It's Got To Be Perfect

by Claire Allan

  Pearse nodded. I knew I was winning. I knew him well enough to know that appealing to his ego was the absolute best way to achieve anything.

  “Right, one time. And tell Bob it better work. And it had better be classy. Manna is not a knocking shop and I won’t have my name dragged through the mud. I’ll draw up a sample menu – you can return that to your clients – and we’ll take it from there.”

  “Great, Pearse. You won’t regret it,” I said, standing up and shaking his hand. I wondered why I had never noticed before how limp his handshake was. It made me feel funny and not in a nice way.

  I walked away feeling proud of myself – after all, despite the very dodgy scenario of running into Ant, I had managed not to make anything worse in the last couple of hours. Given how things had gone recently I figured that was a major achievement.

  I would go so far as to say I was almost on a high as I drove back to the office to move the plans on to the next stage with Bob.

  I stopped on the way and picked up some delicious treats from M&S and knew that when I got home I would be able to sort things out with Darcy.

  And my heart felt lighter still when I walked back into the office to find a huge giftwrapped box of goodies from Ant. There was wine. There was chocolate. There were edible knickers. The sentiment was unmissable but just in case I needed some clarification the card read: “Was lovely to see you today. Can’t wait to see to you again sometime soon.”

  Yes, it was kind of dirty. And it kind of reinforced the notion that he might just be using me for sex but it felt me feel nice all the same. Fionn smiled at me from across the room and when I checked my email there was a note from her proclaiming that I was a lucky bitch. Smugly, I admitted to myself that I did feel like a bit of a lucky bitch in that moment.

  18

  Darcy was sitting on the sofa watching Home and Away and painting her nails when I arrived home laden with my M&S bags and my huge box of goodies from Ant.

  She looked up as I stumbled in the door. “I’m pretty sure he’s interested in you,” she said with a wink. “I’ll put the kettle on make us a brew.” She got up and hobbled, wet toes curled upwards, towards the kitchen.

  “Naw, sit down, Darcy. I’ll make dinner. I’ve brought a lovely, gooey, cheesy pasta thing and then for afters a lovely, gooey, chocolatey pudding thing. And if you are really good,” I said, delving in the gift box, “I’ll share my edible knickers with you.”

  She let out a roar of laughter, hobbled back to the sofa and sat down. “I’ll go for the pasta and the pudding. The sweetie thong you can keep for yourself. Will be nice to have someone cook for me. Gerry isn’t up to much in the kitchen.”

  “Least I could do after being a cow last night,” I said with genuine remorse.

  “I think I was the cow,” she said.

  “No . . . well, maybe we were both cows . . . but I’m worried about you, Darce,” I said, sitting down beside her and kicking off my shoes.

  “Nothing to worry about,” she said with a smile. And, while the smile was still Darcy’s trademark all-teeth-and-gums grin, her eyes gave away the fact that something was amiss.

  “Is it Gerry? Is everything okay there?”

  “Annie. Honestly. I’m fine. Must be PMT or something. I just had a bad day. I have them sometimes, like we all do. But it’s grand. Honest.” She turned her head back to the TV. “Not been the same since Pippa left,” she said, nodding at the residents of Summer Bay and I knew the discussion was over for the evening.

  An hour later we were at the table eating the creamy, cheesy pasta, and making suitable yummy noises while discussing the merits of Home and Away versus Neighbours, when the intercom buzzed to life.

  “Expecting anyone?” Darcy asked.

  “Maybe it’s Scott Robinson come to take me away from it all? I always fancied changing my name to Charlene,” I joked, shovelling one more spoonful of dinner into my mouth before answering the buzzer.

  “Annie, it’s me. Can I come up?” Fionn asked, a distinct waver in her voice.

  “Sure, course you can,” I answered, shooting a confused look at Darcy.

  “Not Scott then?” she asked as I hung up.

  “Nope. It’s Fionn and she sounded funny.”

