The Last Goodbye (2 page)

For the first few nights after arriving in London, I had stayed in a hostel full of American backpackers and students who were all inter-railing around Europe. They would be comatose in the bunk beds every morning after only getting into them only a few hours previously, while I got up early to look for a job. I would try and make myself look somewhat presentable, peering in the hostel’s dimly lit, six-inch-square bathroom mirror, before heading out onto the streets to start my hunt. I had a very limited amount of money to tide me over so I needed to get work quickly before the cash I had saved from my part-time job in the local supermarket at home ran out. I didn’t have a clue about what kind of job I wanted to do – I was just so glad to be away from home that I would have taken anything. I dropped into a few of the large department stores on spec but they weren’t currently hiring. So after a few days of not getting anywhere, I decided my best bet would be to register with a recruitment agency.

As I was walking down the street to the address I’d been given, I walked past a gallery with a beautiful taupe-and-green striped awning outside. I noticed a handwritten sign in the bay window, which read
Now Hiring
. Deciding that I had nothing to lose, I pushed back the door. It had one of those old-fashioned bells that gave a
‘trrrrrrring’
when the door was opened.

A tall, thin girl stood up from behind the counter. She looked to be about the same age as myself. She had the kind of build that women described as ‘striking’ often have. Her height was further emphasised by her hair, which was backcombed several inches off the top of her head. She was wearing a black scoop-necked bodysuit tucked into a tight stonewashed denim skirt, which laced like a corset up the back. Her make-up was dramatic, with heavy kohl accentuating her cool blue eyes with their vivid flecks of green. My eyes travelled down her body and landed on a pair of scuffed Doc Martens. Her style was way beyond anything I had ever seen at home – suddenly I felt self-conscious in my baggy jeans and frumpy sweatshirt. My hair didn’t have a style – it was just dead straight and hung down at both sides of my face like a pair of curtains framing a stage. I had only ever seen people dressed like her on TV. If I had worn those clothes in our village, let alone the hair, I would have been the talk of the town. I had felt intimidated by her. I wanted to turn around and run back out the door again.

She looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to speak.

“I’m here about the job?” I said timidly.

“You Irish?” Her accent was pure London. I had only been there for a few days at that stage but already my ear was starting to distinguish the different accents. She looked at me quizzically with her head tilted to the side as she tried to assess me.

“Yeah.”

“The owner’s not here at the minute – hang on and I’ll give her a call . . .”

“Okay.” I stood there, idly glancing around the gallery while I listened to her talk on the phone.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Got it. Byyyye.” She hung up the phone and turned back to me. “She says it’s fine with her, once I’m happy with you. The name’s Nat – what’s yours?”

“Kate,” I said.

“Well, Kate, looks like you’ve got yourself a job.”

“What? Don’t you want me to do an interview or something?” I had only been enquiring and it felt like the job had just been thrust upon me. And even though I was desperate for work, I wasn’t sure I wanted to work with her. I didn’t even know what kind of work I would be doing.

“Nah, no need!” She waved her hand.

“Okay, well . . . I suppose I should say thank you.”

“Do you smoke?”

“No,” I said, feeling instantly like a Goody Two-Shoes. “I gave up a few months back – because I couldn’t afford them,” I added so she knew I wasn’t completely square.

“No worries – here, can you hold the fort while I run round to the shop and get some fags?”

“Em . . . okay,” I said, looking around at the high gallery walls, wondering what I had let myself in for.

“Listen, Kate, there’s no need to look so scared – I’m not going to bite you, love.” Then her face broke into a big grin and I started to relax.

I knew then that we were going to get along just fine together.

It was such an eye-opener for an Irish girl from Ballyrobin coming to London. It was so depressing at home – both in my house and in the country in general. All I seem to remember when I think back on those years is grey. Grey weather. Grey classrooms. Grey people. There was a whole generation of people who left Ireland for London in the eighties and I was a decade late. Just as I was leaving, the economy was starting to pick up. People were buying new cars and they weren’t ashamed of it. There were jobs to be had now and for the first time in decades expats were starting to return home to work. But I went in the opposite direction. My dad couldn’t understand why I wanted to emigrate at a time when things were finally starting to go Ireland’s way. In the eighties he had spent a lot of time worrying if his kids would have to leave the country like almost all young people had to at that time. So when it looked like things were on the up, he was relieved. For the first time since the eighties there were jobs to be had and not just in Dublin. But it wasn’t about the work – it was never about the work. I know Ireland is a different place now of course – I can see it’s changed whenever I meet other Irish people or watch the news. But London was like the place that I belonged in as soon as I arrived. Within days of coming over here, I had felt more at home than I had in my seventeen years in Ireland. The anonymity was a revelation. People wore what they wanted to wear. People didn’t whisper wherever you walked – they didn’t talk in scandalised tones because the Gardaí had brought you home last night because they caught you necking back some snakebite up in the playground.

Nat turned out to be the best friend that I could have asked for. When she heard I was staying in a hostel to save money, she invited me to sleep on her mum’s sofa until I found somewhere to live. She introduced me to all her friends so they quickly became my circle too. After a week in her mum’s house, I found a poky two-roomed flat in Clapham. Although there was only one bedroom, Nat decided to move in with me. We shared a room with two single beds and not much space for anything else. The paint was peeling off the walls and there were black mildew spots in the corners of the ceiling. The seventies’ furniture looked as though it was taken from the landlord’s family home and he was just looking for somewhere to get rid of it. There was too much of it to be functional. A huge sideboard was squashed into the hallway so that you had to turn sideways to walk past it and, even though it was only a one-bedroomed flat, the long rectangular table in the kitchen could sit eight people around it comfortably.

