Don't You Forget About Me

by Mhairi McFarlane

  Phone numbers on beer mats get slid across the bar. Outright offers are made at closing time by the sozzled. Whispering, giggling groups heavily laden with floral Jo Malone scents come in, and choose particular tables that offer a good view. Kitty and I get asked ‘Who’s that?’ ‘Is he single?’ on the regular. ‘Is the dark-haired guy working tonight?’ is a question which, if answered in the negative, causes faces to fall.

  If Lucas notices any of this, he doesn’t let on, the attention bouncing off his self-contained, serious demeanour. When directly asked out, he shrugs and smiles, bats it away as a patently non-serious query. Don’t get enough time off. Same again?

  Today he’s got the open fire at the far end of the main bar going again, after tearing the old boxy fascia from its charming period features in a soot-caked, bare-forearmed bout of manly practical labour that I didn’t notice whatsoever, obviously.

  The same can’t be said for a couple of thirty-somethings who I could swear were taking covert photos. Imagery of Lucas is now whizzing around on WhatsApp groups, captioned with tongue-lolling emojis, and he is entirely oblivious. I felt protective, which I’m sure is empathy, as someone who’s had her fair share of arse pinches from slimy old fellas.

  When the mid-week shift enters its last hour, Lucas reappears after a shower upstairs, hair still slightly damp, puts a bottle of beer into the opener, flips the lid, drinks.

  He says, nodding his head at the Share Your Shame poster:

  ‘Heard from laughing boy since Saturday?’ He pauses. ‘Tell me if I’m overstepping.’

  I’m immediately embarrassed and mutter Oh no, thank God. It reveals Lucas has been thinking about me, however, and I don’t know if this is a good thing or not. My friends had been in touch with a deluge of ‘FUCK HIM’-style texts and calls the next day, including a rather heartfelt ‘And I thought I had issues with Phil’ from Jo, and Esther, in typical Esther way had called to say, ‘You don’t half pick them, Gog.’ But then, more gently, ‘Let me know if you want to talk about it. No one treats my sister like that.’ I appreciate this, even if it is an objectively untrue statement.

  Deafening silence from Robin, which I hope rather than believe to be a permanent state of affairs.

  ‘I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I got a bad feeling about him,’ Lucas says.

  ‘Hah, yep. You’ve saved time there.’

  Lucas pauses, waiting for me to go on. I realise this is a gesture of friendship, and possibly an attempt to get to know me.

  ‘Thank you again for being so quick about kicking him out,’ I say. ‘He’s malicious. He does these vicious things, supposedly light-heartedly. He plays everything for laughs even when the effect on you is far from funny. Comedians, I guess.’

  Lucas visibly relaxes and says: ‘Yes. My assessment exactly. I’ve said to Dev, it was a power play disguised as a declaration of love. He discussed your personal life, in the middle of your workplace. It was an act of aggression.’

  I nod vigorously, even as my gut crimps a little at the thought of lovely Dev hearing about this shitshow too. Dev’s been back from Ireland since Monday and is currently out back tinkering with the kitchen equipment, so it’s just Lucas and me behind the bar for the moment.

  ‘Yep,’ I agree. ‘This isn’t about getting me back. It’s about winning.’

  Your personal life – my stomach flexes. Robin regaled them about Lou, my walking in on them. Lucas must think my life is a bin fire on a patch of wasteland.

  Much as I hate that he bore witness to Robin’s speech, I’m also struck by real gratitude for a responsible adult spending the time to form an opinion, and not coming to the popular conclusion that it’s my fault.

  ‘I don’t want to alarm you but he didn’t strike me as someone who will give up, any time soon either,’ Lucas says. ‘If he’s got anything personal he thinks he can use against you … well. Get in first and threaten him with a writ, or a baseball batting.’

  I suspect Lucas means naked pictures, and I feel heat rising in my face. Lucas breaks eye contact, on the pretext of fussing over Keith, and as I watch him continue to avoid my gaze, I’m certain he means revenge porn. Thank God, Robin and I were a notch too old and I’m a notch too prudish for that.

  And I had always known that Robin was careless – if anyone was going to accidentally send a photo of my lace-clad buttocks to the group LADS WALK PENNINE WAY: SEPTEMBER on WhatsApp, it’d have been him.

