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

light and sound. The days turned into weeks. By the end of June rain was coming down in torrents and high winds surged all over the country. On the TV news woeful staycationers dripped on flooded campsites and the downpours and gales brought public transport to a halt. The political party UKIP and its leader Nigel Farage seemed to be on every channel spouting anti-immigration rhetoric and brewing a storm of their own. Conor O’Grady came to mind. The world was becoming such a dark and ugly place.

At work I just about managed to crawl to the end of term. I struggled to concentrate on my end-of-year marking and walked up and down the exam halls like a zombie. I attended leaving parties, thanking students for presents and cards with a feeble voice and vacant smile and I avoided the staffroom and Mary’s concerned enquiries about my mental health.

July dragged by. I stopped going out and I ignored texts and calls from colleagues and friends. I became convinced everyone in Chorlton knew about Joe and Karen and my fucked-up life. I hung my head in hurt and shame and wore sunglasses when I went out even though there wasn’t a hint of sun. I started shopping late at night in the twenty-four-hour Tesco in Old Trafford to avoid bumping into anyone I knew. I stocked up on weed and curled up on the sofa every evening with a fat spliff, Merlot and Johnny Cash at his maudlin best for company.

I ruminated a lot on what had happened in Ireland but decided to shelve any further plans to search for my brother. I was starting to lose the motivation to do everyday things. The thought of getting back on that emotional roller coaster seemed a daunting insurmountable task.

Joe moved into a friend’s house on the other side of Chorlton. The only contact we’d had since our conversation outside Karen’s house was a couple of perfunctory emails about stuff to do with the house. He sent another saying he had accepted a two-month project in Madrid. He’d found a flat in Salford Quays and the tenancy was due to start in September. He said it was for the best, that we needed time apart to decide what we really wanted. I replied saying I knew exactly what I wanted and it wasn’t being married to someone who’d shagged my best friend. I made sure I was out when he came round to collect his stuff.

Though Joe had often worked away, it had only ever been for short trips. I started to feel the loneliness. As August dragged on, the big house became hollow with only me in it. I found myself daydreaming about being pregnant and hearing children’s laughter filling the empty rooms. I saw Tess sitting on the sofa in the extension with a grandchild in her arms. I saw Mikey pushing another on a swing. Late one evening I was smoking in the garden when I thought I heard Joe laughing at the TV in the front room. I leapt up and hurried inside. The laughter was coming from a group of revellers in the street outside and I sat on the sofa and cried.

I browsed for last-minute breaks online in the Spanish mountains and walking holidays in Greece. I thought I’d give Italy a miss on account of Karen being there. But lethargy took hold, guiding me to the fridge and the wine then back to the sofa and the TV remote and I never went anywhere. I did consider going back to stay with Julia in Westport. But I’d have to tell her about Joe and Karen and I wasn’t ready to do that. It was too raw. Putting it into words would make it real.

My husband slept with my best friend.

It was such a cliché, it was laughable.

In mid-August, a postcard arrived from Karen. It was from an art gallery in Rome. On the front, a Caravaggio painting called Penitent Magdalene showed a contrite-looking Mary Magdalene bowed in sorrow. On the back Karen had written one word. “Sorry.”

Enraged by such a cowardly, tasteless gesture, I grabbed my phone and texted her.

Thanks for the card. Very appropriate. Like you and your mother, Mary Magdalene was also a whore. Do not contact me again.

That evening I deleted all digital trace of her: photos, phone, email and social-media contacts. I then started on my old photo albums. I burned every picture in the kitchen sink: Polaroids from our school days, arty images from when we went clubbing and all the photos of her with Alexia. It hurt to do that but Alexia looked so much like her mother she had to go. I stood over the sink and watched our years of friendship smoulder and turn to ash. If only it were that easy to erase Karen from my mind. Instead she loomed large, like a searing migraine. I replayed the film of her and Joe fucking over and over until my head hurt.

Life dragged me through those summer months like a mother pulling an unwilling child to school. Then, on the Saturday of the August Bank Holiday, I decided to venture out before I completely lost my mind. I needed books for a research project so I set off for the John Rylands Library in town. I took the bus, getting off at the stop directly in front of Kendals on Deansgate. But as I stepped on to the pavement and saw the shoppers going in and out of the store’s rotating doors, I started to feel odd. I felt unsteady on my feet and grabbed hold of a nearby lamppost. I had trouble breathing and my heart was racing like never before. All those feelings of panic I’d experienced on the day of the bomb started coming back to me. Tess, Joe and I were being swept along with the current of people away from the Arndale, a police horse was trotting beside us and