The Family Gift Read online

  This is the first time I’ve said any of this out loud to another human being. I had skirted around this when I spoke to AJ, my doctor, but that’s all.

  If I had been going to the putative counsellor or attending some sort of a victim support group, I might have spoken of The Fear there. But I wasn’t doing any of those things. So here, in this little café, I was telling this woman I barely knew about The Fear.

  ‘Tell me what this fear is like, how it effects your body,’ said Miss Primrose, all pretence at drinking her Earl Grey abandoned. And I began to tell her.

  14

  Laugh and the world laughs with you

  Now that the idea is firmly set in my head, I can’t wait to do it. At home, inspired by Miss Primrose, I do more internet surfing. I hate the idea of sobbing in a room with strangers. That is not who I am.

  But maybe this will help me learn to live with it – as well as the guilt from all the lying I’ve done about my putative ‘group’. The guilt is like a living, breathing entity for every half-truth to my family. Lying to my beloved Dan is worst of all. How can our marriage have come to this? Me being untruthful about the things that matter? Me hiding this inner rage against Elisa, the terror that she’ll somehow take Lexi away from me?

  I have to deal with this pain and for that, first, I need practical help and preferably a victim support group that takes place on Thursdays.

  You’re not asking for much. Mildred is predictably acidic.

  I ignore her and continue my internet trawl. Only one victim support group fits the bill.

  They might all be weirdos, I think, as I click ‘contact’, but this is it.

  Then I just have to wait.

  An hour later, my phone pings.

  My contact turns out to be someone called Ariel and via text messages, she sounds dreamy and young, peppering her text with words about ‘healing energy’.

  She’s on the message board but full access is only available to complete members of the physical group, so I have no idea what her story is. I wish I knew. Wondering if I’m being absolutely crazy, I agree to meet Ariel outside a coffee shop in the city centre at a quarter to seven on Thursday.

  ‘I’ve got this long brocade sort of Chinese thing I’m wearing at the moment,’ Ariel writes: ‘it’s black, so that’s how you’ll recognise me. I have a rucksack. It’s orange.’

  I think Thursday will never come – now that I’ve made the decision, I can’t wait to do it. I’ve messed up everything with my lies. Why couldn’t I tell Dan and everyone else that what happened to me in January left me feeling broken? Why can’t I let myself be vulnerable?

  *

  I get there early on Thursday evening, scanning the passers-by anxiously.

  And finally, just on time, a girl shows up wearing a long brocade Chinese coat and with a shabby orange rucksack. I think that Ariel probably should have mentioned the jet black hair with the purple extensions. I mean, that would be the way you could recognise someone. But maybe she changes them all the time. Surprised at how anxious I am, I go over to her and say, ‘Ariel?’

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘Freda, you came, I’m Ariel.’

  ‘I love your hair,’ I say.

  She idly twirls a bit of purple.

  ‘I’m getting bored with the purple but I’m keeping the black. My mum doesn’t like it but she doesn’t mind, it’s whatever makes me happy, isn’t it?’

  I put Ariel at about twenty-five and there is something so sweet and beautiful about her heart-shaped face and yet her eye make-up is as dark and her lips are a purplish-black colour. I feel really guilty for calling myself Freda, but I’m so terrified I’ll be recognised, although it’s not as if I’m the President or a movie star or anything. It’s just that the weirdest people recognise me and I don’t want anyone knowing who I am tonight. To that end, I’ve tied up my hair in a scarf which mainly makes me look like I’m auditioning for a part in a play about Rosie the Riveter, but still. I’m disguised. This is my secret. My pain. I have to be in charge of it.

  As the secret-me, I can sit in a room with a group of people who have been scared and perhaps, just perhaps, I can talk about it. Feel something, get something out of my system quickly because that’s what I need.

  Like having a tooth pulled. Extraction. Clean and simple. One trip should do it. Right?

  If it’s awful, I can run and never go back. I’ll sit near the door.

  ‘There’s time for takeaway coffee.’ Ariel insists, dragging me into a small café, her girlish charm still so appealing. ‘We do have tea and coffee but they always forget important things like sugar and if I can’t have sugar, I can’t relax because there’s something comforting about the sweetness . . .’

