The Difference

by Justine Delaney Wilson

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

On a January morning, Beth and Steve bring three-day-old Ismae home from the hospital. A little girl to complete their suburban family. Except Beth knows that Ismae is different. And that, as she gets older and stronger, her difference will become more obvious. As the future Beth imagined grows even more out of reach, the walls of their vast house close in on her, isolating her from Steve. Then she makes a terrible discovery ... Will Ismae's difference break her family apart? Or will Beth be able to see that it's the one thing that can save her? 'Little Ismae is an unforgettable character ... readers will be glad they've met her' BELINDA McKEON 'A novel about one woman's quest for an authentic life. When extraordinary new baby Ismae turns Beth's world inside out, she begins to understand the fierce power of mother-love and,through her daughter, learns to know and trust herself. A moving, convincing story of courage and burgeoning hope' NUALA O'CONNOR, AUTHOR OF MISS EMILY

Release date: May 5, 2016

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 320

Sample

‘I’m going to give you an internal first so I need you to pull your knees up and drop them open.’

I tried to relax my clenched legs.

‘Will it hurt?’

The nurse’s hands were cold and rough.

‘Probably about as much as having sex for the first time.’

I tried to think of a grown-up reply but my eyes filled with tears, making me feel even younger than I was.

Through the gaps around the old sash window, I heard the prayers start up again outside. Another girl arriving. The nurse pushed my legs down and pulled up my jumper.

‘A bit cold, Beth.’ Matter-of-fact, as she squirted gel on my stomach.

‘That’s OK. I don’t mind.’ I didn’t want to be any trouble.

‘There she is. Nine weeks, three days.’ I could hear the scan being printed. ‘I’m just going to staple this to your file. It makes it easier for the doctor if he can see where everything is before he starts.’

*

I was in an old house with a heavy door that had been painted a deep blue. I recognised the blue from the ad at the back of my magazine. It was just one house in the middle of a street of similar houses in Ealing but I knew it was the place as soon as we turned the corner. I could see people with placards on the pavement outside. Enormous, fuzzy scans of foetuses – speech bubbles crudely drawn on them with black marker: ‘Why don’t you want me, Mummy?’

A small group gathered around the door of our taxi when we pulled up, thrusting pamphlets at me before I could get my feet onto the ground. The picture on the front had been digitally altered to show a dark blobby mass with the formed face and engaging eyes of a robust older baby – ‘I love you, Mummy’ was written across the bottom. My boyfriend James took it from my trembling hands and threw it behind him into the car before shutting the door on it. A man in a grey polo-neck said nothing but held his toddler up for me to look at.

Head down, I made my way up the path. James carried my bag, his left hand on my shoulder steering me in front of him through the parting crowd. I could feel their eyes on me, wicked with scorn.

I would’ve run but I knew I’d just be sent back again.

A middle-aged woman jumped in ahead of me and, facing the door, stood square in front of it to block my path. She was thick-set and crammed into a pair of mottled grey tracksuit pants and a tight black T-shirt that made a stack of tyres of her back. Behind me, people started to pray aloud.

Hail Mary, full of grace

The Lord is with Thee

We were two seventeen-year-olds who had come to London to damn our souls.

Blessed art Thou amongst women

‘Excuse me, please.’ James was hesitant, tapping the lady politely on her round shoulder as though she didn’t realise we wanted to get by.

And blessed is the fruit

There was the sound of a bolt sliding across and then the black, strong arms of a security man were reaching out, forcing her to move to one side. His hands found mine and pulled me in through the blue door, which I saw now was badly chipped and peeling.

*

In a sitting room that served as the reception area, ordinary girls like me sat and smiled nervously at each other, waiting to be called upstairs, trying not to change their minds. Even the two who were quietly sobbing lifted their curious heads and half-smiled each time the door was opened. Some were alone, some with women I took to be their mothers. James was the only boy.

The next batch of six girls was called. Mine was the third name out. I’d forgotten to give a false one like I’d been told.

*

Dressed in paper robes and discreetly holding maternity pads and pants, each of us sat on big grey leather single-seaters that tilted back like dentists’ chairs. A Filipino nurse bustled quietly at a table in the middle. The window was shut and there was nothing to see but the tops of the trees against the grey sky. Nobody spoke. The television was on but the sound had been turned down. At the end of the room was a glass-panelled door that led to a tiny porch area, and through there I could make out swing doors to somewhere that didn’t bear thinking about.

The girl two to my right, nearest the porch, was sent for first. I turned and watched her go through the first door, marvelling that her legs could take her there. After a few minutes, I heard older voices – introducing, chatting. Then movement and the voices fading. Silence.

