to leave him?’
There they were. The words. Out there, in the wild. Matt had said it, not me, but I needed to answer. It felt like the point of no return. I took yet another deep breath, this one shuddering. ‘Ye-es. I suppose so.’
I don’t know what reaction I expected from him. But it wasn’t this. He leapt up, grinning, came round the table and leaned over me to hug me. ‘Oh, Mum. At last! You’re doing the right thing. You know you are. It’s time for you to have a life of your own, not dictated by Dad. He’s always putting you down and trying to stop you doing anything for yourself. I know you stayed together for me and Jon, which is lovely of you, but we’re grown-up now and if you two separate, we won’t mind at all. It won’t hurt us. Jon feels the same – I know because we’ve discussed it.’
I picked up a napkin and dabbed at my eyes, which had sprung a leak. It was a weird feeling, knowing our two sons had discussed their parents’ relationship and come to the conclusion I should leave my husband. Very weird. ‘We’ve been married twenty-five years, Matt. It’s a lot to throw away and I need to think it through carefully before doing anything.’
‘You’re not throwing anything away. You’re just moving on to a new phase in your life. It’s the perfect opportunity, Mum. You’ll have somewhere to live and money of your own, so you won’t be dependent on him or any divorce settlement. You’ll be far enough from Dad to stop him interfering. Because you know he’ll try to.’
I nodded. Yes, he would try to interfere. He’d try to stop me. ‘But I’d also be far from you and Jon.’
‘Ryanair fly to Dublin for about fifty quid return. We could come over to see you for weekends every couple of months. I’d love to see my great-grandparents’ farm.’ Matt sat down again opposite me, but kept hold of my hand across the table. I loved that my sons were so tactile and affectionate.
I felt a tear form in the corner of my eye. ‘Can’t help but wonder what your grandparents would have thought, if they’d still been here. Marriage is supposed to be for life.’
Matt smiled. ‘They’d feel the same way Jon and I do, I’m sure. They’d want what’s best for you, and it’s been obvious for ages that staying with Dad isn’t doing you any good. You know, Grandma used to pull me to one side and ask me on the quiet if I thought you were happy with Dad. I used to say yes of course you were, as I didn’t want to worry her, not when she was so ill at the end.’
‘Oh, sweetheart.’ I had to wipe away another tear at that. Mum had been in such pain in her final days as the cancer ate away at her. She’d been in a hospice, in a private room, with Dad at her bedside and the boys and me visiting as often as we could. I went every day at the end. Paul only came once, stayed five minutes then announced he had too much to do. I’d told myself it wasn’t his mum, and he was feeling uncomfortable not being part of her direct family. But the truth was he had never really wanted much to do with my parents. Dad had died only a year after Mum. But before he’d gone, he’d gifted me his car – a three-year-old Ford Mondeo that Paul had immediately appropriated as his own, trading in our elderly BMW. Until Uncle Pádraig’s legacy, the car was the only thing I owned outright, under my own name.
‘So, you going to do it, Mum?’ Matt said, dragging me back into the present.
‘I don’t know yet. I’m going to have a good long think about it.’
‘You do that.’ He was thoughtful for a moment, then looked at me with a smile. ‘Do you remember that poem Grandma used to quote? I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree. That’s what you should do.’
‘Go to Innisfree?’ I said.
‘Or whatever the farm in Ireland is called. Arise and go now. That’s my point.’ He pulled out his wallet to pay for our coffees. ‘This one’s on me. And don’t forget you can ring me any time if you want to discuss it more. Jon and I will do all we can to help you.’
‘Not if it puts your dad against you. I don’t want you to ruin your relationship with him on account of me.’
‘Mum, I don’t have much of a relationship with him anyway. Don’t think Jon does either. It was always you, when we were kids. You were the one who walked us to school, took us to swimming lessons, helped us with homework, played endless games of Monopoly with us on rainy days and all the rest of it. A proper parent. Dad was just a shadowy figure in the background.’
‘On holidays though, he played with you then?’
‘Did he? I don’t remember. When I think of family holidays, I picture you digging sandcastles or helping us fly kites. I suppose Dad was there, but he just doesn’t figure in my memories.’
Matt got up to pay our bill. Those last words had made me kind of sad and lost in my reminiscences again. I’d always thought that our family holidays were the best times, when Paul had been a proper dad for once.
We hadn’t been married long when I became pregnant with Matt. Paul was delighted when I showed him the blue line on the pregnancy test, and immediately took me out to a swanky restaurant for dinner. Bit wasted on me though, as I had developed an odd metallic taste in my mouth (which continued for the whole first trimester) and nothing tasted right. But I was happy that he was happy, and excited about the prospect of motherhood.
Paul insisted I gave up working in the shoe shop when I was six months gone. ‘You can’t be bending down over people’s feet with that huge bump,’ he’d reasoned.
‘But what about maternity pay?’ I’d said. ‘I need to work a bit longer to qualify.’
‘You won’t be going back to work after the baby’s born, Clare,’ he’d said. ‘You wouldn’t want someone else bringing up our child, would you? Anyway, a decent nanny would cost us more than you earn anyway.’
There’d been no arguing with him, and while I was sad to give up having my own little bit of income, he was right about the cost of childcare. I could always find something part-time later on, when our child or children reached school age.
It was an easy pregnancy. I spent the last three months getting a nursery ready for the baby, decorating the room in palest yellow with a stencilled frieze of farm animals around the walls, painting an old chest of drawers and adding more animals to it, making curtains and a matching floor cushion, and re-covering a fireside chair that would be my seat for night-time feeds. That was the first chair I re-covered, and I enjoyed it so much I vowed to learn how to do upholstery properly.
When Matt was born, Paul showered me with gifts. Flowers, chocolates, champagne, pretty white shawls to wrap the baby in, a gorgeous bracelet with a baby charm. No expense spared. I felt like a queen. I felt loved and cherished.
Paul proved to be a hands-off dad. I don’t think he changed a single nappy. I told myself he worked hard all day and deserved a break in the evenings and at weekends, and baby-minding was my job, but to tell the truth, I would have appreciated a bit of help now and again, and maybe a few lie-ins. It would have helped Paul bond with Matt.
I tried to encourage him to do more. But he’d just sigh and say some things were best left to women. I told myself that once we were out of the baby stage, he’d be more interested. When he could take Matt to the park, kick a football, ride bikes – that’s when Paul would come into his own as a father.
Little Jon came along when Matt was nearly three, and here, I thought, was the opportunity for Paul to do more with Matt, leaving me
