Grace in Winter

by Deirdre Purcell

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Love at first sight, on an ice floe, on a dream cruise. The sound of wedding bells soon after. Impossibly romantic, or so it seems...For mother-of-the-bride Grace, it is anything but. Years of caring for her beautiful and unpredictable daughter Leonie have left her wise and worn. As she watches what began as a hopeful break away for mum and daughter become a tale of newfound passion between Irish beauty and besotted American male, she braces herself for drama to follow. As Grace picks up the pieces of her life after unseen events leave her reeling, she soon faces her own tough decisions. But will Grace manage to let love in?

Release date: October 3, 2019

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 320

Sample

‘What the hell?’

At half past two on Thursday, 1 November 2018, Grace McGee stood on the threshold of her kitchen, the contents of her bags-for-life spilling on to the floor and over her feet. She was staring at what her twenty-two-year-old daughter had visited on the room.

The intervals between these episodes were growing shorter.

She was sick of them.

In front of her, cupboard doors and drawers hung open. Their contents – cutlery, crockery, glasses, condiments, sauces – showed under a patchy rug of cornflakes, porridge oats, pasta and rice. Given the context, the primary colours of their boxes and bags seemed inappropriately merry.

In addition, the toaster dangled into empty air at the end of its cord, while the handle of the electric kettle protruded from a sinkful of water, its plug, like that of the toaster, still attached to a socket. On the floor, much of the crockery and glassware was in bits.

Struggling to find her mobile, she upended her handbag over the mess at her feet, retrieved it, then attempted to call her middle daughter, Jacqueline. Her fingers were shaking, though, making contact with the wrong buttons.

She knew better than to call her eldest, Adeline, unless it was a matter of life and death. What had happened here, although troubling, was hardly an emergency, merely a classic Leonie episode.

That her youngest’s outbursts, while not insurmountable – so far – were increasing in frequency, was a worry. She herself was also, to use her daughters’ vernacular, more and more pissed off that she’d been left alone to manage not just Leonie’s episodes but Leonie. Very little help anywhere. To say she felt trapped was a serious understatement: she had forgotten what freedom might feel like.

With her daughter temporarily absent at a ‘lunch with Dad’ in town, Grace had been looking forward to a couple of hours’ peace with the crossword, a cup of coffee – and even a clandestine doughnut.

Off the agenda now. Peace? What was that?

She gave up on the call and crunched across the kitchen floor to rescue the toaster. But what to do about the kettle? Wasn’t it dangerous to touch an electrical appliance in water? Should she pull out its plug? Or was that dangerous too – hadn’t people been killed that way? A thought struck her: had that been the plan?

Of course not. Nobody wants to murder you – you’ve been watching too much television, Grace …

She contemplated calling Harry, her ex-husband, nested cosily for the past seven and a half years with his second wife, Charlotte, known as Cherry, and their seven-year-old daughter, Jasmine, in a nice red-brick Victorian in Ranelagh (a far more fashionable address than that enjoyed by his former marital home here in Baldoyle). Having had lunch with Leonie, he could maybe shine a light on their youngest daughter’s current mood.

But she gave up on the idea as quickly as it had occurred to her. This was just a clean-up job and she saved her Leonie-calls to Harry for situations she felt were beyond her. Her ex, though, while never overtly dismissive, usually made her feel that, in venting, she was interrupting something crucial to his life.

Skirting the worst of the mess, she fetched a dustpan and brush. Before she set to work, she picked up her phone again and managed to punch in the correct information.

The call went immediately to voicemail.

Fed up, holding the dustpan in one hand and the phone in the other, Leonie’s mother flopped onto a kitchen chair, squinting myopically at the little screen as though willing it to light up.

Leonie had never before perpetrated anything quite on this scale in their home. There had been no shortage of explosive behaviour but that was par for the course. In the nearest equivalent to today’s incident she’d taken a large number of empty glass bottles from the recycling box, spaced them carefully over the tiled floor in the cloakroom and closed the door so that whoever next opened it – Grace – would scatter them, shattering most. Luckily, the only damage had been to the glass.

