Hello, Heartbreak

by Amy Huberman

  A group of teenage Goths were opposite us, drinking cans of cheap cider. The girls seemed awkward and the boys apologetically self-conscious. They were all dressed in the same uniform: black trousers, black jumpers and Doc Martens. I wondered if Goths ever wore shorts or flip-flops or if they ever went to the beach. Maybe they could get that white makeup with an SPF in it.

  Cian cleared his throat. ‘I thought about you for days after I saw you in the shop.’

  ‘Well, I thought about you for months after you dumped me.’

  Another silence. I watched the ducks fight for the bread as the little girl tossed pieces into the water.

  ‘I’ve missed you.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’ve missed you.’

  ‘Oh, piss off.’

  ‘I have, Izzy. I know I have no right to come and say this to you now, after everything I’ve done, but…’ his voice dropped ‘… I can’t stop thinking about you.’

  My heart was pounding and I broke into a sweat. Was this a dream?

  ‘I fucked up. Big-time. I wish I’d never met her,’ he continued, his voice wavering. He was nervous.

  But not half as nervous as I was. I tried to slow my breathing in the hope that my heart would stop banging so violently against my ribs. So this wasn’t just an apology? It was…

  ‘You have no idea how much it killed me knowing I’d hurt you so badly. But it all just spiralled out of control. She was so demanding and it had gone too far and I felt so sick with the guilt. I knew you’d never forgive me…’

  ‘So you picked her.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘What was it like? Enlighten me.’

  ‘I got to the stage where I hated being around you because I was so ashamed of myself. You didn’t deserve to be treated like that. I knew I’d messed it up for us. But she kept calling and calling and… it just sort of became something. I’d never intended that to happen.’

  ‘Were you ever in love with her?’

  ‘No,’ he said, after a moment or two.

  ‘Did you fall out of love with me?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Izzy, I don’t know. You must think I’m so weak.’

  ‘At this stage, I’d say that weakness was one of your better features.’

  ‘You have every right to. But…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Well, we hadn’t been getting on too well. You and me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You seemed distant a lot of the time.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Cian! What did you expect me to be like? You were so bloody stroppy. I could never win with you. You’d get so moody, not to mention the effort it took you to show me even the slightest bit of affection. Until, of course, the guilt got to you and you’d sweep me off my feet with some over-the-top romantic gesture. So don’t turn this around on me, you prick.’

  I watched him pick the petals off a daisy and toss them into the water. They sat in a bundle on the surface briefly, then spread out lazily.

  ‘She’s nothing like you.’

  ‘I don’t want to know.’

  The little girl with the bread was hopping towards the gate with her mother, and the crowd of Goths had finished their cider. It was getting dark now and the warmth was seeping out of the day. I shivered. He tried to put his arm around me. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He picked another daisy and tore at its petals. He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not. ‘Izzy, I still love you.’

  I closed my eyes tightly and allowed a tear to tumble down my cheek. ‘Please don’t.’ I got to my feet. My head felt so heavy and my neck could hardly hold it upright. I wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep. I wanted to be at home with my mum, on the couch with a cup of tea. I wanted to close my eyes and forget the world.

  I walked towards the park gate, Cian behind me. I went down Grafton Street, not sure where I was going. Home? I turned into South Anne Street and passed the Bailey. I decided to go in. I went straight up to the bar and ordered a double vodka.

  I could sense him behind me. He ordered a pint of Guinness. We stood at the bar for an hour, drinking and not talking. Then we got a taxi back to his place.

  As soon as we got there, we ripped each other’s clothes off.

  25

  I hadn’t slept a wink the night before and I knew I wouldn’t sleep tonight. Getting through today had been a challenge, and by the time I finished work, all I wanted to do was go home and sprawl on the couch. But if I did, I’d blurt everything to Susie and Keelin. And I couldn’t face the consequences of that. They’d lock me in the cupboard under the stairs because I was a liability to myself. They’d tell me it was for my own good and they’d probably make it comfortable, with pillows and chocolate and self-help books and stuff.

