‘The extractor fan in his kitchen is kaput,’ I say. ‘And he is in desperate need of a bacon sandwich.’
‘Have you scrambled the private jet yet?’ she asks with a cheeky smile. ‘This seems like a category-one emergency.’
Niamh is perhaps the only person in the world who can make jokes about my children or call out their occasional fecklessness without causing me great offence. Niamh gets it – not just because she is a mother to four herself – but because she has been by my side through every step of my parenting journey (boke at the word ‘journey’ – overused as it is). She has witnessed every high point, low point and all in between over the years, and I know that when she criticises the boys she does it ultimately from a place of great affection and from a place of great support for me and my occasionally frazzled nerves.
I smile back. ‘I sent him money to order a pizza and left instructions for him to contact the landlord in the morning. It was enough to settle him a bit. Only back in England a few days and the crises are already flowing.’
‘Thank God for pizza,’ she says as I tie the laces on my trainers, glad to be able to feel my toes again. ‘I suppose it must be strange for him, Adam not being there.’
And she’s right. Even though they are like chalk and cheese when it comes to their personalities, my boys tend to rub along in a nice little codependent manner when they are away from home. Adam is the sensible-headed one who probably knows how to fix a wonky fuse in an extractor fan but can take life a little too seriously and have trouble letting himself go. Saul is the antithesis to this – and the one who will drag his brother down to the Student Union, or up on stage for a karaoke performance of ‘Wonderwall’ and make sure life has its fun elements. They are the yin to each other’s yang in that regard, and neither of them functions quite as well without the other.
‘I think it is. And I think it’s strange for Adam too.’
‘Yeah,’ Niamh says. ‘Things are a bit arseways at the moment.’
She doesn’t need to explain. I know what she means already. It’s a strange time for her eldest, Jodie, too. Although both of our children (now adults) have impressed us with their mature approach to things, there’s no escaping the, frankly, shite timing of it all. Their relationship has only moved from the friend zone to the romance zone over the past few months. This should still be the super-fun-can’t-keep-their-hands-off-each-other stage – which presumably it was for a time, given this unexpected pregnancy.
The memory of Niamh arriving at my door, Laura by her side for moral support, and a pregnancy test in her hand is still embedded firmly in my memory. She regrets telling me in that way now. Wishes she had given Jodie and Adam a chance to work out their feelings before coming to us with the news themselves. But, as I always say, we can only do the best we can with the information we have at the time. At that time, Niamh was in possession of just enough information to freak herself the fuck out and so, of course, it was understandable she would turn to her best friends for support.
Now it is up to us to support our adult children in whatever way they need. For Niamh, that has meant holding Jodie’s hair back while she pukes several times a day, and often with little warning.
For me, it has meant assuring Adam that whatever decision he and Jodie make, he will have my full and unequivocal support and that my newfound incontrovertible knowledge that he has had sex has not lessened my opinion of him in any fashion whatsoever. After all, I have always known it was going to happen some day, even if I could’ve happily lived out my years not knowing it for certain.
‘They’ll be okay though,’ I say, and I’m not sure if it’s a statement or a question. Maybe it’s a bit of both.
‘They will,’ says Niamh. ‘And it’s not the worst news that could come to our doors.’
We have been reminding ourselves of this a lot. It’s not an illness, or an addiction. It’s not the revelation that they are part of some gangland criminal cartel. It’s a baby. Chances are if we had gotten this news ten years, or even five years, from now it would be a cause for celebration. But it is what it is and it’s our job to guide our nineteen- and twenty-year-old offspring through the coming months.
It’s also our job to try and remain sane while doing so and, as Laura reminded me via WhatsApp earlier, it’s my job not to slide into old habits of focusing on supporting everyone else and not pushing forward with my own plans to build a life for myself that sixteen-year-old me would be proud of.
In fact, Laura has been adamant that even with this unfurling domestic drama I power on with my mission to make good on the promises I made my younger self, which I rediscovered when I uncovered the time capsule we made as teenagers.
Laura will not allow me to forsake my plans to overhaul my career, see more of the world and learn to love the life I lead and the body I lead it in. The only area she has kept clear of getting involved in is with my budding – now stalled – relationship with Conal. Her brother. It’s not, she says, that she doesn’t care – more that she can’t bring herself to openly encourage me to have sexual relations with someone who made an art form of directing his farts in her direction when he was a child.
As Niamh and I leave the community centre and reach our cars, we give each other a hug. ‘We’ll be okay too,’ I tell her. ‘I mean, I’m not sure I’ll be able to move tomorrow without considerable effort and a few choice swear words but overall, we’ll be okay.’
‘You just need to get used to the moves and then, honest, you’ll find it a great stress reliever. I feel much better able to go back and deal with Paul after this.’ I hug her tightly, because while Niamh and I are doing our best to support our children, Paul is very much struggling with the news, and as a result there have been some shockwaves in their usually quite wonderful relationship.
‘He still being…’ I trail off, trying to think of a suitable way to describe how Paul is behaving without being truly offensive.
‘A dick?’ Niamh says. ‘Yeah. But you know the craic. He’s my dick, etc. We’ll get through it.’ She shrugs as she gets into her car, leaving me wondering how bad things might actually be between them.
3
HERE I GO AGAIN
There’s a fair chance that I am going to hell. My sin is that I have yet to tell my mother about the pregnancy. To her credit, my mother has always been relatively cool with life’s curveballs, and no matter what either of my boys could ever do, she would still think the sun shines brightly from their arses.
But this is a tricky one. I don’t want to tell her the news until I know exactly what the news is and, if I’m being completely honest, if Adam and Jodie decide not to proceed with the pregnancy then I am considering not telling her at all. Not because I think she’ll be angry about it, but because I know she would find it unsettling – upsetting even. She’s of a generation that believes in mortal sin and eternal damnation, and while she’s not overly religious herself, the impact of years of Catholic indoctrination still looms large in her conscience.
I feel awful keeping something so colossal from her, and it’s made harder that I’m having to add lie on top of lie to cover the tracks of what is really going on.
‘So when is Adam going back to university?’ she asks, as we sit at her kitchen table drinking tea and seeing which of us will break first and reach for a second bun from the paper bag of treats I’ve brought with me.
‘I’m not sure,’ I tell her as the cream-filled, sugar-dusted pastry in front of me tempts me further. ‘But classes are starting soon, so I imagine it will be sooner rather than later.’
‘But he’s okay though?’ she asks. ‘He’s happy over there and happy in his studies?’
