The Rule of Optimism

By Tracey Harries

In the Autumn of 1991, a group of young social work students meet at university in Cardiff, each filled with positivity and ambition. With a backdrop of widespread sexual abuse in Cleveland, Rochdale and Orkney, public perception of social workers is deeply cynical and the profession is already defined by negative media reporting. But this does not dampen their spirits.
Tara is a headstrong pragmatist, a single mother raised in the South Wales Valleys and of Irish lineage. Proud and fiercely independent, she approaches life without fear, bolstered by a secure and loving relationship with her family. Alison is a beautiful but fragile young woman, a gifted musician who is haunted by her parents’ toxic and destructive relationship. As a means of escape, Alison moves to live with her beloved Aunt Clem in rural West Wales and finds an unexpected purpose to her life. Neither Tara nor Alison have ever enjoyed an enduring female friendship before. But when their paths cross, a special bond is formed. Over the course of twenty-five years, the lives of Tara and Alison become cruelly enmeshed by events beyond their control. Despite their devotion to one another, nothing can prevent the terrible unravelling that is about to take place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398437821

Tracey Harries

Tracey Harries lives in the South Wales Valleys, where she has worked as a qualified social worker and manager for the past twenty-five years, both within statutory child protection services and currently for the Welsh Government, providing independent expert advice to the family courts. Tracey has also worked for many years as an independent social work assessor and is registered with both Social Care Wales and the Health and Care Professions Council, England. Tracey and her husband have three grown-up children, and her spare time is spent walking in the beautiful Welsh countryside with the family’s three springer spaniels, Woody, Scout and Cooper. Tracey also loves music, and much of her youth was spent singing and playing in local bands. She has recently started playing the guitar, after a very long sabbatical and finds it relaxing. She loves to attend Glastonbury, and her 50th anniversary ticket is currently very much on hold. She likes to consider herself an ‘old hippy’. The Rule of Optimism is Tracey’s first novel which, at the age of fifty-seven, she sees as a momentous achievement. The book was started during lockdown, and although she has worked throughout as a designated key worker, the time spent working from home has allowed her space and freedom to fulfil this lifelong ambition. Tracey has drawn on her own experiences in the novel and hopes that she can continue to write, as she has found the experience completely transformational.

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About the Author

Tracey Harries lives in the South Wales Valleys, where she has worked as a qualified social worker and manager for the past twenty-five years, both within statutory child protection services and currently for the Welsh Government, providing independent expert advice to the family courts. Tracey has also worked for many years as an independent social work assessor and is registered with both Social Care Wales and the Health and Care Professions Council, England.

Tracey and her husband have three grown-up children, and her spare time is spent walking in the beautiful Welsh countryside with the family’s three springer spaniels, Woody, Scout and Cooper. Tracey also loves music, and much of her youth was spent singing and playing in local bands. She has recently started playing the guitar, after a very long sabbatical and finds it relaxing. She loves to attend Glastonbury, and her 50th anniversary ticket is currently very much on hold. She likes to consider herself an ‘old hippy’.

The Rule of Optimism is Tracey’s first novel which, at the age of fifty-seven, she sees as a momentous achievement. The book was started during lockdown, and although she has worked throughout as a designated key worker, the time spent working from home has allowed her space and freedom to fulfil this lifelong ambition.

Tracey has drawn on her own experiences in the novel and hopes that she can continue to write, as she has found the experience completely transformational.

Copyright Information ©

Tracey Harries 2022

The right of Tracey Harries to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398437814 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398437821 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

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Prologue

The child lies sprawled on the dry grass, small suntanned hands working earnestly in the construction of a daisy chain, her lips pursed with concentration. The woman sitting beside her is in middle age but nonetheless physically striking, her dark hair greying at the temples and cut into a soft, short style that enhances her delicate features. A pale, silver scar to her temple is visible as the breeze lifts her hair, yet deeper scars subsist unseen. Neither speak but are effortlessly fused in that unique manner of mother and daughter. The woman listens to music through an ear piece as she absorbs the scene around her, the warm June air adding a balmy quality to the setting, the hill by the patchwork Glastonbury Festival sign.

The woman has brought the child to the festival since she was a baby in arms and loves this time, just before the festivities are underway: for her, it is a time to reflect on the significance of the mystical ley lines and energy pathways, the myths and legends as well as the anticipation of the weekend of celebration. This is a pilgrimage of sorts from which she always hopes she will emerge kinder and more courageous.

