The First Time I Said Goodbye Read online

  Part of me couldn’t believe that in just a few short hours I would be there – on that famous Irish soil.

  I pressed the last of my sweaters into the case and zipped it closed while Craig watched from the other side of the room, his arms crossed. His body language screamed that he was not even a little bit happy with my trip – and he hadn’t even pretended to be since I had come back from my mom’s and told him that she wanted me to visit Ireland with her.

  “You can’t be serious?” he’d said as I’d flopped onto the sofa beside him and put my feet up on the coffee table opposite.

  I was exhausted. The toll of the last few days, not to mention the last few months, was heavy. I didn’t have the energy to fight so I said nothing, figuring my silence would be proof enough that I was serious.

  “What about your business?” he said.

  “Elise will take care of it. She’s been doing a fine job while I’ve been nursing Dad. I’m sure she can continue to do a fine job while I’m away.”

  “But you have said all along how you couldn’t wait to get back. How you were missing Bake My Day?”

  “I am missing it,” I said, which was of course just partially true. I missed what it had meant – to me, to Mom, to Dad. But I didn’t much want to face what it meant now. But as I said, I was tired and Craig was not the person I wanted to have this discussion with. “I didn’t expect it to feel so . . . final. So horrible!” I spat out, feeling tears prick my eyes. When we had first found out Dad was sick – terminally sick with no hope of recovery – I had reeled with shock. Then as I’d watched him suffer I’d started to tell myself that, although it would be hard, it would be a relief to see him out of pain. That comfort of knowing he wouldn’t be in pain any more got me through many long nights, but the moment he was gone that had shattered into a million pieces around me. Now I just felt lost. I felt like I needed to try and find my way but I didn’t quite know how. When my mother had suggested going to Ireland with her a part of me had, in spite of those initial reservations, felt a little glimmer of something . . . a glimmer that I could get through this.

  “Going to Ireland is just running away,” he said, gruffly, unable to hide his irritation.

  “Perhaps I need to run away for a bit!” I bit back, my tone sharper than I intended.

  In hindsight, although this was true, this was absolutely the worst thing I could have said to Craig.

  He stood up, ran his fingers through his dark wavy hair and took a deep breath as if trying to steady himself.

  “I don’t mean run away from you,” I offered quickly, trying not to think about whether or not I really meant what I was saying. “I just mean from here and now and how I’m feeling.” The tears started. “And my mom needs me now.”

  “And what about me?”

  I thought of everything we had been through – how we had weakened and broken along with my father. My father was beyond help now but, maybe . . . maybe Craig did need me more. But it wasn’t him who was most broken now – it was my mother. And me, I suppose. I was broken too.

  “She needs me more,” I said softly and he turned and walked out of the porch into the summer rain, slamming the door behind him.

  Of course he had come back and told me he was sorry, saying that he missed me already and that while he understood my need to take a trip I couldn’t escape real life forever. I was painfully aware of that, I told him, but I needed to escape a little bit now. When I saw my mother’s face light up as I booked the return tickets, I knew I had done the right thing and I could blank out all images of a gruff and grumpy Craig.

  He offered to drive us to the airport, but I said I preferred to take a cab. If there was to be a scene at my departure, I much preferred that it would be on our own front porch rather than in his car. “It’s not for very long,” I said, as I threw my Kindle into my carry-on case. I’ll be back before you know it.” I zipped my case closed in time to hear a taxi beep outside. Craig sighed as if I had just told him I was leaving forever. I looked at him – his sorrowful face staring back at me – and I wanted to push away every negative feeling I had towards him. I walked over and kissed him gently on the lips, bristling slightly as my lips met with stone cold indifference from him. He was not making this easy.

  “Goodbye,” I muttered, pulling my cases behind me to the porch. He followed me but he didn’t offer to help so I adopted an eyes-forward-do-it-myself approach.

  Climbing in beside my mother, a little part of me breathed out.

  “Is he still sore about you going away?” my mother asked, shifting in her seat and adjusting her seat belt.

  “Not at all,” I lied, looking out the window and watching Craig walk dejectedly back to the house as if I were walking all over his dreams and not just helping my grieving mother heal her broken heart. “He just, well, he worries about me.”

