In case of illness or something?’
The question was inane.
The answer was yes.
I clicked off the time clock
and enquired about your boys,
had you remind me of their names –
Jamie (lovely), David (right), Ned (oh yes) –
and their ages –
five, eight, twelve.
I was silent on the well-being of
Rebecca.
And then it was on to your lingering insomnia
since the boys were babies,
and my work-induced exhaustion.
You recommended a meditation app,
I recommended a podcast.
We agreed beer was a good cure for both
and decided a drink
soon was sensible.
‘For health reasons,’ you said.
‘Let’s expense it to Bupa,’ I replied.
You laughed
and I wanted to sharpen all my words against you,
test how they sounded.
And when I laughed,
it rang around the room,
something rare and tempting.
No one made me laugh like that
or cared to try.
From then on,
we enjoyed one another.
Completely.
Nora says, ‘You’re emaciated.’
Mum says, ‘She looks grand, stop it.’
Nora says, ‘Fiona hates the birdfeeder.’
I say, ‘I gave her a tenner too,’
although it disappeared
in foam and bubbles almost as soon
as I’d handed it over.
Nora offers me a plate of sausage rolls.
‘Dad’s engaged to a Russian.
She’s twenty-six – apparently the age
men most desire.’
Mum sniffs.
‘When I was twenty-six he fancied Thelma Scott.
When I was twenty-seven it was Rachel O’Brien.
He’s had more crushes than a … ’
She hasn’t the patience for a metaphor
and begins unwrapping jam sandwiches,
shooing children away from the
plate of pink wafer biscuits.
I last saw my father at my graduation,
a man smaller than I’d remembered,
with uncontrolled facial hair
and big white teeth
that looked like they belonged in a Shetland pony.
‘Nice one, Ana,’ he’d said,
handing me a box.
Inside was a pearl
which, drunk,
I pressed into a stranger’s hand later that evening.
It was a black pearl
no bigger than a pea
that I discarded like a copper coin.
It can’t have been worth a lot.
‘The cake is lovely, Ana,’ Mum says.
‘I specifically asked for a cat,’ Nora complains.
‘The baker was busy. Butterflies was all Ocado had,’ I say.
The entertainer is loud, old,
dressed like a teenage skateboarder:
baggy three-quarter-length combats
and stripy odd socks.
His balloon hats keep bursting.
The hall jangles with crying.
Fiona tugs on my hand.
‘Uncle Paul says I can give you back the birdcage
and you’ll give me twenty pounds.’
‘It’s not a cage,’ I explain.
‘And you’re not getting any more money.’
Paul waves from the corner of the hall,
where he is watching
Aston Villa versus Liverpool
on his phone.
Jon is asleep on his knee.
Nora leans into me.
‘He’s great, your Paul, isn’t he?’
‘Dad took Mary Sands on the very same cruise
we took together a year before,’ Mum says.
‘First proper holiday I’d ever been on.
The gall of the man.’
I have repeatedly heard this story,
how Dad was caught
because he failed to remove the foreign currencies
from his wallet.
He couldn’t pretend the Turkish lira
had been in there all year –
he’d been gifted the wallet that Christmas.
Nora waves at the entertainer,
who announces it is feeding time.
I check my phone in the kitchen.
WhatsApp reminds me you haven’t
been seen online for weeks.
No one has bothered to take down your picture,
the one of you on a boat –
your first experience sailing.
It gives me half a second of hope
that you are not dead.
Nora pokes her head through the hatch.
‘Hand over that bottle of squash.
But why are you so thin?’
‘Did Dad ever love us?’ I ask.
Nora rolls her eyes.
‘Please have a sausage roll.’
I was only on my first drink
and there it was.
‘Do you love me?’
I could have been eleven years old
for all the sense that question made.
I’d known you two months;
you still addressed me as Ms Kelly in emails;
we hadn’t even kissed.
‘Sexually?’ you said.
There was fear and a lack of preparation on your part.
What had I expected but a defence?
We were in Gertie Browne’s again,
debating the Troubles, Alastair Campbell, Brexit.
How no one seemed to give a damn
about the Irish any more.
Outside it was raining.
‘I don’t know.
Just. Do you love me?’
I hadn’t realised I needed an
answer to this question until the words were loose.
‘Well.’ You looked at the door.
‘I think about you when we aren’t together.’
You didn’t pretend not to understand.
You weren’t that sort of man.
‘Is that enough?’
I should have made a joke of it.
How different everything
would have been if I’d retreated.
‘I need to know this thing isn’t in my head,’ I said.
I flipped my beer mat.
You downed your drink.
‘It’s late. I should go.’
You didn’t touch me at all, but said gently,
‘You haven’t imagined it.’
Inside they are singing ‘Happy Birthday’.
Candles flicker and melt, are blown out,
the warbling ends.
‘Hello?’ Mark says, answering the phone.
My number is unknown.
‘It’s Ana Kelly.
I wondered if you’d thought about meeting me.’
‘Couldn’t you text?
Wait a sec.’
Even when I was a child and the celebration was mine
I hated children’s parties:
the screaming, chasing,
music that guaranteed parents would dance,
jammy dodgers, cartons of orange,
everyone sent home with cake wrapped in soggy napkins.
Now I avoid them because
they are too early in the day to justify booze.
‘Hey. I’m here.’ He pauses.
‘Hi. So … ?’
I am as tentative as I was with you at first.
Afraid to say what I wanted,
tiptoeing into audacity.
‘Come to Brighton for a few hours.
I’m between projects the next few days.’
I turn. Paul is at the window, watching.
I wave.
But I have been caught and we both know it.
‘I’ll do that,’ I say.