Oh, to hell with her anyway. I snap up from the oven, where I was shoving in yet another fresh batch of mini beef Wellingtons.
‘Excuse me,’ I tell her v. firmly, hands on hips, like a character out of a spaghetti western. ‘I’ve already had a job interview this week, I’ll have you know, thanks very much.’
‘Oh, really? What for?’ she scoffs. Can practically sense her getting riled up to test out what she thinks is her rapier wit on me.
‘For … a position. A really good one, as it happens. Something secure, just till I get back on my feet again.’
‘Where?’
‘Never you mind where.’
I turn and bury my face deep in the fridge-freezer to avoid eye contact, pretending to rummage round back of it. Needless to say there’s absolutely no offer of help from Madeline, but then because she’s a lawyer, she clearly considers herself a cut above menial labour. Whereas, in her eyes, I may as well be the hired help with an apron on, saying ‘Just hand me a broom and call me Daisy from Downton Abbey.’
‘Stop avoiding my question, Angie, and just spit it out!’
‘No, now go away and leave me alone. The mini pizzas won’t defrost themselves, now will they? Toby? Call her off, will you?’
‘Jesus, I came in here for a bit of peace,’ Toby mutters disinterestedly, this time between gobfuls of mini gherkins. ‘So for feck’s sake, just tell Mads what your big interview was for and then the pair of you can shut up. Besides, bar you applied for a job as an exotic dancer, what’s the big deal anyway?’
Deep sigh. Because he’s right: I know only too well that Madeline won’t let up with the third-degree questioning till I come clean. She’s worse than the KGB like that. I fully realise from years of dealing with her that it’s easier just to let her have all the jibes she wants at my expense, and get it over with. Quicker in long run.
‘Right then, have it your way. The job I applied for is in a catering company, if you must know.’
‘A catering company?’
Then a short, two-second time delay while Madeline puts two and two together. ‘Oh my God, don’t tell me you mean like, buttering batch loaves in one of the sandwich bars your friend Sarah runs!’
If I’d said the interview was for a job scrubbing public toilets and that the main perk was that after two years I’d be issued with my own brush and a bottle of Domestos, Madeline couldn’t possibly sound like she’s enjoying this any more. She guffaws at me, like an Ugly Sister from Cinderella as I look pleadingly over to Toby for back-up, but no such luck. He’s far more interested in the sports pages now, not to mention the plateful of mince pies he’s devouring.
Thank Christ, am saved from further torture by Mum briskly swishing in, all swingy scarf, big, bosomy tweed suit and sensible shoes, looking even more like Ann Widdecombe than Ann Widdecombe herself. In she breezes, not a scrap of make-up on her, despite having a houseful of visitors to entertain. But then, Mum’s proudest boast is that she hasn’t put on foundation for minimum of forty years. No time.
As usual, her eyes are like hawks, taking in everything in one quick up-and-down glance.
‘So here you three are!’ she eye-rolls at us. ‘Now come on, girls, stop all your bickering. I need some help. Chief Justice Henderson has just arrived; Toby, would you be a pet and entertain him? And, Madeline, I know Douglas McGettigan has to be the single most boring man in the Northern Hemisphere, but he’s sitting all alone; anyone that’s actually met him before won’t go within six feet of him. Can you look after him for me, please? Chat to him about his golf handicap, he enjoys that.’
As the other pair scarper, I get thrown a familiar, vaguely exasperated look.
‘Angela, you let your sister goad you, and you really shouldn’t, you know. You just got to stop rising to the bait every single time. How often do I have to tell you?’
I mumble something vague into dishwasher along the lines of Madeline being a back-knifing cow and Toby being worse than useless, but Mum swishes off, too much in distracted hostess mode to pay much attention.
The minute she’s out door, I pour myself a very large glass of Prosecco and knock it back in a single gulp.
Then check that there’s plenty more bottles in fridge. If I’m to survive today, I’ll be needing lots, lots more where that came from.
Dining room chez Blennerhasset, 3.45 p.m.
