The Break

by Marian Keyes

  It’s a while before I answer. ‘You know, Alastair, things are weird with Steevie.’ There, I’ve said it. My oldest friend, our connection has survived decades and I don’t know what exactly it is, but we’re not on the same page right now. ‘When I’m with her I get the fear.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘She’s so angry with Hugh, she says these terrible things. But it’s actually not about Hugh at all.’

  ‘About the husband who left her?’

  ‘Yeah. She wants to go for lunch tomorrow, but I have to, really have to, sit down with my finances. I’d rather look my out-of-control spending in the face than see her. That’s bad, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is what it is. So what’ll you do tomorrow night?’

  ‘If Mum doesn’t try and nab me for some impromptu Pop-sitting –’

  ‘What’s the story there? Is she going out a lot more than she used to, or does it just seem that way?’

  ‘No, yeah, you’re right, she is. Not that I blame her. Except I wish she’d ask one of the others instead of me. So anyway! Assuming I’m not Pop-sitting, I’ll bunker down with a load of savoury snacks and watch whatever foreign yoke is on BBC4, then hopefully I’ll sleep. I can’t sleep, Alastair. I haven’t slept properly in weeks.’

  He looks at me thoughtfully. ‘I know what you need.’

  ‘Why does this fill me with dread?’

  ‘It’s a – a thing … You go and have a story read to you. Not for kids, adults, we’re adults, but a man with a deep voice, his name is Grigori, reads a fable. In the Kingsley Hotel in town. There are beanbags and hot chocolate and dim lights. Lots of people go. Every Saturday night. It’s … comforting. It’ll help you sleep. It costs a tenner.’

  ‘And who goes? What sort of people?’

  ‘All ages. Some come alone, some with mates. The vibe is friendly, the way yoga classes are friendly.’

  Yoga classes are not friendly. Yoga classes – in my admittedly limited experience – are peopled with snooty body-Fascists who live on green powder.

  ‘Friendly, but not sleazy, is that what you mean? Would I be too old?’

  ‘All ages,’ he says firmly. ‘Saturday nights, nine o’clock. Very good for the central nervous system.’

  ‘What would I have to do?’

  ‘Listen to the story. Drink hot chocolate.’

  ‘And that’s all. You’re certain?’

  ‘I’m certain.’

  Okay.

  Thamy races into the office. ‘Look professional, she’s on her way up!’

  It’s the day for Mrs EverDry’s monthly progress report, and even though we’ve got her so much favourable coverage, an incontinence ambassador continues to elude us. She’s going to give us hell.

  But it’s impossible. No one, no matter how down on their luck, is willing to publicly admit they’ve difficulty in holding on to their wees.

  39

  It’s Derry’s week to do the dinner.

  A Peshwari naan is always ordered for my exclusive use – low-carbing be damned – but the traffic is bad this evening, I’m late and I’m afraid it’ll have been eaten on me.

  Loads of cars are crammed in front of the house – on Derry’s Fridays, a massive crowd of O’Connells turns out, even Maura’s husband, The Poor Bastard, whom we never otherwise clap eyes on.

  Sometimes actual Urzula shows up, looking literally like the spectre at the feast. She never orders food for herself, but asks for teaspoons of other people’s, then mocks us for eating so much.

  I’m really afraid someone will have had my naan.

  I can’t find my key and Jackson lets me in.

  ‘Has the food arrived yet?’ I’m feeling almost panicky.

  He puts a finger to his lips. ‘Shush. Neeve’s doing a make-up vlog with Sofie’s granny. She’s just starting.’ He tiptoes up the stairs, to a cluster of people around a bedroom door. I see Derry, Sofie, Kiara, Maura, The Poor Bastard, Joe, Siena – even Pop’s carer, Dominik, is here.

  With silent purpose I shoulder my way to the front to see what’s happening.

  Mum is on a chair, under the white glare of Neeve’s lights. She’s facing the camera, her hair and make-up looking really ‘done’, and she’s wearing a cobalt-blue suede skirt and a T-shirt with a fashionably torn neck. She looks … nothing like my mother. She’s cool and hip and like a groovy granny.

  I’m dumbfounded.

  ‘We’re starting now,’ Neeve announces. ‘If anyone makes any noise, I will kill them! Okay, Granny. Just look into the camera and answer the questions.’

