To her relief, the hot flush starts to subside and she finally feels able to close the window and resume her teaching duties. She just has to try and stop her mind from running constantly with Jodie and her ‘predicament’. She hates that she even thinks of it that way.
She thought she’d raised Jodie to be careful. She’s never put limits on her but has always encouraged her to make sure to be sensible and think about what she wants out of life. That meant being sensible when it came to sex and contraception. But nonetheless, here her daughter is ‘with child’ halfway through her second year at university. A part of Niamh wants to scream at her. But at the same time she knows that would achieve absolutely nothing except to alienate Jodie, and give herself a sore throat into the bargain.
She sighs as she pulls the window closed, and hauls her brain into the here and now to deal with her teaching responsibilities. How, she wonders, is it possible to feel this hacked off with it at all so early on a Monday morning at the start of a new term? This is the next-level fatigue that normally makes itself known at the end of term – not after a break. She’s supposed to be re-energised now, not so tired she wants to cry. It would help if she could sleep, but she seems unable to manage more than a couple of unbroken hours each night. The rest of the time is spent tossing and turning, waking in a pool of her now cold sweat, and wondering if Paul has always snored so loudly and if it would really be that bad to put a pillow over his head.
No doubt, she thinks, as she walks to the front of the class, all this is yet another thing that can be attributed to the menopause. She thinks of the small rectangular patch of plastic currently stuck to her stomach, allegedly infusing her with oestrogen. She’s not quite sure it’s having any real effect – except for leaving her tummy covered in little grey patches of adhesive that have to be scrubbed with a Brillo pad to have any chance of removing them. They breed down there now, on her lower tummy. One day she will be entirely covered in little grey patches of adhesive, decorated with whatever lint and fluff they have managed to grab.
No one warned her about that. Or that the adhesive would sometimes irritate her skin. No one warned her that if she wanted to stop her vagina from ‘atrophying’ (she swears she feels it atrophy in fear every time she even thinks of that word), she would have to lie, legs akimbo, as she pops a little pill inside her vagina.
On more than one occasion she has, absentmindedly, swallowed the pill before remembering it is notthatkind of tablet.
Still, at least her mouth and throat will be safe from the worry of atrophying.
‘Miss! Miss! Are you okay?’ It’s not Ella or Jayden this time, but Hannah – the class swot – who is speaking. ‘You face has gone very red.’
Hannah’s face is filled with concern. Niamh wishes she had twenty-eight Hannahs in her class. Twenty-eight young people who always remember their books and their homework. Who ask sensible, intelligent questions about topics they are actually studying. Hannah never asks her if she watchesLove Island(which she did until she started to feel irrationally jealous of the side-boob and under-boob on display. It has been a long time since Niamh would trust her D-cups in a bikini top clearly two sizes too small).
No, Hannah always asks the right questions. And right now, Hannah is clearly astute enough to observe that her most beloved of teachers is well on her way to a full-blown meltdown. It’s enough to snap Niamh back into professional teacher mode. She cannot show weakness. She must keep control. She does not want to be known as Cry-Baby Cassidy or something much worse for the remainder of her teaching career. She will push all her worries to the very back of her mind until home time.
‘Thank you, Hannah, but I’m fine. Now, let’s talk about mitosis and meiosis.’
5
FIRST-CLASS TICKET TO PONTYPANDY, PLEASE!
Becca
I’m quite relieved when Adam slumps onto the sofa beside me and rests his head on my shoulder. It’s reassuring to see him come out of his room, where he has been moping, overthinking and carrying on hours of FaceTime calls with Jodie, before disappearing to see her without so much as a ‘Bye, Mum!’ on his way out the door.
‘Jodie is going to come over later. With her mum,’ he says, as Daniel rouses himself from in front of the fire and pads over towards us.
I can’t pretend I don’t feel a little put out that the dog I do 90 per cent of walks for rests his head on Adam’s knee to beg for pets rather than on mine. Then again, when I see my lanky six-foot son reach over and scratch behind Daniel’s ears, both of them immediately perking up, I get a warm fuzzy feeling.
It’s good to see Adam acting silly. He has been too sombre and sensible these last few days – and it’s not like he was ever really not sensible to begin with. It has worried me at times just how much of an old head on young shoulders he has always been, so to see him double down on being serious-minded is concerning. Not that there isn’t a good reason for his seriousness. The prospect of impending fatherhood is a heavy burden. Especially when you’re only nineteen.
I can’t help but see a little boy in front of me when I look at him, even now. Yes, he’s a tall boy. He has a manly physique – a strong jawline, the darkening of stubble across his face. His hands are much bigger than mine – and a world away from the small chubby hands I used to hold on to for dear life as we crossed the road. His voice is deep and he smells of Tom Ford cologne, which cost more than my first week’s wages in my first full-time job.
But he’s still a boy. My boy.
Nineteen is no age. And yet he is facing the biggest responsibility of a person’s life. Selfishly perhaps, I can’t help but worry about the impact it will have on my life too.
‘Is everything okay?’ I ask him, which seems like a stupid question.
He looks at me with a small, stoic smile and nods his head. He looks so like his father in this moment that it takes my breath away. His is a face I love but I don’t love the big reminder of a marriage that failed and of a man who, looking back, I don’t quite understand why I married.
We’ve not told his father – Simon – the big news yet. Adam pleaded with me to hold off until he got his head around it and I agreed. I’m in no rush to pull that particular plaster off. There’s no way Simon won’t have a considerable amount to say about it. He’ll have no qualms about voicing his opinion. Empathy is not his strong point.
‘Yeah,’ Adam says. ‘We’ve talked and talked and talked and I think we know what we’re going to do.’
I raise an eyebrow, waiting for him to tell me.
‘But Jodie and I want to tell you and Niamh together,’ he says, and while I have to respect their decision I want to plead with him to just give me a clue. Even a little one.
Instead I ask him if Paul is coming too.
‘Jodie’s going to talk to him herself,’ he says. ‘You know he’s not exactly happy about it, and you know how much of a daddy’s girl she is.’
He has also always been his daughter’s fiercest protector and her biggest fan. He is not taking the news of her pregnancy particularly well and is failing miserably at keeping his feelings to himself.
