The Importance of Being Aisling

by Emer McLysaght

  ‘You’re alright. You’re alright. I have you.’ I look desperately towards the main entrance for any sign of life, when a familiar shape appears in the doorway.

  ‘Aisling,’ he calls. ‘Aisling, are you out here?’ I’ve never been happier to see him.

  ‘James! James, c’mere I need your help.’ He turns at the sound of my voice and sees me struggling with Sharon. He starts running.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he pants, reaching us, his accent stronger than ever. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He attacked her. There! That fella!’ I point at the silver car, now successfully reversed the width of the car park and doing a screeching turn out the main entrance. ‘Get the number plate!’

  ‘What the hell?’ James whips out his phone to call 999, and between us we help Sharon back towards the hotel.

  ‘Please, I don’t want anyone to see me,’ she begs, straightening up and pulling at her dress. I steer her towards the disabled toilet off the lobby, away from the hustle of the function room.

  ‘Sharon, do you know him? Was it … was it your ex?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ she sobs. ‘Frank Bolger. Frankie Bolger.’ And she rattles off an address in Waterford and gives a rueful smile. ‘My old address.’

  James nods and strides down the hallway, barking details into the phone.

  Once inside the toilet, I lock the door and lower the seat. ‘Go on. Sit down. You’re okay now. Shh, you’re okay.’

  She sits and shudders, looking at her hands. At least three of her glamorous nails are gone. Ripped off in the fight. And her knees are grazed from where she tumbled out of the car.

  ‘Your good nails!’ I exclaim, unable to stop myself. She laughs, a tiny, brief laugh.

  ‘Sharon. Do we … should I call an ambulance or something? Should we bring you to hospital? Did he–?’

  ‘No!’ she whispers, absentmindedly pulling cubes of safety glass out of her hair. I place my hand over hers, mostly to stop her from reefing the fingers off herself, but also to give it a squeeze.

  ‘No,’ she says, more softly. ‘He didn’t. Not this time.’

  The guards, fair dues to them, had Frankie Bolger caught before he even made it to the motorway. James met the two gardaí that came to the hotel to follow up, leading the female guard to where we’re sitting disabled toilet and knocking gently.

  ‘Sharon,’ she says firmly but gently. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Should I go?’ I stutter as Sharon nods and the guard, Hannah she said her name was, comes in. All a guard has to do is look at me and I’m ready to confess to all my crimes: twice forgetting to renew my tax on time and one mad and speedy dash to Kildare Village for a sale on Orla Kiely homewares. I wanted the bread bin badly. It was 30 per cent off!

  Hannah motions for me to stay and kneels down beside Sharon. ‘First of all, are you injured at all? Does anything hurt?’

  Sharon shakes her head. ‘Not really. My knees but they’re grand.’

  ‘And Sharon, I just want to explain to you that we can transport you to the Sexual Assault Treatment Unit in–’

  ‘I don’t need to go. He didn’t. He didn’t sexually assault me.’

  ‘But he has before.’

  Sharon nods.

  ‘I had his records emailed to me,’ Hannah says evenly. ‘I know it has been a traumatic time for you. I’m sorry this happened to you, Sharon.’

  ‘Not sorry enough to put him in prison,’ Sharon snarls.

  The guard is silent for a moment. ‘I’m sorry Sharon,’ she repeats again.

  The guards leave and ask me to make sure Sharon comes in tomorrow morning to give a statement. They leave a card. Hannah shakes her head solemnly as she walks away.

  ‘Will you get Majella?’ I ask James. And then add, ‘And Carol.’ By now everyone knows something is up. James has given the minimal information and tried to keep the looky-loos at bay. Majella arrives and is quickly dispatched again to bring a coat for Sharon and my handbag. Sadhbh passes a message that she’ll see me back at home. Carol, a little surprised to be summoned, immediately takes on a role of carer, smoothing Sharon’s hair and making small talk about what the dickens balayage is and whether highlights would do anything for her. Then we bundle Sharon out to my car to take her back to her little flat above the salon. We pass John pacing up and down outside. He sees me and reaches out to grab my arm.

