Out Late with Friends and Regrets (5 page)

“You’re on your way to recovery, now. You’ve taken the first step, with your fitness classes, and you’ll soon find you’ll make friends and do stuff with them,
you
see.”

“I just can’t talk to people.”

“You talk to your customers in the shop, don’t you?”

“Yes, that’s easy. No problem. I even feel as if they regard me as some sort of T-shirt expert!” She laughed self-consciously. “But I sometimes have coffee with girls from the class afterwards, and they’re all so confident. I’ve tried the odd remark, but I’m definitely the outsider.”

“You seem easy enough talking to me. Even after all the years we haven’t spoken.”

After a moment, Fiona said, “That was – my fault.”

Rosemary opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. She stood up, and said, “It’s going to be a very late lunch, if I don’t get those potatoes on - the beef will have shrunk to a walnut.”

“It smells fantastic,” said Fiona, “I don’t bother with a joint just for myself.”

“We need to feed you up.”

“Can’t wait. Can I help with anything?”

“Yes, come on.”

Fiona added a combat class to her schedule, and began to make a point of saying hello to fellow exercisers. A few smiled and replied, which was nice; and she tried to look interested when the girls from Lynn’s class discussed their relationships and children. Still the outsider.

Lynn was different, though. Fiona was sure she would be able to talk to her, share things with her, if only she could get her on her own.
 
Lynn had a boyfriend, it seemed, but didn’t mention him much.
 
Fiona hoped he was good to her.
 
He would need to be strong, but also tender.
 
He should have a quick sense of humour, to match the crackling one-liners which punctuated the instructor’s harangue during class.
 
They must have a great sex life.
 
Sex with that fantastic body.
 
Did he know how lucky he was, she wondered.
 
Maybe it was time to look for a boyfriend of her own. This thought somehow failed to ignite her enthusiasm.
 
Maybe it was the endorphins stirred up by the physical activity, giving her an almost constant feeling of suppressed excitement.
 

  
And then, one evening after class, she saw the man in Lynn’s life.
 
He was just a vague shape in the gloom, standing by a low sports car, and Lynn’s unmistakable silhouette ran up to embrace him.
 
The figure stepped back, pushed her away.
 
Fiona could not make out the angry words, but there were plenty of them. She just made out the phrase “- NEVER to phone!”, and hoped that she could not be seen behind her own car, under the trees.
 
Lynn was apparently pleading with him, her tone far from that of the confident, sassy instructor.
 
The man’s voice took on an aggressive tone which raised the hairs on her skin, and the last word of his diatribe was plainly “SLUT!”

Lynn turned and walked back to the Centre building, shoulders shaking.
 
Fiona found her heart pounding with an almost audible thump.
 
She gasped for breath; her head swam.
 
To her shock, she felt an almost irresistible desire to seize the man by the lapels, bend him backwards over his car, knee him in the balls again and again, until they were pulp; to run after Lynn, put her arms around her, comfort her, and -
 
well, comfort her.

She stood, trembling, until the man had driven away and her own irrational adrenalin rush had subsided.

He must be married.
 
The tabloids would call him a love-rat.
 
Poor Lynn.
 
And what a stupid, fucking cliché.
 
And that’s all there was to it, really; the light-footed goddess had been dragged down to earth, by a cliché.

Her third visit to Woodside. The second had been Christmas Day; Anna had elected to stay in London at Janet’s, and it had been lovely of Rosemary and Donal to invite her so that she wouldn’t be on her own. Slightly awkward, with Donal’s sister there too; Siobhan was beautiful in a Celtic sort of way, with distinctive blue eyes and arching dark eyebrows, but she was quiet and withdrawn, which made Fiona’s attempts at conversation doubly difficult.

 
“She’s had a bit of a personal crisis,” said Rosemary when they spoke later on the phone, “but she wanted me to apologise for her and hoped you didn’t think she was being rude.”

As if.

 
“No, of course not. I just thought she was shy, like me. Fancy her feeling she needed to apologise, though. She seemed so nice, I’m sorry she’s had an awful time.”

And now Siobhan was there again, though looking a little more cheerful than at Christmas. Bad of Fiona, to feel disappointed at not having Rosemary to herself, but she should make an effort to be friendly.

“How are you, Siobhan?” she asked.

“Doing great, thanks.” She had more of an accent than her brother. “The family’s been just wonderful, and I’ve decided to move over here permanently. I’ve applied for a job at Harford General.”

“Oh, great. You’re a nurse, then.”

She hoped it hadn’t come up at Christmas, and that she had misheard or forgotten.

Siobhan’s smile lit up her eyes.

“Yeah, we’re all nurses in Ireland, when we’re not coping with ten children or writing immortal – or immoral - plays!”

Fiona felt her face heat up. She wondered what to say, but Siobhan reached over, and put a hand on hers, giving it a squeeze.

“Yes, I’m a nurse,” she said, “and I’m off to get my interview right now. So good to see you again, Fiona.”

