Instead, she sets about her tasks and then, having changed into her comfiest loungewear – otherwise known as whatever pyjama set looks least like pyjamas – she’s on her way to Becca’s and Jodie remains tight-lipped about her decision.
Maybe that’s part of what hurts so much. That she is no longer a key part of her eldest child’s decision-making process. Jodie has grown up and is well able to make life choices for herself. Someone else – a boy she has only been seeing a matter of months – is now front and centre of the biggest decision her daughter has ever had to make. Someone who has no idea of the impact having a baby will have on them both – but especially on Jodie.
Adam is a good boy – or more accurately a good young man. Niamh knows this. But it doesn’t matter that she has loved Adam like one of her own since he was born and that she has watched him grow, and thrive. Or that Adam and Jodie have known each other their whole lives and had been the best of friends before they fell in love late last summer. It still feels wrong to Niamh that he suddenly is the person her daughter is turning to when making big life decisions.
Maybe because the pair of them had kept their romance a secret for months. Both Niamh and Becca had only discovered their children were together by chance shortly before Christmas. Just weeks before this surprise pregnancy had been revealed.
Is it any wonder Niamh’s head is spinning?
She glances at her girl, who is absentmindedly singing along to Chappell Roan on the radio declaring she’s a ‘pink pony girl’. Beautiful Jodie. The first person to call her mama. Not a girl of the pink pony type or any other. Tears prick at her eyes and for the first time she wishes for a good hot flush to distract her from her desire to cry. She has to keep a neutral outward appearance.
‘I just want to say, I know you’ve come to a decision, but whatever it is, you can always change your mind. You have time,’ she says.
Jodie turns to her and stops singing. ‘I know,’ she says.
‘And you also know that this is your body, not Adam’s, and I’m not for one second saying he would pressure you one way or the other, but ultimately you are the one who has to carry the baby. You have to put your wants first.’
‘I know, Mum. Trust me. Adam hasn’t put pressure on me. We’ve made a decision we’re both happy with.’
Jodie turns her face back to look out at the window and starts singing again – as if she doesn’t have a worry in the world. Meanwhile Niamh is wondering if the palpitations she is now feeling are because she’s about to have a cardiac event, a panic attack or just another bloody gift from Mammy Menopause.
7
‘HAVE YOU REACHED A VERDICT ON WHICH YOU ARE ALL AGREED?’
Becca
‘Why do I feel like I’m on trial and waiting for the jury to deliver their verdict?’ I ask Niamh as we sit in my living room. Jodie and Adam have disappeared into the kitchen and to my great disappointment are not talking loudly enough for us to hear them here in the living room.
She looks tense. Her expression stiff and stoic as if she has been Botoxed to within an inch of her life. I know she has not, because we have made a solemn promise that if one of us breaks and gets it done, the other must go with them. If one of us falls, both of us fall. Like modern-day Musketeers.
She doesn’t speak. Doesn’t utter a single word but keeps her focus on the fire. This is very much not like Niamh.
‘I don’t suppose Jodie told you what they’ve decided on the way over?’ I ask.
‘Nope,’ Niamh says, her voice terse. ‘Not a word.’
‘Are you okay?’ I ask her, knowing that it takes an awful, awful lot for my ever-cheerful friend to be anything other than… well… ever cheerful.
She turns her head to look in my direction. There’s something in the slow way she does it that makes me fear her head might just keep on spinning and do a full 360 before she projectiles pea soup at me, à laThe Exorcist. Shit. Something is very off here.
‘The thing is, Becs?—’
‘Sorry for keeping you,’ Adam says, walking into the room and cutting Niamh off before she’s had the chance to finish her sentence.
She quickly turns her head towards our two children and plasters on her very best understanding-teacher face. The woman is an expert at looking supportive when really she wants to burn the place down using a Bunsen burner doctored to go full flame-thrower instead.
I note that Adam and Jodie are holding hands. This augurs well, I think. They are united in their decision and neither of them looks as if they have been crying.
It dawns on me that this conversation will be one of the more defining ones of my life. That I am about to witness my son make the biggest decision of his. Everything is about to change. If Niamh is nursing the same thoughts, it’s no wonder she looks as if she might just boke.
They sit down and I bite the urge to shout at them to just spit it out. I mean, I love a bit of drama as much as the next person, but this is alot. It hasbeena lot to have constantly running through my mind this last week or so. It has been a lot to realise this is a decision that only my son and Jodie can make and that my usual maternal urge to swoop in and make everything okay is extremely limited in its grasp in these circumstances.
I wait for either Adam or Jodie to speak. I can feel the tension coming off Niamh in waves and it’s more unsettling than anything our children could say in the next few minutes.
‘We’ve talked this through a lot,’ Jodie says, her voice surprisingly assured. ‘We’ve asked ourselves a million questions. It hasn’t been easy. And we know this isn’t going tobeeasy.’
‘This isn’t something we planned,’ Adam says. ‘But I think that’s pretty obvious.’ His face colours a little. ‘But sometimes things happen that just change everything, don’t they?’