  ‘What if I get it wrong?’

  ‘If you get it wrong we can do it again. But you won’t get it wrong.’ This sounds like an order. ‘Okay, Lilian, tell us a little bit about yourself.’

  ‘I’m Lilian O’Connell,’ Mum says. ‘I’m seventy-two years old, I’m a mother of five and I believe leopard-print is a neutral.’ She flicks a nervous little look at Neeve to see if she’d said the leopard-print line correctly.

  ‘You’ve great skin, Lilian. How do you take care of it?’

  ‘I drink plenty of tea and once a week I exfoliate with a cotton pad soaked in nail-varnish remover.’

  Neeve lets a beat pass. They’ve obviously rehearsed this. ‘Nail-varnish remover?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘That’s going to shock people, Lilian.’

  ‘It does sting but it makes my skin look clear. I first used it by accident – I thought it was toner. The bottles looked the same. And the thing is, even if people say you shouldn’t, if it feels right for you, then do it.’

  ‘What are your desert-island products?’

  ‘I couldn’t leave the house without my foundation.’ She throws a haunted look Neeve’s way. ‘I mean my base. I like good coverage – I don’t understand “veils” and “sheers” and that.’ She holds up a bottle of foundation. ‘This one is good and thick. And I like this bronzer. I like things that make me look brown.’ She freezes. ‘Am I allowed to say that? That I like to look brown? Or should I check my privilege?’

  Neeve snorts with laughter. ‘You’re okay.’

  ‘And I like this eyeshadow set because none of the colours are mad.’ She displays a quartet of browns and beiges.

  ‘What are your thoughts on Botox and other injectables?’ Neeve asks.

  ‘I’d never say never.’ Mum gives a cute little smile. ‘Who knows? Maybe when I’m older.’

  She’s … well, I’d have to see it on screen to know for sure, but she’s … adorable.

  ‘Thank you for your wisdom, Lilian.’

  ‘Can I say something else?’ Mum asks.

  I don’t think this bit has been rehearsed but Neeve says, ‘Go for it.’

  ‘If you find your lipstick shade, and it might take most of your life but when you find it, buy at least three of them because they’ll stop making it as soon as they hear you like it.’

  ‘Great advice.’

  ‘And the lady in the shop will try to make you buy a found– base that’s the same colour as your face. But get a darker one if that’s the one you like. It’s your money, it’s your face.’

  ‘Thank you, Lilian. Okay, that’s a wrap.’

  Naturally enough, we all clap. We clap and whoop and whistle, because we’re a rowdy bunch. There’s a lot that’s wrong with my family but, all credit to us, we know when to clap.

  Downstairs we go, just in time to greet Declyn, his husband Hayden and Baby Maisey, who is instantly ferried off by a selection of her cousins.

  In the kitchen, people mill about, waiting for the food to arrive. Mum is in the thick of everyone, still looking unnervingly like Hot Granny.

  And here’s the food!

  Everyone crowds into the dining room, except Pop, who insists on having his dinner in the living room in front of The One Show, Sofie, who can’t eat if anyone other than Jackson is watching, Finn, Pip and Kit, who live life in constant motion, and Neeve, who needs Snapchat to keep her company so must lie on
the landing for the Wi-Fi.

  Derry goes to the head of the table, unwraps the first bag and shouts, ‘Murgh makhani?’

  ‘Me!’ says Joe and, immediately, it’s passed from hand to hand till it reaches him.

  It’s like one of those heart-warming scenes when ordinary people form a human chain to put out a blazing fire.

  ‘Lal maas?’

  ‘Me,’ Dominik says.

  Derry included him to show our appreciation as a family/bribe him with Indian food never to leave us. He was touchingly surprised but hung back in the race for seats at the dining table, so has joined both The Poor Bastard and Joe, who also missed out. They will eat their dinner standing up, their plates on the windowsill.

  ‘Beetroot chicken?’

  This is what The Poor Bastard always orders – will he speak?

  ‘His!’ Maura yelps, pointing at her husband.

  ‘Rice for everyone,’ Derry says, passing down several cartons. ‘And here’s a garlic naan. No, it’s a Peshwari. Hands off, it’s Amy’s.’

