Mother Mother

by Annie Macmanus

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER, JUNE 2021

'A brilliant book...that explores the brutal legacy of addiction and the consequences of a deep grief left to stagnate' SARA COX

'A work of gilded melancholy that is going to take everyone by surprise' UNA MULLALLY

'Macmanus writes with flair and confidence rarely seen in a debut' SINÉAD GLEESON

One Saturday morning, TJ McConnell wakes up to find his mother, Mary, gone. He doesn't know where - or why - but he's the only one who can help find her.

Mary grew up longing for information about the mother she never knew. Her brother could barely remember her, and their father numbed his pain with drink.

Now aged thirty-seven, Mary has lived in the same house her whole life. She's never left Belfast. TJ, who's about to turn eighteen, is itching to see more of the world.

But when his mother disappears, TJ begins to realise what he's been taking for granted.

MOTHER MOTHER takes us down the challenging road of Mary's life while following TJ's increasingly desperate search for her, as he begins to discover what has led her to this point.

This is a story about family, grief, addiction and motherhood, and it asks an important question - if you spend your life giving everything to the ones you love, do you risk losing yourself along the way?

'A tender, surprising, occasionally bleak, moving and delicate book' Irish Times

'A study of grief, addiction and what it means to be a mother' Stylist

'Melancholy, beautifully unadorned prose' Mail on Sunday

'Unflinching and unsparing but also beautifully written' Daily Mail

'An incredible debut' Daily Mirror

'A page-turning exploration of grief, addiction, young motherhood and unbreakable family ties' British Vogue

Release date: May 27, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 400

Sample

Praise for Annie Macmanus

‘Prepare to fall in love with Mary, to want to reach right into the pages and hold her as a child and help her as an adult. MOTHER MOTHER is a brilliant book that takes you with it on a journey of struggle, friendship and forgiveness that explores the brutal legacy of addiction and the consequences of a deep grief left to stagnate’

SARA COX

 

‘Macmanus’ immersive novel reminds us that the minutiae of daily struggles are always worth honing in on. Her meditative, considered writing constantly pulls us towards the messy experience of life itself, where there is hope to be found in the grind of intergenerational trauma, and beauty amongst the brokenness. This is a work of gilded melancholy that is going to take everyone by surprise’

UNA MULLALLY

 

‘I adored it. I loved the characters and stories, and I became completely immersed in that world. It’s so beautifully written . . . Moving and brilliant’

EMILY EAVIS

 

‘A brave and occasionally heartbreaking portrait of a family falling apart and the woman who’s been holding them all together for far too long. Macmanus’ debut novel is assured, evocative and, like her characters, full of gentle strength’

JAN CARSON

 

‘Superb . . . [Macmanus is] brilliant at voice and motivation and the (historic and emotional) passage of time; at making households so vivid you know their smell. Can’t recommend enough’

LAURA SNAPES

 

‘‘I loved this book and felt powerfully connected to every character I met within its pages. Tender and deeply felt, it’s a beautiful portrayal of the pain and beauty of normal life, told in hauntingly lyrical prose. Poignant and beautifully observed, it was a novel that stayed with me a long time, reminding me again and again of the secrets hidden within the most seemingly normal lives, and the awe-inspiring power and resilience of women everywhere’

CLOVER STROUD

 

‘A heart-rending novel about addiction and faithfulness and the sacrifices demanded of women . . . I was crying as I turned the final page’

JULIE COHEN

Prologue

Mary, Present

She pulls up to the entrance and stops outside the gates. Leaning back as far as she can into her seat, she grips the wheel tightly, arms ruler-straight. Inside the small car, there is only her, and him, and the sound of her short breaths.

In the glare of her headlights, the ornate curls of wrought iron on the gates seem grotesque. She has never been to the cemetery so far into the night. Her head fills with memories: the slice of a shovel into soil, the growl of a mower starting up, the thick, stale air of the drying room . . .

