I'm Still Standing Read online

  ‘You have got to be kidding. That is ILLEGAL. She can’t say that to you, she can’t tell you what your name is…’

  ‘Yeah, I know, but what am I supposed to do? Ring up my human-rights lawyer?’

  ‘You need to get out of there.’

  ‘I can’t just leave.’

  ‘Yes you can.’

  ‘Sure, I’ll think about it,’ I lie. There’s no way I really will. Things will settle down. Mum will soften, the town gossips will move on to somebody else soon enough, and work… well, I’ll get used to it.

  But Tara isn’t finished with me yet. ‘You need a change. A fresh start. You need to get away from everything and begin your life again.’

  ‘That would look great: first I quit my marriage and then I quit my job… my full-time, permanent, pensionable, professional job…’

  She puts down her glass and leans into the screen.

  ‘Evelyn, I know you’re scared. I know you’ve been hit a hard blow. But you’ve played it safe and sensible your entire life – local teacher, married the boy next door, bought a cottage in the village – and look where it’s got you.’

  ‘Oh thanks, Tara, I’m feeling loads better now.’

  ‘No, what I’m saying is, there are no guarantees. You tried it the good-girl way; now try it your own way, do something just for you.’

  She makes it all sound so easy. I have to admit, I love the idea of trying something new, somewhere new. But what? And where?

  ‘What about Mum?’

  ‘She’s fine. She has a big group of friends and her own life to lead now. This is your time to find yourself. You’re twenty-eight, not eighty-eight. Move up to Dublin and live with me. With these transatlantic flights, I’m away a lot of the time. My flat is small but we’ve got the space. Inez won’t mind – in fact she’d love to meet you. I’m always telling her about you. And when I’m around, we can top and tail just like old times.’

  I laugh at the idea. Dad built our bunk beds due to Tara’s relentless badgering. Once they were built, she never lasted a whole night in her own bunk without swinging her head down and asking me to climb up and cuddle in beside her. I shake my head. Two grown women – a teacher and an air hostess – back to squeezing into a single shared bed. It feels like I’ve worked so hard climbing ladders only to slide back down to the first square on the board.

  ‘You know what Dad would say.’ She gives me a soft, considered look.

  ‘Set your sights on the sky and reach for the stars,’ we both say in unison.

  She’s right. My father didn’t sweat the small stuff. He kept his eyes on the prize at all times. He wanted us to keep moving forward, keep pressing on towards our goals; if you fall on the way, he would say, ask for help, dust yourself off, try another route. I know he’d want me to start my journey again, not stand still too long. So much to see, so much to aim for.

  There’s a knock on Tara’s hotel room door. ‘Oops! Gotta go, heading out now. Think about what I said, okay? I love you. Let me help you. It’s what we do, right?’

  I nod and blow her a kiss goodbye, and then she’s gone.

  I sit at my mum’s kitchen table. No sound but the ticking clock and a braying donkey in the field out back. Dublin. It does sound tempting. Getting on a train and leaving all this behind is really, really tempting. Imagine turning this page over, turning the page on my mother’s obsession with village tittle-tattle, on Mrs O’Driscoll’s dictatorship, on driving past the empty cottage looking sad and deserted with its big For Sale sign outside. I’ve just replaced a stifling situation with James with a suffocating situation with Mum. I love her, but we’re not meant to be housemates at this stage in our lives. I need my own space; I need to rebuild my life. Returning to my pre-James life isn’t the answer. This really could be an opportunity. This could be the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.

  I bite the top of my thumbnail. Leaving is one thing, but what would I be going to? No money, no job, scabbing some floor space in my sister’s flat. Is that really an opportunity? At least here I have a home, I have security. It’s only Dublin, four hours’ drive away, but moving from house to house, bed to bed is the easy bit. Anyone can pack a bag and exchange one set of keys for another. But I’ve got to be honest with myself: it’s far more than that. And it’s going to involve a lot more than throwing some essentials together and buying a train ticket. It takes courage, real courage, to walk away from one life, to say goodbye to everything you know, to leave the comfort of the familiar and the well-loved and begin again from scratch.

