Once in a Lifetime (33 page)

until I started writing down how I felt in a journal. It really helped. Keeping it in your head makes it worse. I did something and you need to do something. You have to find out as much as you can about her. She’s your mum, you’re entitled to know. It’s unfinished business otherwise.’

‘I’ve got a picture of her with me,’ Natalie said.

She ran to her locker in the kitchen, found the photo of her mother she’d popped into her bag that morning and came back.

‘She looks so like you,’ Charlie said, staring at the beautiful woman with the long dark hair and wide smile, holding her precious baby close to her heart. ‘Maybe your dad doesn’t talk because it’s too painful rather than because of anything he wants to hide.’

‘If you were my stepmum, would you be upset if I wanted to know about my real mum?’

Charlie shook her head. ‘Of course not. You said Bess is a wonderful person and she loves you. She and your dad have probably been waiting for you to ask. It’s like people who adopt children: they know that one day the child will want to know about their birth parents. Just ask them.’

Natalie nodded tremulously. ‘I will,’ she said. ‘Soon. What about you and your mum?’

‘Don’t think there’s anything I can do,’ Charlie said wryly.

‘“Detach with love” is what Shotsy says to me.’

‘Is it that you fight a lot?’

‘Not really. More that she disapproves of me. I didn’t become what she wanted, although my older sister did.’

‘What did she want you to be?’

‘Somebody important.’

‘Must be difficult.’

Charlie sighed. ‘Yes, it is. Maybe one day I’ll find out what makes my mother tick, and then I’ll work it all out. Wouldn’t that be good?’

The rest of that day, Natalie thought how simple Charlie had made it sound: Just ask. She would, tonight, she decided.

As it turned out, it was the perfect night to discuss things with her father. When Natalie phoned during the afternoon, Bess said the boys would be out and she had to visit a client for a fitting for a wedding dress.

‘I hate missing you,’ said Bess. ‘Tell you what, I’ll ask if I can see the girl earlier and then ‘

‘No,’ said Natalie quickly, hating herself for not being truthful with dear, kind Bess. She felt that her father would find it hard to talk about her mother with Bess present. ‘I was only dropping in for coffee on my way home from work.

Just a five-minute thing. Don’t rearrange your fitting.’

When she walked into the kitchen her father looked up from eating shepherd’s pie. Natalie thought how brilliant a wife Bess was: even when she was going to be out late, she fixed dinner so her husband could sit down after a hard day’s work and eat the sort of food that he liked, with the paper on one side of him and the dogs clustered around at his feet.

Natalie wondered if she’d ever have this sort of relationship with Rory. Would they settle down to the point that she’d cook in advance for him, so that, when she was out, he could eat something she’d prepared? It was strange to think about that. But she found herself imagining living with him, waking up beside him, sitting on the couch with him at night, taking calls for him when he was out with a sick animal…

‘Natalie!’ said her father, surprised. ‘I didn’t know you were coming. Bess never said anything.’

‘Just thought I’d drop in,’ she said. Now that she was here, she didn’t know how to start this. Anything she said would sound like a criticism of her father and Bess, which wasn’t what she wanted.

‘Sit down - have you eaten? This is delicious,’ he said, waving his fork towards the shepherd’s pie. ‘I’ll have to cut

back, though,’ he added. ‘My cholesterol was up last time I went to the doctor.

‘Was it?’ Natalie asked, slightly alarmed, thinking of David Kenny.

‘Ah no, only a little bit,’ her father said. ‘Nothing to worry about, love. Sit down, have some.’

‘No, I’m not hungry,’ Natalie said. She busied herself making a cup of tea she didn’t really want and then finally sat down opposite him.

‘How’s Rory?’ he asked, then grinned. ‘Bess reckons it’s serious. Is he it - the One? I have to say, I’m fond of him myself. He’s a decent lad.’

Natalie smiled, thinking of other conversations about boyfriends over the years. He’d never been the interfering sort of father, the sort who’d stand over visiting lads with a grim face and a threatening look in his eyes.

‘Rory’s great,’ Natalie said.

‘But you’re here to talk to me about something?’ her father said, still eating. He knew her so well.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘What’s wrong, Natalie?’ he asked. ‘There’s something wrong, I can tell.’

