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

don’t believe you. You said you didn’t even like her when you first met her.”

He shook his head and sighed.

“I used to see her at the gym and we’d chat. Mainly about you. Sometimes we’d have a coffee. You were in bits about Mikey and Tess and we were both worried about you. I suppose we bonded.”

“How lovely for you both. So that’s why she cooled off our friendship. Because she was bonding with you.”

“Let me finish. Nothing happened. We just talked. Then we bumped into each other that night and it just happened. We both regretted it immediately. It was just sex. You have to believe me.”

I slammed my hand on the dashboard and his head flew up.

“What about today?” I yelled. “The new owner of the house just told me you took her to the fucking airport! Don’t tell me nothing happened!”

“It didn’t. I swear. We just talked. ”

“And you expect me to believe that?”

“It’s true. She texted and said she was leaving for Italy today. She asked if she could come round. I hadn’t seen her since that night. She was really upset and begging me never to tell you. She wanted to say goodbye but she couldn’t face you.”

I gave a high-pitched, brittle laugh. “I bet she couldn’t.”

“She cares about you, Carmel.” His voice lowered. “We both do.”

I laughed again.

“I offered to give her a lift to the airport. Nothing happened. I swear.”

I looked at him, a vat of pure hatred boiling inside me. I badly wanted to tell him what had happened at the conference that time, to make him hurt like I was hurting.

“Where did you fuck her?”

He looked at me sharply. “Don’t do this.”

“I need to know.”

He shook his head. “No, you don’t.”

I stuck my face inches from his.

“Yes, I fucking do!” I screamed.

“In the front room!” he yelled back, recoiling.

“What position?”

“For fuck’s sake!”

“I need to know.”

“Christ. I don’t know. I was on top.”

“Was it good?”

“Not particularly.”

I dug my hands into the pockets of my jacket, tears streaming down my face. A man and woman were kissing goodbye on the doorstep of a house opposite. They lingered then he walked down the path and she blew him a kiss, laughing. I leaned my head against the window and drew a large question mark with my forefinger on the glass.

“Why?” I asked.

He leaned back and sighed. A fly was slowly making its way along the shoulder of his jacket then up his neck. If I had a knife I’d have sliced it in half, stabbing into his jugular.

“It was a moment of weakness. I swear it meant nothing. But I will say this. It’s never been easy being married to you, Carmel. For years I was always at the bottom of your list of priorities. Everything was always about Tess and Mikey and their problems. Sometimes it felt like there were four of us in our marriage.”

“Oh, come on! You can do better than that.”

“It’s true.”

“So let me just recap for a minute. Tess was mentally ill and Mikey had a drug problem. They were vulnerable adults who needed me. I was a bad wife because I spent time with them, so you slept with my best friend?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I slept with Karen because I was weak. But I’m just trying to explain how I felt about you and your family. Yes, Mikey and Tess needed you. But a lot of the time they could have managed without you. In some ways you enabled them.”

I put my head in my hands. “You have no fucking idea. You never got it, did you? You’ve never had to care for anyone in your life. Mammy and Daddy did everything for you. They threw money your way whenever you wanted it and acted on your every whim. Enable them? I was doing my best to keep my brother and mother alive. Someone had to.”

“And the day of Dad’s funeral?”

“Oh, here we go again!”

“You left me to grieve alone. I’d just lost Mum and instead of staying with me you fucked off back to Manchester to watch your good-for-nothing brother get fined in court for drug possession. That’s exactly how high up I was on your list of priorities.”

I folded my arms across my chest.

“Tess was convinced he was going down and I thought she might do something stupid. I had to be there to stop her.”

“That one day I needed you. But you couldn’t give me that one day. You always put them first.”

“So you slept with my best friend.”

I yanked down the window, breathed in the damp night air then turned and looked him in the eye.

“Did you do it because I wouldn’t give you a child?”

He shook his head and tutted.

“What the hell is it about her? Why do men want her so much when she treats you all like scum? Does she give twenty-four-hour blow jobs? Go on, tell me.”

“I’m not doing this.”

I pummelled his shoulder with my fist.

“Yes, you are! You fucked my best friend. I deserve to know why.”

He grabbed hold of my wrist and held me still, his eyes burning.

“If you want to know why she’s attractive it’s because she grabs life by the throat and lives it. Because she’s not neurotic and not always worrying about the what-ifs. Because she doesn’t overthink everything. Because she lives for the moment. Because she’s fucking brave.”

He let go of me and I fell back into the seat, feeling like I’d been shot.

I fumbled for the handle and opened the door.

“I want you out of the house tonight,” I said, stumbling out on the wet pavement and slamming the door behind me.

Dazed and numb, I hurried down the street. Then a train suddenly hurtled past on the track behind the row of terraces, shaking the ground beneath my feet. 

Chapter 26

After Joe left my world came tumbling down. I went about my days feeling like I’d been buried under a pile of rubble, numb and devoid of