This, the woman ruminates, is her half a century on the planet. It has been more than twenty-five years since they had first met, all young and eager to change the world. She smiles, remembering how they had learned about the importance of ‘attachment theory’, the cornerstone of their social work careers, but how they failed to consider how their own childhood relationships would have such a profound and tragic impact upon their adult lives. The woman is known by those close to her to be a pragmatist and wonders why today she is so overwhelmed by nostalgia; an emotion she usually parks safely away the moment it slides like a thief into her mind.

We came together, each of us flawed by something in our past but bearing the badge of unrelenting optimism that the study of social work demanded. We were problem solvers, we were healers, and we were an ensemble cast, Alison and then, it was just you and I, stripped to the bone, no leading man, no fall guy – just us.

Please forgive me, my dearest friend. Our lives have been inextricably bound together, like creases so embedded in a fabric that they cannot be shaken out, like the painful memories that can never be washed away, no matter how many tears are cried.

Not a day passes when I do not think of you, the way you would bite your lower lip when you were concentrating, take such care when making a cup of tea, each stage a little ritual, and how you always reframed the cruelty of others with kindness. I think of him also, the way he made people feel important, how he would cry without embarrassment, his smile.

We two have been gathering dust, but please say that our dreams haven’t changed so much and allow me to apologise, Alison, for there will never be two friends like you and I.

The soulful voice of Carole King singing Tapestry offers beautiful metaphors that ebb and swell and bring unexpected tears to the woman’s eyes.

Can I listen, Mama? the child asks.

The woman snaps out of her incubus and removes the ear piece gently, placing it against the little girl’s ear. The child listens to the gravelly tones and smiles up at her mother.

What is a tapestry, Mama?

The woman pauses to think, a smile touching the crevices of her face and making it suddenly radiant. It’s a sort of collection of beautiful threads of different colours, and each thread symbolises something important. The child seems, for now at least, satisfied with the explanation.

The woman brushes a strand of hair from her face and glances at her daughter. Every mother believes that her child is beautiful and so it should be. The little girl owes nothing of her genetic make-up to her mother. Her soft, loose curls, golden complexion and amber eyes warm the woman’s heart and remind her so of the child’s father that at times, it takes her breath away. In the heat of the late morning, she and the child wait together, bathed in the golden light as if they were preserved in a Klimt painting, a sweet and fragile daisy chain adorning the child’s chestnut curls.

The child suddenly spots a familiar face in the teeming crowd and runs, calling out her name. She embraces the young woman, and they make their way, hand in hand up towards the peak of the hill where the older woman waits. A little way in the distance, a slender and familiar figure lifts her hand uncertainly, and the woman, with an ache of recognition, rises to her feet and runs.

Part One

Chapter One

The Interview

May 1991

Cardiff Institute of Higher Education is a grey, unimposing structure, unpretentious and functional in design and situated along Western Avenue. In contrast, the campus is surrounded by leafy parks and a short stroll from the bustling city centre. The grim façade of the building looked oddly out of place on the warm early summer morning in May 1991 and would have sat more comfortably within a damp November setting.

Today, the university is host to an eclectic mix of young and old: shiny-faced youngsters accompanied by nervous parents, earnest and hopeful mature students and a gathering of officious administrators crowd the pale green foyer in an atmosphere of chaos and anticipation. Well-intentioned students hand out leaflets and signpost the newcomers to the location of today’s interviews.

Tara Roisin Byrne enters with a sense of purpose, much the same way as she approaches life. Tara’s motto is feel the fear and do it anyway. She moves towards an anaemic-looking girl wrapped in an equally washed-out-looking cardigan and asks where the social works are taking place. The girl looks delighted to be of use and without hesitation grabs Tara forcibly by the elbow and eases her towards the open staircase, advising her to turn immediately right at the top of the stairs and follow the orange signs.

This the only the second year of the Masters of Social Work programme, and the selection process consists of three components: an individual interview, a written exercise and the final stage – a group discussion. Tara has no idea what to expect but determines that whatever the outcome, today would bring with it valuable lessons and possibly lead to the next chapter of her life. She tags behind a small queue, seeking out a friendly face and peering at a list of names posted on the wall.

The initial interview had been held some weeks before, and Tara had immediately warmed to the interviewer, a slender man with thinning red hair who introduced himself informally as Iverson Lewinsky. Iverson had made her feel at ease and established an immediate rapport by enquiring about her Irish heritage and asking whether her Doc Martens were really as ‘hideously uncomfortable’ as they appeared.

