Free All That I Leave Behind by Alison Walsh Page A

smoke spiralling into the air. ‘You all right, June?’ Mary-Pat’s eyes flicked open.
    Mary-Pat’s question came so suddenly, June started in fright. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ I was under the impression that you were the one who was in a bit of a state, she thought.
    ‘You look a bit … tired, that’s all.’
    ‘Oh, God, no.’ June shook her head. ‘I’m fine.’
    ‘How’s Gerry … and the girls?’
    ‘They’re fine.’
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘Yes, fine, Mary-Pat.’
    ‘Sure, what would you have to be complaining about anyway?’ Mary-Pat threw her cigarette on the ground and put it out with her foot, in its huge white trainer. ‘All the servants wiping your bottom for you and making you breakfast in bed.’
    ‘Very funny. Orianna and Luka are hardly servants. Orianna’s practically part of the family now anyway.’
    ‘Right. And I bet you have her sitting up to dinner with you every night. I can just see her, clinking the wine glass with Gerry.’ And Mary-Pat cackled at her own joke.
    ‘How’s the WeightWatchers?’ June knew she was being a bitch, but she couldn’t help herself.
    ‘Oh, pile of miserable crap as usual, but, sure, not all of us are blessed with your genes, June.’ The way Mary-Pat said it made June blush with shame. She didn’t know why she was being so mean. Mary-Pat always teased her about being comfortable, but neither of them really minded. June knew that her sister wasn’t bothered about nice things, not really. If she was, she’d hardly be living in Gnome Central, as the girls unkindly called it, that tiny little house, filled with knick-knacks and fishing gear and that dog. June shuddered every time she thought of him, that big horrible brown thing who drooled all over the place. She also knew that things had been tough for Mary-Pat and PJ in the last few years, but her sister had never complained. Once, she’d even broached the subject of giving them a little loan, but Mary-Pat had nearly bitten her head off and June hadn’t asked again.
    There was another long silence. ‘MP?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Do you ever look around and wonder if it’s been worth it?’ Lately, June had sometimes wondered just that, even though she’d rather die than admit it to anyone. She’d done everything in her power to avoid it, to stave it off, thinking too much about things. She’d poured herself into the job of homemaker, to use the American term, to make sure that Gerry and the kids never wanted for anything and if June felt guilty about farming out the job to her Filipina housekeeper, she told herself that that’s what it took to keep the show on the road. With Gerry hardly ever there, she needed all the help she could get.
    And she compensated for her guilt by driving the girls wherever they wanted to go, telling herself that it was because she loved her Land Rover, but really it was because she needed to feel useful. ‘It’s what I’m there for,’ she’d say when India or Georgia would say that they could just get the bus to their piano classes and hockey camps. And even though she saw the looks on their faces, a mixture of irritation and pity, she ignored them. I’m still useful, she thought to herself. I’m still needed. Because she couldn’t bear to think what it might be like if she wasn’t.
    ‘What do you mean?’ Mary-Pat was saying. ‘If what’s been worth it?’
    ‘Oh, you know, you think you’re going along and then … suddenly everything seems different. I mean, it’s the same, but you see it differently.’ June was trying to explain how she felt these days, but by the look on Mary-Pat’s face, she wasn’t making much sense. ‘What I mean is—’ June was about to continue when Melissa stuck her head around the door of the shop. ‘There you are. I might have known, Mum, that you’d be smoking your head off.’ She curled her lip. ‘Rosie’s waiting for you.’
    Mary-Pat grimaced. ‘Better get it over with then.’
    ‘Behave, MP, will