Chapter 3
Chapter Three
M y mum always comes over on a Thursday. I leave a pump of antibacterial gel by the front door and a bag in the porch for her shoes, just in case she forgets her shoe protectors, but she never does. If my father joins her, he brings his slippers. They bring their own mugs for tea, and only use the toilet if they are desperate.
I was close to both my parents growing up. They wanted the best for me, like all parents do, and I think they would have been happy with whoever I ended up with, as long as that person accepted me wholeheartedly because let’s face it, there is a bloody lot to accept.
My mum’s biggest fear is that I will end up alone. They’d chosen not to have any more children and I think with that came a lot of guilt because, in their eyes, it meant I’d have lived an entire life alone. Of course, that’s not how I saw it at all. I didn’t feel alone.
Growing up, my mother was a stay-at-home mum and my father was an accountant, well respected in the area because he ‘adjusted’ everyone’s books. I didn’t want a sibling – I had Una, who lived up the road from me and was pretty much my sister anyway.
I looked down at my mother’s electric blue shoe protectors as she sipped her tea on the end of my grandmother’s old floral-print sofa. She looked like some kind of 1950s wife, too conscious to slouch, back straight, head up. It was as if she’d come to visit the queen not her highly-strung daughter. But I supposed that was why: she was too afraid to relax in fear of upsetting me.
‘I saw Niall earlier,’ she said. ‘Lovely lad. Did you know he’s studying to be a doctor?’
‘An entomologist isn’t a doctor, Mum.’
‘It’s something medical though.’
‘He studies bugs.’
‘Well, whatever it is, he’s highly intelligent so it doesn’t surprise me he’d be into something like that.’ She cooed.
‘Into bugs?’
‘I’m sure it’s more complex than just bugs.’
‘It’s not.’
‘How’s work going? Have you picked up any extra hours?’ she asked.
‘To fill my long, lonely days you mean?’ I said sarcastically.
‘Your father and I just want you to be happy.’ She always added my father into the conversation when she needed back-up, even when he wasn’t there. Like I would somehow listen more if they both thought it. ‘And we think you deserve to be.’
‘I am happy though, Mum.’
‘You think you are.’
‘I am.’
‘If you had someone around it would make things easier.’
‘Because you wouldn’t have to check up on me mid-week?’
‘That’s not what I’m doing,’ she said, but we both knew she was lying.
I was often short with my mum. I didn’t mean to be, but I knew she didn’t really understand any of it, and I was too tired to try and explain it to her. I could lose up to four hours sleep every night. I’d worked out that was 1,456 hours a year, and around 87,000 hours over a lifetime. Which was a lot of sleep to lose when I didn’t get much in the first place.
On average I get around five hours a night, five and a half at a push. It’s not that I go to bed late, quite the opposite actually. I could go up to bed at eight-thirty and still be awake at one-thirty in the morning. It can be anything that keeps me up – the mat trapped in the front door (even though I check it numerous times), the window latch not pushed closed properly (even though I hurt my finger every time I push it in), a tea towel on the cooker that might catch on fire (even though the cooker is switched off at the wall). Then factor in the stairs and The Lord’s Prayer and I am up and down all night. By the time I do close my eyes, it is well into the early hours and I am well and truly delirious.
It was worse when I lived at home. I drove my dad mad because he’d hear me moving around the house shutting doors, clicking windows, flicking switches, chanting prayers. One time he actually caught me in the act when I was hiding a plastic bag in the cutlery drawer. When he demanded I tell him why, his face dropped a shade of white as I explained it was because I didn’t want to stab him to death in his sleep.
I’d recently watched an interview with a woman who’d killed her entire family in her sleep and she had no idea she’d done it. I’d put the bag there so that the rustling sound would wake me up before I got to the knives. Dad never mentioned it again, but I knew I’d scared him because the next night he put one of those mini padlocks on the drawer.
‘Anyway, I’ve invited him around for dinner.’ My mum’s voice pierced through my memories.
‘Who?’
‘Niall.’
‘Why?’ I groaned.
‘He’s coming over this evening, six o’clock, will you come?’
‘No.’
‘But I told him you’d be there.’
‘Well you shouldn’t have because I won’t be there.’
‘Please, Pearl.’
‘Why the hell have you invited bloody Niall O’Callaghan over?’
‘Because he was so helpful the other day when your father was up the ladder, he stopped to hold it and everything.’
‘Anyone would have done that if they’d been passing. Would you have invited Mr Keele over if it was him?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Why? Because he has phone sex with Maggie Ryan?’
‘It wasn’t Maggie,’ my mother snapped. ‘Maggie wouldn’t indulge in something like that.’
‘I think she would.’ I laughed, but my mother kept a straight face.
Maggie is her best friend. They drink tea together on a Monday and gossip about everyone and everything, except about Mr Keele and his wife.
‘Maggie is happily married and wouldn’t do such a thing.’
‘Call the number then,’ I said smugly. ‘Go on, call it and you’ll recognise her voice.’
‘I’ll do no such thing.’
My mother put her empty mug back in her bag and stood up in her electric-blue shoe protectors.
‘Dinner will be on the table at six.’