She stopped now at the usual place and tested the grass with her foot. It had turned a mustard yellow from the implacable sunshine, no padding remained. While she waited on the scratchy rug for her sandwich, she checked her phone again. She wished Liam would call to check in but knew not to expect it. What did it matter, really? In six hours she’d be with him and the gnawing uncertainty of the last month would be over. It was always the same, she reminded herself, an hour or two in his company and everything settled. His voice had a way of sliding through her. Initially, she hadn’t liked him over the phone—it was always urgent, urgent when he called for Anthony—but he was much nicer in person. In fact, they’d had a laugh that first time. She’d helped him sneak out the fire exit to avoid the head of sales and in their rush down the stairs, she’d dropped the Business Weeklys. The two of them had skitted like schoolchildren, sure they’d be caught. Liam was tall and broad and he’d looked so out of place, in his pale grey suit, hunching down on the steps, the outline of his face inches from her own. He’d held a hand out when they’d finished and almost lifted her off the ground. They’d laughed, both of them surprised by it, and then she’d looked directly at him, brazen as you like. Yellowy-green eyes and a quick smile that released to a slack, half-open mouth.
That was nearly two years ago now, which meant that they—Kate and Liam, Liam and Kate—were nearly—nearly. Nearly nothing. Foolish to have thoughts like that, to curse a thing that way. As more people sat on the grass, the water in front of her seemed to grow smaller somehow, dirtier. Kate pressed her phone again. The screensaver of the cliff walk in Ballycotton mocked her, the grey sky and water, the lighthouse in the distance, the safe landscape shot. He’d been behind her when she took it, cautious as ever, offering to take a photo of her if she liked. (She had not liked—she had instead thought of her sister, how Elaine would have been ashamed of her wussy, plaintive response.) A bitter, tar-like taste was suddenly in her mouth and she longed to go back to the excitement of earlier.
But she was hungry, that was all, wishing the others would suddenly appear with her chicken salad sandwich and can of San Pellegrino. A seagull strutted past and cast his glassy eye over her empty lap. She smiled at him in sympathy. How awful, to be circling the dock all morning, tripping out to the quays—maybe even as far as Sandymount Strand—in search of a crust and to have found nothing by lunchtime. Exhausting. Excruciating, really, trying to shake all the other gulls when you did finally spot some leftover chips and then creeping back to the flock, pretending you were still hungry, so the others wouldn’t peck your face off. It was a hard life—to be a seagull.
Tilting her face towards the sun, she felt a moisture come alive under her make-up, the foundation sliding into her brows. She opened her eyes and spotted Rory at the entrance of the deli, talking to his friend from the foreign bank. Diya was on her phone beside them and Kate wanted to text her to hurry up. But that was not the kind of person she was at work. She liked who she was in the office, without really understanding who that person was or how she had become her. Calm, for one. Kate was the go-to for all sorts of crises, from broken water fonts to lost PDFs to the log issue, as they took to calling it, in the female toilets. She knew her colleagues saw her as clear-headed and responsible, easy to approach, maybe even funny? She’d wanted desperately to be liked from the beginning, to shake off the solitude of her college years. That Kate was dead now, buried in Trinity under the cobblestones.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Diya, landing on the rug and kicking off her shoes. A blister on her heel was flapping, half-open, a glimpse of ruby. Diya grimaced. ‘Will I yank it off?’
Kate turned her head towards the water. ‘Gross.’
‘Do you think it looks infected?’
‘I’ll look at it after lunch,’ Kate lied.
‘Liar.’ Diya tossed Kate the sandwich. ‘Rory has your can in his bag. I knew you’d be starving.’
‘I’m not too bad,’ Kate said. Peeling the sticker, she opened the wrapper and bit into the sandwich. She gave the bread a quick sniff and left the package on her lap.
‘Sokay?’ Diya wiped a smudge of plum sauce from her chin.
‘It’s fine. They put too much garlic in the mayonnaise sometimes.’
The creamy spread was oozing out the sides of the bread. These were the kinds of things that she’d trained herself not to see and she knew it was bad she was noticing now. But she didn’t have time to think about it today—her head was already too full.
