Do You Want to Know a Secret?

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘So,’ I patiently explain to Laura and Barbara, ‘unless you fancy contracting TB from the damp and spending the next week coughing and spluttering and sprawled out on a chaise longue like one of the Brontë sisters, maybe we should try to hook up somewhere else?’

  Barbara’s flat is sadly even less suitable than before, as her flatmate, Angie, is now in the throes of a mad, passionate affair with probably the only straight make-up artist in the entire acting profession, who has pretty much moved himself into their tiny flat for the duration of said affair. Now, as Barbara says, it’s virtually impossible to get any kind of privacy, ever, in their flat and it’s seriously beginning to drive her nuts.

  ‘I mean, I can never even get into the bathroom any more, and when I do, he’s used up all the hot water and the loo roll. He eats all our food, runs up our phone bill, then at night, the two of them are snuggled up on the sofa, all loved up watching HIS programmes on TV and there’s me, sitting on the floor cos there’s nowhere else to go, gooseberry of the millennium. I mean, for Christ’s sake, Vicky, if I’d wanted to live with a guy I would have. In fact, this carry-on would almost drive me into moving in with the next fella that asks me, anything just to get out of there.’

  Not for nothing have Laura and I nicknamed said flatmate Evil Angie, and not only because of this latest twist. We both have a long list of grievances against her, the main one being that, even though she’s an actress too (so far this year, she’s done two commercials, three voiceovers and a small part in one of those fringe shows where the cast dress in black and cluck around the stage pretending to be chickens), she never ever tells Barbara anything that’s going on, and is for ever sneaking off to auditions then acting all surprised whenever she gets jobs. It’s particularly unfair as poor Barbara always passes on information to her about castings and open auditions, but gets absolutely nothing back in return; and bear in mind that theirs is a profession that runs pretty much entirely on word of mouth.

  Many, many margaritas have been knocked back while Laura and I patiently try to point out to Barbara the general horribleness of Evil Angie’s behaviour, but Barbara, loyal soul that she is, will never have any of it. The two of them trained at drama school together and as far as Barbara is concerned, Evil Angie is her closest friend in the acting business. Friend, frenemy, Barbara won’t hear a word said against her. She’s just one of those people. Those she likes can do no wrong.

  Anyway, I suggest we meet in a nice discreet restaurant where we can chat/de-brief each other freely and without interruption, but Laura vetoes it on the grounds that she’s smashed broke and can’t afford to eat out, so her house it is. We’ve no choice. Even our failsafe blanket excuse doesn’t work: ‘But don’t you fancy a night off from the kids?’ Her mother’s out to dinner tonight and, as it’s Saturday, she hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a babysitter.

  I drive Barbara there, and as ever, am amazed at how spotlessly spick and span Laura’s house always looks given the stress that she’s constantly under. Barbara and I shake our heads in wonderment as we park in her perfectly tidied front driveway, every shrub obediently blooming beside her freshly mowed patch of grass, and look at each other as much as to say, ‘How does she do it?’

  Her house is right at the end of a modern, suburban cul-de-sac and it all looks very flowery and very Wisteria Lane, that is until a gang of boys start circling around us on bikes as we clamber out of my car, shouting at Barbara: ‘Hiya, sexy, great jugs, what are you doing later?’ She’s just about to shout something suitably obscene back at them (Barbara’s well able to give as good as she gets and, no, before you ask, even being under age is no defence against her sharp tongue), when we realize that one of the be-helmeted yobbos is actually George Junior.

  ‘This is your godmother you’re talking to!’ she splutters at him as I ring the doorbell. ‘It’s not that long ago I was changing your dirty nappies!’

  Laura answers, Baby Julia crying in her arms, looking as tidy and scrubbed as she always does, just very, very tired, God love her. We all hug, and I simultaneously hand her a bottle of wine and take the baby from her as she marches down the driveway to deal with George Junior and his gang of thuggo friends. Now, I don’t know what he says to her, all I can hear, clear as crystal, is her reply. ‘If you speak to me in that tone once more, I will consider it strike one. I do not CARE where all your friends are off to, you’re not going anywhere until you’ve finished all of your household chores. Now get off that bike, wash the car and this time, USE WATER.’

