The door was open at Siobhan’s place in Rosebery when Clara arrived and, as she walked up the garden path, she heard the noise inside. Not loud, disruptive music that the neighbours might complain about but the sounds of her family trying to talk over the top of each other. She smiled at the cacophony, glad she’d come, and was just about to take the first step onto the front porch, when something (or rather someone) jumped out at her from behind a potted azalea.
‘Bang, bang, you’re dead!’
Her heart slammed against her chest cavity, the bottle of wine almost slipped from her grasp and a word she rarely said fell from her lips as one of her great-nephews aimed a plastic gun at her. Siobhan’s lazy golden retriever raised his head where he was sleeping a few feet away but decided she wasn’t worth barking at and immediately dropped it again.
‘Um-mah,’ said four-year-old Dylan. ‘You said a bad word.’
Clara tightened her grip on the bottle and hit her tiny tormentor with her sternest expression. ‘Of course I said a bad word—you scared me half to death. Does Great Nanna know you have that gun?’
Terror filled his eyes. Clara’s mother—Eileen—Dylan’s great-grandmother, did not abide toy weapons and as his mother had only been eighteen when she’d given birth to him, both his grandmother and great-grandmother were major influences in his life.
‘It’s not real.’ But he looked sheepishly up at her, his bravado gone.
She dropped down to her haunches so she could address him eye to eye. ‘How about we make a deal? I won’t tell Great Nanna about the gun, if you don’t tell her about my bad word.’
‘Okay.’ Dylan shoved the gun in the foliage of the pot plant and held out his hand for her to shake.
‘Come on, let’s go inside. I have to give Aunty Aoifa her present.’
Dylan glanced at the box poking out the top of her handbag as they started into the house, following the hullaballoo down the hallway. ‘What is it?’
‘You’ll see when she opens it.’
Clara waved to some of her teenage nieces and nephews as she passed the theatre room where they were ensconced playing video games. She carried on into the open-plan entertaining area that housed the country-style kitchen, dining and living rooms. Siobhan and Neil’s house was large, but even so it struggled to accommodate the number of people milling about. Dylan let go of her hand and snuck away, no doubt to get up to more mischief, and Clara put the bottle of wine and her handbag on the kitchen bench. Engaged in multiple conversations, her family didn’t immediately notice her standing there on the edges looking in as if she were watching a show.
Rob, whose family had consisted of himself and his mother, said the Brennans were like some big TV clan, a cast of unique and quirky characters, who always had some drama or other going on. It was true; with four sisters who had all married and bred like rabbits and two parents who embraced their Irish Catholic roots still very much alive, theirs could be a long-running soap opera. They’d had the highs and lows that every such show needed—affairs, teen pregnancy, big weddings, small weddings, a niece who came out of the closet, childhood leukaemia, remission from said leukaemia, divorce … The dramas were endless but what mattered was that through dark and light times, happy and sad ones, her family were there for each other.
Her mother played the role of matriarch perfectly with her nose always in everybody’s business. Her father was a man of few words—currently dozing in the corner—but his wife spoke more than enough for both of them. Clara smiled fondly at her dear old dad, but was quickly distracted by squeals from the other side of the room where her brother-in-law, Ranaldo, was entertaining three-year-old twins, Zoey and Blake, teaching them how to make farting and burping noises.
Most large families had a crazy uncle and a spinster aunt and, from the moment her youngest sister, Bridget, had brought Ranaldo home to meet the family, they’d known he’d fit the crazy uncle role perfectly. Clara had just never imagined herself as the spinster aunt. Well, technically she was a divorcee but that was only semantics—she didn’t have any children, and at fifty-three years of age, it would be a miracle of biblical proportions if she ever did.
‘Aunty Clara!’
The squeal of her name snapped Clara out of her silent contemplation and she looked up to see the birthday girl pushing past her other relatives to throw her arms around her.