The girl next to me was called soon after. She padded down to the porch in her stockinged feet. Almost immediately, I heard a knock. I saw her tight fist rapping on a swing door – soft and slow at first, then louder and more urgent. The door opened and there was another voice: questioning, warning. I could make out the girl’s noisy tears and apologies. She came back into the room rubbing her hand across her flushed face, took up her bag and clothes and whispered to the nurse. The four of us stared at her from our leather recliners. Then she was gone. My hero.

‘Beth O’Connor.’

I walked unsteadily to the panelled door and pushed through it.

Just don’t think about it.

I saw now that there was a small pew in the porch area. I felt scared and needed to stand up, to move about, but I sat down on it – my pants and pad in my hand – because I thought this was what I was supposed to do.

Tomorrow everything will be back the way it was.

The doors swung open. They were theatre doors, I saw now.

‘Beth, hello there. Come on in. How’re you feeling?’

A nurse with a Scottish accent smiled broadly as she patted the bed. I felt the draught move my hair as the doors shut behind me. I sat up on the bed and leaned over onto my side to avoid seeing anything. I was shaking and felt cold.

‘It’ll all be over soon,’ she said.

I nodded.

James isn’t ready to be a father.

She put her hand on mine and gave it a quick squeeze.

It’s for the best. I’m just too young.

‘Hello. Another girl from Ireland, I see.’ An older man came toward me carrying my file. He was dressed in scrubs, his mask down around his neck revealing a soft face that reminded me of my father’s.

I wondered if he had children and what he told them he did for a living.

‘You’re my second Irish girl already this morning.’

*

When I came around, I was back in the room with the recliners and the silent television. The three girls to my left were sleeping now, wrapped in blue fleece blankets, their faces relaxed. I saw that my chest and legs had been carefully swaddled too. The chair to my right was still empty. The girl who had been first to go through the doors was dressed and sitting up having tea and biscuits.

Seeing my eyes open, the Filipino nurse came toward me. She handed me the Christmas edition of an interiors magazine from the previous year.

‘Thank you.’ I laid it on my lap and tried to ignore the cramp gnawing at my insides and what it meant.

A young doctor came in and the dressed girl stood up and went to him. Their conversation was whispered as he gave her a pamphlet with Aftercare written on it in large, curly red letters. She extended her hand and he shook it briskly. When their hands parted, she turned to get her things so she didn’t see how he wiped his right palm on the front of his trousers before leaving the room.

The girl raised her arms high above her head to wriggle into her tight leather jacket, revealing the tanned, narrow waist that was hers to keep.

*

‘Hi, Beth.’

James stood up as he saw me coming down the stairs. He was in reception, his skinny frame obscured by the huge bunch of flowers in his arms.

‘I got these for you. But I don’t know what I was thinking. Are they OK? I mean, I don’t want you to think I’m celebrating, that we’re celebrating.’

‘They’re grand. Thanks.’

‘They probably won’t let you take them onto the plane though.’

‘No. Probably not, but thanks.’ My voice was groggy and broken.

I handed him my bag and took the flowers and smelled them. They had no scent.

‘Might look a bit mad arriving home from a trip to London with flowers,’ I heard myself say.

He smiled uncertainly and the braces on his teeth glistened in the light.

*

I had a quick read of my aftercare pamphlet in a cubicle in the airport toilets. I skipped straight to the part about the risk of clots and haemorrhaging and did my best to memorise the warning signs.

I dumped it and the flowers into the bin in the toilets and quickly bought a beefeater magnet and some English shortbread from the stand in Duty Free.

There was a girl I recognised from the clinic on the plane.

I wondered if she was bleeding as heavily as I was.

*

Another taxi, another front door. As we pulled into the driveway, I saw my mother’s silhouette come to block my path this time, patting her hair, waiting in the darkness of the front step.

‘There you are. Let me see you.’ She tilted my face toward the light from the hall. ‘You’ve enough make-up on; that’s good. I was worried you’d look a bit pale and your father would notice.’

She spoke quietly, her hands staying on my cheeks. I thought her eyes looked kind. She kissed my forehead.

‘It’s for the best. You are just too young. We all are,’ she whispered into my ear.

My eyes filled as she pulled away and half-turned backwards.

‘Dad! Beth’s home! From her day in London!’ she yelled, her voice shrill and taut.

She motioned James and me into the hall, commandeering my bag, taking the souvenir magnet and shortbread from my hands, moving life along.

‘Come and tell us all about it, darlings. Did you see Buckingham Palace? What did you get up to?’

*

My mother and I never spoke about it again. From time to time, little flashes of what I’d done disturbed my thoughts and I’d wonder if the piper would ever want paying.

Twenty-four years later, I’d almost managed to forget.

And then my daughter was born.

I live in my hometown again, which is a fact of almost constant disappointment to me.