  Baby Julia is squealing and trying to wriggle out of my inexperienced child-carrying arms when Laura’s mother comes out of the kitchen.

  Oh shit and double shit.

  Barbara and I shoot a panicky look at each other, but there’s no avoiding her, given that the hallway is about the same length and width as your average toilet cubicle. ‘Oh, there you are, girls, well, three guesses why I was summoned here this evening,’ she says, crisply putting her cheque book away and snapping her handbag shut. ‘Honestly, there are times when I feel like some sort of cash-dispensing machine.’

  ‘Hi, Mrs Lennox-Coyningham,’ we both mutter, instantly reverting back to a pair of teenagers. I don’t know why it is, but Laura’s mother just has that effect on us. She’s one of those women who, when you meet them, your accent automatically upgrades to several degrees posher and politer, and you almost feel you should be curtseying, as if they’re minor royalty. She looks a bit like Princess Michael of Kent: tall and imperious, impeccable and be-suited, with a knuckle-duster ring on every finger and a permanent whiff of Chanel No. 5. In fact, no matter where I am – airports, theatres, any public place you can name – all I have to do is get the slightest sniff of that perfume for my ‘fight or flight’ hormones to immediately kick in, and I immediately start darting around looking for places to hide from Mrs Lennox-Coyningham. And I’m thirty-four years of age.

  She also has the most intimidating way of looking down her nose at you that just makes me regress to the time, aged about nine, when I was sitting at their vast, scary dining-room table, too afraid not to eat the fish supper, even though I have a chronic allergy, while Mrs Lennox-Coyningham bragged on about how Laura got straight As in her exams, top of the class as usual, and how did I do? ‘Two Cs and 4 Ds and an F,’ I muttered in a tiny, frightened voice. To this day, I’ll never forget the look on her face, it was as if I’d befouled her immaculately polished parquet floor. And I wouldn’t mind, but for me, that was a particularly good result. In fact, my parents celebrated by taking me to McDonald’s and generally acting like they had a Stephen Hawking in the house. Anyway, ever since then, as far as Mrs Lennox-Coyningham is concerned, I’m her daughter’s thick, loser friend. And Barbara is her permanently unemployed, waster friend.

  They’re our labels and we’re stuck with them, whether we like it or not.

  ‘So, Barbara dear, when am I going to see you in something?’ she asks, as usual sensing a weak spot and going in for the kill. ‘Very soon, I hope. It’s been quite some time now, what is it, two, no three years, since that production of Lady Windermere’s Fan which you played the maid in?’

  ‘Dunno, Mrs Lennox-Coyningham,’ says Barbara, suddenly acting like she’s chewing gum, even though I happen to know she’s not. ‘I’m doing a lot of hard-core porn these days. Tough gig, but it pays the rent, and at least my nights are free.’

  Barbara, as you can see, is an awful lot better at handling Mrs L-C than I am.

  We’re saved from the misery of having to come up with any more small talk when Laura comes back inside and takes the baby from me.

  ‘Well, we won’t delay you, Mum,’ she says, pale and stressed-looking. ‘Thanks for . . . helping me out, and I hope you and Dad enjoy the law society dinner.’

  ‘Oh yes, well we always enjoy an evening with Martha,’ she beams, her mood changing like mercury. I’m not kidding, she’s actually smiling. ‘Her friends are such wonderful, stimulating company, all doing
so well for themselves at the Bar, and somehow Martha always manages to get us the very best table at the Inns, you know.’

  Martha, I should tell you, is Laura’s sister, younger by a year, rising young barrister and general all-round pain in the face. In school, her nickname was ‘Laura-lite’ because every single thing Laura ever did or achieved, Martha copied. Never as successfully, though, she didn’t have Laura’s natural brilliance, and try as she might, couldn’t live up to her promise; but now that Laura is a full-time mom, her parents have decided that, actually they’d been wrong all along, and that Martha was the horse they should have bet on to pursue a glittering political career and generally keep the Lennox-Coyningham tradition alive.

  ‘Drippy, boring Martha,’ as Barbara often says behind her back. ‘I’m telling you, if that stupid cow ever ends up running the country, that’s it, I’m emigrating.’

