All Because of You (Lakeview #2) (39 page)

She was right.  Her mother was apoplectic, and although her father tried at first to remain calm and non-judgemental, he too was obviously very upset. 

“The little shit,
” her mother raved. “Isn’t well for him taking off back to the city and leaving us to deal with his mess!”

“It’s not a mess, Mam,” Tara insisted through her tears. “We love one another. Yes, we made a big mistake, but it’ll be OK.  Jason loves me – he’ll come back and look after us. It’ll be OK.”

But it wasn’t OK.  When Tara finally plucked up the courage to phone Jason and tell him the news, his reaction wasn’t quite what she’d expected.

“I … I don’t know what you want me to do,” he’d said, after what seemed like an interminably long silence. “I’m starting college next week and –”

Immediately, Tara dropped the phone. Naively, she’d hoped against hope  that Jason would  immediately rush to her side and proclaim that he was going to take care of her and the baby, that there was no need for her parents to worry, that he would face up to his responsibilities because he loved Tara and wanted to be with her forever. Stupidly, she’d even allowed herself to pretend that the pregnancy might force his hand and get him to move here for good. But instead, he’d acted cold and uncaring, a million miles from the Jason she knew before their night in the park.

“What did I tell you?” her mother ranted. “Of
course
he’s going to tell you it’s your own tough luck. That’s what happens in these situations. You’re the one – or should I say
we’re
the ones – who’ll be left to shoulder the burden – so you might as well get used to it.”

Looking back, the words seemed unnecessary cruel, but a teenage pregnancy in the family – a respectable family in a small, quiet village – was every parent’s nightmare. 

But the words remained with Tara and, right then, she knew that if she stayed and tried to bring up the baby under her parent’s roof, when they were so obviously disappointed in her and resented her situation, she’d regret it for the rest of her life.

So, when she’d eventually got over the disappointment and devastation of Jason’s rejection of her, Tara resolved to take the ‘burden’ and shame away from her family and deal with it all herself. And when, a few months later, an adorable bundle of dark hair and laughing brown eyes was born to her, Tara resolved to go it alone.

She knew what to do; she’d thought about nothing else for the last while and had set the plans in motion during the last few months of her pregnancy, had spoken to the relevant authorities, and knew exactly where to go and what to do next.

She’d prove to everyone that she could do this on her own, and she never wanted the baby – Glenn, she’d called him – to feel that he was an outsider, or resented by anyone in her family or the community.

So, at barely eighteen years of age, Tara got out of Lakeview and went to Dublin, bringing her three-month-old baby son with her. For the first few months of his life she’d ensured she learnt how to cope properly with him, how to feed him, how to respond to his cries, and while she had no illusions about how difficult it would be, she felt confident she could go it alone.

Much to her mother’s protests. “What do you think you’re playing at?” Isobel had sniggered when Tara told her she didn’t want to burden her any longer. “How are you going to feed him and yourself?”

“I’ll get by,” she said defiantly. “Other people have to do it.”

Her mother shook her head. “Nonsense! Yo
u’ll be back here within a week.”

But Tara would not allow her son to be a burden on her parents, and she knew that if she stayed she would become resentful and bitter, and that her mother would remind her every single day that she was beholden to them.

Granted, it wasn’t exactly a bed of roses being beholden to the state services either, as Tara was in the early days. She knew that the benefits given to single mothers were a constant source of ire to the working population, but at barely eighteen years of age, she’d hadn’t much of choice but to rely upon them. She couldn’t go out to work just yet as there was nobody to look after Glenn, so she’d had no other option but to take the ‘handouts’ she was, apparently, legally entitled to.

They’d also put her on the housing waiting list, and in the meantime set her up in a tiny, airless bedsit on Dublin’s Northside, in what could only be described as ‘a troubled’ area. But within the community Tara eventually made some good friends – especially amongst the other single mothers, and although life was very tough for the first few weeks, as far as she was concerned it was only temporary. As soon as Glenn was old enough to go to playschool, she’d come off the benefits, get a job and begin to make some kind of a life for them.

