“Shit!” he said, slamming his palm hard on the worktop. “Shit, shit, shit!”
I was taken aback. He never cried.
Then, as if suddenly reminding himself that Joe Doherty simply didn’t do that sort of thing, he straightened up like a soldier standing to attention, wiped his face with the back of his hand and staggered upstairs to bed.
I tightened the belt of my dressing gown. It was a bright morning. Corn-coloured sunshine flooded the room and birds chirped through an open window. I’d been up since six scouring the internet for information about the Tuam home.
I scrutinised Joe’s face. His eyes were puffy and surrounded by dark shadows. He’d pretended to be asleep when I slipped into bed the night before.
“How was your evening?” I asked.
“Fine.”
“You were wrecked when you came in. I was on the sofa in the extension but you didn’t see me. You were hilarious.”
He frowned and tugged at the zip of his jacket. “I may have had a few pints too many.”
I laughed. “You could hardly stand up.”
He leant back and folded his arms over his chest. “So how was your evening getting stoned and drunk on your own again?”
His sharp tone felt like a slap across the face and I flinched.
“You stank when you came to bed. You do know the neighbours can smell it through the window when you smoke in the garden, don’t you?”
“I may have had a joint and a few glasses of wine too many.”
He shook his head and pointed at the empty bottle of Riesling by the recycling bin. “You had a bottle of wine and fuck knows how many joints too many.”
“Yesterday was a hell of a day. I might tell you about it some time.”
“Isn’t every day a hell of day for you though, Carmel? Can you actually remember when you last had an evening without a drink or a spliff?”
I shifted in my chair, under attack. “No, but something tells me you can.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not the only person in the world to lose loved ones, you know.”
I stared down at the keyboard, willing him to leave. I wasn’t in the mood for any of this. But he did have a point. My drinking and smoking were constant and, I feared, becoming medicinal.
“You coped much better with your grief than I did.”
He snorted then bent down and tucked his trousers into his socks.
“Or at least you seemed to.”
He straightened up. “How the hell would you know? You were always too pissed or stoned or wrapped up in yourself to ask.”
My mouth opened but no words came out. What the hell was wrong with him? Yesterday at the hospital he was husband of the year but now he was acting like he hated me.
He picked his cycling helmet up from the worktop and as he turned to leave it hit me. This wasn’t about my drinking and smoking at all.
I sat up. “They were all talking about babies last night, weren’t they?”
He turned around slowly and nodded. “I was the only one there without kids. I want to be a dad, Carmel. You’re forty in a few months. We don’t have much time left.”
I shut the laptop lid and sighed. “I’m scared, Joe. There are so many things that could go wrong. It’s not like the gene pool on my side is great, is it? There’s a very good chance any child of ours could inherit HMC.”
He stepped towards me. “I’ve been reading up on it. They’re developing new tests that can check if a foetus has it early on.”
I shrugged and folded my arms. “OK. So imagine I got pregnant and I did one of those tests and it came back positive. Then we’d have to decide whether or not to have an abortion. How difficult would that be? HMC killed Mikey when he was thirty-four. Tess lived all her life with it. A child of ours might live to be eighty so how could we go ahead with an abortion?” I put my elbows on the table and rubbed at my temples. “And then there’s Tess.”
“What about Tess?”
I swallowed. “A child of ours could inherit what she had. Her mental instability.”
He shook his head wearily. “Let’s face it, Carmel. You just don’t want kids.”
“You had a happy normal childhood, Joe. That’s why you’re so sure you want kids. You had two healthy parents who were in a good marriage and you never had to worry about money. Tess did her best for me and Mikey but growing up was tough after Dad died. What I experienced as a child isn’t something I want to replicate. And, unfortunately, we do replicate the past.” I sighed. “I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I’m just not sure I’d make a good mother.”
He came over, knelt beside me and took my hands in his. “You’d make a brilliant mother, I know you would.”
I shook my head. “No, I wouldn’t. I’d be anxious and overprotective and scared all the time. That’s not good for any child.”
I slipped my hands from his, placed them on his shoulders and looked directly into his eyes. “I have to be honest with
