Savannah nodded. ‘Am I pitiful?’ she asked. ‘Thirty-seven, my own business and I couldn’t get my own dog.’
‘No, you’re not pitiful at all. My sister, whom I can introduce you to, was in a very similar relationship for many years. She can give you all the details, I’ll put you in touch with her. She’s a clever, wise woman and she got caught that way too. These men are good at pulling you into their world and then you’re stuck. Why do you have to stay in that house?’ Joyce asked suddenly.
‘I mean, it’s the family home and—’
‘Do you own the business?’
‘Yes.’
‘And does he have his own business?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, then, that house can be split between the two of you. Find somewhere else to live, rent somewhere where he’s never been, where he can never come, where you can be safe. And get a dog or two.’
Savannah laughed. Clary would love that. It seemed so easy when Joyce said it: get a house, move out. ‘All you need is to find a house, rent it, get movers to move your stuff, and you’re gone.’
‘That’s just what I’ll do,’ said Savannah.
‘Honesty,’ said Eden, looking out over the assembled party in front of her, ‘is what we’re supposed to be about.’
One hundred and fifty faces looked up at her. Faces of all ages, but certainly there were more older male faces than female ones. She repeated the sentence.
‘Honesty is what we’re supposed to be about. But we can’t really be honest,’ she said. ‘We can have honesty in what we hope for, say we hope for climate change or we hope for the health care system to work properly or for homeless people to be housed. But there are so many parts of our lives where we, women, can’t be absolutely honest. Where we have to weigh our words carefully.’
The audience were with her at this point. Behind her, stood Agnes and she knew Agnes was with her. Ralphie was there too and Diarmuid. She could feel his tall stately presence behind her. And she knew that he was supporting her. But she also knew that if the party turned against her, really turned against her, Diarmuid’s support would fizzle away like a spent match. Except that Agnes’s support would not wither away. Agnes was with her. And for many of the party faithful, Agnes was the strong member of the Tallisker family. Agnes was the one who’d run surgeries and stepped in and found homes for people, defused difficult scenes, handled both the minutiae and the generalities of political life. Been there through years of party politics, international politics, moments of distress and trauma. Agnes had always been there by Diarmuid’s side, sometimes showing him the right way to do things when it came to comforting people who’d been involved in tragedy. There’d been enough tragedy over the years. Agnes was the one people looked to, to see which way to sway. Tonight Agnes was on Eden’s side.
‘I know many of you think that I’m a shoe-in for the nomination for Fergal Maguire’s seat, that my family-in-law will have tied up the seat for me.’
Eden did not know how she hadn’t said Feral Maguire.
It was very hard to get his name right. She had to stop referring to him as Feral in private. Feral was there in person, teeth glittering. He really had huge canines, she thought, trying not to look at him. Word was that he’d head butted a constituent once and it had been nicely covered up.
There was definitely something of the night about Fergal.
‘It would be an honour to serve—’ Eden paused. She’d had trouble writing this bit. She couldn’t possibly say, in Fergal’s place, because really! An honour to serve in place of Fergal, the head butter. So she’d amended the speech. ‘An honour to serve all of you in the Dáil. And because of my relationship with Diarmuid and the whole Tallisker family, I’m sure many of you feel that I’ve come up through the ranks very quickly. But my work in politics in Trinity showed my commitment to public representation from the very start. And when I began in politics, honesty was what I was looking for. But even then, I had secrets and I kept them close to me, because I was terrified that they would derail my political career. Even though those same secrets were the thing that had pushed me into politics.’
She definitely had everyone’s attention now. She could see the cogs of their minds moving. What was she going to say next? Secrets? Something juicy, she could see them hoping.
‘So tonight I’m here to give you the reasonably unadulterated story of me. Because I’m not going to stand on the ticket for the party without honesty. I can be diplomatic, hardworking, and I can work with anyone, but I’m here tonight putting out my core values, explaining who I am to you, so that when you choose who goes forward, you will choose knowing all the facts. Knowing who I am, knowing what I stand for. And you can decide if that’s what you want for this party.’
‘You’re doing brilliantly,’ whispered a voice behind her: Ralphie.
She took a deep breath.
‘I’ve campaigned for women’s rights for years but I never told you my own story because I was afraid – afraid that my story would mean I got drummed out of politics. I’d be no use and, worse, I’d be humiliated for being human, for being a scared seventeen -year-old. I was afraid of the Twitter trolls, the Facebook venom, the letters … I kept silent and that did nobody any good—’ She paused, looked over the audience. ‘When I was seventeen I got pregnant. It was the year of my final school exams and my boyfriend wasn’t able for it and neither was I. I was too young to become a mother. So I did what thousands of Irish women had done before me. I got the boat to London where I had an abortion.’
There was a harsh intake of breath. No matter that abortion was now legal in this country actually saying that you’d had one and being a political representative was a bit like being Bill Clinton on the impeachment stand. Low murmurings began. But Eden stood up straighter.
‘I know that’s shocking to many of you. For some of you, it goes against your religious beliefs. But it was not against my religious beliefs.’ She stared at them all. ‘I think it’s very hard to judge other people unless you’re in their shoes. For so many years women have been judged by white middle-aged males.’ She caught the eyes of many of the white middle-aged males now. ‘And they’ve judged harshly. They’ve made the decisions, decided what was acceptable for us. Some political campaigns around the world are run on where the candidate stands on abortion – people, who do not care about the rights of children once they’re out of the womb and living in poverty, claim to care deeply about them when they’re in utero. Caring for one and not the other is not being pro-life. Pro-life is caring forallchildren.’
She could see the women in the room sit up straighter. She knew she was risking her political career on this. Perhaps it would all fall apart, but then she could run as an independent. She didn’t know. All she did know was that honesty was what she wanted from now on: no more lying, no more waiting for another letter to come into her house, threatening her, blackmailing her.
‘I don’t regret my choice now and I’ve thought of it often. I still don’t have children but that’s not the reason. That decision is between me and my husband. Some things are private. But because abortion is such a political football, I’m telling you all this now. There will be no skeletons falling out of my cupboards when I’m in parliament. Nobody will find any drink driving or crazy behaviour in my life. This is me standing in front of you, honestly. You know my policies, you know I fight for climate change, I fight for women’s rights, I fight for the rights of women not to live in fear in their own homes because they’re being abused, I fight for children’s rights. I had an abortion. I’m a woman. There you have it. You can make the decision based on that.’
The clapping came from behind her first. She knew it was Agnes, Ralphie – and Diarmuid, because he had a very particular way of clapping. It was those huge hands. He could make a clapping noise that would be heard miles away. And then the women in the audience began to clap and stand up. There were more men for sure in the room, but the women were standing and some of the men, the younger men. And wow, Feral – Feral was standing. Eden wondered if he’d had a daughter who’d taken the boat. Many of the old white men here would have had daughters and granddaughters who’d had abortions and maybe they’d known and maybe they hadn’t. But suddenly here was somebody putting it up to them, sayingthis is life, this is reality: choose. The clapping was deafening now. Perhaps, thought Eden, perhaps they would choose her.
The sisters thought that the Sorrento Hotel would be the perfect place for the new photo as a fivesome instead of a foursome. It would probably be the last time they would ever be there, Indy said, looking at it mournfully. More than a year had passed since the wedding. The acers were beginning to glow gold in the garden in the October sun and the place looked so beautiful.
