She burst into noisy, messy sobs that sooner or later would require the services of a tissue.
Barry looked on, helplessly, before pulling on his boxers. Presumably, he felt safer with them on than off. Better on than just floating around Becks’ bed, leaving him wholly unprotected in the crotch department.
“Who is she? Is she someone I know? Someone from your work?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Barry looked all sheepish now.
“Why do men always say that?” Before he had a chance to attempt to answer her rhetorical question, she added, “It matters to me! Tell me who it is, Barry, you utter shit, if you ever want to bloody well see me again after tonight.”
Barry hesitated. He looked like he was struggling with something. He opened his mouth to speak just as Becks realised that there was someone downstairs, someone who was banging fairly persistently on the front door. She suddenly felt like the noise had been going on for some time but she’d chosen to block it out.
“Dad’s forgotten his key again,” she said. “Hold that thought. I’ll be back in two seconds.”
Wrapping her dressing-gown tightly around her, she ran down the stairs and opened the door.
It wasn’t her father at all, but two Guards, one male and one female. Their Garda hats were off and in their hands, and their faces were serious. Becks felt like her heart was pounding in her mouth instead of in her chest.
“Are you Rebecca Jamieson?” the male Guard said.
Rebecca started to laugh out loud. “When the Guard is sad, the news is bad!” she exclaimed, parroting a silly jingle she’d heard once on a television sketch show. Still laughing, she repeated: “When the Guard is sad, the news is bad! When the Guard is sad, the news is bad!” She turned and yelled up the stairs “Hey, you, fuckface!”
Barry came rushing down the stairs in just his boxers with his shirt covering up the stupid tattoo.
“Come on down here and hear the news! When the Guard is sad, the news is bad! When the Guard is sad, the news is bad! When the Guard is sad, the news is bad!”
Barefoot, she began to dance a little jig around the hall.
“All right, Becks, all right,” said Barry firmly, stopping her in mid-jig and taking hold of her hands. To the Guards he said: “I’m sorry about this, Guards, I think she’s a little hysterical. We’ve just been having, erm, a small disagreement about, erm, something and nothing, and I think she’s a little bit, um, upset, shall we say. I’m Barry O’Donnell, her boyfriend. What’s wrong? Has there been an accident or something?”
“It’s about her father, Stephen Jamieson,” said the female Guard gently.
Barry caught Becks before she hit the floor.
STOP 13: ST. STEPHEN’S GREEN
Laura again
Laura got on the Luas at the St. Stephen’s Green stop, near her flat, and prepared to take plenty of selfies. She’d gone to a lot of trouble to get ready for work that morning. She went to a lot of trouble to get ready for work every morning, she thought with a sigh, and where had it got her? Precisely nowhere, or at least not where she really wanted to be. Sure, she got the attention of every pervert and sleazebag on public transport, like the guy in the black coat who was eyeing her up a little too attentively right now from two seats down, but she didn’t care two flying fucks for these losers. The only guy whose attention she’d ever really wanted was Paul Sheridan’s, and that was hard enough to get these days. That asshole Barry O’Donnell had dumped her by text a few days ago too. His girlfriend’s father, a raging alcoholic according to Barry, had been knocked down by a hit-and-run driver on his way home from the pub. He was in hospital and wasn’t expected to live.
“I’ve got to be there for Becks,” he’d whined at her in his texts. “You do see that, don’t you, Laura, babes?”
“Oh, just fuck off, Barry, will you?” she’d texted back, annoyed at the blow to her pride – she did the dumping, not some jerk-off of a guy she’d met only for sex a handful of times. Otherwise, she was not too bothered. Barry had been a stop-gap, that was all, nothing more. He was good-looking but a bit too vain and self-centred for her liking. Laura, as a vain, self-centred person herself, recognised the trait instantly in another. She didn’t think a relationship between two similarly selfish people was a good bet – too much jostling for mirror space in the morning – but, for a while, his thick black hair and sturdy, gym-honed body had taken her mind temporarily off her troubles.
