An Unravelling Read online

  She’ll start with that little bag of laundry – if she puts it in the machine now, it might even be dried and ironed by the morning. But she won’t manage that big box… Molly glances over the neat hedge. Fair play to those daffodils; the way they multiply quietly in the hard winter soil, emerging each year with more and more of themselves. No stopping daffodils, once they’re down. She hopes Mr Brereton doesn’t know about the new people pulling down that cladding – Mother of God, it took him so many months to put it up that summer – and then a van of men came and hacked it off just like that.

  There’s no sign of the new girl coming out to help with the shopping. Molly could ring the bell and ask… Oh, but that house is vicious looking now, stripped back to the cold bricks and the door painted the squeaky grey of a mushroom.

  3

  STOPPED AT THE LIGHTS, the car’s tinny floor jittering, Freya pulls an old copybook from her bag, opens it on the passenger seat and hurries through the pages. There it is – SAT/March 4/1pm/GENIE FULL PACKAGE scratched across the top in the waxy skids of a blunt, splintered colouring pencil. Beneath this, she has written Trí Mian, and, boxed in with red streaks, the phrases GIRLY GIRL, 6 Precocious??? and right at + rds.

  She scans the page for some landmark to type into her phone. Then she remembers – she rolls her eyes and smacks the wheel, whispers ‘Fuck,’ and sighs out the window as though to blame the concrete footpath and the quiet row of shopfronts. She was supposed to come up here in advance to check out where the house is. It’s that snooty client who wouldn’t give a proper address, We certainly won’t be in the sat nav I’m afraid, the postman just knows who we are, you know, it’s that sort of area…

  The courtesy call took over an hour. Freya even had an urgent piss during it, her thumb pressing the mouthpiece mute.

  ‘Fuckfuckfuck!’ How did she forget to do it?

  She’s hungry already. She should have eaten a pancake at Cara’s. She opens the glove box of her sister’s car, unleashing a clatter of ancient cassette tapes just as the traffic lights flash green. Shit, she’s to take a right here. The car staggers into gear, sending the contents of the glove box sliding out over the passenger seat and onto the floor. Steering with one hand up a steep country road, she uses the other to sift the mess for something to eat. What she needs is instant sugar – a chocolate bar with nougat and nuts in it – but apart from the cassettes, all she can find is a half-full packet of crayons, a cream-coloured spray bottle saying ‘All Natural Crystal Deodorant’ and a pair of grey oat biscuits covered in cellophane.

  The house is somewhere up here on the left. She’s drawn a wobbly oval on the page, scribbles of grass beneath it – The name of our property is carved on a granite rock at the entrance – Trí Mian – it means three wishes. For our three little treasures…

  Head low to the wheel, Freya peers either side at the stone walls, white sun on the scrawny trees. She looks at the page for another clue. She has drawn a balloon with a little cartoon face on it, rolling eyes and its tongue sticking out.

  Still no granite rock. Only the scabbed road and rain-filled potholes. Now and then a small, rusty gate, a dreary pebbledash house clinging to the hillside. How long should she keep driving before she calls the client? Did she give no other directions at all? She turns the page – only the details for the christening party.

  Then she spots it – a pink balloon bopping against a road sign. Great, a balloon trail! She loves when they do this. Up and up she drives, and the balloons grow more frequent – a burst one frittering on a telegraph pole, a big purple one buoying softly on the wall, the string flexing and rumpling in the low wind. She must be on the right track now – there could only be one ‘Girly girl’ party up in the Dublin mountains today… And there it is! Five minutes before schedule. A big driveway winding up to a stolid white house with little turrets at each corner. By the gate, a great silvery hunk of rock says, Trí Mian. There are three helium balloons sprouting from it – one pink and two blue.

  Freya takes a breath and puts on her big party smile as the car crunches up the gravel drive.

  *

  The mum is waiting on the portico entrance, flanked by miniature fluted columns with bunches of balloons tied to each of them. She sounded taller on the phone, and better groomed. She has an unhealthily thick throat and lank, no-colour hair smeared back off a protruding forehead. She watches Freya’s approach with a small, hopeful smile, hands clasped before her. When Freya steps out of the car, the smile opens – one of those desperate, down-turning smiles more like a grimace now. ‘Hello!!!!’ A hand waving wildly beside her face. ‘Hello, Genie Gilly!’