  ‘Ais, are you okay?’

  I stiffen and then see the worry in his face and smile and say, ‘I’m fine.’

  The blonde bombshell – although on closer inspection she’s just a normal girl with a load of teeth and a load of tan – arrives at his side and takes his arm. I smile at her too and repeat, ‘I’m fine. We’re fine.’

  ****

  Sharon’s ex had assaulted her many times and raped her twice. When he did it the second time she went to the guards five days later. They questioned him. He said she was lying, that he’d dumped her and she wanted revenge. There was insufficient evidence, they said. She left him shortly afterwards, packing up her things while he was at the pub. She hoped and prayed he’d never find her.

  ‘When we first got together he wanted to be with me all the time,’ she explains, curled up on the couch. ‘I was only twenty-two – I thought it was romantic. He always wanted to know where I was and who I was with.’

  ‘How long was it before he got violent?’ Carol asks gently.

  ‘Only a matter of months.’ Sharon sniffs, and I gasp. ‘He followed me on a night out with my friends. Said he’d seen me dancing with some fella. Accused me of cheating on him. That was the first time he hit me. I felt so guilty, I couldn’t tell anyone. It was my own fault. He had me convinced.’

  ‘Sharon, it wasn’t your fault at all!’ I interject. ‘You’re entitled to go out with your friends and dance with who you like.’

  ‘I know that now,’ she says. ‘But it wasn’t so clear back then. It was like he had me brainwashed.’ She turns to me. ‘How did you know it was him, Aisling? I never told you.’

  ‘I just had a feeling. Your whole face went dark when you mentioned him ages ago. I knew there must have been something. And you were so worried when the café was attacked.’

  She looks down at her hands.

  ‘How did he find you?’ I continue. ‘Does he know you have family around here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I’ve been trying so hard to keep a low profile. I blocked him everywhere online, but sure, he probably still found a way.’

  And then I remember something. I tagged her in an Instagram picture at the soft opening of BallyGoBrunch. It was a shot of Carol’s smashed avocado on toast. Very arty. I noticed she’d removed the tag the next day, and I was a bit put out that she didn’t want to be linked to the café, although I never said anything. ‘Could it have been Instagram?’ I ask the room, not quite able to meet her eye.

  Sharon looks up at me and nods. ‘I think it might have been,’ she says. ‘And I think that might have been why your café got smashed up, Ais. I’m sorry. I should have said something. Frankie Bolger is dangerous. He did something similar to my salon in Waterford. I just didn’t want to believe he was after me – that’s why I never said anything. I feel so guilty.’

  ‘Don’t you dare say sorry,’ I quickly admonish her. ‘I’m the one who should be saying sorry. I was so busy trying to go viral that I put you in danger. I’m a right gom.’ Then I pull her in for a hug.

  ‘The main thing is you’re safe now, Sharon,’ Carol says, tucking a blanket around her legs. ‘The man I was engaged to before Marty hit me too,’ she adds, looking down at her hands. ‘When I met Marty I thought he had saved me from him. But the truth is that he could see I was vulnerable.’

  ‘They know, don’t they, somehow?’ Sharon says with a rueful smile, and Carol looks up at her. ‘They do,’ she agrees. ‘And they pounce.’

  I’m not much use but I do have a share bag of Maltesers in my handbag – I always mean to just have a handful (9 Points) but somehow t
he whole lot always goes down the hatch. Anyway, the girls are lucky that this is a new packet.

  ‘What was it like with Marty?’ Sharon asks.

  ‘He never hit me. It was more … emotional. He has plenty of money, but he used to only give me the bare minimum for my housekeeping every week. He said he’d up it when the children came, but of course that didn’t happen. It wasn’t my fault – it just wasn’t to be. He told me that I was useless, a waste of space, only a housewife. He said I’d never have the gumption to leave him.’

  ‘Well, he was wrong about that, wasn’t he?’ I say. What these women have been through – the things that happen behind closed doors. My heart breaks for them.

  Carol smiles. ‘He was,’ she says. ‘I’m tougher than I look.’

