And now I am an editor at a paper about the Irish in London, and Deenie Byrne wants to talk to me.
* * *
By the time I decide that I am definitely going to meet Deenie, my husband is at golf with my brothers, and my parents are at work. This means I have no choice but to bring Shay with me.
I do not know what Deenie Byrne’s fertility journey has been like since I last met her, but something about her email says that she is still childless. She said she was “reflecting” a lot, which I suppose anyone could do at any time, but feels unlikely if she has a brood of children under ten.
I see her at a table, a manuscript plopped in front of her, and I am again jobless in 2010, and mad at her for not paying me more than fifty euros a week.
She is in her forties and looks broadly the same. Her roots a little grey, her Victorian eyes with a few lines, but still Deenie. Small and sturdy as a jewel. I’m still bulky from pregnancy, and the words chubby student with a crush come back to me.
“Hello,” I say, reversing the buggy carefully next to the table.
“Rachel,” she says, standing. “Oh my God, you’re so grown up.”
“Thanks.”
She is startled by Shay, and I can see the fear and confusion pass over her pretty face. Even though she knows I have a child now, for about three seconds, she is back in 2010, too. I have kept the baby that belongs to her, and this is him. She blinks hard. Snaps herself out of it.
“And who is this little man?”
“This is Shay.”
“How old…？”
“Ten weeks!”
“Oh my goodness. He’s so long.”
“I know, I know, he’s the longest in his class.”
I sit down while Deenie politely engages with my son, who is asleep.
“Congratulations, Rachel. He’s gorgeous.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I was sorry to hear about Fred.”
The last time I saw this woman, she was handing me a cheque for two thousand euros, and I promised she would never have to see me ever again.
“Yes,” she says, used to sympathy by now. “It’s been hard. Do you want a coffee?”
“I’ll just have a sparkling water, or something.”
“I’ll get it for you.”
She shoots up quickly and sits back down with my water.
“I didn’t let myself google you for years,” she says. “But then I saw your piece in The Irish Times, during the referendum. Interviewing the English abortion providers about Irish women.”
I nod. “That was a hard one.”
She nods, too. “It was really well done. I’m so glad it has worked out for you.”
I want to be patient with Deenie Byrne, but I am not going to compare LinkedIns with her.
“It would have been easier if I could have used any of my publishing experience,” I say flatly. Then I feel bad. She thought I was having an affair with her husband, after all. And who knows how helpful that experience would have even been? Would Deenie’s name have meant anything to an English publisher, when so few Irish things mean anything to English people?
She nods again, her eyes flicking to her manuscript.
“Did you…？” she says, then stops. “Did you cover all the abortion stuff, because of your own…experience?”
“What? Oh. No. It was just, you know. It was important.”
“Of course.”
“And I’m an Irish journalist in England. There’s only a few beats they really want you on.”
“The abortion beat?”
“The abortion beat, the child molesting beat, the occasional ‘Ten Reasons Irish Women Are Hot Right Now’ beat. Those are the main beats.”
She laughs.
“How is he doing?” I ask.
“Um, well, he’s awake.”
“Oh, wow!”
“Yes. Since January.”
“And how is he…？”
“He’s very different.” She says it like a mother explaining her shy child to a new teacher. “You wouldn’t know him, I don’t think.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t really know what happened.”
“Of course. It’s, ah, it’s quite a rare thing. We were swimming.”
“Swimming?”
“We were in South Carolina last year. For our anniversary, you know. Fifteen years married. We did a tour of the Southern states. And we were in this beautiful creek, in this big national park. Later we got back to the hotel, and he started vomiting, and we thought it was sun stroke.”
“Oh my God.”
“I know.” She had obviously told this story many times. The next few lines came out in a big rush.
“And well, there’s a kind of amoeba that lives in water, all water really, South Carolina wasn’t special, and it enters your bloodstream through your ears and nose, and it can lead to a brain infection, and that’s what he got. He was hospitalised, and we were stuck in South Carolina for weeks, and we thought he was going to die, and being sick in America is like staying at the Ritz Carlton and ordering everything on room service every night, money wise, but he didn’t die. We somehow got him back to Ireland, and he had moments of being awake, but then he would fall back in again. And he would fade, and then do better, and then fade again. And now he’s awake.”
In all the many punishments I had dreamed up for the Harrington-Byrnes over the years, I would never have allowed this to enter even my darkest fantasies. It was too cruel, too unusual.
“Deenie,” I said, “I’m so sorry.”
Sensing the agony in the room, Shay wakes up and begins to moan. I wait a minute, and hope he is just squeaking, looking for a more comfortable way to sleep. But he doesn’t want to sleep. He wants to be with me. He gets louder, and I take him out.
“Oh,” Deenie says. “He’s so small.”
“No,” I laugh, glad that he’s cutting the tension. “He’s very long, remember?”
His hands start to ball into fists, and I realise he wants to eat.
Can I really get my tit out in front of Deenie Byrne?
“Sorry,” I say, wrestling with my top, my annoying maternity bra. “Do you mind if I…？”
“No, please, Rachel. Go ahead.”
I always said that I would not be one of those mothers that puts a tea towel over her child’s head while he feeds. I found it prudish and weird. We all know what’s happening under there! Now, I hated myself for not being a tea-towel mother. Deenie Harrington could see my enormous purple nipple.
His lips smack against me. It’s embarrassingly noisy, and I can feel my face going crimson. “You’re so natural,” she says. “Such an earth mother.”
No one ever says “earth mother” to petite women.
“You must be wondering why I wanted to speak to you.”
“A little.”
She allows herself full eye contact with Shay, and with my boob. “I’ve wondered a lot, about you.”
“I’ve thought a lot about you, too.”
“It never happened, did it, Rachel?”
My arms freeze. Shay can feel me stiffening, and moves his arms and legs around in protest.
“What do you mean?”
“You never slept with him, did you?”