‘Mummy’s home! Mummmyyy’sssss hooommmeee!’ Mark zigzags towards me at the hall door. His little face overjoyed to see his mummy. He grabs me in a tight hug around my legs. He is wearing his filthy dirty Olaf costume and his Fireman Sam wellington boots. Mark is a real mixture of us both. Sandy blond hair and blue eyes.
‘Careful, darling,’ I say, as I hold onto the glass hall table with my brown paper bag in the other hand. I kick the hall door shut behind me. The house is cold. Colin hasn’t got the heating on. Again. It’s December and, although I do love our planet, I live in Ireland, an island in the North Atlantic. Gas heating is a necessity. I’m bloody freezing.
‘Mummy doesn’t want to drop her booze, Markey boy.’ Colin walks out of the living room in his stocking feet, MacBook surgically attached under his arm, straight past me and straight up the stairs as he ruffles Mark’s floppy Olaf head.
I plaster a smile on my face for my baby and fix his hood. His carrot nose bobbing.
Some people are worth melting for.
‘Where is Jade? Did you guys have any tea?’
His tiny features warm my heart.
‘Just Maccy Donald’s earlier.’ Mark is still stuck to my legs. He’s small in stature for five. The smallest in his class. I’ve had him with the paediatric doctor and they don’t see any immediate growth issues.
‘He’ll probably never play full back for Ireland, mind you,’ the specialist had said as he charged me an arm and a leg, but told me there was no need to reschedule an appointment.
‘OK, well, how about some toasted fingers and dippy boiled eggs? I’ll give you some grapes while you wait,’ I say now as I put the wine down carefully on the hall table, undo my wedges and pick him up. I know I shouldn’t, it’s another huge bone of contention between Colin and me. Colin literally flips out when I carry Mark. I know he is five but he’s still my baby. Junior infants. I have argued the use of the word infant with Colin a lot lately and I quote: ‘Infant: denoting something in an early stage of its development.’
Colin thinks it’s weird that I still want to pick him up and says I’m doing Mark no favours by babying him all the time. But he is my baby. My last baby. I kiss him gently on the lips. I inhale him.
‘Yayyyyy, Mummy, do I have big school ’gain t’morrow?’
‘You do, sweetie.’ I hold him close and carry him into the kitchen. He smells of Monster Munch and markers.
‘Not long to go now before you get Christmas holidays and Santa comes!’ I whisper in my excited voice and I start to hum ‘Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer’.
I stop in my tracks. The kitchen is a total bomb site. Dirty dishes, arts and crafts all over the table, Lego pieces all over the floor, the dirty washing strewn around by the machine, uniforms and tracksuits to be ironed piled up on the chair. I sigh.
‘What am I getting for lunch tomorrow? Alistair gets chocolate spread on crackers and when he squishes them together the chocolate comes out through the holes and it’s so funny, can I have that? Can I Mummy? Can I?’ Mark asks as I gently release him down to the floor.
‘Can I go out to Karen’s for, like, an hour?’ Jade is lounging against the kitchen door again. Looking sixteen. Light military-style denim shirt, grey legging and Uggs. Her blonde hair falling around her shoulders. A hand-made loom-band chocker around her long neck. Red and black. I did not look like that at her age.
‘No, it’s too late and too dark now … do you want a boiled egg, love?’ I ask her.
‘Can I, Mummy, can I?’ Mark pulls hard at my duffel.
‘Um … how come everyone else is allowed to go to Karen’s?’ Jade darts the words at me.
‘Can I, Mummy, can I? Can I? Can I?’ Mark tugs and tugs.
‘No, Mark, you are having Billy Bear Roll tomorrow OK?’ I look down at him, then to Jade. ‘Because I said so, now do you want a boiled egg?’
The wait for her answer begins. It’s irritating me already because of the Colin-inflicted situation I find myself in, I know, but nonetheless I brush past her out to the hall table, pick up my wine and return to the kitchen, open the fridge and put it in to chill more. I take a wine glass from the top shelf and add that to the freezer too. I love a frosted wine glass.
‘Uh no, coz, like, Brooklyn and Bailey are posting a new video anysecondnow and I have to be in m’room to watch it – and you know Dad won’t let me eat in m’room, Mom,’ she drawls.