Dinner served. Determined somehow to survive and live to tell the tale. Mum and I jointly cooked, but then we’re the only ones round here who eat normally and still gain weight. The other three are like bleeding rakes.
3.55 p.m.
Conversation turns to a personal injury case Dad presided over in the District Court few months back, where Toby was a junior counsel for plaintiff. Toby won, record settlement. Got in the papers and everything, one or two scuzzy tabloids even lapping up the whole father/son thing. Dad was utterly mortified by all the fuss, but I’m prepared to bet good money Toby still has all press cuttings framed and mounted in his downstairs loo. Strongly suspect he thinks it’ll boost his chances of landing a quick shag.
But if you weren’t involved in said case, and if you don’t happen to get the legal terminology, it’s all deeply, deeply boring, so while Toby’s telling yet another ‘hilarious’ lawyerly anecdote, I surreptitiously whip out my mobile from my jeans pocket and check it. Just on the off chance Simon has news. Or better still, in case Kitty herself has miraculously resurfaced. Who knows? Maybe having crashed out on someone’s sofa for past twenty-four hours? And now with nothing more than a minging hangover and a hilarious tale to tell?
Course I’ve tried to check if Kitty is by any chance visiting her foster mum, but can’t. Already made two sneaky phone calls to Foxborough, Mrs K.’s nursing home, when I was holed up in the kitchen loading the dishwasher. No answer, though. ’Course not, it’s Christmas Day. Who in their right mind would be working on reception Christmas Day?
Mum’s straight on to me. Asks me why I keep glancing down at my phone every few seconds. Then tells me to put the phone away, that it’s rude.
3.56 p.m.
Golden chance for Madeline to get yet another jibe in.
‘You know, Angie, you can just say if all this legal chat is a little bit above your head. We can always change the subject and talk about, ooh, let’s see now … what’s happening in the lives of the Kardashian sisters? Would that be a little more up your street? Or maybe the latest news from the catering industry?’
‘I was actually checking to see if there was any word from Kitty,’ I fire back, throwing her what I only hope is a scalding look.
The whole table give long sighs and eye rolls. Yet again. All in lawyerly agreement I’m totally overreacting to whatever’s going on. The gist of what they think is that Kitty’s spending the day doing whatever suits her and clearly has better things to do than making phone calls. Yes, even to the best friend she stood up on her birthday.
Relations between la famille Blennerhasset and Kitty are as follows: both Mum and Madeline are the only people I’ve ever met totally and utterly resistant to her laid-back, chaotic charm. Instead, the pair of them have her down as a notoriously unreliable, uneducated, lunatic flake-head from the wrong side of the tracks, whose worst crime in their eyes is that she’s a bad influence on me and has been ever since the day we first met. They hold her wholly responsible for my not obediently trailing after every other Blennerhasset since the Civil War and subsequently spending my days mouldering away in the law library. (Where I’d doubtless have ended up either an alcoholic by now, or else on hard drugs. Fact.) Mainly because it was Kitty who first encouraged me to stop always doing what was expected of me, but instead to follow my own dreams, and to live my best life.
Which is why, not long after graduating, I took myself off to post-grad film school, to study as a freelance director. Which is kind of why, after years of great gigs coming in, I’m now suddenly unemployed. (Film production is what you might call a soufflé business, and this is not a good
economy to be in the soufflé business, trust me.)
Dad and Toby tend to be slightly more under Kitty’s spell, though every now and then Dad will remind me he still hasn’t forgotten about the time she filched a bottle of his Château Margaux for a piss-up we were both going to. Happened when I invited her to stay here one Christmas all of four years ago and he still hasn’t let it go. And I know right well Toby has a crush on Kitty, I can tell by way he blushes like a wino whenever she’s here and he keeps asking her if she’d like to swing by his flat sometime, to check out his fifty-two-inch Blu-ray plasma screen.
‘She’s clearly gone to visit that foster mother of hers down in Limerick,’ Mum is telling me, ‘so just relax and don’t let that girl ruin your Christmas, like she ruined your birthday.’
