The Break Read online

  ‘I hear you’re Neeve Aldin’s mother,’ she says. ‘Neeve Aldin of Bitch, Please fame?’

  ‘Oh? Ah. Yes!’

  ‘I watch her make-up vlogs with my fourteen-year-old. She’s gas craic, makes us both laugh.’

  ‘Well … ah … great.’

  ‘Mind you, I’m nearly in the poorhouse from having to buy the stuff she pushes. You wouldn’t ask her to showcase some cheaper brands?’

  ‘I can try!’ There’s not an earthly that Neeve would listen to me.

  ‘How come she has a different surname to you?’

  ‘She’s from my first marriage. Goes by her dad’s name.’

  ‘That’s that mystery cleared up. Let’s get started.’

  Off we go and Mrs EverDry is pleased with some of our progress – we got a mention on Coronation Street. ‘But I’ve decided that we need an ambassador,’ she says.

  Her words fall into stunned silence. ‘The public face of the brand.’

  We know what an ambassador is, we just don’t know how to tell her she’s totally delusional.

  ‘Interesting …’ I’m playing for time.

  ‘Don’t you “interesting” me,’ she says.

  Alastair’s got to be the one to neutralize this – she loves him. ‘Mrs Mullen,’ he says gently. ‘It won’t be easy to find someone willing to publicly admit to incontinence.’

  ‘We just need one person,’ she says. ‘Then everyone will be at it.’

  And she’s right. It’s not so long since having cancer was a secret, or when no one would own up to an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

  ‘Everyone’s incontinent!’ Mrs EverDry declares. She looks at Alastair, and her tone softens. ‘Well, maybe not you. You’re perfect.’

  ‘I have more things wrong with me than you could ever imagine.’ Alastair thinks he’s being charming but I agree with him.

  Mrs EverDry studies Tim. ‘I’d say you aren’t incontinent either.’

  ‘I’m too young,’ Tim says.

  ‘And too uptight.’

  We all snort with unexpected laughter. Mrs EverDry is our most important client, but you couldn’t help liking her.

  Now she turns her gaze on me. ‘I couldn’t claim incontinence,’ I say apologetically, ‘but my bladder certainly isn’t what it was.’

  ‘Maybe not everyone’s incontinent yet,’ Mrs EverDry concedes. ‘But soon they will be. Because we’re all living too long.’

  Which is exactly the point that Hugh had been trying to make when he broke his terrible news to me. The tiny pilot light of hope that Maura’s visit had lit is abruptly extinguished and, once again, I’m sad and scared.

  3

  I’d been well aware that Hugh was suffering – his dad had died, it was only to be expected, and as his mum had been dead for eight years he was now officially an orphan.

  None of my family of origin had died yet, but I’d absorbed enough from our Dr Phil culture to know that bereavement affects everyone differently and all I could do for Hugh was be there for him. But although I urged him to cry, he didn’t shed a tear. And, though permission was tacitly granted for a spell of excessive drinking, he stuck to his usual few bottles of ludicrously named craft beer. I even offered to accompany him snowboarding, in spite of being worried about the state of me in the padded clothing, but he had no interest.

  I tried to keep his life as stress-free as possible – which mostly involved defusing tension between him and Neeve – and I’d often ask, ‘Would you like to talk?’

  But talking was the last thing he wanted to do.

  Not much riding either, since we’re on the subject. And maybe we weren’t, but it has to be said. In fact, in the aftermath of his dad’s death, very little of his time was spent in bed. He stayed up late, binge-watching crime things, and was always awake before me in the mornings.

  Then one Thursday, maybe four or five months after the funeral, I’d bumped awake around six a.m. Hugh wasn’t in bed with me and his spot was cold. Although his car was still outside, he was nowhere in the house. Extremely uneasy, I rang him, and when he didn’t pick up, my imagination went to the darkest places. We hear so much about men and suicide, how it happens – seemingly – without warning.

  Hugh didn’t do anguish. As a rule, he was very steady and, paradoxically, it was this very steadiness that had me convinced he was in the danger zone – too much of a stoic, bottling stuff up. In a panic, I threw on some clothes and drove around Dundrum, searching for him in the March dawn.

