Fionnuala Kearney - You, Me and Other People

Oh, the words of the wise.

‘But he loves you the most,’ I add. ‘Never forget that.’

I can tell she’s trying not to cry, tearing a little piece of garlic bread off every few seconds. It’s like, if she keeps chewing, the tears won’t come.

‘I still can’t quite believe it,’ she confesses. ‘Every morning I wake up and think of how he’s behaved and I just shake my head.’

I nod mine.

‘It’s so bloody clichéd. I thought he was better than that.’

‘Didn’t we all?’ I sigh, a deep sigh. ‘Eat your food, it’ll get cold.’

She takes her fork and stabs some gnocchi, raises it to her mouth.

And, in that moment, watching her, I’m cast back in time to a three-year-old Meg. Her lower lip would tremble, just like it’s starting to now; she’d take a deep breath and she would either howl like a feral vixen or keep the lip-tremble going, stubbornly refusing to cry. Tonight there is no wild sound but the floodgates open anyway. Silent tears slide down her face. She looks away, searching for an escape route to the Ladies and I reach for her hand, clutch it tightly.

‘Stay,’ I plead. ‘You’re okay …’ The restaurant only has four other diners and we’re seated far enough away from them. I can feel the taste of my own cries in the back of my jaw. Controlling them, I hand her tissues and whisper, ‘It’s going to be okay.’ The words seem empty and hollow to me. I hope they sound different to her.

‘Will you,’ she sniffs, wipes her eyes, ‘will you take him back?’

The hope in those eyes makes me want to gasp, grab at some extra air to help me come to terms with what her expression means. Despite her strength, despite her obvious anger at her father, all she wants is for this to be over and her family back together again. I want to kill Adam. I want to kill him for doing this to her and to me. I shake my head slowly. ‘I don’t know, Meg, I just don’t know yet.’

She nods, looks away, places the cooling gnocchi in her mouth and chews slowly. I watch her pierce another piece and repeat. Letting go of her hand, I take my own fork and swirl some spaghetti around its end. The bolognese is garlic heavy and I think about how Adam always shied away from garlic kisses. It feels something like spite when I clear my plate slowly.

We chat about anything that is nothing to do with Adam and me, or Adam and me and her. Her coursework, her flatmates, her tutors and her shower, which has mould in the tiling grout. Soon her tears have turned to laughter and I smile and she does too. She stands, comes over to my side of the table and hugs me. Tight. No more words are needed. She’s strong. She will be all right and, as long as she’s all right, I will be too.

Later, after late-night cocoa at home, Meg apologizes again for not staying the night and pulls a jumper on over her T-shirt. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’ve got an important tutorial first thing. You okay?’ I take her in my arms, not an easy feat as she’s a lot taller than me. I stroke her beautiful chestnut curls.

‘I’m fine if you are,’ I whisper into their softness.

‘The “f” word, Mum. That bad, eh?’

‘Fine’ is a swearword in our house, usually meaning, ‘fed-up, insecure, neurotic and emotional’.

She kisses me, a slight touch of lips. ‘Take care, Mum.’ I want to keep hold of her as we hug, wrap her up in my clothes or shrink her, put her in my pocket for safekeeping. As soon as she leaves, I run to my handbag, remove my notebook and my Dictaphone. As I write the words, I record the melody I’m humming. I call it ‘The F Word’.

I’m not fine,

No, I’m not fine this time,

I can’t even say that word in this hell of mine.

I close my eyes and positively visualize it performed on a worldwide stage.

Maybe given time,

Fine might mean fine,

But right now it’s early days,

I hurt in a hundred ways,

And I’m not fine.

Climbing the stairs to bed, I yawn – a long, gaping, sleepy yawn, and am so relieved that I crawl fully clothed under the bed covers. In my dreams, Gordon Ramsay is in my bed.

‘You can’t call it “The F Word”,’ he says.

‘How did you get here?’ I say.

He doesn’t answer but I have to admit that he looks quite dishy there, his head resting on Adam’s pillow.

‘But since you’re here, does the “F” stand for fuck or for fine?’ I lean up on my left elbow. ‘See, around here when you say “fine”, it’s called “The F Word”,’ I explain.

‘No,’ he says, raising his head to meet mine. ‘It definitely stands for fuck in our house.’

‘But this is my house,’ I pout. In my dreams, my pout is suggestive, my lips dressed in scarlet gloss.

‘Who the fuck cares,’ he says, and kisses me. Gordon, it seems, is not averse to my garlic kisses.

Emma has a fourteen-year-old son called Harold. Not Harry – Harold. I imagine him to be complete with spots and a pathological hatred of both his name and his divorced parents.

So far, because I generally visit the White House at weekends, when Harold is with his father, Alan, I have avoided meeting him. Last night was an exception to this rule. A Wednesday and dinner at the White House was on, because Alan had taken Harold to the cinema straight after his school tennis match. They would not be back until ten, by which time, having eaten dinner, I would be gone. That was the plan. Like all best-laid plans in my life, it didn’t quite pan out – which is why I’m sitting in St Thomas’s A&E department, nursing a minor head wound. I don’t blame Harold. He and Alan had argued, so he’d come back early. Any child of fourteen who’d walked in to find a stranger mounted on his mother on the white rug would do the same thing. I think his tennis racket came off worse.

‘How are you feeling?’ Meg asks. I haven’t yet explained what happened since calling her on a payphone.

‘Fine, it looks worse than it is.’ I tug on the bandage.

‘Leave it,’ she says, ‘I don’t think the bleeding’s stopped yet.’

I look around. No sign of a doctor with the X-ray results yet.

‘Did she bring you here?’

I nod, slightly.

‘So, where is she? Why did you call me?’

‘She had to go, be with her boy.’

‘She has a son?’

I nod again.

‘How old?’

‘Fourteen. With a hell of a right swing …’

Meg’s face scrunches. She looks me up and down, and frowns in a way that makes her look like her mother. ‘Please tell me he didn’t catch you,’ she whispers.

I remain silent. I feel nauseous, and the antiseptic scent of the surroundings doesn’t help; that clawing taste that lingers at the back of my throat.

‘You already have Mum in therapy and now some poor child will probably need counselling for the rest of his life. You’re disgusting,’ she says, looking far into the distance, ‘absolutely disgusting.’

I would nod again, agree with her, but I’m afraid the motion would make me puke.

‘Mr Hall?’

We both turn to see the doctor who’d spoken to me earlier. I raise my hand, acknowledging my name.

‘Ahh, there you are. Well, the good news is there’s nothing broken, no fractures. You have a mild concussion. You may feel nauseous, even vomit, but if it lasts longer than twenty-four hours, come straight back to us.’ He smiles at Meg. ‘You are?’

‘His daughter,’ she says, her lips curling in distaste.

‘He shouldn’t be alone, just in case he’s sick?’

She nods, pulls me upright and pushes me towards the exit.

‘His clothes?’ The doctor, noting my state of undress, looks back towards the A&E department. I have no shoes or socks on, no shirt; just a large, blood-splattered white bath sheet, presumably Emma’s.