‘Oh April,’ I say, taking both her hands in mine. ‘So what exactly are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to concentrate on work,’ she says, ‘I’m going to stop goingpart-time, if I can, and I’m going to get some hobbies. I’m going to stop waiting. I’m going to get some rescue puppies. This year is going to be different.’ She looks defiant.
Ma never allowed us to have dogs in the house. ‘Dirty smelly things,’ she called dogs.
‘Good for you,’ I say.
‘And if a man invites me out in that six months, I’ll tell him no. And if at the end of it he’s still there, well, we might give it a try. But I will be looking for upfront disclosure. If he’s married orabout to be divorced, and that happens more often than you think, then no. Or isliving separate liveswith his wife, that’s another bigno-no. If only you knew all the stories they tell...’
I don’t want a story from Nate. I’m going to find out myself what’s really going on: no excuses from him, the actual truth. And if he has been cheating, then he’ll be sorry.
29
Bea
Mum’s been very busy finding me dates. New Year, new love life, apparently.
‘It’s my new mission,’ she says cheerfully, as she lists her friends’ relatives, who generally sound as if they should be attending some sort of group therapy after tricky divorces/relationshipbreak-ups.
I have had coffee with some of them and I think that if work goes belly up, I could always retrain as a counsellor with a view to working with the recently divorced.
There’s Jim, who married a Brazilian lady, who ended ourtwo-hour coffee session in a local Starbucks by saying he was very dull, which was why the love of his life had left.
He told me all about her during our ‘date’. Two hours is a long time for a blind date but I felt so sorry for poor Jim and it ended up with me almost counselling him about how he might get help so he could recover some of his lost confidence.
There’s Leon, who has three daughters, has been though an epic divorce battle and cheerfully told me he’d never have a bean again.
‘Cleaned me out,’ he said. ‘Still, I want the girls to have a good life. The flat’s fine, although they have to share the second bedroom when they come to stay. Mea culpa,’ he added. ‘I had the fling, it was my fault.’
I said I didn’t know this and Leon looked a tad annoyed. ‘I was sure Aunt Josie would have said that, just to warn you. She says you went through a hard time, what with your husband being killed and all that.’
‘Yeah, hard time,’ I agreed. Leon is too much of a player for me to want to say any more.
Mum is sorry that Leon and Jim weren’t keepers but she’s still hoping and it keeps her amused. Plus, it’s keeping my mind off the absence of news at work about our impending doom. Dr Ryan discussed it but now isn’t going anywhere after all, says Laoise, who has taken it upon herself to be the bringer of news on the office front. ‘I think the move is off.’
Myself and Antoinette, with whom I job share, discuss that we now get anxious whenever Laoise approaches either of us on our shifts in case she has newly gleaned bad news about the doctors’ plans to downsize.
‘I need this job,’ says Antoinette.
‘Join the club,’ I agree.
So I’m kept busy until, suddenly, the day the Family Tree project hits Luke and I, and it blows our lives out of the water.
To families with two parents living with their child, it must be easy, I think.
But not for us.
Worse, I didn’t think it would hurt us and I had advance warning.
‘That family tree bullshit – it’s coming up,’ Shazz says to me one week. We both knew it was coming, had been waiting since before Christmas.
‘Lori reminded me,’ Shazz went on. ‘It’s part of the New Year curriculum, always is in fourth class.’
Shazz has a friend with an older girl in the boys’ school and she’s like us, a single mother. She’s very helpful for filling us in on issues in senior classes, so we’re ready for them when they occur.
‘Kids want both parents,’ Shazz said to me one night while we’re discussing the issue of being single parents. ‘Why? Why aren’t we enough? We give them everything.’
I swirl the wine around in my glass.
