Chapter 3
THE FEAR
Laura
It has been almost thirty years since Laura O’Kane felt this kind of fear.
There is nothing in the world like it. Even though it is a Thursday night, this is definitely more than a little reminiscent of the Sunday night fear of her youth.
It might even be worse. In fact she is pretty sure it is worse.
It might even be worse than any dread about going back to work after a fortnight away in Spain, or even after her maternity leave with her only child – a now seventeen-year-old diva by the name of Robyn.
And the toughest thing to swallow about it all is that she chose this for herself.
This particular brand of existential dread is one she signed up for of her own free will.
She is no longer legally obligated to go to school.
She is not under the age of sixteen and hasn’t been for some considerable time.
And yet, here she is about to embark on what she has started to refer to as her ‘learning journey’.
Tomorrow she walks into the Magee College campus of Ulster University and registers to start studying for her degree.
She’s aware that ‘learning journey’ sounds cheesy.
She was aware of that even before Robyn rolled her eyes to the heavens and made a mock gagging sound.
In fact, she only started calling it her learning journey to exact that very response from her teenage daughter.
If there was one thing Laura’s powerhouse of a mother, Kitty, had taught her in her far too short time on this earth it was that embarrassing your offspring makes all those hours in labour worthwhile.
The gentle teasing that she shares with Robyn now was like an echo of the teasing she had shared with Kitty, and it made missing her a little easier to bear.
It’s hard to think it is already almost a year since Kitty O’Hagan finally succumbed to the cancer that she had been doing her best to defeat for years.
Then again, there are many times when Laura thinks, How can it only be a year?
In those times it feels so much longer and the ache in her heart still has the power to stop her in her tracks.
Those times come when she almost lifts the phone to call her mum.
Or when she sees something in the shops she just knows Kitty would love and almost, almost lifts it until the realisation sets in once again.
And Kitty would be the first person to tell her to pull herself together and stop her whinging.
Sure, hadn’t she, on her deathbed, made Laura promise that she would not spend hours or days weeping and crying over her once she was gone?
‘My wee pet,’ she’d called her with affection, the like of which Laura has never received from any other person.
‘It will be really sad. It will be hard. You will feel broken, and that’s okay.
Because I’m pretty amazing.’ Kitty had done her best to wink, her paper-thin skin almost translucent at that stage.
‘But you’re even more amazing. And you’ll know that if I’m not here, then I’m not in pain any more – and I am so done with being in pain.
It takes over your life and the life of the people around you.
You’ve been so good to me, but you need to be good to yourself now.
Do the things you always wanted to do. Promise me that, dote.
Don’t lose more weeks and months to grief. It’s already taken enough from us all.’
Kitty, if she were here, would be as proud of Laura right now as she had been on the night before her first day in Primary 1.
There might not be a uniform to hang out or a Snoopy lunchbox to fill, but Laura can imagine her mum would sit holding her hand and talking through the big adventure that was to come.
‘Now, be nice to all the boys and girls,’ Kitty would say. ‘But not too nice to the boys.’ She’d wink and give a cheeky laugh. ‘Don’t be afraid to answer the questions the teacher asks.’
It’s a lecturer, not a teacher, Laura thinks, enjoying the daydream of this conversation as if it were real.
As if Kitty really were sitting beside her, the smell of her Chanel No5 perfume hanging in the air.
Laura would lean her head onto her mum’s shoulder and feel the soft touch of Kitty’s lips on the top of her head.
‘Lecturer, teacher, sure it’s all the same,’ Kitty would say.
‘Anyway, just speak up and speak clearly and remember you are just as good as anyone in that room, teacher and all included. You earned your place and you’re going to fly, my wee pet. ’
Laura closes her eyes and swears she can really hear her mother’s voice, and feel the warmth of her body. She stays that way for a moment or two, revelling in the perfect illusion before it is interrupted abruptly by the sound of Robyn at the bedroom door.
‘MUM! Did you see my geography text book? I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it. Mrs Keenan will kill me if I don’t have it.’
Eyes springing open, Laura looks at her daughter, who is already looking much too like a grown woman for her comfort, and shakes her head.