A fountain of water shot into the air near the end of the dock and a man in a suit cursed at the young lads.
‘You know,’ Diya said. ‘I’m so happy you ended things with Liam.’
A piece of chicken lodged in Kate’s throat. She coughed, wishing Rory would hurry up with her can.
‘He’d never have left her,’ Diya said.
‘Yeah.’
‘You haven’t heard anything since?’
Kate shook her head. She hated lying to her friend, though it was easier than telling her she’d bottled the ultimatum. It was not from fear of losing him, not exactly, but a more general, nebulous fear of loss itself.
The afternoon was frantic, Anthony’s door opening and shutting every few minutes, as if ordering her about was his own personalized workout. Some client had dropped Conville for a competitor earlier in the day, and everyone in the building was responsible.
And still, the only message to come through to Kate’s phone today was from Liz, an email-length rant about Mammy and how she’d psychotically damaged Ray to the point that he was unable to act like a human being. Psychologically damaged, surely? Though Kate supposed it could be either. On another day a text like that might have meant a trip to the bathroom, or a walk down the quays until she’d shaken it off, but today she’d too much going on. But then, in that wonderful trick of time when you manage to stop thinking about it, she looked at the bottom corner of her computer screen and saw that it was half four. The noise levels coming from the office reflected it, she realized, the furious typing and urgent demands of the afternoon rush giving way to a hum of conversation, the odd phone ringing in the distance, occasional pitchy laughter. The water cooler in the corner of reception gurgled and Kate began to feel excited.
Twenty minutes later, the editor passed by the marble, still on her headset as she wished Kate a nice weekend. Her friendly, brusque style often reminded Kate of her aunt Helen, who had moved to Australia when Kate was in college. Right before she’d met Liam, Kate had been planning to visit her aunt in Melbourne, maybe take a month or two to do the Gold Coast afterwards. Now, it seemed a trip for a younger person.
The journalists slunk out after the editor, though they were supposed to stay till half five like everyone else. Kate put a hand over her eyes and could hear them laughing as they got in the lift. Sales and marketing left next, the interns badgering her to come to the Ferryman. The production lot weren’t too long after them, then finally, Rachel from HR, always at twenty-five to six. Kate stood up to close the blinds nearest the counter, the marble digging into her ribs as she reached across for the string. They fell slanted and she ducked out to fix them, imagining what Anthony would say if she left them askew. Her desk phone rang when she was over at the window. Well, the office was closed for the weekend. The machine would kick in.
She got to it just as it stopped ringing and instead Anthony materialized behind her. Finger crooked.
‘Need you, Kate.’
He glanced at the chrome clock above her chair and said nothing.
A heavyset man tipped his hat as she ran up the carpeted steps of the Merrion and she wondered which of them was more roasting on this summery evening, him in the two-tone tails or her after racing from the bottom of Holles Street to the hotel when the taxi driver eventually admitted there were several major gigs around the city that evening. She’d thrown the tenner at him and ignored the fact that it was ten cents more on the meter, jumping out of the car and shutting off his complaints with a bang of the door. A group
of women with huge bellies had been sitting on plastic chairs at the side entrance of the maternity hospital, their nighties down off their shoulders as they caught the evening sun. Stepping onto the road to get past them, Kate had almost been knocked over by a bike. They’d squealed laughing and one of them had called her a dolly bird, and she wished she’d been brave enough, or on time enough, to have turned around and told them to be kinder to their own children when they had them, especially if they were girls.
Kate checked her phone as she passed through the hotel’s scented lobby. Twenty past seven and Liam still hadn’t returned any of her calls. She’d gotten one message—Can I call you later?—but she knew it was an automated text, the kind you get your phone to send to people you don’t have time for. The hotel was quieter than she’d expected, the cream couches beside the bar mostly empty except for a couple of suits. Three older women were on stools at the bar, so fresh-looking in their candy-coloured dresses and matching boleros. A reedy whistle cut through their chatter as the barman polished glasses. The woman with the fascinator tipped a champagne flute to her mouth. Kate looked all around her but she couldn’t see Liam. She wanted to go to the bathrooms downstairs and see what state her hair was in after the trek through the park, but she pressed on to the restaurant, kicking over a briefcase as she hurried through the Garden Room. She apologized to a bald man with a kind face and wished he would look away for a second so she could steal his tumbler and knock back his drink.
