I had been living in Manchester for a couple of years. I was in my final year of an english literature degree. I had some modest success as a competitive gymnast and had represented my country abroad at notable tournaments. I wont bother you with the details as nobody cares about gymnastics. Everybody likes it, but nobody actively supports it. It’s not like football or golf. Nobody has a favourite gymnast. There’s no magazines devoted to it.
Still, I was on telly a bit and in the papers and praised by other great Scottish sporting luminaries. It all felt very patronising, but I was still pretty stoked to have my day in the sun. Gymnasts have short careers and I peaked at eighteen so I retired and focussed on my studies. I had barely scraped through first year due to my training schedule. I cried a lot that year, just due to sheer exhaustion. It was brutal, but it was what I chose. It was my life and I honestly loved it.
I just wished Ray had been there to share in my success. The end of the summer came much too quickly and we had to part. It was devastating for both of us. I had been a naive girl when I’d arrived in Cork that May, but by the time I’d left I was a woman in so many ways.
I thought I would die being away from him. It sounds awful to say it, but it was just as bad as my mum leaving. The pain was just as intense. I needed to make a clean break. I couldn’t keep him dangling. Neither of us had the means or the time to travel back and forward between Manchester and Cork. It just wasn’t possible. I knew it was the end.
That summer had been by far the happiest time of my life, but now it was over and I had to keep moving forward.
I walked around in a daze for weeks. I burst into tears all the time. I tried having serious talks with myself. I knew I couldn’t throw away my future for some lad. The best part was, Ray never asked me to. I know it hurt him terribly for me to leave too, but he never tried to make me stay. If he’d asked me to I’d have crumbled and said yes, but would quickly have grown to resent him. He wanted me to succeed and have a wonderful life, and I couldn’t do that in Cork. He knew that, and never tried to clip my wings. He made that sacrifice because he loved me.
I threw myself into training. I switched my brain off and let my body take over. I channelled my emotions into brutal workouts. I’ve always felt better after a good session of punishing myself.
I enjoyed my classes at university. I didn’t really have time to make any friends. Story of my life. Granny and grandad would call me but they never mentioned Ray. They heard my voice waiver if we got close to that territory and they tactfully moved away. I had no idea when I’d next be in Cork. I had loved spending time with them and Brendan and Saoirse over the summer but the thought of going back was just unimaginable. Manchester was home for the foreseeable future.
I earned some money from endorsements and appearances after my gymnastic victories and put down a deposit on a house. A beautiful red brick semi detached victorian home on the outskirts of Salford. I had my own home and I adored it. It would be challenging to keep up with the payments, but I was a bright and talented young person and I felt confident I could take care of myself. The bank seemed to have faith in me.
I had been keeping distant tabs on Ray all this time. Of course I had. I had never forgotten him, or really stopped loving him. I had just stopped seeing him. It was a good thing I left when I did because only a few months after he was signed to a decently sized club in England. His dream finally came true. I was ecstatic, in between bouts of crying. He was the best part of a hundred miles away now. A lot closer but still too far when my life was so chaotically busy. Even if we lived under the same roof I wouldn’t have time for him. So I contented myself with knowing he was finally succeeding and hugged my pillows at night and pretended they were him.
My time at university was coming to a close. In the past two years I hadn’t really had any other relationships. I had explored my bisexuality and enjoyed sexual relationships with other girls, dabbled in drugs, something strictly verboten when you’re a competitive athlete. I hadn’t been with another man though. I couldn’t bring myself to. God, what was wrong with me?
*
In the video for ‘We Found Love In a Hopeless Place’ Rihanna is sat in a bath with a boyfriend looking like they've been arguing and smoking a faaag. Maybe. That’s my recollection anyway. A woman with a northern accent intones about how passionate and addictive toxic relationships are.
Well, shove your council estate up your arse. My parents really did meet in a hopeless place, and it wasn’t ghetto fabulous. Back in the mid eighties there was a huge apocalyptic famine in Ethiopia. It was constantly on the news. There’s a famous photograph from the time by (I think) Kevin Carter of a painfully emaciated little girl being stalked by a vulture. The ghoulish image embodied the suffering, though the photographer was lambasted for taking a photograph rather than helping the girl who he couldn’t do anything for. Taking her picture and letting the world see the suffering the best thing he could do. Tormented by feelings of guilt, he committed suicide some months later.
Baba had recently qualified as a shiny new doctor and wanted to do something useful before he settled into the nine to world of hospital doctoring. With his parents enthusiastic blessing he took a position with the Red Cross and was sent to a refugee camp in Ethiopia.
My mother had been drifting through life since leaving school when she was sixteen. She had no great career ambitions but wanted to be useful. She was involved in her church and saw a poster selotaped up in the porch of the church hall looking for volunteers to go to Africa to do relief work. Mam hovered by the poster every time she went into the church hall, not sure what she thought of it. To her, the demonstration of her faith was doing good works. She hated those hypocrites who turned up at Mass on a Sunday then gossiped outside about so and so and whathisname for half an hour later before going home to shout at their kids and quietly despise their husbands.
Ailis felt called to go. She was frightened of going so far away to a different continent to a disaster zone with so much human misery, but she truly believed this was God’s plan for her. Life wasn’t supposed to be easy and her life was an absolute breeze compared to most. It behooved her to go there and help relieve some suffering.
She went to her priest one morning and told him her thoughts and he placed his hands over hers and told her she was exactly the kind of robust, determined creatures they were looking for. And that was that settled. Ailis was going to Ethiopia.