Chapter 8
8
SORRY, MRS MARTIN
‘I shouldn’t have brought the car,’ Niamh says as I hand her a cup of tea. ‘I could do with a glass of wine – a large one – about now. Or maybe some vodka. Turps even, might be good. Do you have any in the shed?’
‘It’s a lot, isn’t it?’ I say, staring into my own cup of milky tea and wondering if there is any turpentine in the shed. Adam and Jodie have disappeared up to Adam’s room because they wanted to talk through their plans more. In private. Leaving Niamh and me to look at each like two war-weary baby veterans reliving the tough early years of parenting and trying to imagine Adam and Jodie taking on those roles.
It’s a good thing my house is currently alcohol – and turps – free. If I started drinking I might not know when to stop.
‘It’s a school night,’ I remind Niamh. ‘You’ll feel better for not going on a bender when the little darlings are trying to get you to make a TikTok with them in the morning.’
‘The fact that it’s a school night and that the little darlings will be trying to get me to make a TikTok is part of the reason I want a large glass of wine,’ she says, pulling a face and eyeing her tea as if its lack of alcoholic content has personally offended her.
‘It must be bad. It’s only the first full week of term!’
She shakes her head slowly. ‘Feels like the Christmas break didn’t happen at all. Probably because of this situation .’
The situation is how we have taken to talking about the pregnancy over the course of this last week. Niamh had to be very careful of how she spoke in case her boys, Ethan and Cal, got wind of it or, worse still, Fiadh found out before decisions were made. It had been easier for me to fall in line with that, but I suppose now we can think about using the actual words. At least, once we’ve told those who need to know. I already feel a bit sick at the thought of how Simon – not known for his tact and diplomacy – will react. I know Niamh will be having similar worries about Paul.
‘I know the kids can wind me up, but today I swear my patience was through the floor with them. I’m not a grumpy teacher – most of the time – but I swear I nearly summoned my inner Mrs Martin on Year 11 today.’
I grimace. Mrs Martin was our science teacher from first through until third year. The kind-hearted might refer to her as a ‘real character’, but to those of us who actually endured hours in her lab, she was a full-blown demon. The queen of the passive-aggressive putdown, she seemed to get a sense of pleasure out of reducing schoolgirls to tears or ordering us out of her classroom – where we would wait in fear of the vice principal walking by and starting an interrogation.
She was prone to hysterical shouting fits, and God love anyone sitting at the front of the lab because they would be sprayed with her spit as she roared.
I have never in my life been as scared of a teacher as I was of Mrs Martin, so to hear that Niamh – my lovely, funny, witty Niamh – felt as if she was coasting dangerously close to that level of full crazy was worrying.
‘Shit,’ I say, reaching for a chocolate biscuit.
‘Shit indeed.’ Niamh lifts a chocolate biscuit and examines it before putting it back down again. ‘Maybe I need to go to some extra yoga classes or something. So I’ve somewhere to channel this big, fat feeling of… fuck… I don’t even know what it is. Rage? Anxiety? Fear? Hunger?’ She lifts the biscuit again and eats it in one bite.
I’m not going to lie, she’s scaring me a bit now too. What if she goes all Mrs Martin on me? My PTSD in that regard might be well buried but I’m not sure it would stay so if Niamh started spit-shouting at me in my own living room.
‘Becs, will you hate me if I tell you I don’t know how I feel about all of this?’ She gestures around the room, looking up to the ceiling – a nod to where Jodie and Adam are currently in their blissful baby bubble.
‘Of course I won’t hate you. I could never hate you. And as I’ve said, it’s a lot. There’s so much to consider. They’re both great kids, with sensible heads on them, but…’
‘Kids,’ Niamh says. ‘They’re kids. I know that technically they’re adults but nineteen and twenty these days is nothing like it was in our day and even then I would have had a conniption at the thought of having a baby. They can’t have thought about it properly.’
‘No,’ I say, shaking my head.
‘And I’m not saying that I want Jodie to have an abortion… I mean if that was her choice… but…’
‘I get it,’ I tell her. ‘It’s scary. It’s a lot of responsibility on their shoulders. And Adam giving up his place at university? He loves that course. And Saul relies on him so much. God only knows how Simon will react. As I said, it’s a lot.’
