Together Forever Read online

  TOGETHER FOREVER

  Siân O’Gorman

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.ariafiction.com

  About Together Forever

  When life demands that you make a choice, how do you know you are making the right one?

  Tabitha Thomas gave up on a happy family life with Michael her absent, high-flying husband long ago. Instead she concentrated her energies on their daughter, Rosie, and her career as head teacher at a local primary school.

  However trouble looms on the horizon…

  While Rosie struggles with the most important exams of her life, Tabitha’s eco-warrior mother is protesting outside the school gates to save some trees from the bulldozer. And best friend, Clodagh, a top TV news broadcaster, is self-soothing with Baileys, as she’s edged out of a job by an ambitious flame-haired weathergirl. Finally, with the return of an old flame and a political expose to deal with, Tabitha is forced to confront a decision she made a long time ago and face the life-changing consequences she has lived with ever since.

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About Together Forever

  Dedication

  The Forty Foot

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Acknowledgements

  About Siân O’Gorman

  A Letter from the Author

  Also by Siân O’Gorman

  Become an Aria Addict

  Copyright

  For Sadhbh

  The Forty Foot

  For centuries people have been swimming in the Forty Foot, stepping into the cool waters of the Irish Sea from a tiny tip of rock at the southern end of Dublin Bay. In the shadow of a Martello tower, the swimmers gather, even on the coldest winter’s day. Some arrive in dressing gowns over their togs, others with towels under their arms, ready to wobble and wriggle into their swimsuits before gingerly picking their way down the steps and into the cold (always so cold!) sea, only ever deterred by large swells or big waves churned up by storms. The last time I swum there was the morning of my grandmother’s funeral, when I was twenty-five; years ago now. And these days, when I drive past and see the hardy swimmers making their way down, all I feel is relief that it’s not me submerged in those unknown depths.

  Rosaleen, my grandmother, was one of those daily swimmers at the Forty Foot. She had no time for ‘namby-pambies’ her word for people who didn’t swim in the sea in all weathers, in other words the rest of the world.

  ‘I go in with a head full of problems,’ she used to say, pulling on her flower-strewn swimming cap and red swimsuit, ‘and come out with the clarity of John the Baptist himself.’ She wasn’t remotely religious, and had brought up her daughter without the encumbrance of a man or even marriage, but often she would invoke the name of a holy person or holy event to make a point. The Irish emphasis. ‘Mother of the divine Jesus’ was as exciting her swearing ever got, and usually when she had lost her purse or burned a stew or when the sea was particularly cold. But a swim in icy water cured everything. Colds, headaches and even namby-pambyism. ‘Come on, Tabitha,’ she’d urge while I teetered on the edge. ‘Sure, you’ll be grand once you’re in.’

  And I always was. With her anyway. She was the nicest person I knew, always laughing and chatting with people, and I her little shadow. She’d bring me down to the sea on a Sunday morning and in we’d plunge, laughing and screaming at the cold until we’d float out, stretching our arms towards the horizon, feet kicking madly. Away we’d go, a tiny propeller of a girl and a fine-figured woman slicing through the Irish Sea. ‘Holy water,’ Rosaleen used to say. ‘We’re swimming in the holy water. That feeling of stepping into the sea. It was like nothing else. I remember the icy water, the camaraderie of the other swimmers, the feeling of zingy invincibility when you got out, as though you’d been reborn, made anew, and we’d emerge, skin bright red, singing and stinging and tingling.

  I remember being very little and sitting on one of the old stone benches while Rosaleen bent over me, drying my feet carefully and gently, and then putting on my socks and shoes. Years later, on the very last day we swam together, I returned the favour. Her breathing was bad and bending down was difficult, so I dried her feet and pulled on her stockings and slipped on her shoes. ‘Thank you, loveen,’ she’d said. ‘You’re a pet.

