The Week I Ruined My Life Read online

  I don’t want Corina to know how he speaks to me, I’m embarrassed, so I keep my voice at the same breezy level so he will know this. He knows she’s sitting opposite me by my tone.

  ‘Yeah … just enjoying the catch up and thought another glass would be nice.’

  ‘So have another glass but make it a spritzer, a few black coffees, then drive home.’ He spits the advice at me.

  ‘I’d be over the limit, wouldn’t I, though?’ I’m making a face of pretend deliberation while licking my index finger and rubbing an imaginary stain off the table.

  ‘Do whatever the hell you want, Ali, but Maia’s picking me up at seven in the morning to drive to Carlingford on an overnighter. We have a meeting with the MD of NewsXtreme newsagents, so I don’t know how you are going to get the kids to school.’ He rings off at that. I do not.

  ‘Ahh, right, sorry, I totally forgot. Yeah that’s grand … Yeah, OK, see you later, bye, bye, bye, bye.’ I ring off now and drop my phone onto the table. The amount of times I got the call to say he’d missed the flight home from Manchester and would now be on the last one, or the early morning one, I couldn’t count on two hands.

  Corina is making a sad face.

  ‘No can do?’ she asks.

  ‘No can do,’ I manage.

  ‘Next time maybe,’ she says as she unsignals the approaching waitress. If she knows, she is playing along nicely. I’m guessing she could hear him. Oscar nominee stuff. Meryl Martin.

  My heart is racing. Listen, I’m not annoyed he has to leave early to go to work or that it’s not practical for me to leave my car overnight. I get it. All I want is his attitude to be nicer. He sounds so hostile towards me all the time. Pissed off. Bitter. Impatient. Angry.

  ‘Actually, will I just order our desserts then?’ Corina asks.

  ‘May as well,’ I say.

  Our friendly waitress returns, Corina apologies for playing ‘table tennis’ with her and they both laugh. Corina knows I’m upset but she also knows I don’t want to talk about it. She orders our favourite desert in this establishment, two banoffee pies with extra Devon clotted cream, a pot of strong tea for me and a large hazelnut latté for herself and we talk about the effect worldwide notoriety is having on young Kylie Jenner.

  When we are full up and have split our bill I hug Corina tightly at the door, the rain has stopped but it’s deathly dark at five thirty. The smell of Christmas is actually tangible. Almost like mulled wine is making its way through the streets. Like when Scooby-Doo used to follow that long line of visible scent. Dawson Street twinkles. Early shoppers brush past me laden down with bags. People to see, places to go.

  Corina pulls on her lime green soft leather gloves and before she walks away she says softly, her nose crinkling up at me, ‘Maybe you guys should think about some marriage counselling, Ali? It can’t hurt.’

  She winks at me with a smile and walks away, head down, tapping on her Blackberry, undoubtedly to meet some friends for drinks somewhere trendy and dimly lit with fairy lights and lounge music as I trudge towards my grey car. Wager she’s going somewhere that brews their own craft beer.

  I don’t want to go home. I would if Colin wasn’t there; if it was just my children I’d race home. The constant keeping my mouth shut so as not to upset them with another row is starting to become more and more difficult for me. Draining my soul. I wrap my un-winter-worthy brown leather jacket tighter around my chest and I see the orange neon sign for Nectar Wines just where my car is parked. My beacon of hope. And I head straight for it. It is necessary to press a buzzer to gain access, reads the sign on the door, so I do. I’m authorized and buzzed in. Alcohol approval. I buy myself a bottle of the same Pinot Grigio from Malan’s, almost ten euros cheaper, and armed with my brown-paper-bagged bottle I get into my grey Mazda car and I slowly drive myself home.

  3

  Sunday night. At home.

  ‘Mummy’s home! Mummmyyy’sssss hooommmeee!’ Mark zigzags towards me at the hall door. His little face overjoyed to see his mummy. He grabs me in a tight hug around my legs. He is wearing his filthy dirty Olaf costume and his Fireman Sam wellington boots. Mark is a real mixture of us both. Sandy blond hair and blue eyes.

  ‘Careful, darling,’ I say, as I hold onto the glass hall table with my brown paper bag in the other hand. I kick the hall door shut behind me. The house is cold. Colin hasn’t got the heating on. Again. It’s December and, although I do love our planet, I live in Ireland, an island in the North Atlantic. Gas heating is a necessity. I’m bloody freezing.

