The truth was, April had never been overly bothered about having children. Not till the moment she was told that she couldn’t have them. When she was in her twenties and pictured her future, she always imagined herself by the beach, living her life, happy. Meeting Duncan at work was something she’d never expected, and so the picture had changed. When the children didn’t come, the picture fell apart altogether. Now she was here, by herself, and whether she felt the need to defend her life choices or not, she would have to. Single, childless women of a certain age were treated as anomalies back in her old social circle, and she was glad to be away from it.
Picking herself up off the floor, she headed to the bathroom. It wasn’t too bad in here after her earlier scrub fest. All the chalets were in good condition; they just needed a bit of a makeover, a deep clean that would make Kim and Aggie get a sweat on, and some home comforts. The skip that was Tim’s chalet was one of the worst things about the place, and given that it was her home, she could put up with it. There was of course the odd collapsing door and rotten window frame, but Cillian seemed to be on the ball with everything, so she was trying to keep her panic levels low key. Martha, the resident she had seemingly inherited along with the park and a pile of problems, was obviously not impressed with her being the new owner. At one point, April thought that Martha might actually nobble her with the bat, but she had been decidedly quiet that afternoon.
She’d been surprised to find herself agreeing to Cillian’s live-in position. She hadn’t envisaged many people in the beginning, and now she had a grumpy octogenarian with a violent streak and a family living next to her. The thought of Cillian’s daughter coming to live here made April feel a little odd. She couldn’t imagine having a kid around, although she knew she was being stupidly naive. Holiday parks meant families, grandchildren, school trips. There was no avoiding seeing the tiny human portion of the population, no matter how she tried. Who could? They were everywhere, like flies around manure or bees around honey. The fact that she compared children to insects flying around a turd wasn’t lost on her, and she was glad she was alone and couldn’t blurt it out to anyone.
Why did the fact she couldn’t have children make her this way? Some days, she wanted to scream at all the pregnant women moaning about their aches and pains. She often saw fraught parents shouting at a crying child on the street back home, or in the supermarket, the mother looking hollow-eyed and miserable, the child crying and shuddering with emotion. Didn’t they realise how good they had it? Would she have been that person?
She knew it wasn’t like that, not really. She got that motherhood was hard – hell, her own mother had shown her real strength, just by being out there, trying to live her life. She had been in her mother’s shoes, packing up her life and driving to Shady Pines for a new start. She’d felt the connection so keenly at times that it felt like her mother was actually sitting in the car with her, listening to CDs and crying at the sad songs. How her mother had found the strength to go on, to raise her child and still keep smiling, she’d never know. It made her love and miss her all the more, so much her heart hurt. She wished she could talk to her now, tell her how grateful she was. Thanks, Mum, for making me at least half as brave as you.
Thinking about growing a new life inside her body left her nothing but cold now. She would never know that joy, so she shut herself away from it. Some days, it was easy. Days like today, dreading the arrival of a small person who had done nothing wrong, it wasn’t so simple to understand. She really didn’t want to pat another child on the head like a cocker spaniel any time soon. How old was his daughter anyway, and what about the mother? What did she think about moving to a chalet here again, and her husband working for a tearful woman who couldn’t hang a front door? The whole thing had her stomach in knots. It made her think of Duncan, and a day some months back, when she’d felt just as anxious.
***
‘God, I’m so depressed,’ April murmured to herself, kicking a frilly grey scatter cushion off the bed with enough force that it propelled across the huge white and grey room, hitting Duncan’s trouser press that sat to one side of the large bay window. From the walk-in shower in the en suite, a voice called out.
‘You say something, honey?’ His deep rich voice echoed against the tiled walls, the water still running as he showered for work.
‘No, nothing,’ she lied, lying back against the plush sheets. ‘Just falling apart quietly over here.’ She said it so he wouldn’t hear, of course. He was already in work mode, his suit laid out on the dresser, the jaunty cherry-coloured cufflinks she’d bought him for their wedding anniversary sat on top.
Her phone beeped at the other side of the room, where it sat on charge. The sound set her teeth on edge. She’d had the foresight to book the
