The Women of Primrose Square

by Claudia Carroll

Leon looked up at her, with a fat sausage in one hand and a mug of milky tea in the other.

  ‘You don’t put off until tomorrow,’ he growled in his twenty-fags-a-day voice, ‘what you can easily do today.’

  Emily winced. ‘You haven’t met my sister.’

  ‘Get over yourself, would you? I’ll even drive you there myself.’

  ‘No need,’ she said, a bit too fast. ‘I’ll grab a bus.’

  ‘Taxi’s right outside,’ Leon grunted, as he went back to his breakfast. ‘That way, at least I know you’ll go through with this.’

  ‘Oh, come on, what do you take me for – a child?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, stop arguing and just drink your coffee. Now, do you want some toast with that?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘I’m paying.’

  ‘Then in that case, yes please. Thought you’d never ask. I’m bloody starving.’

  *

  Leon was as good as his word. Without any small talk, just the over-bright tones of a highly caffeinated presenter on the radio in the background, he deposited Emily outside her sister’s neat suburban house, in her neat tree-lined road, surrounded by other neat two-bedroomed semi-detacheds just like it.

  Sadie worked from home in a converted office upstairs, so her car was parked in the driveway, where not so much as a stray leaf seemed to sully the atmosphere of calm tranquillity.

  Well, I’m certainly about to shatter the peace in this house, Emily thought, unstrapping herself from the passenger seat of Leon’s taxi and clambering out.

  ‘Wish me luck,’ she said to Leon.

  ‘Luck has nothing to do with it,’ he replied. ‘Just remember this is about one thing and one thing only: atonement.’

  ‘Jesus, you’re fun in the mornings, aren’t you?’ she said, banging the car door shut and striding up the driveway, dying to get this over with.

  It was a God-awful, horrible feeling, she thought, having to retrace her footsteps back up that driveway, Sadie’s words still ringing crystal clear in her ears from the last time the two had spoken: ‘From now on, I have no sister.’

  Ouch.

  She rang the doorbell and waited. Rang again, waited some more. Sadie’s immaculately organised office was directly overhead, so if her sister was indeed working from home, then all she had to do was throw open the window to look down and see who it was.

  Still nothing, though – not a whisper from inside the house. Emily shoved her hands in her coat pockets and took a moment to look around the pristine front garden, with her sister’s gleaming new BMW hybrid in the driveway, proudly bearing 19-D number plates which might as well have screamed: ‘We’re so affluent and comfortable here!’

  Jesus, she thought. I’m three years older than Sadie and I’ve got absolutely nothing to my name. A few fast-dwindling savings and that was it. Yet here was her younger sister, living prosperously with her gorgeous little boy, happily married to Boring Brien, although how anyone in their sane mind could be happy with someone like him was beyond Emily.

  But then, you could have had all of this, she reminded herself. Showroom home, nice car, great lifestyle, even a husband. And you threw it all away. You ran screaming from suburbia the minute you got the chance. So if none of this would ever make Emily happy, then what would? That, she thought, is the million-dollar question.

  She knocked a third time, louder this time, starting to get impatient. God Almighty, all she’d come to do was apologise and then she’d be on her way. She was only asking for approximately three minutes of her sister’s time – would it really kill her to answer the bloody door?

  She started to yell through the letterbox. ‘Sadie,’ she said loudly, ‘I know you’re in there and I know you can hear me. I faithfully promise I’m not here to cause trouble. I only came to say that I was sorry for everything. For all the horrible things I did and for all the hurt I caused you and Mum.’

  Eerie silence as her voice trailed off into thin air.

  ‘Anyway,’ she added, feeling like an eejit as her voice echoed down the hallway inside. ‘That’s it, I suppose. So I’ll be on my way now. I doubt we’ll ever see each other again, so this is goodbye. Have a nice life and . . . remember that I did at least try to say sorry. I get that you don’t want to see me any more than Mum does, but please remember that I did try.’