  Marley Park seemed like the obvious choice – all those trees – but no one was there so I circled the residential streets in our neighbourhood for probably an hour, a very long one, until my phone rang. It was him. I’d worked myself up into such a state that I could hardly believe his voice. ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At home.’

  ‘Stay there.’

  He claimed he’d gone for a walk. I believed him, but it was deeply unsettling. Running, even middle-of-the-night running, is fairly normal, right? Walking, though, seemed a bit weird.

  ‘I was worried about you,’ I said. ‘I thought you might have –’

  ‘No. I’d never do that.’

  ‘But I don’t know what’s going on with you.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He’d sighed. ‘I don’t know what’s going on with me either.’

  ‘Sweetie,’ I’d said. ‘I think it’s time you saw someone about anti-depressants.’

  After a long silence he’d said, ‘Okay.’

  Then I was really freaked out. Hugh would do anything to avoid going to the doctor – if his leg fell off he’d dismiss it as a mere flesh wound even as he hopped in place to stop himself toppling over.

  But he went and he got a prescription for Seroxat. (Which I knew were ‘entry-level’ SSRIs – as a middle-class, middle-aged woman, my life was filled with people who had either been on anti-depressants or knew someone who had.)

  Even though he took the tablets, Hugh continued to disappear regularly in the middle of the night, and when I told my sister Derry, she said, ‘You don’t think he’s, you know, dropping in on some unaccompanied lady?’

  Of course the thought had crossed my mind, but instinct told me that whatever internal tussle was taking place in Hugh, it wasn’t about extra-curricular riding.

  So I sat him down for another chat and suggested he see a grief counsellor.

  ‘What would that achieve?’ he asked, his eyes dead.

  That stumped me. I knew nothing about the ins and outs of counselling sessions. But … ‘Lots of people who’ve been bereaved find them helpful.’

  ‘How much would it cost?’

  ‘I could find out.’

  ‘How many times would I have to go?’

  ‘I think it varies.’

  ‘You think it might help me?’

  ‘Well, it helps other people. Why should you be any different?’

  ‘Okay.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘Maybe I’d better.’ Then, ‘I can’t go on like this.’

  That terrified me. ‘Sweetie, what do you mean?’

  ‘Just … I can’t go on like this.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Everything seems pointless.’

  ‘Tell me. Please.’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing to tell. Just everything seems pointless.’

  I knew better than to say that things weren’t pointless. But to witness his pain and be unable to reach him was maddeningly frustrating. We, who’d been so, so close, were light years from each other.

  Alastair was my go-to person for all matters related to emotional growth. He gave me the name of a psychotherapist who specialized in bereavement. ‘She’s spendy,’ he warned me.

  But I didn’t care. Any money was worth it if it coaxed Hugh from his silent, flat-eyed misery.

  After the first session I asked Hugh, ‘How did it go?’

  His face expressionless, he said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Will you go again?�
�

  ‘Yeah. Next week. She says I have to commit to ten weeks.’

  ‘Okay. Good. Great, Hugh. Well done.’

  He stared at me, as if he didn’t know who I was.

  So, for several Thursdays in a row, Hugh went to the counsellor. I tried not to quiz him about it, but always managed a breezy, ‘How’d it go?’

  Usually he shrugged and made noncommittal noises, but towards the end of the course, he said, his tone without inflection, ‘I don’t think it’s working.’

  My spirits plummeted, but I forced cheer into my voice and said, ‘Give it time.’

  What kept me positive was the hope that once we’d got past the first anniversary of his father’s death things might ease up for him.

  Then the most horrific thing happened: Hugh’s friend died, a man he’d known since he was five years old. The nature of the death was particularly dreadful: Gavin had been stung by a wasp and gone into anaphylactic shock. No one had known he was allergic to wasp stings – the entire thing was a bolt from the blue.

  I was sorry for Gavin’s wife, for his children, for his parents and sibling – but, to my shame, I was more concerned about Hugh. This was bound to impact on him profoundly. Any healing he might have done in the months since his dad had died would surely be negated.

