Chapter 34
34
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Niamh is still cuddling Daniel as I half walk/half stumble back to the bedroom.
‘Do you think you need to go to A&E about that?’ she asks, her face wide with concern.
I shake my head. It hurts, yes, but a quick google while I was trying to build up the courage to stand up in the bathroom revealed it is more than likely just a bruised coccyx and pain relief, combined with cold and heat therapies should ease it. Apart from that I’m just going to have to ride it out for a few days. Only then, if it still hurts, will I consider going to A&E just in case it is actually broken.
‘I’m pretty sure I’ve just bruised it,’ I say, as I shuffle back onto the bed beside her.
‘Do you want me to look?’ Niamh asks.
‘That would be a no,’ I say. I have no desire to flash my arse at my best friend. We have shared a lot in our many years of friendship but there are certain lines I don’t ever want to cross with her. My arse falls very firmly across one of those lines.
‘Thank the Lord for that,’ Niamh says with a grin. ‘I love you and all but there are some things I’m happy to never see.’ She seems a little brighter for having had a big cry and a big nap. Maybe at heart we’re all just like big children and every now and again we need to blow off steam and then sleep off the aftermath. Whatever the reason, I’m happy to see her more like the Niamh I know and love. It’s just going to be my job to keep a watchful eye on her in future and do all there is in my power to do to support the times when her low mood comes calling.
She stretches and makes to get up, much to Daniel’s disgust.
‘I know Dan the Man,’ she says. ‘I’d love to stay and cuddle with you all night, but I have men folk at home who are basically useless and a semi-feral seven-year-old so I need to go home.’
‘You know you’re always welcome to stay any time you want,’ I tell her. ‘If you need to take the pressure off a little bit, or just escape, or just hug a dog or whatever.’
‘I know,’ she says with a small, warm smile that says everything that needs to be said about our friendship. ‘I think I need to go home tonight though. I want to talk to Paul about how I’m feeling while I’m in the moment. He’s the one living with my mood swings after all. And I want to hug to my children – even the annoying ones.’
‘I totally understand that,’ I tell her, as I feel a pang for my own boys. ‘And that reminds me. Did you know Jodie is in Manchester?’
Niamh is standing up and straightening her clothes. ‘Jodie who?’
‘Your Jodie!’ I tell her, shimmying my way to the edge of the bed to prepare myself for the inevitable pain that will come with standing up.
‘My Jodie? My daughter Jodie?’
‘Yes!’ I tell her. ‘I’m going to assume by your response that you were very much not aware she is in Manchester. Although to be fair, she might’ve come home by now.’
‘Are you sure? As far as I’m aware she’s still in Belfast.’ Niamh says, pulling her phone from her bag and scrolling through it.
‘Adam told me,’ I say. ‘She’s over visiting him and Saul. He hinted at a romance.’
With that, her eyes fly from her phone to look me directly in the eye. ‘A romance? Who with? No, she would’ve said.’ Her eyes dart back to her phone where she is scrolling some more.
‘With Adam,’ I say, adding, ‘My Adam,’ before she asks the inevitable, ‘Adam who?’
‘Get. To. France!’ she declares and I admire her restraint in using France instead of the swear word that is very clearly on her mind.
‘It’s true,’ I say. ‘He sounds sort of smitten.’
‘I know it’s true,’ she says, turning her phone screen to face me. ‘That’s her location. I have her on Find My Phone and that is definitely not Belfast on the map – it appears to be some sort of student digs in Manchester.’
I blink and squint at the screen, thinking I very much need to book in for an eye test. And yes, it is student digs, and it is the student digs where my boys are staying. Not that I needed convincing. If Adam tells me something, then it is guaranteed to be the absolute truth. Saul is another story… but not Adam.
She pulls her phone away again and taps furiously at the screen. I’m trying to read her face. Is she annoyed? If so, is she annoyed at Jodie for not telling her? Or Jodie for hooking up with my son? Because if it’s the latter, my mama bear instincts are getting primed to tear her to shreds. Any mother should be delighted to have Adam dating their daughter. Of course, again, Saul is another story. But Adam – sweet, gentle, responsible Adam – he’s a catch. If that doesn’t sound too weird coming from his mum.