She’d met him one day at the Harcourt Street Luas stop. He’d been waiting for this Becks person to beetle down from Charlemont, and Laura had had a few minutes to kill before her journey to work, so she’d walked up to the Harcourt Street stop rather than get on at the Stephen’s Green one as usual, enjoying the fresh air as she walked. They’d started talking at the Luas stop and Barry had given her many admiring glances, which had pleased her and flattered her after all the bullshit with Paul. They’d swapped numbers and he’d called her the minute she got out of work. She’d invited him over to her flat and he’d accepted like a shot. They both knew what he was coming over for.
After breaking up with Paul, it had felt so good to have a nice hefty male body in her arms and in her bed again. Barry was an uncomplicated lover who seemed to want only to climb on top of a woman and mate vigorously. After Paul’s complex needs and all his mad kinky stuff, it had been a blessed relief to have just plain sex and nothing else with Barry. Several times he’d come round to her flat off Stephen’s Green after his work and her own job had finished for the day. He worked in an office on Harcourt Street, which was nice and convenient for her flat. He’d make some lame but plausible excuse to his girlfriend Becks (Laura had seen pictures of her on Barry’s phone – she was a looker all right but appeared a bit on the sappy side and too goody-goody for Laura’s liking) and end up staying half the night at Laura’s place. He seemed to be perfectly okay with just having regular sex and the occasional blowjob, which made a nice change from Paul, who was never content with ordinary lovemaking. Maybe the truth was that Paul couldn’t get aroused unless there was some element of kinkiness, domination and sado-masochism involved. She’d heard of people like that. Either they needed extensive therapy to ‘fix’ themselves and wean themselves off their fixations or, in this modern day-and-age of ‘anything goes’, they just had to learn to live with their obsessions and be comfortable with them and open up about them to others, as if it was no big deal that you needed a household appliance shoved up your hole in order to be able to have an orgasm. Even though Laura missed Paul like crazy and wanted him back, she couldn’t help feeling relieved that, for now at least, she didn’t have to play the bloody dominatrix for him.
Barry O’Donnell loved her collection of kinky underwear and had nearly wet himself with excitement when she wore the stupid purply basque thing she’d worn for Paul. He looked in the mirror a lot though, and he seemed to spend more time and money on his hair than she did on hers, which she didn’t like. And he was always fixing himself, to the point where she wondered if his hair and clothes were actually the most important things in his life. He seemed kind of shallow to her, and immature, like a little boy rather than a man. He took an awful lot of selfies too, just like Laura did (she couldn’t have a go at him for being like that, because she was exactly the same herself), although he was apparently smart enough at cheating to draw the line at uploading to social media the ones he took of himself and Laura at Laura’s flat and even in Laura’s bed. Those were just for his personal use, he said.
“I don’t want Becks finding out about us that way, not when we’re just having a bit of fun,” he’d said with a grin.
You don’t want her to find out about us at all, because I mean less than nothing to you, Laura wanted to say but she didn’t.
She was annoyed that he was always calling her ‘a bit of fun’. That stung a bit, the way guys were always saying that about her. She was always the ‘bit on the side’, never the main course, only the starter or the dessert. Alway
s the girlfriend or the mistress, but never the bride, never the wife. That was increasingly how Paul had made her feel in the final weeks of their relationship, and now Barry was trying to do it too. So she’d fought back, against all the lucky women she resented who had their claws into some guy and thought that meant they owned him. She persuaded Barry to stay overnight at her flat, which she knew would get him in trouble with Becks, and it did. She also persuaded him (and this was an absolute hoot) to get a tattoo on his back, a snake entwined around a rose on his left shoulder blade. She knew that Becks, as a fellow woman, so to speak, would go nuts when she saw it and wonder endlessly who he’d done it for. She was right on both counts. Becks gave Barry merry hell about it and then Barry in turn had given Laura merry hell about that. Shit rolled down, didn’t it? Then there was all the trouble with Becks’ lush of an old man (it was okay for Laura to refer to him as such, because her own mother had a drink problem too, and it would have been hypocritical of her not to admit this), and Barry had had to call a halt to the whole thing, and by text too, the prick. Laura genuinely didn’t care though, or at least so she told herself. It was only her ego that had been bruised, nothing else. Barry had really only been a diversion, a distraction from all the pain and suffering involved in being dumped by a married man who, for better or worse, was still the love of her life. All she’d had on her mind for so long was her big campaign to Get Paul Back. She’d put too much time and effort into that relationship to have it snatched away from her, and yet it was gone nonetheless. How could that be? Still, no one had ever said that life was meant to be fair, had they? And if they had, they’d have been lying, with bells on.
