Cathy Kelly 3-book Bundle (74 page)

‘Out,’ she said crisply. Less was more with the likes of James.

‘Out. Interesting,’ murmured James, leaning closer so that she could smell his breath.

She felt a momentary flash of fear at his closeness, the sense that he was a feral beast and the normal rules of human behaviour wouldn’t apply to him. But she cast it off. Fear was deadly. If you let them know you were afraid, then they’d won, they’d take what they wanted.

Dara grabbed her stuff. ‘Yes, out,’ she said, and gave him the benefit of her Siouxsie glare.
Go away,
it said.

Jason’s friend, Felippe, held her arm and they stood by the side of the road on Stephen’s Green, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city, even at half past midnight. Dara tried hard to concentrate, but it was too difficult. Her vision was cloudy and no matter which eye she closed, she still couldn’t see properly.

‘Gotta get a taxi,’ she managed to say. ‘It’s furry late.’

‘Sure,’ Felippe said.

Together, they weaved their way into the middle of the road and started hailing cars. As if they were stones in a river, cars swerved to avoid them.

‘They’re not taxis!’ shouted someone else from the footpath. ‘They’re ordinary cars.’

This was unbearably funny and Dara collapsed on to the road laughing, trying to haul Felippe down with her. ‘Not taxis!’ she giggled. ‘Ordinary cars!’

‘You’re soo funny,’ Felippe said. ‘Ooh look, I think the Green’s open.’ He unhooked his arm from hers and wobbled
over to the other side of the street where he began to rattle the Stephen’s Green park gate in the manner of a person trying to get out of jail.

‘Get off the road, Dara,’ shouted someone. ‘You’re going to be run over.’

Offended, Dara got unsteadily to her feet. ‘No, I’m not,’ she claimed. ‘Look. Up. Not run over.’

A car came perilously close to her, skidding in a flash of steel to avoid her. ‘Oops,’ she said, and that was very funny too, so she had to sit down again for a minute.

‘You’ll be killed, you stupid cow.’

Somebody sounded angry, and whoever it was had grabbed her and was pulling her back across the road to the safety of the pavement. It was Lawrence, another friend of Jason’s, a very boring straight person who didn’t know how to enjoy himself. But cute, Dara thought. Hard to tell because he was so wobbly in front of her but she thought he might be cute. Nice shirt, striped and with purple in it. She liked purple. He’d got her a cab and was holding the door open and trying to shove her in.

Charming.

‘–please take her, she won’t get sick in the car–’

‘I won’t,’ Dara said loudly. ‘I’m not drunk, you know. Not even a little bit. I could drink much more, but I have to get up for work in the morning.’

‘Tomorrow’s Saturday, you moron. Shut up, Dara, will you?’

She was facing Lawrence and she had a nice idea of how to say goodbye to him, a memento of the evening. Swiftly, she pulled up his purple-striped shirt, found his nipple and bit it. ‘Goodnight,’ she said, and let herself slump into the back seat of the taxi. ‘Home, driver, and don’t spare the horses.’

Morning slammed into her consciousness. No gentle opening of the eyes but a rapid sit-up-in-the-bed moment as her pulse
thumped drumbeats in her body. Where was she? What time was it? What…?

Her own bed and in her own clothes, which was good. She felt carefully and found she was still totally dressed, everything on. No items of clothing gone–that was always scary. But fully dressed. In her own bed and she was–she looked around with anxiety–alone. No sign of another person with her and since she was still clothed, it was unlikely she’d brought anyone home. People home, men, meant she’d have taken some of her clothes off and even if she couldn’t remember anything actually happening, it was always there, the possibility. On those days, she’d shower for ages, scrubbing with the loofah she’d bought in the Body Shop until her flesh was raw. Like monks from the olden days, scrubbing away their sin. Today though, she was dressed. No man, no body snoring beside her.

Which was one good thing, but instantly she began the roll call of possible bad things, piecing together the night before. Where she’d gone, what she’d done there. Sometimes, the receipts in her handbag were the only clues, clues that added up to lots of her salary. Being broke never upset her when she was drinking. Then, she was rich as J.R. Ewing, ready to order wine no matter how expensive or how awful it was.

She’d done it again. She’d only meant to have one drink, just the one, and what had happened? Millions of drinks, shots and tequilas and you name it pumped into her.

