The Family Gift Read online

  Sure, occasionally I’ll buy another pair of shoes – not expensive ones – and I’ll secrete them in my big shoe library and not mention them to Dan. But neither of us lie over the big things, that’s not the way to have a marriage. You need kindness, respect, truth – my mother would always have said that’s what it took when we were growing up, that’s what she had with Dad.

  She gives him kindness and love now, but truth . . . there’s no truth to be had in sitting beside a man whose mind may or may not be there and saying, ‘I don’t know how long you’re going to last, darling and I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to look after you.’

  No, truth is sometimes kinder left unsaid.

  But in a living breathing marriage between two living breathing and aware people, truth is important; I know that and yet I can’t bring myself to tell him. So I lie.

  ‘I’m trying to do without the sleeping tablets,’ I say. And even as the words come out of my mouth I feel like a heel.

  ‘That’s great, darling,’ he says and he sounds so hopeful.

  ‘I can’t stay on them any longer,’ I go on. Once you get started on a lie, it just grows and grows, but I am beginning to hate this version of myself. ‘I was tired last night and I snapped because Lexi was all made up . . .’

  I can barely finish telling him exactly what happened because I am so ashamed.

  ‘Lexi messaged me,’ he said, ‘and told me she’d sent a photo of herself to Elisa . . .’

  I can’t help it: I shudder.

  ‘She told you?’

  ‘She told me,’ he said ‘and she’s really upset. She thought it was OK, that you didn’t mind her seeing Elisa and now, now she knows you do.’

  ‘It’s more complex than that,’ I say, and explain. ‘She wouldn’t talk to me afterwards. I put some lunch in her schoolbag this morning but I don’t know if she’ll eat it. What if she gets an eating disorder and it’s all my fault because I said something stupid and—’

  ‘Calm down, honey,’ says my husband. He hasn’t berated me or told me I’m a moron or shouted at me. He’s been loving and kind and I don’t deserve any of it.

  Maura and Pip have taken a long weekend away when all hell breaks loose.

  First, Granddad Eddie takes a fall against the jamb of his bedroom door on Saturday morning and Mum thinks he might have seriously damaged his wrist.

  When my mother phones to ask if I can come over to take care of Dad and Granny Bridget, I can hear Eddie roaring in the background that he is not, repeat not, going near a hospital.

  ‘They get you in there and you come out in a box!’ he’s roaring. ‘Crowd of quacks. No way. I’m not doing it.’

  ‘You think he’ll keep saying that when he’s in the hospital?’ I ask, mentally working out what I need to reorganise.

  ‘Definitely,’ says Mum. ‘We’ll be the most popular people in the whole place, I should imagine. I might draw up a sign that says: “We are related but I do not agree with anything he is saying. I love doctors, nurses and everyone here.”’

  ‘I’d add a bit to the sign,’ I say, laughing. ‘Write: “The sooner he gets out of here, the sooner the noise level will drop.” And say sorry a lot.’

  ‘I spend my life saying sorry for Eddie,’ Mum sighs. ‘To the police when he makes V-signs at them, to the carers, to my mother’s poor innocent cat because he shakes his stick at her all the time. I love him and he’s so good to your father but he’s tricky.’

  Dan is put in charge of taking the kids bowling and on the off-chance, because who knows how long Mum will be with Eddie in casualty, I fire off a text to Scarlett asking if she and Jack are around to add fun to the weekend.

  Dan’s perfectly capable of looking after our three children but the gap in ages means that what Lexi wants to do – meander by the clothes shops en route to the bowling alley – will not be what Teddy or Liam want to do – buy ice cream/have a go on the shopping centre’s mini carousel.

  Plus, Lexi is not her usual sunny self because since the make-up debacle there has been no contact with Elisa and she is blaming me. I have not contacted Elisa but Lexi doesn’t believe me.

  ‘She thinks you told Elisa to back off,’ Dan reports back to me.

  ‘But I didn’t,’ I say. ‘Did you?’

  ‘No. There was no need. Elisa just says whatever she thinks people want to hear. She never acts on it. I knew nobody would contact us from Surella.’