‘Happy birthday, gorgeous girl. How did you grow up so fast?’
Aoifa laughed as she pulled back. ‘Come meet my new boyfriend, Xavier. Isn’t that a sexy name?’
Clara agreed that it was and happily let her niece drag her across the room to where a tall, lanky boy with curly dark hair and an eyebrow ring looked to be receiving a grilling from Aoifa’s mother, her grandmother and three other aunties.
‘Xav.’ Aoifa took hold of his arm and drew him possessively against her. ‘I want you to meet my Aunty Clara.’
Xavier’s eyes widened. ‘Another one?’
The women chuckled.
‘This is the last, I promise, and she’s my favourite.’
Clara smiled—she suspected she was the favourite aunty of all thirteen of her nieces and nephews and her great-ones as well. She had a tendency to spoil them, but when you didn’t have kids of your own, surely you were allowed to indulge your sisters’ children a little. She held out her hand. ‘Hi Xavier, nice to meet you.’
Despite looking terrified, he had a firm handshake. ‘You too. You all look exactly the same. You could be quintuplets.’
It wasn’t the first time they’d heard this or something similar. As children, their father had called his five daughters ‘my little Russian dolls’ and the fact their mother had often dressed them in identical hand-sewn outfits hadn’t helped. As adults, they all wore their golden-blonde hair differently but even so, their sea-green eyes and narrow faces made it clear they were related.
Growing up, Clara had always imagined that one day she’d have her own set of real-life Russian dolls, but whoever held the controls upstairs had other plans and instead all she had was a collection of wooden ones. It wasn’t that she begrudged her sisters their happiness but why out of five children was she the only one who’d failed marriage and motherhood? Had she done something wrong in a past life?
Stop it! She hadn’t come here to be melancholic and dwell on what she didn’t have.
‘There’s strong genes on my side of the family.’ Eileen focused her gaze on Xavier. ‘What are your family genes like?’
He blinked as she continued, ‘I want to know you come from good stock in case you and Aoifa make babies.’
Always with the babies.
‘Oh, Nanna. Leave poor Xavier alone. I don’t even know if I want to have children. I’m only just twenty-one!’
‘Have I told you all about Ranaldo’s mother?’ Bridget asked in an obvious attempt to save the birthday girl and her boyfriend from her mother’s grilling.
‘Oh, yes.’ Another sister—Fiona—nodded excitedly. ‘You told me but go on, tell them. This is gold.’
And so Bridget shared a story about how her mother-in-law had just run off with a woman she’d met at her bowling club. Apparently her father-in-law was beside himself because who was going to wash his jocks? Aideen (Clara’s second-youngest sister) said that sometimes she wished she could do the same.
‘Oi, I heard that!’ shouted her husband from where he’d been talking footy with his brothers-in-law a few feet away.
Everybody laughed and Clara felt some of the sadness that had weighed her down all day ebbing away. She was glad she’d chosen her family over a date with the TV. She might not have a husband or children, but she was blessed with wonderful sisters, nieces and nephews.
Aoifa led Xavier away from her grandmother and the conversation between the sisters changed to Fiona’s angst over her son, Liam, wanting to change from engineering to a drama degree.
‘Can you imagine?’ The horror on her face would make anyone think Liam wanted to become a male prostitute.
‘He’s only nineteen. Let the poor boy follow his dreams before life crushes them. Now, Clara, can I get you a drink?’
‘Yes, please.’ Clara nodded. As much as she loved all her sisters, when Fiona (the oldest after her) started on about something, she could go on forever. It paid to escape while you could, so she followed Siobhan to the kitchen and gleefully accepted a glass of wine.
‘How are you doing today, anyway?’ This wasn’t just your everyday how’s-it-going question.
‘I’m okay. I’m glad I’m here with all of you.’ She took a long sip of her wine just as her phone started buzzing
‘Is that yours?’ Siobhan glanced towards Clara’s handbag on the bench.