It was my choice, one I think I was excited about when I made it almost four years ago and thought that what was familiar was desirable. It’s only minutes from my parents’ home so there are some of the conveniences I’d imagined, but mostly it’s a glaring indication of how far I haven’t got.

I look out our bedroom window here in Vesey Hill and see how quickly the view stops, the vista so narrow and slight even though this suburb is raised above the town. From here it’s impossible to have any sense of what might be going on in the city, or even a mile away. Nothing but big houses, like ours, keeping the world at bay with their chests pushed out and their shoulders broad with importance. In the distance, I can just make out the tops of the grand gates which mark the boundary of the estate.

From the outside, the houses of Vesey Hill are identical. I’d wager there isn’t a riot of difference between them inside either for that matter, but I can’t be sure. From our front door, the two opposite look back at us. Unresponsive. In each of them, three straight-edged cream-coloured blinds in the windows upstairs sit exactly midway up, giving them the appearance of half-closed eyelids.

My husband, Steve, is from New Zealand so moving there was always a possibility. When we first met, he often spoke of the future. I’d move nearer him, be attentive with every cell of my being, as though physically leaning toward the conversation would make me part of its potential. His dreams involved a sail boat, a house by the sea, and work he enjoyed, back there.

And me, if I would like that.

We built this dream life together in our heads, colouring in every tiny detail.

That was fourteen years ago.

He paved a section in the back garden to house a giant barbecue and a few easy chairs last month, to recreate ‘a little bit of the Kiwi lifestyle’. The damp Irish summer has prevented us from using the barbecue for anything other than standing our eleven-year-old son Al’s wellington boots on until the mud hardens and can be chipped off. Wearing a jacket out on his paving, my husband is hopeful about the possibility of a more rousing future for the three of us where he calls home.

I say that I’m easy, like the chairs.

If we did live in New Zealand, with its clean, wide streets, I’d get to be the exotic one. I could reinvent myself any way I pleased. In my fantasies, I’d have a rewarding life because I’d deserve it after sacrificing my homeland for my husband. And as the foreigner, I couldn’t be blamed if things didn’t work out.

Steve has been the foreign one for so long. His accent causes heads to tilt and smiles to be raised. Once on a flight from Dublin to Rome, he asked the older lady next to him if he could borrow a pen. She lifted her powdered face and smiled.

‘You’re not from here now, are you?’ and immediately reached to oblige this man with the dark colouring and the antipodean lilt. His accent thickened as he smiled back and answered her.

She rooted through a huge leather travel bag. ‘I’m quite certain I have one in here.’ No pocket went unzipped, no snappy glasses case unopened. She marvelled at his every utterance while persisting with the awkward digging. After an age of struggled burrowing, she sat upright, pushed her tinsel-silver hair back from her face, and gave out a triumphant, ‘I knew I had one.’ In her right hand, held aloft, was a safety pin.

Sometimes when I think about the possibility of moving there, I feel exhilarated. As though I might actually say a big ‘I do’ to life’s proposal. As though there are a million possible ways my life might go. Even two.

We’d moved to London after Al was born, full of love and enthusiasm. Just for a couple of years, we’d said. We had our beautiful plans for a sail boat and the sea and a life on the other side of the world. A seven-year lucky streak on Steve’s boom-time salary later, his job offered change again and an opportunity to move back to Dublin.

Not part of the sail-boat plans but a chance for me to move my life back to Ireland, to settle our son into school and among family. My mother was sure we needed to do this for Al. That my job as a copywriter – ‘What does that even mean, Beth? It doesn’t sound like any career I’ve ever heard of’ – precluded me from being a good mother and a supportive wife to my important husband. It just wasn’t possible to do it all long-term, she said, which is why she had never done it at all. That Al was losing out on being raised in a noisy city, without family around him, and his father travelling with his successful career and his mother out working too, she said. The poor child! I should mark her words.

We came back to Ireland and, not long after, it felt like there’d been a death. Not of a very close loved one but the loss of something vital all the same. Something that couldn’t be caught hold of. We’d everything we needed in this big house and we were near the things that I’d been told were necessary in order to cope, to live a grown-up life, to allow me be an attentive mother, so Steve could still travel and be important and satisfied, so Al could flourish.

But routine and housing estates and school gates and being a daughter again scoured our gloss away and the sail-boat dream faded like an old photograph left in a damp and forgotten place.

Time has skittered past by four years and everything feels insubstantial. Except for this house, which seems to be gaining on us. Locking us in.

My courage has shrivelled alongside my cul-de-sac existence. And now, most of the time, the other side of the world just seems a very long way away.

But I will say this: of all the countries I’ve travelled to in my life, I’ve never seen stars like those that shine over New Zealand. Actual star-shaped stars, powerful and spell-binding and eager to be wished on in an inky dark sky.

Not for the first time, I was sitting with my head shrink-w. . .