  “Ireland’s very modern these days,” my mother said. “And the North, well, it’s not like it used to be. It’s safer than most places here. Hardly anyone gets shot these days. He has nothing to be worried about.”

  I think we both knew that wasn’t what Craig was worried about.

  She took my hand and squeezed it tight. “The friendliness of the Irish – it’s not just a thing of legend. It’s real, you know. And the people of the North, we get a bad rap sometimes but, you know, hearts of gold. They’ve been through so much. I was lucky, I suppose – I left before the worst of the troubles started . . .”

  “Is that why you never went back, Mom? Until now? Because of what was happening?” I thought of my mother and how she seemed to think wistfully of home from time to time but never mentioned going back. I had offered once, to pay for both her and Dad to make the journey back but she had shaken her head. “I’ve spent more of my life here than I ever did there,” she said. “Sure it seems strange to even consider it home now. I’m happy with my memories.” But she hadn’t looked me in the eyes and I knew there was a part of her that wanted more than just memories.

  She shook her head now, giving my hand one last tight squeeze before letting it go. “Oh no, darling. It wasn’t that . . . it just didn’t feel right.” She leant back and closed her eyes, signalling that she wanted to snooze and that the topic of conversation was closed for now.

  I looked at her, head tilted to one side, grey hair in a stylish bun, her fingers fine and delicate, soft as satin. She looked well, I realised, with a bit of start, and I’m not sure if it made me feel sad that she looked a little freer since Dad had passed or it made me happy that it wasn’t only his pain that had ended. It had almost killed me to watch him suffer – Lord alone knows what it did to her. I looked out the car window – the fields passing by in a dull blur of green and I wondered if Ireland really was green and lush and if things really had changed.

  I thought of Craig and his sullen face and pushed that aside. And I thought of Elise and her excitement at getting to hang onto the reins of Bake My Day for another while yet, and I pushed that away as well.

  This trip, whatever it was, was my escape from what had happened – and my journey towards what would be and, whatever would come, I would make the very most of it.

  * * *

  “There’s no hotel?” I was having to hold my tongue very firmly in place not to swear at my mother. I had never sworn at her before and I was not about to in the departure lounge of Miami Dade airport.

  “Family don’t do hotels, pet,” she said, adopting a strange lilt to her accent which I hadn’t heard in a while. It was as if she was transforming into an Irish cailín before my very ears. “It would be madness.”

  “Mom, I said I would pay – so if it’s money . . .”

  “It’s not money, love,” she said. “It’s family. When you go home, you stay with family.” Family who you have never met, I thought to myself and sighed. I thought it would be me and Mom in a hotel room, not crammed in someone’s spare room like the invading Yanks.

  “And you are not to be worrying, because I know you won’t want
me cramping your style so I’ll be staying with Auntie Dolores and you will be staying with Cousin Sam.”

  The swear word nestled there on the very tip of my tongue, dying to burst forth, but I bit the side of my cheek instead. Sam – the name-stealer – who I had never met. Who I was “friends” with on Facebook but who I was pretty sure had me on a limited profile because all I could see were the occasional life-affirming quotes he posted and none of the good stuff.

  “But I don’t know Sam,” I muttered, stepping forward in the queue towards check-in. “Surely Derry has hotels. I don’t mind paying,” I repeated.

  My mother shook her head and smiled at me. “You may not mind paying but I mind making a show of myself and refusing to stay with family. I’ve heard Sam is a good boy. His mammy loves the bones of him – said all he needs is a good woman to sort him out. And he lives on his own – swimming in space, he is, so it would do neither of you harm to spend some time together. Sure he must know what all the young ones get up to.”

  Sam – who needed a good woman – who was older than me. Oh, sweet Lord above. I had images of being foisted on some late 30s Lothario who knew what the young ones got up to. Worst case, he was a creep. Best case, he was a momma’s boy. Either way I could feel my skin creep and my desire grow for a simple hotel room with a power shower and Egyptian-cotton starched sheets, black-out curtains and lattes on tap with a simple call to room service. The thought of the spare room in the pad of a man with a penchant for life-affirming quotes was almost too much to bear.