  ‘I knew Frankie was around as soon as PhoneWatch called earlier to say the alarm was going off. He’s an electrician – he knows what wires to cut and which ones to leave. I knew he was trying to lure me over. I should have just called the guards then.’

  ‘Ah, Sharon, you know yourself that there’s nothing they could have done,’ I say, throwing an arm around her shoulders. ‘They weren’t going to hunt down a lad for opening a window. You did everything right.’

  At 1 a.m., Sharon is exhausted. Carol offers to stay on the couch so that I can go back to Sadhbh and Mammy and Majella can put Pablo’s mind at ease. ‘You’ll be okay,’ I hear Carol say as she tucks Sharon in. ‘You’re made of strong stuff, missy. Strong stuff.’

  ‘Sharon!’ I poke my head back around the door. ‘That’s what you should call the salon. Strong Stuff. The Strong Stuff Salon! You might get a few head-the-balls thinking it’s an off-licence but … what do you think?’

  Sharon smiles sleepily. ‘It’s perfect.’

  Chapter 40

  ‘Are you settling in alright?’

  Carol has the place lovely. She’s already found places for all of her bits that she liberated from the home she shared with Marty Boland, and James Matthews put up a magnetic knife holder especially for her in the kitchen.

  ‘It’s lovely. I love it. I don’t know myself.’

  ‘And you’ll never have an excuse for being late for work.’

  She’s taken one of the new apartments above the café. I gave her a loan to help her with the deposit, and she and Sharon went and packed up her things and moved her out of her home for the last twenty years. Sharon said she didn’t even look back once. They’re great pals now.

  ‘Any word from Marty since you left?’

  ‘Not a peep. Did I tell you he had locked the door to the workshop?’

  ‘The louser! Those sausages are yours! Your creation, your hard work – you should have the glory.’

  ‘I’m going to carry on making them in the café. He can’t stop me. And the recipe is in my head. He can try all he likes but he’ll never get it just right. And anyway, I know they’re my sausages. And that’s enough for me.’

  ‘Well, BallyGoBrunch will be stocking Carol Boland Sausages, not Marty Boland Sausages, and Mammy will be selling yours up at the eco-farm too. I’ll make sure of it.’

  ‘You’re a great girl, Aisling. Your father would be very proud of you. Not that he wasn’t anyway. He used to be in the butcher’s telling anyone who’d listen about you running the show at a big pensions place in Dublin.’

  I’ve never heard this titbit before. What else was he saying about me, I wonder?

  ‘Well, running the show is a bit of a stretch.’ I can’t take all the credit for PensionsPlus, although if it wasn’t for me the kitchen would have been shut down by the Health and Safety Authority and nobody would have ever had a pen or Post-its.

  Carol raises her eyebrows and smiles. ‘Well, you’re running the show here now, so you must have been doing something right. Go on down, I’ll be after you shortly.’

  Sadhbh and Elaine went on another scout of charity shops around Dublin for me and dug up a fresh range of ancient lampshades and mad old pictures of couples who look like they’re about to brain each other. I’d rather a nice bit of inspirational calligraphy, but if anyone knows shabby chic brunch décor it’s Sadhbh and Elaine. They dropped them down to me yesterday – what would I do without them? And now James Matthews is going to help me hang them – what would I do without him? He’s more or less finished on this project, but he’s been there at every turn to help out. He was lugging the Morans’ stuff in out of the jeep earlier. They’re going to be Carol’s neighbours upstairs for the time being. It’s not ideal to have them squashed into a two-bed apartment, but at least it will be their own.

  Shem and Pablo have really bonded since the fire – over Willy, strangely enough. It turns out Pablo had got fond of the little fecker and had even stopped sleeping with a washing basket over his head to prevent Willy from humping his ear during the night. Poor Willy. May he rest in peace. They’re still waiting for the insurance money to come through, but it shouldn’t take much longer now that the cause of the fire has been established. For half a second I had it pinned on Frankie Bolger but it was actually lint in the dryer drawer. It shook me to my core – what was Liz Moran doing with the dryer on in June? And why hadn’t she cleaned out the lint drawer? They kept it to themselves until rumours of insurance fraud started to trickle through the village, but to be quite honest, I’d rather be suspected of burning down my house than having the dryer on in summer.