‘No, there’s nothing wrong,’ she said quickly. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Well, what is it?’

Now that the moment was here, Natalie toyed with the idea of fibbing about being broke (though that was true), or something else; anything to put off the conversation. But no, she’d waited too long.

‘It’s about my mother,’ she blurted out. ‘I just need to know a little about her -‘ She broke off when she saw how stricken her father looked. It was there, in his eyes: an expression that wasn’t fear, but something else. Sadness?

‘I’m sorry, Dad. I don’t mean to hurt you or Bess, but…’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s my fault.’ He put his knife and fork together and pushed the plate away.

‘Don’t stop eating,’ Natalie said.

‘I’ve had enough,’ he murmured. ‘I’m really sorry, Natalie, I should have spoken to you before, but there was never a right time.’

‘That’s it exactly,’ Natalie said, grasping the opportunity.

‘There’s never been a right time, Dad. I’ve wondered so often over the years what she was like. I don’t really know anything and I’ve so few pictures and you don’t talk about her and …’

‘And you felt it would be disloyal to Bess and me to ask,’

he finished for her.

‘Exactly, but I need to know. I need to know why we never talk about her. Was it so awful, her dying? Or did you just want to put it all behind you and start again? I need to understand, Dad.’

Now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop.

‘Molly’s father dying has made me think about my mother.

The day at David’s funeral, when I fainted, I think -‘ She broke off; it sounded crazy to say it out loud. ‘I think I was remembering my mother’s funeral.’ She barely dared look at her father, thinking how painful this must be for him.

‘My darling Natalie, I’m so sorry,’ he said, and reached across the table to take her hands. ‘It was never meant to be like this.’

‘But you understand, don’t you, Dad? And Bess will understand?

It’s not that I don’t love the two of you, I just need to know about my real mum.’

It felt weird to even be saying mum.

She’d always thought of her mother as her real mother, but not Mum. That was what you called someone you saw every day, hugged and kissed.

‘I knew that Molly’s father’s death had affected you,’ her father said quietly. ‘It’s the same graveyard, you see. When you told me you’d fainted, I wondered if you’d remembered something.’

‘The same graveyard?’ Natalie was stunned.

‘I can show you. I can take you to see the grave.’

Natalie’s hand flew to her mouth. She hadn’t been going crazy - those had been real memories of her mother’s burial.

‘I was there when she was buried?’

He nodded. ‘Natalie, it wasn’t my idea not to tell you all this,’ her father was saying.

‘Was it Bess?’ she asked cautiously. It would be so unlike her stepmother to want to wipe out Natalie’s mother from everyone’s memory and yet, it could have been. Maybe Bess had found it too hard to live with the memory of her predecessor.

‘No,

it wasn’t Bess. She thought it was the dumbest idea she’d ever heard. She was against it when she found out. It wasn’t right, she said, to keep your mother a mystery from you. No, it wasn’t Bess; it was what your mother wanted, Natalie.’

‘My mother?’

‘Your mother,’ he said. ‘She was an amazing woman. God, I loved her. Her dying was just about the worst thing that ever happened to me, but she didn’t want you to be …’ He was clearly trying to find the right words. ‘Sorry, love, if you knew how often I’ve had this conversation with you in my mind. I had it word-perfect when you were little, but it’s one thing telling a small child this stuff, it’s another entirely telling a grownup. Your mother had a hard life and she worked very hard trying to escape that. She wanted you to escape it too. That was the plan, she didn’t want the past to destroy you.’

Natalie looked at her father in bewilderment. ‘She didn’t want the past to destroy me?’ she repeated. ‘What past?’

‘I’ll try and explain, love.’

Twelve

The Past

Dara

Dara Murphy loved watching television. Her favourite shows were The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie programmes about families where, no matter what disaster occurred, they were there for each other at the end of the day.

Her friend, Ruth, had read the Little House on the Prairie books and she said they were a lot different from the television series.

‘More stuff happens in the books and it’s about setting up home in tough places, sometimes with no school or not a lot of food. There’s no Nellie Olesen in the books, well, not that I saw.’