‘She didn’t ruin my birthday,’ I say loyally, to an exasperated eye-roll back at me.
‘I’m sorry, love, but it’s no secret that Kitty Hope is not exactly my favourite of your friends.’
‘Mum’s quite right, you know,’ Madeline pontificates, ‘so just stop harping on about what did or didn’t happen to Kitty and wait till she gets back to you. Knowing her, she probably forgot all about you and spent the day at some more interesting Christmas Eve do. Be perfectly typical of that nutcase you insist on hanging around with. Oh God, will you ever forget the time that she—’
But Dad interrupts. ‘Scan not your friend with microscopic glass; you know his faults, so let his foibles pass.’
Dad’s a great man for quotes, but I rarely have the first clue where they come from. Nice, though, to think he’s temporarily forgiven Kitty over the nicked Château Margaux incident.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ I smile gratefully back at him.
‘You know, I’m certain there’s absolutely nothing for you to worry about, pet,’ he says, leaning forward and gently patting my hand. ‘One of a thousand things could have happened to Kitty yesterday, you know. She’ll be in touch, you just wait and see. Never assume something is wrong until you have concrete evidence in front of you.’
Subject dismissed as far as everyone concerned.
Long pause, the table filled with sounds of nomnomnom noises, then Mum suddenly pipes up, sounding worried now.
‘Are you absolutely certain that you and she didn’t have some kind of falling out?’
I nearly splutter on a Brussels sprout.
‘Mum! There was absolutely nothing like that, I promise! Come on, you know how close Kitty and I are. We’ve never had a single cross word in all the years I’ve known her!’
Almost the truth. Only ever had one tiny blip with Kitty, in seven otherwise row-free years. In my defence, it wasn’t entirely my fault either. It was Kitty’s idea to shoplift two lip glosses from the Top Shop cosmetic counter just for the laugh, when she thought the place was so packed, no one would notice.
Bloody CCTV cameras.
It was v. scary, we were taken into a security office and threatened not only with the police being told, but even more intimidatingly, with being barred from every Top Shop branch on the planet for life. I was all of twenty-one years old at the time and while Kitty brazened it out with all the swaggering confidence of someone who’s had to fight all her own battles from a young age, I collapsed under questioning and just sat there, bawling hysterically. End result? We were let go with a caution, but to this day I still can’t cross threshold of any Top Shop without breaking into a cold, clammy sweat.
Mum’s implication is v. clear though. That somehow, even without realising it, I did something to piss Kitty off, and now she hasn’t disappeared at all. She’s just not speaking to me.
7.35 p.m.
Dinner over, thank Christ. And now we’re all sprawled round the fire with Mum point-blank refusing to switch on the telly, even though I’d kill to see lovely, life-affirming It’s A Wonderful Life and banish the horrendous shittiness of last twenty-four hours temporarily out of my head. The others are all back to chatting about mutual colleagues that they know and I don’t, to the background track of Dad snoring like a passing Zeppelin.
So, so bored. And still so worried about Kitty.
I’m just thinking about her when my mobile rings … Simon! Suddenly wide awake and on high alert, I race out to the hall to take it, away from the riveting background debate on the gripping subject of Flynn vs. Sullivan and whether or not sentencing was overly lenient.
‘Simon? Can you hear me?’
My heart’s nearly walloping off my ribcage by now, cartoon-like.
Please have news, please, please have good news, please can Kitty somehow have surfaced and be with you and please tell me that all is well …
‘Hi, Angie, look I’m so sorry to bother you on Christmas night, when you’re with your family …’
The line’s v. bad, he’s already cracking up on me, but even so, I can clearly hear the deflation in his voice. Not a good sign.
‘Simon, are you still there?’
Have to shout this a few times before he comes back into coverage again.
Come on, come on, come on!!!!
‘Yeah, look, Angie,’ he almost has to yell now to be heard, ‘I’m still with my parents down in Galway and the signal is rubbish at their house … Have you heard anything yet?’
Oh shit. If he’s calling me to see if I’ve any news, then we’re really in trouble.
