‘My job gets stressful sometimes,’ he replied, looking back to his iPad.
‘Do you find life stressful?’ I asked.
I wanted so badly for him to say he did; I wanted to know that I was not the only one who found all of this so exhausting, and so gruelling, and so hard. I could not even get him to look at me.
‘No, I’m fine,’ he replied, readjusting his glasses and going back to what he was doing.
I placed the bottle back on the shelf, took my headache tablets, and left him to his alone time. When I looked at what he was doing, he had Tetris on his screen. Maybe he was close to a high score.
The contrast to my relationship with Elsie could not have been more stark, though my perspective is shifting now as to why that has been. Mum was always a lucky dip, if most of the parcels were spring-loaded. I am not sure if I have more memories of her soothing me or screaming at me, but I know which ones are easier to recall. This is something I am working on. If conditions were perfect, she could be wonderful. She could be funny and engaged and emotionally intelligent. She gave great advice and eased my anxiety; she could tell me everything would be okay and I would believe her. But only one or two things had to go wrong for the whole picture to fall apart. If I arrived home from school and heard a cupboard door slam in the kitchen, I knew to avoid the area. Only sometimes was I wise enough to follow that through. Other times, I had the urge to present myself to her, and dare her to have a problem with that. Those times, she was always able to convene openly with me about the hows and whys of life’s stresses; it was just that for her, I was the answer to most of those questions.
14
23 December
Olivia and I are the first in the kitchen again, this time so early that Maeve is still fast asleep in her crib. My sister, looking a little worse for wear, makes me a strong cup of coffee alongside her own.
‘Did you sleep okay?’ she asks, when we are both curled up in armchairs in front of the fireplace.
‘Not really,’ I reply.
‘Yeah, fair enough,’ she replies, sipping from her drink.
I remember it is the right thing to ask people questions rather than let them be the only ones doing the heavy lifting, so I ask her about how she is feeling being back here.
‘It’s fine, it’s nice. Such a busy time of year, though. Maeve is having fun, but I’d love to be back in the winter and be able to enjoy it all more quietly. I’m getting pretty tired of running into people I went to school with, or having to talk about my book with Mum’s friends,’ she replies, as though admitting to something awful.
‘I bet. Mum loves showing you off, though – she’s so proud of you.’
Olivia considers this idea, shrugging as though she neither agrees nor disagrees.
‘Luke has someone in his room with him,’ she says, her voice lowered to a whisper, a cheeky smile on her face.
‘What, like a person?’
She laughs at this.
‘Yes, a person – a woman, I assume.’
‘But he’s married,’ I state, more confused than judgemental. That will come later once I have had the space to process.
‘He and Laura have split up. Well, that’s what I assume, anyway, seeing as she isn’t here and he won’t talk about her at all.’
I am still taking this revelation in when a door opens down the hall and an unfamiliar figure starts to walk towards us.
‘Oop,’ Olivia whispers, her eyes locked in and ready for the show.
It is not until the light hits her face that I realise this person is actually a familiar one.
‘Poppy?’
I have not seen her in years, and her hair is different, cut into a long bob, but I recognise her fairly quickly, in comparison to my usual inability to place a face.
‘Nora, hi,’ Poppy says, looking appropriately mortified.
‘Hi,’ Olivia says brightly.
I cannot process fast enough.
