Page 11 of Good Sisters

‘I know you’re still sad about Granny. I’m sorry, Mum. I’ll try to help you more.’

I crouched down. ‘Tom, you are always sweet and helpful. I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ he whispered quietly into my ear, making sure no one could hear him.

As he walked off, I began to cry again. I was like a tap. Once I started crying, I couldn’t stop, and I cried a lot. I was still feeling hurt that the boys weren’t more upset about Mum. Sophie and Louise kept saying how their daughters were heartbroken, whereas my lot were fine. I wished they’d known her better. I wished she’d spent more time with them, but it was too late now. She’d never know them and, although they drove me absolutely nuts, they were my pride and joy. They were growing into fine young men and she was missing it all.

I fumbled in my bag for my keys.

‘Julie?’

Oh, for the love of Jesus, no. Not her. Not now. I ignored her.

‘Julie.’ She tapped me on the shoulder.

I roughly wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my hoodie andturned to face an immaculately groomed Victoria Carter-Mills. Perfectly applied subtle make-up, glossy blow-dried hair and a beige cashmere coat that I wanted to wrap around me, like a soft hug.

‘Yes?’ I wasn’t in the mood for small-talk or any of Victoria’s usual digs about the triplets being rowdy hooligans who were unfit for this posh school. She was a poisonous snake and the last person I wanted to see right now.

‘Have you heard anything about when the Junior Cup team is being picked? With three boys involved, I thought you might have some insight. Sebastian says he doesn’t know and Mr Long isn’t returning my calls or replying to my texts.’

Mr Long, the rugby coach, was like a brick wall. He gave nothing away. Even the formidable Victoria couldn’t harass him into giving her any information. Go, Mr Long, I thought, mentally high-fiving him.

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Well, could you call him and see if you can get any insight?’

‘No.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘No, I will not call him. He’ll tell us when he’s ready to tell us.’

Victoria tried to frown, but because of the Botox and fillers, her eyes just squinted a bit. ‘There’s no need to be so curt about it. It’s just one phone call. Really and truly, I’m not asking you to climb Mount Everest.’

Unfortunately for Victoria, she was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. All the pushed-down rage and grief and exhaustion I’d been desperately trying to work around in order to be ‘normal’ rose up and spurted out of me.

‘Let me put it this way, Victoria. First, I wouldn’t call Mr Long if you paid me a million euro because he doesn’t need pathetic, overambitious, delusional parents hounding himto find out if their kid is on the team. He will tell us when he’s good and ready. Harassing him before then is only going to piss him off. Second, my mother died a few weeks ago and I’m still reeling. I’m barely holding it together. So can you please get the hell out of my face? I strongly suggest you step away or I may accidentally run you over.’

Victoria’s face darkened. ‘You are the rudest woman. No wonder your children are feral. I’m sorry about your mother, but that does not give you the right to be so uncouth.’

Ignoring her, I got into the car, slammed the door and hurtled out of the car-park space. Victoria had to jump sideways to avoid being run over. But instead of feeling victorious and delighted that I’d stood up to the viper, I was crying again. I felt lost, at sea and guilty. I was shouting at my kids because I was so sad and they weren’t sad enough – it was completely unreasonable. I had barely cooked since Mum died and kept ordering in family dinners. I didn’t work: being a mum was my job and I wasn’t even doing that. I could barely drag myself out of bed in the mornings. All I wanted to do was stay in bed, look at old family photos and cry. I knew I should be moving on: five weeks was quite a long time. The sympathy cards had stopped arriving, the flowers had long since shrivelled up, but I seemed to be getting worse. My emotions were all over the place. How long did grief last? Was there a finite timeline? Was I just weak and overemotional?

I got home, crawled back into bed, watched videos of Mum last Christmas, in the full of her health, and sobbed.

That Sunday Louise had summoned us all to the house. She had decided that it was time to clear out Mum’s things and not leave it to Dad.

I was sitting in my kitchen, at the marble counter, whichstill made me feel slightly nauseous when I thought how much it had cost, drinking a strong coffee and trying to psych myself up for the day ahead. I was dreading going through Mum’s things. I knew it would bring up so many emotions. Sophie, Gavin and I wanted to wait, but Louise was adamant that we do it this weekend. My big sister was channelling her grief via spreadsheets, rotas and clear-outs, and none of us had the energy to fight her.

Harry was readingWinning!by Clive Woodward. He was some English rugby coach who had won a rugby World Cup or something and Harry was obsessed with the book. He had a highlighter pen and kept underlining passages and reading them out to me, which made me want to poke my eyes out.

‘Julie, listen to this.’ Harry’s eyes were shining. ‘“Concentrate on measuring performance and winning will take care of itself.” The man is a genius.’

It seemed like a pretty obvious statement to me, but I just nodded. If I showed a modicum of interest, Harry would probably start reading out chapters and I couldn’t take it. He was keen to learn as much technical detail as he could about rugby – playing, strategy, skills, training techniques – so he could chat to the other dads on the sidelines with confidence. In typical Harry fashion, he didn’t just leaf throughThe Idiot’s Guide to Rugby, he immersed himself in the entire subject. He had spent the past few months reading about the game, watching matches and, frankly, becoming a bit of a rugby bore.

At the matches, while Harry banged on about whatever statistic he’d just done a degree in, I usually tuned him out. When we went to watch the boys play, the only thing I cared about was the triplets’ safety. I spent my time holding my breath in case they got injured. In the last twelve months alone, we’d had two broken arms, one fractured foot, threeconcussions and endless black eyes, cuts and bruises. I’d tried to persuade the triplets to play tennis instead, but they’d laughed at me and said tennis was for losers.

This was going to be a big year for them as they were all hoping to get onto the Junior Cup rugby team. So now, as well as praying they didn’t get injured, I was also praying that they all got picked for the team. Leo was the one who was the least sure to get on as another guy played the same position and was as good as, if not better than, him. If the other two got picked and he didn’t, he’d be crushed. I’d rather none of them were picked than just two. I felt sick thinking of poor Leo on the sideline while the others played.

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