Chapter Nineteen
Early the next morning, I rang Michael’s phone. I hadn’t slept well and had laid in bed wondering and worrying, thinking of my past and Rosie’s present and our future, wondering what it looked like. Michael needed to know what was going on in Rosie’s life and the fact that she very well might not be sitting her Leaving Cert this year and the sooner I told him and prepared himfor disappointment the better. He was in Brussels as far as I knew.
‘Tabitha?’ He sounded half-asleep. It was eight a.m., surely, there was some kind of high-powered breakfast meeting he should be at?
‘Hi Michael,’ I said. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Pretty good,’ he said. ‘Just checking something. This thing is saying I slept for nine and half hours. No, sorry, nine and three-quarters. I could sleeplonger. Getting ready for my big presentation tomorrow. And then there’s the vote at the end of the week. I’m not so much up to my eyes but am submerged.’ He paused. ‘So why are you ringing? Is there something wrong? A fuse gone? Your mother arrested?’ He laughed at his own joke.
‘Michael, this is actually pretty serious.’
‘What? She has been arrested. Listen, I can’t pull any strings. It wouldbe against SIPL. If she is in some cell somewhere justice will have to be seen to be done.’
‘It’s Rosie,’ I said, ‘it’s about her exams.’
‘Tabitha,’ he said. ‘Anyone would think she was the only person who’d ever done an exam. It’s you, it is. Fussing. Just let her get on with it. She does so much better when you are not hovering around looking worried.’
‘Michael!’
‘Well, sometimes it hasto be said. I’m not being personal, it’s just mothers. They’re rather suffocating at times. I mean, look at mine.’
‘It’s Rosie,’ I said, keeping my voice calm. ‘Just to let you know that she’s not going to be doing her exams. Not this year anyway. I’ve been thinking and thinking and maybe she can start again next year, this time with different expectations and goals.’
There was a noise thatsounded like Michael falling off the bed. ‘What?’ He was muffled, and then clearer as he wrested back control of his phone. ‘Of course she’s going to do her exams! How can she not do them? It’s what you do. It’s what we all did.’ You could practically hear the whirring of his brain, as he tried to assimilate this new information. ‘You are born, you go to school, you learn how to read and write andthen you do your exams. It’s how it’s been done for millennia. Unless you are mentally incapacitated or the academically disinclined and, as far as I am aware, our daughter is neither.’
No one witnessed my eye-roll. Michael was on another planet entirely.
‘She hasn’t been working,’ I said. ‘She’s been far too anxious.’
‘Anxious? It’s called the Leaving Cert. It’ssupposedto make you anxious.It’s no walk in the park, you know. It’s not likeWho Wants Be A Millionaire. Nice easy questions and phone a friend!’
‘She’s been having panic attacks,’ I pressed on. ‘Remember at your mother’s party?’
‘That was nothing. The room was too hot and she was being forced to talk to Imelda Goggins. That would induce panic in any right-minded person. I’ve spent my life perfecting disinterested interestand a healthy internal world when talking to people like her. Rosie just needs a bit more practice.’
‘Michael, listen to me.’ I could feel myself getting annoyed. ‘Rosie hasn’t actually done any work.’
‘But every time I ask, you say she’s up in her bedroom. Working.’
‘I was wrong.’
‘Wrong? I leave my daughter in your care and this happens!’ He blustered. ‘I am off trying to make Europe a betterplace for our citizens. And upholding standards in public life. And supporting the dairy farmers of Ireland and you take your eye off the ball…’
‘Michael. Just stop this. Okay? It’s no one’s fault. We’ve just got to look after Rosie…’ But then I heard his voice break. A wobble? Michael never wobbled. He was Teflon.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, dropping his voice so low I had to strain my ears. ‘I’munder a great deal of pressure, that’s all,’ he whispered into the phone. ‘This couldn’t have come at a worse time for me.’
‘What do you mean? It’s not about you. I think, Michael, that it might be a good idea if you…’
‘It’s just… I’ll talk to you later. Okay?’
‘Are you going to call Rosie, tell her that it’s okay, that you understand and that you love her despite her not going to college?Well, not this year anyway.’
‘She knows that anyway. She knows that I support her whatever she does. Even if she doesn’t…’ He stopped, as if the enormity of what he was contemplating was hitting him for the first time, his voice cracking at the horror and enormity, ‘even if she doesn’t go to Trinity.’
‘It’s disappointing, I know,’ I said.
‘I won’t be able to go back to sleep now,’ he said.‘I may as well get up…’
