The Book of Love. Fionnuala Kearney

Sophie hugged Maisie and the child grimaced. ‘But you only have to look at her …’ She was doing exactly that, staring at Maisie who had Dom’s walnut brown eyes, his fair hair, rangy limbs and already, his calm nature. ‘Do you think you can forgive me?’ Sophie handed over Maisie, who was stretching her arms in Erin’s direction, cooing an ‘M’ sound that Erin hoped would grow into ‘Mama’.

      ‘Of course, I—’ She had been twenty minutes away from her planned exit when the apology had started. And now, it wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate her mother-in-law’s words, far from it, it meant a huge amount to her, but, it was Maisie’s first birthday and she and Dom had bought their own cake, had planned a silly blow-out-the-single-candle ceremony.

      ‘Gerard, he’s been telling me for ages I should just come out with it and talk to you and …’ Sophie scooped some crumbs from the table into her hand. ‘Have you had enough to eat, Erin? What about Maisie?’

      Erin watched her scan the table, laden with enough sandwiches to feed a mid-size family for a week. Some part of her was touched at the effort Sophie had gone to. ‘We’ve had plenty, thank you,’ she replied.

      ‘Why don’t you take some of these and some cake for Dom and you later? Saves you cooking?’ Without waiting for a reply, Sophie left the room, calling back that she’d just wrap them up for her. Erin kissed Maisie’s cheek and began to do it repeatedly as the child giggled, then she caught Sophie watching from the doorway, a roll of tin foil in her hands. ‘She’s a total delight you know,’ she said. ‘A total delight.’

      Erin grinned. She was. She placed Maisie on the floor next to her bag, kept one eye on her as she helped Sophie wrap the sandwiches. Whether she liked it or not, she was stuck here for a while with her new best friend and she and Dom were having soggy egg butties and Tinky-Winky’s lower body for supper.

      ‘Wow,’ Dom looked up from his position lying, stomach down, on the floor.

      ‘I know, right?’

      ‘Wow,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t ever remember Mum saying she was sorry.’

      ‘Well, she seemed to mean it, so …’ They both looked at Maisie next to them. In the last few weeks, she had been trying to walk and was managing to find her way around the room by clutching the edges of furniture. When she reached Dom, she smiled and sat down on him heavily. The sounds made Erin smile – first the high-pitched chuckle of Maisie followed by a breathless squeal and then Dom’s deeper laugh as he took hold of her and tickled her. ‘I’m going to GET you!’ he crawled on all fours as she scrambled away, giggling. It was contagious, and she was laughing to herself as she went to fetch the cake.

      Minutes later, she sang the length of the hallway. ‘Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you!’ She peered, wide-eyed, around the door. ‘Happy birthday, our Maisie!’ Bending down to where Maisie was sat on Dom’s stomach, she held the cake she’d bought in front of her daughter’s face. ‘Blow, darling, look Daddy will show you. Blow!’ Dom obliged by pursing his lips and blowing gently. When Maisie followed suit and tried without success, both of them helped. ‘Happy birthday to you!’ she sang the final line just as her daughter put her fist in the cake.

      ‘That’s right, darling, you tell her,’ Dom said as he sat up and looked sideways at Erin. ‘Mummy should never sing, should she?’

      Erin licked some chocolate icing from a finger. ‘What’s wrong with Mummy singing?’

      Maisie laughed and suddenly realising it was chocolate on her own hand, she began to lick it too.

      ‘Yum, yum,’ Dom pretended to chase her. ‘Daddy wants some!’

      More squeals from them left Erin holding the plate of cake. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my singing,’ she yelled above them both.

      When bedtime came, Erin listened from the hallway as Dom began to read Maisie’s favourite picture book one more time. While he sounded out the phonics for the words and accompanied each farmyard animal with a suitable noise, Erin folded linen into the airing cupboard. Smiling at his braying donkey, she entered the bedroom, lowered herself down beside them on the large beanbag. And amidst the farmyard sounds, Maisie’s eyes began to droop.

      ‘She’s tired,’ Erin whispered. ‘She didn’t have a nap today.’

      ‘Me neither,’ Dom said, his eyes closing.

      She grabbed his hand and let it lie on her stomach as she felt one of the babies move and wondered yet again how they’d stack three children into one room. ‘You ever get afraid?’ she asked Dom suddenly, replaying her conversation with Sophie in her head.

      ‘Afraid?’ He said the word as if it weren’t in his vocabulary.

      ‘Yes, scared, afraid.’ She remembered the same time last year being overcome with worry just before giving birth.

      ‘Not since I was a kid. Didn’t like the dark much. Ghoulies and ghosties.’

      ‘You’ve never felt frightened as an adult, not at all? Not even when the scan showed two babies?’

      ‘Nope,’ he confirmed, turning towards her, a sleeping Maisie crooked under his right arm. ‘Only when I hear you sing. That scares me.’ He shuddered.

      She snuggled against him.

      Ghoulies and ghosties and things that might possibly bump in the night had never bothered her. Three children. Five of them in a two-bedroom flat. One income. They all sort of scared her.

      2nd April 1998

      My darling Dom,

      Here’s the thing.

      My mother died when I was only eighteen. I can’t explain how devastated I was, more at having to watch her die slowly, than the fact that I lost her. When she passed, I felt relief and then huge shame that I felt relieved. And her death changed me.

      And since then I’ve never been able to take a single thing for granted.

      You and I are so alike in what we both want from life, but so different when it comes to believing we can get it. I’m a worry wart and wanted to say to you earlier, wanted to ask you (again) how we’re going to manage with three children on your income with so little space? I said nothing, I couldn’t, but I can’t shake it from my head, which is how I find myself in here.

      Dom, I love you because of your absolute certainty that nothing can touch us. You believe that love will make everything alright and your faith in that makes me believe it too.

      Erin xx

      P.S. And what’s wrong with my singing? It sounds perfectly fine in my head.

      3rd April 1998

      Erin, my love,

      What’s the problem?

      Old Mother Hubbard did it, didn’t she?!! Wait it wasn’t her – was it some ‘old woman who lived in a shoe’? Who cares? We’ll stack them, top and tail them. We’ll be fine.

      Is this the part where I have to write down why I love you?

      I love you because you want me to write to you when we live together, because when I’ve finished writing, you want me to put the book away in the hall table where ‘it will live’ apparently, and then I have to put your name on a post-it, place it on the mirror above, so you know I’ve written to you.

      One day, maybe all, or at least some of that, might make sense.

      And I love you because you know you’re a crap singer and you do it out loud anyway.

      Mightily yours,

      Dom xx