‘All right, well, when you have watched it come down and I’ll make it for you then, OK, love?’ She is only eleven years old, I constantly have to remind myself. Still just a child. Growing up in a grown-up world. Jade slouches away in her fake cream eBay Uggs. I start to pick the clothes up off the floor and put them into the washing machine. I pull on a pair of dirty socks. The grey slate floor is freezing under me, but there’s no way I’m going upstairs to get my slippers.
‘Mark, why don’t you go in and watch CBeebies and I will call you when tea is ready?’ I take off my brown leather jacket, hang it on the back of the kitchen chair, walk over and flick on the central heating and suddenly I feel dog-tired. Weary. I prepare Mark a bowl of seedless red grapes and set about getting the kitchen back in order, making the lunches, locating all the bits of each uniform, ironing the uniforms and making the teas. Colin does not come back down. I see from the silver cartons and the leftovers on his unwashed plate he had ordered himself a Chinese takeaway. But not the kids. My kids hate Chinese takeaway. One year they both got a vomiting bug and the last food they had eaten was a Chinese takeaway. They can’t look at one since. I should be glad, I suppose, but sometimes it’s a bummer. I feed the kids their boiled eggs with toast separately, and get them both up the stairs, washed, teeth cleaned into their pyjamas and ready for bed. A new dawn, another new day, another chance for it to be better. I can hear the commentary from a football match blaring out of our bedroom. I read Mark another chapter from Rover Saves Christmas, the latest in our series of library borrowed Roddy Doyle books, for his bedtime story and allow Jade another half an hour in her treasured iPad world.
* * *
Pop! The wonderful sound of medicated relaxation. If only Pilates popped! If only fitness fizzed! I am bent over with the cold wine bottle between my legs and have successfully uncorked my reward.
Taking my wine glass out of the freezer, I pour myself a large, unmeasured chilled glass.
The unruly kitchen is now spotless, back to the way I left it earlier. I love my kitchen, don’t get me wrong. I don’t own a NutriBullet and I don’t shop organic at my local farmers’ market, but I do like to cook. The Greatest Cook in the World Award will never adorn my shelf but I do try and I just like spending time in the kitchen. It’s the warmest room in the house. That, and the fact there is a constant supply of strong tea, probably adds to my affection for it. Until I have ingested my first cup of tea of the day I’m still clinically asleep. Then another, then another, then another and I’m just about ready to face the day.
I’m not bad at the few things I make, mind you. I taught myself how to make a great stew and I like homely dinners, like a baked ham and baked potatoes and broccoli. Mine will both eat broccoli, possibly the only veg they actually like. Mark is a bit better than Jade; he’ll eat corn and peas. Jade is afraid of any other veg, so broccoli it is.
Like everyone, I’m afraid of all processed foods and hidden sugars now, so even the one-of-your-5-a-day smoothies I used to pay ridiculous money for and beg the kids to drink are now removed from my shopping list. I don’t have time to make fresh smoothies, sorry, but I just don’t. I’m not a juicer. I don’t want to become a raw, green, frightened human being. There is always fresh fruit in the house (don’t mind Colin and his withered apple comment) and that’s the best I can do. I slice banana into their Weetabix in the mornings (also now the only cereal I can apparently buy – given Coco Pops is almost as bad as dipping your licked finger deep down into the sugar bowl, I understand). I give grapes and apples for lunches, and I always try to hand them plates of cut-up fruit when they are watching TV. I remember fruit being considered a treat. When Granny Margaret gave me a ripe pear or a plate of strawberries I was in heaven. Ha!
Anyway, my kitchen is a nice place. It’s all open plan with dark slate flooring and a long row of dark oak shelves; the American-style fridge is a vibrant glossy red and the kitchen table is also dark oak but with four red chairs around it. ‘Seriously stylish’, Corina calls it. There’s a sliding patio door that leads out onto our large back garden. The cream walls are covered in framed photos of the kids. Mostly black-and-white. Colin prefers black-and-white; I prefer colour. One wall is painted with metallic blackboard paint but no one ever chalks on it. It is too dark to see anything but out the back there are three wheelie bins – one brown, one black and one green – swings, a wrecked piece of garden furniture, a filthy barbecue and various bikes, flickers and scooters scattered around.