In many ways, these days she and her daughter played a sort of silent cat-and-mouse game around these incidents. Exhausted by years of rows, Grace now confronted Leonie very rarely. She told herself that this was for her own sanity. Rather than fight, it was easier to deal with behavioural blowouts by turning the other cheek. To issue a challenge meant that for the days – or weeks – following, communication between them was non-existent. Confrontation normally released the dogs of war.

In any event, she had gradually come to recognise the other side of the story, that these explosions, intended to cause her grief, were simply outlets for Leonie’s constant frustration.

She knew what many others – including their GP – thought of her own passivity: the prevailing attitude was that bad behaviour shouldn’t be tolerated. Period.

She would respond with a rueful smile and leave the stage as quickly as possible, outwardly as Grace the Serene, inwardly spitting fire, rehearsing the retorts she should have employed.

In truth, her overwhelming desire for herself and her daughter was both the simplest and most difficult thing to achieve: a quiet life. She was now resigned to the fact that this might never happen, but her own frustration at being trapped in a prison of stress and watchfulness was hard to bear.

Meanwhile, one drama of recent months was potentially far more serious than a few bits of broken crockery: her daughter’s upcoming court appearance in February 2019 to face a first charge of shoplifting two lipsticks and a lash curler from a discount outlet and a second of resisting arrest. But Grace had mastered the art of compartmentalising. This was only November and, for now, that particular worry resided as far back in her brain as she could place it.

The phone in her hand tinkled – Jacqueline. ‘Hi, Mum, saw a missed call. Everything okay?’

‘Hi, Jack.’ Grace pitched her voice high and bright. ‘Yes, everything’s under control here but I need a bit of advice. Is Mick still at work?’

‘He is, yeah. Why?’

‘I was rushing earlier, filled the kettle while it was still plugged in – stupid I know! Anyway, I dropped the bloody thing into the sink, full of water, and now I’m kind of afraid to touch it. Would you mind ringing him to see if it’s safe to pull out the plug? Electricity and water and all that!’ Her ‘careless’ laugh failed horribly.

‘Sure.’ Jackie’s tone, resigned, patient, signified no surprise at this news. ‘Okay, Mum, why don’t you simply turn off the electricity at the mains? Then you can take the kettle out of the sink. You know how to do it? That little trip switch at the end of the row at the top of the fuse board in the utility room? Remember we showed you that time when you thought you’d smelt gas?’

‘Of course.’ Grace swallowed hard. ‘I should have thought of it. Sorry to make a fuss. Thanks, Jackie. How’s Tommy?’

‘Great.’ Her daughter’s voice lightened. ‘It’s nap time, thank God. I’ll be putting him down now. Today’s his seventeen-month birthday, can you believe it, Mum? I don’t know where the time goes. We’re going to have a cupcake later …’ she turned away from the phone ‘… when Daddy gets home, aren’t we, darling? Aren’t we going to have a cupcake? Yeah! Cupcake!

‘You should see his little face, Mum,’ she was back, ‘he’s actually doing clap-handies! Such a clever little dude – aren’t you?

‘So, anyway,’ she added briskly, ‘do remember not to stand on a stool or a chair to reach that fuse board, okay? Use the stepladder I bought you. And this is very important. Don’t use that kettle again until you’ve dried it out completely – put it in the hot press for a day or two.’

‘You’re a genius, Jackie,’ Grace said. ‘I’m clearly losing the plot. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.’

‘Stop it, Mum, you’re far from losing the plot. You’re brilliant, the way you cope. I’ve said it before, I don’t think I could do it.’

‘Well, thanks again, sweetheart. Talk soon. Cheerio for now.’ Grace pressed End Call.

Although she accepted that both of her older daughters had their own lives to live, she was increasingly irritated by what she saw as pointless paeans of praise about her management and tolerance of Leonie. They came not just from Jackie and Adeline, but from Harry too – and even from some of the neighbours. The admiration, almost universal and, she knew, very well meant, was nevertheless in danger of driving her over the edge.

Grace had never voiced it but privately had acknowledged that she would prefer a little less flattery and a little more ‘How can I help?’ Or ‘Here’s a thought, something I can help with, so why don’t I …?’