  Little girls in Disney-inspired party dresses are already emerging as Freya hauls the big polka-dot suitcase from the boot. Clutching it with two fists, she struggles to the portico and plonks it onto the mossy wooden slats.

  ‘Hello!’ Freya says, smiling and reproducing the client’s manic wave. ‘Hello! Excuse me for disturbing you, but my name is Genie Gilly and I have been searching and searching all day long for a very special birthday girl called Lottie! Does anyone know a birthday girl called Lottie? Waldo the Wizard told me that there is a very special girl called Lottie who is SIX today, and I have been searching up and down the Dublin mountains…’

  The children grin, and disperse like startled birds. In the moment this makes, the mum shakes Freya’s hand, her face all anxious gratitude, her head bent. ‘Hi Gilly,’ she says, ‘I’m glad you found us alright.’ The hand is dry and cool. ‘What do you need to start?’

  ‘Just a plug socket for the speakers—’

  ‘Oh yes, you told me that. I have the conservatory all organised…’

  ‘… and a table and some water for the facepainting – and just leave the rest to me!’

  The mum doesn’t release her grip. Instead she lays her other hand over Freya’s. ‘There are more than I expected,’ she says, her voice lower now, confiding. ‘I said RSVP on the invitation, but…’

  Freya has time to flash her a reassuring smile before the children rush back out. A reluctant little girl is pushed towards her by an older boy (her brother – Eamon? Aaron?).

  ‘Lottie,’ he says. The boy bends level with her face, his hands between his knees, and nods. ‘Say hello, Lottie.’

  Freya gives a great big gasp. ‘Is THIS Lottie?’

  There is a crowd of little girls around them now, and they all giggle, wide-eyed, and nod. The birthday girl crosses her arms and raises a softly cleft chin at Freya. Freya likes the look of her – a bony-faced child with freckles and vague, peach-coloured eyebrows stretching the width of her forehead. Her hair is in two painfully tight French braids, darker than her pale orange fringe, as though plaited when wet. She is wearing denim shorts over black leggings, and a vest. She has bony shoulders, wiry arms slick with muscle.

  ‘Oh my goodness, Lottie, I am so excited to meet you! I heard that you are SIX today, is that true?’

  Lottie blinks at her and looks up at the balloons bobbing against the Grecian columns. They are tied on with generous lengths of foil ribbon, their silver ringlets tangling in the breeze.

  ‘Well, I just LOVE birthdays,’ continues Freya, ‘and because it’s your birthday I think we should do some magical, fun birthday things. What do you think, Lottie?’

  Lottie shrugs and slides her jaw from side to side. She plunges her fists deep into the pockets of her shorts and looks at her feet.

  ‘I hear… that you like dancing! Is that right?’

  The child’s brow crimps and pinkens.

  ‘I like dancing!’ cries a small girl in fairy wings, an island of pink polish on each scrappy nail. She stands very close to Freya, stroking the tasselled fringe of her waistcoat, and dips her head to catch Lottie’s downward gaze. ‘Do you like dancing Lottie?’

  Lottie sucks her lip. Freya stretches up on her toes and calls, ‘Hands up who likes birthdays?’ She raises her own hand in the air and cries, ‘Me!’ and the party guests copy her. ‘Meeeee me me me!�
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  ‘Hands up who likes facepainting? Meeeee! Hands up who likes magic tricks? Meeeee! Hands up who likes dancing? Meeeee! Yeahhh! Well come on then – let’s get started!’

  Freya rolls her suitcase down the hallway carpet, over the loud marble floor of the kitchen and out into the hot glare of a new-smelling conservatory. She plugs in the speakers, her mic and the company-issue iPod. Smiling brightly, she selects her playlist – ‘Girls age 5–8’ – and unpacks her facepaints to the opening verse of ‘Girls just wanna have fu-hun’ – beaming and nodding around her at the princesses and snot-nosed fairies that maul at her earrings and paw her hair: ‘Genie Gilly, I want to be a butterfly’; ‘Genie Gilly, can I be a crocodile?’; ‘Genie Gilly, I like your sparkly shoes…’

  The birthday girl is watching from a distance, leaning against the glass wall.