‘Well, ride me sideways!’ she declares and turns her phone to my face and once again I have to try and focus on the screen in front of me.
‘What am I looking at?’ I ask her as the phone is waved in front of me, but then, slowly at first, the image on the screen comes into focus. It’s a picture of Adam – his very handsome face dominated by the widest of smiles – with his arms wrapped around Jodie. Jodie who happens to be wearing a matching grin. The kind of grin that only comes with that all-encompassing rush of dopamine and endorphins and all sorts of happy hormones that flood our system when we are falling in love for the very first time. Their happiness exudes from the screen so much that it takes me a moment to notice Saul pulling a very confused, ridiculous face in the background in one of his trademark photobombs. Somehow this picture sums up absolutely everything about my children.
Below the picture is a three-word caption. ‘Insta official now!’
I look at Niamh, who is staring directly at me as if trying to read my reaction. We used to joke about this, of course. When the children were born. We did that really awful thing that parents do and referred to our babies as each other’s boyfriend and girlfriend and talked about who would get to wear the biggest hat at the wedding. Niamh always called that particular one because she, of course, would be the mother of the bride which overruled any sort of mother of the groom nonsense.
‘So,’ I say. ‘I’m assuming she didn’t tell you this.’
‘She did not,’ Niamh says, her face falling.
‘I only found out by accident last night,’ I soothe. ‘Seems we were both being kept in the dark.’
‘Sure, as long as Instagram knows, what do we matter?’ she says, her voice bitter and her expression sad. Damn it. We had got back happy Niamh for a bit and now she is back in the feeling pointless and unloved space.
‘They’re young and selfish, just like we were young and selfish,’ I tell her. ‘It’s a privilege only the under twenty-fives really get to enjoy. I’m sure they didn’t mean to exclude us.’ But as I speak, I start to feel a little sad too. Maybe I need to take more co-codamol and sail off on another opioid induced cloud of bliss.
‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘But it would’ve been nice to be told before the world and his mother. God, I’m even sounding like my own ma now – giving out about social media and people sharing their lives.’
I haul myself to standing and walk around the bed and open my arms wide. ‘Here, give me a hug. It will make you feel better. But don’t squeeze too tight. My arse won’t like it.’
She lets out a loud, heartfelt laugh and walks towards me so I can hug her. ‘It’s a good thing though, isn’t it? That our children have found each other?’
‘I suppose it is,’ she says.
‘And at least she’s with Adam and not Saul.’
‘That is a very fair point,’ she says with a laugh. ‘Not that I don’t love the very bones of my godsons the same.’
‘Oh, I know that,’ I say. ‘But Saul’s an eejit.’
‘He is,’ she says, and she is the only person in the entire world who I would allow to speak about my son in that way. ‘But a nice eejit,’ she clarifies.
We hug a little more before she pulls away. ‘I really better get home. It’s only a matter of time before Ethan or Cal see that Insta update, and say something to Paul and all hell breaks loose because there’s no way he’ll believe I knew nothing about it.’
‘I am always here to be your character witness,’ I say as I hobble down the stairs, ouching and oohing as I go.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to look at that before I go?’ Niamh asks as she gets ready to leave.
‘I think you’ve had a tough enough day without me forcing my bum on you,’ I say. ‘Honestly, I’ll be fine. I’d like to say my ego is more bruised than anything but I don’t think that’s true.’
‘I’ll check in on you tomorrow morning, okay?’ Niamh says, opening the door and letting an icy blast of wind and rain in.
‘Not if I check on you first!’
‘And we definitely need to go to Amsterdam. Let’s get that in the diary. See when suits Laura and let’s make it so,’ she says, kissing me on the cheek and walking down the drive towards her car singing the only two lines from ‘Tulips from Amsterdam’ that she knows.
Balls. I realise that between my fall, her pregnancy scare, Adam and Jodie getting it on, and the high-strength painkillers, I haven’t even told her about Laura. Maybe because I’m terrified that this time she’ll take Laura’s side.