Chapter 15
I picked up the copy of the Manchester Evening News from the mat and headed into the kitchen. I looked at the wall clock. Three-quarters of an hour before the taxi was due. It was a bank holiday so the flight to Knock would be busy. A burst of adrenalin rushed through me. I was both excited and nervous about my trip and the possibilities it might unearth. I was also looking forward to being back in Mayo. I hadn’t been back since Tess passed away. I couldn’t wait to wake up to those breath-taking views of Clew Bay from the spare room in my Aunt Julia’s house.
I slipped my passport, Ryanair ticket and car-hire documents into my new travel wallet. I ran my fingers over the soft red leather. Joe had given it to me when he got back from a business trip to Madrid a few days previously. We spent a perfect evening together. We ordered a seafood curry takeaway from Coriander, our favourite Indian, and opened the oaked Rioja he’d brought back. We ate and drank by candlelight and snuggled up to a film. He apologised for being an arse recently, told me he loved me and didn’t mention the baby issue. We had sex on the sofa. Good, bonding sex that made me feel cocooned and safe again.
Then the previous night he’d flown at me again for no apparent reason. I was packing for my trip in the bedroom and he was changing out of his work suit. I noticed he’d lost weight. His once fleshy torso had hollowed out and his arms seemed skinnier. His face looked gaunt too, as if he was ailing for something.
I still hadn’t found the right moment to tell him about Tess’s baby and the real reason I was going to Mayo. We’d both been busy. He’d been in Madrid and I’d been at a conference in Bristol. But I’d decided I was going to tell him everything over dinner that evening.
Karen was on my mind a lot and so I told him about her leaving.
Joe didn’t seem particularly interested. He acted like it was something in my world that didn’t concern him.
“I still can’t believe she never told me,” I said, reaching into my wardrobe for a couple of thick jumpers, “Not even about selling the house.”
“You’re not her keeper!” he snapped, looking on in disapproval as I squashed the sweaters into my holdall. A regular traveller, he meticulously folded and rolled to fit everything into a cabin-luggage-sized case. It really got on my nerves. “Why do you have to be so negative? Why can’t you be happy for her?”
“I am happy for her. I just don’t like the way she did it without saying anything, that’s all. We’ve been friends for years. She should have told me.”
“Sounds to me like you’re jealous,” he said, throwing his shirt in the laundry basket and zipping up his track-suit top.
“What?”
“Well, I am,” he said. “Starting a new life in a new country and leaving this shithole behind. Who wouldn’t be?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I yelled, picking up a pair of jeans and throwing them after him as he left the room.
The front door slammed shortly afterwards. I sat on the bed with my head in my hands, bewildered. What the fuck?
Joe and I had been together for almost twenty years and, though we had our ups and downs, he’d never been as cruel as he had been in those past months. I was started to feel scared and paranoid. Yes, he annoyed the hell out of me sometimes, but I loved him. I didn’t know what I’d do if he were to leave me as well as all the others
The forecast for the west of Ireland was clear skies and sun. For once I was looking forward to the plane landing at Knock airport without being buffeted by fierce Atlantic winds and brutal rain. I had a busy three-day itinerary. After I’d picked up the hire car I was going to drive to Tuam to visit the site of the Mother and Baby home. After that I was going to Westport to Aunt Julia’s.
Julia was Dad’s youngest sister. We were close. We spoke on the phone and Skyped regularly, and I visited a couple of times a year. I hadn’t yet told her the reason for my visit. I had no idea if she knew anything about Tess and Dad and the baby. In 1960, when it all happened, she was living in America. It was too big and emotional to tell her by phone. I wanted to sit down with her in the Chesterfield chairs in front of the open fire, glass of red in hand and talk it through. I’d arranged to meet Kathleen Slevin at a hotel near her home in Bohola the following day.
I made myself a coffee and had turned on the radio when the doorbell rang. A shaven-headed lad in a blue boiler suit stood on the doorstep looking at me expectantly. Tess’s radiogram stood on the path and an orange house clearance van nudged over the hedge behind him.
“Oh yes, thank you,” I said. “Could you just leave it in the hall for now, thanks.”
I’d received a text from the house-clearance people telling me about today’s delivery but in my rush to get ready for my trip I’d forgotten all about it.
I stepped back and opened the door wide as the boy picked the radiogram up and carried it into the hall. Rattling noises came from its belly, like something might have broken inside. Before I could complain he had scarpered out of the door. Shaking my head in annoyance, I went back into the
