Friends Like Us

by Siân O'Gorman

  She had come here because she didn’t know what else to do… she didn’t really want to be around anyone, not feeling so jittery.

  She picked up a small yellow purse. It was lovely, the colour was bright and gorgeous, the leather soft and supple. She wondered if she needed a purse. No, the one she had was fine. But she found herself unzipping and checking for a security tag.

  Nothing.

  She suddenly felt the surge of adrenaline, heart pumping; she was going to take it. She didn’t need the purse, in fact, if she had walked away right now she would never have thought of it again. She could have bought ten of them, if she wanted. She could have bought anything in the shop and made no dent in the family finances. But it made no difference, she wasn’t going to buy it, she was going to steal it.

  Holding the purse casually in her hand, she continued her browsing and when she pulled out a jacket to take a better look, she slipped it into her bag.

  She had managed to turn her jitters into full-on seismic shocks, a way of masking the pain inside, a way of creating even more drama. She had no idea. All she knew was that she had to stop but she couldn’t. She tried on more jackets, took her time and then, ever so nonchalantly, walked toward the doors, her insides about to explode. She felt like one of the Great Escapers… she was nearly in Switzerland. Come on.

  ‘Excuse me, Madam.’ A man’s voice. She turned around.

  ‘Would I be able to check your bag, please?’ He was a large man, dressed in perfectly ordinary clothes.

  This was it. Game over.

  She had no choice but to follow the man to the back of the shop, heart thumping, pulse at her temple banging against her head. Steph looked straight ahead, just in case she saw anyone she knew. A fleeting thought: imagine if Miriam saw her. Would she laugh and point in horror?

  She thought of Rachel and the shame she would bring on her, the girl with the mother who is a shoplifter. And her parents, they would never imagine in a million years that this was how low their daughter had sunk.

  Her face was scalded, her stomach desecrated. The man brought her into a room with no windows and a table with a few dirty paper cups. There was a smell of the dead about the room. This was a far cry from the glitz of the shops. This is serious, she thought. There was no getting out of this. She couldn’t just pretend to be forgetful or scatty like she had with Fintan. This is it. The beginning of the end. The architect of my own demise. And it’s all my fault.

  And what was going to happen? Court, prison? What would Rachel say then?

  Prison? Who would have thought that her life would end in prison? The shame would be stratospheric. She couldn’t put Nuala and Joe through that. They wouldn’t be visiting, bringing grapes to see her. No, that’s hospital. What did people bring to prison? God only knew.

  ‘Why would you like to check my bag?’ she asked, quavering but trying to remain dignified.

  ‘I think you may have put an item into your bag that you have not yet paid for, Madam.’ He looked at her, right into her eyes.

  ‘Really?’ she managed. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, may I check?’

  She slid her bag towards him on the table, as accepting of her fate as Anne Boleyn on the scaffold. It was to be. Prison awaited. Her life over.

  ‘May I?’ he said.

  She nodded, tears brimming in her eyes.

  He poked around. And then poked around some more. The bag wasn’t that big. What was the problem?

  ‘I can’t see anything there,’ he said, finally. ‘I must have been mistaken.’

  ‘Oh…’ she was unsure what to do.

  ‘I am terribly sorry, Madam. Will you accept my apologies?’

  ‘Yes, yes of course.’ She couldn’t believe it. Trembling they walked out of the room. She had no idea what had happened but she just wanted to get away.

  ‘We’ve had terrible problems with shoplifters, you see,’ he explained, all chummy and matey now. ‘They are the bane of my lives. And sometimes I get a little trigger-happy.’

  ‘You mean you shoot them?’ Her voice was shaking.

  ‘Just a turn of phrase,’ he laughed. He bent down to whisper in her ear. ‘I would though,’ he hissed. ‘I fucking would. Those little feckers. I would blast their fucking little heads off.’ His eyes were bulging and his teeth gritted in a most alarming way. ‘Now you madam, you don’t look like the type to pilfer, to pinch things. You wouldn’t do anything so low-down as that, would you?’

  Steph shook her head hard. ‘Absolutely not!’

