Niamh gives a small laugh. ‘I think I’d pay good money to see that.’
9
WE’RE GONNA NEED A LONGER YOGA CLASS
Niamh
Niamh feels a little calmer when she leaves Becca to make her way home. Her best friend is right, things do have a way of working themselves out. It might take a while, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Hadn’t she given up on ever reconnecting with Laura – the third member of their friendship triumvirate – only to be brought back together towards the end of last year?
Driving home, she thinks of Laura now, and the challenges she has faced over the last while. She watched her mother battle with cancer before the cruel disease finally took the inspirational Kitty O’Hagan much too young. Laura has been remarkably stoic in front of others, but Becca and Niamh know just how hard it has been for her. They’ve seen her when she has let her guard down and fallen apart – her pain just too overwhelming. Of course, thinking of Laura leads to a tsunami of guilt washing over Niamh. Here she is getting her comfortable Marks and Spencer knickers in a twist over the menopause and the prospect of a grandchild while Laura is living under the weight of grief.
She can almost hear her mother’s voice in her ear – ‘Sure, there’s folk a million times worse off than you. You need to haul yourself out of it, love.’ It was one of her mother’s most frequent refrains.
While she knows her mother doesn’t mean to make her feel worse when she doles out that particular nugget of maternal love and care, that is in fact the outcome of this gentle ‘encouragement’ all the same. And it’s something so ingrained in Niamh these days that she doesn’t even need her mother to say it any more. It’s ever present in her own mind. It’s why she so rarely allows herself to slip into a maudlin mood or ruminate on her worries – instead always feeling compelled to pull herself together and ‘count her blessings’ instead.
There may be some sense in it, but God damn it those feelings have to come out sometime. Deep down she’s starting to worry that all the messy feelings she has pushed down over the years have just been biding their time, waiting for the perfect moment to burst forth into the world.
Best case, they arrive in spectacular ‘fuck it’ style wearing a feather boa and high heels, singing ‘Get the Party Started’ by P!nk while quaffing Tattinger. Worst case – and the one she thinks might be looming imminently – is that they stumble out of her, hungover, in grubby dressing gowns and mismatched socks, mascara streaked all over their faces as they sob about their past, and it won’t matter how hard she tries, she will never be able to make them sit down and behave.
Maybe, she thinks, she’d have less cause for worry if she hadn’t spent all these years suppressing the urge to occasionally feel sorry for herself.
Starting to feel uncomfortable with just how dangerously close she is to having a full-on ugly cry in her car, she practises her emergency slow breathing to find her centre. Yoga has its benefits and this is certainly one of them. To her surprise, even though she finds each yoga class to be a form of torture, she has started to look forward to her classes – even booking a few extra sessions. It’s impossible to focus your energy on your problems when you’re contorting your body into some unholy shape while trying not to fall over or pass wind. Maybe she should book one every day.
Maybe she should ask Laura, again, if she’d like to come along too. It might do her good to get out of the house and do something that will distract her from her grief, even if it is only for an hour or two. A guilty thought hits. Should they have invited Laura over this evening? No. It would have been weird for everyone to have her in the middle of their conversation with the kids about their baby. Both Adam and Jodie are only really getting to know her again after the ‘great falling-out’ which happened when Becca’s marriage disintegrated and Laura chose to stay friends with her ex, Simon.
As her husband Aidan’s best friend, Laura didn’t feel she could leave him out in the cold, but when Simon moved into their house for a while post break-up, their friendship had imploded spectacularly. Niamh had got caught up in the crossfire when she chose to take Becca’s side.
The ten-year gap in their friendship hasn’t stopped Niamh and Becca from picking up from where they left off with Laura and very quickly building on the sisterly bond they had shared from their first days at secondary school. But with the kids, it was different. Yes, Laura had been ever present in their childhoods – until the point where she simply wasn’t any more. Jodie had been just ten, and Adam just nine, when the great falling-out happened. A lot has changed in their lives in the intervening decade. They have grown into young adults, who need to get to know Laura all over again.
But still, Niamh feels guilty that Laura was excluded from proceedings – worrying that her friend might still feel like a bit of an outsider to the incredibly close bond she and Becca share.
To assuage her growing guilt, she instructs Siri to call Laura so she can fill her in on what has happened.
Laura doesn’t answer with hello, but instead with, ‘Well? What’s the craic? I’ve been sitting here on my nerves waiting to hear from either of you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Niamh replies. ‘We were talking for a while and then Becca and I had a chat about it. They’ve decided to keep the baby.’
There’s a pause for a second or two before Laura speaks again. ‘And how do you feel about that?’
‘Mixed feelings, if I’m honest. But they’re taking a very sensible approach to it all and they seem to have given it a lot of thought.’
‘And Paul? How has he reacted?’
‘Jodie went home earlier to talk to him. I’ve been driving around trying to avoid going home, but I suppose I have to find out sometime, so I’m on my way back now.’ Niamh flicks the indicator on and pulls into the forecourt of the garage closest to her home. She’s going to buy some chocolate. Possibly a lot of chocolate. Her raging hormones have her wishing she could get melted Cadbury’s infused directly into her veins. Not hot chocolate, mind. That’s not pure enough. She would have them melt down at least three family-size Dairy Milks and run its thick, gloopy goodness in on a fast infusion.
They chat for a while before making plans to meet at the weekend to catch up. Wine, Laura tells her, is not optional.
‘It will probably be Becca’s house. I’ll message her when I’m done talking to you. Oh and Laura, don’t forget tomorrow is her big pitch with Grace atNorthern People. Let’s be on standby in case she needs some emergency support measures before or after.’
‘I’ll consider myself on call until I hear different from you,’ Laura says, and Niamh can’t help but smile. At least, she tells herself, she has her girls. She might feel completely at sea in regards to just about everything else in her life, but she knows her friends will keep her right. That, and her yoga and her chocolate – which she will keep in a secret stash in the glovebox so that none of her children will get a hold of it. Becca had warned her that teenage boys can eat you out of house and home but she’d never quite believed it until her own offspring had begun to land like a plague of locusts every time she brought food into the house – devouring everything and leaving nothing but empty boxes in the cupboards and empty milk cartons in the fridge.
Once she has stocked up, Niamh heads for home, unsure of what atmosphere will greet her when she gets in the door. She’s not sure how she will cope if it’s anything less than peaceful. A rush of anxiety starts to claw at her and she does not like this feeling. Niamh Cassidy does not get anxious. She is renowned for her ability to keep her cool in every situation. She was the first person Becca turned to when her marriage broke up. She’s the first person the head turns to when the printer breaks, or the heating breaks down, or Year 11 start a fire in the home economics classroom. Niamh doesn’t get flustered. She does what needs to be done. She is practical and logical. Her scientific brain helping her keep a hold of her senses.
Or at least she used to be like that. Increasingly, she seems to be swamped with bouts of anxiety so severe she feels as if someone is compressing her chest, making it hard for her to breathe. Her skin crawls as if anxiety is a poison spreading through her veins.
Rationally, she knows that it isn’t. Everything is okay, she reminds herself. She knows her husband. She knows he will get his head around things. She knows her daughter and knows that, even though she is young, she will cope.
The thing she doesn’t seem to know, or trust in any more, is her own ability to cope. Could Becca be right? Could this be down to the menopause? Is that why her ability to cope with life’s many shit-hitting-the-fan scenarios seems to have disappeared? Because if it is, she isnota fan. The menopause, and the hot, sweaty, anxious horse it rode in on, can fuck right off.
