, he had got to grips with making dinners, vacuuming and putting on the washing machine, but doing Milly's hair was something he seemed to fail abysmally at. Women had a lifetime of practice before they had to start doing their daughters’ hair, but for a man it was a whole new experience, he thought grimly. He made hapless attempts every morning at ponytails or sticking hairclips in to tidy it up a little, but she still never looked neat, like the other girls they would see.
It was over a month since the crash and it was the day that the children were due to return to school. It was also to be Aidan’s first morning back in work. He felt his stomach lurch whenever he thought about it. It was Gemma who had suggested that maybe it was time. ‘It’ll be a good distraction,’ she had said. Aidan had been waiting for the right time, but he now realised that was never going to happen. There was never going to be a right time.
The kids had missed so much school already and he didn’t want them to fall behind and have to contend with that as well as everything else that had happened to them. He also knew it was probably time to return to work; there was only so much bereavement leave his company would give him. Hadn’t he once been that same boss that had said to members of his team to ‘take as much time off as you need’ when they were going through something but really, he expected them back in the job in a few weeks? Any longer and he thought they were taking the piss.
Aidan now understood that there was no time limit on grief. People said that time healed, but he could imagine himself a year down the road – even ten years down the road – still feeling the same way, completely floored and shocked by what had happened to them. It felt wrong to move on again, how could they do that? Returning to normal life seemed like admitting acceptance – like he was giving the world permission to continue on when his life had come to a standstill. People would think that by getting on with their lives they were okay; that they were picking up the pieces and getting through it, but Aidan didn’t think they would ever be okay again. He still felt angry and cheated that this had happened to his family, he wanted people to know that it wasn’t all right – he wanted them to understand just how awful the last few weeks had been.
He was also scared to send the children back to their ordinary lives when everything had changed so much. It was like part of their shell had been removed and they were a little bit more vulnerable, a little more exposed to the frailties of life. They now knew that bad things could happen and when they did, he wouldn’t always be able to fix it or be by their side them to protect them.
He twisted the elastic around Milly’s hair, wincing as it snagged on a strand. Then he turned her around to face him. He looked at her lopsided pigtails and sighed. Poor Milly, she would have to endure a lifetime of bad hairstyles at his hands.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said. ‘Go grab your lunch bag.’ He watched his daughter run off towards the cloakroom. She still had her cast on, but it hadn’t slowed her down.
He hadn’t heard anything further from James and Helena. As the days had gone past and he had time to process everything, he was feeling more and more outraged by their visit. At first their audacity had landed like a sucker punch that he hadn’t had time to prepare for, but as he had begun to digest it, he was disgusted at how pathetic they were. They were so hellbent on having a child that they didn’t care whose lives they trampled on. James had destroyed enough of his life, and he certainly wasn’t going to allow him to do any more damage.
He looked over at Jack who was munching his way through a bowl of Cheerios at the table, but his spoon seemed to be permanently dangling in mid-air. It was as though the distance between the bowl and his mouth was an eternity.
‘Jack, hurry up and finish your breakfast, we need to leave in five minutes!’ Aidan warned. ‘Callum?’ he called upstairs. He had woken Callum an hour ago, but he had yet to make an appearance in the kitchen. ‘We’re leaving in five minutes.’
Callum’s behaviour was still proving difficult. He had accompanied his son to the BetterValu supermarket to apologise to the store owner, but he had refused to set foot in the place.
‘Why the hell did you come here if you’re not even going to bother getting out of the car?’ Aidan had asked as they sat in the car park, growing angrier with every passing minute.
He’d shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to come, you made me.’
‘Are you going to go in?’ Aidan had tried again, but Callum had remained stubbornly silent, so Aidan had stormed out of the car, slammed the door behind him and marched into the supermarket.
Why couldn’t Callum see the bigger picture here? he’d wondered, feeling anger blistering through him. The Gardaí had told them that a simple apology could prevent this from escalating further. Callum didn’t realise how much was at stake.
A lady on the checkout had told him that the store owner was in the frozen food aisle. He’d found him, a small man in his mid-sixties, piling bags of frozen peas into a freezer. Aidan had apologised on Callum’s behalf, explaining the situation about Rowan’s death and promising that it would never happen again. The store owner had been very gracious about it, all things considered.
‘If you so much as set foot in that shop again, you’ll never leave the house,’ Aidan had warned as he returned to Callum in the car.
‘Whatever,’ Callum had retorted, as he’d looked out the window.
Aidan had gripped the steering wheel tighter. They drove home silently together and when they reached the house, the tension had wound itself so tightly around Aidan, that he felt like punching something. He knew his angry reaction was inflaming the situation; Rowan would have told him to calm down and deal with it rationally, but he couldn’t help it. How dare Callum think this was okay. Once they’d got in the house Callum had stormed upstairs, while he had gone in to Gemma, who had been minding the younger two.
‘I just can’t get through to him,’ Aidan had said, coming into the kitchen, tossing his keys down on the island. ‘We’re trying to help him here, but how can we do that when he won’t even help himself?’
‘I know it might not feel like it, but you’re doing a good job, Aidan,’ she had said. ‘Don’t beat yourself up. Give him time.’
‘Daddy, can you help me?’ Milly asked, pulling him out of his head.
‘Sure, sweetheart.’
He helped her to slide her arms into the sleeves of her coat.
‘Hurry up, boys,’ he called upstairs to where Jack had gone to brush his teeth and he was still waiting on Callum to appear. ‘We’re leaving now.’
He held Milly’s hand and led her out of the house. As they descended the front steps, he saw their postman coming up the driveway towards him.
He handed Aidan a letter. ‘I need you to sign for this,’ he said.
‘Sure,’ Aidan said, signing the handheld device where indicated, wondering what was so important that he had to sign for it. He realised with a sinking feeling that it was probably some official paperwork to do with Rowan’s death. Over the last few days, there had been so many letters arriving from insurance companies and other financial institutions regarding policies they had had in place in the unlikely event of one of them dying young. The types of things you set up to be sensible, but you never expect to use.
He took the envelope and held it between his teeth as he opened the car and strapped Milly into her seat. Then he sat in the driver’s seat and ran his finger beneath the gummed seal, while he waited for the boys to come out of the house. He took out the letter that was inside and unfolded it. He quickly scanned through it and felt his heart stop with every word he read. Surely it was wrong. He tried reading it again, but the words seemed to be swimming on the page before him. The car doors opened, and Jack climbed in beside Milly and Callum sat into the passenger seat. Aidan quickly folded the letter and slipped it back inside the envelope. His fingers were trembling as he turned the key in the ignition.