We live in Dublin 6, in Ranelagh, just off Milltown Road, and it’s a lovely three-bedroom semi-detached house with real physical character. Castlebrick Road. All the houses on the street are painted a different colour – right now ours is a canary yellow. They must be freshly painted every year, in May, by law of the county council and it costs a bloody fortune!
We live in No. 13.
The superstitious digits put me off the house at first but Colin just told me to cop myself on, ‘It’s only a number. Would ya hand back thirteen million on the Lotto if ya won it?’
Fair point.
We were aware of it about to come on the market as a friend of Colin’s, Ado, the president of the Ranelagh Manchester United Supporters Group, had been renting it but was told he had to vacate as the landlord wanted to sell. That was twelve years ago, just before we were married, and we got it for what was considered, in the ridiculous Irish property boom, to be a good price!
We still have a huge mortgage on it. Huge. Huge pressure to meet it every month.
I take a sip of my fermented grape juice. It tangs on my tongue and rolls sharply down my throat. Nice drop of plonk, if I say so myself.
I put it back on the table as I locate the two school bags and leave them out by the door with the coats on top. I Chubb lock and chain the hall door and finally I can sit down. Jobs all done.
Closing the kitchen door softly, I pick up my wine and wearily plod into the sitting room. I’m so cold-blooded I still find the room chilly, so I throw the fleece blanket around my shoulders, grab the Sky remote controls – I draw the heavy navy curtains with silver threading, then I settle back into the black leather sofa and sip my wine. I flick. Nothing much catching my attention.
Flick. Flick. Flick.
The amount of Christmas ads for certain insanely expensive toys is so early, it’s bordering on propaganda.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the pressure Colin is under to make this house tick along. No, I don’t earn much of a salary to contribute, but the plain fact is I’m not qualified for any high-paid work.
Flick.
Grand Designs. Seen it. Still I watch for a while. Kevin McCloud’s voice is hypnotic. I can hear the muffled noise from Colin’s MacBook up above in our bedroom. I can’t go up to bed until he’s asleep. I can’t face it.
Flick.
I settle on a Friends repeat. ‘The One Where Rachel Tells Ross She Still Loves Him’. Ross and Rachel. Their wonderful on-screen chemistry and easy banter takes my mind off the day. Escapism. I’m only half watching – I’ve seen it so many times, I can say the dialogue word for word almost – but I have finished the glass already, so I pop back into the kitchen. When I return I take the bottle with me and put it on the floor, I relax back into my warm seat with the blanket. I’m laughing at something Ross did when the door opens and Colin is standing there in his Manchester United boxer shorts. I jump.
‘The fucking heat in this house, Ali, is that heating still on? Jade’s still on that iPad too, do you know that? It’s a quarter to ten, Ali!’
He stares at the watch on his wrist as though it had just shouted the time out at him. His back-up. His ally. His second-in-command. The watch I bought him for his thirtieth. A Tag. I saved up half my children’s allowance for a year for it. Silver strap with a deep red face. He adores it. He had picked me up and swung me around the bedroom. I’d kicked the wicker chair over and then he’d pretended he’d done his back in. We’d laughed and kissed and I was thrilled he’d liked it so much. Good times. He never took it off.
Colin had never got much by way of presents as a kid. He was an only child and his dad suffered badly with MS from the early age of thirty, so his mother, Janet, had worked full-time in the local bakery and money was scarce. When they moved down to Dublin to live with his wealthy brother in Terenure, she got a job in Londis on the checkout. When his dad finally passed away fourteen years ago, Janet jacked in the job and moved back up to Belfast. Colin goes up now and then and sometimes takes the kids but not very often.
‘Ali?’ He throws his hands dramatically in the air now. The Tag moves slightly up his arm.
‘Oh, sorry, yeah, I forgot. Sorry, I’ll go up to her now.’ I go to stand up.
‘No, stay where you are, I’ll do it. And can ya keep the telly turned down and turn off the heating?’ He nods at my wine bottle on the floor and smirks out a laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’ I ask.
‘No … nothing … oh, by the way, are we going to talk about you going away for this whole weekend? Because I know you have to tell yer woman Collette tomorrow, don’t you, and it doesn’t look like you are coming up to bed anytime soon.’
‘I’d like to go to bed now, actually.’ Dutch courage. I move the blanket off me. It has to be done. This can’t go on. He’ll be in a better mood once we do it. Get it out of the way.
