I have to hug him. I need it as much as he does, so I stand up and gesture to him to the do the same before pulling him into a ‘giant squish’, as we used to call it when he was little. ‘I’m proud of you, Adam,’ I tell him. ‘We’ll all get through this together and take it one day at a time. We’ll work it all out.’
I’m aware that Niamh has stood up too and is hugging Jodie and it’s one of the loveliest, but also most surreal and most terrifying, moments of my life.
8
SORRY, MRS MARTIN
‘I shouldn’t have brought the car,’ Niamh says as I hand her a cup of tea. ‘I could do with a glass of wine – a large one – about now. Or maybe some vodka. Turps even, might be good. Do you have any in the shed?’
‘It’s a lot, isn’t it?’ I say, staring into my own cup of milky tea and wondering if there is any turpentine in the shed. Adam and Jodie have disappeared up to Adam’s room because they wanted to talk through their plans more. In private. Leaving Niamh and me to look at each like two war-weary baby veterans reliving the tough early years of parenting and trying to imagine Adam and Jodie taking on those roles.
It’s a good thing my house is currently alcohol – and turps – free. If I started drinking I might not know when to stop.
‘It’s a school night,’ I remind Niamh. ‘You’ll feel better for not going on a bender when the little darlings are trying to get you to make a TikTok with them in the morning.’
‘The fact that it’s a school night and that the little darlings will be trying to get me to make a TikTok is part of the reason I want a large glass of wine,’ she says, pulling a face and eyeing her tea as if its lack of alcoholic content has personally offended her.
‘It must be bad. It’s only the first full week of term!’
She shakes her head slowly. ‘Feels like the Christmas break didn’t happen at all. Probably because of thissituation.’
Thesituationis how we have taken to talking about the pregnancy over the course of this last week. Niamh had to be very careful of how she spoke in case her boys, Ethan and Cal, got wind of it or, worse still, Fiadh found out before decisions were made. It had been easier for me to fall in line with that, but I suppose now we can think about using the actual words. At least, once we’ve told those who need to know. I already feel a bit sick at the thought of how Simon – not known for his tact and diplomacy – will react. I know Niamh will be having similar worries about Paul.
‘I know the kids can wind me up, but today I swear my patience was through the floor with them. I’m not a grumpy teacher – most of the time – but I swear I nearly summoned my inner Mrs Martin on Year 11 today.’
I grimace. Mrs Martin was our science teacher from first through until third year. The kind-hearted might refer to her as a ‘real character’, but to those of us who actually endured hours in her lab, she was a full-blown demon. The queen of the passive-aggressive putdown, she seemed to get a sense of pleasure out of reducing schoolgirls to tears or ordering us out of her classroom – where we would wait in fear of the vice principal walking by and starting an interrogation.
She was prone to hysterical shouting fits, and God love anyone sitting at the front of the lab because they would be sprayed with her spit as she roared.
I have never in my life been as scared of a teacher as I was of Mrs Martin, so to hear that Niamh – my lovely, funny, witty Niamh – felt as if she was coasting dangerously close to that level of full crazy was worrying.
‘Shit,’ I say, reaching for a chocolate biscuit.
‘Shit indeed.’ Niamh lifts a chocolate biscuit and examines it before putting it back down again. ‘Maybe I need to go to some extra yoga classes or something. So I’ve somewhere to channel this big, fat feeling of… fuck… I don’t even know what it is. Rage? Anxiety? Fear? Hunger?’ She lifts the biscuit again and eats it in one bite.
I’m not going to lie, she’s scaring me a bit now too. What if she goes all Mrs Martin on me? MyPTSDin that regard might be well buried but I’m not sure it would stay so if Niamh started spit-shouting at me in my own living room.
‘Becs, will you hate me if I tell you I don’t know how I feel about all of this?’ She gestures around the room, looking up to the ceiling – a nod to where Jodie and Adam are currently in their blissful baby bubble.
‘Of course I won’t hate you. I could never hate you. And as I’ve said, it’s a lot. There’s so much to consider. They’re both great kids, with sensible heads on them, but…’
‘Kids,’ Niamh says. ‘They’re kids. I know that technically they’re adults but nineteen and twenty these days is nothing like it was in our day and even then I would have had a conniption at the thought of having a baby. They can’t have thought about it properly.’
‘No,’ I say, shaking my head.
‘And I’m not saying that I want Jodie to have an abortion… I mean if that was her choice… but…’
‘I get it,’ I tell her. ‘It’s scary. It’s a lot of responsibility on their shoulders. And Adam giving up his place at university? He loves that course. And Saul relies on him so much. God only knows how Simon will react. As I said, it’s a lot.’
Niamh, quiet for a moment, takes a sip from her tea before putting the mug back on the coffee table and rubbing her temples.
‘Jodie has her final year at uni to complete, and was hoping to go on and do herPGCE,’ Niamh says. ‘I suppose that will go on hold. She’ll not want to be committing to that level of study when the baby will be so young. I was going to get her a placement in the school. And Paul? He won’t be able to hide his disappointment. You know what he’s like – his voice mightn’t say it, but his face will. Him and Jodie have always been so close… he’s wanted everything for her. Was so proud she was following in my footsteps into teaching. But now this? All because of a boy!’
I bristle. Not because I don’t agree with her, but because the ‘boy’ happens to my boy. Who will be making sacrifices in his life plans too. When I think of the scary teacher version of Niamh, who shouted at Jodie to get on with it not half an hour ago, I decide to keep my feelings on this to myself. Emotions are running high. It won’t do me, or any of us, any good to lose the head right now.
‘And Becs… grannies! You know that big wobble we had last year about ageing – when we found those letters we wrote when we were sixteen? I think that was just the precursor to this even bigger wobble. Is this it? Is my life going to be Year 11, and all future Year 11s, making me more and more ratty until I retire on the grounds of insanity in ten years’ time? I mean… what age was Mrs Martin when she taught us?’
‘God knows,’ I say. ‘Every teacher seemed to look the same kind of old-lady old to me back then.’