  ‘You are free to go.’ He swept his arms out into a princely gesture and she walked towards freedom once more. This time, chastened and appalled. I must never, ever steal again, she repeated. I can’t do this, I can’t live like this. It’s going to get me in trouble. Think of Rachel, she hissed to herself, think of Rachel if you can’t think of yourself.

  By the jackets, she noticed something on the ground. The canary yellow purse was lying on the floor. She hadn’t managed to drop it in to her bag. This was a sign. She was ready to re-find God, anything. She would never steal again. She had been given a second chance.

  I am sorry for everything, she atoned. I promise, never again. Thank you for this chance. I have been weak and stupid but I promise I will sort this – sort me – out. I just don’t know how yet. I just don’t know how.

  14

  The girls

  This time, Melissa had invited them around to her tiny flat in Portobello for a take-away curry and wine.

  Steph thought twice about coming. She was still trying to recover herself after the incident in the shop… and seeing Miriam and Rick in the garden. Images of them kept flashing into her mind, all the time. She knew she looked and acted normal, but inside she was shaking, permanently. And then after the shop-lifting near-miss, she wasn’t quite sure how she was managing to get out of bed every day. Surely someone must see she was a zombie and on the brink of craziness, but no one seemed to notice. It’s a nightmare, she thought, this lack of control. She was petrified about what was going to happen next. She was so determined to turn over a new leaf, to start again but even if she got the shoplifting under control, there was still Miriam and Rick to worry about.

  She sat down next to Eilis on Melissa’s sofa.

  ‘This is nice,’ said Eilis, ‘really comfortable. I could fall asleep on it.’

  ‘Sometimes I do… and that’s never a good idea,’ said Melissa. ‘Here have a poppadom… Steph?’

  She took one. ‘The flat is gorgeous,’ she said. Tiny, she thought, compared to her house in Dalkey, but perfect for her and Rachel. She imagined living somewhere like this, her own place, just her and Rachel, not just a tiny corner of it and never having to flinch when she heard the key in the door. She could have all her things around, make it her own. Being single looked so easy.

  She looked around at the pictures on the wall, the framed posters from different plays Melissa had seen over the years, a photograph of herself and Cormac.

  ‘Cormac looks particularly handsome in that one,’ said Steph. ‘Is he getting more attractive or am I imagining it?’

  ‘No, you’re not imagining it, it’s true,’ said Melissa. ‘I’m like his Dorian Grey portrait. I’m getting older and he is getting younger. Very, very annoying.’ They all laughed. Melissa looked at the photo. The two of them were on a boat in France, one of the holidays they had taken together. The sun was glinting off the sea, the two of them, their arms around each other. They’d given Cormac’s expensive Nikon to the sweetest old lady to take the photograph. She remembered his whispering, into her ear, ‘That’s the last time we’ll see that camera.’ And she giggled just as the shutter closed. And she remembered his arm around her and the feeling she had when he took it away, the emptiness she felt when it wasn’t there and how natural it was with his arm around her, their bodies pressed together. The photo is there, her laughing, him grinning. She loves it. It’s them in a nutshell. She took him for granted all these years and it
is suddenly dawning on her that maybe she made a mistake. By keeping him at arm’s length she might have wasted too much time, that life was for living and taking risks but her fear of failure had meant she would never know what it was like to have that arm over her shoulders, to hear him laugh at one of her jokes or to hold his hand or eat an ice cream on the pier ever again.

  ‘By the way, Steph,’ she said, changing the subject before she thought too much about it, ‘I passed Mrs Long’s gallery on Molesworth Street and thought of you. Remember her?’

  ‘Of course! How could I forget? She was wonderful. I should have stayed there. It was such a lovely job.’

  ‘And then Rick would always come and drag you off somewhere…’ said Eilis.

  ‘Yes… that’s a long time ago,’ she said, smiling her fake smile, as though she was adrift in happy memories. That was when she was in love with Rick, when she thought life was going to be easy. Ha! ‘Shall we eat first and then start making the lists,’ she said, ‘I’ve got some invitations from the designer – it’s a guy in the paper – for you to look at? We can email them to everyone.’