  She talks in a stream of consciousness, as if nothing bad ever happened to her but her eyes are sad. Again, I think, what happened to you? It must be like being in prison where you are afraid to ask what someone is in for, or maybe you do. Who knows.

  But apart from her sad eyes, lovely ethereal Ariel does a good job of pretending as if nothing bad could have happened to her. It’s as if this is a project she’s taking on and it’s nice to meet wounded people on a Thursday evening every two weeks. Once we’ve got the coffee, she brings me to an ancient, unloved mobile phone repair shop. Beside the shop is a shabby door left open to the stairs above and we climb them.

  ‘Not the most beautiful place,’ she says, ‘but it’s free. It’s a community centre during the day.’

  ‘And how does it work?’ I say, my speech speeding up as we climb.

  What if they want names, details? I need to know exactly how this works because otherwise I’ll get anxious.

  ‘I don’t want to say the wrong thing or start talking when I’m not supposed to.’

  We stop outside a door that’s ajar and Ariel shines me a smile of such sweetness and kindness.

  ‘There’s no wrong way to do it,’ she says.

  If only that were true.

  The room itself has three couches, all utterly threadbare, along with uncomfortable-looking school chairs and one very ornate armchair that might have come from another century. There are all sorts of community notices and posters on the wall and it’s clear that this room is used as a meeting place for lots of different groups. There are eleven people in the room, all ages, men and women, and I walk in self- consciously, keeping my bescarfed head down and trying to appear invisible, which is very difficult when you’re my height.

  ‘This is Freda,’ says Ariel in her soft breathy voice.

  Everyone says hello cautiously.

  I’m on edge. I immediately don’t like it. Strangers sitting here to talk about stuff. No, this isn’t for me.

  ‘Give it half an hour,’ says Ariel beside me, as if she knows what’s going through my head. She drags me to a couch, takes off her boots and sits crosslegged beside me, utterly at ease. ‘I felt the same at first. Just listen.’

  So I do.

  One elderly man was mugged too but even though I can feel empathy for his pain, I have nothing in common with him. Nothing.

  I can’t engage with his story because he’s so frail and it hurts to imagine him being beaten, so I do my best to stop listening and look around the room, surreptitiously, in case everyone thinks I’m judging them. The room is horrible, I decide. The others are all listening keenly, drinking their tea or coffee, relaxing into what’s obviously a safe space for them. I don’t belong here.

  A woman talks about her home being burgled. I feel my heart race. I don’t want to listen. What if our home gets burgled? I couldn’t cope.

  The Fear roars up in me. I can’t take any more.

  Suddenly, I’m on my feet, swinging my bag onto my shoulder.

  ‘Sorry,’ I whisper at Ariel and I’m out the door, rushing down the stairs and out into the street. I half walk, half run away, expecting Ariel t
o come after me, to beg me to stay. But she doesn’t: nobody does.

  *

  Melody Garot’s honeyed voice and moving music has accompanied me all the way from my house to Kilkenny. Normally, driving and listening to music relaxes me. Today, the hatchback – a vehicle with too many miles on it and too many hopes and dreams pinned to it – has suddenly developed squealing brakes, which sound as if some enormous, long-necked bird is putting up a fierce fight while being strangled right beside a loudspeaker. People stand and look at the car as I pass whenever braking is required. That is to say, at every small town and traffic lights.

  With my vast mechanical experience (almost zero), I know that this shrieking means my brake pads need to be replaced. But I have to be in Kilkenny for lunchtime, I have no clue how long actual brake-pad changing takes (an hour, a day?) and I know, from a previous experience of this, that I can drive with shrieking pads as long as I crawl along and get them fixed as soon as possible.

  Possible is tomorrow.

  Lorraine has driven her own car for once because she has family in Kilkenny and is going to stay over. I am not. Brake pads or not, I may just propel myelf home with the force of my rage/anxiety – who knew they were so similar – because Dan phones me when I arrive in Kilkenny for the corporate event to inform me that Elisabetta – we are, clearly, now calling her that – rang asking if she and Lexi could meet up that evening for coffee.