His pointy features and delicate demeanour concealed a mischievous humour, punctuated by an infectious wheezy laughter, and when Tara eventually emerged from the interview, she couldn’t stop smiling. On reflection and despite his casual approach, the two had discussed the demise of the Berlin Wall, as well as the Velvet Revolution. Inadvertently, she had learned that Iverson originated from New Hampshire which explained his Bostonian drawl, lived with his soulmate Edwin in nearby Cathays and was an unapologetic fan of progressive rock.

The written exercise had taken place two days before and under formal conditions. Tara had smiled nervously at Iverson who was acting as one of the invigilators, and he had returned an encouraging wink. Tara was better at talking than writing but had managed to complete the paper with a few minutes to spare. She had felt less confident emerging on this occasion, but her characteristic optimism had kicked in, and today she stood with her contemporaries feeling relaxed and excited.

The purpose of the group interview was to ascertain how individuals functioned as part of a collective and to give them the opportunity to demonstrate critical thinking and initiative. Tara loved a good debate and had acquired much of her political fervour from her mother and grandmother. She had listened in awe at her grandmother’s stories of the great famine, although her older sister, Aisling, was indifferent to their cultural history and affectionately described her little sister as the social justice warrior.

******

Tara found her name on the seating plan and sat herself down in the circle of chairs directly under a large window through which the midday sun was struggling to penetrate a thin layer of dust and grime. She smiled at a tall, ungainly woman with dyed auburn hair and scarlet lipstick, and when the smile was returned, Tara supressed a giggle as the lipstick also embellished the woman’s uneven teeth. Over the next few minutes, the circle filled with anxious faces. Tara noticed that the chair directly opposite remained unoccupied and pondered on whether the intended occupant had opted out due to nerves or maybe some last-minute crisis.

An attractive woman sporting a bluntly cut bob stepped forward, introducing herself as Caroline Hammond, the Course Director, and announcing officiously that the group discussions would commence in a few minutes. A portly middle-aged man in a checked shirt introduced himself as Trevor and explained to the circle that he would be facilitating the group discussion which would proceed for forty-five minutes. Caroline approached the group with a handful of cards, and Trevor selected one with a sense of ceremony that Tara found faintly amusing.

Caroline announced that the exercise would begin and as Trevor gingerly turned over the card, a young woman sidled into the circle and sat apologetically in the empty seat. Trevor was clearly a little disgruntled that his pièce de résistance had been undermined by the late arrival, and puffing out his chest, he announced that the topic was ‘should siblings in care be kept together’? There was a moments silence as the group collective frantically mused over this somewhat unexpected topic.

The gangly woman Tara had mentally named ‘Hot Lips’ appeared pleased with herself and lifted up her hand excitedly. Trevor asked her to introduce herself to the group and explain why she had applied to join the course: Hot Lips’ name was Barbara, and she announced to the group that she was the adoptive mother of two children; it appeared that her own ‘extensive experience’ had led her to conclude that it was her destiny to train as a social worker. Over the next few minutes, ‘Hot Lips’ proceeded to gush about her knowledge of Bowlby’s attachment theory and how she felt that if siblings were separated through foster care or adoption then it was their right to maintain a relationship with one another. She used terms such as ‘staying connected’ and ‘adoption support services’, and Trevor nodded enthusiastically like one of those dogs attached to a car mirror. Tara felt herself becoming irritated by both ‘Hot Lips’ self-satisfied ramblings and Trevor’s clear adulation and failure to take control of the group dynamic. ‘Hot Lips’ had outstayed her welcome as far as Tara was concerned, and although she had not clearly thought of the point she wished to make, she stuck up her hand and gave a little cough. Trevor turned reluctantly to Tara and asked her to introduce herself.

Hi, I’m Tara, she said, as unconsciously her hand proceeded to make a little waving motion to the group, which made her flush and Trevor sniff with disapproval. The ‘latecomer’, who up until now had remained passive and expressionless, broke into an unexpected and beautiful smile that caught Tara completely off guard.

After a few seconds, Tara regained her composure and started talking with confidence. I think we need to be careful not to miss the point here. Surely, we cannot apply a universal approach to this issue. There will be times when siblings would be traumatised if they were to be separated, but what about cases where the children would be better being placed on their own? Isn’t it dangerous to make assumptions that— but before Tara could explain her rationale, ‘Hot Lips’ had again taken the chair, dismissing what had been said in favour of her own well-researched theories.

Tara found her concentration drifting and started to tune in to a discussion in the adjacent group: a young man whose face she couldn’t make out was talking about his own experience of being adopted and a Chinese woman sat directly opposite him was nodding encouragingly. Tara thought what a lovely voice the young man had, deep and kind, the sort of resonance that made you want to listen.