  ‘And you told her this?’ I ask.

  ‘I told her that neither of us stopped Elisa from contacting her but she doesn’t believe me, either,’ he says sadly.

  I can think of nothing else, so today’s emergency has come at a bad time, hence me phoning my sister.

  Normally, Scarlett replies instantly but today, she doesn’t, so I tell Dan he’s on his own.

  ‘I am not an idiot who needs assistance with my own kids,’ he says, definitely affronted.

  You could tell him that normally, you do more child-minding than he does, even though he’s good, but just sayin’. . .

  Mildred, shut up, I tell her.

  ‘Course you’re not, honey,’ I say, hugging Dan, ‘but it’s easier to handle three in the bowling alley/shopping centre with multiple pairs of hands.’

  Copped out?

  He’s a brilliant husband, and stop causing trouble, Mildred. I swear, I am taking up Buddhism if only to get you off my back.

  I concentrate on my here-and-now husband. ‘And Lexi is still not herself,’ I say to Dan. ‘A bit of retail therapy with Scarlett might cheer her up, and you hate shops.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he admits grudgingly.

  Eddie is clearly in a lot of pain when I get to Mum’s in fifteen minutes’ flat, and the pain is not making him any happier.

  ‘Painkillers,’ he pleads. ‘You’ve got a box of strong pain yokes somewhere, I know you have,’ he says to Mum.

  ‘You need an X-ray and stop shouting at me, Eddie. I’m not giving you anything stronger than paracetamol until someone with medical training sees you.’

  I’d hold on till I got some Hillbilly Heroin in me, Mildred says.

  My mother does not have Oxycontin lying around, Mildred. You are so low rent, I tell her.

  And which one of us is using sleeping tablets like sweeties, huh?

  Bitch.

  Mildred knows how to hurt me. Besides, I’m seriously low in my stash of precious sleeping tablets. I have not been tailing off gently the way I’m supposed to be doing. At this rate, I’ll be coming off them cold turkey and that’s going to be fun – not. I have googled the side effects and they all sound terrible.

  With Eddie grousing and his arm in a sling, my mother and Eddie head off.

  Dad, Bridget and Delilah, the cat, are all watching The Waltons, which is one of Bridget’s favourite programmes.

  Poor Dad, I think – he never gets to choose his own telly anymore. Someone always does it for him: Eddie and his WWII shows and Bridget with her 1960s and 1970s classics.

  Everything appears to be fine on Walton Mountain and I lean against the door jamb quietly, thinking back to those days when I was a child, when The Waltons was always on TV and everything was fine.

  Delilah scrambles off the couch – her days of leaping are long behind her – and makes her way to me, whereupon she weaves her body in between my legs, tail aloft.

  ‘Freya!’ says Bridget in delight, even though I can see her face is streaked with tears along with the make-up she carefully applies each day. High-emotion crying, I assume, thanks to Eddie’s accident.

  ‘We were going to have tea and watch some episodes of The Love Boat!’

  ‘I’ll make the tea,’ I say, going over to hug Dad and make sure he hasn’t slipped down in his wheelchair. I kiss his warm forehead and suddenly, I want to cry too.

  It’s that damn Waltons
theme tune. It whacks me over the head with thoughts of earlier, happier times. Mum loved it. She never appears to watch television anymore – she reads. Non-fiction only. Biographies and autobiographies. Nothing later than the 1930s.

  ‘I tried that wonderful biography of the Romanovs,’ she told me once, ‘and I cried too much. So I’m beginning to think that 1900 should be my cut-off point. Before that, I can distance myself.’

  I make tea and sort out Bridget with some hidden biscuits before feeding Dad some lukewarm tea very carefully. His face never changes even though he’s facing the TV and I’m talking quietly to him. Sometimes, he gets facial tics but that’s all they are: not emotions darting across his face, as we once all hoped. His face is now a mask and I always think how strange it is that we assume our faces are who we are, and yet they’re not. We are the emotions behind the face. Nobody shows this more than Dad.

  By six, I’ve made dinner, fed Dad his meal and am waiting for the arrival of Kevin, one of the best of Dad’s carers, who will stay with him and get him into bed by half eight.

