"Can I start getting the bus to school?"
"Huh? Why would you want to get the bus when I can just drive you?" I chuckled.
"Everyone gets the bus." Aoife shrugged.
"I don't know, Aoifs."
"Please, Mum. You always say that you don't know when you actually mean I'm scared the paps will chase you. I just want to be normal. Everything else about me is so not normal, can't I just have this one thing?"
She was right, her life hadn't been normal. She had been thrown to the lions of the media since she was born.
"I mean - I guess. If you promise to text me every day when you get to school?"
"Thanks, Mum. I promise."
"What we promising?" Leah asked as she entered the room.
"She's going to start getting the bus to school."
"Why?"
"Everyone gets the bus." Aoife mumbled again.
"Right. So you're going to leave here at 7:45am every day to walk 15 minutes to the bus stop, and then get the bus which takes 45 minutes to get you to school just because everyone else does it?" Leah cocked her eyebrow.
"Yep." Aoife shrugged again.
"And you're fine with this?" She directed the question at me.
"It wouldn't hurt her to have a bit of normality, I guess."
"Fine, but Aoife we aren't doing this whole arguing when it comes to getting up thing."
"I'll get up, I promise."
Leah and I had been grateful for how grown up Aoife had been about everything; helping around the house as Leah struggled to overcome the post-surgery tiredness, understanding that Leah and I were trying our best to phase back into the life that we had once had, and adapting to the fact that she would become a big sister again. It was hard not to be immensely proud of everything she had achieved, and to think that this was anything other than exactly what she had told us it was - wanting to have some normality.
If only we had known what the normality she was talking about actually was.
As promised, Aoife got up every morning on time for the bus, we didn't once have to ask her otherwise. She would text the second she got to school, text when she was leaving school, and arrive home on time every single day. She worried about Leah a lot, she worried that she would get sick again, or that she would try to do too much, constantly trying to relieve some of that pressure by offering to do things herself; organising that her friends parents would take her to training, refusing to ask Leah to pick her up one day when she missed the bus, and instead texting to say she would get the later one.
Again, if only we had known why.
The world still didn't know that Leah was pregnant, which I suppose made the secret Aoife was keeping from us easier. The more Leah began to show, the less we wanted to have her out and about; in turn, the more Aoife was able to not show that actually it was being seen with us that she was worried about.
Secrets don't stay secrets though, and this one would ripple through our lives as we knew them.
Just two months before the baby was due to arrive, I was lay on the floor of the nursery desperately trying to build a flat pack cot in anticipation for the new arrival. Leah's laughter from the doorway made me look up to see her stood with a piece of paper in her hand.
"If they're instructions, I don't need them. I will do this." I sighed.
"You are so stubborn. They aren't instructions though." Leah chuckled, taking a seat on the chair.
"What is it?"
"Look."
Dear parents,
Our annual school holiday will take place in Iceland this year, a chance for pupils to see the Northern Lights, a topic they will be required to study for their upcoming summer examinations.
The total cost for the trip will be £742 per pupil, plus spending money.
In advance of booking, we will require a photocopy of each pupils passport, and a signed copy of this form returned within 7 days.
Many Thanks
"What's the issue?"
"Has she told you about it?" Leah asked.
"No. Did you say yes?"
"She hasn't told me either. Found the letter in her school bag."
"It's dated - 4 days ago. Why hasn't she mentioned it?"
"This is exactly what I didn't want happening. I get the feeling she's doing this, and the bus thing, because she thinks she has to be some kind of mini helper." Leah sighed.
"Yeah. We can talk to her, she should go on this trip - I'd love to do that." I chuckled.
"We can't have her missing stuff like this because of the baby." Leah sighed again, obvious tears filtering through her voice.
"Hey, we'll talk to her. Okay? She'll be so excited when she realises she can go." I smiled, taking Leah's hand into my own.
"I love you."
"I love you."
"Hey, have you seen my -"
Aoife froze, her face dropping as she looked at the letter in Leah's hand.
"Where did you get that? Why were you in my school bag? That's my stuff!" Aoife shouted.
"Aoifs, don't talk to your Mum like that." I scolded.
"It's okay, your whole life has lacked privacy hasn't it?" Leah sighed.
"Yeah - but it's fine. Just - don't go through my stuff, please. I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry that I talked to you like that, I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the trip."
"Why didn't you?" I chimed in.
"Huh?"
"Why didn't you tell us about the trip?" I asked again, knowing she had avoided the question.
"Oh - eh - money." Aoife shrugged.
"Money?" I scoffed.
"Yeah."
"Aoife - that's not true. You know money isn't an issue."
"Yeah - but baby an all that."
"This baby doesn't change anything, for any of us. Just adds to things. Positive things." Leah smiled.
"Look - I don't want to go. Okay? Can't you just say okay no problem."
"It just seems weird that you wouldn't want to go on something like this, Aoife. It seems like it's something more - the bus, not wanting us to take you to matches or training anymore - you almost died when I came along to your awards show last week." I chuckled.
"Please, Mum. Can we just leave it? I don't want to go on the trip - and I'm fine with you guys not being there for things."
