She bites her tongue. This is the kind of thing they talk about often. They’ve been debating upsizing a bit now that the children are all getting bigger. Of course, there might even be a new baby coming into the house… but still she feels irritated by him waving his phone in her face. Worse than that, she feels irritated that she feels irritated by him. Mustering all the essential relaxation skills she learned in yoga, she takes a deep breath and centres herself before she dares open her mouth. She feels it in her very bones that one of these days when she speaks it will not be the supportive, loving wife coming out of her mouth but the vicious, snapping beast that menopause is turning her into. When she visualises it she can’t help but think of the Gmork fromThe NeverEnding Story– the scary, growling black dog/monster that gave every child watching that movie in the eighties the biggest jumpscare of their young lives.
‘Very good,’ she says as he shakes his head in disbelief at the asking price of his neighbour’s house.
‘They’re chancing their arm, looking for that,’ he mumbles and goes back to scrolling across his phone screen.
‘But I need to talk to you about something else,’ Niamh says.
He looks up from his phone and grimaces. ‘Oh, God, what now? Don’t tell me there’s another bombshell coming our way? What is it now? Cal been expelled? Fiadh getting anASBO?’
‘No. It’s nothing like that.’
‘Thank feck,’ he says. ‘So what is it? God. Don’t tell me it’s worse?’
She tenses and wonders when did he ever become such a drama queen? ‘It’s not something worse. It’s just, well, Becca got the gig atNorthern People.’
‘That’s brilliant news!’ For the first time in two weeks he looks genuinely happy.
‘It is. And they’ve already offered her a great opportunity to go to a women’s retreat – a kind of menopause boot camp.’
He grimaces again and she wants to throw a cushion at his face. ‘Don’t pull that face! You wouldn’t be doing that if you actually had to go through menopause.’
‘Yeah, but I have to live with you going through menopause. Maybe I’m the one who needs a retreat? Could you ask Becca?’
He’s joking, of course, in the sarky gentle ribbing way they always joke, but Niamh doesn’t find it funny and it’s more than a cushion she wants to throw at his face this time. But along with the anger, another emotion bubbles up, taking her by surprise. Tears prick at her eyes. Dear God, she thinks, I’m going to cry. As a lump forms in her throat, and embarrassment causes her face to flush a fierce red, she gets up and leaves the room because she does not trust herself to speak.
Even though this is Paul. Her Paul. Her soulmate and life partner – who she has cried in front of too many times to mention over the years but who she doesn’t seem to recognise any more.
Has he changed that much, she wonders. Or is it her?
14
PAPA DON’T PREACH
Becca
I’m excited about our trip. Ridiculously excited. Even if it will involve a yurt and meeting new people and probably some weird workshops. Three things that would usually send me into a tailspin of anxiety.
That I’m so excited probably says a lot about how little I’ve managed to get away from normality over the last few years. It’s been so infrequent that I’m at the stage that even a night in a haunted hotel being forced to watchMrs Brown’s Boysreruns on a loop while someone scrapes their fingernails down a blackboard beside me would sound a little appealing.
Between raising the boys and simply trying to get the bills paid and the dog looked after, nights away from home have not been on my list of priorities. Admittedly the boys and I did get a night in a hotel when we went to my cousin’s wedding – but I’m not sure sharing a hotel room with two twelve-year-olds, as they were then, off their tits on Fanta counts as a relaxing break.
I’d stayed in a Travelodge when I’d dropped the boys at university but I was too emotionally fragile to fully appreciate the luxuries of a budget hotel buffet breakfast.
But apart from that, I am embarrassingly not well-travelled. My boys have seen more of the world than I have thanks to Simon taking them on holidays. I am, at least, grateful for that.
Last year, when we uncovered the time capsule, I made myself a promise that I would finally make plans and start to travel to far-flung places. It’s what sixteen-year-old me dreamt of. While I’m pretty sure Inishowen doesn’t count as ‘far-flung’ by anyone’s standards – being just an hour’s drive from home – I quiet her with the reassurance it’s just a start.
Having the girls with me will make it extra nice. It will make it feel special – a little like those girls’ holidays we dreamt of all those years ago. That’s enough to make me look forward to it. It’s even enough to make me feel less guilty about using the weekend to go to a ‘Female Empowerment’ retreat instead of blocking out some much-needed time with Conal. Thankfully he has been more than understanding, if disappointed. ‘It’s work,’ he reminded me when I felt that disappointment wash over me too. ‘You have to go. It’s too good an opportunity.’
He’s right, of course. It’s exciting, or it will be after I get through some of the less appealing conversations I have to have with both my mother and Simon.
Adam offered to talk to them both himself, but I’ve known him long enough and well enough to recognise the flicker of panic in his eyes as he told me that. Telling his granny, and his father, that he is going to be a dad is a lot for a nineteen-year-old to deal with. Even one as sensible and reliable as Adam. In fact, maybe even more so given his reputation as the sensible and reliable one. I know my son is cut from the same cloth as me. A cloth that is permanently terrified of disappointing people.
Surprisingly perhaps, the person he is most worried about disappointing is not his father but rather his granny. He revels in her pride at his achievements and can’t bear the thought of upsetting her.
It doesn’t matter that I’ve told him a hundred times over there is nothing he could ever do that could change how she feels about him. My mother loves him and his brother more than she loves the children she actually birthed herself. I knew this within seconds of the first time she and my father met these tiny, pink-faced little babies who had just arrived in the world kicking and screaming. My mother had held Adam, and my father had cradled Saul, and I had witnessed their transformation into doting grandparents in all its immediate and overwhelming glory.
As for telling Simon, well, there’s a different kind of trepidation tied up with that one. Adam fears his dad will lecture him and tell him he’s ruining his life – choosing to focus only on the negative aspects of parenthood and not the blessings. If we’d describe Niamh’s Paul as being a ‘bit of a dick’ about thesituation, then it’s likely Simon will react in way that makes us see him as a ‘whole dick, and balls’ about things.
