He sat on our sofa with a stupid smile on his stupid face and his fancy stupid shoes on our footrest. The footrest was one million years old and manky as fuck but I still felt the heat of fury rise up in me when I noticed. Who the fuck was he to be putting his dirty shoes on our stuff? Dickhead.
“Mind getting your shoes off the fucking furniture?” I said coldly.
“Aideen!”
Mam sounded shocked at my language, which was entirely for his benefit as every second word out of her mouth usually had asterisks in it. She was standing holding the kettle over three mugs. Did she really think we were all going to sit down and have a cup of tea?
Dad stood up. “I should go.”
“Aidan, no.” She looked at me, pleading. “Aideen.”
A whole storm raged inside me. Everything about him made me sick. There had been a time when I was little when I didn’t feel that way, but it was because I didn’t really understand what was going on. I didn’t think it was strange that my dad only came round now and then. Or that he would disappear for months on end. I knew kids whose parents were divorced and I knew that sometimes dads didn’t live with you. That wasn’t strange. I didn’t think it was weird that sometimes I saw them kissing either. I understood that when he went away, Mam was sad and that made her drink.
From overheard smoky conversations that my mam had in the kitchen with her friends I gradually put the past together. Dad had married this woman, Sarah, a year or two before he met Mam. Dad had an affair with Mam and then I arrived. At some point he asked Mam to marry him, even though he was still with Sarah. She waited for him to leave for years, but he never did. For some reason there was this part of Mam that wanted to believe he would so badly that she just couldn’t give up hope. Sometimes he’d come back to her and he’d claim that she was the one he really loved. Sometimes he’d disappear and I’d see pictures of him celebrating an anniversary or a new baby online. He had four kids with Sarah now. One of them was older than me.
He didn’t know I followed him. I’d friended him with a random picture of a hot woman and figured he’d accept. Thankfully he’d never slid into my DMs. I knew Mam must see those pictures too, although if she was friends with him it was also under a fake profile.
A couple of years after I figured all this out something else occurred to me and I rang the records office. I asked about my birth certificate. There was no father listed.
No trail. I wondered sometimes if Mam named me after him to make a point. You can’t pretend she’s not yours. But from what I’d seen she was just that obsessed with him.
She looked so happy every time he came around. And so devastated every time he left. Was it worth it? The moments of joy paid for with days when she couldn’t even get out of bed? If I made it worse for her, was I taking away the only thing that made her smile? Was being happy for a little while better than never being happy? It didn’t feel like that. It felt like ruining your life for the same scrap of affection over and over because you didn’t think you deserved any more than that.
“Sorry,” I said, trying my best to squash the bitterness in my voice. Mam smiled, a real smile, and I saw how her eyes lit up when she handed him a cup of tea and he said, “Thanks, love.” For a second I thought I was right to let her have this moment. But he never had the same spark when he looked at her.
I forced myself to sip on my tea. I sat at the table though, and not on the sofa near them. Dad had to turn around and crane his neck to look at me.
“How’s school going?” he asked.
Don’t you get a report? You pay for it, after all. Or do you not bother to open it?
The fees for my school were not huge and they were meant to be a “voluntary donation” but I know they helped me get in because my entrance exam was abysmal. I was dying to go to St. Louise’s because it was where Holly was going. I felt like I’d compromised myself by accepting his money. I should have told him to shove it up his arse and gone to St. Rose’s instead, which was closer to where I lived and not as obsessed with exams. But there was no Holly there. I sold myself out for her.
“It’s grand,” I said.
“You still knocking about with that wee girl with the red hair?”
I have one friend and you can’t even remember her name. Classic. Can you remember the names of Rachel’s, Thomas’s, Christopher’s, and James’s friends?
“Yeah.”
Mam gave me a meaningful look over her mug.
What’s happened that you’re here again? Fight with Sarah? A lull in the relationship? Is she not in the mood lately? Did you fancy fucking someone different and knew you wouldn’t have to make any effort with Mam?
“How’s work or whatever?”
Dad perked up. Of course he did, it was about him. He launched into a full explanation about what was going on at his company and I didn’t even pretend to listen. Imagine being so up your own hole that you don’t realize when someone is only asking a question to be polite and instead you think a sixteen-year-old girl is actually interested in your shite company.
“Cool,” I said when he finally stopped talking. “I have loads of homework.”
Have I done my penance?
Mam nodded to let me go and I resisted the urge to slam my door behind me.
My bag was full of books when I kicked and it hurt my toe but it reminded me that I really did have to do homework. I put my earbuds in and opened the French file and tried to focus. I held my pen in my hand over a pad of paper and tried to ignore the pounding in my head. I played the same few lines over and over again but the meaning didn’t come. I knew some of the words, but there were too many that didn’t mean anything to me. A few loud laughs penetrated past the deep voice of the French fella in my head and it made me tense up. How could she sit in there laughing with him? The paper in front of me became blurry and a tear dropped out and splashed on the page. I blinked really fast so no more could get out and I opened up my messages.
AIDEEN
He’s back.
HOLLY
Come over.
I threw a big hoodie on and slipped out the front door. Mam didn’t notice and I suspected she wouldn’t for some time. I walked to the bus stop and waited. It was two buses to get to Holly’s and by the time I got to the first changeover I thought I’d calmed down. The whole of my Sad Ladies of the Nineties playlist had played through and smushed down the churny awful thoughts of Mam and Dad. Or Aidan rather. Why did I even still call him Dad? He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t want it! I was just another unfortunate consequence of his “complicated” relationship status. He liked to swoop in, wreak havoc, and then disappear with no thought for what was left behind. I wondered if he thought about us when he wasn’t here. Did we cease to exist for him when he wasn’t looking directly at us?
Holly was waiting for me at the bus stop. She had a tea in a to-go mug, which she held out to me.
“You didn’t have to meet me here,” I said.
“Come here,” she said, and she held her arms wide. I sank into them and cried into the soft fluffy collar of her coat.