  Sometimes my mother, Nora, would join us, if she wasn’t off somewhere working, protesting, righting wrongs; as an ‘environmentalist and political agitator’, as she likes to call herself, her life spent protesting, placard waving, and heel-digging in. These days, as she’s grown older and since she’s retired she too has become a daily sea communicant. For years and years, Nora worked for various environmental groups as a press officer, spending her life calling journalists and trying to make them care about the planet. Oil spills, Sellafield, tree cutting, forest fires, rezoning were all in a day’s work. Just last year she was on the front page of the Irish Times protesting about a car park which was being built beside a tuft of gentian orchids. Hair flying in the wind, Barbour flapping, she looked like the pirate queen I remembered from when I was growing up. Nora, my accidental mother, always engaged, forever concerned and outraged, saving slugs, fungi and flowers from the farmer’s spade, always standing up for her beliefs.

  ‘You should come down,’ she goes on, even though she knows why I don’t. But she never gives up. Ever. ‘It’ll do you good,’ she keeps saying. ‘Your grandmother said it was a cure-all, and like in most things, she was right.’

  ‘But I don’t need to cure anything.’

  Nora gives me a look as if to say, she knows better. I could still see the appeal. The icy water, the camaraderie of the other swimmers, the zingy invincibility when you remerged, as though you’d been reborn. But the reason I never swim there is not a fear of cold water or sharks or jellyfish. It’s something else. You see, for me, the water isn’t holy and magical anymore but dark, disapproving… there’s an ominous power to that water, as though I can’t quite shake off all those droplets that cling to my skin.

  Chapter One

  A summer morning, early May, the sky blue, the air still. Ireland at its most beautiful. Driving back from the supermarket, I took the coast road, through Sandycove, past the Forty Foot, worrying about my daughter. Rosie was all I really thought about now, anyway. For the last two years, she had done nothing but revise. The Leaving Cert are the set of tough, gruelling exams at the end of your school days that you fervently believe will dictate the rest of your life. They wreak such havoc on the psyche of every Irish citizen, instilling such fear and horror, no one ever quite recovers. Your whole life hangs in the balance of knowing particularly difficult Irish grammatical tenses, impenetrable maths equations and the exact movements of Padraig Pearse during the Easter Rising. I still remember that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, the dread… and then, when they are over, you do miraculously move on with your life but like traumatised elephants, you never forget.

>   But we were so close to Rosie’s liberation from all this tension and pressure. She was pale and seemed to be fading fast. She just had to cling on and the old Rosie, the confident happy girl, would return. As I indicated to turn left to continue on to home, in Dalkey, I spotted my mother on the road ahead, creakily, rustily, slowly pedalling home from her swim, dressed in her usual charity-shop purchases. Her old men’s sandals and knitted socks, her legs bare under her long skirt, her trusty battered Barbour and an old cloth bag slung over her shoulder. Her long hair, damp from her dip, hanging over her shoulders to dry. Instinctively I thought of my husband Michael and what he would make of her and mentally cheered her on. She stood for everything he didn’t and Nora was the part of me which he found most difficult to accept. She didn’t fit in with his idea of an acceptable extended family. She would cheerily tackle him on any issue, good-naturedly holding him personally accountable for everything from homelessness to the closure of the Dun Laoghaire bowls club.

  He believed in the individual, that anyone can make it if given the right support. She believed in welfare and community. But when I decided to marry him, it seemed, to be the most rebellious thing I could do and I don’t regret it – I wouldn’t change a thing about Rosie, after all – but it had been rash, not a love match but what I had thought was a pragmatic and sensible choice.

  As I passed Nora’s bike, I slowed down and tooted my horn. ‘That’s it!’ I called through the open window. ‘Keep it up! Nice to see you getting a bit of exercise!’

  ‘Thank you, Tabitha,’ she said, ‘You’re very kind. But your encouragement is unnecessary.’ But she was smiling. ‘How’s Rosie? Not still at those books?’

  ‘You know what’s she’s like, takes after you. Never gives up!’