Yes, the flat was tiny, but we had so much fun there. I could go out when I wanted to and come home at whatever hour I chose. There was no one banging on my door calling me for Mass on a Sunday morning. We would go home from work in the gallery and then we would usually head straight out to a party or a club or have friends over to ours. We were out almost every night of the week. For the first time in my life I had freedom. I didn’t have the weight of home dragging me down. Leaving was without doubt the best decision I ever made.

London was where I belonged now.

Chapter 2

At six o’clock we turned out the lights in the gallery to head home. We said bye to one another and Nat put her bag into the basket on the front of her bike and cycled off while I walked in the other direction to the Tube. It was a warm summer’s evening and people spilled out of the pubs and onto the streets, keen to make the most of the evening sun. I weaved my way around where they stood on the path, beer bottles in one hand and taking long drags on cigarettes with the other. Their laughter carried on the summer air. Joggers overtook me on the pavement before cutting into the park.

I arrived in the door to the smell of curry. Even though I had bought the ingredients for it myself the day before, now the smell of the coconut milk just made me want to hurl. I stopped at the door into the kitchen, where Ben’s broad back was towards me as he stood in front of the cooker. He was angling the chopping board and tossing green peppers into the frying pan. Our kitchen was so poky: a few small grey-painted presses, a sink, washing machine, cooker, fridge and a small table and chairs was it. We had a few pots of herbs growing on the windowsill – they were Ben’s babies, not mine.

“
Euuuggggh!
”

He turned around and smiled at me from where he was stirring the pan.

“Don’t tell me – the smell is making you sick?”

I pinched my nose and nodded my head. He left the pan and came over and wrapped me in a hug. This was without doubt my favourite part of the day – when I would come in wrecked from work and Ben would put his strong arms around me and all my worries and stresses would just fade away.

Ben was a primary school teacher so he was always the first one home. I was spoiled rotten because he usually had dinner ready and waiting for me when I got in every evening. He loved his job. I knew most of the children in his class by name myself, just from listening to him talking about them.

“How’s Baby Pip doing?” he asked, nuzzling at my neck.

“I think I started to feel kicks today – it’s so faint though, it’s hard to know.”

We called her Pip because when I had first found out that I was pregnant the book said that at five weeks she was the size of a pip, and somehow it had stuck even though we both thought that it was a bit cheesy.

He placed his hand on my tummy. “I can’t feel anything.”

“Well,
duh
– the movements are only tiny at this stage plus she –”

“Or he,” Ben interjected.

“Or he – isn’t moving at the moment. It’s a girl anyway.”

“How do you know?” He started to laugh.

“I just do.”

“Please can we find out the sex at our next scan?”

“No! I told you already, I don’t want to find out – but I know I’m right.”

He held me at arm’s length and stared at my tummy.

“You’re getting a bump.”

“Yeah, I know – I haven’t got long left in these trousers. I had to open the top button this afternoon when I was sitting down behind the desk.”

“Well, I’d say that looked good! Although you could pretend it’s some new form of artistic expression. So did you think any more about going home for a weekend?”

“Not now, Ben!” I pulled away from him. “I’m exhausted. I think I’m going to go and have a soak in the bath.”

Later that evening, as I lay in bed reading on my own, I could hear Ben laughing away on his own at the TV in the living room. The sounds were muffled as they travelled through the walls to our bedroom. We lived in part of what was all originally one house but in the eighties the owners had decided to convert their upstairs bedrooms into an apartment and rent it out. It was a red-bricked terraced Victorian house. We had two bedrooms, a galley-kitchen, a living room and a small bathroom. The rent was typical of London – big money, small place. We were saving up to buy our own place but then I had found out that I was pregnant so we decided to put our plans on hold for a while until after Baby Pip arrived.

There must have been something particularly funny on the TV because Ben was howling with laughter.

Ben was definitely the smiley one in our relationship. He was always in good form – he had what you might describe as a ‘sunny disposition’. It wasn’t that I was a grumpy person but I just wasn’t constantly in good form like he was – nothing ever seemed to get him down or to send him into a rage like me. Everyone loved him as soon as they met him – he was just one of those people. And he always knew how to pull me out of a mood. I was fascinated whenever we were out together, watching how everyone automatically migrated towards him. I would hover somewhere on the periphery, staring, taking it all in. Ben saw the good in everyone whereas I was a lot more cynical. I tried not to be but I couldn’t help it. I think that was why he wouldn’t let the whole trip to Ireland go – he wanted to make everyone happy just like him and he thought that a trip home would do that for me too. It was like the baby had put a deadline on it – he wanted it resolved before Pip came along. But it was never going to be that simple: twenty years of anger and hurt can’t be just reset with a quick visit home. I knew he meant well though.

I put my book down and placed my two hands flat on my bare, swollen stomach. I could definitely feel Pip moving. I knew I wasn’t just imagining it. It was such a surreal feeling to think that there was actually a baby in there, growing away, doing its thing, doing everything that it needed to do and knowing when to do it. The pregnancy was going well – except for the nausea, which still wasn’t showing any signs of abating even though I was nearly at the halfway mark. I had been assured by all in the know that once I entered the second trimester the morning sickness would go and I’d get a new burst of energy but they were all liars because I still felt like shit.

The whole thing was making me think a lot though. I wasn’t prepared for that side of it – it had brought a lot of old memories back to the surface. And Ben wasn’t helping by constantly banging on about it. I had known this was what would happen and that was why it had taken me a while to come round to the idea of having a baby with him. Ben had been broody for a long time – he was the one who would stop a mother on the footpath to coo over her infant whereas I just saw sticky hands and a runny nose. While I had always wanted children, it was more a case of ‘one day’ so it came as a bit of a shock when I found out that I was pregnant. But when I had seen the two pink lines on the test stick, I’d got really excited – the time was right, Ben loved me and I loved him.