  ‘Mummy doesn’t want to drop her booze, Markey boy.’ Colin walks out of the living room in his stocking feet, MacBook surgically attached under his arm, straight past me and straight up the stairs as he ruffles Mark’s floppy Olaf head.

  I plaster a smile on my face for my baby and fix his hood. His carrot nose bobbing.

  Some people are worth melting for.

  ‘Where is Jade? Did you guys have any tea?’

  His tiny features warm my heart.

  ‘Just Maccy Donald’s earlier.’ Mark is still stuck to my legs. He’s small in stature for five. The smallest in his class. I’ve had him with the paediatric doctor and they don’t see any immediate growth issues.

  ‘He’ll probably never play full back for Ireland, mind you,’ the specialist had said as he charged me an arm and a leg, but told me there was no need to reschedule an appointment.

  ‘OK, well, how about some toasted fingers and dippy boiled eggs? I’ll give you some grapes while you wait,’ I say now as I put the wine down carefully on the hall table, undo my wedges and pick him up. I know I shouldn’t, it’s another huge bone of contention between Colin and me. Colin literally flips out when I carry Mark. I know he is five but he’s still my baby. Junior infants. I have argued the use of the word infant with Colin a lot lately and I quote: ‘Infant: denoting something in an early stage of its development.’

  Colin thinks it’s weird that I still want to pick him up and says I’m doing Mark no favours by babying him all the time. But he is my baby. My last baby. I kiss him gently on the lips. I inhale him.

  ‘Yayyyyy, Mummy, do I have big school ’gain t’morrow?’

  ‘You do, sweetie.’ I hold him close and carry him into the kitchen. He smells of Monster Munch and markers.

  ‘Not long to go now before you get Christmas holidays and Santa comes!’ I whisper in my excited voice and I start to hum ‘Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer’.

  I stop in my tracks. The kitchen is a total bomb site. Dirty dishes, arts and crafts all over the table, Lego pieces all over the floor, the dirty washing strewn around by the machine, uniforms and tracksuits to be ironed piled up on the chair. I sigh.

  ‘What am I getting for lunch tomorrow? Alistair gets chocolate spread on crackers and when he squishes them together the chocolate comes out through the holes and it’s so funny, can I have that? Can I Mummy? Can I?’ Mark asks as I gently release him down to the floor.

  ‘Can I go out to Karen’s for, like, an hour?’ Jade is lounging against the kitchen door again. Looking sixteen. Light military-style denim shirt, grey legging and Uggs. Her blonde hair falling around her shoulders. A hand-made loom-band chocker around her long neck. Red and black. I did not look like that at her age.

  ‘No, it’s too late and too dark now … do you want a boiled egg, love?’ I ask her.

  ‘Can I, Mummy, can I?’ Mark pulls hard at my duffel.

  ‘Um … how come everyone else is allowed to go to Karen’s?’ Jade darts the words at me.

  ‘Can I, Mummy, can I? Can I? Can I?’ Mark tugs and tugs.

  ‘No, Mark, you are having Billy Bear Roll tomorrow OK?’ I look down at him, then to Jade. ‘Because I said so, now do you want a boiled egg?’

  The wait for her answer begins. It’s irritating me already because of the Colin-inflicted situation I find myself in, I know, but nonetheless I brush past her out to the hall table, pick up my wine and return to the kitchen, open the fridge and put it in
to chill more. I take a wine glass from the top shelf and add that to the freezer too. I love a frosted wine glass.

  ‘Uh no, coz, like, Brooklyn and Bailey are posting a new video anysecondnow and I have to be in m’room to watch it – and you know Dad won’t let me eat in m’room, Mom,’ she drawls.

  ‘All right, well, when you have watched it come down and I’ll make it for you then, OK, love?’ She is only eleven years old, I constantly have to remind myself. Still just a child. Growing up in a grown-up world. Jade slouches away in her fake cream eBay Uggs. I start to pick the clothes up off the floor and put them into the washing machine. I pull on a pair of dirty socks. The grey slate floor is freezing under me, but there’s no way I’m going upstairs to get my slippers.