Still, in the first few weeks they’d barely coped, and many times Tara seriously considered going back home to her parents but her pride wouldn’t let her. Then, almost two months after she first left Lakeview, her mother – grudgingly impressed by the strength and determination shown by her eldest daughter, and ashamed at her immediate response to her plight – had insisted she come home and raise the baby there. 

“We can look after the baby for a couple of mornings a week if you want to go out to work,” she’d offered. “Anything to make it easier on the two of you.”

Initially, Isobel had been so consumed with anger and upset (not to mention embarrassed) at Tara’s stupidity, that she’d been quite prepared to let her go it alone and get it out of her system. It wouldn’t be too long before she’d come crawling back to Lakeview begging for help. But when the weeks passed and that hadn’t happened, Isobel had to admit that her daughter’s tenacity surprised her. Then, again, with the kind of handouts the young ones got these days, maybe it was no surprise after all.  Still, the state of the places they expected them to live in! Isobel had been horrified at the sight of roaming horses and burnt-out cars on her first time visiting the flat where Tara and the baby were living, and after that she vowed that she’d look after them both properly.  

But Tara didn’t want to be ‘looked after’; at that stage she didn’t want anything from her mother that could be construed as charity. She didn’t want to go back living under her parent’s roof and have it held against her for the rest of her life, as her mother surely would. She knew she’d never be allowed forget it. And by then, Tara had gone through enough without her mother’s help. She’d got over the worst of it. 

So, she’d faced her mother down and told her that she didn’t want to go home to Lakeview, to be ‘looked after’ and that she was perfectly fine staying in Dublin, but if Isobel and her dad wanted to contribute to their grandchild’s upbringing by giving her a hand to look after him now and again, they were most welcome. 

That was a proud day for Tara. She hadn’t asked, she hadn’t begged, yet her mother was offering to help with the baby, not because she had to, but because she
wanted
to.

And Tara accepted the offer with a pure sense of relief, relief that she no longer had to do it all alone, that her parents would be involved in Glenn life’s too, but by their own choice. This way, she and her mother were closer to an equal footing – they were both adults, sharing the burden (and the joys) of looking after the baby rather than Glenn and Tara living at home and always having to feel grateful because her mother had no choice but to help her out.

Her dad had been wonderful too and, as a young toddler, Glenn loved going down to the house in Lakeview now and again to work out in the garden with him, while all the time his mother strove to build a decent life for them in Dublin.  

Eventually when Glenn was old enough, Tara enrolled him in the local playschool, and herself in a state-sponsored ‘back to work’ programme, working mornings in a nearby centre for troubled kids.  

The scheme was designed so that she could contribute to the community, learn some new skills, and at the same time hold on to her benefits. It was a godsend for Tara, who had been terrified she’d become like some of the other unmarried mothers she knew, perpetually dependent on the state, with no desire or no incentive to do anything else. Whereas nothing mattered more to Tara than to have the chance to get out of the poverty cycle, and try make a better life for herself and Glenn.

So, by the time Glenn was eight years old, and with his grandmother on board to look after him (on
Tara’s
terms, she’d been clear about that) Tara had gone on to complete a variety of similar schemes, and had built up a decent portfolio of different skills, so much so that she’d decided that community and social care was what she wanted to do. But, jobs were limited and she discovered, when finally coming off benefits, wages were very low, and the centres where her skills were most needed were chronically under-funded. 

Still, this was where Tara’s interests lay, and while Glenn was in school during the day, she kept them going by working in a telesales company, and then took a correspondence course in Social Studies by night. And by the time she was twenty-five years old, Tara had a decent job, her own rented flat (not much bigger than the one the state provided but, most importantly, paid for out of her own wages), and had completed a university diploma, all with an eight-year-old son in tow.