  Mutterings of ‘We know it’s Amy’s’ reaches me.

  Oh, sweet Jesus, here’s Urzula. She looks like a biscuit-coloured skeleton with cold blue marbles for eyes. Urzula’s brand of skinny is a world away from ‘wellness’. She’s just bones with skin shrink-wrapped around them. Even her hair is thin.

  ‘Urzula,’ Derry says levelly. Derry isn’t scared of Urzula. ‘You should have said you were coming. I haven’t ordered you a dinner.’

  ‘Not an issue. I could not possibly eat an entire carton.’

  Around the table, heads bow in shame. All of us could eat an entire carton, no bother.

  ‘But perhaps someone will spare me a spoonful of theirs.’

  The only good thing is that she literally means a spoonful. Even so, no one offers.

  ‘Where’s Sofie?’ she asks.

  ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘What is she eating?’

  No one answers. We’re not shopping poor Sofie who, anyway, only ordered a starter and will probably persuade Jackson to eat most of it.

  ‘Help yourself to mine.’ I need to stay on good terms with Urzula because I love Sofie. ‘And would you like some naan?’

  ‘Let me see it.’ She picks apart a quarter of my naan before thrusting it away like it’s infectious. ‘Marzipan? Raisins? Amy, this is cake!’

  She eats her spoonful of curry, then inspects the rest of us as we tuck in. ‘You eat too quickly,’ she says. ‘Slow down! It takes twenty minutes for the brain to receive fullness messages from the stomach.’

  Our heads bow lower and lower.

  ‘You should drink a big glass of water between each mouthful,’ she says.

  Suddenly, from the living room, Pop yells, ‘Fuck off with yourself! Fuck away off, you miserable yoke!’

  40

  Saturday, 1 October, day nineteen

  What the hell do I wear to a story-telling thing? Something comfortable, probably. But I need the protection of nice clothes.

  There’s a skirt in my wardrobe I’ve never worn, a flared navy crêpe with – very best things ever – pockets in the sides. It’s another of Bronagh’s finds, and it’s genuinely from the fifties, you can tell from the cut, which works well on a woman of my shortness.

  I try the skirt with a black blouse patterned with cartoony cats and decide that I’ll do. But the blouse fastens at the back and I can’t reach to get my zip all the way up. I’m not even going to think about Hugh, so I step on to the landing and call, ‘Zip!’

  Neeve emerges from her bedroom. ‘Where are you off to in your dead person’s threads?’

  ‘Out. To a story-telling thing. In town.’

  ‘You are?’ She does the zip.

  ‘You know about it?’

  ‘Yeah. The Google kids and those types like it. They’re all overworked and stressed and, unlike Irish people, they haven’t embraced the relaxing effect of heavy drinking.’ Something terrible seems to occur to her. She clutches my arm. ‘You’re not going on your own?’

  ‘No, with Alastair.’

  ‘Work Alastair? Ah, he’s cool.’

  I remember now that when the girls had waitressed at the party to launch Hatch, Alastair had tipped them lavishly.

  ‘Seeing as it’s him you’re going with,’ Neeve says, ‘you’re allowed to enjoy yourself.’

  In the lobby of the Kingsley Hotel, in faded jeans and a soft, loose, collarless shirt, Alastair looks younger and hipper, scruffier than his work persona. Yesterday he was clean-shaven but today he has enough chin-hair to almost qualify as a beard. How? Miracle-Gro?

  Up the stairs we go and over to a door-girl, who’s wearing the biggest denim jacket I’ve ever seen – it’s easily the size of a shed.

  While I’m still fumbling at my bag, Alastair has paid for us both and is hustling me into the room.

  ‘Stop rushing me!’ I locate a tenner. ‘Here.’

  ‘My shout.’

  ‘I don’t want it to be your shout. Take the money.’

  ‘Calm down, Amy. Really.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll buy the hot chocolate.’

  ‘The hot chocolate is included.’

  It’s a big, cosy room, the floor scattered with beanbags, hammocks and low couches. The lighting is dim and rosy, and there are snuggly throws strewn about. Lots of people are here already – nearly every man has a beard and a man-bun, and the women are the height of millennial fashion, which is to say they look like they’d got dressed this morning in the first things they found on someone else’s bedroom floor: too-big jackets over dayglo crop-tops and high-waisted acid-wash jeans or shapeless jumpers almost as long as the shiny pleated mini-skirts they purport to cover.