  There was a car behind me. ‘See you later, Mum.’ I said, pressing on the accelerator and moving forwards. But her face suddenly lifted as though she’d just remembered something.

  ‘The trees!’ I think she shouted. In my rear-view mirror, she waved again, mouthing something. ‘The trees!’

  *

  The black ministerial car was parked outside the house, which meant Michael was home. Terry, his driver, reading a paper in the front seat of the Mercedes. Michael rarely made domestic appearances these days, arriving unexpectedly and disappearing just as quickly, shunting daily life out of its rhythm and he often asserted himself into the household in some way. Usually it was that the garden needed tidying at the front or he had been shocked to see a dead cheese plant in the hall.

  After hopping through the ranks from local councillor to member of the Progressive Conservatives and a front-bench position, Michael had now made it to the giddy heights of Europe. He spent more time in Brussels than Dublin and all his talk, when he did come home, was about EU directives, policies and late-night votes and dining on steak and red wine and crème brûlée. He was good at the mechanics of politics, remembering every name of anyone he had ever shaken hands with, able to differentiate between constituents, who had the brother in hospital and who had the issue with the damp. And after being submerged in Bill Clinton’s autobiography, he emerged pale and drawn but excited by all the new techniques he had absorbed, such as finding a face in the crowd and waving, the double handshake and the disconcerting never breaking eye contact.

  Politics was his passion; the deal making, the risk taking, the prestige, power and perks, along with a flat in Brussels and a studio in Dublin city centre. His was important work. The most important work, changing the world, one EU directive at a time.

  Michael had grown up in the shadow of his father, Michael Sr, also a politician. He never watched children’s television, only the news, had never worn jeans, and saw politics as the family business. And he wanted Rosie to continue the family dynasty and do exactly what he did. Go to Trinity to do Law, get into local politics and then… well, next stop Brussels.

  I harboured secret and treasonous thoughts that Law in Trinity was too much like hard work (and far too boring) and that no one – and definitely not my daughter - should be subjected to it. But then I wasn’t a Fogarty. After giving up her dreams of acting, Rosaleen, my grandmother had been front of house manager at the Gaiety Theatre all her life. Nora gave no credence to academic qualifications but everything to the ability to chain oneself to railings in protest. The only time I can remember feeling she was really proud of me was when I won first prize for my poster in a competition against Sellafield when I was twelve.

  Unministerially, Michael was eating Weetabix. ‘Morning Mammy!’ he said. ‘Cold milk on cereal! Breakfast of champions. It’s the milk, though Irish milk from Irish farmers that makes it! Am I right?’

  ‘Hi Michael,’ I said, not bothering to tell him for the billionth time to call me Tabitha, rather than Mammy, and that he already had his own mother and didn’t need another one. ‘Um…’ I tried to formulate an opinion on milk.

  ‘Caught the red-eye from Brussels and needed my farmers’ association tie for the meeting in Dundalk,’ he went on blithely. ‘You need…’ he spooned the last drops of milk from his bowl into his mouth, ‘the right tie. Bill Clinton says it’s the killer move. Get it wrong and no one will trust you. Get it right, and putty in the hand!’

  ‘I suppose the same could be said for the handbag,’ I said, putting away the shopping, ‘too expensive and everyone mistrusts you…’

  ‘It’s an art,’ he said, as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘You have to think of who you are meeting and with farmers, it can’t be too flashy. It has to be just right. I’m thinking of a Donegal tweed. Well, that’s what Lucy has decreed.’

  Michael’s best perk was Lucy, his secretary. Over the last two years she’d made it her life’s work to overhaul not just his office but also his image. There is now a more contemporary look to his hair and the cut of his suit. His fringe pushed up, lapels more city slicker than fusty politico. And his teeth have undergone a bleaching more thorough than any toilet and now gleam brighter than those of Tom Cruise’s.