  ‘Mark, why don’t you go in and watch CBeebies and I will call you when tea is ready?’ I take off my brown leather jacket, hang it on the back of the kitchen chair, walk over and flick on the central heating and suddenly I feel dog-tired. Weary. I prepare Mark a bowl of seedless red grapes and set about getting the kitchen back in order, making the lunches, locating all the bits of each uniform, ironing the uniforms and making the teas. Colin does not come back down. I see from the silver cartons and the leftovers on his unwashed plate he had ordered himself a Chinese takeaway. But not the kids. My kids hate Chinese takeaway. One year they both got a vomiting bug and the last food they had eaten was a Chinese takeaway. They can’t look at one since. I should be glad, I suppose, but sometimes it’s a bummer. I feed the kids their boiled eggs with toast separately, and get them both up the stairs, washed, teeth cleaned into their pyjamas and ready for bed. A new dawn, another new day, another chance for it to be better. I can hear the commentary from a football match blaring out of our bedroom. I read Mark another chapter from Rover Saves Christmas, the latest in our series of library borrowed Roddy Doyle books, for his bedtime story and allow Jade another half an hour in her treasured iPad world.

  * * *

  Pop! The wonderful sound of medicated relaxation. If only Pilates popped! If only fitness fizzed! I am bent over with the cold wine bottle between my legs and have successfully uncorked my reward.

  Taking my wine glass out of the freezer, I pour myself a large, unmeasured chilled glass.

  The unruly kitchen is now spotless, back to the way I left it earlier. I love my kitchen, don’t get me wrong. I don’t own a NutriBullet and I don’t shop organic at my local farmers’ market, but I do like to cook. The Greatest Cook in the World Award will never adorn my shelf but I do try and I just like spending time in the kitchen. It’s the warmest room in the house. That, and the fact there is a constant supply of strong tea, probably adds to my affection for it. Until I have ingested my first cup of tea of the day I’m still clinically asleep. Then another, then another, then another and I’m just about ready to face the day.

  I’m not bad at the few things I make, mind you. I taught myself how to make a great stew and I like homely dinners, like a baked ham and baked potatoes and broccoli. Mine will both eat broccoli, possibly the only veg they actually like. Mark is a bit better than Jade; he’ll eat corn and peas. Jade is afraid of any other veg, so broccoli it is.

  Like everyone, I’m afraid of all processed foods and hidden sugars now, so even the one-of-your-5-a-day smoothies I used to pay ridiculous money for and beg the kids to drink are now removed from my shopping list. I don’t have time to make fresh smoothies, sorry, but I just don’t. I’m not a juicer. I don’t want to become a raw, green, frightened human being. There is always fresh fruit in the house (don’t mind Colin and his withered apple comment) and that’s the best I can do. I slice banana into their Weetabix in the mornings (also now the only cereal I can apparently buy – given Coco Pops is almost as bad as dipping your licked finger deep down into the sugar bowl, I understand). I give grapes and apples for lunches, and I always try to hand them plates of cut-up fruit when they are watching TV. I remember fruit being considered a treat. When Granny Margaret gave me a ripe pear or a plate of strawberries I was in heaven. Ha!

  Anyway, my kitchen is a nice place. It’s all open plan with dark slate flooring and a long row of dark oak shelves; the American-style fridge is a vibrant glossy red and the kitchen table is also dark oak but with four red chairs around it. ‘Seriously stylish’, Corina calls it. There’s a sliding patio door that leads out onto our large back garden. The cream walls are covered in framed photos of the kids. Mostly black-and-white. Colin prefers black-and-white; I prefer colour. One wall is painted with metallic blackboard paint but no one ever chalks on it. It is too dark to see anything but out the back there are three wheelie bins – one brown, one black and one green – swings, a wrecked piece of garden furniture, a filthy barbecue and various bikes, flickers and scooters scattered around.

  We live in Dublin 6, in Ranelagh, just off Milltown Road, and it’s a lovely three-bedroom semi-detached house with real physical character. Castlebrick Road. All the houses on the street are painted a different colour – right now ours is a canary yellow. They must be freshly painted every year, in May, by law of the county council and it costs a bloody fortune!

  We live in No. 13.

  The superstitious digits put me off the house at first but Colin just told me to cop myself on, ‘It’s only a number. Would ya hand back thirteen million on the Lotto if ya won it?’

  Fair point.