Niamh, quiet for a moment, takes a sip from her tea before putting the mug back on the coffee table and rubbing her temples.
‘Jodie has her final year at uni to complete, and was hoping to go on and do her PGCE ,’ Niamh says. ‘I suppose that will go on hold. She’ll not want to be committing to that level of study when the baby will be so young. I was going to get her a placement in the school. And Paul? He won’t be able to hide his disappointment. You know what he’s like – his voice mightn’t say it, but his face will. Him and Jodie have always been so close… he’s wanted everything for her. Was so proud she was following in my footsteps into teaching. But now this? All because of a boy!’
I bristle. Not because I don’t agree with her, but because the ‘boy’ happens to my boy. Who will be making sacrifices in his life plans too. When I think of the scary teacher version of Niamh, who shouted at Jodie to get on with it not half an hour ago, I decide to keep my feelings on this to myself. Emotions are running high. It won’t do me, or any of us, any good to lose the head right now.
‘And Becs… grannies! You know that big wobble we had last year about ageing – when we found those letters we wrote when we were sixteen? I think that was just the precursor to this even bigger wobble. Is this it? Is my life going to be Year 11, and all future Year 11s, making me more and more ratty until I retire on the grounds of insanity in ten years’ time? I mean… what age was Mrs Martin when she taught us?’
‘God knows,’ I say. ‘Every teacher seemed to look the same kind of old-lady old to me back then.’
‘But maybe she wasn’t old at all? Maybe she was just our age, and menopausal? I’m tempted to try and find out if she’s still alive and call round to apologise personally to her.’ Niamh punctuates the end of her sentence by stuffing another chocolate biscuit – in one bite – into her mouth.
I let her eat her biscuit before I answer, not wanting to try and speak over the din of crunchy digestive topped with chocolate.
‘If it helps, I’m freaking out a bit too. This was not on my bingo list for the latter half of my forties. I’m grateful I don’t have Year 11, or any year group for that matter, to stand in front of because I can tell you now that I would go full Mrs Martin. All you teachers have the patience of saints.’
Niamh gives a small smile, but it doesn’t last long and I know she is well and truly down in the dumps.
I proffer her the plate of biscuits but she shakes her head. ‘If I eat any more biscuits, I’ll barf. I swear I’m 90 per cent biscuit at the moment. I’ve no stomach for anything else and I’m so tired all the time that I just want as many sugar hits as I can get. We went and got the patches, Becs. Should they not be tackling all this hormonal depression-laden nonsense by now? I don’t feel any different, except that my boobs hurt like a motherfucker. It reminds me of when I was pregnant, which I’m absolutely not. I’m not going down that rabbit hole of madness again.’
The ‘madness’ being the not too distant past where she was convinced she was indeed pregnant, until a negative test and a subsequent visit to the doctor assured her she was not. She was, instead, in perimenopause. As am I. We were both prescribed HRT patches to wear, and while I have found them to be a great boost to both my mind and body, Niamh is still accursed with menopausal woes – including the aforementioned sore breasts.
‘Maybe HRT just doesn’t work for me?’ she says. ‘I had such high hopes that I’d get the Davina McCall effect and get all snatched and super healthy, but instead I’m suffering through yoga, sweating buckets all the time and my mood – God, my mood, Becca! I’ve become a complete shite-craic cry-baby. How am I going to find the patience to help Jodie through her pregnancy when I just feel so pissed off all the damn time?’
I let her speak because, to be quite honest, I’m now quite scared to interrupt her but I know she needs my help.
‘Maybe your HRT just needs a wee tweak? The doctor told me it’s not one size fits all, and it’s a matter of playing around with it until you hit that sweet spot.’
‘You make it sound like a sex toy,’ she says with a bit of a smirk. There’s a flash of the old, happy, not-afraid-to-make-inappropriate-jokes Niamh still there after all.
