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

the Embankment to keep warm, passing a young couple on a bench facing the Thames. They looked in their twenties, Latino and beautiful. His gloved fingers were entwined in her long dark hair and they were kissing. I stopped in my tracks, the memory returning like a push in the chest.

In the weeks after the Manchester bomb Joe and I fell for each other quickly. We spoke every other day by phone and every weekend without fail he’d come up to Manchester or I’d go to London. The sight of his pale denim jacket and boyish grin at the end of the platform at Euston made my heart somersault. The second I stepped past the ticket barriers he’d pull me to his chest and kiss me long and hard then we’d smooch shamelessly on the Tube all the way back to his shared flat in Shoreditch.

We continued our long-distance relationship for the next two years. Joe lived in the East End in a shared flat long before the East End was gentrified. We spent Saturday nights drinking with students and locals in The Bricklayers Arms or The Griffin or we’d wander to the Eastern Eye on Brick Lane for a cheap curry. Now and again we’d meet up in the Founder’s Arms on Southbank with Joe’s work colleagues from the tech start-up where he was a programmer. Sundays were always spent in Greenwich with Paddy and Peggy and a roast dinner or bacon and cabbage. I’d fallen for them as quickly as I had Joe. The atmosphere in his childhood home was calm and conflict-free. It was a revelation to me that family life could be so happy.

Though I hid it from my Mancunian friends, I’d also fallen in love with London. Up north many of us resented the capital because every government invested so much in it. Power and culture thrived while we got so little and we saw nothing of ourselves in the city’s wealth and glamour. Yet at that time I couldn’t help being wooed by the hustle and bustle of the place, the diversity, the history, the variety of arts venues and theatres. The view of the city from the Southbank on a summer night or Greenwich Park at dusk filled me with awe. Arriving at Euston on Friday evenings felt like pulling off a dark hood. I was liberated from Tess’s black moods and Mikey to look after and those weekends with Joe were some of the happiest days of my life. I was in love and I was free. If I hadn’t had Tess and Mikey to care for I’d have moved to London in an instant.

One Friday evening I was about to leave Brantingham Road to get the Euston train when Mikey fell through the door looking like he was plugged in on high voltage. He was as high as a kite, rummaging through drawers and bags and demanding money from Tess. Thinking I couldn’t leave him alone with her, I rang Joe at work and told him I wasn’t going to make the train. He said he was gutted as he had a surprise for me but he understood (he and Mikey weren’t yet at the stage where they loathed the sight of each other). Joe said he’d have to go the Founder’s to drown his sorrows. Shortly afterwards Mikey left the house again. Raging, I decided I’d had enough of being treated as a doormat. I went over the road to ask Rose O’Grady to keep an eye on Tess during the weekend then I got on the next train to Euston. I hugged myself at the thought of surprising Joe.

The Founder’s was heaving with warm bodies when I bounded in, weighed down by my backpack. Joe’s colleagues were sitting at the back of the pub on the patio. Phoebe, a brittle Chelsea blonde who had a habit of imitating my accent every time we met, pointed at the door with a tight smile. She said Joe was outside. Off I went, jostling through the pints and suits. I couldn’t see him anywhere in the crowd. Then I looked further out towards the river, stopping in my tracks. He was sitting on a bench with his back to me next to a girl with long dark hair.

My legs weakened and I grabbed the arm of a large American standing next to me who roared with laughter, put me in a headlock and asked if I wanted a fight. When I’d wriggled free I slumped against the wall of the pub to get a better view. The girl was tall and lithe with a nose-ring. She was heavily made up and wearing a tight white minidress and had long tanned legs that seemed to stretch to the far side of the Thames. I looked down at my white legs, denim cut-offs and scraggy Van Morrison T-shirt. When I looked up again, Joe and the girl had their arms around each other. I lowered my eyes, convinced that was it. He had someone else on the sly all along. I felt like I was about to shatter into a thousand pieces and was about to turn and walk away when they pulled apart. The girl stood up and pulled on a pink jacket then Joe turned round and saw me. He got up, waving me over, his face lighting up. By the time I got to the bench a huge grin had spread across his face. He turned to the girl who picked up the small pink suitcase that lay beside her feet.

“Here she is. Bloody hell. She made it after all. Sinéad, this is Carmel, the love of my life.”

He introduced me to his cousin who was over from Cork for a few days and staying with Pat and Peggy. He’d been hoping the three of us could spend the evening together but she was already late for her flight and had to rush off to get to Gatwick.

I watched Sinéad