  I looked at my mother. Her Irish eyes were smiling as she fished in her bag for her passport and travel documents and the silent swear word in the back of my throat became a silent scream as I wondered what I had let myself in for. The thought of turning back home, facing life, reality and Craig, suddenly seemed a lot more appealing.

  “I can’t believe it,” I heard my mother’s voice break softly through my reverie. “I’m going home, Annabel. I’m going to see it all again – to breathe that air again. Is it so wrong of me to just want to take my shoes off and dance through the grass again?”

  I looked at her and could imagine her, long blonde hair – now grey – dancing through the grass as a young woman, smiling, carefree – and the scream became a smile. I would do this, creepy Sam and all, if it made my mother happy.

  * * *

  I’m not sure if I was expecting some sort of emotional meltdown as we landed in Dublin. My mother slept through it and I decided to leave her to it – it had been a long day and her giddiness at the airport had given way to a plethora of tears as our plane had taken off out of Florida and headed eastwards over the Atlantic.

  “I’ve never flown this way before,” she said softly. “Your dad and I, we travelled – but only in the States. You know he never once left America? He was so proud of that, Belle.” She smiled and I nodded.

  Yes, a real Yankee Doodle Dandy – not quite as much as me, obviously, what with my birthday and everything. But he always had a flag flying off the front porch and he smiled every time he came home at the God Bless America sign that hung over our front door.

  “He just liked his . . .”

  “. . . comfort zone,” I finished and we laughed.

  Dad certainly liked his creature comforts. We used to joke that we were pretty sure the father character in the sitcom Frasier was based on him – down to the ratty old chair he liked to lay back on each evening and the badge of honour he kept in his top drawer from his days on the force. Comfort and routine. Routine and comfort. You could do no wrong with either, in his book.

  “Do you think he would have liked Ireland? Do you think he ever really wanted to go?”

  My mother shrugged her shoulders as the plane levelled out and we started to cruise at a comfortable 35,000 feet. “He always said he had enough of Ireland in me – that nothing about Ireland could be better than what he had. Why did he need to see more of it when he had the best all to himself?”

  I smiled and squeezed her hand but there was something in her voice that was a little bit too wistful. She took a deep breath with just the slightest of judders which made me realise she was trying to compose herself and she let go of my hand.

  “Right, my dear,” she said, “is it okay to drink on the plane? Because I would really like a shot of brandy.”

  “I think we have to wait until the lights go off. It shouldn’t be long.”

  “Grand so,” she said. “I can do that. I’m very good at waiting.”

  * * *

  Ireland was as lush as the Maeve Binchy books had promised. Looking down over it, there was a patchwork quilt of greens unfolding below me. I wondered were there actually any cities in this country as field followed field followed mountain followed lake. Of course, as we began our descent little dots of houses appeared out of the greenness, and then more houses, and an industrial estate and lots of cars scurrying like ants along the network of narrow roads. The sky was grey and rained pattered against the side of the plane, trickling horizontally from one side of the window to the other. I guessed it would probably be cold and I was grateful for the sweatshirt I had packed and the sneakers I was wearing. No, they weren’t very glamorous and they no doubt screamed “tourist” but they were comfy and my mother had warned me we had quite a bus-ride from Dublin before we reached the North. I wondered how long it would take and, as my mother slept, I asked the tired-looking cabin assistant who shrugged and said it would only take maybe three or four hours depending on traffic. I felt my heart sink. I was bone tired and desperately in need of a power shower, some decent non-airline food and a warm bed to sleep in.

  “The roads aren’t too bad,” the crew member assured me. “Bit bumpy in places but you’ll be grand.”

  I nodded my thanks, glanced out the window to where we were coming in faster and faster to the ground and had a momentary fantasy about the whole thing crashing and me getting a decent rest at least before the day was out.

  Never mind, I laughed into myself as we bumped onto the tarmac, at least I would have Sam the Singleton’s chintzy house to stay in once we got there.

  Chapter 3

  They say we have choices – and you may think I made my choices – but I didn’t. It was beyond my control. It’s beyond what I can do. This is not what I would have chosen, my love. It is not what I would have chosen at all.