  ‘No, nothing of a sensitive or unclothed nature whatsoever. Thank God. I am not a fan of what I believe are called “belfies”.’

  Lucas grimaces. ‘I don’t even know the word so I won’t ask more.’

  I hesitate. ‘Is that true about the fine for filming? When you got his agent to delete the video?’

  ‘Oh, no. Private property but open to the public, so he was within his rights. But I thought you’d prefer there not to be a record.’

  ‘Hah! But you seemed so certain?’

  ‘That’s how you get anyone to believe anything.’

  I say thanks to Lucas, a sincere thank you, tinged with slight awe. And a lingering question about whether I’ve been similarly made to believe anything.

  ‘Enough! I can’t do my job in these conditions!’ Devlin says, over the strains of Ed Sheeran. The last punter has left, Dev’s abandoned the kitchen and the clean-up is underway. He disappears for a fiddle with the music system and Guns ’n’ Roses ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ peals out at deafening volume.

  Dev and I get on, we have good colleague chemistry. Both of us understand you don’t whine or sulk. If there’s a crap task, get on the other side of it; complaining about it only makes it loom larger.

  ‘Fridge my fancy fruit!’ Dev calls to me, as I’m putting the garnishes away, and bowls a Sicilian blood orange at me.

  I catch it and put it on the side of the bar. ‘That was easy. Over arm next time.’

  I am conscious of Lucas watching me. First he was looking at his phone, now me. My skin prickles.

  Dev lobs another orange and I lunge and catch it.

  ‘Oh you’re good. Let me guess, always centre in netball?’

  I laugh. Another volley. Another catch.

  ‘I’ll leave you two to it,’ Lucas says, with a sigh, unsticking himself from the wall and vanishing upstairs.

  I wipe the tables down while Devlin rinses the drip trays and crashes empties into the bottle bin.

  As he’s cashing up and I’m slotting the wine glasses from the dishwasher into the shelves, I risk an observation about the dispositional difference between the McCarthy brothers.

  ‘Oh yeah. I’m louder, but Luc has a strong sense of humour. He’s very dry. Dry and sly, that’s him.’

  ‘Oh sure, I didn’t mean that. Just the outgoingness, I suppose. He’s great to work with,’ I add, hurriedly, worried that I might capsize good relations by this being relayed back to Lucas in blunt terms.

  ‘You’re not seeing Lucas at his best, either,’ Devlin says, swigging from a pint of tap water, under the pumps.

  ‘No …?’ I say, gingerly.

  ‘Nah,’ he shakes his head. ‘Not with what he’s been through.’

  I get the impression that Devlin, while in no way malicious, is fairly indiscreet, and that this might well be another point of friction between the brothers. Especially given the younger is a Sphinx-like riddle.

  I can’t resist asking now. I mean, I’m clearly being invited to ask.

  ‘Been through …?’

  ‘With his wife,’ Devlin says, and the word wife hits me like a sparring jab to the ribs. Lucas. Wife? He’s a lad in a faded t-shirt and Dr Martens who has to share his homework with me, he can’t have a wife?!

  It’s the strangest thing, especially given Lucas is so easy on the eye, but I never considered until this moment that he had any serious Significant Other. He walked back into my life without anyone at his side, and I assumed … Wishful? I don’t know.

  I mean, in time I was braced for some astonis
hing creature with hair like molasses to sashay up to the bar, and say in a Celtic brogue: Is Luc about? then vanish upstairs, as someone with the sort of rights that meant they didn’t need to knock first. And for us not to see Lucas at all for the next forty-eight hours, and for me to spend a lot of time trying not to think about that. But she wasn’t going to be a wife. I’d made up the rules.

  ‘He’s married?’ I say, hoping I sound casual. He doesn’t wear a wedding ring? A wife.

  ‘Yes, well, he was. She died. He’s a widower.’

  I open my mouth and close it again. Devlin continues:

  ‘Brain tumour. Very sudden, last year. She had eight weeks from diagnosis,’ he shakes his head. ‘He doesn’t say much so it’s hard to know what’s going on inside his head. I pushed to buy this place because I thought he needed a distraction, something to focus on, you know? He’s always been down on Sheffield, I was surprised he agreed.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.’

  ‘Don’t say anything will you?’ Devlin says. ‘He’s not one for opening up and sharing and I probably shouldn’t have said.’

