Page 57 of Secrets in the Snow
‘You love Aidan too,’ he says, reading my whole sorry set-up with a lot more intuition than I could ever give him credit for. ‘I like how you smile when Aidan is around. It makes me feel happy when you’re happy too. It makes me feel a bit fuzzy inside.’
I swallow, I smile, and I ruffle my baby boy’s hair, then I go to the top of the stairs and I can’t go any further, so I sit there and recall how I used to do the very same thing when I lived with Jude and when I needed to find answers from within.
I’d sit on the top stair of our marital home and I’d will myself to have the strength to make the changes I needed to. I would hug my own waist and rock back and forth, breathing deeply and deliberately as my mind raced with possibilities. Where would I go if I packed up and left him? What would I do next? What would the neighbours say? What would Jude do without us? Would Ben ever forgive me?
And now, as I sit here in a similar position in a place that has been a lifeline to me after a life of hell, I know that this is similar in that I’ve only myself to blame for this loneliness and despair I’ve found myself in, because this time I can’t blame Jude or Aidan. I’m inflicting a lot of this upon myself with my late nights wallowing in self destruction.
My spare bedroom door where I once loved to escape when life was going so well has been closed for weeks now and I’ve had no interest in opening it again. My violin, which Mabel had presented to me with such determination and delight, hangs on the wall in there, overlooking unfinished pots and blocks of beeswax that were once going to be candles.
I hear Jude’s voice, laughing at my failure again. He had such a distinctive laugh. Some might have called it hearty, but to me it was always laced with gloating and a warning that he was winning again as always.
‘You actually thought you’d be able to find a life better than the one you had with me,’I hear him saying, his mouth twisting into a threatening shape of disgust with bullets of spittle hitting me in the face.‘You’re second-hand goods, Roisin O’Connor. You’re a reject. A scrapheap kid, and without me you’ll go right back to where I found you, just where you deserve to be. On the scrapheap! No one will ever want you! Even your own family didn’t want you.’
I hear Mabel’s voice, cross and angry at how I’m turning into that woman who believed him again – that weak,broken person who thought the world would always be against her and that it was as much as she deserved.
‘Push those shoulders back and stand up straight, for goodness’ sake, Roisin,’ I hear her American sing-song voice with a pinch of warning that only she could get away with. ‘You can’t and won’t settle for anything but the best and you’ll get it if you work hard and be counted! You are worthy of just as much as the next person in this world. Prove it to yourself! Prove it to your mother and to Jude, who both dragged you down to this level in the first place!’
I feel my blood pumping now and I pull myself up using the bannister for support. The whisky in my system makes me wobble ever so slightly and the smell on my breath now makes me sick. I stand there, my heartbeat throbbing in my ears as the room spins around me, all these voices in my head sobering me up and driving me on.
I hear Ben.
‘You seem really sad. It scares me when you’re sad. When I see you happy, it makes me happy too.’
And then Aidan.
‘You think that everyone is out to hurt you or destroy you, but not everyone is like that, Roisin. Not everyone is Jude or your mother. There are plenty of people like Mabel or Janet and Michael in this world, if you are just brave enough to let them in.’
But loudest of all is my own voice, and it’s one that shouts so loudly now I have to block my ears with my hands. Andthat voice tells me to open up the spare-room door and do something useful to tire out my overactive brain so I can sleep without alcohol to ease my pain.
So I turn the handle, I switch on the light, and I put on some classical music to ease my soul. I slip my apron on over my pyjamas and I sit down at my pottery wheel where I smack a lump of clay into the centre, splash it with my fingers with water from the bowl and I pump the pedal to make the wheel spin as I focus on the wet, moving mixture and mould it with my fingertips and the heel of my palm. I close my eyes, letting the familiarity ground and soothe me, and I don’t stop until I’ve a new creation ready for a new day.
I need to get my life together again. I need to change my own world so that I can once again create things in this little room, and then I can start to believe in myself again. But as the night draws in and the clock ticks back the hours, I can’t help wondering what Aidan is doing now, so many miles away in New York, where his world has crashed down on him just like mine has.
I lift my phone. I want to call him so badly, but I can’t destroy myself any more than I’ve already done, and I’ve already made my decision.
I can’t let any man win me over like that again. I’ve been bitten, torn, lied to and ripped apart far too many times.
I leave my workshop and go to the bathroom where I wash my hands, unable to meet my own reflection in themirror above the basin. I never thought I’d sink as low as this again and I get a horrifying flashback to when I was a very young child and my mother disappeared during the night in search of a bottle, leaving me wandering around the house alone, looking for her, crying in the darkness, with nothing except my own echo to keep me company.
I’m that child again. I’m wandering around, with no idea where to go next.
I fall onto my bed and pray for sleep, hoping as I drift off that tomorrow might bring the answers I need so desperately before I reach rock bottom and forget how to bounce back again.
Aidan calls once a week for the whole month of September, determined to keep trying to convince me to hear him out, but our conversations are like taking a knife and slowly carving deep patterns on my heart every time I hear his voice.
‘I miss you and love you,’ is how he ends every call, during which he tells me about his day and asks about mine, and I squeeze my eyes tightly with my fingers to stop the river of pain from flowing when I hear him speak.
‘You’ll be fine,’ I answer him. ‘You’re destined for big things over there with the Bowen family. You’ll be fine.’
It was Camille’s idea that I give in and pick up his calls again when she found me in the garden one morning, unable to make it into work because I was simply too exhausted to function.
‘Ignoring the one person you want to talk to more than anyone isn’t the way out of this,’ she told me, coaxing me to eat the end of summer strawberries and organic yoghurt with honey she’d bought in a healthfood shop, along with bags of other goodies in her effort to help me find my lost appetite again. ‘I know you don’t want to forgive him, Roisin, but just see if some light conversation with him will give you some focus. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how cutting him out is affecting you.’
‘Have you been speaking to him?’ I asked her, my eyes wild but heavy with tiredness.
‘I haven’t, darling,’ she said, putting her hand on mine, which looked cold and pale in comparison to her tanned Italian skin. I felt ugly and unworthy of her attention and wished she would give up and leave me alone. ‘But I’m sure he is very, very worried and just wants to talk to you. Roisin, Aidan loves you deeply and he misses you as much as you’re missing him. Give him a chance to explain properly and maybe you’ll see that?’
She bent her head down to try to look into my eyes, which were now staring at the daisies that covered the lawn at the back of my house. Mabel’s new gardener, employed from afar by Aidan of course, has offered to cut the grass for me on numerous occasions, but I politely refused, partly because its wildness marks my own state of mind. I hadn’t washed my hair in days and my love of pyjamas had gone a little bit too far as they were all I seem to want to wear.A pile of washing was cleverly disguised in a kitchen cupboard, and it was only when Camille filled the sink and washed some dishes that I realized how neglected the whole house had become.