  And so it proved. Instantly Hugh abandoned his counselling sessions and left the room whenever I brought up the subject. He began skipping work and spent hour upon hour watching Netflix. He stopped seeing his friends, opted out of all family events and barely spoke.

  In July, he, the girls and I went on holiday to Sardinia, me desperate with hope that the sunshine might effect some healing. But all he did was sit in silence and watch the sea with a six-mile stare, while the rest of us tiptoed anxiously around him.

  Once we were back home, I realized, with no little despair, that all I could do was wait things out, and that it was likely to be a very long wait.

  However, about three weeks ago, we were invited to a drinks thing – someone’s birthday – and, to my surprise, he agreed to come. My heart leapt with hope and the ever-present knot in my stomach unwound slightly.

  But soon after we got there, my arch-frenemy Genevieve Payne descended on us.

  ‘Hugh! Hello, stranger.’ She began stroking his arm. ‘The eyes on this man!’ she said. ‘So blue! So sexy! You know, Amy, if Hugh was my husband, I’d never let him out of bed.’

  This was her normal lark with him. My mouth went, ‘Ha-ha-ha,’ while my eyes went, ‘Please can I bury an axe in your head?’

  In the past, Hugh had always received her attentions in a strong and silent fashion – not shrugging her off but not leading her on either. You know, polite. He knew how her slinky confidence intimidated me.

  But this time he turned and smiled at her – I hadn’t seen him smile in the last year. Genevieve reddened, she actually looked embarrassed, and something inside me felt very cold and scared.

  Driving home I said, ‘You can have an affair with anyone in the whole world except for Genevieve Payne.’

  Whenever I said that – and I said it every time I saw her – Hugh would reply, ‘Babe, I won’t have an affair with anyone ever.’ But this time he said, ‘Okay.’ No ‘babe’. And just ‘Okay.’

  I opened my mouth, then thought, No, let it go.

  Fast-forward to last Saturday evening, when we were at home, alone. Hugh was at the kitchen table, tapping away on his iPad for hours. A quick look over his shoulder established that he was doing something with figures. I thought nothing of it but on a return visit, ages later, he was still at it.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He hesitated and, whatever way he did it, a thin thread of dread unfurled in my gut. ‘Our finances.’

  I stared at him for a long, silent beat. This didn’t make sense. Only two months earlier, our ropy finances had enjoyed a major facelift because his dad’s house had finally sold. The proceeds were divvied up between Hugh and his three brothers, and after we’d ring-fenced Sofie and Kiara’s college fees, got braces for Kiara’s wonky teeth, repaired our glitchy house-alarm system, fixed the leak in Neeve’s bedroom, gone on the holiday to Sardinia and paid off our credit cards, what remained might have bought half a car. (A mid-range car, I don’t mean a fancy one.)

  As we’d never known financial equilibrium, the unprecedented situation of not worrying if our card would be declined with every transaction we made was joyous.

  But to have an actual fund of actual cash to play with had nearly toppled me over the edge. I began uttering the phrase ‘nest egg’, even though heretofore it was the most irritatingly smug thing I’d ever heard.

  I had great plans for the ‘nest egg’ and assembled a lengthy wish list – replacing our unpredictable boiler, getting a much-needed new couch, paying off a tiny amount of our mortgage, or even – this was a secret, desperate hope – sending Hugh and me on a modest mini-break, just the two of us, in the hope that somehow we’d reconnect.

  Nothing explained the lengthy calculations Hugh had been doing all evening and I could have pressed the issue but something – fear? – advised me to say nothing.

  The very next night, after the girls had gone to bed, he said to me, ‘We need to talk.’

  That is a sentence no one ever wants to hear. But, as Hugh had barely addressed a syllable to me in the previous year, I was definitely … interested, I suppose.

  He handed me a glass of wine. ‘Can we sit at the kitchen table?’

  A talk where I had to be softened up with alcohol? A talk where we’d be facing each other?

  I took a big swig of wine, went to the kitchen, sat at the table and took another swig of wine. ‘Off you go.’

