‘I think maybe men just don’t get it,’ Niamh says. ‘Paul didn’t. Until I had my own little meltdown and now, well, he’s not perfect. He’s still a man. But he tries and I no longer want to kill him every three days.’
‘That’s a definite win,’ Laura says. ‘I’ll eat a Percy Pig to that!’
‘Me too!’ says Niamh, and they each take a little pink gelatinoussweet and bump them together as if they are glasses of the very finest champagne.
‘Being honest though,’ Laura says when she is finished eating. ‘I think it runs deeper than that with Aidan. Paul wants to understand. Aidan doesn’t. He doesn’t want his life to change. He is perfectly happy with things being as they are – with him being the big man and me being the old ball and chain at home. Did you know he changed the ringtone on his phone for when I call?’
‘To what?’
‘The Angry Birds theme. Because he says I’m an angry bird now that I’ve gone all woke and feminist.’ Laura cringes as she retells the story, trying to pretend there wasn’t a sting in it when she found out. She had been so excited about her new passion, so enthralled in her learning, that she had wanted to cry when Aidan reduced her enthusiasm to something that makes her angry. And to use the word ‘bird’ to describe women… Well, she has a lot of feelings about that and none of them good.
‘The absolute gobshite!’ Niamh says. ‘Are you serious?’
Laura nods. ‘He said he supports my going back to university, but I don’t think he really does. He keeps saying things like, “Look, there’s no harm if you go for a few weeks and pack it in. You’ll get some of the experience of being a student without having to do the work.” He doesn’t realise Iwantto do the work. I love the work! I’ve only had a handful of lectures so far but I come out of each one feeling like my soul is waking up. I had a class on women and global human rights today and I just thought that yes, I would love for this to be my life’s work, you know.’ She recalls the anger, the sadness, the passion and the pride she had felt in the course of the hour-long lecture which outlined the module’s remit and how women are used as pawns, or property, or errant children to be punished – but how theycontinually fight back against a system designed to destroy them.
‘I think that’s amazing – the passion you have for it. And I think Aidan O’Kane deserves a boot up the hole,’ Niamh says. ‘You know, I have a pair of DM boots in the back of my wardrobe that, unlike my clothes, still fit me despite the middle-aged spread and I would be only too willing to use them.’
Laura smiles. ‘And that’s why I love you.’
There’s a pause. ‘But it’s more serious than that, right?’ Niamh asks, gently.
‘How can I be with a man who doesn’t respect me? Who doesn’t want to see me chase my dreams? I get that people grow older and we’re not all the same and our beliefs won’t always align – but you know I have worked hard all my life. I’ve never shied from long days on my feet, and late nights doing stock counts, and wrangling with awkward staff. I’ve never shied away from keeping our house right and being the good wife. But this… it’s like this is what I’ve been waiting for all my life. And I know, I feel in my bones, that Kitty would be cheering me on.’
Laura knows because there she is, again, always just out of sight. Her mother. She can feel her. She can sense her pride. She can sense Kitty pushing her to keep going and urging her to put her hand up to answer questions and make herself heard.
She can sense her mother whispering in her ear that it is okay to walk away from things that are no longer serving you. It’s okay to walk away from people who do not appreciate the gift that you are.
She can sense her mother telling her she will absolutely be okay no matter if she walks away from her life as she knows it. Hadn’t Kitty herself managed on her own raising the two of them? And thanks to the inheritance her mother had left herand her own savings, Laura doesn’t have to worry too much about coping financially in the near future either.
‘Darling, I know you’ve not been happy for a while. I didn’t know just how unhappy you were though. And I certainly didn’t know that prick was disrespecting you in that way.’ Niamh cuts through her thoughts.
‘I think I was too embarrassed to tell you, and Becca. Jesus… I stuck by Aidan when he supported Simon after their break-up. I lost ten years of friendship because I was being loyal to him. I thought that made me a good wife. A good person. But…’
‘You were already a good person,’ Niamh chimes in. ‘And it sounds to me like you were a good wife. God knows you are a good mother. He, on the other hand, is a knob. You know, I don’t think knob as a diss is used enough these days. We need to use it more.’
Laura loves this about Niamh – how she can say everything that needs to be said and bring everyone to the very edge of emotional, only to pull it all back to funny with a well-timed dick, or knob, joke.
‘He is a knob,’ Laura says. ‘And I’m not going to do the whole “well, he’s a knob, but he’s my knob” thing. He’s not my knob. I don’t think we fit any more, and more than that, I don’t think I want us to.’
It’s the first time she has said it out loud. The first time she has admitted it to herself. Fully. When she said she quit, she was talking about more than just last night and a tonne of dirty dishes.
She wants to find herself. She wants to be free to be the person she is becoming. The girl who dances around the living room to classic tunes, who occasionally has a glass of wine on a school night, who sits in the coffee bar at the university discussing feminist theory with her new friends and herlecturer. The woman who goes to retreats that feed her mind and her soul. Who wants to travel but not to all-inclusive beach resorts with her husband where they bake in the sun and small-talk over dinner. But to places where she can see the real culture, talk to the real people. Share the experience of being a female with women who live lives so very different to hers. She wants to make a difference.
To have the mad craic in a choir singing Whitney bloody Houston and to know that when she phones someone – when she wants to tell them about her day, or about her latest victory, or even when she needs to sound off about something going wrong – they aren’t going to listen first to a ringtone that implies she is unreasonable and angry just because she’s a woman, and laugh at their own clever little joke.
If anything, Laura thinks, she’s not angry enough. But what she will be, from now on in, is ‘R.E.S.P.E.C.T.’ed. He can stick that ringtone on his phone and smoke it.
An hour later and the Percy Pigs are finished and Laura is slightly regretting her choice of treat as the sugar rush threatens to give her a cardiac arrest. But she feels better. She feels relieved. She has voiced what has been bubbling inside of her for the last few months and having said it out loud, she has been surprised to find it didn’t sound unreasonable. She didn’t sound like an overly emotional silly woman. And the sky didn’t crack open or the world fall from under her feet.
Yes, she will have to tell Aidan. Break the news to him gently – for Robyn’s sake. That, she isn’t looking forward to. Telling Robyn will hurt, but she owes it to her daughter to be true to herself. Besides, she has already set plans underway to help her baby girl face the truth of being a woman and finding your sisterhood.
38
THREE DAYS LATER
Becca
‘Just another couple of steps, Mum,’ I say, walking beside my mother as we turn back into her hospital room and towards her bed. She has managed to walk a little down the corridor today. It’s progress that everyone has been delighted to see.
