Me and Sorcha are wandering around Dundrum with our daughter's Santa list, which looks like the kind of document that negotiators get handed in hostage situations. The third item down, I notice, is, "Five grand in cash", which makes me laugh out loud, because it reminds me so much of myself at her age, which is eight.
“She’s not getting everything on this list,” Sorcha goes. This is when we’re on the escalator in House of Fraser, where we’re trying to find a something-something something-or-other. “There must be €40,000 worth of things on this list.”
I’m there, “Another way of looking at it is that if we get her everything she wants, then she might not be so horrible to us on Christmas Day. Is it a price worth paying? I think that’s the point I’m trying to make.”
Sorcha is still considering this question when my old dear suddenly passes us on the escalator, going down as we’re going up. Usually, I’d have time to come up with a decent opening line – something seriously hurtful – but like I said, she’s in my face, then she’s suddenly past me, and the best I can come up with at such short notice is, “The focking state of you, you bet-down pigbeast.”
And that’s what I notice – and Sorcha notices, too – that my old dear is not alone. She’s got three little boys with her. One of them is – okay, this is going to sound possibly racist, but I don’t know how else to say it – black. One is sort of, like, Chinesey slash Japanesey looking and the other is possibly Eastern European.
The old dear shouts, “Sorcha, when you reach the top of the escalator, stay there. I’ll come straight up to you.”
“Oh my God,” Sorcha goes, while we’re waiting for her to appear, “who are all those children, Ross?”
All I can do is shake my head. I’m there, “She was talking about possibly adopting? She’s got her eye on one of those People of the Year awards and she’s trying to create the impression that she actually cares about the world. But they wouldn’t give her three kids at her age, would they?”
Then a new thought suddenly occurs to me. If you have money, and you go to the right country, you can get anything – her plastic surgery history is evidence of that.
Thirty seconds later, she appears at the top of the escalator, looking like Brad and Angelina’s nanny, the kids following three or four steps behind her. She goes, “Hello, you two!” and she air-kisses both of us, although it would be closer to the truth to say that she breathes Bombay Sapphire into our faces while going, “Mwoi! Mwoi!”
I’m there, “If I lit a match right now, you’d burn like an Iraqi oil well. Seriously. It’d take a year to put you out.”
Sorcha smiles at the kids. She goes, “Hello!” because she’s good with young people.
I’m there, “Okay, where did you get these?”
“These,” the old dear goes, “happen to have names,” and then she introduces us to them. The – again, apologies – black one is called Justice, the Chinesey one turns out to be not a boy at all but a girl named Wu and the Eastern Europeany one is called Gheorghe.
They seem like great kids.
“My question still stands,” I go. “Where did you get them? Because they wouldn’t let you adopt, what with you being ancient and a basic soak.”
She’s there, “Where did I get them? Ross, these are my godchildren!”
Sorcha, who’s always been a bit of a suck-orse around my old dear, goes, “Awww, isn’t that – oh my God – so cute, Ross?”
I’m there, “I didn’t know you even had godchildren. As in, you’ve never mentioned them before?”
She’s like, “Well, of course I’ve mentioned them! Justice is Saskia’s son – Saskia from the campaign to stop the Luas coming to Foxrock. Wu belongs to Susan, who’s in my sculpture class. And Gheorghe is the son of Alexandru – do you remember the little Romanian boy that Delma’s daughter adopted all those years ago? Can you believe Delma’s a great-grandmother now?”
If you stare at my old dear for long enough, you can actually see the evil coming off her, like heat waves rising from the road on a roasting hot day.
Sorcha smiles at Wu and goes, “So are you having a nice day with your godmother?”
“Yes, thank you,” Wu goes, then she holds up three or four shopping bags. All of the kids, I notice, have three or four shopping bags.
The old dear goes, "We've just had a lovely lunch in Eddie Rockets, " and she says Eddie Rockets like she's only just heard of the place.
“You never brought me to Ed’s,” I suddenly hear myself go. My voice sounds a bit – I don’t know – wobbly, like I might be about to burst into tears. “Not once when I was a kid did you ever bring me to Ed’s.”
She exposes her upper veneers to me – her attempt at a smile.
She goes, “I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I lacked the maternal urge. I’ve apologised for that, Ross, many times. It simply wasn’t in my make-up. But recently – oh, it must be some kind of mid-life thing – I’ve started connecting with children in a way I never did before.”
Sorcha smiles and goes, “Oh my God, that’s amazing, isn’t it, Ross?”
I don’t even answer, except to go, “All she wants is one of those statuettes, the focking gin-crazed ice weasel.”
The old dear goes, “Anyway, we mustn’t delay. I promised Justice here I’d buy him his first pair of rugby boots!”
And that’s the line that does it. The straw that breaks the bladhy blah. I’m like, “You’re a monster! That’s what you are – a monster!” and I step onto the escalator, actual tears rolling down my boat as I start walking down the moving steps.
A few seconds later, I hear Sorcha behind me, shouting, “Ross! Ross!” except I don’t turn around. I just keep walking, straight out of the shop, stopping only once to say to the security guard, “There’s a woman upstairs. Three kids. Fur coat. She looks like Bismarck du Plessis in drag. I just saw her slip something into her handbag.”
ILLUSTRATION: ALAN CLARKE