  * * *

  Ireland, June 2010

  The bus journey was exhausting. Not even the allure of the lush green hills and overgrown hedgerows and the quaintness of the villages we whizzed past could take away from the exhaustion that had crept up on me, sitting on my shoulder, jabbing me square in the neck every three seconds.

  “You should sleep,” Mom said. “Did you even close your eyes on the plane?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t sleep in public places – not even when I was tired right down to my very bones. I wasn’t a great sleeper anyway – only ever truly drifting into a deep sleep in the calm darkness of my own room, all sounds silenced for the night, all glints of light hidden by an eye mask over my eyes – no one near me, not even Craig. My best nights’ sleep were nights when he was working. I felt guilty for feeling that way, but that was how it was.

  “I’ll sleep when we get to Derry,” I offered. “When I can lie down on a proper bed.”

  Again the thought of no hotel filled me with dread.

  “I’m sure your cousin has a very nice room waiting for you – Auntie Dolores tells me he keeps a nice house,” Mom said and I cringed. “He’s a nice boy, she says.”

  I tried to block out my growing sense of unease as we wound through the roads. My iPod pumped tunes into my ears, the quiet melancholy songs of Adam Duritz soothing me.

  Any emotions my mother had been keeping in check disappeared as we neared Derry. I saw her sit a little more rigidly as the signs directing us to her native town revealed smaller and smaller numbers. By the time we reached a village – which looked more like a street to me – called Newbuildings, she h
ad her hands tightly clasped and was muttering some sort of prayer under her breath. As we swept through a set of traffic lights and caught a glimpse of the River Foyle weaving its way towards the city ahead her prayer had become a sob. A “Jesus, Mary and Saint Joseph” of emotion accompanied by gentle rocking. I reached for her clasped hands, feeling a tear fall to my hand before she shrugged me away.

  “It’s home, Belle,” she said softly before losing herself again to her sobs. “It’s home.”

  Sitting back, leaving her to her reverie, I tried to take in the sights around me. This was where my mother grew up – a place she hadn’t seen in a lifetime – a place she had always said she was happy enough to leave behind. I was surprised to find a flurry of emotion rise up in me as we turned and swept onto a blue steel bridge and across a river which seemed to cut the city in two. There was a part of me here – right in this air, in these rain-soaked pavements, in the dull greyness of the sky and in the gentle sobs from my mother.

  “It’s so different,” she whispered as we came to a halt at the redbrick bus station, where weather-battered hanging baskets swayed in the breeze. “It’s just the same.”

  I nodded, pretending to know what she meant but I knew there was no point in talking to her further. Her eyes were darting around the platform, trying to find the familiar, as I helped her from her seat and lifted her bag from the overhead rack.

  I think I saw Dolores before she did – a short stocky woman, whose grey hair was cut short and fixed in a curl but whose facial expressions mirrored my mother’s. Once again my mother called to the Baby Jesus before alighting from the bus with not a care to her age, her slightly arthritic hips or the exhaustion from the long journey. Within seconds she was wrapped in her sister’s arms, the pair crying as I pulled the weekend cases down the stairs of the bus and collected the rest of our luggage from the rear compartment. It didn’t seem like one of those moments where I could just butt in and introduce myself, so I stood there awkwardly, lifting my weight from foot to foot, trying to bring some life back into my limbs after the long journey. Auntie Dolores seemed reluctant to let my mother go – her warm voice, a slightly harsher, deeper version of my mother’s, muttered over and over that it had been a lifetime and that she couldn’t believe it had been so long. She hugged my mother close. “Poor Bob!” she said, or at least I think that is what she said as her thick accent was muffled in my mother’s hair. I could not hear my mother answer back but I was aware she was crying. A man, in flat cap and slacks with a heavy grey cardigan and obviously with Auntie Dolores, watched us from a distance, looking slightly embarrassed at the show of emotion before him. I nodded in his direction and he tipped his head at me briefly before staring off into the middle distance. I figured there was no point right now in trying to engage him in conversation – I would just have to wait for the reunion to cry itself out – which of course sounds harsher than I meant it to. But I had been travelling for the best part of twenty hours. I needed the bathroom and I could no longer feel my right butt-cheek. I was pretty sure that the slightly dodgy smell which had been lingering in my nostrils for the last hour might have actually been coming from me.