He eyes me suspiciously. His tone softens, though.
‘Have you sorted anyone to collect Jade after this gymnastics thing, because honestly I’m up to my tits on Friday with NewsXtreme paperwork, I’ll be lucky to make Laura’s by six.’ His face is less annoyed looking.
‘Yeah, I have, you can collect her from Emma’s mum’s at seven, she’s having her tea there. I’ll text you the address and Laura’s fine with six, and she’s taking Mark to McDonald’s.’
‘Wow … very healthy,’ he says.
‘You took them there today!’ I’m kind of incredulous.
‘Ya know it’s a joke. Yer mother’s rented her house in Rathfarnham and is swanning around India when we are desperate for help with the kids.’
He loves slagging my mum off. Granted she isn’t the most hands-on grandparent but she has every right to travel the world; she has no husband or other children. She is free. I never slag his mother. Janet Devlin is a lovely woman. Life has just exhausted her, so I never expect her to travel down from Belfast to mind my kids. Just like my mother has every right to live her life wherever she wants to now. He has some cheek.
The will to try to do it has completely vanished.
‘I might watch the end of this actually.’ I turn back to Friends, grab the controls from the couch and notch up the volume. I pull the blanket back up to under my chin.
He stands there and says nothing for what feels like an age.
‘I suppose I have to give you money as well for this trip?’ he asks me, his voice full of anger again. His finger now resting in his dimple.
‘No.’ Rachel is so tanned. So beach ready. So golden. So independent. Probably I do need to join a gym in the not-too-distant future. Maintenance. Or I’ll be Curly Watts not Naomi.
‘So what are you going to do for spending money?’ He pursues his line of questioning. Detective Inspector Devlin.
‘I’ll manage, Colin.’ I stare at him now.
‘I have no problem giving you spending money, Ali.’ He can sense my temper rising.
‘Well, it seems like you do. I don’t want anything from you,’ I say through the blanket that’s now covering my mouth.
‘Oh, Little Miss Career Woman, now are we? Angela Merkel what?’ He makes a fist with his left hand and covers his mouth with it stifling a fake laugh.
‘Oh, go ’way, Colin, I’m too tired for this.’ I boldly pick up my wine glass and even more boldly I bloody drain it.
‘You’re too tired for everything lately, I see. More wine? Maybe you need to pop into the ole AA?’
‘Huh?’ I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
He nods to my other hand.
‘The old desperate housewife crutch. A glass here, a glass there, a bottle a night, two bottles a night. Sure, you didn’t want to come home, did you? You wanted to stay boozing with the crazy lonely winky woman.’ He flicks the elasticised band on his preposterous Manchester United boxer shorts.
‘I wanted to have another glass of wine, yeah, so shoot me. That would have made a whole two glasses in total. That’s a lot less booze than you consume on one of your football trips, I imagine.’ I pull the blanket away from my face now and glare at him.
‘What does crazy lonely winky woman think you are? A single woman who can spend all her Sunday afternoon drinking wine and talking shite?’
‘Her name is Corina,’ I spit the name at him. I release the three syllables at him like bullets from a gun.
Pppccchhhuuuuuuuuu!
Pppccchhhuuuuuuuuu!
Pppccchhhuuuuuuuuu!
I hear three gun shots in my head.
‘Well, I don’t think Corina has any respect for me or our family if she persuades you to ring me to ask can you stay out all night drinking with her, just cause she has to go home to her empty shithole on South Circular Road.’
‘Oh, go away … please!’ I plead.
He steps back now, holding the door slightly open still.
‘Actually, on your way to the AA pop into the Well Woman Centre and ask them to give you a once-over too, give you a lady MOT if you will.’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ I stare at Ross and Rachel as they look lovingly into one another’s eyes.
‘Check if your parts are still working. You’re always too tired for sex, aren’t you, Ali?’ His voice is raised now and I am alertly conscious that Jade is still awake.
I throw off the blanket, jump off the couch and ask him quietly to step back in and close the door. Please let us not subject her to another argument.
‘I’ll come up now, Colin …’
He moves away. ‘You’re grand, I’m not begging—’
‘But I want to,’ I interrupt. But I don’t, but I do.