But she’d end up berating herself for being an ungrateful whinge. In general, people were disposed to be sympathetic and helpful, but were as flummoxed as she was.

She had learned to choose her battles with Leonie. A few of her friends, with well-balanced ‘normal’ offspring, had repeatedly advised that Leonie, whatever her problems, should be turfed out of the house and left, sink or swim, to fend for herself. In not ‘allowing’ her to grow up and take responsibility for herself, Grace had become part of Leonie’s problem.

She carried a supply of quiet, well-worn responses to these well-meant exhortations. Such as ‘It’s hard to describe what it’s like unless you’ve been through it’; or the more challenging ‘Have you had any experience of this yourself?’

For who among her friends and acquaintances had lived with someone like Leonie without at least one other person available – family member, partner, psychiatrist – to offer practical relief, a week’s respite, useful advice or, at the very least, to act as a witness to Leonie’s behaviour so that she, Grace, would be believed when she reported it? She had been abandoned to manage someone like her daughter when even some of the medics were throwing up their hands about a specific diagnosis. The MRI Grace had insisted on putting Leonie through had shown no brain damage or lesions (although the process had terrified the girl). Heavy anti-anxiety medication hadn’t helped, by turns either sedating her excessively or seeming to increase the verbal aggression.

There were two exceptions to this shortfall in empathic support: two women with whom she had made friends during a Carers’ Workshop. She had found the sessions of little use: the tutors had been excellent but had concentrated largely on depression, a serious condition but in no way comparable to the daily conflagration she confronted.

Jennifer and Harriet had each faced the ultimate tragedy when their offspring, unable to deal with the ‘real’ world, had died by suicide.

Each had striven to change her child’s future, had fought the system, had written to politicians, had been fobbed off with the we-haven’t-the-resources excuse, had borne a reluctant daughter to suicide-prevention charities. On advice, Jenny had practised ‘tough love’, now the deepest source of her grief because, despite universal reassurance that she’d been in no way to blame for the eighteen-year-old’s death, she believed she had failed as a mother.

Although society agreed that the two girls’ decisions had been theirs alone, both mothers were afflicted with guilt: they could have done more, they felt, or had misinterpreted the advice offered.

At the end of the workshop the three of them had formed a WhatsApp group, and for Grace, now, it was only to the other two that she felt free to speak of her sense of entrapment; neither ever tried to contradict her, judge her or to foist on her the psychiatric mantra of ‘no expressed emotion’.

All three had found this particular advice impossible to follow when dealing with their daughters. They accepted that anger and frustration had to find expression or cause worse damage.

And neither ever said: ‘At least your daughter is still alive.’

As yet, as far as Grace could tell, Leonie had manifested no sign of taking her life. Still, Grace lived in fear of it.

Throwing Leonie out would leave her at the mercy of the inadequate state apparatus or, more likely, sleeping rough, with all its dangers. Anyhow, whatever they thought privately, family, friends, even neighbours knew that Grace McGee would never render her daughter officially homeless.

The standout was Maxine Smith. Grace and Max had been best friends since they’d met at their County Mayo boarding school and, as best friends do, had followed the ups and downs of their lives ever since.

Outspoken in the ‘You know me, I call a spade a spade’ way, Maxine frequently expressed outrage at how her friend had been forced into too close a ‘minding’ relationship with her youngest daughter. She also believed that, soon after Harry had left her, Grace herself had made that choice: ‘Everyone has a choice to make, Grace, however difficult it is. In your case, evicting Leonie will be hard but that choice is available. You’re far too lenient and accommodating. Your personality is vanishing before my eyes. Leonie is consuming you!’

For the sake of their friendship, Maxine had eventually accepted that her pal, caught in an intractable situation, wouldn’t throw out her daughter. Ever. She didn’t like it, though, and kept trying to force Grace into action: ‘I don’t approve of the way you manage her, but it’s your choice. I love you to bits and I’ll try to live with it.’ Then, at the end of each such conversation, the ominous: ‘We’ll talk again.’

During the last call between them, Maxine had made another try: ‘Not even as a temporary device to wake her up to reality, Grace? Wouldn’t it give her a shock? Show her how lucky she is? Nice home, good food – you at her beck and call? For God’s sake, she’s in her twenties, not five!’

