Overtime is plenty at the moment, though I’m hammered in subs. Every penny is going into the tin for our new life together. I stay out of the pub except for the odd pint at the Irish Association Club in Chorlton of a Saturday. I can’t wait to take you there. There’s dancing every weekend.
I have an eye on a house for us not far from here. I took a walk over there on Saturday morning. It’s in a decent area and you can walk to the shops in Chorlton. I met a fella from Dublin, O’Grady, when I was looking. He lives across the road and his wife is a Corkwoman and a nurse at the hospital.
Anyway, my love, I must leave you now. My new roommate is coming up the stairs. He’s a Roscommon lad, nice enough but he snores like a prize pig.
Try not to be too afraid of what is to come. Your confinement will soon be over. Then we can start our new life together.
I think of you every minute of every day.
All my love
Seán
xxx
I looked at the date and frowned. September 1960. Tess told us she and Dad met on the boat from Dublin to Holyhead in 1962. I was sure of it. But, according to the letter, Dad was already settled here and he was waiting for her to join him. So, what was she doing in Tuam, a town in north County Galway miles from her birthplace in 1960? I read the letter again, this time slowly. When I’d finished I sat upright and inhaled sharply.
Your confinement will be over.
Confinement. The word rose up off the page and slapped me in the face. How could I have missed it? Confinement. Meaning imprisonment, detention or detainment. But also a euphemism for pregnancy.
I grabbed the arm of the chair. “Jesus.”
A car horn beeped outside and I glanced out of the window. A crow was skimming through the cherry blossom, a slither of black slicing through the pink.
I searched frantically for more letters, opening every envelope and scrutinising every bit of paper but I found nothing.
My phone buzzed. It was Joe.
Where are you?
I looked at my watch. Christ. I only had half an hour to get into town, park and get to my appointment. I’d been so engrossed I’d lost track of time. I texted back immediately.
On my way.
I stuffed everything back into the envelope and slipped it into my bag along with some of the old records. Dazed, I gathered the binbags, locked the front door behind me and threw the rubbish into the bins. I hurried to my car. As I was about to open the door I looked back at the house. The clouds opened and a momentary sliver of sun cast a long shadow over the roof. It looked different, the way the face of an old friend looks different if they do something unexpected or out of character.
That morning, I’d been hoping make peace with my troubled childhood. To move on and to find closure. But now everything had been flung wide open. Had Tess and Dad really had another child out of wedlock fourteen years before I was born? Had they really kept it secret from me and Mikey for all those years?
In my excitement I put my hand on my phone to ring my brother and tell him. Then I remembered.
My heart dropped with the speed of a falling lift. I couldn’t share my news with Mikey. I couldn’t tell him anything ever again.
Chapter 6
My brother entered the world with the same drama he left it. He ripped out of Tess onto the lime-green lino in our kitchen in Brantingham Road on St Patrick’s Day 1980. I was six and Dad had just left for work. Tess was kneeling in front of me attaching a hedge of shamrock to my school jumper, my head already a flotilla of green, white and gold ribbons.
She held me at arm’s length to admire her handiwork. “Now then,” she said.
As she stood up she gave a low moan. Water was cascading between her legs. She grabbed hold of the table to steady herself and knocked the remaining shamrock onto the floor. My fell mouth open and I watched the precious plant that had come all the way from Mayo float in the pool at her feet like lilies on a pond. With no explanation I was ordered across the road to fetch Rose O’Grady from Number 42.
Rose was a staff nurse at Manchester Royal Infirmary. Everything about her was wide and bountiful, her hips, her smile, her generosity of spirit. Yet she was married to the most curmudgeonly man ever to leave Ireland. Thin, unsmiling and monosyllabic, Tommy O’Grady spent most of his time in the pub or the betting office while Mary slaved away at the hospital then reared their five children at home. She was a loyal friend to Tess, one of the few in the Irish community who didn’t shun her when her mental-health problems took their toll. In the weeks after Dad died, when Tess’s depressive episodes pinned her to her bed, Rose came round every morning to check that Mikey and I were fed, dressed and in school. She put food in the cupboard, checked we did our homework and during Tess’s spells on the psychiatric ward she took us in. She and Tess were in