‘Well, maybe it is a bit like that,’ I say, a blush creeping over my face. That’s the problem with being a born-again virgin who hasn’t actually had any sex in the ten years since her marriage broke down – I get ridiculously embarrassed talking about anything remotely sex adjacent. It’s something I’ll need to get over if I’m to write the column I’m pitching to Grace Adams. Or, more importantly, if I’m to get things back on track with Conal. ‘Look, make an appointment to see the doctor again. I’ll go with you. We’re not giving up and giving in just because we’re going to be grandmothers. Didn’t we say when we found those letters that we were going to grab life by the balls and do the things we’ve always wanted? That means getting ourselves in the right place, physically and emotionally, to do that. Make the appointment. We’ll make this work.’
‘If we’re not babysitting instead,’ she says, glumly. ‘Ach, listen to me, I’ve become such a long streak of misery. I can’t even stand listening to myself.’
‘You’re grand,’ I reassure her, secretly worrying that yes, we might just be babysitting all the time and not able to do all the things we promised our younger selves we would. Younger me wanted to travel more. She wanted to write because she loved it. She wanted to fall in love and dance under the stars and do all the things that would be difficult if there was a baby on her hip.
Niamh brushes the crumbs from her biscuit off her trousers and into her hand, where Daniel dutifully licks them up. ‘So, forgetting about the babysitting and going back to grabbing life by the balls… what’s the sitch with Conal? Any… you know… ball-grabbing action going on in that regard?’
‘Sadly, no. We still seem to be stuck on pause. I haven’t wanted to not be there for Adam, and then I’ve been working on this pitch for Grace – which is happening tomorrow, by the way. I don’t want to spend time with him when I’m distracted by everything else and then he has been busy at work too…’
She shakes her head. ‘The course of true love doesn’t run smooth.’
‘Except for you and Paul,’ I say. ‘As the young ones would say, hashtag couple goals.’
‘I’m not sure the young ones would say that right now,’ she says, slouching back in her seat, defeated. ‘If I’m grumpy, he’s grumpier. We’re like Statler and Waldorf from The Muppets . Only more crabbit. Jodie’s news has knocked him for six.’
‘It has knocked us all for six,’ I say.
‘Yeah, but Paul, I don’t know, he seems only able to see the negative. He’s wallowing in it and I’m bearing the brunt of his frustration and sadness and I have enough of my own frustration and sadness to be coping with. I don’t have the mental or physical energy to lift him up too. He looks at me as if it’s my fault, somehow. Or something. I don’t know. But I don’t like this side of him. I’ve never seen him this way.’
It’s certainly not the case that Niamh thinks the sun rises and sets in Paul Cassidy’s eyes. She is not blindly in love with the man, and they have had their share of ups and downs over the years, but for the most part they have been on the same side when it comes to the big issues. Their clashes have been minor and infrequent. So I can totally understand why this is worrying to her.
‘He’ll come round though,’ I say, hoping that I’m right. ‘He’s not an arsehole. There’s no way he would’ve been able to hide his arseholey ways from us all these years. He just needs to process it all.’
Niamh shrugs. ‘I just wish he would process it faster, or in a less grumpy fashion. God knows how he’s going to react to this decision of theirs. Jodie is insisting on talking to him herself, but what if he says something he can’t take back?’
I nod and listen as she continues venting.
‘I’ll be stuck in the middle between them. And it’s not like this is easy for me either. I feel awful saying that. That’s my grandchild in there, after all. Ah, fuck, Becs. It’s all a mess. Maybe Paul is handling it the right way and being honest about his feelings. Maybe it’s me that’s the problem.’
Shaking my head, I grasp her hand. ‘Darling, you could never be the problem. Even at your worst, you’re still not a problem. You might have an unhealthy yoga addiction?—’
‘It’s the only thing that stops me losing my shit!’
‘I know that. And I know it’s good for you, and me. It’s just really, really hard.’
‘It will get easier,’ she tells me. ‘I promise.’
‘Hopefully that’s true for all our worries. Things have a way of working out, and if I have to give Paul a stern talking-to, then I will. Just tell me when.’
Niamh gives a small laugh. ‘I think I’d pay good money to see that.’