The wave of shame that rose up in her was physical. Shame could be physical. If flirtation made a person blush with a rosy hue, then shame was a fire of pain.

Rhona had been in the bank longer than Dara and had moved on from microfiche filing to answering telephone calls about deposit accounts.

‘You don’t drink like the rest of us,’ Rhona said.

Dara felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
‘Whaddya mean?’ she blurted out.
Stupid,
that sounded wrong, like she was worried about it, which was the wrong impression to give. ‘I mean, how does everyone else drink?’ she added, managing to sound a bit blasé.

Rhona kept her unwavering gaze upon Dara. Rhona wasn’t one of Dana’s favourite people: she was too sharp, too ready to say what she thought–a very annoying habit.

‘Like we’re going to drink the bar dry.’

‘I don’t do that,’ Dara said and she laughed. Convincing, no?

‘If you say so.’ Rhona shrugged.

When she was gone, Dara thought about the stupidity of the whole conversation. Wasn’t that the point of drinking, to drink the whole bar dry? Dara scanned her mind for that moment in the pub when the alcohol was sinking into her and she was sinking into it, when she’d stare at the jewel-coloured bottles racked up behind the bar and want to finish every single one of them. Surely everyone felt the same, didn’t they?

Dara lived in a bedsit near the bank. It was small but reasonably clean and it was her own. That was the best thing about it.

Des Flynn lived near her. Dara liked Des; not that he was her type. He was always in the company of a gang of other lads, equally strapping, all muscled sporty types with big bags that held soccer jerseys and runners, and probably damp towels that housed billions of bacteria and hadn’t been washed since the year dot. Friendly blokes who drank a couple of pints of beer on a night out and danced badly to Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Not the type who knew how to roll a joint or where you could get a bottle of absinthe, therefore not her type.

She’d watched him sometimes as he went out with his pals. Sitting with the window open all the way down, so her legs
hung out in the sun, with a glass of wine beside her and her skin tanning, she could see all the way down the street. She could see the little old man who came slowly out of his house every afternoon, shuffling up in the direction of the bookies and perhaps for a pint in Horgan’s once Holy Hour, when all the pubs closed, was over. She could watch the young mother with two small kids come shouting and panting out of her front door, one child holding reluctantly on to her, the other crammed into a pushchair, face screwed up and crying. The park, Dara decided, they were going to the park, and the mother would stop screaming and they’d all sit on the grass by the swings and the children would smile at the dogs rushing around, sniffing everything, in the sun. She didn’t know if all this really happened, but she liked imagining people’s lives.

And the boys, she watched Des and his mates.

‘How’s it going?’ Des called up to her.

‘Fine,’ Dara said. She wanted to say something else but couldn’t think what to add, so she gave him a little wave. That looked stupid, she decided.

They were in the pub again after work. It was a Thursday, so nobody wanted to be out late. Well, not that late.

‘Tequila slammer,’ she said.

‘Wayhay!’ yelled Stanno. ‘Atta girl, Dara. Let’s all do tequila.’

‘You’re so boring when you don’t drink,’ agreed Mark, who worked on the counter and charmed all the good-looking mummy types who came in to pay off the husbands’ credit cards.

‘I hate boring people,’ sighed Michaela. ‘The salon was full of them today.’

Everyone smiled indulgently. Michaela owned a nearby hairdresser’s and was often to be found in the pub because she hated the smell of perming lotion and needed little drinkies to cope with having ten staff and annoying clients.

She was older than the rest of them, mid-forties at least, and had curly hair the colour of blackberries. There were three shot glasses lined up in front of her. Peach schnapps. It was her latest favourite, discovered when she drank a Vestal Virgin, of which schnapps was the major ingredient. Nobody was too sure what the others were but it was mind-blowing.

The tequila arrived, dumped on the table by a waitress who was too busy for niceties.

‘Just one lemonade,’ said Dara quickly. No point paying for lots of mixers when they only wanted to spend cash on booze.

The waitress silently took the extra lemonades away and collected an assortment of coins from them.

Dara grabbed the lemonade first, splashed a bit into her tequila, held her hand over the glass to shake it, then slammed the glass on to the table. The drink obediently fizzed up and she knocked it back in one.