“Please move down the tram,” said the automated female voice.
Laura sighed. Every day was the bloody same. Nothing ever changed.
The first few days without him had been terrible. She’d phoned Barbara, Paul’s wife, at their family home (Laura hated that phrase – she hadn’t had one of those herself growing up, not really, so how dared anyone else live so comfortably and cosily in theirs?) in Stillorgan, just like she’d threatened to, and spilled the beans about herself and Paul. It was Paul’s own fault for running out on her like the coward he was and she, Laura, had felt entirely justified in acting as she had. She was only doing what she said she’d do if he left her that day. It hadn’t gone the way she’d intended, though, and it was a toss-up as to who had felt worst after it, herself or Barbara.
“Hello?” she’d said into the phone that day.
“Hello?” a little girl’s voice had replied.
Oh shit, one of the kids. “Can I speak to your mummy, please?” Laura’s voice was trembling, much to her annoyance. She wanted, needed, to do this right now, while she was all high on adrenalin and righteous fury and indignation. Any delays, and she might lose her nerve.
“Just a minute,” said the little girl.
There was the sound of the phone being put down, then voices and background noise. Laura thought she could hear the sound of cartoons on the television, and picturing the cosy family scene made her feel like Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction, in the bit where she’s looking in the window at her lover with his wife and child and their brand-new rabbit, all curled up nice and warm in front of the fire. Glenn Close’s character is so upset and revolted (and feels so excluded) by the scene that she runs round the side of the house to vomit her guts up. Laura thought it was the one scene in the film that made the woman look human, a sympathetic character instead of just a raving lunatic.
“Hello?” said a woman’s voice.
Laura recognised it because she’d rung the house once or twice before, out of sheer curiosity, just to hear what her lover’s wife, her love rival, sounded like. On each occasion, she’d sounded older than Laura, and tired. On each occasion, Laura had put the phone down without speaking after Barbara picked up.
“Hello?” The woman sounded impatient now. “This is Barbara Sheridan speaking. Who’s this?” She sounded so confident and sure of herself, so goddamn fucking entitled, that Laura felt her own nerve coming back.
“This is Laura Brennan,” she said coolly. “I work at Phelan’s with your husband.”
“Is Paul all right?” the woman said, suddenly sounding panicky.
“He’s fine.” Laura took a deep breath before adding, “I’m just phoning to tell you that I’ve been having sex with Paul for the last two years.”
Her heart was pounding like the clappers, now that she’d actually done it. There was a silence, then the other woman said curtly: “Hold on a minute.”
The phone was put down again, then there was the sound of the television being turned off and children being ushered complainingly out of the room. A minute later the woman was back. Laura could hear the sound of her puffing furiously on a cigarette.
“Has he dumped you then?” Barbara Sheridan said coldly. “That’s the only reason you’re calling here, isn’t it? He’s dumped you, and you’re getting your revenge by phoning me.”
“He-he’ll be back.” Laura’s confidence was somewhat shaken by the other woman’s accurate representation of the situation, as if such a situation had occurred before and she was used to it.
“You don’t fondly suppose, do you,” said Barbara Sheridan bitterly, puffing away on her fag, “that you’re the first great love of Paul’s life? Granted, you might have lasted a bit longer than the others, but you still got dumped in the end, didn’t you?”
“The . . . the others?” whispered Laura. “There were . . . others?”
