The Women Who Ran Away - Sheila O'Flanagan Page 0,153

London job was a great opportunity and there was no way he was turning it down. Despite being in the middle of my accounting technician’s course, I went to England with him. I couldn’t bear the thought of us being long-distance lovers, even though London isn’t really that far away. But it’s overseas, so that makes it long-distance. Besides, being an accounting technician wasn’t my dream. It was simply a qualification that would hopefully help me to get a job.

I didn’t need my unfinished qualification, though. A few days after we arrived in the English capital, I landed a position as a receptionist in a Jaguar car dealership. Thanks to my dad, I know a lot about cars, although I’d never even seen a Jaguar up close before. But the job was perfect for me, I got on well with the staff and the customers, and despite missing home, I liked being part of London life.

We stayed for six great years. Then Dave was offered a contract on a massive commercial development back in Dublin. Returning was a no-brainer. Happy as I’d been in London, I was delighted to come home for good. We’d been talking about having a baby, but neither of us wanted to bring up a child in London. It was nothing against the city that had been good to us. It was simply that I wanted to start my family at home.

We bought a house in Baldoyle, a ten-minute drive from where we’d grown up, although we stayed with my mum and dad for a few months while Dave and his mates renovated it. I think I became pregnant on our first night there. A few months after Michaela was born, we were married in a ceremony that was way more lavish than we could afford given all the money we’d lashed out on turning the house into our dream home.

‘Till death us do part, babes,’ Dave said that night. ‘So it’s worth it.’

Or until Julie Halpin and her bootylicious bum moved in next door.

I’m awake ten minutes before the alarm is due to go off, and the image of the pair of them is in my head again. I always wake up ten minutes before the alarm, a somewhat useless talent that does, however, mean I have a few minutes to gather myself before getting out of bed. It used to be a time when I’d think about the day ahead, and I savoured those ten minutes as an oasis of calm before I had to throw myself into the fray. Now it always seems to be filled with images of Dave and Julie and the fact that she was on top.

Wiping away the hot tears that have filled my eyes, I pick up my phone and silence the alarm before it starts to ring. Then I tiptoe out of my bedroom and across the hallway to the bathroom, stepping carefully over the squeaky floorboard so as not to disturb anyone else. When I brought Mum up to speed on what had happened and asked if we could stay with her for a while, she wanted me to take the main bedroom with the en suite. She said it would be far more suitable. But there was no way I was turning her out of her own bedroom. I insisted that I’d be fine in the room I’d slept in as a girl, even though sleeping in a single bed after the comfort of the much bigger one I shared with Dave is really difficult. I thought I wouldn’t miss him in the narrow bed. If anything, I miss him more.

I let myself into the bathroom and close the door behind me. In a further effort to keep things quiet, I don’t switch on the ventilation fan but open the window instead, although the dawn light has only reached the very edge of the horizon and the early-morning air is more autumnal than height of summer. But Mum is a light sleeper too, and after the months of Dad’s illness, she needs her rest.

She could have done without me turning into an unexpected lodger with two children in tow. But where else could I have gone? Who else would I have run to?

I pull my hair into a knot and cover it with a shower cap. Mum is as supportive as it’s possible to be, but no matter how much it suits both of us for now, I can’t camp out here indefinitely. The children