She inhales deeply and slips out of the car, leaving the engine running, to unlock the gates with a large bunch of keys from her hoodie pocket. She rushes to the car, drives it inside, then stops again to close and lock the gates behind her before hurrying back to the car once more.

She drives slowly away from the formal flower beds at the main entrance and down the slight hill of the west road. The ground lights along the edges of the road are pathetic against the darkness, so she flicks her headlights on to full beam, and there are the rows and rows of stones, falling away into the black. She always felt calmed by the uniformity of this place. This spread of fields that holds the bones and ashes of tens of thousands of lives, all neatly arranged in their allotted spaces. She knows that every life ends with words. Every life – and the dreams that come with it. She thinks of the patterns of words now as she leans forwards into the wheel; how they are imprinted on her memory like street signs from childhood. How their repeated refrains echo all over this place, again and again: dearly beloved, sadly missed, in loving memory of.

She feels a tightness in her throat as the headlights fall on a copse of silver birches ahead. Their white bark gleams; they are ghosts, lying in wait. She quickly turns the knob to switch the lights off, and stares through the glass until the birch trunks appear as dark shapes in front of her again. She will carry on without light. She knows every corner and every turn, every stone and every word etched on to it.

Gone from our home but not from our hearts, good night and God bless, in our hearts you will always stay, loved and remembered every day, she danced into our hearts, to know her was to love her, together always, the Lord is my shepherd, gone but not forgotten, rest in peace. Peace, perfect peace.

She knows the pebbles, embedded with sparkles; the paper flags, the faded flowers in glass cases, the teddy bears and the fairy doors, the stone hearts and the angels, dead-eyed and staring right through you. You have to be careful on a windy day: the trinkets can blow away from the plots.

She sniffs and jolts her foot down on the accelerator so the car moves again. There is the glass surface of the lake on their right, reflecting the clouds as they jostle for front place. She pictures the moorhens curled up in their nests at the edges of the water, their heads twisted and tucked deep into their wings, their tiny feathered chests moving with their breaths. Is the heron that lived by the lake watching over them tonight? She always loved the heron, for her grace and her silence and her magisterial proportions as she took flight.

She slows the car to a stop where the road bends around to the right and allows the quiet to settle around her. A small handcrafted bumblebee air freshener sways slowly on its string from the rear-view mirror. She registers that her hands have stopped sweating now as she lifts him up from the passenger seat and draws him close to her chest. Her thoughts are fizzing and popping and she has to keep moving, she has to keep moving. She sniffs loudly to break the silence and, still clutching him, climbs out of the car.

They are at the very edge of the cemetery, where the paths are less worn. There are no designer pebbles here. The ground is uneven, and the rectangular grave plots tilt with it, like boats on gentle waves. She walks slowly and methodically, feeling out the ground with her feet, until they stop at a small marble stone. She stands over it, resting her chin on her chest, listening to the rustles and whispers of the branches of the ash tree a few metres away. She knows that the tree will be heavy with bunches of September seed – helicopters, they used to call them, for the way they spun through the air as they fell. She closes her eyes and hugs him close to her chest. She can feel her heart thumping frantically against him. After a few minutes, she steps up to the stone and sits down cross-legged directly in front of it, her knees wedged up against it. Carefully, she lays him on the grass beside her, and turns back to the stone.

It is a crude grey square with two roses etched on to the top right and left corners, flanking the calligraphy below. She traces the letters, allowing her fingers to move shakily through the grooves, and when she gets to the end of the final number, she wraps her arms around the top of the stone and pulls herself close. It is comforting in its cold, solid form. The air fills with misty rain and its light touch feels like a caress on her skin. The damp from the grass is seeping through her leggings to her legs and bottom. She allows her back to slump over into a hunch as she leans the full weight of her head against the stone. She starts to feel her breathing slow down into a regular rhythm. She is moored to this marble. Wet skin on wet stone. Soaking it all in.