  Mrs Lennox-Coyningham lets herself out, saying, ‘Well, I’d better fly.’ A cue to Barbara to mutter something under her breath about how brilliant it must be having a broomstick to get through the traffic that bit quicker. Laura bangs the door behind her, and the atmosphere lightens considerably now that she’s safely out of the way.

  ‘You know, I can physically see the thought-balloon coming out of my mother’s head every time she mentions my beloved sister,’ she says as we follow her into the kitchen. ‘Martha, the daughter who didn’t turn out to be such a sad disappointment, Martha, the daughter who didn’t ruin her life by getting married to a worthless git when she was barely out of college.’

  ‘Absolutely not true,’ says Barbara, plonking down at the kitchen table and helping herself to some neatly sliced ciabatta bread. ‘Although it does my heart good to hear you refer to George as a worthless git.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ I say, defensively. ‘You’re the one who gave your mother four beautiful, perfect, wonderful grandchildren.’

  On cue, Emily strolls through the kitchen, with her iPod on, totally ignoring us as she wafts through one door and out another, only stopping to shout over whatever she’s listening to, ‘I don’t want any dinner, Mum, I ate mints and now I feel fat.’

  ‘I won’t even attempt to dignify that comment with an answer,’ says Laura, turning back to the cooker the minute Emily’s out of the room. ‘Nor will I embarrass you by initiating an argument/screaming match with the little madam and generally turning into Momzilla, but, by God, if I could only afford a decent boarding school, that would soon knock corners off her.’

  Dinner is very Laura, that is to say, absolutely perfect. Wholesome, healthy, meat-and-two-veg mammy food, only slightly ruined by Emily picking at the corners of hers (and that only under extreme duress and a lot of grade two nagging from Laura), then telling all of us about her friend in school who cut out all wheat, refined sugar and dairy and managed to lose thirty pounds.

  ‘Thirty pounds,’ Barbara quips. ‘Wow. That’s like, half a Backstreet Boy.’

  ‘Who are the Backstreet Boys? Never even heard of them,’ sneers Emily, looking at Barbara like she’s an old, old lady, in a way that only a true pre-teen can really pull off.

  ‘Never you mind. I’ll give you one tip though, Emily. Guys hate skinny girls. Known fact. They prefer curves. That’s why Kate Moss only ever goes out with complete losers, you know, they’re the only ones who’ll put up with her having no flesh on her bones. So if I were you I’d do what your mother says and eat up. Mints are not a food group.’

  Amazingly, this approach actually works, and Emily now grudgingly shovels a few morsels of lamb chop into her mouth, accompanied by a deeply grateful look from Laura. Then she starts going on about how much she wants a boob job for her sixteenth birthday: ‘I mean, come on, Mom, all the other girls in my school are getting one.’ But as Laura calmly and sensibly points out, we’ve a few years yet to pee on that particular fire.

  Meanwhile George Junior and Jake manage the feat of wolfing back a full meal in approximately three minutes flat. This is followed by a heated discussion/row between Laura and George Junior, who wants to go back out biking with the thuggo friends. It goes along these lines.

  ‘I told you I was going back out after dinner, Mom.’

  ‘You most certainly did not.’

  ‘I did. In body language.’

  Laura sighs exhaustedly, in that way parents have when they recognize that the fight is actually futile. ‘Right then. Back here by ten sharp, or else I’m ringing the police and then your father, in that order.’

  Anyway, Jake is dispatched out the back to clean out his gerbil’s cage, Emily wafts upstairs to go on her favourite internet chat room, and finally we have a bit of peace.

  ‘Do you want to know what my secret dream is?’ says Laura as we help her wash up. (Everything in this house has to be hand-washed before it’s deemed clean enough for the dishwasher. Honestly.) ‘To live in a house with a panic room,’ she goes on. ‘That way, I could either lock them into it or myself if I needed calm.’ Meanwhile Baby Julia gurgles peacefully away, dozing off in her little Moses basket. ‘Never learn to talk properly, my little cherub,’ Laura coos down at her, wiping her hands in a dishcloth. ‘Because the sooner you learn to speak, the sooner you’ll speak back.’