  “Funny ha ha, or funny peculiar?”

  “Definitely peculiar,” I said, walking down the hall and opening the front door, just in time to see Fionn lumping what looked like her entire earthly belongings up the stairs.

  “It’s over,” she said dramatically. “Or at least that bastard is going to think it is until he wises the feck up!”

  I doubted my gob had ever been so smacked before.

  Fionn staggered in as I held the door open. She walked down the hall, dumped her bags on the living-room floor and sat down at the table, spooned some of my lovely pasta in her mouth and took a deep breath.

  “Darcy, how the hell are you?” she asked with a grin and I wondered if it was her turn to have some sort of breakdown.

  “Fine,” Darcy replied, mildly amused.

  “Great, great. Annie, is there any more of this? I’m fecking starving! I’ve hardly eaten a damn thing in the last three weeks because of that wedding dress so, seeing as I might not actually get to wear the damn thing at all, I might as well eat whatever the shag I want and grow to the size of a house. So if you have any garlic bread, or parmesan, or even lard, then bring it on because I don’t care any more.”

  I nodded mutely and walked to the kitchen and dished her up a plate of pasta before grating a small mountain of cheese on the top.

  “Will this do?” I asked, presenting it to her.

  “Perfect, absolutely perfect,” she said and turned her attention back to Darcy. “So what is it you were talking about before I lumped in?”

  Darcy looked at me, at Fionn, back at me and then back to Fionn again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “You know what,” Fionn said, “I’m about as okay as I’ve been in a long time but I really don’t want to talk about it just now. I just want to eat this, talk some utter rubbish and then go to sleep. Annie, I take it’s okay if I crash here?”

  “Of course,” I said, thinking of the one bed in the flat which was already populated by me and Darcy. I wondered if could we fit a third person in.

  “One of us will have to take the sofa though,” I said, “I don’t mind if you two want to share . . .”

  “I don’t mind sharing,” Darcy said and Fionn shrugged her shoulders.

  So it was sorted.

  The rest of the evening was spent in a weird conversational zone – Home and Away vs Neighbours vs Coronation Street. We had just about covered every birth, death and marriage in Summer Bay, Ramsey Street and Weatherfield by eleven when there was a mutual decision to go to bed.

  I climbed into my jammies, pulled a blanket over me on the sofa and lay there with thoughts of mixed-up relationships, sisters with secrets and edible underwear running through my mind.

  19

  It was unusual for me to get up early on a Saturday morning. Usually – unless I had a shopping trip planned with Fionn – I would laze about most of the morning, dozing, reading, watching TV. I’d get up around eleven and maybe go for a run through the park to get some fresh air into my lungs. It was unusual for me not to have a little buzz of a hangover so the fresh air helped with that and then I would go home, eat something yummy for lunch and watch a tacky film before getting ready for a visit from Pearse after hours or a trip down to Manna to sit like a spare part at the bar waiting for him to come and talk to me.

  But this was no usual Saturday morning. I had spent the night tossing and turning on the sofa – at one stage rolling off and landing with an almighty thump on the floor. I’d been so tired I’d just stayed there for a while, hoping it would be more comfortable than my sofa. I vowed, at 4.36 a.m., that if both Fionn and Darcy were with me that night there would definitely have to be drink involved. A good feed of wine would at least ensure a decent night’s sleep.
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br />   So I rose at seven thirty and headed for the shower – figuring I might as well take advantage of the calm before the storm. The last time I had shared with two girls had been during my university years where it became a fine art to get up and in the shower first, without waking my housemates who would have used all the hot water had they beaten me to it.

  So I crawled off the sofa, stretching so that I could actually hear my bones crack and click back into place, headed for the bathroom and switched the shower on.

