Exile Read Free Page A

always unhappy.”
    They hadn’t seen each other for five months and although Maureen vividly remembered how angry her mother made her, she had forgotten the sanctimonious bulldozing, the utter disregard for her feelings, the vicious kindness and blind denial of what Michael had done.
    “Think about it, Winnie,” she said, talking through her teeth, the fury reducing her voice to a whisper, “think about what he did to me. If it wasn’t for him I’d never have been so unhappy. If it wasn’t for him I’d never have been in hospital. I’d have gone on to a real job after my fucking degree. I might be happy, I might be married. I might even have the nerve to hope for children of my own. I might be able to sleep. I might be able to look at myself in the fucking mirror without wanting to scratch my fucking face off.” She was out of control, shouting loud and crying in the street. Art students stole glances at her as they came out of Mr. Padda’s with their newspapers and lunchtime rolls. “And what did he sacrifice all of that for? For a fucking tug.”
    Winnie had never believed in the abuse and had never flinched from saying so before. But this time she pursed her lips and clasped her hands prissily in front of her. “Is that all you want to say?” she said, grinding her teeth and looking off into the middle distance.
    Winnie was trying to listen. She was actually trying, and Maureen had never known her to do that. Not when they were children, not when they were adults, not even when Maureen was in hospital. “Mum, that man and the memories and stuff. I know what he did. He knows he did it too.”
    Winnie looked nervously around her. “Do we have to discuss this here?”
    “Does he ever ask for me?”
    Winnie swallowed hard and looked away. She muttered something into the wind.
    “What?” said Maureen.
    “No,” said Winnie quietly. “He never asks for you. Ever. It’s as if you were never born.”
    “How likely is that, Winnie? Doesn’t it make ye wonder?”
    Winnie couldn’t think of an answer. It must have bothered her terribly. She looked angrily over Maureen’s shoulder. “I’m sick of this,” she said.
    “Why did you tell me he lives there? God, am I not troubled enough already?”
    “You can’t blame me for that—”
    But Maureen was backing off into the street. She leaned forward in case Winnie missed anything. “Stay away from me,” she said slowly, pointing at her mum’s soft chest. “And stop phone-pesting me when you’re steaming.”
    “If I was that bad of a mother,” Winnie shouted after her, “how come none of the rest of them had breakdowns?”
    The vicious morning frost had numbed Maureen’s ears before she was two hundred yards down the hill. She turned a corner and the wind ambushed her, parting her eyelashes. She stopped and waited at the lights, staring at the patchwork tar on the road. The nervous cars and buses jostled one another for road space, speeding across the twenty-foot yellow box, afraid of being left back at the lights. If she threw herself into the road she’d be killed instantly, a five-foot jump to an eternity of peace and no more brave plowing on, no more shouting over the storm, no more nightmares, no more Michael. She thought of Pauline Doyle and envied her.
    Pauline was a June suicide. She had been in psychiatric hospital with Maureen. Two weeks after she was released, a walker had found her dead under a tree. Maureen couldn’t stop thinking about her. Her thoughts kept short-circuiting straight from worry to the happy image of Pauline at peace on the grass in springtime, oblivious to the insects crawling over her legs.
    She glanced up, conscious that something around her had changed. The green man was flashing on and off and the other pedestrians had almost crossed the road. She jogged after them, clutching the fag packet in her pocket, bribing herself on with the promise of a cigarette when she got to work.

Chapter 4
    WORK
    The morning dragged