  I watch them with envy – I was there for grunge the first time round: the look didn’t work for me then and it wouldn’t work for me now.

  Everyone seems to be moving about, stepping over bodies and administering enthusiastic hugs.

  Alastair scans the room, says, ‘Over there.’ We pick our way through soft furnishings to an island made from floor cushions, a beanbag, a low table and a nightlight. A girl flaps towards us, wearing what seems to be an entire convent’s worth of black pinafore, and dispenses hot chocolate.

  Alastair sits cross-legged on one of the floor cushions and carefully I lower myself to the beanbag. My skirt is too short for this lark – yes, I’m wearing tights, but anyone on gusset-watch would be quids in. Then I realize I’ll have to stand up again to go to the bar. ‘What do you want to drink?’

  ‘There’s no bar.’

  ‘What? No alcohol?’ I want to go home. This isn’t for me at all. I’m too old, too set in my ways, too sober …

  ‘Try your hot chocolate.’

  I take a sip. And now my tongue is burnt. ‘So, come here, about Mrs EverDry, I was thinking –’

  ‘We’re not talking about work.’

  ‘Well, then, what will we talk about?’

  ‘Non-work stuff.’

  ‘You mean personal stuff? I’ll need a drink.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll go downstairs to the bar.’ He gets to his feet with such lithe grace that a girl standing nearby stares hard at him. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Vodka and tonic.’

  Left on my own, sprawled on the beanbag, I feel like a bit of an eejit. I try to let a little smile play around my lips, so that I don’t look as uncomfortable as I feel, but it’s no good so I get out my phone and look at emails.

  ‘Hi.’ A man is staring down at me. He looks slightly messianic – long hair, beard, intense eyes. His age? Impossible to tell, these days, with young men and their beards, right? But somewhere between nineteen and thirty-seven.

  ‘Can I join you?’

  I freeze. What’s the etiquette here? ‘You can, I guess. But –’ And, thank God, here comes Alastair, carrying two glasses.

  Messiah Boy follows my stare. ‘You’re with someone? That’s cool. Great top.’

  ‘Which? Oh, mine? Thank you.’

&nbs
p; ‘Are they cats?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His clothes are very weird – acid-washed skinnies, sheepskin slippers, sports socks and a shrunken fisherman-style sweater, pilled and bally and the funny thing is that it might have come from a charity shop or it could just as easily have cost seven hundred euro from Dries van Noten.

  He retreats to a nearby hammock, where he swings back and forth and eyes me a little insolently.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Alastair gives me my vodka. ‘Did you get hit on?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I take a swig of my drink, which is pleasingly strong, and say, ‘Maybe he was just being friendly. Is this a double?’

  ‘I thought I’d save myself a second trip downstairs.’

  I look around. The room has filled up a lot, and people are lying everywhere. ‘This looks like the setting for an orgy.’

  ‘It doesn’t,’ says Alastair.

  ‘How do you know?’

  He gives a little smile.

  ‘Have you really been to an orgy?’ I ask.

  ‘Why? Would you like to come to one?’

  ‘I would fecking not,’ I say hotly.

  ‘You sure?’ He finds this funny. ‘How can you know until you’ve tried it?’

  ‘Because,’ I take another swig of my drink, ‘to be honest, it’s not sex, per se, that floats my boat. I like romance, I like passion, I like the feels you get when a man says, “I can’t stop thinking about you.” Or “You’re in my head the whole time.” You know?’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘See, I’d never be bothered with a lesbian thing. I don’t want sex to be equal – Jesus, this vodka is making me chatty. I like to be dominated in bed, not like spanked dominated, just ordinary dominated. I like to be flung on a bed and for a man to say, “I’ve waited so long to do this,” and I love the weight of a man pressing down on me.’

  Alastair’s gone very still. ‘Vanilla.’

  ‘Totally. I’m ashamed, Alastair, that I’ve no interest in multiples or anal or bondage. What I like is waiting. I like sexual tension. I like being desired. But I’m shy in bed. I’d never do …’ I watch closely for his reaction ‘… reverse cowgirl.’