  The next morning I went into the Lights! Camera! Action! office to sort through some files and discuss interest rates and over-budgeting with Laurence. Blah blah blah profit share blah blah twenty-six per cent blah blah return on investment. I think I managed to pull a muscle in my neck from all the enthusiastic nodding I did to hide the fact that I didn’t understand or give a shit what he was on about.

  Eve purred sarcastically that they’d all missed me ‘terribly’ since I’d been working on-set.

  ‘We have, pet,’ Geraldine put in. ‘Gets very serious in here altogether when you’re not around.’

  ‘That’s because there’s work to be done, Geraldine,’ Eve said authoritatively. ‘It can’t always be fun and giggles.’

  ‘Heaven forbid! Why don’t I organize some hair shirts for us and some electric-shock computer keyboards so we can rule out the possibility of extracting any joy whatsoever from our jobs?’

  ‘Now, now, ladies,’ Laurence remonstrated. ‘We don’t want to put Izzy off coming back to us.’

  ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea, love, and you can tell us all the gossip on-set.’

  ‘Damn right,’ said Laurence. ‘I want to know everything about the actors. Especially any information on what Gavin Reed was doing with Saffron Spencer in the conservatory at Eve’s engagement party!’

  Even though I knew the truth, the sound of their names in the same sentence still unnerved me.

  ‘They would make such a gorgeous couple – their children! Go and put the kettle on,’ Eve interrupted, removing her glasses and folding them up neatly. ‘Ten minutes and then back to work.’

  ‘Thanks for that, Your Majesty. Do let me know which toilet breaks you’ve pencilled me in for,’ Geraldine muttered under her breath and, still sitting in her wheelie chair, propelled herself to the sink and flicked the kettle on.

  We sat nursing our mugs of tea and chatted about what I’d been getting up to on the set and what I’d been missing in the office. Even though I’d seen them a few days ago at Eve’s engagement party, it was a good excuse to put our feet up and do as little work as possible. I was all for that. Especially today. I told them about Saffron Spencer and what a pain in the arse she was, how she carried on as if she owned the place, and how rude she was to the crew members she thought were beneath her. Eve refuted this, saying she thought she was a complete dote when she’d spoken to her at her party. Now why didn’t that surprise me? When Geraldine asked if Saffron was going to be one of the bridesmaids at her wedding, Eve failed to detect the sarcasm in her voice and replied that she’d have to think about it.

  Geraldine told us that Ger was in hospital with an ingrown toenail, and you’d swear his body was being amputated from the waist down, with all the moaning and complaining he was doing. Not to mention the late-night phone calls she was getting from him saying he couldn’t sleep for the stress.

  Eve told us she’d booked a castle in Scotland for the wedding reception in January. And how she was going to arrive to the church in a Swarovski-crystal-studded husky-drawn sledge. She had always dreamt of a winter wedding, and if it didn’t snow, she was going to hire a fake
-snow machine. She said that Philippe was going to arrive on a snow white horse and she’d enrolled him for riding lessons up in Enniskerry. The last time he’d been on an animal’s back it had been a donkey in Dublin zoo when he was seven. He’d fallen off and broken his arm. Now he was petrified of the entire equine family. Nice for Eve to have taken that on board.

  Suddenly we heard Fintan’s door handle turn and we all whipped back to our desks. I put on my work face, the one that belies the fact I’d rather be slicing out my own retina with a scalpel than doing any work.

  ‘That 1.46 per cent making a bit more sense now?’ Laurence beamed proudly at me from his desk, thinking he’d inspired some mathematical genius in me.

  So my work face had the desired effect. Nice one.

  I got through the rest of the day, flicking through files and sorting out the scraps of paper that littered my desk. Eve made me type up some stuff for her on the computer – apparently I looked as if I needed a ‘challenge’. I did it to avoid an argument but left in a few typos so she’d have to redo it after I’d gone. I hadn’t liked the sarcasm with which she’d imbued ‘challenge’.

