The Playground Read Online Free

right there beside them.
    She blustered in, all business.
    â€˜Still not dressed? Gosh, I’ve been up for hours; been to Mass, read the papers, had a swim in the Forty Foot.’
    â€˜Mum, that’s dangerous. It could stop your heart.’
    â€˜Nonsense. It’s wonderful,’ she said, rubbing the knuckles of one hand against the palm of the other, eyeing the postman who was still standing at the doorstep with a registered letter for me to sign.
    I could see her exhale as she lowered herself into the Irish Sea, stunned by its coldness but determined not to let it show. ‘This is heavenly,’ she’d say, when she was able to move her mouth again,making small, swift breaststrokes that somehow propelled her forward. And then, with a proficient flip, she’d be on her back, eying her bobbing toes, her bathing cap of white roses high on her head and everything still, aside from her hands gently weaving water.
    The postman said something I missed. Off he went and back up the stairs we went, Estée Lauder’s Knowing filtering through my nostrils. It was the scent Mum had settled on after years of experiments. ‘Well, it just seems to suit me,’ she said.
    â€˜So how are you settling in, pet?’ she asked, looking around her, silently evaluating for herself. The sitting room, which had appeared vast and bright in its emptiness on the day we moved in, now seemed small and grubby with our few ill-fitting possessions apologetically positioned about the place. The sofa which had settled so well in Sandycove, looked sunken and scruffy beneath the bay window.
    â€˜OK. I’m just tired,’ I said, sighing, feeling sorry for myself and feeling my bottom lip tremble – Mum’s presence was always unburdening. We moved into the kitchen. I rooted through a box labelled ‘miscellaneous’ for a second tea cup. ‘And I need to get this place clean.’ I felt like the addled woman in an advert before Mr Muscle appears to sort out everything. ‘Well, yes, you could really do with more storage,’ she said, meaning that the flat was a mess.
    Though we didn’t meet eyes – we knew each other too well for that sort of intimacy – I could see from them that she was also tired; they were pink-rimmed and small from insomnia, but now she forced them wide to talk to her little grandchild, bending to her level with questions and exclamations. ‘And where are your clothes, cheeky monkey? You can’t feed the swans with no clothes on.’
    Addie giggled, grabbed Alfie’s lead, ran out of the kitchen, both of us smiling at her perfect, peach-downy little bum. Then she was straight back in with a brilliant idea. ‘You be the doggie, Mummy, allright?’ This was another of her favourite games, me on all fours being a dog, while she ‘walked’ me on a lead. Alfie was never considered for this sort of task – she didn’t consider him a dog at all.
    When she’d tired of this game and everything seemed organised, we sat down at the kitchen table, my mother still making tiny adjustments to the position of things: her placemat, saucer, spoon. Although she was always moving, patting, prodding, organising and straightening, rooting and fixing, her presence made us calm and within minutes of her arrival, my little girl was content on her knee, the dog asleep at her feet.
    She looped her bag over the side of the chair and immediately un-looped it again, remembering the gift she had for me. She often brought back loose, brightly coloured garments from her travels that she genuinely expected me to wear. Her latest trip had been to Peru – a trek across the Andes to Machu Picchu with a nomadic assortment of widows, gay men and always the one unfathomable (no one was sure why she was there), all partaking in a frantic ticking off of antiquities and places and events that they felt were essential to a life fully lived. I