Dara didn’t read much; had never found reading easy. She occasionally took books from the library, but books didn’t fare well in her house. They went missing or had food spilt on them.

Her father hated books: ‘Bloody priests,’ he used to say every time he saw one.

In his mind, the written word was linked with education, which was linked to the Christian Brothers who’d taught him in school. These educationalists were infamous for their love of corporal punishment, and there were many former pupils who had no time the Christian Brothers and their messianic fondness for the leather. Dara’s father, as usual, took this dislike to the nth degree. If they were on the bus and passed by his old school, he’d spit out the window. Greg, Dara’s brother, used to laugh. ‘It’s not funny,’ Dara said.

‘You might as well laugh,’ said Greg.

He was better at laughing than Dara was.

‘I’d like to live in a world like Little House on the Prairie,’ Dara said to Ruth. ‘Imagine a place where everyone cares about everyone else. On the TV show, if somebody’s being horrible, everyone in the whole town knows by the end of the episode.’

‘It’s only television,’ Ruth said. ‘Real life isn’t like that.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Dara, ‘I was just saying.’

The two friends talked about most things but there were some topics that were untouchable. Like what happened to make a boy’s mickey get inside you if it was all floppy normally, or why Eric, who lived beside Ruth, did drugs when he was so clever and could have gone to college and everything. Dara’s dad was another topic in this forbidden area.

Sometimes, Dara talked about what would have happened if her mother hadn’t been killed in a car crash when Dara was six. This was fantasyland, where Dara, her mum and Greg lived in a big house with lots of dogs - Dara loved dogs - and had a big telly and heating that worked.

‘If you live in the big house, what about us?’ Ruth would demand when Dara dreamily went into fantasyland.

‘I’m only kidding,’ Dara would say. ‘Wouldn’t I go mad if I didn’t have you!’

Ruth lived across from Dara’s, in a sprawling Dublin estate where the blocks of houses were arranged around small

playing greens. The streets had beautiful names, like Snowdrop View and Daffodil Avenue, obviously thought up by someone with a supreme sense either of irony or optimism. Ruth and Dara’s houses on Snowdrop Park looked exactly the same on the outside: small, two-storey redbrick houses with a post-it-sized piece of garden at the front and a yard at the back. Ruth’s dad had racing pigeons in his yard and her mother used to give out about them all the time.

‘Those damn birds - the smell and the noise of them,’ she would mutter.

She didn’t mind them really. Complaining about the pigeons was part of the tradition of the whole sport, Ruth’s dad liked to say. If women couldn’t give out about their husbands’

hobbies, what else would they have to occupy their time? One of the pigeons was called Lulu because Ruth’s dad reckoned it sounded the way Lulu did when she screamed the first syllable of the song ‘Shout’.

‘I swear he loves those pigeons more than he loves the rest of us,’ said Ruth’s mum.

She was only kidding, though.

Ruth’s mum and dad and two older brothers filled the house with good-humoured squabbling. Ruth’s mum was a terrible cook, but nobody minded. Dara loved eating there because she felt welcome.

Inside, the houses were as different as chalk from cheese.

If houses could be colours, then Ruth’s home was a deep rose pink, full of warmth. Dara’s house was grey, a cold grey like endless rain. Her favourite room was the dining room because her father rarely went in there. He preferred the living room with its fire and the big chairs where he and his cronies could sit for hours drinking. Dara always knew when they were there: she’d come home from school and the atmosphere in the house would be so tense and threatening it scared her.

On those days, she’d sometimes run over to Ruth’s house and stay there for the afternoon. But she didn’t like to impose

herself too often. Ruth had her own life. Dara didn’t want to rely on her friends too much, it wasn’t fair.

Most grownups were no use either.

‘What happened to your homework?’ Miss Daniels would say, examining the empty copybook.

‘Dunno, Miss,’ Dara would say, looking as blank as the pages. She spent a lot of time looking blank. And nobody picked up on it. No teacher came to their house asking why she never did her homework or why she was so tired in class, or even why her lunch consisted of a packet of crisps. Teachers didn’t notice much, or if they did notice, Dara decided, they didn’t want to get involved.