‘No, love. I’ve not. Would it be on the kitchen table? Did you do your homework there before?’
Robyn shakes her head. ‘No!’ she says mournfully. ‘I looked and all but it’s not there. I bet I left it in Mia’s house. Or she swiped it out of my school bag on Friday. She’s always up to something. I’ll text her…’
With that, and without Laura having to say another word, her daughter skips off down the hall into her own room already humming along to some tune by some band no one outside Generation Z or whatever they’re called seems to have heard of.
Peace returns and Laura is back in her room, hoping to conjure her mum back for just another moment, but it’s too late.
The spell is broken. And she’s on her nerves waiting for the inevitable meltdown when Mia claims to have no knowledge of the missing book and Robyn goes into full-blown teenage panic – the strongest force on this earth.
‘I suppose we’ll talk later, Mum,’ Laura whispers. ‘Love you.’ Then she gets up and braces herself for what lies ahead in her daughter’s room.
At least, she thinks, it is a distraction from the back-to-school panic.
The last time she felt terrified that she didn’t or wouldn’t fit in was a very, very long time ago – and it’s a source of shame to her till this day.
She had let that fear join ranks with her increasingly bolshy teenager attitude and had decided A Levels weren’t important anyway.
And so she had bombed out of them with style.
She has gone on to do her own thing and be successful, enough, in the time since.
She knows that. She’s worked her way up the ladder in a variety of retail jobs.
She knows her worth is not tied to academia.
She knows that A levels and university degrees are not a measure of a person’s worth, but she also knows that secretly she felt she had let herself, and her mum, down by not storming her exams and going on to enjoy three years of student life hedonism.
Lifting her phone, she scrolls to the group chat she has with her closest friends, Becca and Niamh. Despite some pretty spectacular bumps in the road, they are as close as they ever were: BFFL (Best Friends For Life). She types:
Having all the feelings tonight, girls. Am I mad? What would Kitty think? I wish she was here. Why can’t you two come back to school with me and we can all be together like the old days?
She adds a winky face before she hits send, to make it look as though she is just joking around. She hopes that her girls can intuit that her fears are real and offer the reassurance she needs.
Maybe she should voice her concerns to her husband, Aidan.
Again. Even though she is getting slightly fed-up vibes from him.
During her last wobble he told her he no longer knew what to say to settle her nerves.
He said all he could do was what he had been doing all along and remind her that she wouldn’t have got the place on the Women’s Studies course if she wasn’t considered more than able for it by the admissions folk.
She’d smiled and thanked him at the time, but wanted a little more than a rational, logical response.
She wanted a ‘I know this is scaring the absolute skitters out of you, but look it, you are made of strong stuff and you can absolutely kick this in the dick’ – which is exactly what Niamh replies in her message two minutes later.
A second message comes in from Becca – this time in the form of a voice note of her singing ‘Roar’ by Katy Perry, followed by a short pep talk on how she is, again, going to ‘kick it in the dick’ – and it makes her feel infinitely better.
She is so glad to have these ladies back in her life.
It’s hard to imagine they went the guts of a decade not speaking to one another after Becca’s marriage to Aidan’s best friend, Simon, broke down.
As she had tried to balance her loyalties between her best friend and her husband, things had become fraught all round until their friendship broke down altogether.
It had been Kitty’s death that had brought them back together and old wounds had been healed.
Now she can’t imagine her life without them.
They have both so easily slipped back into their old ways, with the exception of one pretty big change.
Becca is now about ten months into a relationship with Laura’s big brother, Conal.
It’s a source of both delight and worry – she loves seeing them so happy, but she also knows how fragile friendships can be when it all goes wrong.
For now, however, it’s going right and she has her girls by her side to offer reassurance on tap.
And that’s exactly what they do now. After fifteen minutes of a back and forth, she feels a little a little better.
Not better enough to actually get a good night’s sleep, but better enough to allow her to smile as she pulls the duvet up to her chin and closes her eyes to rest. Her girls, it seems, will always have her back, which is a good thing because she really, really thinks she’s going to need them.