I turn back to the couch and grab the controls, point them at the TV and press. The room falls dark. I reach for my iPhone in my back pocket and use it to light up the room. I just want this family to be all right again.
‘Let’s go,’ I whisper.
He doesn’t refuse me a second time.
I brush my teeth slowly as he takes the iPad off Jade and closes her bedroom door. As I rinse and spit I hear him whisper to her from the landing, ‘Love you, Jadey.’ It’s been quite a while since he whispered anything like that to me and actually meant it. I only ever seem to hear those words when he’s trying to get something out of me. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time Colin had a kind word to say to me. Trying to calm the anger I feel towards him, I embrace the cold night as I strip naked in my bathroom and then slowly walk into the bedroom closing the door behind me. He is sitting up with his bedside lamp on, the room only illuminated on his side. He’s looking down at his MacBook and he doesn’t look up. I climb in beside him. I feel like we are worlds apart.
‘Ya OK?’ he asks me.
‘Yeah, fine,’ I answer him as I wiggle down beside him. The bed is toasty warm. He is naked.
‘Wanna take a look at this?’ His breath is heavy as he turns the MacBook to face me.
He is watching porn. All I see is a poor young woman being violated by two men by way of making her living. I try and watch but all I feel is sorrow for this poor young woman. How old could she be? Nineteen, twenty at most? Eight years older than our daughter. Turned on, I am not.
‘Ya like that, Ali?’ he whispers as he leans over and kisses me. Hard. Forceful. Sloppy. He grabs my breasts and drops his head. I feel like he is having sex with the young woman in the video. I want to roar. My whole body feels like it’s being subjugated by him.
‘Ohh, Ali,’ he moves up now and moans into my ear. I feel like he is invading me. I try to get on with it, hurry it up.
‘Woah!’ He pulls his head up.
‘Whatever happened to foreplay?’ he half laughs taking my face in his hands. ‘Maybe I was wrong and maybe you have wanted it as much as me these last few weeks … could be months now even … What are we like? You are so sexy … I love you, Ali …’
See? See how he only says these words at times like this, which are very rare these days. He ducks down under the covers. I know where he is heading and right now I simply can’t cope with it. I zip my legs up tight. It’s involuntary, I can’t help it.
‘What’s wrong now?’ He pops his head back up.
‘Sorry,’ is all I can manage.
‘Sorry?’ He pauses.
‘I can’t do this, Colin,’ I whimper and then he flips. It’s not even the porn. How can I be intimate with someone I am fighting with? I physically can’t. I cannot dig that deep.
‘Fffffuck this! Fffffuck this shit!’ he thunders.
‘Shush, please, Colin,’ I beg. ‘Jade will hear you.’
‘I don’t give a flying fuck who hears me! It’s my house! I can’t live like this any more! I have needs. You are a complete, frigid bit—’ He stops himself.
I don’t answer.
‘You are a fucking useless wife, Ali, you know that!’
He flings the goose-feathered duvet back and jumps out of the bed and grabs the MacBook and takes it into the en suite bathroom.
I know he is relieving himself and I am glad.
I turn over and shut my eyes. I know it’s all wrong of me. I feel so bad, I really do, but I just can’t help it. Why am I feeling like this? What is wrong with me? Why can’t I just do it? I know it will all be better if I just do it. How hard can that be? But he makes me unable to physically want him by irritating me so much. I feel physical emotion with my brain not my vagina. Plus, I admit, I just don’t think that Colin should want dirty sex from me any more. I’m the mother of his two children. How does he get off on desperate young women? Can’t he see the fact that in the other room lays a girl not all that much younger? Would it be better if he had showed me a middle-aged woman? I don’t know. I don’t know when I started to feel like this, but I wish to God I didn’t. How can I fix it? Maybe Corina is right, maybe I should look into counselling. It’s only sex, it really shouldn’t be this difficult.
Owen.
Owen O’Neill.
Would I feel like this in bed with Owen? No. I wouldn’t. I know I wouldn’t. And that’s all sorts of wrong. Nothing works with Colin and me any more. It’s broken. I lie still and wait for him to come out of the bathroom. The toilet flushes. Colin’s back. He slips under the covers. I remain motionless.
‘I don’t know why you don’t want to make love to me any more, Ali, but it really hurts.’ He curls up into the foetal position.
I cry quietly.