Page 27 of Beautiful Losers

‘So is Grandad the man in New York or the man on the desert island?’

‘He’s neither, sweetheart. He’s an actor, so he’s lots of things.’

I scan the tables around me, hoping no one here can speak English.

‘I’d like to be lots of things,’ says Ari.

‘Me too,’ I say, dipping the teaspoon from my coffee into Ari’s ice cream.

‘Daddy said you need a boyfriend.’

‘When did he say that?’ I ask, my teaspoon suspended in mid-air.

‘On the computer. He said you need to say “yes” to life.’

‘Your father talks too much.’

‘Maybe Jack could be your boyfriend?’

I’m thrown by the mention of Jack’s name. ‘Why would I want Jack to be my boyfriend?’

Ari shrugs his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. He played monsters with me and it was fun.’

‘He did?’

‘Yes, in the garden with Myriam. He has beautiful hair.’

‘Good hair isn’t a reason to be with someone.’

He really does have a good head of hair, though.

‘I don’t want a boyfriend,’ I say firmly. ‘I’ve got everything I need right here. We’re good, aren’t we, baby? You and me. We don’t need anything else.’

‘Except ice cream,’ says Ari.

‘Except ice cream.’

I reach across the table and wipe chocolate sauce off Ari’s chin with my thumb.

‘Hey, Mummy?’

‘Yes, baby.’

‘Sometimes, I’m sad Daddy leaved us.’

‘Me too, love. Me too.’

15

I wake up to a message from Yiv. Rather, I wake up to a screenshot of my father sitting opposite Alice Hoolihan, host ofOn The Record, Ireland’s leading current affairs show. Dad’s arms are crossed in indignation, his nostrils flared to the size of donuts. Yiv has captioned the photo,Yer da tho, scream emoji, gritted teeth emoji, head exploding emoji.

A few years after the world went into financial meltdown and my father saddled the country with a billion euros of bad debt, he moved to the UK, where he could declare himself broke and be back in business a year later. (The bankruptcy period in Ireland at the time was twelve years.) One of his last blowouts – widely deemed a two-fingered salute to the Irish public – was his lavish wedding to Gillian O’Donoghue, a former Rose of Tralee winner and brand ambassador for a chain of beauty clinics in Dublin. I met her once. She gave me a twenty-five-euro voucher for laser hair removal. I read in the paperthat they got married in Italy, in the same castle Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes hired out for their nuptials, and that the cake had been flown in from Paris by private jet. Their first dance was ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’.

It never affected Dad, losing the money, because he didn’t lose it. Not all of it. He still has his hefty pension pot, protected by EU law. And since returning to Ireland, he’s been operating under the radar, quietly investing in various deals, rebuilding his fortune. Until recently. Over the past few months, he’s been back in the media attempting to restore his public image. He seems to think the best way to do this is to do what he’s always done – deny any wrongdoing. Claimhe’sthe real victim.

Dad used to say that the reason people had it in for him was down to jealously and resentment. The Irish disease, he called it. A result of eight hundred years of being ruled by the English. Now, I’ll admit, the English have a lot to answer for and I’m confident you could trace the majority of the world’s current problems back to colonialism, but what would be the point? It lets us off the hook when we place the blame squarely on the system, when we tell ourselves our actions are preordained, that ‘it’s not personal’. It’s always personal.

I remind myself of this, of Dad’s role in what happened, of the last time I saw him at the funeral – defiant, unwilling to accept the slightest hint of responsibility for what went down. I remind myself of how he strode down that aisle with Gillian, shoulders back, chest puffed out, and sat in the front row like nothing happened. I remind myself of all of it during the moments I’ve wavered over the past decade, wondering if I made the right call, cutting ties with the only familyI have. Moments like the day Ari was born. Cillian went out to get us burritos from Pablo Picante and it was just Ari and me on a ward with other new mothers and doting grandparents. Ari looked at me with Dad’s slightly upturned nose, and suddenly I wanted my father there so badly I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to show him this perfect thing I’d made and for him to tell me I did good. And it was only the smell of refried beans and jalapeno sauce that stopped me from texting him to let him know he had a grandson.

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