  However brilliant Steph might have thought her acting was, Melissa was again receiving the message loud and clear that all was not right. She had never seen her quite so tense before, her jaw clenched and shoulders hunched.

  When Steph first met Rick, Melissa was witness to the whole thing. But even then, Melissa had found him rather intimidating, had always wondered what Steph saw in him. He was just so… so Alpha. So bloody male. He had never had much to say to her and Eilis and, initially, Steph was torn, living two separate social lives. But that soon becomes exhausting and when your husband doesn’t particularly like your friends, then you have to choose.

  Melissa had turned up to some of their parties. She did it for Steph, and tried to mingle and mix and meet everyone, but she felt like a sore thumb. Rick was bloody terrifying, and those friends of theirs were quite, quite mad, especially that Miriam. She had always wondered how Steph, who was so normal, stood it all. But then, Melissa really didn’t understand how marriages worked.

  She herself had lied so blatantly about her miserable time in Paris. And Steph obviously telling porkies about her life being okay. She looked over at Eilis… she never really spoke about anything either… Here we are, she thought, such old friends and yet we lie to each other, as though we don’t trust the others.

  How could you be friends without full-disclosure? Suddenly, she was possessed with the need to tell the truth. She was exhausted by living in the shadows, scared that someone might actually know the truth about her, that things weren’t perfect in Melissa-land.

  ‘Listen, I’ve got something to say. It’s my Mam…’ Here we go, she thought, warts and all, here I am. ‘Well, she’s not like other mothers…’

  Eilis and Steph exchanged glances. They knew what she was going to say.

  ‘My mother… Mam, is an… an alcoholic. And it’s the hardest thing in the world. It’s had the most awful effect on me and I need to tell you so I can start to deal with it.’

  Melissa looked at them, feeling vulnerable, exposed. She willed them to understand. She wished she hadn’t said anything. She hated this feeling of being so alone. Steph was the first to put her arms out and hug her and then Eilis joined in.

  ‘We know,’ she said. ‘We’ve known for years. You poor thing… you poor, poor thing. Why don’t you start at the beginning?’

  And Melissa did and told them everything.

  15

  Steph

  At home, the next day, Steph felt all the feelings, disappointment, rage, sadness, begin to spark again, but instead, Stepford Wife-style, she popped in the dishwasher tablet and turned it on. She even practised her fake smile when she was on her own but it was beginning to hurt her cheeks and her eyes, she had noticed, had a crazed hollow look. She looked not quite real, like a waxwork. Exhibit A: unhappy wife.

  Poor Melissa! She had been so brave to say what she had. She couldn’t stop thinking about her. At least, they could now talk about it. That would help, surely?

  She wondered if she too would ever be able to express how lonely she was, how certain she was that her husband was a bully and an adulterer and how fearful that she may have lost Rachel. She didn’t think she could ever say it out loud. If people knew the truth, it would make her failure official. Eilis was on her way round for a cup of tea, they were neighbours after all and Melissa lived in town, and she had to look normal and definitely not unhappy.

  When Steph and Rick moved into the house on Kish Road, Rachel was only three. The cracks in their marriage were already crevasses but they had a young child and Steph didn’t dwell on them. The problem, she thought now, was that there hadn’t been proper love, real love there in the first place. And they would never have got married if she wasn’t pregnant.

  The family next door seemed just like them. There was Miriam and Hugh and their three-year-old daughter Aoife, and a few years later, little Sorcha arrived. It suited everyone when the families began spending weekends together, and even holidays. There were dinner parties, joint children’s parties with huge bobbing bouncy castles and bottles of fizzy orange. It took the bare look off an unsuccessful marriage. But now, of course, there was the not inconsiderable and rather inconsiderate matter that Rick was sleeping with Miriam. And Angeline. And… there were most likely to be more. There had to be. And then there was the bullying, the anger, the ignoring, the total disinterest in her life. It ground you down all of that, until you begun to lose sight of who you really were.

  There was a ring of the doorbell.