Chapter 1

TJ, Present

He lies still for a few seconds, blinking himself awake. There is a crack in the ceiling plaster and his eyes follow it to the window where the shadow of Black Mountain darkens the blind. His toes are hanging out of his Manchester United duvet and he pulls them in, rubbing his feet together to warm them. As he turns on his side to face the wardrobe, he squeezes his eyes shut and opens them wide again, as if to reset himself. He isn’t used to waking up so abruptly at the weekend. Normally it is a long, slow sludge into the day, a repetitive pattern of dozing and yawning that ends with the inevitable phone scroll and hauling himself out of bed on account of her shouting at him from the bottom of the stairs. He strains his ears to listen for her. Normally her noise is filling up the house in some way. He pulls himself up to sitting, rubs his eyes and tilts back his head to shout.

Ma-aa.

There is no reply. There’s a scratchiness in the air, as if it’s charged with something. He glances down at his phone on the bedside table. It tells him that it is Saturday, 15 September and it is 11.30 a.m. He has a night off work tonight. This is all normal. It is not normal for her to be out on a Saturday morning. He briefly contemplates the lump of hash wrapped in tinfoil in a matchbox in his bedside drawer. Not on a weekend, he thinks. Not when she’s going to be around. He climbs out of bed and pulls on a pair of green tracksuit bottoms lying in a heap on the floor. His movements are reflected in the mirror stuck to the wardrobe door and he stands still for a moment to inspect himself. His chest is concave and hairless. He inhales and pulls his shoulders back, trying to breathe some broadness into himself. His ma says he is growing in fast forward. He hopes that soon he can start growing out as well as up. He pulls open his bedroom door and shouts again.

Ma-aa.

He walks across the tiny landing space into her room and up to her bedroom window, and peers out from behind the net curtain. Slate roofs and satellite dishes stretch into the distance. No sign of her car. He pulls his phone out of his tracksuit bottoms pocket and unlocks it with his finger. She is at the top of his list of favourites.

Ma.

He presses the phone button and then the speaker button and stands with the phone held by his mouth, looking out the window. He rubs his eyes, which still feels puffy from sleep, and scratches at the light fluff above his top lip. The street is busy enough for a Saturday, he thinks. A new family has moved in up the road and the dad is out washing his car with a hose and a bucket. Every so often, he flicks the hose towards the twin girls who are hovering nearby and they screech with glee and run away. He can see the clothes dangling off the washing line in the Kavanaghs’ back garden. Big granny knickers and the lot. Right below him, old Mrs McGuinness is gliding past. Her hand trembles on her walking stick. Her son was killed in a bomb on the Falls Road – he couldn’t have been much older than TJ is now.

Hello, this is Mary, leave a message, please.

It’s her formal voice, all clipped and flat. He opens his mouth to leave a message and then suddenly feels self-conscious and hangs up the phone. He takes the stairs two at a time. Four of his long lolloping strides and he’s in the kitchen. The silhouettes of his ma’s plants are casting their shadows over the black and white tiled floor. He stands in the middle of it now, looking for signs of her. The calendar hangs by the fridge, with her scrawled handwriting all over it.

Belfast Tech clearing day!! on Tuesday.

Aunt Bridget birthday, flanked by two shakily drawn stars, on Wednesday.

Today is left blank. He pictures her busying herself around the space, humming along to the radio, inspecting her plants in that intense way she does, holding the pot right up to her face and turning it around slowly in the light as if there are dark secrets hidden amongst the leaves. He opens the fridge. Maybe she’s gone to get groceries. He sees bacon and eggs, tomatoes and yoghurts. He takes out the milk and fetches a box of cereal from the cupboard above. He gets a spoon and a bowl and flicks the switch on the electric kettle. The teapot sits clean and untouched by the radio. Has she not even had breakfast? He lowers himself down to sit on the bench and allows his face to drop into his hands.

A queasy feeling creeps into his stomach. Could she be upset with him? Because of last night? The kettle clicks in a cloud of steam and he sits up suddenly. He’ll go and find her at the park.