  Mum has rung at intervals but it seems casualty is jammed with serious cases and Eddie’s wrist is not high on the list of priorities.

  ‘I think we might be next but that’s only if nothing else serious comes in.’ She sounds exhausted.

  ‘I’ll get Scarlett to race over here and take over, in case this goes on longer,’ I say decisively. ‘You can’t sit there all night. Mind you, neither can poor Eddie.’

  I phone Scarlett and she answers when I’ve almost given up hope.

  ‘Hello, finally!’ I say and while I don’t mean to sound narky, it comes out that way.

  ‘Hello,’ she replies, sounding as if she has the worst cold in the world.

  ‘You’re sick?’ I ask, seeing this plan disintegrate. A sick person cannot help in the house of invalids.

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘Thank goodness,’ I say, and race through chapter and verse of what has gone wrong and how I need her help.

  ‘OK,’ she says flatly.

  ‘Really?’ I ask. ‘You sound – a little off.’

  ‘Just a bit,’ she says, with a hiccup. ‘Jack’s left. But I’ll be right over.’ And she hangs up.

  In twenty minutes, Scarlett arrives at the house and while she is still Scarlett, she is also not. This woman has hollowed eyes, is dressed in very warm clothing, even though it’s late June, and neither hair nor make-up were a priority before she left. In short, she looks nothing like my beloved sister.

  ‘Don’t.’ She holds a hand up as I rush up to her to hug her, ask what happened, comfort her.

  I stop.

  ‘Please. Don’t. I can cope if you are not nice to me or don’t ask anything. You didn’t tell Bridget?’

  ‘Heck, no,’ I said. ‘She’d cry for a week.’

  ‘Great.’

  This automaton of a sister walks into the house and manages a reasonable performance for our grandmother, who is now into her Saturday evening viewing of Miss Marple.

  I follow Scarlett into the kitchen like a dog and she holds up the hand again.

  ‘Freya, I can’t talk about it.’

  ‘But when did he . . .?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ she says tightly. ‘We started to row and he just packed and walked out. That’s it. I can’t say anything else. Go to Mum. Don’t tell her. Not yet. Please.’

  I sigh. ‘Fine.’

  Gathering up some bottled water and a couple of the energy bars my mother uses when she’s truly exhausted, I text Dan to check in and to tell him that I’m on my way to the hospital to take over and head off.

  It’s midnight before I get Eddie back home with his broken wrist in a cast and plenty of medication to be doled out by someone else.

  ‘He asked could he double up on the tablets if the pain was really bad,’ says the lovely nurse who’s been taking care of him, and is one of the few people he hasn’t been rude to because she got his measure pretty quick. Plus, he appears to fancy her.

  ‘That’s very Eddie,’ I murmured back at her. ‘If in doubt, take two.’

  ‘And no whiskey, Mr Abalone,’ she adds sternly, after he’s already offered to take her out for a drink to say thanks, but only hard spirits, none of that girly shite with cocktail umbrellas in it.

  Eddie, who is definitely slightly in love, but that could be the painkillers, smiles a very naughty smile.

  ‘He lives with my mother and she will be in charge of the drugs,’ I say.

  ‘Did you write down your phone number?’ roars Eddie to her as we head out the door.

  ‘Eddie,’ I say, ‘you’ve got fifty years on that woman.’

  ‘Plenty of tunes to be played on an old fiddle,’ he laughs.

  I hope it’s the painkillers. It’s not that I’m even slightly against nonagenarian romance but I fear for any poor woman Eddie lusts after.

  I finally fall into my own bed at one in the morning and my mind, free of Eddie and his problems, swerves right back to poor Scarlett. It’s so unfair, so sad.

  If Life were to give my family any more lemons right now, I’d throw them right back and keep at it ferociously until Life got a black eye, serious bruising and a few broken ribs.

  Atta girl, says Mildred.

  Over the weekend, news of Jack’s departure filters through the whole family.

  Mum, Maura and I, via phone, discuss it endlessly.

  ‘I would never have seen it coming,’ says Maura. ‘They love each other. They’re like that couple in Love Story – I swear it. Nothing could break them, nothing.’