  Could this whole ‘Step Eight’ crap-ology possibly go any worse? Emily wondered, as she stomped back down the gravelled driveway, finally admitting defeat. Just as she reached the garden gate, she spotted a wheelie bin with an actual neon pink cover over it. Typical Sadie, she thought. Even the wheelie bin was spotless, and doubtless Boring Brien was out there every other day with a garden hose cleaning it down.

  The old her would probably have kicked it over, purely out of badness. The old her would probably have had to be dragged kicking and screaming from the house. The old her would doubtless have smashed windows and given Sadie’s car tyres a right good kicking. But this was Emily 2.0 and Emily 2.0 wasn’t that person anymore.

  Then, turning over her shoulder, she caught a glimpse of Sadie peeking out from behind her gleaming white plantation shutters on the first floor. There was no mistaking it; Emily saw her shadowy figure hiding behind the window, with her phone in her hand, double-checking that Emily had really gone, and probably ready to call the cops at a moment’s notice.

  So Emily didn’t cause a scene. Instead she went quietly, without a fuss. She even gave a little half wave in the direction of Sadie’s office.

  You see, Sadie? I told you I’d changed. You don’t believe me? Just keep on looking.

  *

  The worst thing about being unemployed, she was learning, was the sheer, unrelenting, mind-numbing boredom.

  Emily used the last spare change she had in her jeans pocket to go into town, but with the whole day stretching ahead of her, was at a complete loss what to do. Catch an afternoon movie, maybe? Out of the question on her budget. Window shopping? Boring – and given how broke she was, annoying too, when she started seeing all the things she could ill afford.

  Feeling utterly out of place among the busy families wheeling prams down Henry Street, she wandered aimlessly until she found herself close to the Ilac shopping centre. There was a library there, she remembered. Perfect. The ideal place to kill time cheaply when you were on the scratch and still had a good seven hours to fill before she could even think about going back to Primrose Square for the evening.

  She texted Leon to thank him for the lift to Sadie’s earlier, stressing that it had all turned out to be a colossal waste of time. Then she loitered outside a coffee shop in case he replied, secretly hoping he might even be free between taxi fares for a quick cuppa and a chat.

  Be good to talk to someone who actually got it, she thought. But her luck was out – no response from him at all, which meant he must have had a fare and couldn’t get back to her.

  Jesus Christ, I have GOT to get work, Emily thought, striding up the stairs that led to the Ilac centre library. When was the last time she’d even been inside a library? When was the last time she had all these long hours stretching out ahead of her, not having the first clue how to fill them?

  There was a time when she’d have gone straight to the nearest boozer and happily spent the day there, propped up on a bar stool, talking shite to whoever would listen – or better yet, to whoever would pay to keep the drinks flowing.

  She shuddered, thinking back to all those long, boozy days when she’d been fired from her job, but somehow still had the cash to go drinking in the daytime. Day regularly turned into night, then turned into morning, and Emily would find herself passed out on some random stranger’s sofa – or worse yet, in their bed. Hard to believe now, but nakedness, mortification and killer hangovers were often how she used to start her days.

  Once, she even came to lying in a pool of her own blood on the floor of a dingy apartment, with her right arm bleeding profusely, as she lay semi-conscious in the middle of a mound
of broken glass. There were shards everywhere, even in her hair and mouth.

  It was only when the fire brigade broke down the door to let her out that she managed to put two and two together. Apparently she’d gone back to some randomer’s flat, then panicked when they’d gone to work the next morning and she realised she was locked in. So what do you do when you’re trying to get out of a strange flat, still numb from the two bottles of vodka you drank the previous night? Put your right hand through a plate glass of an emergency exit, of course, and try to get out that way. To this day, Emily still had scars from the twenty-seven stitches she’d been given in A & E. It was what had propelled her into treatment – her first bout of treatment, that is, before she fell off the wagon and went back on the sauce again.

  Oh fuck this, she thought, as she slunk into a cool, quiet seat in the library near a bank of computers, where unemployed and very possibly homeless people like her were all availing themselves of the free facilities to go online.

  It’s all well and good apologising to people I’ve wronged in the past, she thought. But it seemed the main person she needed to apologise to was herself.