  I walk over to the sink and gaze out into the sparkling sky. It is beautiful here. My mother can’t understand why anyone would want to live anywhere else. Here our night sky is as dark as you will find anywhere, and our view of the stars is unparalleled. We live on the most remote edge of Europe. From here I can see where the land meets the sea and the sea meets the sky and the sky meets the land all over again, a fluid palette of green to white to blue in the daytime and star-studded inky black at night. It is a precious place, a magical place, and the only place I’ve ever lived. The rolling waves of the Atlantic crash day and night against our shores; have done for thousands of years. An unbroken action, an uninterrupted sound linking everything past to our present. Yet every day, the coastline changes, every minute it is shaken up and rearranged by the elements. And right now I feel like my life has to be completely shaken up and rearranged to help me find the one I’m meant to lead.

  Set your sights on the sky and reach for the stars.

  As children, every time we faced something that seemed insurmountable – from long division to cross-country races – we’d run down the lane to Dad, crying and kicking and insisting that we couldn’t do it, we weren’t ready for it yet. Too much, too hard, too impossible. And he’d tell us that the outcome was of no concern to him; it would take care of itself and be joyous as long as we were willing to begin. That was all we had to do: set our sights, start well and he would be proud of us.

  Tara’s right. He’d want me to begin to make my life again. Begin with tears in my eyes, pain in my heart, empty pockets and a broken past, but begin. Everything needs a beginning. And once you begin, who knows what adventure awaits? Reach for the stars and you’ll land somewhere higher than you ever imagined.

  I open my laptop, my finger hovering over the Facebook icon. I promised myself I wouldn’t stalk James on social media. But right now, on the cusp of making another huge life change, I need to see how he’s doing. How he’s coping with everything being shaken up. I take a deep breath and quickly click it.

  His image flashes up on the screen. Just two minutes ago, he posted a photo. He’s sitting on a stool at a bamboo counter, the blazing orange horizon in the background. He’s already looking tanned, relaxed, happy, a mojito in hand. His eyes look brighter, like he’s been laughing. I study the photo more carefully and see new, unfamiliar chunky black markings on his forearm. The tattoo he’s wanted for years. Something he wanted that I talked him out of. I look to his naked wedding finger. There’s no tan line, no mark to say that this is out of the ordinary, that this is unusual.

  This is the new normal. Me sitting at the kitchen table on a Saturday night wondering what life is happening elsewhere. Someone is typing in the comment box under his photo. Living the dream, mate! Our break-up has given my ex-husband wings. Whereas I feel as though mine have been clipped.

  I hear my mother’s footsteps and Muffin’s panting as they approach the front door. ‘Evelyn? Are you still here?’

  Yes. Still here. Sitting alone in the kitchen of my childhood home in a ball of Primark fleece, afraid of what home truth my mother might deliver next.

  Muffin scampers in ahead of her and rushes over to my knees, jumping up on me, eyes bright, full of unconditional love and enthusiasm. I stroke her head and nuzzle into her neck. She wags her tail and tries to talk to me in her cute whimpering way. Why can’t everyone just be a bit more dog? Why can’t we love like this all the time? Be with each
other the way we are with non-humans?

  I look Muffin in the eyes. ‘Someday I’m going to be the person you think I am.’

  The person Tara thinks I am. The person I want to be.

  And then it strikes me who that person is. A flash, a glimpse, and right there and then I know what I’ve got to do. Before my mother has even shaken off her second wellie and set foot inside the kitchen, I’ve texted my sister.

  Ready or not, Dublin here I come.

  Because I’ve set my sights and it’s time for me to reach for those stars.