  ‘Coffee?’ I yell into the phone. ‘Lexi is fourteen: fourteen-year-olds don’t go out in the evening for coffee! They do their homework, have showers, and get into cuddly pyjamas before reading Harry Potter books with a few precious teddies lined up on the bed!’

  ‘I told her that but it’s a quick thing – half an hour in Giorgio and Patrick’s at seven. Maura’s coming over to take care of Liam and Teddy, although if Teddy gets wind of it, she’ll want to go. She’s passionately attracted to their cake cabinet.’

  ‘I won’t be home by seven,’ I say, stricken. It will be closer to nine and I start to run through scenarios in my head where I drive at death-defying speeds so I can arrive in the café to make sure Elisa doesn’t say anything cretinous and hurt my precious Lexi.

  ‘I’ll be there,’ says Dan, really trying to calm me. ‘It’s going to be fine, Freya, love. Elisabetta won’t hang around: you know that. But Lexi has to be allowed to get to know her.’

  ‘Yes,’ I squeak, knowing this is the moral thing to do but still, the ache inside me makes me want to beg Dan to keep Elisa away from our daughter.

  What if Lexi prefers her as a mother? What then?

  Lorraine, who could take her pick of any spy job should the opportunity arise, figures that I am in a towering rage from the way I am slicing carrots when she enters our catering area.

  ‘There’s something frightening about the way you’re doing that,’ she remarks, standing well back as she puts down the rest of the stuff.

  ‘I had to do something!’ I hiss, slicing with a fierce intensity.

  ‘We haven’t got all the equipment in yet. We don’t start the voodoo sacrifice for ages.’

  I glare up at her and her face, concerned and wise, makes the anger dissolve into tears in an instant.

  ‘Elisa wants to take Lexi out for coffee,’ I say miserably, snatching up some kitchen roll and wiping my eyes.

  ‘When?’

  ‘This evening.’

  ‘Lexi’s a kid. Kids don’t do evening dates, do they?’ says Lorraine.

  ‘No. Dan is going too, it’s only going to be for half an hour but I swear the bloody woman picked a day when I wasn’t around.’

  ‘She doesn’t sound bright enough to be that manipulative,’ says Lorraine and I glare again.

  ‘She might be!’

  ‘Think this through, Freya,’ says Lorraine, removing the knife from my hand, dragging up one of our stools and shoving me onto it. ‘Make-up launches hardly last forever. It’s not as if L’Oreal have signed her. It’ll be over in a few weeks and she’ll go back home to Spain. End of. Just hold your nerve.’

  I get home, screeching brake pads and all, by a quarter to nine, to find a candle burning on the coffee table. Two glasses are waiting for me and Dan, some cheese and crackers are ready with napkins and my home-made chutney, and a bottle of red wine has been opened and being allowed to breathe.

  Dan, who likes wine but has no time for any of the associated carry-on that so many men immerse themselves in, is clearly doing it all for me.

  Not that I’m a wine connoisseur myself but as a chef, I understand a fair bit about it. I still get swayed in the off- licence by bottles with pretty labels, though.

  I ignore the set-up and race upstairs, taking two steps at a time and collide with Dan on the landing.

  His strong arms grab me.

  ‘All asleep,’ he whispers, and I let out a huge breath of rage.

  Lexi cannot be asleep. She’s so often awake at this time, in half-sleep but still awake.

  ‘I’ll keep my eyes open till you get home, Mum,’ she always says when I’m out on a job.

  ‘Damn,’ I say, and he hugs me into him but my body is too stiff and angry. I pull away and step quietly into her room where I swear, the scent is different from normal. Lexi normally wears a light flowery perfume she got from her aunt Scarlett for her fourteenth birthday, something entirely suitable for a girl of her age. But her room now smells of something sexy and grown up.

  Elisa’s bloody perfume, I think, furiously.

