‘It is. But this is your morning, if Paolo’s repeated messages ordering me to stay away last night are anything to go by. Tell me everything!’
She grinned, holding out her hand to show me the ring, and I breathed a silent sigh of relief at how similar it was to the ‘Dream Ring!!!!!!’ she’d put on the SisterApp a few months before. Just in case it ever came in useful for us to know what kind of engagement ring she liked. Of course, we’d immediately forwarded it on to Paolo, with #takethehint.
‘Wow, not a Haribo or a Hula Hoop! He must really mean it this time.’ I held her hand in mine, nodding appreciatively. ‘I hope he managed a better speech than the last time, too. What was it? “Please don’t go to London, I want to marry you and have kids and stuff and if you go you might end up falling for some swanky southerner”?’
Bridget rolled her eyes, her grin downgrading to a quirky smile. ‘This time, he said I was the most amazing person he’d ever met, he’d known we were meant to be together since we were kids and he couldn’t imagine not spending the rest of his life with me.’
‘You don’t sound massively thrilled to have been proposed to by the love of your life. Haven’t you been waiting for this for, like, twenty years or something?’
‘Well, yeah.’ Bridget furrowed her brow. ‘I think that’s it. Getting engaged isn’t some out-of-the-blue dream come true. I always knew we’d get married. I just, well, I suppose having had a couple of decades to plan it I thought he’d come up with something a bit more… memorable.’
‘Right.’
Even though we Donovan sisters had a pact to never compare anything, whether it be dress size, bank accounts, or proposals, I could understand how she felt. Annie got the top of the Empire State Building, and Moses hijacked an outdoor cinema and played Sofia a film where he’d listed all the reasons he wanted to marry her. Orla and Sam were nineteen, dealing with a surprise pregnancy, and he still took the time to make her a treasure hunt.
Even my proposal had been more effort than a meal in the flat and some roses. Although a moonlit picnic didn’t count for much when, three weeks before the wedding, I discovered Jake with his hand up my old school nemesis Helen Richards’ shirt.
‘Sorry. I sound like a spoilt bitch Bridezilla and it’s only been one day.’ She smeared an enormous blob of jam all over the remaining corner of her pastry.
‘No, I get it. You don’t want him to take it any more for granted, just because it’s inevitable. You still wanted your moment.’
She shrugged. ‘I guess it’s about time I accepted that I’ve not chosen a romantic, grand-gesture type of man. But I love him to bits, and he loves me, and I can’t wait to finally marry him. What does Mum always say? It’s not the grand gestures that make a marriage, it’s all the little ones in between.’
‘Have you told her yet?’
‘No. We thought we’d wait, get it all over with in one go at lunch.’
‘Mum’s radar’ll spot your ring the second you step into church.’
Sunday mornings, the whole Donovan tribe went to the church that Sofia and her husband Moses ran in a deprived corner of Nottingham. Well. Most of us did. My dad had come down with a horrible flu eighteen months ago, which then became post-viral fatigue, which then became something way more serious than that. As the weeks became months, instead of getting better, the chronic exhaustion and debilitating pain branched out into muscle tremors and agonising insomnia, and what was once lightning Irish wit became foggy and hard-going. After weeks of being told to wait it out and give it time, followed by months of tests and referrals and deeply offensive suggestions about wanting early retirement (to a man who arrived in England with nothing, and at the age of fifty-five owned a thriving hardware shop, which he loved only second to God, his wife and his girls), he finally got the answer we’d been dreading.
Dad had ME, otherwise known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
Paolo took over running the shop, having worked there since he was fourteen.
Initially, Dad had made it clear that this was a temporary measure, repeating often to his regular clients, his family back in Ireland, the many, many friends he’d made since emigrating to Sherwood Forest, that it was only until he’d ‘got back on his feet’.
Over the past few months, those comments had been made less often. When Dad had days he could barely get up on his literal feet, the life he’d given his all to build for himself, and more importantly for his family, began to fade into the past.
Still, nobody mentioned retirement. Or disabled. Or selling up.
What does a self-made man do, when suddenly everything he worked so hard to make is taken from him?
My father, like so many men his age, grieved in private. But we saw the stoop in his once-straight shoulders, and how we missed the twinkle in his Irish eyes.
My mother, of that same generation who would fuss for weeks about a speck on the carpet but, when it came down to it, revealed themselves to have a backbone of solid steel, knuckled down and, in addition to carrying on as the shop bookkeeper and administrator, learnt how to fill the car with petrol, work the hedge strimmer, replace a tile on their farmhouse roof and all the other things you never learnt to do when you had a handyman husband. She took for better for worse, in sickness and in health as a given, and never complained once about all this greedy, grasping illness had stolen from them. She did, on the other hand, complain often – in person and in writing – to the NHS, the welfare system, and our local MP. Last June, she also raised several hundred pounds for ME research by converting the barn behind the farmhouse into a pop-up tea-room for the day. Having nagged and cajoled most of the village to stop by for what turned out to be a huge success, this year she was planning to go even bigger and better.
As for the Donovan sisters, we dealt with this as we did with everything else: we talked it out, we hugged and cried and argued and eventually apologised or told each other to buck up, or to give ourselves a break. We cooked and ate and fell apart and picked ourselves back up again. We loved each other with the fierce Donovan love. We loved our mamma, Gabriella Donovan, even as she drove us crazy, and we loved our dad, Bear Donovan, even as his sad smile and shuffling walk broke our hearts. And we told them that, often. In words and cups of tea and phone calls and lifts to hospital and cakes and snarky, family jokes that no one else could get away with.
Our family was crushed, yes. But we were not beaten.
But there was a space on the end of the row every Sunday, and I didn’t think we would ever get used to it. Or stop hoping that maybe next month, next year, Dad would take his place there again.
‘I’m skiving this morning. We’re having brunch with Paolo’s parents, then we’ll be over for lunch to break the news.’ Bridget, who could never be accused of resembling a Bridgetopotamus even after eating breakfast, brunch and lunch, stuffed in a bite of a second croissant.
‘I’d better go and sort myself out, then, try and look a little bit less like a washed-up old hag for the inevitable photos.’ I dragged myself back up off the chair.
Bridget stopped me as I went past, wrapping both arms around my waist. ‘I’m sorry that this means you’ll be last,’ she whispered into my shoulder. ‘I hope it won’t make it hard for you to be my matron of honour.’