  Just as I was about to leave, Geraldine asked me to give Gavin a buzz and ask him if he’d be in tomorrow or would he be still off gallivanting on the other, more exciting projects.

  Oh.

  I didn’t want to call Gavin. I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps I’d tell him everything that had happened the night before and he’d think I was a fool.

  Which I was.

  I pretended to punch his number into my phone. ‘Engaged,’ I said, then grabbed my bag and ran out of the office.

  I’d felt numb all day, as if my body had been injected with an anaesthetic, but I could still see and hear everything around me. Now, though, the numbness was abating and a frisson crept in. Of shame.

  I’d slept with Cian.

  I’d actually slept with Cian.

  He had called to my door to say he was sorry, that he had made a mistake, that he missed me. Did I slap his face for having the gall to show up out of the blue like that? Did I kick him in the balls and wallop him over the head with a rolling pin? No. I decided to have sex with him.

  Gloria Gaynor would be so ashamed of me.

  Not that I even owned a rolling pin. Didn’t think I’d even seen one since my Blue Peter days. But it was my weapon of choice for inflicting pain on Cian in my head. That or a pitchfork. Which I didn’t own either. Wow. I really hadn’t thought it through properly. In truth, I’d not expected to hear from him again. Not after ten months. Inflicting pain on Cian had been something to entertain myself with, like when I was bored waiting in a queue, or on a bus, or in work talking to Laurence. I’d never imagined I’d get an opportunity to do anything about it.

  When we got back to his place last night, I was like a mad woman. All the anger, hurt, regret and betrayal that’d been planted in me ten months before grew roots, branches and more branches until I thought I was going to explode. I needed to get them out of my system. Now! I could have thrown every plate in his kitchen at his head, but that would only have made me feel worse.

  The only thing I could do was respond when he touched me.

  He pushed my back to the wall and kissed me hard. He dragged my T-shirt over my head and undid my belt buckle. I grabbed at his jeans buttons and ripped at his shirt and before I knew it we were standing in his hall in our underwear. He lifted me up and carried me to the kitchen table. There, he continued to kiss me. Everywhere.

  I couldn’t wait. I needed him inside me. Now!

  It was quick and furious and uncomfortable. And then it was over.

  ‘Izzy, I love you.’

  ‘Get the fuck off me.’ I shoved him away with the only shred of energy I had left.

  ‘I’ll run you a bath,’ he said, and left me lying there. I counted eight separate damp patches on the ceiling. One looked like the face of an old woman, another like Gonzo from The Muppet Show.

  I sat in the bath for an hour, letting occasional tears roll down my face and plink into the water. When I got out, he wrapped me in a towel and gently patted me dry. I crawled into one of his T-shirts and he led me into his bedroom and rolled down the duvet.

  I got into his bed and he tucked himself in beside me and held me to his chest. We lay like that for hours, not talking, not sleeping, not moving. Until I bolted up. I needed to get out of there.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Izzy, stay. Please.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please,’ he implored, as I climbed back into my clothes.

  ‘No, Cian.’ I pushed his hands away.

  What on earth was I doing? I was here with Cian. In his house. In his bed!

  I ran down the stairs and out of the front door and looked about frantically for a taxi. I spotted one with its light on, stopped at the traffic-lights down the road, sprinted to it and jumped into the back.

  My phone beeped in my bag. I pulled it out. His name was flashing on the screen. My eyes glazed and I wanted to throw up. But I didn’t have enough money to pay the driver’s soil-age charge, so I forced myself to hold it down. Not that he would have noticed – he was too busy having a one-way conversation with the late-night talk-show host on the radio: ‘Recession, me hole! The politicians have just nicked all the money and are hiding it for themselves somewhere. It’s probably in some cave down the country!’

