I didn’t sleep last night. Of course, of course. The last few years of awful treatment by the husband’s mother and sister finally made sense. Once it was certain that we couldn’t have children, I was no longer family. I was just above the dog, in the hierarchy of the husband’s family.

Discussing this issue over inheritance with me on the phone, V described it as “Irish parochialism at its worst.” “Trust me,” she said, “This will all come to boiling point when there’s a death.” Rural Irish society is so obsessed with property, it’s lethal at times. There have been too many occasions when I read yet another news story about a conflict over inheritance that culminates in bloodshed. A man is shot dead in his bed by his father and brother over land; they will commit suicide in a nearby field, and the mother, whose land it was, will die of cancer hastened by grief. Over a disputed farm, a brother hacks his two younger brothers to death among its sheds. Of course, V’s prediction didn’t mean this kind of outcome. But, god, spare me your land-lust, your want of small pitiful kingdoms.

//

On her way out of town, the husband’s sister dashes up to the office in the rain to proffer a thumbs-up as I stand at the window, on the phone. She has a wide, ridiculous grin, the kind you make when you’re nervous: shit-eating. When you’re mortified by the things you remember you had said while drunk. When you’re not sure how much the other person knows. When you’ve read the texts from the husband, defending me, the person he has loved for thirteen years and who had his back when he was at the lowest point in his life, when he could have jumped off a bridge, that was how deep his despair. Our love does not need a child to bind us.

I lift a thumb up, and hope she feels even crappier.

<<