The posters began appearing in June on lampposts and billboards visible from the main road:

 

‘Come home, we love you, Mum.’

 

The photo shows a copper-haired child in school uniform. My child: Lara, staring at the camera, straight-faced, gripping her toy giraffe by the neck.

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Lara had her fifth birthday last week, her first since we became a one-parent household. We had a small party, just the pair of us.

 

~

 

We’ve been taking the backroads to school in the mornings. I drive slowly to give Lara time to talk. She sits in the back counting cows. How does she feel seeing herself on hoardings every two hundred yards, like a precocious election candidate?

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Her friends have seen them, the neighbours too. Only a matter of time before Lara comes at me with her bottomless bag of questions.

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There was a fresh poster this morning, same picture: ‘Yours forever.’

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It was pinned to a barrel outside Róisín’s favourite pub. The one we used to go to before we had Lara. Friends say Róisín hasn’t been seen there since Christmas, that she’s a changed woman.

 

~

 

‘Dad?’

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We’ve just driven past a new one planted in the roundabout at Aldi: ‘Lara loves Mum’. I shiver.

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‘Yes, pet?’

 

‘Why do I have so many freckles?’

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‘You don’t!’

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‘In the photos,’ Lara says. ‘I don’t have that many freckles in the mirror.’

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It’s like she’s already gotten used to being a poster child for family strife.

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‘I’m not sure, love. You were younger then. Maybe it was summer.’

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‘It was my first day of school,’ she says. ‘That picture’s from my first day.’

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She doesn’t know it was the last photo Róisín took of her.

 

~

 

I had to throw her out. Took a long time for people around here to get their heads around that. Some still can’t stomach it. Depriving a child of her mother.

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If it were just me, I could battle on. Wait for Róisín to wise up or dry out or get help, maybe expire. But I can’t have Lara being driven to school by a woman who’s had Buckfast for breakfast.

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The principal had called me at work on the first day of junior infants, asking in polite disbelief why nobody had come to collect Lara, to hear her exciting news of friends and teachers and two-colour crayons.

 

~

 

At pick-up, Lara’s teacher beckons me over to ask about the posters. What will be the impact on Lara, she asks. Had I thought about that? I say I’ve thought about little else.

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The teacher wishes me luck, says she hopes my campaign works, and whispers something about the virtue of forgiveness. I don’t know what to say. Should I tell her they aren’t my posters? 

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On our way out the school gate, Lara stops beside a large photo pinned to three feet of plywood. This one shows Róisín holding Lara on the day Lara was born. Both look reddened and tired, but deeply content: ‘Hugs are forever.’

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‘How many are there, Dad?’

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I say I don’t know.

 

~

 

We pass three more before we reach the house and find Róisín standing in the driveway. Her hair is brushed. She’s smiling, wearing clean clothes. This was the Róisín I fell for seven years ago. A pulse thumps in the centre of my head.

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She watches me stop the car and open Lara’s door. Lara sprints to her mother, erupting into teary yelps as she locks her arms around Róisín’s legs. Róisín bends over to squeeze her daughter’s little body and to kiss a head of curls. When she looks up, streaks of mascara are running down her cheeks. This is closer to my last memory of her.

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‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

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‘I’ve seen your posters. The whole town’s seen them.’

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‘You blocked me. It was my only way to tell you.’

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‘Tell me what?’

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‘I’m sober. I want to come home.’

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Lara looks up at her mother.

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‘People think it’s me,’ I say. ‘The posters.’

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‘I know. I need them to believe that you want me back.’

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‘Dad?’

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I look down. Our daughter’s eyes are begging me to open my arms.