  I got into my house and found a note from Keelin:

  Where the hell did you disappear to? Thought you’d slipped on one of those water-chestnut yokes you put in your stir-fries and were lying unconscious on the kitchen floor. Got bored standing on the porch wondering whether you were alive or not so I called over to Will, Caroline and co. till Susie came home. Anyway, turns out you hadn’t slipped on a water-chestnut on the kitchen floor so I assume you got a better offer and headed off out for the night. You lucky bitch. I sat in and watched some programme about courtship rituals in Carlow in the 1800s on TG4. And it didn’t even have subtitles. God, this note is long. I have a cramp in my hand. Night x

  I scribbled, ‘Had to go home, Emma had a fake-tan emergency. Me and Mum had to soak her knees and elbows in nail-polish remover’ at the bottom of her note. Hopefully she’d see it before she left for work in the morning. It wasn’t very inventive, but it was all I could think of. And, knowing Emma, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

  I couldn’t tell her where I’d been. I couldn’t tell anyone. Not Keelin or Susie or Emma or Mum or Gavin or anyone.

  My phone beeped in my hand and I watched Cian’s name flash on to the screen again.

  26

  ‘So you really think it’s too much?’

  ‘Keelin, I can see the tops of your nipples.’

  ‘But if I wear my hair down it’ll cover them up a bit… no?’

  ‘Keelin, you have a bob. I don’t care how pert your boobs are, they can’t be that pert. And all the male guests will get a simultaneous erection, which will make things awkward.’

  ‘But it’s my birthday. And that’s always been one of my fantasies.’

  ‘To be in a room with twenty horny drunk Irish men?’

  ‘You make it sound so unsexy.’

  ‘May I remind you that Aidan will be there?’

  ‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’ She raced over to her chest of drawers and pulled out a black string top and put it on under her dress. ‘When you say stuff like that you make me want to go to confession and do two hours of Hail Marys.’

  ‘Much better,’ I said.

  She stood in front of her mirror and lifted the hem of her dress until it rested dangerously just below her knickers.

  ‘Keelin!’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ she said, letting it drop to mid-thigh. ‘Since when did you get all Taliban?’

  ‘You look gorgeous as you are. And he’s already noticed you – you don’t have to try so hard any more.’

  She looked doubtful.

  Simon was coming
to the party tonight and I could tell she was petrified.

  ‘It’s just… What if he gets bored, meeting my friends and stuff? It might take the mystery out of it all. I mean, it’s fine at work. But what if it doesn’t translate to the real world?’ She plopped onto the bed. I’d never seen her so insecure about a guy before and found it endearing: if she hadn’t felt a bit vulnerable, she wouldn’t have cared that it might not work out.

  ‘You might get lucky tonight yourself, Iz. Plenty of top totty coming. And you’re on a roll in the sex department.’

  I picked at my nails to avoid looking at her.

  ‘How long has it been now?’

  Four days. ‘God, I dunno. A few weeks… Jonathan,’ I said instead. ‘Let’s hope I don’t have to wait as long again, eh?’ I guffawed over-enthusiastically. She glanced sideways at me. Did she know I was hiding something?

  ‘When are you going to see him again?’

  ‘Who knows? Anyway, it was good fun, did what it was supposed to do. Better go and get ready.’ I got up off her bedroom floor and headed into my own room.

  ‘I wanna see some tit!’ she called after me. ‘We’re gonna try and get you some action tonight. It’s like breaking the seal. Once you go, you need to keep going!’

  Jaysus, easy on there, I thought. Was Keelin turning into Hugh Hefner in her old age? I pulled open my wardrobe.

  As it was her birthday she’d decided earlier in the week that she wanted to have a big party in our house to celebrate. She was afraid no one would come on account of the drugs fiasco, which nearly everyone in Dublin had heard about – she’d had a text from someone asking if there was going to be hardcore knackers there or what was the craic. She’d been a bit worried by that and had sent a group text to everyone: Just to assure you that the type of craic we’ll be having is of the fun variety, not the narcotics. And although I’m very open to multi-culturalism, no drug dealers will be at the party. But if you do have friends from any other ethnic backgrounds, all are welcome! Snacks, mixers and police protection will be provided. A workmate of Will’s had spent a summer in Ibiza as a male stripper for hen parties. The policeman routine with the cuffs and the baton was his most requested performance. It was close enough.