Between The Sheets (25 page)

I was right when I thought that life would never be the same again. Father kept me home from school for a full week after we returned from London. Then one morning as we sat at the table, eating breakfast, he announced that I was to start in a new school on Monday. It was thirty miles away and too far to commute so he said I was to become a boarder.

'I won't go,' I said immediately.

He didn't even look up. 'You'll do what you're told.'

'Conall, I don't think it's a good idea to send Dana away after ... everything.'

He shot her a cold look. 'What? After fornicating with a pimply youth, getting pregnant and then killing her own child?'

'Conall!'

'It's okay, Mum. Maybe it would be better if I went.'

'You've no choice,' he retorted. 'The convent won't have you back; you're a bad example to the other girls. Go and pack. I'll take you there on Sunday afternoon.'

My new school was a grey prison, and a narrow cell was to be my home for the next year.

'Then you can come back to me,' my mother said, hugging me tightly before they left.

All through that year, I kept to myself, I wrote long letters to Judy and my mother, and I studied hard. I needed to win a place at university in Dublin. I had to make sure that I would never have to depend on my father again. And maybe I could even liberate my mother.

In my daydreams, I saw myself arriving at the house in
Wexford in a flash car and whisking my mother off to live with me in my Dublin mansion. In my nightmares, I saw my father dragging my baby from my arms and walking away. I would scream and cry and beg him to bring it back, but he'd just keep walking. I would wake up with a jolt, my pillow soaked with tears.

When I wasn't studying, I was writing or walking. It struck me that I was behaving like my father. The realization made me nauseous. Once a week I'd phone my mother and we'd talk non-stop over each other, trying to make the most of our precious few minutes. Afterwards I'd lie on my bed and try to recapture the sound of her voice and hold it in my head and heart. I missed her so much, even more than I missed my brother. I lived for the Christmas holidays when I would see her again, but my father landed a bombshell. He'd arranged for me to stay on through the holiday and take extra maths lessons. Mother protested but I assured her it was what I wanted to do. It was all lies, of course. But she was alone in the house with my father now, and I didn't want her to do anything to antagonize him. Not now I wasn't there to watch over her.

I sailed through my exams in June and was confident that I'd won my place at university. I pre-empted my father's plans for my final break by securing a job helping out in my school's summer camp. My mother was disappointed that I wasn't coming home, but I knew that if I'd tried, he'd have found some way to stop me.

I only ever saw my mother once more. She took me up to Dublin before I started university, and we had three wonderful weeks together. She helped me find a reasonably clean bedsit that was only ten minutes' walk from Trinity College. She bought me a colourful duvet cover and curtains to liven up the drab room, and an electric fire to warm me in the winter nights ahead. We visited the cinema and shopped for clothes and even spent a day at the zoo. I had never seen my mother so gay and carefree. At least, not since Ed had left.

'Do you ever think of him?' I asked, the night before she went home.
We
were lying in our twin beds in the hotel room, turned towards each other.

'Every day,' she said.

I wish he'd come home.'

'He can't,' she said simply.

'Why don't you leave Dad, Mum?' I sat up. 'You could come to Dublin. We could set up house together.'

'I can't do that, love.'

'Why not, Mum? Why would you want to stay with him after everything he's done?'

'It's where I belong.'

'And what about me?' I said like an angry child. 'Where do I belong? Where does Ed belong?'

'You must make your own life, Dana. You must put everything behind you. This is your big chance, my darling. Take it with both hands.'

And I suppose, to a certain extent, that's what I'd done. I reinvented myself in Dublin. I was, on the face of it, a normal, happy arts student, and no one knew anything about me. And while I lived it up a little, I studied hard too. When I wasn't attending lectures or studying, I was scribbling — I couldn't believe how easily stories came to me. I filled notebooks with the words that tumbled from my mind.

I was flicking through a discarded magazine in the canteen one day when I realized that I could turn my talent into cash. Readers were invited to send in stories — both fiction and non-fiction — and if your piece was printed, you got fifty quid. I read two of the winning entries and knew I could do better. I went out and bought half a dozen more magazines and found they all made similar offers. This had the potential to be a nice little earner.

I got stuck in straight away, confident that I could do it. The money started to roll in almost immediately. Depending on my mood, I would write seriously about controversial subjects or, in contrast, churn out a romantic and slushy short story. I took a perverse pleasure in writing anything that I thought would upset my father. When I wrote non-fiction, I would take the opposing view to his. When I wrote fiction, it was the light, fluffy material he abhorred. The results were lapped up by the magazines and my bank balance grew. And while I was doing it merely to amuse myself, I felt proud of my prowess. I was able to look at a magazine, size up the type of reader it attracted, and produce a piece of bespoke fiction to match. I took an enormous amount of pleasure in watching some of my fellow students devour my stories, completely unaware that I was the author. I used a variety of pen names and told no one what I was up to.

And then one day, along with the cheque in the post, came a note from one of the editors telling me that I had 'some' talent and should think about writing a novel. I discounted the idea at first -1 didn't have time to produce such a large piece of work — but it planted the seed. My romantic stories were well received and were easy to write. Also, in this genre, novels were usually shorter than the average paperback. Over a weekend, I came up with a synopsis and two main characters and wrote the first pages of my debut novel.

At the end of eight months, I'd produced what I felt was a marketable seventy-thousand-word manuscript. I carefully chose six agents — two in Dublin and four in London — and sent it off to them. I heard nothing for weeks and grew quite disheartened. But then I got a letter from an agent in London that I had never even heard of. He wrote that my manuscript had been passed on to him by a colleague, and he was impressed by it. He didn't believe that it was suited to the UK market, but he thought a publisher in the US might be interested. The US! I almost fainted with happiness. Immediately I went to pick up the phone to call my mother. But no, it was premature. The agent could be useless; it might all come to nothing.

Determined not to get my hopes up, I threw myself back into my studies, and even went to some parties. And then the second, fatter envelope arrived. It was from the same agent but this time it included a letter and two contracts. He explained that I had received an offer from the US publisher and that the contract was enclosed. He asked me
to call him as soon as possible so that we could discuss the matter further. It was signed Walter Grimes, literary agent.

I couldn't believe my eyes as I read the contract. Happy? I was bloody ecstatic. Wait till I told my mother. I jumped up and down on my flimsy bed, squealing with delight. I was laughing so hard I didn't hear the phone ring in the hall below. Finally, my neighbour came up and banged loudly on the door. 'Phone!' he yelled.

'Coming.' I hurried down the stairs after him. 'Who is it?'

'Your old man.'

I froze on the spot and just stared at the dangling receiver that was banging against the wall. Slowly I went over and picked it up. 'Hello?'

'Dana?'

'Yes, Father, it's me.'

'Dana, you must come home.'

'What? But it's the middle of term. What is it? What's wrong?'

He didn't reply at first, and then when he spoke his voice was fainter. 'I'm sorry, Dana, but your mother has passed away.'