  In her bed, Lexi is lying the way she always does, dark hair fanned out, her teddies and old cuddlies still there on the bed but on her bedside table is something new: a publicity shot of Elisa propped up against the lamp: all glossed lips and hair tweaked to within an inch of its life. I can’t read the writing at the bottom, so I take the photo onto the landing and look.

  ‘To darling Lexi, to lots of fun, love and hugs, Elisabetta.’

  If AJ was there, he might think I was psychotic at that moment because I want to rip the photo into shreds, then set fire to them. I want to ring bloody Elisa and tell her to stay away from us but I can’t.

  Dan is suddenly holding me and at first, my body is rigid with rage, and then I lean into him and let myself cry. We stand there for several minutes, and while I always get such solace from my husband, tonight I cannot. He can’t understand this. He doesn’t hate Elisa the way I do.

  Finally, he moves, takes the damn picture and replaces it, then leads me by the hand downstairs and into the den where he pours me some wine and sits on the couch with me, holding me.

  ‘I’m sorry, baby,’ he says. ‘I know it’s so hard. I know you can’t bear her near our daughter but we have to.’

  ‘Why?’ I say, sobbing, pushing the wine away. ‘She can’t want to be involved now. She can’t. I don’t want her here. We’re a family, not bloody Elisa or Elisabetta which is stupid, because who changes their name at her age? She’s so fake, and who says “to lots of fun . . .” to a child? Who does that?’

  Dan takes a slurp of wine and winces. He really is a beer man. Despite my pain, I feel huge love for him because he’s carefully organised all the things I like for my return.

  ‘You bought this because you liked the picture on the front, didn’t you?’ he says.

  I nod.

  Golden leaves with a background of hills made me buy it, along with delicate writing redolent of ancient times. A Chianti.

  I take the glass from him, drink some and wipe my eyes with one of the napkins. Dan unwraps his arms from me and almost automatically, I cut some cheese and eat it.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The three of us sat and Elisa talked about the make-up and what bloggers she’d been talking to. It’s a whole new world out there, darling,’ he said, ‘but she seems to know what she’s talking about and Lexi certainly does.’

  ‘Did she ask anyt
hing about Lexi, though?’ I rasp out.

  ‘Yes. She wanted to know about school, although she doesn’t have much of a grasp of the educational system, given that she went through it herself. But then . . .’ Dan looks into the distance ‘. . . Elisa and her gang were great ones for bunking off school. Lexi said she’s doing her Junior Cert exam next year and Elisa said it used to be called the Inter Cert in our day, and she asked what subjects Elisa liked.’

  I could feel fear rise up in me, different yet worse than The Fear that comes in the middle of the night when I relive my mugging.

  Elisa was interested? What did this mean? I would not let her take Lexi from me.

  ‘Why’s she so fascinated now?’ I ask flatly.

  Dan shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’

  My fear coalesces into one lethal spear point.

  ‘You need to find out,’ I say to him and my voice is cold. ‘Or I will.’

  Leaving everything where it is, I head upstairs again and into our room. Within moments, I am in bed, sleeping tablet swallowed. I cannot face this right now. Dan is ignoring the danger Elisa poses to our life. She cannot ruin what we have. I won’t let her.

  I have to pretend I have a cold the next morning: it’s the only way to explain my reddened eyes and the hollows underneath them.

  I can’t cope with Dan at all because I feel that he’s brought all of this on top of us.

  I pretend to drink a lemon and paracetamol hot drink during breakfast and blow my nose a lot as I ask Lexi how she got on the evening before.

  ‘It was wonderful,’ she says, eyes shining. ‘Elisabetta’s got this plan for what she’s going to do next: she wants to build a . . . What was it, Dad?’

  Dan looks at me from under hooded lids. ‘Lifestyle blog,’ he supplies.

  ‘Yes! Isn’t that cool! She wants my advice too because she says younger people are the way forward.’

  I’m sure that’s a song lyric but say nothing narky. ‘Lovely,’ I say, dredging up some enthusiasm from somewhere.

  ‘She wants to see me again soon but we don’t know when we can fit it in,’ Lexi adds and that’s when I look at Dan, stricken.