"That's a bit hurtful, Aoifs." Leah mumbled.
"I'm sorry. I'm trying." Aoife sighed.
"What're you trying, Aoifs? People your age shouldn't be worrying about things like this - you didn't used to!"
"I don't want to talk about it anymore." Aoife sighed, leaving the room abruptly.
A boy. That's what we thought it was.
Leah and I struggled with the idea of checking her phone, knowing what an invasion of privacy it was, but also knowing that she was still just a child. As we sat on the sofa, finally unlocking her phone and clicking into her messages, you could've knocked us both down with a feather as we began to see the abuse she was suffering.
Why do you get the bus now? Your mums too busy at gay camp to drive you?
Test tube baby
Who is your dad??
You'll be a lesbo like your mum hahahaha
It's actually disgusting that you have two mums
Who fucked your mum to get her pregnant with you? Like is that cheating or do they not count sex with men as cheating??
Bet your mums had a threesome to get the d and you were the result 🤢
Your family is sick. Such a fucking weird set up man
Have you ever found the fake dicks your mums have?
You were cooked in a lab lol probably why your nose is so big
"Oh my god." Leah whispered, her hand trembling.
"I'll kill them. I'll fucking kill them."
Never before had I seen red, but bullying my daughter? That was enough to send me over the edge. I stood to my feet, intent on going to the house of every single name on her phone.
"Alex."
I'll fucking kill them.
"Alex, you need to calm down."
Who is her dad? Why is it so hard to accept that she has two mums who love her.
"Al, please."
How is this even still a fucking thing?
"Alex, baby, please."
Leah's pleading voice filled with fear at my unusual anger was enough to zap me back into the real world. Realistically, I couldn't kill them - or their parents. Nor did I actually want to. Kinda.
"Sorry." I mumbled.
Now my emotions were coming out in a different way, tears spilling from my eyes as I remembered my own battles with misconceptions about sexuality.
"I'm here. I'm right here." Leah said gently, letting me cry onto her chest.
"How can they be so cruel?"
"Uneducated on it, I guess. How do we even tell her we've seen this stuff? They shouldn't even know anything about that sexual stuff - they're literally kids."
We kept Aoife off the following day, buzz after buzz coming through on her phone as the day progressed. Leah and I tried multiple times to start the conversation about what we had seen, but neither of us truly knew how to tell her.
"You read my phone, didn't you?" Aoife began to cry.
I rushed to her side, Leah rushing to her other side and the three of us wrapped into a hug.
"Yeah, Aoifs. Yeah, baby." Leah choked back her tears.
"I'm sorry."
"What're you sorry for? You didn't write those things." I shook my head.
"I didn't mean to lie, I just didn't know how to tell you. I didn't want to be embarrassed, but they're making it really hard not to be." Aoife began to sob.
"Do we make you embarrassed?" Leah asked, although I knew she didn't want to hear the answer.
"I can't explain it." Aoife cried.
"Can you try? Maybe if we understand how you feel then we can all deal with it together, the best way for you." I whispered.
Aoife took a deep breath, clutching onto both mine and Leah's hands as she spoke.
"I'm not embarrassed that you are my parents, and I'm not embarrassed that I came from a test tube. When I'm here - I'm not embarrassed at all, I love our family. I love being the oldest in our family and helping out and I love when you take me to football mummy and everyone thinks it's super cool that my Mummy is Leah Williamson."
We chuckled along with her.
"I don't feel embarrassed when you are together either, I like it. I hated when you moved out, Mum. It made mummy really sad, and all of us really sad too. They don't get it though, they don't get that we are just a normal family. And when they say those things - then I start to feel embarrassed and I feel guilty for being embarrassed because if I could choose any other parents - I wouldn't want anyone different. I'd want you two."
I exhaled deeply to stop my tears flowing, watching as Leah bit her lip to stop her own.
"Aoifs, you didn't grow in a test tube, you know. We didn't go and collect you from the lab after 9 months."
"When did you collect me?" She asked innocently.
"We didn't - you grew inside my tummy." Leah chuckled.
"Don't you need a boy for that?" Aoife asked bashfully.
"Not really, technically. They collected some eggs from mum and put them inside me. You need something from a man, but it's like a donation thing."
"Donation?"
"So like there's men out there who know that me and your mummy couldn't have a baby without their - you know - so they donate it. And then when it comes to us having a baby, we just randomly get some of it from a clinic and then they mix it with both of our eggs so we are both biologically your Mums. Does that make sense?" I asked.
"Yeah. I think so. So did you have to give birth to me?"
"Yeah. On the bedroom floor, actually." Leah chuckled.
"Really?"
The sound of Aoife finally laughing warmed my heart.
"Yeah, she made a right mess." I chuckled.
"More of a mess than when you make pancakes?"
"Hey, I'm not that bad!" I gasped.
"Yes you are!" Leah and Aoife said in unison.
"What do we do, Aoifs? How do we make this better?" Leah asked gently.
"I don't think you can help." Aoife shrugged.
We had to, I wasn't sure how, but we had to.