  Chapter Three

  I hoist my bags from the bus, dragging them through the busy city centre towards O’Connell Street, where hopefully I’ll be able to flag a cab. The empty footpaths start to narrow and crowd with hurried office workers, aimless tourists, distracted shoppers. I cross the Ha’Penny Bridge and pass clusters of market traders selling everything from fresh flowers to charm bracelets. The city is beautiful: tall red-brick buildings with stained-glass windows; old-fashioned shop signs alongside light and airy modern cafés and restaurants full of smiling baristas and smelling of fresh coffee. The River Liffey is as still as glass, sparkling in the midday sunshine.

  I turn the corner into the main shopping strip, the streets lined on either side with flyer distributors to further clog the pedestrian traffic. The crowd stalls to almost a standstill by the next bus stop. Yes, people of Dublin, please continue to walk as slowly as humanly possible as though it is you alone who exists in the world. And just when you think you are walking as slowly as possible, challenge yourself to go slower again, almost to the point of walking backwards into a little something I like to call my personal space. Or don’t. Whatever. The woman in front of me stabs her umbrella into my toe and the man behind me coughs a speck of phlegm onto my neck.

  Maybe this was a mistake.

  Maybe I’m just not cut out to be in a city. Too loud, too packed, too dirty. Research could actually prove that the amount of time I spend in crowded urban places negatively correlates with how much I care about the human race at this moment in time…

  I look up and down the street, trying to spot a friendly face so that I can confirm the directions I’ve been given, but nobody smiles or makes eye contact with me. The traffic is chaotic and there’s a definite city stench hanging in the air, but it’s only to be expected that I’d notice that. After all, I’ve lived my entire life on the most staggeringly beautiful and remote edge of the Atlantic coast. We don’t just breathe fresh air; it whips us in the face, it lifts us and carries us over rock and sand, the music of it whistling and whooshing around us constantly in the crashing waves and wild winds.

  But here in Dublin, I can only hear sirens. And horns. And the shouts of angry drivers undercut by the frustrated mumbling outrage of cyclists and commuters. So many people getting in your way, in your space, under your feet. I’ve hardly covered any ground at all but I feel like I’ve crossed a minefield.

  And there’s something else here. Something unsettling. I can’t help but notice the number of homeless people huddled under blankets by the bridge railings, their cupped hands held out in front of them. I place a few coins in each as I walk towards the cab rank. I know every capital city has its share of poverty and homelessness, but it shocks me to see it up close: so many people hurrying past so many other people sitting on flat cardboard and asking for loose change. It really does look like a tale of two cities within one. And it scares me – how did this happen to them? Drugs, drink, breakdown? All sorts of unexpected things can occur in life; I never expected to end up here like this, single and jobless, but it’s happened. I don’t know how I’d cope if it wasn’t for the support of my family, my mother and Tara looking out for me. I feel tears rising in my eyes. How lucky I am. How much I’ve got.

  I arrive at the taxi queue and see a woman about my own age wrapped in a dirty blanket on the kerb. There are no millionaires in Ballybeg, but never have I seen a person left in the gutter. But I’m not in Ballybeg now and I’m going to have to remember that this city doesn’t look out for the needy. I open my wallet and take out a couple of spare notes, pressing them into her palm. Her eyes remain closed.

  ‘Thanks, love.’ I nearly jump out of my skin as a disembodied voice coughs and splutters from somewhere behind me.

  I spin around on my heel. ‘Hello?’

  Movement. Shuffling. A soft-edged human-sized shape unbundles and emerges from the shadows of two chained-up wheelie bins, straightening up as he peels off his sleeping bag. ‘Didn’t mean to scare you.’

  ‘No, you didn’t scare me. I was just startled, that’s all. I didn’t see you back there.’

  His accent is from down the country, just like mine. I dip my hand into my purse again, but I haven’t anything more to give. ‘I’m so sorry, I need this twenty for my taxi fare. I don’t know what it’s going to cost, otherwise you could have it.’

  He waves a dismissive hand at me. He’s about my age too, thirty at the most. He’s bundled up in a matted woollen hat and scarf along with a few layers of stained fleece. Why on earth is he sleeping rough like this? What could have gone so wrong that he’s ended up here?

  I hold out my hand to introduce myself. ‘Evelyn.’