  We were aware of it about to come on the market as a friend of Colin’s, Ado, the president of the Ranelagh Manchester United Supporters Group, had been renting it but was told he had to vacate as the landlord wanted to sell. That was twelve years ago, just before we were married, and we got it for what was considered, in the ridiculous Irish property boom, to be a good price!

  We still have a huge mortgage on it. Huge. Huge pressure to meet it every month.

  I take a sip of my fermented grape juice. It tangs on my tongue and rolls sharply down my throat. Nice drop of plonk, if I say so myself.

  I put it back on the table as I locate the two school bags and leave them out by the door with the coats on top. I Chubb lock and chain the hall door and finally I can sit down. Jobs all done.

  Closing the kitchen door softly, I pick up my wine and wearily plod into the sitting room. I’m so cold-blooded I still find the room chilly, so I throw the fleece blanket around my shoulders, grab the Sky remote controls – I draw the heavy navy curtains with silver threading, then I settle back into the black leather sofa and sip my wine. I flick. Nothing much catching my attention.

  Flick. Flick. Flick.

  The amount of Christmas ads for certain insanely expensive toys is so early, it’s bordering on propaganda.

  Don’t get me wrong, I understand the pressure Colin is under to make this house tick along. No, I don’t earn much of a salary to contribute, but the plain fact is I’m not qualified for any high-paid work.

  Flick.

  Grand Designs. Seen it. Still I watch for a while. Kevin McCloud’s voice is hypnotic. I can hear the muffled noise from Colin’s MacBook up above in our bedroom. I can’t go up to bed until he’s asleep. I can’t face it.

  Flick.

  I settle on a Friends repeat. ‘The One Where Rachel Tells Ross She Still Loves Him’. Ross and Rachel. Their wonderful on-screen chemistry and easy banter takes my mind off the day. Escapism. I’m only half watching – I’ve seen it so many times, I can say the dialogue word for word almost – but I have finished the glass already, so I pop back into the kitchen. When I return I take the bottle with me and put it on the floor, I relax back into my warm seat with the blanket. I’m laughing at something Ross did when the door opens and Colin is standing there in his Manchester United boxer shorts. I jump.

  ‘The fucking heat in this house, Ali, is that heating still on? Jade’s still on that iPad too, do you know that? It’s a quarter to ten, Ali!’

  He stares at the watch on his wrist as though it had just shouted the time out at him. His back-up. His ally. His second-in-command. The watch I bought him for his
thirtieth. A Tag. I saved up half my children’s allowance for a year for it. Silver strap with a deep red face. He adores it. He had picked me up and swung me around the bedroom. I’d kicked the wicker chair over and then he’d pretended he’d done his back in. We’d laughed and kissed and I was thrilled he’d liked it so much. Good times. He never took it off.

  Colin had never got much by way of presents as a kid. He was an only child and his dad suffered badly with MS from the early age of thirty, so his mother, Janet, had worked full-time in the local bakery and money was scarce. When they moved down to Dublin to live with his wealthy brother in Terenure, she got a job in Londis on the checkout. When his dad finally passed away fourteen years ago, Janet jacked in the job and moved back up to Belfast. Colin goes up now and then and sometimes takes the kids but not very often.

  ‘Ali?’ He throws his hands dramatically in the air now. The Tag moves slightly up his arm.

  ‘Oh, sorry, yeah, I forgot. Sorry, I’ll go up to her now.’ I go to stand up.

  ‘No, stay where you are, I’ll do it. And can ya keep the telly turned down and turn off the heating?’ He nods at my wine bottle on the floor and smirks out a laugh.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I ask.

  ‘No … nothing … oh, by the way, are we going to talk about you going away for this whole weekend? Because I know you have to tell yer woman Collette tomorrow, don’t you, and it doesn’t look like you are coming up to bed anytime soon.’

  ‘I’d like to go to bed now, actually.’ Dutch courage. I move the blanket off me. It has to be done. This can’t go on. He’ll be in a better mood once we do it. Get it out of the way.

  He eyes me suspiciously. His tone softens, though.

  ‘Have you sorted anyone to collect Jade after this gymnastics thing, because honestly I’m up to my tits on Friday with NewsXtreme paperwork, I’ll be lucky to make Laura’s by six.’ His face is less annoyed looking.

  ‘Yeah, I have, you can collect her from Emma’s mum’s at seven, she’s having her tea there. I’ll text you the address and Laura’s fine with six, and she’s taking Mark to McDonald’s.’