  ‘No of course not, don’t worry.’

  I’ve tried, very carefully, to hide my special interest in Lucas from Devlin – well, from anyone – but there’s something I want to know so much that I can’t stop myself.

  ‘Devlin. What was her name? Lucas’s wife?’

  ‘Oh, Niamh. We called our daughter after her. You know, you say it NEVE but it’s got a crackpot Gaelic spelling. N-I-A-M-H.’

  ‘That’s beautiful.’

  Devlin nods back and gives a sad smile.

  I don’t concentrate on anything I’m doing, as I head off to my taxi in quiet turmoil.

  I feel more foolish than ever about my reaction to Lucas to forgetting me.

  Before, it was wounded pride, aching heart, knowing it was so significant to me and not to him. I felt like I deserved my misery. Now, I realise I was other things too. Petty, self-important and ridiculous.

  I expected him to care about someone he tapped off with during the last summer of A-levels. While he’d been dealing with the love of his life, dying.

  As I fully expected, she’s beautiful. I mean, was beautiful.

  Staring into Niamh’s deep-set brown eyes, mine following her as she cavorts through holidays, weddings and mimes fake surprise at office Secret Santas, I think, I didn’t know her and yet I can’t believe she’s gone. It’s not as if death was ever easy to accept, but this vibrant and informal digital afterlife we have now makes it even more incomprehensible. Dad would hate it.

  I’ve wasted no time finding Niamh online.

  I got in from The Wicker, and scanned my latest Karen love note:

  • SHARWOOD’S GARLIC NAAN (1) – MISSING

  • AMOY LIGHT SOY SAUCE – ONE QUARTER MISSING AND CAP BROKEN

  • QUAKER PORRIDGE, SYRUP FLAVOUR – PACKET STRANGELY DAMP: ANY IDEAS??

  So many ideas, Karen, involving you accidentally self-immolating while making your blueberry Pop Tarts.

  I went upstairs, hauled my laptop onto my knees in bed, opened Facebook and searched Niamh McCarthy (even the name is gorgeously musical).

  Straight away, I found a public memorial page. I could see the posts, read the tributes. I think I’m right that Lucas has no online presence because I see no tagging. And there’s no sign of him in the many pictures posted either, which seems slightly odd.

  It’s the right Niamh though, of that I’m sure – not only do the dates match, but every so often, someone refers to Lucas in passing, saying he’s in their prayers and so forth.

  Lucas’s late wife has high cheekbones and a ribbon of a mouth with a pronounced Cupid’s bow, constantly curled in amusement. The profile photo is one with her brown-black hair in tendrils, whipping round her rosy face as she laughs, caught in an unguarded moment while doing something healthy up a hill. There’s a vast gallery of photos and I click through them, fascinated and voyeuristic.

  When looking at a photo with enough dark space, I see my own face reflected back in the laptop. I look like a looming ghost. It’s me, Cathy …

  An eight-week illness. He must still be reeling. I can’t imagine.

  I found out about Dad in one terrible phone call from Esther, as she stood outside the Royal Hallamshire Hospital and I stood in the university library, saying ‘What?’ on repeat, because she’d just said something so obscene and absurd it couldn’t be true. Esther later told me she was going to say Dad was ‘critical’ so I wasn’t alone when I found out, but she couldn’t bear to give me the false hope. I don’t really remember my train journey down from Newcastle. But losing your parents is still something you expect to go through, someday. Losing your other half at thirty isn’t.

  Niamh was a ‘podiatrist by day, poet by night’ apparently. Born: Galway. Lived: Dublin. Thirty-three. Thirty-bloody-three. There’s a photo of her petting Keith. Comments underneath about him being the love of her life.

  There’s none of her looking sick – I guess she wasn’t sick for long enough.

  Instead, she’s holding a stein of beer in Berlin, one thumb up to the camera. In a flowered, strappy dress, hair swept up, head on one side. Caption: ‘Tara and Terry’s wedding.’ Cuddling someone’s baby, her lipsticked lips puckered and pressed against its chubby little jowls. Caption: ‘Rupert loves his Aunty Niamh already!’ Round for dinner at someone’s house, the ‘before we tuck in’ picture, her superior bone structure peeking out of a row of grinning people, poised around a platter of lamb kofta.

  Why no Lucas? Does he hate the camera? I don’t think it’d hate him.