Barbara Sheridan laughed, a cold, angry sound with no laughter in it. “Of course there’ve been others, you sad, dozy bitch. You’re not even the first to call here, for fuck’s sake. If you believed him when he said that this time was the only time he’d ever broken his marital vows, and he’s only broken them for you because you’re so special, then you deserve all the shit you get from him. For Christ’s sake, there’ve been two others from Phelan’s alone. Remember Diana? She got the sack in the end. And so did that mouthy one with the streaks of pink in her hair – Debbie Somebody.”
Laura listened in shock. Those had been girls who’d left Phelan’s in the last two years, since she’d been there herself. Diana was the woman whose job Laura had applied for when Diana handed in her notice, and Debbie Crosby had been working in Phelan’s when Laura had joined the company two years ago, but she was gone now too. Laura had never known why they’d left. Jesus Christ Almighty. Had they both been shagging Paul? Debbie with the pink hair had only left about six months ago, while Laura had been seeing Paul. Had he been two-timing her with Debbie? It was incredible, impossible – it didn’t bear thinking about. Barbara must be lying. Or maybe she’d seen some things, heard some things and misinterpreted them, put two and two together and made five.
“I don’t believe you,” Laura said, her voice now a lot less confident than she would have liked.
“Believe what you like,” snapped Barbara. “Why don’t you ask him? Or are you afraid to? You’ll not get the truth, mind. He’s a compulsive liar. One of these days I’ll work up the courage to leave him. And then, after I get what I’m owed, you little office scrubbers can divide up the rest for all I care.”
“He . . . Paul doesn’t love you.” Laura was desperate to regain the upper hand, along with some of her previous composure.
Barbara laughed again. “Do you honestly think I give a flying fuck?” She took another long drag on her fag. “Because, if you do, then you’re even dumber than you sound. Good luck to you, Laura Brennan. You’re going to need it.”
Sensing that the other woman was about to hang up, Laura hastily jumped in with, “I’m pregnant too, by the way, Mrs. Barbara Sheridan, and it’s your precious husband’s child. So, how’d you like that, then, Mrs. High-and-Mighty?”
There was a silence, then Barbara hung up with a smart click, leaving Laura to stare, dumbfounded, at the phone.
The few weeks following that phone conversation had been awfu
l, almost unbearable. In Phelan’s, Paul studiously ignored her and, if he absolutely had to interact with her, he was coolly professional, calling her Miss Brennan in tones so frosty that they practically had icicles adhering to them. Laura personally thought that he was drawing much more attention to the issue by being so ridiculously distant and formal towards her publicly, and she didn’t like the sniggers she was sure she could hear coming from the other girls in the typing pool. She was convinced now that they all knew about her and Paul and that he’d dumped her. She was a fucking laughing-stock. When she walked into the office bathroom, the women gathered gossiping around the mirrors would pointedly stop talking and concentrate assiduously on doing themselves up. When she passed any of the men who worked in Phelan’s, they’d eye her up speculatively as if Paul had told them what she was like in bed, or what her body was like under her clothes. It made her more uncomfortable than she’d have ever believed it would. When she and Paul were together, she’d been dying for everyone to know about them. Now that he’d dropped her like a hot spud, the reality was different. They were glad she’d been dumped, she felt sure. They probably saw it as that snotty bitch Laura, the one who was way too much into her looks, being taken down a peg or two and finally getting her come-uppance. The idea that they no doubt were thinking that mortified Laura.
She thought of handing in her resignation and looking for another job, as Paul had so nastily suggested to her on the night he’d dumped her, but why should she? Why should she be the one to have her life disrupted? No way was she looking for a new job just to suit him. She liked her job. Well, okay, so it bored the arse off her – she couldn’t exactly say that she liked it, but it wasn’t too difficult and it paid well. Let him look for a new job if he was so bothered. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t been fired before, anyway, for messing about with the female staff. Had those two girls really left (or been fired) because they’d been screwing Paul and it had all gone tits-up? In that case, why not just get rid of Paul? It wasn’t as if he was indispensable at his job or anything. No one was. He was only a junior manager. More likely it was just because he was the man and they, as women, were the sluts, the office scrubbers as Barbara Sheridan had called them, so they were the dispensable ones. Sexism and an anti-woman bias were obviously alive and well in the workplace, anyway.
Thirteen Stops Page 30