Grace had hung up. It hadn’t been the first time she had done so – Maxine was used to it and always called back after a few days, not mentioning it, cheerily imparting gossip from her local Galway neighbourhood. But this time she hadn’t. And the longer the mutual telephone silence dragged on, the more difficult breaking it became. Grace missed her pal, but she had decided she couldn’t stand any more of Maxine’s advice, even though, deep down, she knew there was more than a grain of sense in it. She was not (yet) prepared to go there.

As for Leonie’s father, Harry, where was he in all of this?

Nowhere, apart from springing for his monthly lunches with his daughter, spotting her a generous allowance and making sure that Grace, too, wasn’t short of money. When he called to discuss something, he nearly always ended the conversation with a cursory ‘And how’s Leonie, by the way?’ But, in Grace’s opinion, Harry didn’t actually want to be given the details of how Leonie was.

By contrast to her life, Harry’s, regularly exhibited on Cherry’s Facebook and Instagram postings – Jasmine in her First Communion outfit, himself grinning on golf courses, with Cherry in south Dublin restaurants – rankled: she wondered why she had been abandoned like this, not just by Harry but essentially by Jackie and Adeline, who were always, it seemed, too busy with their own lives to offer their mother a little respite by taking Leonie into their own homes from time to time.

Jackie feared, she had explained, that Leonie’s antics would scare little Tommy. As for Adeline, in the school holidays she was always either on a professional development course or bound for, perhaps already in, somewhere like Zimbabwe or Brazil, having volunteered with a charity as a tutor.

Frequently, Grace fantasised about moving to one of those places. Or maybe Hawaii?

She accepted her own part in their seeming abandonment of her: not ten minutes ago, she had instinctively lied to Jackie about the kettle fiasco. Why the hell couldn’t she just demand family help?

She groaned. She hated giving house room to such resentful thoughts but had found lately that each time their mean little heads poked out, it was more difficult to shove them back where they’d come from. She reminded herself of the lifetime pledge she’d made to all three newborn children, when cradling each for the first time in the crook of her arm. She would love them as fiercely as she had not been loved by her own mother, she told them: there would be no abandonment. Ever.

Leonie, of course, was the one most in need of the pledge’s fulfilment. Grace had regularly to remind herself that she was not the victim of this circumstance, Leonie was, and that acceptance of her daughter’s humanity was key.

‘Shit!’ she cried to the ceiling. Then, realising she still had her coat on, she jumped up and took it off. No more of this navel-gazing – it never resulted in any positive outcome. Her newspaper was unopened, her coffee unmade. She’d already wasted too much of today’s ‘free’ time: Leonie would be home soon and everything would tick back to Ground Zero.

Among the mess, she found the bottle of floor-cleaner, then turned on the radio to listen to Joe Duffy’s Liveline.

There was always someone, many someones, worse off than Grace McGee.

In the TV room, crossword almost completed, Grace stiffened, then consciously lowered her shoulders: she’d heard Leonie put her key into the lock. Bringing her newspaper, she went quickly into the kitchen, sat into a chair at the table and opened it at random, looking up as her daughter came in. ‘Hi, Leonie. How did it go?’

‘You always ask that after I meet Dad. How do you think it went?’

‘It must have gone well because it went on for so long. I was just wondering if there was any news, that’s all. I haven’t spoken to a soul today …’

‘Well, actually …’ to Grace’s surprise, her daughter crossed the room and sat in the chair opposite ‘… there is news, as it happens. They were both in great form. They had Jazzy with them – she’s a fantastic kid, Mum, bright as a button and very nearly top of her class at school.’

‘They were there too? Cherry and Jasmine?’

‘Does that still bother you? Yes, they were. Get over it!’

Before this could develop, Grace smiled, folding the newspaper to signify her full attention. ‘I am over it. It’s been a good few years now – so tell us, what’s the news?’

‘Big. Dad’s in line to be captain of his golf club – he thinks it’s in the bag.’

‘That’s great, and well deserved.’

‘Are you being sarcastic?’

‘Of course not. It’s a big honour in the golf world, I know that. A big responsibility too.’

