The First Time I Said Goodbye by Claire Allan

enough to deal with.”
    My mother looked down at her plate.
    “I still can’t believe you did that,” Uncle Hugh said to her. “My God, girl, it took some guts heading over the water on your own. Still, it all worked out in the end.”
    I looked at my mother again. Her head was still down, a slight blush on her cheeks. The conversation we’d had the day before played in my mind. The belief that I always had that she went to America because she was in love with my father had been rocked to its foundations. The version of events they had told me – or maybe they hadn’t told me, maybe it was something I conjured up in my own mind – was that they had become pen pals through a mutual friend and had eventually fallen in love. My mother had moved from Ireland to be with him and the rest was history. And yesterday she had told me she hadn’t even met him until “some years” after she reached the States.
    “Yes,” my mother said, interrupting my thoughts, “it all worked out in the end. Sure didn’t I have all those happy years with Bob? Didn’t we get our Annabel out of it?”
    “Oh I know,” Hugh said jovially, sipping from a glass of beer that Dolores had poured for him. By the redness in his cheeks I deduced it wasn’t his first or perhaps he was still slightly drunk from the night before. “And besides, I never could warm to Ray anyway. Coming from the Base all that time – sitting at your mother’s table and never so much as bringing a tin of Spam with him. Never could.”
    There was an audible intake of breath. I’m not sure if it was my mother, Dolores, Sam, myself or all of us. My mother put her knife and fork down; Dolores glared at Hugh. I tried to run through every Ray I ever knew in my life to see if the name meant anything. Sam looked at me – a look similar to the one I had given him when his mother had asked if I had any single friends. Hugh drank on oblivious.
    “And you like a mad one, heading off out of the country. Fair play to you, Stella. Fair play.”
    “Hugh!” Dolores stage-whispered and I heard a thump as, I could only assume, her foot collided with his shin.
    “For the love of God, woman!” he yelped as my mother lifted her plate, dinner still half eaten and walked to the kitchen.
    “You eejit!” Dolores staged-whispered again before turning to me. “He’s had a few, pet. Never you listen to him.”
    I nodded and then kind of shook my head, unsure of what my reaction should or could be at this stage.
    Dolores stood up and, leaving her own dinner half eaten, followed my mother to the kitchen.
    “I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” Hugh said, tucking in heartily to the meal in front of him. “It’s not like it’s any big deal. It’s not any big secret.”
    I looked at him, not sure how to tell him it was a big deal and it was a big secret. I wasn’t hungry any more, so I put my own knife and fork down and sat back in my chair.
    “I didn’t know any of this,” I said softly. “I didn’t know it at all.”
    “But there’s no harm,” Hugh said. “So your mammy was once in love with a marine? It was your dad she married. I just don’t understand why anyone is getting so het up over a bit of ancient history.”
    “Dad,” Sam said, gently, “maybe it’s best we just change the subject.”
    “Women!” Uncle Hugh muttered and went back to his dinner. Over the sound of him clattering his knife and fork I could hear hints of Dolores’ off-stage whisper to my mother. The house around me, with its whispers and my tipsy uncle and the whole pretending Sam was not gay thing suddenly got to me.
    “I think I’ll go for a short walk.” I stood up, pushing my chair back.
    Sam pushed his back too. “I’ll go with you,” he said.
    “There’s no need,” I replied but I quickly realised there was a kind of need as I didn’t know one street in Derry from the next and there was every chance I would get very lost and get myself into a whole panic.
    “There