  ‘I’m sure Lucy’s right,’ I said, trying to keep a facetious tone out of my voice. ‘She always is, isn’t she? That’s what you say.’

  ‘She’s a marvel,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘Yes, yes, quite the marvel.’ His eyes went misty for a moment as we both contemplated the myriad ways Lucy was a marvel.

  ‘Now,’ he said, breaking focus, ‘where’s herself?’ He meant Rosie.

  ‘Upstairs. You know, Michael, the exams,’ I said, ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you about it. If there’s anything we could do, anything we should be doing to make it easier for her. They’re so awful. I think they might even be worse than when we did them. I mean, they seem to be even harder these days …’

  ‘She’ll be grand,’ he said, dismissing me. ‘Us Fogartys always are. I sailed through mine. She’s got a good brain, that’s all you need.’ Rosie, he believed, was more Fogarty than Thomas – the politics, the clear head, the methodical way of doing things. Chip off the old block. He’d been talking about Rosie going to Trinity, his alma mater, since before she was born, and as Rosie had done exceptionally well in her mock exams and had been offered a place, it was a case of just passing the finals and she’d be in.

  ‘Trinity College! She’s on her way.’ Michael put down the cereal bowl and actually rubbed his hands with sheer excitement. ‘I was just onto my old professor yesterday and we had a good chat about Trinity and how it’s changed. He said to bring Rosie in one of these days for a look round the place. Thought I would show her a few sights. The library. The old lecture hall, that kind of thing.’

  ‘She’s already been round…’

  ‘Ah, but not with me. An old boy, so to speak. Not that I’m old. Just older than I was.’ Michael was the same age as me, 42, but gave what he might think was a boyish grin and ruffled his own hair. Which he then quickly smoothed back in place.

  ‘Michael, it was more than twenty years since you were there.’

  ‘Technically, yes.’ He helped himself t
o another two Weetabix sprinkling them liberally with sugar and splashing on the milk. He took a mouthful. ‘The Fogarty name still opens doors, you know. We are not nobodies. We belong there and Rosie will be the fourth generation. Now…’ His face suddenly looked grave, like a headmaster disappointed in the child who had been caught smoking. ‘I need to talk to you…’

  ‘Really?’ What had I done now?

  ‘The hall light was on,’ he said. ‘Why? It’s a summer morning? There’s really no need.’

  ‘I must have flicked it by mistake…’

  ‘It’s not the expense,’ he said, shaking his head at my absent-mindedness. ‘But the waste. If I am seen as wasteful, then I am not setting a good example for my constituents. They expect me to have the highest of standards, Mammy. We must live up to that ideal.’

  ‘Yes, Michael.’ Over the years, I had learned to nod and agree.

  ‘I am a public figure,’ he went on, ‘and must be beyond reproach. SIPL!’

  ‘Sipple?’ Was this some new, utterly perplexing, mind-bending, borderline-barmy EU policy?

  ‘Standards in Public Life. It’s my latest directive. I’ve told you about it before…’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said weakly, glancing at my unread paper and thinking of the croissant I had just bought and had been looking forward to for the last hour. ‘So…?’ I tried to stay focussed on what Michael was saying but, as usual, when he held forth on Europe, my concentration wavered. Where was my nice pot of jam? I hoped Rosie hadn’t finished it all off.

  ‘Now this is really exciting,’ he was saying, ‘It’s going to be very popular with voters, I just know it. All politicians, across Europe, will sign up to this agreement, declaring that they are beyond reproach. Voluntary self-regulation and a move towards a different relationship between people and politicians. Bring back respect.’ He chattered away confidently in that way he had that what he was saying was of great interest to the listener. ‘We shouldn’t behave like ordinary people, civilians, the ones doing ordinary jobs, leading ordinary lives, like going to the park, or making dinner, or watching Strictly Come Whatever. Instead, we non-civilians will be shining lights, exhibiting impeccable human behaviour, so that others, the civilians know how to behave.’