  ‘Something did,’ I say and I think that sometimes, the pain of life can just be too much. Look at Eileen in my support group. She’s getting on with life but something has certainly died in her soul with the death of her beloved daughter.

  Con does none of the phone discussions but says he’s putting all his mates on the job of finding Jack, who has gone missing.

  ‘That’s no help,’ says Maura crossly. ‘What are they going to do if they find him: handcuff him and haul him back home to Scarlett?’

  ‘Well, I’m only trying to help,’ says Con. ‘I could reason with him . . .’

  ‘If he’s gone, it’s because he wanted to go, Con,’ I point out gently. ‘All the reasoning in the world won’t change that.

  Jack’s family, just as mystified and all anxious to descend on Scarlett to support her, have heard nothing from him.

  Scarlett refuses to talk to anyone but me, Mum and Maura, and makes me deal with them.

  ‘I can’t talk about it or have Jack’s entire family land up here sobbing and saying they’ll make him change his mind,’ she says in a monotone. ‘His mother keeps phoning me and texting, saying he’ll come to his senses, she knows he will. But he won’t, so I can’t talk to them.’

  I am now the UN Secretary General of Scarlett’s in-laws’ family talks – and am coping with a weeping Lexi, who is upset at Elisa leaving the country without talking to her.

  Lexi arrives into our bedroom at seven the morning after Eddie’s late-night hospital jaunt and sobbing, holds out her phone: ‘She’s gone!’ she says, and she falls into bed beside me and cries her heart out.

  Somehow, a sleepy Dan retrieves the phone from the bed and finds his ex-wife’s latest Instagram shots: at a party in Madrid.

  ‘Why would she go and not say anything?’ sobs Lexi and there’s nothing I can do but hold her, stroke her softly, and tell her that we’ll never leave her.

  Dan tries to undo some of the damage: ‘Elisa isn’t used to telling people what she’s doing, darling,’ he says, but his words only make Lexi sob harder.

  I shake my head at him, and keep stroking Lexi until she calms, then I suggest we clamber into her bed and watch The Gilmore Girls on my iPad with some hot chocolate.

  ‘With marshmallo
ws?’ she asks, her little face tear-stained.

  ‘Marshmallows and chocolate swizzle sticks,’ I say.

  ‘Mum, you’re the best,’ Lexi says, snuggling into me and I close my eyes and sigh with relief. I have her back and I vow, I am never losing her again.

  I’m also getting ready for a big interview Nina has lined up for me, and, when the children are at school, spending a lot of time sitting at my desk staring at old recipes and worrying about work.

  I’ve done some cooking demonstration work for big stores, which pays well, but the book and TV show money won’t be long trickling away if there isn’t more coming soon. This is the wrong time to give up sleeping tablets so I take my life in my hands and visit my friend, Dr AJ again.

  ‘Two more weeks of tablets. But that is it, Freya,’ he says.

  ‘AJ, look at my life right now,’ I beg. ‘If I can’t sleep, I certainly can’t work.’

  ‘You’ve got to consider going to a psychiatrist. And a therapist.’

  ‘I have my group,’ I say smugly. ’It’s made a huge difference.’

  ‘That’s not enough.’

  ‘It is,’ I reply.

  Scarlett is scarily calm.

  Thanks to Con, reports keep coming in of Jack: he’s been seen in a bar in town; seen walking on Sandymount Strand in the rain – a sign of his brokenness?

  Seen with a woman, not his sister/sister-in-law/any other female friend that could possibly be helping out and not be attached romantically – seen as appalling behaviour.

  Nobody tells Scarlett any of this but everyone in the Abalone clan is that strange combination of wounded, mystified and utterly enraged that he would hurt Scarlett. The mystified bit comes from the fact that they are like one person. Have been since they met. Jack and Scarlett. Scarlett and Jack. It’s like one word. And how they have coped over the last few years – Jack has been quite simply the perfect husband, perfect man.

  ‘He’s my best friend,’ Scarlett always used to say. And I have always believed her.

  I ring every day and meet her every few days for lunch or a cup of coffee.