Page 39 of The Secret Life of Beatrice Alright

Cora looks at me with heartbreak-heavy eyes. She knows I’m not talking about the four walls, or the great location. I will missthe life I was supposed to have. The life I so desperately wanted to give my daughter.

Ellie appears at her bedroom door and her crazy bed hair makes Cora laugh immediately.

‘Someone had a good sleep,’ she says, hurrying over to scoop Ellie into her arms.

Ellie squeals with delight, surprised to see Cora. She drops her head onto her shoulder and they share a cuddle.

‘I brought you some brekkie,’ Cora says. ‘How does hot chocolate and a cookie sound?’

‘How does sugar and more sugar sound?’ I say.

Cora looks concerned for a moment before she realises I’m teasing. ‘Eh, you can’t talk. I thought you were going to turn into a pop tart when we were in college. It was literally all you ate for three years.’

‘The strawberry ones are still my favourite.’

‘Mine too.’

Cora places Ellie on a stool at the breakfast bar and passes her one of the cups and a cookie.

‘Be careful, it might be hot,’ I jump in.

Cora jams her hands on her hips. ‘Well, she needs something to heat her up. Is the heating broken in here too? It’s Baltic.’

‘I haven’t turned it on in a while,’ I say. ‘Declan usually takes care of the bills and since, well…’

I trail off, not quite sure what point I’m trying to make, but Cora continues to look at me as if she’s looking for an explanation as to why Ellie and I have practically been living in a freezer since Declan left.

‘I know he’ll pay the bill when it comes in. But it’s killing me that I need him to, you know?

‘But it’s December. It’s bloody freezing,’ she says.

‘I know!’ It’s my turn to jam my hands on my hips. ‘But I don’t want his damn money, okay. I can look after myself. I hatethat I ever let him pay for anything. I hate that I can’t afford this place on my own. That I have to move because without him I have bloody nothing. I hate that I let myself get into this position.’

Ellie looks up at me with a mouthful of cookie and round eyes that look as if they might start to cry at any moment.

‘Mammy?’

I pull her close to me and kiss the top of her head. ‘I’m sorry, chickpea. I didn’t mean to shout. I’m just tired.’

Her little body stiffens and she doesn’t seem convinced.

‘You finish your cookie, okay? Everything is okay.’

When I pull away from her Cora passes me the coffee and croissant that’s been waiting on the countertop. She smiles with a look that tells me she naively believes everything will be okay.

‘I love that coffee shop downstairs,’ she says, as casually as if we’ve just been talking about the weather or fashion and not my life completely falling apart.

She runs her finger along the café logo on the paper bag. ‘Such a nice little place. And it opens at six. How brilliant is that? Nowhere opens before work. I mean, shift workers are people too. Right? We need morning coffee too. Right? God, if I lived here, I would be in there every day.’ She takes a mouthful of her coffee. ‘Mmm. Heaven.’

I’ve only been in the café below the apartment block a handful of times, with Declan and Ellie. The coffee is expensive and the cookies are outright extortion. Ellie knows it’s somewhere we go when her daddy is home, but not somewhere we go on our own. I wonder if some day, when she’s all grown up, she’ll look back and realise why.

I sip on the coffee. Cora is right, it is incredibly good.

‘Everything will be all right, you know,’ Cora says, after a few minutes of everyone being lost in their own thoughts.

‘Yeah.’ I say, but I know I’m not convincing her and I’m certainly not fooling myself.

‘I’ve taken the day off.’

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