  *

  When her facepainting station has been set up, Freya gives a blast of the bubble machine, sending a shoal of bubbles across the room. The children jump after them, and Freya takes the mic. ‘Hands up who wants their face painted!’

  ‘Meeee!’ the little girls shriek, heads and hands bopping.

  ‘Well… who do you think should go first? I think it’s the… birthday girl! Come on up Lottie and let’s make you an extra special sparkly birthday girl!’

  Shoulders curled, the child is nudged along by her mum – ‘Come on Lottie, come on my little lambkin.’ Freya sits by the facepaints and takes the child’s lean fingers in hers – cold hands, like the mother.

  ‘Now Lottie, sit down here for me. What would you like to be?’

  Lottie shrugs and sits down, arms wilting into her lap.

  ‘Well let’s see, you could be… a butterfly?’

  Lottie shakes her head.

  ‘A sparkly princess?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A goldfish?’

  ‘What’s that like?’

  ‘Well, it’s all orange and scaly with big fishy lips, and I can paint goggly fish eyes on your eyelids so when you blink everyone will get a fright!’

  Lottie gives a narrow grin. She nods.

  The mum is standing behind her.

  ‘What’s she going to be? What are you going to be Lottie?’

  ‘A goldfish,’ says Freya, sliding a wink at the child.

  ‘Oh. Would you not be a pretty princess Lottie? Lottie? Would you not be a princess or a butterfly? I saw on the entertainer’s website, you know, the butterfly is really lovely. You would look lovely Lottie, with your lovely plaits…’

  Lottie stares ahead, and swallows.

  ‘Wipe that sourpuss off your face,’ says the mother, her cheeks muscling and a bite in her voice so sudden and penetrating that it makes Freya flinch. ‘After I went to all the hassle of organising an entertainer and everything; you sit there with a puss on your face like nothing’s good enough for Little Miss Lottie…’

  Lottie stares ahead, grinding her back teeth. Freya recognises that feeling – like a hand clamping the back of your neck, like drowning in your own breath.

  ‘Oh the goldfish is super-duper cool!’ Freya says. ‘It’s extra special, a very unusual choice.’

  The mother speaks through stiff lips, her voice low and jagged. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Lottie. You know, you could be quite pretty, but you’re dog-ugly when you scowl.’

  A gulp forces itself into Freya’s throat, her chest; an ache spreading down her limbs. There is something of her own mother about this woman; she could see it straight off – the over-enthusiasm, the whole performance on the portico. Freya’s own skin cools and tightens. ‘The Lily’ is what she and Cara call their mother, the definite article separating her from them.

  Lottie’s mother turns to Freya and shakes her head fondly, but there is a violence in the tendon tensing up her neck. Her cheeks are the colour of coral. ‘That’s my Lottie,’ she says. ‘Always has to be different. Very much an individual.’

  The child is hunched in her chair. Her face glows the same colour as her mother’s.

  ‘Come on, chicken,’ Freya says, swiping her makeup sponge in a disc of orange facepaint, ‘let’s make you a goldfish.’

  The mother shoots a quick frown at her daughter before turning to Freya with a smile. ‘Kids,’ she says. ‘It’s all ahead of you.’

  ‘Oh, no, I…’

  She was nineteen when Jem was born; she was young, and they made her feel it – the midwives, the other mothers – as if her maternity was something she had stolen. But Freya is twenty-four now. Why doesn’t it occur to other women that she could be a mother too?

  The doorbell rings and the mum flurries off. ‘More guests! It did say RSVP on the invitations…’ Freya can feel Lottie releasing a little breath. There are goose bumps prickling down the skinny white arms.

  ‘Are you cold, chicken?’

  Lottie shakes her head. ‘No. I’m just a bit sad.’

  Freya has sponged orange paint all over Lottie’s face. She loads a fan-brush with yellow, and then dips the tip in red. She uses it like a stamp to press two-tone scales all over the cheeks. Her face is close to the child’s. ‘You’re a very lovely girl, Lottie,’ she says. ‘Don’t you mind anyone telling you mean things. You just remember you are a very lovely girl.’

  Freya can feel tears of embarrassment wash up from her throat – what’s wrong with her? Talking shite like that to a little girl she doesn’t even know. She dips her finger in a pot of glitter and dabs a sparkly fingerprint on each fish scale.

