BooksBarbecue
Back Before My Actual Heart Breaks Save as PDF
Chapters (48)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. 2007
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 1973
  9. 3
  10. 4
  11. 5
  12. 6
  13. 1982
  14. 7
  15. 8
  16. 9
  17. 10
  18. 11
  19. 12
  20. 13
  21. 14
  22. 15
  23. 16
  24. 17
  25. 18
  26. 19
  27. 20
  28. 21
  29. 22
  30. 23
  31. 24
  32. 1998
  33. 25
  34. 26
  35. 27
  36. 2004
  37. 28
  38. 29
  39. 30
  40. 31
  41. 32
  42. 33
  43. 2007
  44. 34
  45. 35
  46. 36
  47. Acknowledgements
  48. THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

I pushed her arm away from me then and started the stomp back towards Johns Farm. Grateful? Grateful? She wanted me to be grateful that she’d marooned me with my baby girl? She wanted me to be grateful for the fact that she had no one else to ask! I was the last chance saloon! I had never been good enough for her, she had rubbished me from day one with her ‘weak material’ and ‘bad blood’ and ‘nothing’, and now that I was red raw from the loss of my real mother she’d decided it was time I started playing the Duty Game? She was not getting me back!

I would love to have Daddy, have him to myself for a few days without her hovering like a vulture at his back, but she wasn’t getting a leash on her favourite dogsbody, No Siree Bob. The blood boiling in my ears and across my face made me feel better than I had for months:, where there’s blood there’s life.

–  Call me when you’re leaving and I’ll go up and make Daddy’s tea! I might even show him how to fry a SHAGGIN’ egg for himself!

–  Mary Rattigan! Honour thy mother and thy father! What is wrong with you? What? Sometimes I swear you’ve never moved beyond being sixteen! Mary, do you hear me, I swear you’ve never moved beyond being sixteen?

–  It’s Mary Johns, Mammy, don’t make me tell you again.

29

The months were rolling past, flying over the hills quicker than clouds on a breezy day. I waited for the wound of Bridie to heal. I missed her from minute to minute, her and Serena and Marius and Eugene, all lost to me in their various ways. I tried not to fuss over Shane and Daniel, especially when their father was watching. His black eyes bored into me when I left my fingers too long on their cheeks.

If I did speak to John he looked put out, like I was someone who wanted something from him, something he didn’t have. He was angry over his mother’s death and surely angry that he was left with me, just me, the rattling bag of bones and nerves Bridie had held together for the guts of thirty years. She had always had my back, interpreting what I meant, what I said, what I did and setting it out in terms that he could understand. She could make him see that I wasn’t all bad. Without Bridie between us, daytime relations between John Johns and me would deteriorate nicely. We might not even hit our low goal of civilities.