  It seemed terribly selfish of me and probably a bit bitchy, but knowing that Fionn and Darcy were having their own problems (even if, admittedly, Fionn’s was a little of my making) comforted me. For a long time, I thought as I let the water pour over me, I had felt as if I was the only person in my wider circle of family and friends who wasn’t dancing her way towards a happy ending. All the books say that your thirties are meant to be the happiest decade in your life so when they rolled around – and I said goodbye to my drunken twenties – I embraced the new beginning. This was where it was all going to happen. Cosmo said so, so it must be true. And I had hauled that bloody stupid Life Plan out on my thirtieth birthday and gazed at it again and convinced myself this was when it would all happen and all I had to do was chase after it.

  I felt a bit of a failure when it hadn’t all come together. Sure I had met Pearse and we had been in love for a while but it had become increasingly clear to me that he was A): An asshole, and B): Never likely to commit anyway.

  I rinsed my hair and tried to shake the feelings away as I knew that feeling happy at anyone else’s misery was a recipe for disaster. It was bound to anger some giant big karmic being and misery would be heaped upon me by the bucketload.

  I stepped out of the shower and lifted my towelling dressing gown from the back of the door. Padding to the kitchen, I flicked on the kettle and rummaged in the fridge to see if there was anything there that I could use to hammer together a decent breakfast for my houseguests. All I found was some cheese, one egg, the chocolates from Ant and a suspect-looking yoghurt. A trip to the shops was going to be necessary but, as I was naked apart from a towelling dressing gown and the only item of clothing outside of my bedroom was a pair of edible knickers, I knew there was no way I could sneak out without waking Darcy and Fionn.

  Still I tried my best to be deathly quiet as I crept into the bedroom and rummaged about for a pair of jeans, clean T-shirt, underwear and some flip-flops. I looked at the bed. Darcy was sound out to the world, her blonde curls messy over her face, and only drooling slightly.

  She was my rock and my heart ached a little to think that there was some unhappiness there that I didn’t know about. I was struck by an awful sense of guilt for my earlier comforted feelings and I gently moved her hair from her face.

  She opened her eyes and smiled. “You okay, sis?” she asked.

  “Yes, Darce. Love you. Just nipping out to the shop. You sleep on.”

  She nodded, her eyes drooping again as I closed the door softly behind me. I was so lucky to have her here. To have someone in my life who would drop everything and travel 200 miles to be at my side. It dawned on me that no man had ever done that for me. For the love of God, it had been nigh on impossible to get Pearse to travel four miles to be with me. I remembered one time I had been violently ill – feeling as if I was going to die – and I called him, begging him to come over. “Annie,” he said dismissively, “you know I can’t come near you when you’re sick. What if I bring something into the kitchen? Jesus, do you want to get me shut down?” I knew there was some logic in what he was saying – but that didn’t stop me doing a horribly ugly cry when I put the phone down. All I wanted was someone – the man who loved me preferably – to hold me and comfort me, and hold my hair back when necessary and ply me with Lucozade. Instead I sat alone weeping into my pillow, feeling horrendously sorry for myself, and it was Fionn, and not Pearse, who had eventually called round and brought supplies. She had tidied the flat, bleached the loo and opened the windows to dissipate the smell of sick before changing my bed sheets to tuck me back in and then she had promised to tell Bob I would be off for at least twenty-four hours post my last boking fit and he would just have to make do.

  I vowed, as I stepped out into the fresh morning, that I would cook them both a breakfast they wouldn’t forget in a hurry and that we would have a deliciously girly day.

  My culinary skills weren’t a patch on Pearse’s, but I could fry a mean egg. I had already grilled bacon and sausage and buttered a small mountain of delicious scones and pancakes. I had squeezed some fresh orange juice (okay, I had bought some freshly squeezed orange juice, but the sentiment was there) and I had brewed both tea and coffee. I opened the window in the living room to allow in the fresh morning air and put the radio on softly in the background.

  Darcy had been up when I returned from the shops and was now on the phone to Gerry in the bedroom while Fionn was in the shower. I had tidied her cases away to the bedroom and made the bed. I had even made tentative plans, with myself, to load the three of us into my car and go for a long drive once breakfast was out of the way.

