self destruction.
My spare bedroom door where I once loved to escape when life was going so well has been closed for weeks now and I’ve had no interest in opening it again. My violin, which Mabel had presented to me with such determination and delight, hangs on the wall in there, overlooking unfinished pots and blocks of beeswax that were once going to be candles.
I hear Jude’s voice, laughing at my failure again. He had such a distinctive laugh. Some might have called it hearty, but to me it was always laced with gloating and a warning that he was winning again as always.
‘You actually thought you’d be able to find a life better than the one you had with me,’ I hear him saying, his mouth twisting into a threatening shape of disgust with bullets of spittle hitting me in the face. ‘You’re second-hand goods, Roisin O’Connor. You’re a reject. A scrapheap kid, and without me you’ll go right back to where I found you, just where you deserve to be. On the scrapheap! No one will ever want you! Even your own family didn’t want you.’
I hear Mabel’s voice, cross and angry at how I’m turning into that woman who believed him again – that weak, broken person who thought the world would always be against her and that it was as much as she deserved.
‘Push those shoulders back and stand up straight, for goodness’ sake, Roisin,’ I hear her American sing-song voice with a pinch of warning that only she could get away with. ‘You can’t and won’t settle for anything but the best and you’ll get it if you work hard and be counted! You are worthy of just as much as the next person in this world. Prove it to yourself! Prove it to your mother and to Jude, who both dragged you down to this level in the first place!’
I feel my blood pumping now and I pull myself up using the bannister for support. The whisky in my system makes me wobble ever so slightly and the smell on my breath now makes me sick. I stand there, my heartbeat throbbing in my ears as the room spins around me, all these voices in my head sobering me up and driving me on.
I hear Ben.
‘You seem really sad. It scares me when you’re sad. When I see you happy, it makes me happy too.’
And then Aidan.
‘You think that everyone is out to hurt you or destroy you, but not everyone is like that, Roisin. Not everyone is Jude or your mother. There are plenty of people like Mabel or Janet and Michael in this world, if you are just brave enough to let them in.’
But loudest of all is my own voice, and it’s one that shouts so loudly now I have to block my ears with my hands. And that voice tells me to open up the spare-room door and do something useful to tire out my overactive brain so I can sleep without alcohol to ease my pain.
So I turn the handle, I switch on the light, and I put on some classical music to ease my soul. I slip my apron on over my pyjamas and I sit down at my pottery wheel where I smack a lump of clay into the centre, splash it with my fingers with water from the bowl and I pump the pedal to make the wheel spin as I focus on the wet, moving mixture and mould it with my fingertips and the heel of my palm. I close my eyes, letting the familiarity ground and soothe me, and I don’t stop until I’ve a new creation ready for a new day.
I need to get my life together again. I need to change my own world so that I can once again create things in this little room, and then I can start to believe in myself again. But as the night draws in and the clock ticks back the hours, I can’t help wondering what Aidan is doing now, so many miles away in New York, where his world has crashed down on him just like mine has.
I lift my phone. I want to call him so badly, but I can’t destroy myself any more than I’ve already done, and I’ve already made my decision.
I can’t let any man win me over like that again. I’ve been bitten, torn, lied to and ripped apart far too many times.
I leave my workshop and go