  ‘Don’t you mind.’

  Until Jem was born, Freya was all frustration and bewilderment, yearning for her mother’s love, but then she started seeing it differently. There was simply a glitch in The Lily, she decided – some cog that didn’t catch its groove. Something had gone wrong with her. It was nobody’s fault.

  Lottie’s mother marches back into the room.

  ‘I got her from the Polly’s Parties agency – they’re great, really professional. Great reviews. She’s going to do dancing and magic tricks and everything in a minute.’

  She is followed by a low-set lady wearing many scarves and bulky pieces of jewellery. Freya ignores them but there’s that hot-cold clench up the back of her neck again.

  A couple of years ago, Freya clicked her way to a support site for ‘Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers’ and was delighted to see her mother dismantled there into a checklist of traits. For a moment, she felt victorious and safe. But she encountered herself there too – many versions of her – women who held tenaciously to childhood slights, who topped each other’s stories and denigrated their mothers with a rage so jealous and insistent it made Freya hate herself.

  She is using a pale blue to paint fish eyes, but since her mother has returned, Lottie’s lids keep trembling. By one eye, a plump vein twitches helplessly under the young skin.

  ‘It’s alright, chicken,’ says Freya. ‘Are you alright?’

  The fishy lips now – she mustn’t make the paint too wet. Leaning in close, she builds them like the lips of a geisha, swirling her brush to make two circles balancing on a bigger one. Then she uses a metallic paint to draw lines for the creases.

  The child has fine, narrow lips, clean breath.

  *

  Her sister thinks she was too young when it all happened, but Freya can remember. Watching from the door as their mother beat her own arm with a rolling pin, the silence pulling tight across her lips and her eyes steady. Standing before the pretty bán Garda, her mother’s fingers digging into her shoulders, Tell them, Freya, tell them what Cara did… She can remember, back before Lily finally sent Cara away, being dragged about to strange houses – the smell of sandalwood and patchouli, her mother’s voice always changing to match the person she spoke to; she had that amazing ability to adapt everything – her accent, her tone, her beliefs, her history – I need help with my eldest, Cara— then her voice lowering, threatening – a dark soul.

  She knew her share. And wasn’t it Freya who was abandoned,
really? In the end, it was because of the social worker that The Lily left her with their grandparents; they never came for her. And did Cara ever wonder what they were like, those months all alone in that house, trying, trying all alone to dance for their mother’s love?

  ‘Oh, Lottie! Look at you, isn’t that brilliant!’ The mother shrieks, slapping her hands onto her own cheeks. ‘That’s my Lottie,’ she says, turning to her friend. ‘That’s my Lottie – a real individual.’

  4

  MOLLY WARMS HER HANDS around the cup, pulling some of the steadiness into her bones. She likes her coffee very hot. Dinny used to pour his tea into the saucer to take the heat out. He’d lift it very carefully and slurp from it, while the rest cooled in the cup.

  Oh, she’s tired now.

  She’s brought in the ham from the deli, and a brick of real butter – lovely stuff with a sour tang, wrapped in greaseproof paper – then the chicken and lamb chops from the butcher’s, and the milk. It took her a few journeys just to do that much; just the stuff for the fridge. She’s left the rest for Freya to get in the morning.

  Maybe she should have waited until Monday for the messages. Or she could have sent Freya, of course, but Freya would have insisted on spending her own money, and Molly doesn’t like her to do that. That girl needs to keep her money and get some savings together. She needs to use her head more, Freya, to keep her cards to herself and tuck her heart in safe. That’s always the way with Freya; such a flighty, fragile little thing and everything pouring out of her – all her love and all her ideas just pouring out. No safety valve to Freya – that’s what Dinny used to say.

  Molly would like to buy her a little house – a little house for her and the boy. She will, only she needs to find a way to do it that doesn’t make Freya feel beholden, that makes her feel she has done it herself. It’s a shame she has to work like that, but Dinny thought they had made a mistake with their three. He said it was important to know the value of work, that with their girls they had forgotten that. So excited, maybe, that they could suddenly pay for things – all the things they never had – it was something Dinny and Molly hadn’t considered. Then suddenly, it was all Dinny talked about, his big regret – Do you realise, Molly, he said, the great mistake we made? Our girls have never worked a day in their lives.