  *

  Emily managed to fill in a good chunk of the day at the library, honing her CV, which, as Lena, a Polish girl half her age at the computer next to her, said, essentially meant lying. Then she emailed off her embellished, over-inflated CV to every online employment agency that she could find.

  ‘Turns out there’s not that much out there,’ she said to Lena wryly, ‘if your only experience is in event management and you haven’t worked in a couple of years.’

  ‘Try being a nail technician,’ Lena replied. ‘My last job offered twenty euro.’

  ‘An hour?’ Emily asked.

  ‘A day.’

  ‘Are you serious? How are you supposed to live off that?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Lena said, shaking her head. ‘That’s not what you earn. That’s what I was expected to pay the owner of the nail bar for the first month. A training fee, she called it.’

  ‘Sweet God,’ said Emily, shaking her head. ‘So you pay to work? Now I’ve heard it all.’

  They closed up the library at 6 p.m. on the dot, and after saying her goodbyes to Lena, Emily made her way back outside the shopping centre and onto the now semi-deserted Henry Street.

  Christ Almighty, she thought, glancing down at the time on her phone. It was still way too early to head back to nutty Violet’s House of Pain. Frank, or rather Francesca, still wouldn’t be home from work yet, which of course meant Emily wouldn’t even be able to have a good moan about her utterly soul-destroying, pointless day.

  Then, as she paced down Henry Street, a fresh thought struck her. Given that she appeared to be stuck in Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell, why not go the whole hog? Why not do a job lot of apologising to everyone she’d wronged?

  Emily had already accepted that none of them, her own family included, would probably ever speak to her again, so what was to stop her getting this one last obstacle out of her way? There certainly was a lot to be said for getting all this crawling in the dirt lark over with in one go. At least then she could abandon the whole twelve-step programme for the useless, self-indulgent twaddle that it was. This way, she reasoned, she could go back to Leon, say she’d done her level best, but claim that the whole thing was a colossal waste of time, both his and hers.

  Which brought her neatly to the Big One. The trickiest one of all. The one she’d been putting off for as long as she possibly could. The one person who Emily could look in the eye and say, actually, it wasn’t entirely one hundred per cent my fault. Seventy-five per cent her fault maybe, but definitely no more than that.

  He didn’t live too far away, either. Only about twenty minutes’ walk. With her feet leading the way, Emily found herself striding in the direction of Manor Street in Stoneybatter – or Bitter Batter, as it was known, as so many unemployed actors and artists lived there.

  Not him, though. Not Alec, Mr Workaholic Success Story. After he and Emily had divorced, he’d invested in a bang-on-trend, two-up two-down redbrick cottage in a row of houses just like it. Alec was a software designer and worked from home several days a week. Fingers crossed he’d be at the house now – probably still working, knowing him.

  Emily knew the address from countless post-divorce letters she’d been served with and didn’t have much difficulty finding it. But what she wasn’t prepared for was for how bloody fabulous it all was. A small house – a fraction of the size of what you’d see on Primrose Square, but still. The houses all along Manor Street were well maintained and ‘bijou’, in estate-agent speak.

  Typical Alec, she thought ruefully, walking down the street till she found the right number. Always a wise, cautious investor, always with his eye on how to make money long-term. The only bad investment he’d ever made in his life was marrying her.

  From the outside, number eleven was your typical two-up two-down Coronation Street-type home – but this being Alec, doubtless it was a stunning architect’s dream on the inside. A quick glimpse through a sash window that overlooked Manor Street confirmed this; all Emily could see were minimalist exposed wooden floors and a lot of sexy, expensive-looking chrome furniture going on.

  This time, she hesitated at the door. With her mother and Sadie, she had no doubt in her mind what she was going to say. A grovelling apology and she’d be on her way.

  But with Alec, it was very, very different. How, Emily wondered, did she even begin to put into words what needed to be said? She thought back to how different it had been when they’d first met and fallen in love – how magical it had all been. How happy she used to be – so happy, she didn’t even feel the need to drink. Being with Alec was joy enough and no amount of booze had made her feel as high as she did with him.

