I’m sitting with my feet up on the sofa, sipping wine, when I hear the key turn in the door. I wasn’t expecting Tom for at least another hour, if not more. My heart jumps. What am I going to say? I’ve spent hours going round and round in my head, rehearsing the words ‘Do you have another child, Tom?’ ‘Is there something you would like to share with me, Tom?’ But the words have suddenly disappeared, the sound of Tom’s footsteps scaring them away.
He enters the room. ‘You still up?’
I’m usually already asleep in bed at this time on a Saturday night. A full day of bleaching and braiding sends me into a coma once Amber is safely in her bed. But tonight my mind is restless.
Tom is hanging his coat over the back of a dining-room chair when it strikes me. This man – standing looking at the TV, stretching his back while scratching his neck – there is no way he could be hiding such a big secret from me. Tom loves me, I know that. Even if he had got someone pregnant before he met me, he would have told me. Wouldn’t he?
I was twenty-one when I first saw Tom’s smile. Myself and my friend Emer were walking down Jones Road in the shadow of Croke Park when a gang of lads approached us. Tom was one of them, holding a flag on his way to the match, his tall fit body hidden beneath a Dublin jersey. Emer had made me go to the match, said the craic would be brilliant. She had got the coveted tickets from her boyfriend. Tom was one of his mates. The long-awaited win had injected everyone with the energy to celebrate until four in the morning and that’s when he kissed me. When our destiny was sealed. After a few months dating, Amber’s conception accelerated our plans. I never doubted that I wanted to marry Tom. I loved him from the start, his gentleness, his kindness, his way of making me feel like I was the only girl in the world. The idea of spending my life with him was a dream come true. So getting married earlier than we planned didn’t matter to me, or to him. We were both happy about it. My father wasn’t so thrilled but he put his hand in his wallet, which unlike his heart was always full, and made the day happen.
Tom’s phone beeps. He takes it from the pocket in his jeans and glances at the screen before putting it down on the table. If he leaves the room now, I could have a quick look in the contacts, see if there’s a Kenny.
‘I think I heard one of the boys stirring, Tom, will you check?’
‘I didn’t hear anything.’
‘All right,’ I sigh, lifting my feet to the floor. ‘I’ll go.’
‘No, I’ll do it.’
With Tom out of the room, I jump up from the sofa and grab his phone. The screen lights up the moment I swipe it. No lock. He’s certainly not trying to hide anything here, which is good. Still, my eyes troll through the contacts list while my ears listen out carefully for his familiar thud on the stairs.
Amber, Alan, Brian, Colm… on and on until I reach K.
Kilkenny Golf Club, Karina Ryan, Kohl Tyres. Kenny’s… My stomach rises, retreating when I see the name beside it. Golf Shop. Kenny’s Golf Shop, where Tom gets all the tools he blames when he’s had a bad day on the course.
A door above my head closes. Tom’s footsteps on the stairs. I place the phone on the table and move back to the sofa.
Go out, light, please go out.
The screen is still lit up, taking forever to go dark. But it does. Just as Tom walks in through the door.
‘They’re both out cold up there,’ he says, opening the drinks cabinet and taking out a bottle of Baileys.
‘Do you want one?’ He holds the bottle up in the air to tempt me.
‘No, thanks.’
‘The lads had to head off early so I only had the three pints.’ He says this like there’s a quota he’s supposed to hit. ‘They’re all up at the crack of dawn for the captain’s day tomorrow.’
Oh, here we go. Tom was raging when I arranged the twins’ birthday party on the same day as some big golf tournament he wanted to play in. I explained to him there was nothing I could do about that. The twins’ birthday is the same day every year. It always will be and this was the closest Sunday to the day. He suggested that I could have had it on the Saturday but I reminded him that I have to work on Saturdays, and that we both knew whose fault that is. That shut him up.
With his Baileys in hand he moves to the far end of the sofa. Usually I stretch my feet over his legs but this time I pull them away from his touch. I don’t know why but the picture jumps to the front of my head. The pink shirt. The day we bought it sticks in my head because Aaron got sick on the floor of the shop after eating a whole packet of jellies, while Tom was at the till. I was in a panic trying to clean it up with a crumbling tissue I found in my pocket, when the woman came out from behind the counter in a panic waving her hands for everyone to step away. Tom looked at me, both of us trying not to laugh at the woman’s reaction to a bit of baby puke.
The wine in my blood stream is making me braver and weaker at the same time. Will I say something? Or should I wait and look for some real evidence. Something to suggest that it was Tom in that photo before I go jumping down his neck.
‘Do you have another child, Tom?’ The words slip out of my mouth before I have time to stop them. The wine must be conducting my brain. Tom is in the middle of laughing at something Graham Norton is proclaiming when he turns to look at me.
‘What?’
‘I’m asking you if you have another child, Tom?’ My heart thumps like a bass drum threatening to drown out his answer. He laughs. Just a short chuckle before turning his attention back to the TV. What do I do now? He thinks I’m joking.
‘I’m not joking, Tom, do you have another child? A teenage boy.’ Taking the remote in his hand he lowers the volume on the TV and twists around in the sofa to face me.
‘You’re for real, are you? You’re actually asking me if I have another child?’
‘Ehh… yes?’
The look on his face describes exactly what he’s thinking. That I’m crazy. ‘What makes you ask that, Sally?’
‘I saw a photo today of a teenage boy and I thought I saw you in the picture with him. The girl with the photo said the man was the boy’s father.’
‘What?’ He moves forward to the edge of the seat and places the hand that isn’t holding the Baileys on my foot. I pull my foot away. ‘What are you talking about, Sally?’
‘Today in the hairdresser’s, a young girl showed me a photo of her boyfriend with his father. It looked like you in the picture.’
‘Why are you saying this? That’s not possible.’
‘I’m telling you what I saw.’
‘It must be some guy who looks like me, Sally. It certainly isn’t me.’
‘So you’re telling me you don’t have another child.’
‘For fuck sake, Sally, how much of that wine did you drink? This is crazy talk.’
He heads back to the drinks cabinet to fill up his glass. And for some reason, I feel like he’s an intruder in the room. Someone who doesn’t belong here.
‘You really need to stop drinking so much wine, Sal. It’s beginning to play games with your mind.’
He returns to the sofa, raises the volume on the TV and tunes back in to the entertainment. I’m sitting here feeling like a fool. It has to have been someone else in the photo. Someone who looked like Tom. Someone with the same expression, the same pink shirt. I’ve been so tired lately. Working full time, caring for the twins and worrying about Amber and how distant she seems. Maybe my imagination is playing tricks with me. And with the party tomorrow…
Oh no… Shit. I forgot to pick up the birthday cake on the way home from work. I don’t fucking believe it.
Grabbing my cell, I quickly Google Thunder’s Bakery.
The boys are expecting Thomas the Tank Engine to be stationed in the middle of their party table tomorrow. They’ve been talking about it all week. Well, actually I have, trying to rouse them, get them all excited.
I flick through the screen. Please be open Sunday… pleeeease.
Opening hours. Mon – Sat 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Sunday.
Fuck. I can’t believe it. The cake. What will I do? The most important day for Cian and Aaron and I’m off somewhere in my head playing the victim. Worried about a stupid photograph that some stranger shows me of what might or might not have happened in the past and all the time neglecting the present. The boys, the party, the family I love.