Kate stopped by the stand at the double-fronted doors to the restaurant. The long-legged hostess frowned when she said Liam’s name, disappearing into the room to solve the mystery. An empty table at the front was immaculately laid out, all gleaming implements and overlapping triangles, waiting for some greedy messer to destroy them. Kate tried to breathe. The mindfulness lark was useless in situations where you actually needed it. Liam hated lateness. So did Kate—no, not lateness, she hated time itself, which was always against her, stopping when she wanted it to go quicker, or speeding up when Anthony had her trapped in his office, telling her in his soul-crunching, digressive way the big plans for the week ahead.
The hostess returned with a ledger-sized menu and Kate felt herself relax. At least he was still here. In a lilting foreign accent, the woman apologized for the delay, holding out a slender arm with a solitary silver bangle. As she walked after her, Kate pulled at the chunky copper cuff that had seemed so bohemian that morning but now only highlighted the marmalade patches of freckles on her forearm. She slipped the bracelet off her clammy wrist, smiling at various diners who seemed to notice her as a kind of tail to the hostess. They got to the far side of the restaurant before Kate realized that there was no sign of Liam at all and that the woman was holding open the door to the corridor, waiting for Kate to go in front. Following dumbly, she wondered if she was being kicked out of the hotel. Somehow, it felt appropriate. The pair of them clacked down the hardwood floors to a staircase with a sign for the gym and the petulant whiff of chlorine, but they went left at the bottom instead of right, and Kate twigged that they were going to the Cellar Restaurant and not the Garden Room at all.
The booth was in one of the arches at the back. Liam’s shirt looked a burnt yellow in the low lighting, his frame filling the couch that was meant for two, legs out to the side as he read his phone, one brown loafer flexing in time to the swing music. His hair was shorter than the last time they’d met, shorn higher at the sides. He lifted his head as the hostess approached the table and gave his neat, brilliant smile, looking past her, to Kate. The woman left the menu on the table. Kate sat into the booth opposite him.
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
He leaned across the table and took her hands, his eyes kind. ‘Relax.’
‘Billy Joel’s in the Aviva and…’
‘Kylie’s in the Point.’
‘It’s the Three Arena, old man.’
‘There she is.’ He tapped her nose. ‘You look different, you look good.’
Kate withdrew, leaning back against the hard leather seat.
‘I do not. My hair is like a bush. I ran from Holles Street.’
‘You’re here now, relax. You’re here.’
Liam looked away from the table and a second later a waitress appeared. He had some magnetic charge when it came to wait staff, unlike Kate herself who often waited longer in a café for the bill than the time it took her to have coffee.
‘Wine?’ Liam smiled.
‘I’ll have a vodka and soda, please.’
‘Grey Goose,’ Liam said to the waitress. ‘And a bottle of the Albariño.’
‘Of course.’ She beamed at Kate as she left.
‘Grey Goose?’ Kate felt the back of her dress stick to the booth.
‘The States always turn me into a snob. Back to naggins on the next date, I promise.’
It was a rush, usually, any mention of the future but the comment left her oddly deflated this evening. Nearly two years together and they were still talking dates. She tried to smile, fiddling with a heavy fork. There were four settings laid out and it suddenly annoyed her that he hadn’t told the waitress to take two of them away. She wanted to knock them on the ground, and she brought her hands under the table just in case. As he scrolled his phone, apologizing, she knew she should ask him about his trip. They’d so much to catch up on, almost a month’s worth of news and stories—and feelings, if they got drunk enough.
‘Is someone else joining us?’ The question came out loud, and he looked behind him to their nearest neighbour, a boisterous group of men crammed into an identical booth.