  ‘Eilis! Come on in. Kettle’s on.’ The hugged hello. ‘It’s so nice to see a friendly face,’ Steph said. ‘Come in…’ she led the way to the kitchen.

  Steph noticed Eilis looking around, the old dresser she found at an auction, an armchair with a flattened cushion on it and a rug. A book titled Finding Your Spark was spread open on the arm.

  ‘The house looks nice,’ Eilis said. ‘You know, cosy.’

  ‘Does it?’ Steph laughed. ‘It’s messy, though. I never seem to win against the clutter. I’d love a minimal space, a blank canvas.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I’ve got. Rob’s choice. Everything is hard and poky. I was thinking of buying a chair, just for me, something soft, but no one is allowed to sit in it but me. Like yours.’ Steph wondered if all was well with Eilis. Didn’t she have a choice about the furnishings?

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Rick’s got his study, Rachel’s got her bedroom and I’ve got the kitchen. Well, one chair.’

  ‘Everyone needs a chair.’

  ‘A chair of one’s own. You can do lots of things in a chair. Reading, thinking…’

  ‘Exactly. So will you come round and see our uncosy cottage? It’s Rob’s vision, everything Danish and designer. Even his egg cup. I’ve got my garden, though. My oasis.’

  ‘These things are important… egg cups and… and tea towels.’ They laughed.

  ‘Our kettle has –’ Eilis dropped to a stage-whisper ‘– a remote control.’

  ‘Wow.’ Steph was feeling so much better that she had a friend in her house, it gave her a greater feeling of possession, of ownership, having Eilis around and hearing about her life. She put down a pot of tea and two large mugs. ‘Now that’s serious. Why on earth would you want that?’

  ‘And I’m always losing it. There’s always a frantic search for it before I can even have a cup of tea!’ They laughed.

  ‘You should buy your own, to be beside Rob’s. And while he’s still trying to find the remote, you could be sipping your tea. He’ll soon realize that normal kettles are fine. Rick has pretty firm ideas of things too,’ Steph said. ‘He actually chose this kitchen. Though God knows why as he’s never here. But he wanted the double burner and the ice-maker. And the wine fridge, too.’

  ‘That’s considerate,’ said Eilis. ‘A nice full wine fridge.’

  ‘I would prefer it,’ said Steph, ‘if we had a ch
ocolate fridge. You know, to make sure chocolate was kept at the perfect temperature.’

  ‘There’s a business idea in there somewhere,’ said Eilis.

  ‘Somewhere!’

  Steph would have loved to talk about Rick, what was really going on. Not just skimming the surface. She realised that this hinting that all was not well was desperate, hoping someone might see the truth and know the pain she was in. She was so lonely, she longed to open up to someone. She was just about to say something, to admit all was not going well when they heard Rachel from upstairs.

  ‘Mum! Muuuuu-um!’

  ‘Yes darling?’ She dashed out of the kitchen to attend the emergency. An angry face at the top of the stairs: Rachel, furious, incandescent.

  ‘Have you been tidying my room again?’

  ‘Just straightened up a few things, picked up your clothes, collected some mugs, that sort of thing. I found mould – mould – inside those mugs.’ Steph tried to sound confident, but inside, her chest was constricted. A permanent fixture. She couldn’t remember the last time she breathed freely. She had even given up her weekly yoga class as she would lie there supine with nothing to do in the quiet except think about how unhappy she was. It became embarrassing, pretending she wasn’t crying.

  ‘They are my mugs. Okay?’

  ‘Technically, they belong to the family,’ said Steph, immediately wishing she hadn’t. Teenage wrath was, she was learning, best avoided. Brilliant, she thought, your parenting is brilliant.

  Rachel death-stared at her. ‘Just leave everything. It’s my room. Okay? And now I can’t find anything and NOW I’m going to be late. And IT’S YOUR FAULT.’

  Should Steph shout back? No, she wasn’t much good at shouting. Try and argue and reason her point? Maybe she shouldn’t have tidied up. It was interfering, but then again things had to be cleaned. She just didn’t know. She glanced at Eilis who was pretending not to hear anything, just gazing out of the window.