  I figured we could do with some sort of distraction – not least, for me, from the increasingly insistent texts from Ant.

  I set the table before returning to the kitchen and taking out my mobile.

  “I have guests, Ant. Sorry. No can do midnight feast,” I typed, referring to an earlier message from him referencing the edible knickers and the chocolates.

  “Shame. I’ve quite an appetite,” he typed back. And I felt myself shiver – even though it was far from cold in my over-heated kitchen.

  Darcy walked in and smiled. “Smells good, Annie. All those years with Pee-Arse must have had some positive influence on you after all.”

  I smiled back and replied that I hoped she was hungry, trying not to think of just how hungry Ant was and how I had turned him down once again.

  Fionn followed and I ordered her to grab a plate of toast and follow me to the living room where the rest of my feast was waiting.

  “So, ladies,” Fionn asked, biting into a slice of smoked bacon, “what are the plans?”

  “Well, I was thinking we could get in the car and go for a drive. Maybe we could grab lunch somewhere and then go for a walk and when we get home I was thinking wine, pizza and a good old gossip.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Darcy replied with a smile. “But let’s not go too hard on the wine. I’ll have to get back to Dublin tomorrow. Duty calls.”

  Of course I knew that Darcy couldn’t stay forever and she had already been here for four days but I couldn’t help but feel that familiar sadness as she declared she was leaving. It was the same every time we parted, not knowing when we would see each other again. And even though she wasn’t my mammy and even though I was big woman now, every time Darcy left a part of me (a big brattish part of me) felt as if I had been orphaned again.

  Noticing my crestfallen face, Darcy reached across and rubbed my hand. “You’ll be fine, sis. You’re on your way now. You’ve got rid of that eejit. Work is going okay and you have made up with Fionn.” She nodded in Fionn’s direction and Fionn nodded back. “You don’t need me any more but I do promise not to leave it so long till next time. Or, you know, you could always go crazy and get that bus down the road to Dublin. Just a thought.”

  I blushed – of course she was right. I was more guilty of not visiting her than she was of not visiting me. I should really make the effort too – I mean Dublin could be good. There were great shops, fab bars, lovely restaurants. And I wouldn’t even have to endure the latter with Pearse who would no doubt spend the entire time passing comment on everything that was set down in front of him and posing, hoping that someone would recognise him as “that bloke off the telly”.

  “I will,” I said. “I promise.”

  “I’ll make sure she does,” Fionn added.

  “Great, that’s that sorted. Now, where will we go?”

  Fionn didn’
t talk about what had prompted her to walk out on Alex and Darcy didn’t talk about whatever it was that had been upsetting her. I even managed to spend the day in their company without talking about Ant and his masculine ways.

  Instead we walked along the shore at Portrush and stopped for candyfloss. Then we had a go on the bumper cars where I inflicted minor whiplash on a bolshy teenage girl who was getting on my wick as she flaunted herself in her wee electric car like it was a top-of-the-range sports effort.

  We stopped at the Silver Sands for a lunch of egg and chips, complete with a thick slice of buttered bread and a cup of tea, and we sang all the way home along with the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. When we reached Derry, I stopped at the off-licence and stocked up, feeling absolutely high on life. My life certainly was a rollercoaster and I was thankful that at least at the moment it was on the up.

  I was on my third glass of wine and my tongue was loosened when I decided to ask Fionn outright what had happened. While she had been in good form all day, I hadn’t failed to notice her checking her phone every ten minutes and the odd faraway look on her face when it was clear there were no messages to read and no missed calls to return.

  Darcy shot me a look, warning me not to go overboard with my questioning.

  Fionn sat back, curled her feet up under her and sipped from her glass. “He came home from work – he had himself all in a fluster,” she said. “Seems he had lunch with Rebecca. He needed someone to talk to – you know – about me and him. So anyway he chose to speak with her, which is laughable really.”