  The unusual peace (for this house) continues as the three of us move into the living room, uncork a bottle of wine, dim the lights and light all the little tea-lights dotted on the fireplace. We all sit in a kind of circle, with the baby miraculously dozing away in her little basket beside us.

  God, we must look like some weird kind of coven, except with crèche facilities.

  ‘You’re the hostess, you go first,’ Barbara says to Laura, gently, for her, sensing that she’s had a rough day.

  ‘Oh, ladies, where to begin,’ she says, tiredly pouring out wine for the three of us. ‘All right then, shameful admission number one, I had to ask my mother for yet another lend of money this evening. And it’s a measure of how little pride I have left that I calmly took the cheque from her, listened to the accompanying lecture, and didn’t even care. All I could think was, thank God, that’s this term’s school fees sorted, and at least I have another couple of months before I have to fret about September and all the usual back-to-school expenses.’

  Truth to tell, I kind of copped on when I saw the old dragon with her cheque book earlier, but thought it best to say nothing.

  ‘Shameful admission number two,’ she goes on, taking a long deep mouthful of wine, ‘the long summer holidays are around the corner and for once, I actually feel sorry for my kids. They have to listen to all their friends going on about trips to Spain and Portugal when they’ll be doing well if I can bribe my parents to let us have their holiday cottage in Connemara for a week. Oh, ladies,’ she says, running her fingers through her fine, neatly cut hair. ‘I sometimes have these road-to-Damascus moments where I look at my life and wonder, how did I get into this mess? I just need cash so, so badly.’

  ‘Your short story was brilliant,’ I say encouragingly. And for once I’m not even exaggerating, it really, really was.

  Barbara and I chipped in with a few, really very few, comments and suggestions about the piece, which she took on board, then emailed off the finished product to Tattle magazine yesterday. So she’s actually the only one of us with her Butterfly Club assignment all done and dusted. Which kind of gives me a brief, momentary flashback to our schooldays, when Laura was always Miss Perfect, Goody Two-Shoes, everything done on time, without any hassle or fuss. Always.

  ‘Shameful admission number three,’ she goes on, ‘I actually enjoyed writing that story. I found it strangely cathartic. There I was, snatching what little time I could, and for some reason I kept thinking about J. K. Rowling.’

  ‘J. K. Rowling?’ says Barbara.

  ‘Was a single mom and wrote the first Harry Potter in a café somewhere, to save on light and heating bills in her flat. What can I say? It’s a tale I can relate to.’

  ‘And look at her now; she’s, like, richer than the Que
en,’ I chip in encouragingly.

  ‘But, Laura, this is amazing,’ says Barbara, flicking through my dog-eared law of attraction book and stopping at a page she’s turned down. I lent it to her a few days ago and ever since, you should just hear her; it’s all ‘the universe this and the universe that’.

  ‘Oh please, not that bloody book again. Honestly, you pair treat it like it’s the I Ching,’ Laura says, tiredly.

  ‘No, hear me out. Yes, here it is. “Imagination is the preview of life’s forthcoming attractions,” she reads aloud, in the voice I happen to know she only saves for doing voiceovers. ‘It’s a quote from Einstein actually, so it must be the real deal. By thinking about J. K. Rowling and focusing on how she turned her life around, you, honey, are creatively visualizing a wealthy fab life for yourself and the kids. You just don’t know that you are.’

  ‘She’s dead right,’ I say, knocking back a big gulp of wine. ‘We have to train ourselves to see the things we want as already ours. Act as if.’

  ‘So are you both suggesting that I go to my friendly bank manager, demand a ten-grand overdraft and whisk my kids off to a villa in Barbados for the summer? And won’t my justification just sound fabulous in bankruptcy court. ‘Your honour, all I’m guilty of is acting as if, just as my head case friends advised me to.’

  ‘You’re missing the point,’ says Barbara, in her assertive, Donald Trump voice. ‘You have to focus absolutely on seeing yourself living your best life. In your dream home, with no financial worries, wondering whether or not you’ll buy the new Lexus jeep or say to hell with the mammy wagon, and treat yourself to a flashy little Porsche.’