‘I checked, and there’d be a fair few changes, I think – the nearest station to Aled’s mum’s guest house is Colwyn Bay, which is way up on the north coast – it’d be a long journey, which we’d most likely spend standing up.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s three days before Christmas,’ Niamh said. ‘The trains out of London will all be packed.’
‘Oh god, of course.’ In all the drama of the past few days, Rosie had completely lost track of the date. ‘OK, we’ll take my car then. It’s fine. I mean, I’ve no idea where I’m going and pretty much the only place I’ve driven in the past five years is to my mum’s, but how hard can it be? This is what smartphones are for, right? We’ll Google Map it or something.’
‘Exactly,’ Niamh said. ‘We can do this. I’m ready when you are.’
‘But what about the kids? Work?’ Rosie asked, winding a soft woollen scarf around her neck and pulling on her gloves.
‘Brendan has the kids until further notice, and work isn’t an issue.’
‘In what waynot an issue?’ Rosie said, mildly concerned but also relieved. Niamh looked much more like herself again – calmer and happier than Rosie had seen her since the summer.
‘I’ll tell you in the car,’ Niamh said, swiping at the screen of her iPhone. ‘We’re going to have … ooh. A goodfour hoursto talk about it.’
When she got back to the flat, Rosie put down some extra food for Springsteen and threw some essentials into an overnight bag. Whatever happened with Aled, her chances of getting back here before tomorrow were virtually non-existent – so it made sense to be prepared.
It was drizzling and already getting dark, and for the first time it occurred to Rosie that this journey was going to involve navigating unfamiliar roads in weather conditions that could only be described as less than ideal. She pushed the thought aside, dropped a goodbye kiss on Springsteen’s head and made for the door.
Niamh had gone on ahead to grab her own pyjamas, toothbrush and change of clothes from Wanstead. Just as importantly, she had declared, she would pick up a selection of ‘road trip’ snacks before returning. When she arrived at Rosie’s front door, she was proudly clutching a plastic carrier bag full of food and a cardboard tray holding two takeaway cups.
‘Peppermint hot chocolate with whipped cream, sprinkles and crushed candy cane topping!’ Niamh announced, brandishing the tray with pride. ‘It’samazing, try it.’
Rosie took a tentative sip through the hole in the plastic lid and couldn’t help grimacing. ‘It tastes like type 2 diabetes,’ she said.
‘Delicious, in other words!’ Niamh trilled happily.
With some trepidation, Rosie peered into the top of the bag Niamh was carrying. Inside was a box of mini yule log cakes, a bag of iced ginger biscuits shaped like Christmas trees, a sizeable sack of red and green marshmallows and a pack of ‘Christmas pudding-flavoured popcorn’.
‘Is this some sort of experiment?’ Rosie asked, aghast. ‘Are you trying to prove you can rot a mouthful of healthy teeth in the time it takes to get from London to north Wales?’
‘You’ll be glad of the odd energy burst when you’re an hour or two into a monotonous motorway drive,’ Niamh said. ‘And I got us a Lindor Santa each.Bigones. They’re in my overnight bag.’
‘Touché – and well done,’ Rosie conceded.
Getting out of London seemed to take forever. As Rosie’s little car crawled through urban sprawl, they turned the heat up until they were toasty and listened to Christmas songs on the radio. Niamh tunelessly joined in with ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, holding a gigantic marshmallow in front of her mouth as if it were a microphone.
‘So come on,’ Rosie said when her performance was over. ‘Are you going to tell me, or what?’
‘I need to apologise for being a total bitch first,’ Niamh said. ‘I kind of haven’t done that yet.’
‘You admitted you’d been a dick,’ Rosie said. ‘Which you were. But I said some pretty harsh things to you in return. I’m sorry I was so brutal. I was angry, but I’ve also been really worried about you, too.’
‘I know. It was hard to hear, but you weren’t wrong about any of it. Since Rory and Eva were born I’ve been determined to do everything the way I’d always planned – to be a great mum, but also not to become one ofthosepeople: the people whose lives are turned completely upside down by offspring.’
‘Isn’t thatallpeople?’ Rosie asked, indicating to pull onto the M1.
‘You’re so wise, Rose,’ Niamh sighed. ‘It probably is. However, I had this idea that becoming a mum would be like learning a new skill. Like, it would add another string to my bow – as if it was the equivalent of becoming a qualified first aider or learning to play the piano or something. You know: here’s another thing I can do now!’ She did jazz hands, and Rosie laughed.
‘I knew having the twins would change things day-to-day,’ Niamh went on. ‘The house would always be messy, we’d have to go to restaurants that served chicken nuggets, we’d become obsessed with Julia Donaldson books. What I wasn’t prepared for were the changes it would cause in here.’ She pointed at her head. ‘Becoming a parent isn’t about learning a new skill. It’s more like learning to be a new person – or a new version of yourself. When I went back to work, I had to face the fact that I wasn’t the Niamh I used to be. Not only could I not stay at the office until eight o’clock on a busy day, I genuinely didn’twantto. I didn’t want to win accounts that would take me away overnight, or organise corporate events that would see me miss five bath-and-bedtimes in a row. And it isn’t that I don’t want to work, or that I want to stay at home all day, every day with the twins – it’s just that my old job isn’t right for the new me.’
‘Wow,’ Rosie said. ‘That’s a lot.’
‘Yep. And I don’t think I’d have got there if it wasn’t for your rant,’ Niamh admitted. ‘At the very least it would have taken longer. Brendan’s been trying to talk to me about all this since September, but I kept refusing to engage. He’s been super worried – it’s driven a bit of a wedge between us.’
‘But you’re OK now?’