  Wait, buried in a set of five, captioned: ‘@ Dun Laoghaire’ – here he is. My stomach lurches at the sight of Lucas, personal and off duty, which is ridiculous, given he’s no one to me. And vice versa.

  He’s sat looking up at the lens, arm on the back of a sofa. It has peach, plushy, slightly dated upholstery that says it’s a parental or even grandparental house. Niamh is next to him, in a striped top and jeans, legs crossed, beaming. Lucas’s expression is polite acquiescence, but there’s some sort of resentment behind it. I get a peculiar sensation of the telepathy he and I once shared, age eighteen, when I felt I could read his thoughts. Hah, but you couldn’t, I remind myself.

  God, but he’s stunning. I feel almost irritated that I was the first to notice the luminous quality of his skin, the inkiness of his hair, the intensity when he fastens his sight on you. A cult band I once loved is now at Number One and my status as Biggest Fan is now lost in a sea of admiration.

  Since he’s become suddenly single and wreathed in tragedy, it’s possible he had to leave Ireland to stop himself being mobbed.

  I completely recalibrate my recent judgements of Lucas’s behaviour, in light of this horrible bereavement. To think I’ve been cheeky about his lack of joie de vivre. I almost physically cringe.

  As I read about the vivacious, popular Niamh, the light of his life, the light gone out in his life, there’s something unnatural I’m feeling. Something weird and ungenerous and irrational and appalling, and eventually I admit it to myself.

  I am jealous of her.

  24

  Esther you didn’t tell Mum & G about the free Robin stand-up show, did you?

  No! Why?

  I have been summoned for a ‘coffee and a cake’ by them and Mum won’t say why. It reeks of Having A Quiet Word About Something. Gx

  Well, not guilty. I told them your writing was really good though so maybe it’s to congratulate you

  AHAHHAHHAHA. YEAH. X

  I pocket my phone and twitch with low level anxiety. Mum gets on at me plenty, but she’s never gnomic and mysterious.

  Across the street, in khaki Barbour, Geoffrey approaches me. Something in his clenched, determined expression is unpromising. He is not doing a saunter, or a cheery amble.

  ‘Hi! Where’s Mum?’ I say, warily. Hoping for ‘just parking the car’ while knowing Geoffrey would never let a woman
drive him.

  ‘She’s not coming,’ he says, awkwardly.

  ‘Oh. Is she not well?’

  ‘Bit under the weather, yes,’ Geoffrey says.

  Oh God, have they had a fight? Why didn’t they cancel? My shoulders hunch at what lies before me – a whole social occasion with only Geoffrey. I’d hoped to end my days never experiencing that. I reluctantly follow him into the café, trying to make sure my thought processes aren’t revealed by involuntary grimacing.

  He jangles his change in his pocket and makes a show of inspecting the cake display.

  ‘What’ll it be? Those little tarts with kiwis look enticing. Or perhaps a French Horn.’

  ‘Uhm …’ I’m not hungry at all – who is, for afternoon tea? – but I feel I should show willing and ask for a bun with my coffee.

  ‘I’ll just have a cuppa I think,’ Geoffrey says, after. Great. He can’t be arsed with his half of this charade.

  He tries to order by rapping knuckles on the glass case of patisserie, until a wrung-out looking waitress looks over and explains it’s table service. Geoffrey has that manner with strangers where he’s not rude, exactly, but always several shades brisker than he needs to be, giving me the adolescent wince of embarrassment. Without doubt, he would crash and burn on the Waiter Test.

  We find seats, winding our way past a sixty-something man reading the paper and eating an egg custard tart, and it makes me think of outings with Dad. I crush the thought as soon as it’s formed because with Geoffrey here instead, the universe is warped and will be forever. It’s like ripping the stitches out of a wound that never heals.

  I find a table and a waitress follows, setting plates and cups down with our order. I pinch my Elephant’s Foot, take a tiny bite, wipe the chocolate from my hands with a paper napkin and wonder how on earth I’ll find half an hour’s conversation with Geoffrey.

  ‘Has Mum seen a doctor?’

  Geoffrey shakes his head while blowing on his tea.

  ‘I might pop round,’ I say.

  ‘No no no, no need for that, she’s sleeping actually. I’m sure she’ll be right as rain by tomorrow.’