  The money raised from the fashion show gave them a big boost, and Majella’s job means they can keep their heads above water. Mammy’s made noises about giving Shem some work as she and Constance start getting their eco-farm in gear. They’re off meeting a yurt consultant today. I warned Mammy to bring a can of hairspray in her bag in case they need to make a quick getaway. ‘Yurt consultant’ just doesn’t seem like a real profession, so I want them to be prepared in case it’s someone trying to sex traffic them or something.

  ‘Ah, there you are – I was just getting worried,’ James Matthews jokes as I drag the last of the lampshades with me through the kitchen from the store room into the café. He has all the gear with him and has already started marking places to hang the new pictures. Most of my wall decorations were destroyed by Frankie Bolger – we know it was him now. The one fingerprint he left was a match. I have even more stuff for the walls now though, and James has his work cut out for him with screws and rawl plugs and what have you. My DIY vocabulary has come on no end over the past couple of months. His T-shirt is a teeny bit too short for his torso, and every time he reaches up to mark a spot on the wall I catch a glimpse of his knickers and his smooth skin. He has so many important pockets in his trousers too. I used to think that men were just being dramatic having that many pockets, but I’ve seen the various things he pulls out of them and I’m considering a pair myself now, to be honest. I had a pair of combats when I was seventeen but the pockets were sewn up, and Majella warned me against cutting them open or else I’d ‘ruin the line’. She’d read it in a magazine, but it was the same one that told her that putting mouthwash on her spots was a good idea, so I’m not sure it was the lifestyle bible she made it out to be. The skin was burnt off her.

  James is stretching and marking and occasionally putting his hands on his hips to consider his work. The T-shirt is in bits but I bet it smells–

  ‘Aisling.’

  Jesus, he’s talking to me. ‘Sorry! What?’

  ‘Will you hold the other end of this spirit level for me? The darned thing keeps slipping.’ His English accent is like butter. Now, I’ve nothing against English people at all, but there’d be people around BGB who’d be muttering about spuds and 800 years any time James might cross their paths.

  I stand in beside him, close to the wall, and take one end. He gestures with his head towards the other end of the level. ‘And that end. I need both hands.’ I slide in in front of him and place my other hand on the far edge of the spirit level, holding it against the wall. Mother of Divine, he’s very close to me. His front is almost touching my back. But I know f
or a fact my hair smells nice. Thank you, Herbal Essences Anti-Frizz with Jojoba. You never let me down. James reaches down and picks up his drill and then stretches up and places his arms over my head, one each side.

  ‘Hold still.’ He leans in and bzzzrrr: the drill crunches into the wall, sending a tiny cloud of dust into my face and me backwards into him with a loud ‘Hey!’ He puts his hands on my shoulders and we laugh. He twists me around and sets about brushing the dust from my forehead and nose. His eyes are very brown. I wonder can he see the yellow flecks in mine. I got my make-up done for a wedding once and it was a big mistake. She had me convinced to try golden eyeshadow, saying it would bring out the bits of yellow in my blue eyes, and I believed her, like a clown. I can’t pull off gold eyeshadow. I have examined my eyes for the yellow bits, though, and she’s right. They’re there. James is staring hard enough at them anyway. One hand still on my shoulder. The other pulling gently at the front of my hair. One dimple just about showing in his cheek. He’s close enough that I can hear his breathing, and it’s a little bit fast. And is he … getting closer?

  ‘Hello?’ The door opens. I know that voice.

  Peering out around James’s torso, I see John standing at the café entrance, looking awkward.

  ‘Ais, hiya. I didn’t see you there. If you’re busy …’

  ‘No, no!’ I jump out in front of James and, in a moment of panic, blather, ‘You know James, don’t you? James, this is Aisling – I mean John,’ swinging my arm from one man to the other. John reaches his hand out to James to shake. ‘We’ve met a couple of times. Howiya, lad.’

  ‘If it’s a breakfast sandwich you’re after, you’ll have to wait another few days I’m afraid.’ What in the name of all that is holy is he doing here?