She nodded but didn’t bother reaching for it.
Siobhan’s face scrunched up into a scowl. ‘Rob?’
‘Probably. I did have to cut him short earlier when he called.’
‘It’s been two years since the divorce, when he’s going to get the message?’
‘It’s always bad around this time. He doesn’t really have a support crew like I do.’ Clara let out a heavy breath; she couldn’t help making excuses for him.
‘And whose fault is that?’
Siobhan was right. Once upon a time he’d had plenty of friends—his band-mates were like brothers—but he’d slowly driven them all away.
Still, Clara ignored her comment. ‘I don’t know what he wants me to say though. Nothing I’ve done has helped him in the past.’
‘That’s why you need to stop trying. Rob will never be able to live a satisfying life until he gets help for his addiction and you’ll never be able to get on with yours while he’s still lingering in it.’
‘I know but …’ Breaking free was easier said than done. Clara had always been a helper—it was simply who she was—and there’d never been anyone she wanted to be able to save more than her exhusband.
‘No buts. It’s not your responsibility to pay off his bosses, nurse his hangovers, go out searching for him in the early hours of the morning, sign him up to AA and—’
Clara held up her hand ‘Okay, okay. I get the message.’ She didn’t need her sister recapping her disastrous marriage.
‘You need to block his number,’ Siobhan said, undeterred. ‘Take out a restraining order. This has gone on for far too long.’
‘A restraining order seems a little drastic—and I’m not sure it would even be possible, he hasn’t actually done anything to harm me.’
Siobhan scoffed. ‘That’s debatable.’ And then dived for Clara’s handbag.
‘What are you doing?’ Clara’s heart squeezed as her sister grabbed her phone.
Siobhan stared at the screen. ‘What’s your PIN?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m taking control of this situation. You’re always worrying about everyone else. Always making sure we’re okay, Rob is okay, your patients are okay, the women you support are okay, but what about you? It’s my job to worry about you. PIN?’
Clara knew it would be pointless trying to fight this. ‘Five. Six. Three. Five.’
Siobhan punched in the numbers as Clara spoke them. ‘Bingo!’ Then she called across the room to her nephew. ‘Liam, how do you block a number on an iPhone?’
If everyone hadn’t been privy to this conversation before, they all were now. As Liam asked, ‘Why do you want to know?’, all Clara’s other relatives turned to see what was going on.
Siobhan filled them in and, as usual, Clara’s business became a family affair. Liam pushed a few buttons, apparently both deleting and blocking Rob from her phone—she decided not to mention the fact he still knew where she lived—and everyone weighed in on the situation.
‘You need to show Rob you’re moving on,’ Aideen said. ‘And the best way to do that is to meet new men.’
‘Yes, start going on dates again.’ Fiona made it sound as simple as making the decision.
Clara all but snorted. She hadn’t dated in over twenty-seven years. Part of her wanted to tell them she didn’t need a man in her life but the truth was she missed having someone to come home to. Someone to talk to, someone to bring to family gatherings, someone to warm her feet against in bed on those long, cold wintry nights. Not that she’d ever really had that, not since the very early days with Rob.
After she’d thrown him out the final time, she’d been too raw to contemplate another relationship. Now almost two years on was she finally ready to let someone else into her heart again?
Even if she knew the answer to that question—and she wasn’t sure she did—wanting to find a partner and actually finding one were two very different things. ‘Where am I going to meet men at my age?’
‘You make it sound like you’re a hundred, Aunty Clara.’ This from Aoifa—she was such a sweetheart.
‘Some days I feel it.’
‘If you’re a hundred, what does that make us?’ Her mother gestured to her father, who’d roused himself for this conversation.
The lines around his eyes crinkled as he smiled. ‘Whatever makes you happy, love.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’
‘You could go on a cruise,’ suggested Siobhan. ‘Aoifa’s always telling us we should try one and I’ve heard they’re a great place for older single people to meet.’