Chapter 2

Mary, 1990

West Belfast had been softening under relentless sunshine for two solid weeks. The last days of August seemed to melt into each other, punctuated by the occasional sound of gunfire from the barracks and the tinny ring of the ice cream van. Mary lay on her stomach in the small patch of long grass at the back of the house. She was nine years old, with a small wash of freckles across her nose and hair the colour of fox fur. The garden was no bigger than a bus shelter and was bordered with stinging nettles, but she loved the feeling of being in the middle of it. Like she was part of somewhere else. She was crafting a daisy chain, using her nails to gently push holes through the stems and threading the flowers into a delicate line. She could hear Bryan Adams’ cracked voice drifting through the late afternoon haze from a window in the distance.

There was the hammer of footsteps as a group of boys ran up the alleyway towards the main street. She flinched and ducked instinctively. The alleyway ran along the back of her street and in the holidays it was a busy by-way to the green. Now there came three soldiers, talking loudly, breathing heavily, taking off their helmets to shake away the sweat. The source of the boys’ haste. She kept her head down, fixed the two end daisies on the line into each other and carefully pulled the circle over her head. With the soldiers out of sight, she pulled herself up and walked inside.

They were the second-last house on the street. The kitchen was tucked into the back corner; it was brown and beige chequered linoleum floor tiles, and walls grubby with the residue of years of grease and smoke. The bedrooms were upstairs and Sean’s room was the biggest. It looked out over the front of the house. They used to share, but now Mary slept in the box room above the kitchen. It was normal for her to go a whole day without seeing Sean in the school holidays. She knew he was out there somewhere, in a pair of cut tracksuit bottoms and his T-shirt hanging off him, begging a soldier for a hold of his gun, shouting from a wall or a tree, presiding over a football match or a fight. He was always in the middle of a huddle of heads. He stayed out, eating at friends’ houses, or not eating at all, coming home covered in dirt and sometimes blood to stuff pieces of bread and butter into his mouth before running out again. There were no half measures with Sean.

Her father’s room was at the back of the house, looking out over the alley. They didn’t go into his room. He was there now, sleeping off the night shift. He worked in the sorting office of the Belfast postal service. Mary understood the grave responsibility her father carried with his job. To be in charge of all those letters and packages going to the right places. One slip of his hand and a life could be changed forever. He’d be up and out to the Glen pub soon. Over the course of the summer, she had noticed that her father’s drunkenness had overtaken his sobriety once and for all. She wasn’t sure if he was drinking more, or if maybe the drink had just become part of him now, seeping through his veins into his brain, turning everything inside him the colour of cloudy stout. She knew when he had gone too far from the second he walked into the house, from the heaviness of a door slam or his footsteps stumbling on the stairs. She knew to move around him and behind him, to take shelter from him as if from a biting wind.

She walked up the hall and pulled the front door open and sat on the front step, wrapping her arms around her shins and resting her chin on her knees while she waited. Mrs Kavanagh was always first. Her front door opened and her head popped out, looking from side to side. She hesitated a few seconds and then she shuffled to the gate in her slippers and leaned against the post. Then she lifted her face and bellowed her children’s names into the air.

Connor!

Cian!

Niamh!

Bronagh!

Dinner time!

NOW!

Mary watched her as she took a box of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one and drew on it deeply, closing her eyes in the pleasure of it. She watched Mrs Kavanagh’s face soften as she saw her kids run towards her, one by one. She was fascinated by these daily declarations, these names in the air, bouncing around the estate night after night. Fascinated by the mothers themselves. She thought of the photo of her mother by Sean’s bed. Her back was turned, and her head looked over her shoulder at the camera: eyebrows raised, mouth set in a slight smile, like she had been caught in the act of thinking about something that pleased her. Mary practised that expression often in front of the bathroom mirror.

Three doors down, another mother was yelling at her children now, too. And another from the street next to theirs. Here was Connor running towards his mother, talking to himself.

Jesus Christ, Connor, look at the dirt of ye.

Then Cian.

Where are your shoes?