  ‘Martin,’ he answers, shaking it firmly. He shoots a look down to my suitcase. ‘So you’ve just arrived?’

  I nod. ‘From Ballybeg. And yourself?’

  He smiles at me but doesn’t attempt to answer my question. ‘Do you know where you are going?’

  ‘Yes, my sister will meet me.’

  ‘Good, that’s good. Easy to lose your way round here.’

  A laughing businessman in a sharp suit steps out of a revolving glass door, a mobile tucked into the crook of his neck and a folder of documents in his hand.

  Martin steps forward and begins to shout at him. ‘Pieces of paper wrapped in glass and stone.’ He points up to the windows of the office block and then holds up the dirty cardboard he obviously sleeps on. ‘But people wrapped in paper. Don’t you think there’s something a bit wrong about that, Mr O’Leary? Don’t you think there’s something wrong about kicking human beings out of their homes and into the street and replacing them with filing cabinets and photocopiers?’

  The businessman thrusts his phone in his pocket and scurries off.

  ‘Bloody bloodsucker developer!’ Martin shouts after him. But the businessman is on his phone again and doesn’t look back. ‘Hope you sleep well at night knowing you’ve thrown good people out into the street, taken away our beds, robbed us of our homes. You’re ripping out the heart of this city.’

  The man disappears into the crowd and Martin turns to me, shaking his head and biting down on his lip.

  ‘Who was that?’ I ask.

  ‘Vulture developer. Council cuts on social housing, so he swoops in to buy it all up, tenants evicted, just like that. He promised we’d be rehoused, promised the earth, but once the building was his, all the promises dried up.’ He nods towards the office block. ‘I used to live in there, number twelve. Now I live here.’ He looks down at the spot where he is standing.

  I had no idea that could happen. I didn’t realise that you could fall so hard and nobody would catch you. All of a sudden I feel very naive and very much out of my depth. Starting your life again is not for the weak; there’s enough unpredictability in the world without shaking everything up just because you want better. Surely my situation before was more than adequate, much more than poor Martin has right now.

  I’m next in the queue, and the taxi driver honks for my attention.

  ‘I’ve got to go now, Martin. Let me see if I’ve any change at all.’ I feel around but can’t find anything except Nurofen and eyeliner and…

  ‘Antiseptic spray?’ I offer, blushing at the absurdity.

  Martin holds up his hand. ‘Nah, its grand, thanks. I’m travelling light.’

  I go to take a step away, but as the cab driver loads my suitcase into the boot, I turn round again. Suddenly I w
ant to know more about this man’s story. I want to know how he got here and how he feels about it and whether I can contact anyone for him. A brother, a sister, a parent. I want to know if there’s anything I can do, but I doubt he’ll tell me. If he won’t reveal where he’s from, he’s unlikely to divulge anything else personal. But there’s more to find out, I just know it.

  ‘What’s it like when you sleep out at night?’

  He takes a moment to consider what he wants to say, and then his strikingly bright pale-blue eyes meet mine.

  ‘If you’re dry, night-time can be magical. Amazes me that all these people scramble around glued to their little screens, looking down, always looking for inspiration, for meaning. And they’re missing it. Night after night. All they’ve got to do is raise their faces to the sky and gaze up at the canopy of stars.’

  I wait for a moment, speechless.

  ‘Great stars on the west coast. Hope you get to see some here too.’ Jutting his chin in the air, he smiles. ‘Now go on, your carriage awaits.’

  I step into the car, and all the way to Tara’s I think about Martin and his situation. He had no choice about what life threw at him and he’s not in a position to change it. The choice to split up, James and I made of our own free will. The delicious pleasure it gave me to hand my notice in at St Mary’s was completely my decision. Moving up here and starting again isn’t something to be afraid of; it is something to be cherished, to be thankful for, to be excited about. Not having the chance to start again – now that is scary. And I decide that from now on, every chance that comes my way is going to be met with gratitude and fearlessness, because I’m one of the lucky ones. Lucky that I get any chances at all.