My Mother's Children: An Irish family secret and the scars it left behind. Annette Sills (free e books to read online txt) 📖

Barbakan Deli with Tess when it was a small Polish grocery. Over the years I’d watched it transform into a Mancunian foodie heaven. Nowadays people travelled miles for its sour dough, German rye and ciabatta. They packed bags stuffed with Danish pastries, original Italian pasta, smoked hams, salamis and continental cheeses into the boots of their cars. The outdoor terrace had recently been revamped with new rattan furniture and it had become a popular venue for Chorlton parents after the school drop-off. I parked in the small Tesco car park on the opposite side of the road and headed over.

As usual it was busy with a queue snaking out of the door. I exited after a long wait with my steaming Americano, soda bread, pasta and cheese. As I crossed the terrace I spotted Bryonie Phillips at a far table with a group of friends. I hadn’t seen anything of her since that night at the fundraiser. She was wearing Jackie O sunglasses and a flouncy yellow top that made her large breasts look like a pair of canary melons. She caught my eye and waved. I had a sudden flashback to the night of the fundraiser when I’d been so shamefully horribly drunk. God only knows what she was saying about me to her cronies. True to form, I panicked. I pretended I hadn’t seen her. Hurrying down the steps onto the pavement, I took my phone from my pocket and started talking into it. Then as I was waiting to cross the road, I heard the unmistakable high-pitched screech of her laughter behind me, like chalk screeching on a blackboard. I froze. It was too loud and too forced to be natural. I was meant to hear it. I walked across, still in conversation with my imaginary friend, my heart pounding.

On the drive home I cursed myself yet again, powerless in the face of my debilitating anxiety. Why couldn’t I slip on a mask and smile and say hello to Bryonie like any normal person might? Avoidance was supposed to be the worst strategy for anxiety-sufferers but I’d been doing it for so long now it had become second nature. When I got home I put Classic FM on the radio to calm myself as I got ready for work. I tried to fill my head with positive thoughts. The conference looked very promising and I was seeing Claire later. I started to feel better. I shut the front door behind me and headed down the path with a slight spring in my step. Little did I know that when I opened it again I’d be stepping into a very different life.

Chapter 23

As the taxi pulled up, Joe’s black BMW was disappearing around the corner of the street in a silver mist of rain. I thought I saw the profile of someone in the passenger seat but I couldn’t be sure because of the rain. A furious wind thrashed around the street and a woman passed me holding her umbrella in front of her face, with all her strength like she was rolling a stone up a hill. I paid the driver and ran into the house. I wondered where Joe was off to. A man of habit, he went to the cycling club every Thursday but it was vicious out there so it must have been cancelled.

After an enjoyable conference I’d gone for drinks with a couple of colleagues at a wine bar near the university. I was about to call a taxi and head over to Lark Lane to meet Claire when she called. She was stranded in A&E with Sam, her sports-mad ten-year-old. It looked like he’d broken his arm and they weren’t leaving the hospital any time soon. Deflated, I made my way to Lime Street and boarded the train for Manchester Piccadilly. I ordered a coffee from the trolley and gazed out of the window as the train trundled between grey Lancashire towns. Dusk was falling. Rain swept over the valleys and gently undulating hills, avocado and mint green in the fading light. I’d always thought of the Lancashire terrain as mellow and calming compared to the violent landscape of the west coast of Ireland. Both had a beauty of their own. Both were part of me in equal measure. Like two sides of a coin.

A harassed-looking mother on a nearby seat was trying to placate her crying toddler with a game on her phone. Sometimes I couldn’t help resenting my friends’ children when I saw how they sucked their mothers dry. Of course, I was sorry that Claire’s boy had broken his arm but at the same time I felt hostile towards him for robbing me of an evening with her. From what I could see, children didn’t drain their fathers in the same way. Fathers managed to maintain a sense of self but mothers were left with very little of their own. Something to think about if Joe and I ever did get pregnant.

I was exhausted and couldn’t be bothered cooking so I helped myself to some of the brie and soda bread I’d bought from the Barbakan that morning. I looked around. The kitchen was spotless but I’d left it in a tip that morning. Now the worktop glistened, the floor had been scrubbed and even the tea towels were piled neatly by the sink. The only time Joe cleaned like that was after an argument or when he’d done something that upset me. It was our standing joke, how doing housework was his unspoken way of apologising. I poured myself a glass of red and smiled. I wondered what he’d done for me to deserve all this.

I took my food and wine into the front room. I was looking forward to catching up on more Irish history and watching the next episode of Rebellion on Netflix, a show about the Easter Rising. I spent at least five minutes searching for the TV remote and