In Jonty’s garden, Mammy.

Mrs Kavanagh flicked her fingers towards the end of the road, still squeezing the cigarette.

Well, go back and get them, right now!

Mary had observed the children of the estate becoming louder as the summer holidays drew to a close. She saw them out the window, running screeching and shoeless, skipping behind the soldiers until they lost their sense of humour and ordered them away home.

Then the tiny twins, Niamh and Bronagh.

She watched Mrs Kavanagh herd her children up the path before stubbing her cigarette out on the wall and standing on it with her slipper. Before turning to go back into her house, Mrs Kavanagh saw Mary and lifted a hand in the air in greeting. Mary smiled and waved.

Y’all right, Mary McConnell?

Aye, Mrs Kavanagh.

She stood up, shy then, and went to the kitchen to put her sandals on, wondering how it would feel to have someone shout her name into the air with such conviction. The home phone clanged through from the hall and made her jump. She ran to pick it up.

Hello?

Mary, it’s Bridget. I need to speak to your father.

Right. He’s in bed . . .

You’ll have to wake him up so.

Hokay.

Daddy!

She called up the stairs.

Aunt Bridget’s on the phone!

She clutched the phone, unsure whether to make conversation with Bridget while they waited. A phonecall from her was rare these days. Bridget was their father’s sister, and she had looked after them from when Mary was two until she was five years old. She took up a lot of space in all Mary’s early childhood memories. She was a big woman, with a small, beak-like mouth that rarely smiled. It was always very clear to them that Bridget was not a replacement mother, mainly due to her relentless insistence on this point.

I’m not your mother, you will not get away with that behaviour with me!

Bridget liked order. She cooked and cleaned and taught them how to do the same. She used to come to the house, about once a fortnight, to show Mary how to cook the meals her father and brother would want to eat.

Here was her father now, making his slow descent down the stairs. He could look like a desert islander after a sleep; the whites of his eyes a surprise in the mess of hair on his head and face. He would have been taller, but his neck folded into his shoulders, giving him a vulture-like stoop. He stood on the bottom step and stretched his arms up. She watched in silence as his mouth gaped open, suspended in a long yawn, and his T-shirt rode up to expose a rounded and rock-hard beer belly. When he flopped his arms back down, he took the phone from Mary.

Bridget.

She watched his brow furrow as Bridget talked, and she watched him pull the phone cable under the living room door and push it closed behind him. She pressed her cheek up to the wood of the door and strained to hear.

He was stood on top of the car? Was it still burning?

Where was it?

Jesus. He shouldn’t be that far away.

There was a long pause. Then.

Right, Bridget. Well, thanks for letting me know.

Yes. Yes, I will, of course.

Mary raced back to the kitchen, then opened a tin of beans from the cupboard and tipped them into a saucepan. There was no movement from the living room. She pulled on a cardigan and closed the front door behind her, then set off down the road. She didn’t dare look back into the living room window for fear of catching a glimpse of his expression. Across the road, she spied the Barry brothers marching towards their house. She shouted across at them.

Is Sean on the green?

They nodded in unison at her. The green was a small patch of grass and trees, stretching about half an acre at the top of their road. You could jump over the wall from the main road and walk straight through it to get to their street. It was empty of bodies this evening, apart from two older boys leaning against a wall on the other side, sharing something to smoke. She made her way towards the line of trees at the far end.

Sean?

She stood at the bottom of the tallest tree, staring up into the leaves, searching for the shape of him until she saw movement in the branches and bare legs clambering down. He landed deftly on the bare earth, flicked his hair out of his eyes and returned her smile with a half-smile. He was eleven years old now and stretching out of his clothes. He would be going to secondary school in two weeks, leaving her behind to finish her last two years at St John’s Primary. They walked home side by side. The kerbs were painted in coloured sections, green, white and orange. Up ahead, some men sat in a row along the kerb, clutching cans of beer. Their naked backs were lobster-pink and shining with sweat. Mary spoke fi. . .