The large wall clock situated over the door indicated that there was less than ten minutes left in the exercise. Tara felt that she had participated sufficiently in the discussion but was inexplicably anxious that the ‘latecomer’ had yet to make a contribution. The ‘latecomer’ was a young woman, slender if not fragile and ethereal in appearance, dressed entirely in faded dark vintage type layers with dark hair that fell across her face, partially obscuring her translucent skin and exotic eyes.

With only minutes to go before the discussion closed, the ‘latecomer’ raised her hand and in soft and honeyed tones said simply, I am Alison. My major is music, but I am interested in the human condition and what makes some people more resilient than others.

Alison spoke with a sense of truth and melancholy about the intimacy of childhood relationships and how these should be our most enduring. She seamlessly introduced the concept that children may have unhealthy sibling relationships that cannot be healed as well as divided parental loyalties. When she had finished, the group was silent and contemplative; there seemed to be nothing left to say, and despite her fragile exterior, it was as though Alison had mesmerised those sat within the circle on that cloying May afternoon.

******

The group had broken up slowly, some lingering to offer platitude and reassurance to those who felt that their efforts had been poor. ‘Hot Lips’ could be heard offering her voice of experience, and Tara could feel her spine stiffening as an involuntary response to the pompous woman. Alison had left almost immediately, and despite her efforts to strike up conversation with one or two others, Tara felt a heavy disappointment that there had been no opportunity to find out more about this enigmatic stranger. She decided that she would grab a tea and headed towards the canteen which was situated adjacent to the entrance hall.

The canteen had all but emptied given that it was now past one thirty, and Tara ordered a white tea and a packet of ginger biscuits, before joining a couple of familiar renegades including an ex vicar called Richard and a homely woman who introduced herself as Joy.

The bright orange retro seats were of a tubular construction and reminded Tara of her old high school. Her companions were discussing the exercise and how the topic had caught them unawares. Tara stirred her tea whilst agreeing that she had jumped in without thinking, simply to take the wind out of ‘Hot Lips’ sails. This drew sniggers from Richard, and Joy nodded vociferously in agreement.

I thought I was doing okay until Alison spoke, she volunteered with a smile. After that, everything I had said sounded like a bloody cliché.

At that point, Joy made a beckoning gesture, and the group was joined by Alison who smiled shyly as she placed her black coffee on the table and sat down. Tara was once again struck by the girl’s beauty, not simply a collection of perfect features but a certain unearthly presence.

Years later, Tara would often reflect on that meeting and how she had been drawn to Alison. Was it her serenity or vulnerability or that sudden radiant smile from an otherwise sombre face that had intrigued Tara so and made her determined that the two would become friends?

Chapter Two

Tara

Fairy Town

The small valley town of Care Capel was situated only ten miles from the city centre of Cardiff but appeared to belong to a different era in time. Tucked into a deep valley, the tiny hamlet consisted of only a handful of undulating terraced houses reflective of the strong industrial heritage of the Welsh Valleys. Woodside Terrace virtually clung to the mountain and was characterised by a row of humble little houses, each painted with a bright façade and pristine doorstep. The terrace was situated at the highest point of the community with a backdrop of dense woodland that provided a cool sanctuary amidst clusters of bluebells. At the top of the terrace stood the little white Methodist chapel known as the Tabernacle.

Tara’s maternal grandmother, Sarah, had worked in domestic service after the First World War, initially in London and later for a prominent lawyer living in a leafy suburb of Cardiff. It was at this time that she met William Byrne, a train driver who, like Sarah, hailed from County Tipperary. The couple had married and settled in The Valleys where William was stationed. They had enjoyed a simple but happy existence with Mary, their only daughter, and when they passed away, Mary had remained in the little family home. Until the end of their days, Sarah and William had retained their strong southern Irish lilt, with its long vowels and musicality. Mary and her daughters often lapsed into this way of speaking, using interjections such as banjaxed and gobshite along with Welsh colloquialisms, and this often made family conversation sound like some strange hybrid language.

It was on a rare night out in the capital that Mary Byrne met Owain Williams or ‘flat out’ as he was known locally. Owain’s nickname was derived from his dislike of a day’s labour and ability to earn his ‘beer money’ from playing the piano at local public houses. Mary was initially swept off her feet by Owain’s musical ability and swarthy Welsh features, but after the birth of their second child Tara, she had come to her senses and given him his marching orders. Despite retaining contact sporadically until the children started school, appearing without notice and usually with some ulterior motive associated with cash-flow problems, over time Owain stopped visiting and became a figure