The bite of the tequila rasped her tastebuds. It was hideous stuff, but oh, the effect. Her eyes closed, she waited. The warmth spread from the depths of her belly into her limbs and, most importantly, into her head. Lapping at the anxiety and fear like a soft lake gently drowning her. She opened her eyes and smiled at her friends with relief. She felt safe and loved.

‘Haven’t you guys started yet? I’m ready for another.’

James and a few of the other older guys from the bank had been sitting on their own having grown-uppy conversations, but as the evening wore on and the fair-weather drinkers left, they joined Dara, Elaine and the young gang.

James made a bee-line for Dara as usual and, for once, she didn’t mind. He was harmless enough, she decided from the delicious safety of several tequila slammers.

‘Having fun?’ said James, sliding on to a barstool beside her and waving a hand at the barman at the same time.

‘Yes,’ said Dara happily.

‘And on a school night, too,’ James added. ‘You are a wild child.’

Dara grinned at that. Wild child: she liked that. She liked to think of herself as untameable. Nobody tried to capture or hurt wild things. He obviously understood that much about her.

‘Another drink?’

Dara considered another slammer. They hurt her stomach after a while. She’d had a couple of chips when one of the lads got sausages and chips in a basket, but she never ate much when she was drinking. Soaking up the booze was such a waste of good alcohol.

‘Have something else,’ urged James, seeing indecision in her eyes. ‘I’m having brandy.’

That was the smell around him, she realised. A rich, fiery smell. She liked it.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll try one.’

Slammers made her feel high but brandy made her buzz. Her pulse raced and she felt full of energy, wanting to dance when someone put Salt ’n’ Pepa on the jukebox, but they weren’t allowed to dance in here and she had to content herself with standing at the bar, moving her hips in time to the music.

Dara focused on her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. She loved how she looked when she was drunk, it was the only time she did. Otherwise, she felt ugly and, no matter how often people like Elaine or Ruth told her otherwise, she felt fat.

‘You’re a size ten,’ Elaine would shriek. ‘If you’re fat, what does that make me, you idiot?’ Elaine was a size fourteen.

‘But you’re taller than me,’ Dara would reply. Elaine was gorgeous, there was no comparison. She could be twenty stone and she’d still be gorgeous. It wasn’t about weight, not for other people. Only her. She was wrong no matter what.

Ruth and Elaine never gave up, though. ‘You have to say
I’m a beautiful woman and I have a secret,
’ said Ruth, who
was much taken with a new fad about how to walk into a room and look in control and mysteriously gorgeous at the same time.

Dara had pretended to do it, but she didn’t believe it for a moment. They were just words. She wasn’t beautiful, although she had plenty of secrets.

Right now, she was feeling a little bit not-so-ugly, which was not even in the same time zone as being beautiful. The lighting was dim and in the mirror, Dana saw a small face with big dark eyes and lashes so long they looked false. Her skin was a warm tone and she had a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. Any lipstick had long been smeared off, so she rubbed Body Shop strawberry lip balm on her lips. Sexy, that’s what she looked, with her large dark pupils and the trails of long, thick, espresso-coloured hair curling around her shoulders.

James met her in the hallway as she emerged from the ladies’. ‘I just had a thought,’ he said. ‘This place is boring. Let’s go somewhere else. Closer to town, more fun.’

Dara wavered. She wanted to stay with Elaine, not go off with James. She didn’t really like him, despite the brandy.

‘I’ve got your stuff,’ he said, holding up her handbag and coat. ‘Come on.’

He gripped her hand and led her outside, whereupon he began to run, pulling her along behind. His car was a red MG. Dara had never been in such a car.

James fired it up, did a U-turn in the middle of the street and began to drive in the opposite direction to the city.

‘This isn’t the right way,’ Dara said.

‘We’re going the back route. Don’t want to get caught by the cops.’

Briefly, Dara wondered if it was a good idea to drive after so many drinks. How many could you have and still drive? She didn’t know; she didn’t have a car and there was no limit on drinking and taking the bus home.

James put on a cassette and turned the music up to full blast. ‘Pink Floyd,’ he said.

After a few minutes they pulled into a small heavily graffitied car park with lots of cans and broken bottles scattered around and got out. The pub was a solid redbrick square with blocked-up windows that had bars on them.