‘No, not a word, I was hoping you might have by now! What about Mrs K. in the nursing home? Did you have any luck getting through there? I tried earlier but no joy.’
‘Me neither. So look, here’s the plan …’
Good. A plan. I’m a big fan of plans. Everything works better with a plan. Weddings, murders, everything.
‘I’ll keep ringing every friend Kitty has that I can think of tonight,’ he says, sounding more and more crackly by the second, like he’s calling from inside the large Hadron Collider at Cern.
‘Great, I’ll do likewise …’
‘… And if there’s still no sign of her by first thing in the morning, I’m going to drive straight to the nursing home in Limerick, to find out exactly what’s going on for myself.’
‘And … well, what if Kitty’s not there either?’
My voice is sounding tiny now, like a small child’s, and the worry sweats have restarted with a vengeance.
‘Then I’ll just come straight back to Dublin and I guess we’ll take it from there. The main thing to remember, Angie, is not to panic. I’m sure she’ll turn up safe and sound and that there’s some perfectly reasonable explanation for this.’
As ever, when told not to panic, my shoulders seize and my breath starts to come in short, jagged bursts.
‘But, Simon, what then? What’ll we do if we still can’t find her?’
Too late, though. His phone’s gone totally out of coverage. Line’s now totally dead.
And he never even answered the question.
Chapter Three
Stephen’s Day, 7.01 a.m.
Another sleepless night alternately spent tossing, turning or else staring at the ceiling, hoping against hope that my phone would just ring and it’d be Kitty. Then I switch the light on, check the mobile on my bedside table, thinking maybe, maybe, maybe the Miracle of Christmas has actually happened … Keep telling myself that you just never know with her … But nothing. So I lie back down again, try to sleep, can’t, then repeat the whole palaver all over again at regular thirty-minute intervals.
At first light, I check the phone for about the thousandth time, but it’s a total waste of time, the screen’s completely blank. Automatically I hit the re-dial button and call Kitty’s number, almost through force of habit at this stage. I know it’s like eating a whole tube of Pringles and that it’s ultimately v. bad for me and will end up driving me mental, but I just can’t stop myself. And, of course, her phone clicks straight to voicemail.
‘Hi there, it’s Kitty! Sorry I can’t take your call, but leave a message and I’ll ring you back. Providing of course that you’re a) good-looki
ng, and b) that I don’t owe you any money!’
Completely weird hearing her disconnected voice like this. It’s almost a shock how bright and bouncy and full of energy she sounds, while we’re here, agonised out of our minds about her. I check the number of times I’ve called her since the whole Christmas Eve/aborted birthday fiasco. Fifty-two. And not one single message returned. Even find myself turning to prayer, something I only ever indulge in when I’m really sick with worry.
Listen God, I know you don’t exactly hear from me all that often, and I appreciate you’ve probably got miles more important things to get on with, such as sorting out famine in Africa, etc., etc. But if you could just see your way to keeping Kitty safe wherever she is and maybe if you could get her to turn up anytime now, we’d all be so, so grateful. Come on, God, you can do it! It is, after all, officially the Season of Goodwill, isn’t it? Any chance this could be my miracle of Christmas?
P.S., hope Baby Jesus had a really lovely birthday yesterday.
The only straw of hope we’ve got is this: at end of day, it is Kitty we’re dealing with here. I have to constantly repeat it over and over, like a mantra. Therefore, the rules that bind ordinary mortals like you and me just don’t apply.
True, she’s my best friend, but still … I remind myself of the sheer number of times in the past when she’s flaked off like this before. Honest to God, you’d marvel at how entirely possible it is to love another human being dearly, and yet want to strangle them with your bare hands at same time. No question about it: Kitty’s the type who could have taken off anywhere, or who absolutely anything could have happened to. Easily.
Might possibly even have ended up drunkenly crawling on a flight to Rio, with a gang of people she accidentally got swept up with, and now can’t get in touch with us …
Highly unlikely, but you’d never know … I keep saying it over and over, like it’s playing on a loop in my mind.
Me and You Page 4