  Everyone loved Alec, but then it was impossible not to. A good-looking, charming guy with a fantastic job at a global tech firm – what was not to like? They’d met in a bar in town about twelve years ago now, when Alec was out celebrating a pal’s stag night and Emily had been out on the piss with a few random stragglers from work. Back then, she was an indiscriminate drinker; at the end of the day in the office, she’d loudly proclaim: ‘I’m going for just the one, anyone coming?’

  But her pals had long since abandoned her that particular night and Emily was three sheets to the wind and drinking alone when she found herself standing beside this tall, good-looking guy about her own age, jostling for position at the bar.

  ‘When they call last orders in here,’ she’d said cheekily to him, ‘it’s a bit like the bull run in Pamplona.’

  He’d laughed. To this day, Emily still remembered how warm his smile was. A proper, crinkly smile that reached his eyes.

  ‘If I get served first, I’ll shout your order in for you, if you like?’ he’d very kindly offered. Music to Emily’s ears.

  Booze, she thought, wavering outside his front door. Booze had been right there from the very start of their relationship and was with them to the very end. Well, if nothing else, she thought, drawing herself up tall and strengthening her resolve, let Alec see me sober. Let him at least see that. If nothing else, he’ll see me dry and maybe, just maybe, this journey won’t be a wasted one.

  She rang the doorbell – one of those expensive ones that chimed elegantly inside the house. Moments later, the door was opened by a much younger woman – petite, pretty and blonde.

  So you’re her, then, Emily thought. You’re Poppy. That was her name: Poppy. This one suited her name too; she was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, standing in front of Emily with a big smile on that pretty, clear-skinned, annoyingly unlined face.

  She was clearly living with Alec now, utterly clueless that this was his ex-wife standing mutely in the doorway, staring back at her like the wicked queen from a panto.

  Fuck’s sake, Emily thought. All I need is a puff of green smoke and the sound of thunderclaps going off in the background to complete the picture.

  ‘Hi, you�
�re here at last,’ Poppy said, giving Emily a lightning-quick up-and-down look. But before Emily could answer, she was yelling up the stairs.

  ‘Alec love?’ she called out. ‘The babysitter is here. Are you ready to go?’

  Babysitter? Emily had to take a second to process what she was hearing. Did she just say babysitter?

  At that, Poppy threw the hall door open wide to reveal a gorgeous little baby dozing placidly in a pram, a beautiful, bouncing boy, dressed in blue and looking so like Alec, it took Emily’s breath away.

  ‘Thank God you’re finally here,’ the younger woman said, smiling at Emily. ‘Alec and I need this date night so badly! So the baby is fed and changed, and I think he should go down for you fairly easily—’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ was all Emily could stammer, as she stepped backwards in shock. ‘I think I must have the wrong address.’

  Frank

  ‘Now you know that here at Creative Solutions, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive organisation.’

  ‘Yes,’ Frank said quietly. ‘Yes, I do know that.’

  ‘And of course, by inclusive, we mean . . . we like to think that we support staff. In everything. In every aspect of their lives. Whatever their . . . orientation.’

  Frank cringed in his chair as he sat opposite the company’s HR manager, Hannah. Ordinarily, Hannah was a generous, hard-working colleague, who had only the best of intentions at heart. She did, however, suffer from a tendency to tie herself up in knots when it came to corporate-speak. So anxious was she not to come across as being politically incorrect, she’d now strayed deep into the territory of acute mortification.

  Carefully, Hannah glanced down at her notes in case there was any other bang-on point she might have forgotten to raise, something that might land her in trouble on social media afterwards. ‘I’m transitioning gender and I got no help or support from my heartless, prejudiced bosses!’ was exactly the sort of post she was clearly hoping to avoid.

  ‘So, moving forward,’ she said, looking earnestly across her desk at Frank, ‘is there anything that we can do to help you with what you’re going through? Professionally, I mean,’ she added hastily. ‘You know what a valued team member you are here at Creative Solutions. We’re anxious to do all we can to make this as seamless as possible for you. We want you to be comfortable here – at Creative Solutions.’