‘If you don’t get seasick,’ countered Fiona. She’d always had a weak stomach.
‘Or sign up to some kind of club.’ This from Bridget.
Ranaldo winked. ‘My mum had some luck at lawn bowls.’
‘Ooh.’ Eileen clapped her hands together. ‘I saw Martha Struthers at the funeral of an old friend the other day.’
Martha Struthers was the mother of a boy Clara had briefly dated (if you could even call it that) in high school.
‘And she told me that—’
‘Let me guess?’ Clara interrupted. ‘She told you that her son, Michael, is recently divorced and on the market again?’
Eileen nodded excitedly. ‘Yes. He was such a lovely boy. You should look him up.’
‘No way. I never even liked him when I went out with him. Why on earth would I go back for more?’
In hindsight, Michael—a bit of a nerd—had been another instance of her playing the helper.
‘You could join Tinder.’ Aoifa smiled at her boyfriend as she snuggled against him. ‘That’s how I met Xavier.’
Clara raised her eyebrows. She’d heard about Tinder and unless she wanted a sexed-up toy boy, it was not the place for her. And right now, she was done with this conversation.
‘Thanks for your concern,’ she said in her most authoritative voice. ‘But isn’t it time for Aoifa to open her presents?’
Everyone approved of this plan so the teens were summoned from the theatre room and they all clustered around the large dining room table to watch Aoifa unwrap her gifts. A pile of discarded paper grew on one end of the table and by the time she’d finished, everyone was starving.
Dinner—a number of different casseroles—was laid out on the island kitchen bench and everyone was instructed to serve themselves and then take a seat. If they could find one. The older generation were seated at the massive table; everyone else had to squash up on the couches or sit on the floor. As the food was devoured, the decibel level in the house rose once again with everyone talking and eating as if it were an Olympic sport.
As usual Clara and her father were the only ones not trying to be heard over everybody else. Her nieces and nephews talked Snapchat, Instagram and other things she didn’t understand, while her sisters and brothers-in-law moaned about the hardships of getting teenagers through high school and her mother told them everything they were doing wrong. Clara didn’t have anything to say on any of these topics, so as it often did her mind drifted into a fantasy about what her life would have been like if Laura and her other babies had lived. She could close her eyes and still feel her daughter’s tiny hand in hers as if it were real.
She tried to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat. Laura would have been the oldest of the next generation, so Clara would have plenty to say on all things parenting. She’d have been the font of knowledge and wisdom for her sisters and all Laura’s cousins would have looked up to her and hung off her every word.
Would Laura even be here now or would she be off in some far-flung corner of the globe pursuing her passions? Clara often wondered what they would have been. What her daughter would have grown up to do. Would she have followed in her father’s footsteps and gone into the music industry? Or would she have been a doctor? A teacher? A journalist? If Laura had lived would any of them still be living in Sydney or would Rob’s career have flourished and taken them further afield years ago? There’d been talk of moving to London before One Track Mind had disbanded.
She could easily visualise this whole other reality about how good her life could have been, if only … But this bubble of bliss never lasted and once again she found herself feeling like an outsider in her own family. She knew they didn’t mean to make her feel this way and she wouldn’t want them to censor their conversations around her but …
It was a relief when the dog toddled in from outside and slumped under the kitchen table, no doubt hoping that someone would accidentally drop food into his open mouth.
‘Hey, boy.’ When Clara reached down and scratched his ears, he moved closer to her, settling on her feet. She liked the feel of his heavy body against her legs and wondered if maybe she should get a pet. Then again, pets tied you down, and Bridget’s mention of cruises had got her thinking. Maybe she should do something crazy like jet off on an overseas holiday. She was only fifty-three; if her parents’ ages were anything to go by, she still might have a third of her life left.
Just because the earlier bit hadn’t turned out how she’d hoped didn’t mean she had to admit defeat.