But – and every day Tara thanked her lucky stars for this – Glenn was a wonderful mild-mannered child who loved nothing better than sitting quietly in front of his computer, playing games. Initially, Tara had been concerned at his apparent contentment with his own company, but according to his teachers, he had lots of friends and was very outgoing at school so this wasn’t an issue.

“Tara
look, see what I can do!” he’d say, calling her into his bedroom, hoping to impress her by displaying his skills on some confusing computer game that would leave his mother dizzy trying to keep up with him. 

“Why doesn’t he call you ‘Mammy’?” her mother asked one day. By then, the two had long put aside their differences, and Isobel was very much involved in her grandson’s life. “It seems strange that he calls you by your name.”

Tara shrugged. “Do you know, I don’t really notice it anymore,” she said truthfully.   “It was funny in the early days when he started doing it as a toddler – probably because he never heard me being called anything other than Tara by the other mothers and kids in the estate. But I never really corrected him, so I suppose it stuck. I don’t mind though.”

Isobel said nothing, feeling that it wasn’t really her place to criticise her daughter’s child-rearing skills at this stage, not when she’d done such an amazing job, particularly in the early days when she’d gone it alone. But it was a bit strange all the same. 

Eventually, and especially once Glenn hit his teenage years, Tara began to carve out more of a life for herself, and so she went about setting up her Life Coaching Consultancy. It was ironic really, that this work could be carried out in her own home now that Glenn was old enough to do his own thing; whereas when he was a baby there been no option for her to do anything other than go out to work. 

And the last few years had been great for them – they had an incredibly close relationship, Glenn very aware and evidently respectful of the sacrifices his mother had made for him, and he’d never given her a bit of trouble or a night of worry.

Of course, she was occasionally concerned about him falling in with the wrong crowd, but seeing as most of his mates were computer geeks just like him, she’d little need to worry.

And when earlier that year she’d learnt that Glenn had passed his Leaving Certificate exams and had gained enough points for computer studies (what else?) in university,  she’d never felt so proud. It had been worth it, all the pain, all the heartache and poverty, and years missed going out and enjoying life like other girls her age. Glenn was her life, and everything she’d worked for had come good.

She hadn’t lied when she’d told Jason that he’d grown up to be a decent, respectable young lad. He had, and sometimes his level-headedness worried her. Immediately after finishing school and his exams, instead of taking it easy for the summer as most other seventeen-year-olds would do, he’d taken the junior analyst’s job at Pixels, which he hoped would give him lots of experience in his chosen field. But the truth was that Glenn’s first love was and always had been computers. It was only surprising he hadn’t been born with a keyboard in his hands, she thought smiling, such was his love for all things cyber. 

Now, lying awake in bed for the second night running, Liz sleeping soundly in the bed next to her, tonight’s nightmare dinner with Jason and Natalie finally over, Tara worried once more about Glenn and the situation he was facing. She’d no right to criticise; after all, the same thing had happened to her and everything had turned out OK, but didn’t he have any idea how hard it was going to be? 

She wanted more for him, of that there was no doubt. But she couldn’t help but be impressed by his determination to stand by this girl Abby and shoulder his responsibilities. Whether or not this optimism would still be around by the time the child was born was another thing, but at least he was giving the girl the support she needed.

The kind of support that Tara had sorely craved from Jason.

The Murrays had never again returned to Lakeview for the holidays, and after that initial phone call to tell him she was pregnant, Tara had never again heard from Jason. 

In fact, she hadn’t thought about him for a very long time, and certainly hadn’t expected to bump into him again at this stage, and especially not in London. Back then, Tara had tried to convince herself that her reasons for moving to Dublin were purely for Glenn’s good, but thinking about it, maybe there was a tiny part of her that subconsciously hoped she might bump into Jason again in his home city, although apparently he lived in a big house south of the capital along the coast, a millions miles from the run-down part of the city she’d had to settle for.