‘I hope you mean that, Mother – but anyway that’s not all! The really big story is that Cherry is to get an award, a really major one, Mum. She’s been given “Lifetime Professional PR Person of the Year” and she’s getting it at a big gala event in the Shelbourne Hotel and, Mum, I’m invited! And Adeline, Jackie! We’re all going – Jackie’s even allowed to bring Mick. It’s black tie. I can’t wait!’

‘I’m delighted to see you so happy – when is it?’

‘In four days’ time and I’ve nothing to wear. Can we shop?’

‘Of course. Tomorrow if you like – listen, on another subject, while we’re talking, has something upset you lately? Something recent.’

Leonie’s mood changed instantly. ‘What? What do you mean?’

‘I honestly think you know what I mean, darling.’

‘Well, if you know, why are you asking me?’ Her daughter jumped to her feet. ‘This is typical. You ruin everything – I come in happy and you just have to destroy it, don’t you? We all know I shouldn’t be living here! I should be with my dad and Cherry – she’s fun, Mother. Remember fun? No wonder my dad left you – I pity you, I really do. It must be terrible to be a failed wife.’

‘I’m talking about the mess I found in the kitchen when I came home from the shops at lunchtime.’ Grace kept her tone steady.

‘What mess? The kitchen? The kitchen was fine when I left.’

‘Leonie.’ Grace felt her blood pressure rise. Remember: no expressed emotion! ‘You know what I’m talking about. You do these things when something’s bothering you. You can tell me. I’m not angry, just concerned – I do know how hard life can be, and now that Sharon—’

‘Jesus! You’re evil. You’re a head-wrecker – you love messing with my head, don’t you? It’s your hobby. You have to bring Sharon into it, don’t you? You want me to be miserable and lonely so you drive away everyone from me. You’re in Dad’s ear, I know you are, talking about me, telling lies. He told me you were – but you know what, Mother? You’re crazy in the head. I’m going up to my room. Don’t come near me. You stink, by the way, do you know that?’ She flew.

Grace, sighing, folded the newspaper, stood up and, in a saucepan, boiled some water to make instant coffee.

Within the past few years there had been several genuine crises surrounding Leonie, many with repercussions far more serious than the weekly or even daily spats and bad behaviour, such as what had happened in the kitchen that morning.

The impact of some episodes was still playing out – in particular, one from the previous Christmas, which had resulted not just in Leonie going missing but in the permanent loss of her friend, Sharon, who had been loyal to her since their earliest days at primary school. In recent years, she had been not just a true friend to Leonie but the only one.

The split had occurred because of Leonie’s obvious and disastrous play for Sharon’s boyfriend at a family dinner in a restaurant to celebrate Adeline’s birthday. All of the family, including Cherry, had been there and Leonie had asked if Sharon could come with her new boyfriend, originally from Arizona.

With Harry presiding at the top of the table between Leonie on his left and Cherry on his right, Jaden had been seated between Leonie and Sharon. For the first hour or so, Leonie had behaved herself, reacting delightedly to flattery about her off-the-shoulder dress and a new pixie haircut emphasising her eyes. Jaden had enthusiastically joined in, remarking that she was the reincarnation of Audrey Hepburn.

All seemed to be going well and Grace had felt she could relax. For quite a while, she had chatted with Sharon, who talked excitedly about her plans to change job.

Two years previously, she confided, Jaden had sold his fledgling IT company to one of the giants and since then had been living on the proceeds (now, he’d confessed, much depleted). He had put his time to good use, though, and was planning a new venture.

Sharon wanted to leave her own well-paid job to work with him, although they hadn’t yet sorted out the terms of her employment.

The conversation continued as the main courses were served. Each woman turned to the guest on her other side, and it was then that Grace, alarmed, saw her youngest daughter was in full-on flirt mode with Jaden.

Sharon had seen what was going on (it could hardly be missed) and even Harry and Cherry had noticed, he transfixed, she stony-faced. Intervention, Grace feared, was already too late: Leonie had worked her strange magic and was at that moment engaged in touching the guy’s hand, teasing him about his collar-length hair, even taking a forkful of food from his plate and, eyes fixed on his mouth, popping it me. . .