‘Are you joking?’ Liam said. ‘I can’t tell. You’re in a strange humour. You know—’ He tilted his head, ‘you do look different.’
‘The settings? I meant the settings.’ Kate’s voice was like glass.
‘Right, right,’ he laughed. ‘The girl can clear them. You hungry? You must be starving.’ He went back to his phone. Kate wished the girl would hurry with her drink. She reached across the table suddenly and took his glass, threw down the end of the whiskey. The glass clinked against the heavy table as she left it back.
‘Hey! Thief.’ His big hands caught her fingers and he began kneading the centre of her palm with his thumb, sending a tremor up her arm. ‘Hey,’ he said, looking at her directly this time, his eyes opening with sea-like wonder. ‘Tough day?’
‘Tough month,’ she said, though it wasn’t true, not in a general sense.
‘Tough life?’
She laughed, twisting her fingers under the cuff of his shirt. ‘Maybe,’ she said, taking her hands away.
‘What’s so tough then?’ He put the phone down. ‘Work? Anthony?’
‘Well, yeah, he kept me late this evening. Obviously.’
‘I don’t mind that you’re late. Is that what’s eating you?’ The eyes were back, and the teeth with their surprising sharpness.
‘I mind. It’s my Friday. And I was in before him this morning. Before the whole office.’ She hated when she did this, telling lies that made her job seem urgent, vital, as if she was nipping out to do spine surgery between the cappuccinos and indexing.
‘Tony wouldn’t have kept you if it wasn’t important. He’s a chancer sometimes but he is fair, isn’t he?’
Using the last of her energy, Kate nodded. It was yet another conflict of interest in their growing list of conflicts where she couldn’t speak her mind without endangering one or both of them. Liam was head of the Ireland-American Alliance and got all his diaspora magazines from Conville.
‘The magazines were a smash,’ he said. ‘And the fundraising events.’
‘Yeah?’
‘We netted at least a million.’
‘Wow.’ It sounded like a lot for an organization that didn’t seem to do anything concrete. ‘What is it the alliance does exactly?’
‘Seriously?’ he said.
Kate’s face flushed. ‘I mean, I know. I just forget sometimes.’
‘We need to get you
fed.’ Liam went back to his phone.
The girl appeared with a tray, the tall tubular glass with her vodka almost full to the brim with mixer.
‘Thank you,’ Kate said.
‘Are you guys ready to order?’
‘I’m starving,’ said Liam. ‘Any specials?’
The girl didn’t miss a beat. ‘For starters, there’s a lobster gazpacho. It’s my favourite, so fab. Or there’s duck liver pâté on Melba toast with red onion marmalade and pistachio brittle.’
Kate took a lengthy slug of her drink.
‘Then for the mains.’ The girl scowled as one of the men in the neighbouring booth started to sing. ‘They’re so loud, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Liam. ‘It’s Friday.’
Kate took another long sip until she heard ice clinking.
‘Mains are hake with pumpkin ravioli and—oh my God!—are you guys meat eaters?’
Liam arched a brow. ‘Do we not look Irish?’
The girl laughed and Kate joined in, noticing how young the waitress was for the first time, how eager she seemed in her pencil skirt and sing-song voice.
‘We love meat,’ Liam said.
Kate didn’t have it in her to remind him that she only ate white meat and fish these days. Really, it was all she ever ate, but she hadn’t wanted to seem particular, to seem fussy on those tentative first few dates so she’d had whatever burger, or duck pancakes, or pork belly was going. It didn’t matter this evening. She wasn’t hungry anyway, she just wanted to get happy and hammered and forget the stress of the day.
‘We have an amazing côte de boeuf to share for the price of—’
Liam held up a hand. ‘Superb. I’ve been waiting so long for my friend here that I could eat the whole damn cow myself.’ He winked at the waitress. Everyone laughed. Everything was that bit lighter since the girl had come to the table. Kate wondered if they could ask her to join them.
Liam looked at Kate. ‘We’ll try the starters as well?’
‘Sounds good. And another vodka.’ She ran a hand through her hair until it got stuck in a knot. ‘Grey Goose.’
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