  Hugh stared downwards, as if the secrets of the universe were written in the limed oak. ‘I love you.’ He flicked a glance at me and his eyes burnt with sincerity. Then he resumed his study of the table. ‘I want to stay married to you.’

  Good words, yes, nice words, the right words. However, any fool could see that a great big BUT was hanging over us like a block of concrete.

  ‘But?’ I prompted.

  His hand clenched his beer bottle and it was a moment before he spoke. ‘I’d like a break.’

  Bad. This was bad, bad, bad.

  ‘Could you look at me?’ If I could see him, it might be possible to stop this.

  ‘Sorry.’ He sat up straight, and the sight of his face, full-on, was kind of a surprise, because when you’ve been with someone a long time, you rarely bother to study them properly. He looked exhausted.

  ‘I’m not expressing myself well.’ He sounded miserable. ‘I’ve written it down in a letter. Can I show it to you?’ He slid his iPad across the table.

  My angel,

  I love you. I will always love you. I want us to be together always.

  But I want something else. I need more.

  I guess it’s because of Dad, then Gavin. All I can think about is the complete futility of life; we get one go, it’s very short, and then we die. I feel I haven’t done enough with my life. Enough for me. I love Neeve, Sofie and Kiara with everything I’ve got but I feel I’ve spent a lot of time putting them ahead of me. I want some time where I put me first.

  And as I write this, it sounds so selfish, and I’m aware of all the other people who have terrible lives they can’t escape. I know you also feel like your time is constantly colonized and that you’re always last on the list. But I feel like I’m being buried alive and that I’ll burst if I don’t change something. This is destroying me and I can’t keep going.

  I know it will hurt you and I hate myself for that, but I can’t stop my thoughts. I want to stay for you but I need to go for me. It’s like being torn in two in a trap.

  Yes, it’s a mid-life crisis, but I don’t want a sports car, I just want some freedom. I really think this will be the best for us in the long run.

  I want us to grow old together. I want us to be together till the end.

  It’s not simply a s
ex thing. I know you’ll worry that it is, but that’s not the reason.

  This isn’t a cowardly way of saying I want us to split up. I love you, I love our life together, I will always love you, and after six months I promise to come back.

  Hugh

  Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

  Just as well I was sitting down because I was dizzy. He looked at me, his eyes searching, and I stared back, like he was a stranger.

  ‘Amy?’

  ‘I … God, I don’t know what to …’

  ‘It’s big, I know,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Amy. I’m so sorry. I hate doing this to you. I don’t want to feel this way. I’ve tried to stop it but it keeps coming back.’

  I scanned the words again and they were even more devastating second time round – torn in two in a trap … like I’m being buried alive … six months … freedom …

  Having his internal upheaval laid bare was horrifying – he was in a terrible state. And him wanting six months of freedom wasn’t a whim: it was a conclusion he’d reached after painful soul-searching.

  He mustn’t go – that was clear – but I needed the details so I could manage them.

  ‘Where were you thinking of doing this?’ My voice was choked.

  ‘South East Asia, Thailand, Vietnam, those places. Back-packing. I want to learn to scuba-dive.’

  The level of detail triggered another wave of dizziness. All that time he’d been going around like a silent ghost, I’d been solicitously enquiring if he’d like to talk, and he’d been plotting his escape.

  And back-packing? He was forty-six, not nineteen.

  Still. Lots of people were giving up their middle-aged, middle-class lives to relive their teenage years. Silver something-or-others. Not that Hugh was a silver anything: his beard and shaggy hair were dark brown, not a hint of grey, he was tall and fit and, when he wasn’t in the throes of anguish, he looked younger than his age. He could be a hit on the beach-party-under-a-full-moon circuit.

  ‘But what about your job?’

  ‘I’ve been talking to Carl.’ Carl is his brother and they co-own a sound studio where Hugh is an engineer. ‘He says he’ll cover with freelancers.’

  ‘You’ve told Carl?’ Before he’d told me. I took another swig of wine. ‘So you wouldn’t be earning any money for six months?’ What about the mortgage, all the different insurances, the daily drain from the girls, all the small expenses that add up to so much?