She stood, and she and Rosemary hugged. When she had gone, Rosemary said, “She’s doing so much better, it’ll do her good to live away from the source of all the bad stuff.”

Fiona wondered if she could decently ask what bad stuff, but Rosemary added, “There was a fling and a flit with a doctor, which made the papers over there, even in Dublin.”

“I’m surprised it caused such a stir.”

“They were both married. Small town. Messy divorces.”

“Oh. Oh God. Yes, I see.”

“But you’re the one I want to hear about, Fee. How’s the exercise regime going? Sun still shining brightly out of Lynn’s arse, is it?”

Fiona giggled. When she had told Rosemary about Lynn’s love-rat, she hadn’t even toned down her own overreaction. You could be that frank, with a friend.

“Oh yes. Watching out for unworthy suitors so I can see them off.”

“Well, that’s one way in which you haven’t changed,” said Rosemary.

“Eh? What way?”

“You were always the hero of our imagination games.
 
Do you remember one lunch-break, when we’d been doing Arthurian legends in English – must have been in second form?”

“I don’t think so...”

“You decided you’d be a knight to my lady, and rescued me off the roof of the bike sheds, where the evil baron had me imprisoned –
  
you got me down with a flourish, but do you remember sweeping me into your arms and snogging me like there was no tomorrow?
 
You even put your tongue in my mouth!”

“Oh God, yes I do!
 
How embarrassing! I always yearned to be the guy with the leather doublet and a handy way with a rapier. If I’d been doing a fencing class at the sports centre when I saw them in the car park, I really think Lynn’s boyfriend – make that ex-boyfriend - would have gone home with an intimate body piercing he wasn’t expecting. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Maybe I do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember Sister Francesca? All the hockey injuries you pretended you had so she’d check you over? You broke your heart when she was sent to the missions.”

Fiona let a long moment pass, while she studied the gas flames of the fire, eventually saying,“Well, OK. Everybody has schoolgirl crushes.”

“Yes, so they do. Did you ever know you were mine? I used to think you’d make a brilliant romantic lead.”

It was getting too hot in the room altogether.

“Oh come on. You always had loads of boyfriends, all the nice-looking ones, too, whilst I got all the dregs. Geeks, weirdos, no-hopers. They were always horrible,” said Fiona.

“Your problem was that you put all the potential talent right off. Too feisty by half.”

Fiona tried to visualise her former self. Always in trouble. Pushing her luck. Cheeky. Trying the nuns’ ironclad patience to the limit. Sending them off at explanatory tangents in the more boring lessons. Paper plane-maker, pellet-flicker, impromptu impressionist. A different person, a girl with whom she’d lost contact.

“Hmm. Can’t say I’m itching to get a boyfriend, anyway. I mean, I assume Donal’s taken?”

“Too right. But I think you’re ready for a change of direction, recovered enough to take a step into the arena. I sense a kind of – oh, I dunno, a kind of impatience in you.”

“Maybe what I need is a nice, civilised, gay boyfriend. Someone I can talk to and go places with.”

Rosemary looked at her intently for a moment.

“Maybe what you need is a nice, civilised, gay
girl
friend, someone you can let rip with, and use up some of that pent-up energy!”

Fiona stared. Her heartrate seemed to have shot up. She realised her mouth was open. She would have to say something.

“No. No, I don’t think so. Not at all.” She was finding it difficult to breathe without gasping, as if she’d been running. She shouldn’t have come. She could have carried on as she was, without Rosemary in her life. Without anyone in her life. Could she decently leave this early? It was two o’clock, and a Wednesday because they both had the day off; she could plead early dusk and the impending rush hour.

And Rosemary was just watching her, saying nothing.

“So what does a respectable married woman like you know about... gay girlfriends?” Fiona managed, finally.

Rosemary’s dimples winked in her cheeks as she smiled.

“Oh, I had a little dabble at uni, y’know. We were all radical feminists, and constantly looking for boundaries to crash. Several of us went through an experimental phase of dating women. Rites of passage, Fee. I’m deeply happy with Donal, and I love him to bits, but I have to say that I could have acquired a taste for women if he hadn’t come along.” The dimples deepened. “Perhaps I was really lucky in my choices,” she added, rolling her eyes.

“Oh God,” said Fiona, “and you think that I -”

“Yes.”

There was a pause, and Fiona reached for her cup. It made a quiet but discernible rattle in the saucer. She would have killed for a real drink.

“Tell you what,” said Rosemary, resettling herself next to her friend on the sofa, “you can give my theory a try-out. Trial snog, free of charge.”

She pushed her lips forward in a duckbill pout and lowered her eylids halfway.

“Gwon,” she muttered through the pout, pointing at her mouth for emphasis. Fiona’s tension broke, and she flopped back into the soft upholstery, laughing.

“You’re an idiot, Rosemary J. Carty.”

“I know,” admitted Rosemary with a grin.

“But can we change the subject?”