Friends Like Us (40 page)

And so tea was made and Rachel joined her mum, Melissa and Eilis and they chatted about their own memories of school.

‘Your mother,' said Melissa, ‘once handed out condoms to all the girls in Sixth Year.'

‘What?' Rachel looked shocked.

‘They weren't to
use
,' Steph said quickly, ‘We were all still good girls. It was a
political
act.'

‘Oh, is that what it was?'

‘Well, to be honest,' said Steph, ‘If I remember right, I didn't really know what they were for, but they were giving them out at the students' union when I went for the open day and when I told them I was at the Abbey, one of the women there, gave me a box and told me to distribute them. I knew the nuns would go mad.'

‘And they did!'

‘But they never would have believed it was your mother,' said Eilis. ‘She was far too goody-goody. They never did get to the bottom of it.'

‘I remember being terrified my parents would find it and so I threw it in the bin on my way home from school,' said Steph.

Rachel was laughing. ‘So you weren't very rebellious then?'

‘We tried to be,' said Steph.

‘And another time,' said Melissa, ‘your mother was caught bringing vodka into the school-leavers' disco.'

‘Immediately confiscated and no questions asked,' said Steph. ‘Those nuns could smell alcohol from miles away.'

‘And don't think they threw it away. They had their own party later, once we had gone home,' said Eilis.

‘More cake Rachel?' said Melissa.

‘No, I'm fine,' she said. ‘I think I'll head up to bed.' She stood up. ‘Night everyone.'

‘Good night, Rachel, sleep well,' they all said.

‘I'll be up in a minute,' said Steph.

At the door, Rachel stopped. ‘It was really nice meeting you all properly.'

‘You too,' they beamed at her.

And once she was gone, Steph started crying again. ‘Look at me,' she said. ‘I'm a mess.'

‘You guys are going to get through this, you really are,' said Melissa. ‘Look at you two already. You're both amazing.'

The house was quiet, Rachel still asleep and without Rick there, Steph was the only one up. She was making a cup of tea for herself, when from somewhere outside she heard a scream and some raised voices.

And then, ‘OH MY GOD!' Rachel shouted from upstairs. ‘Mum, come up here!' Steph ran upstairs and into Rachel's room, where Rachel was standing at the window. From there they had a perfect view of next door's front garden.

Miriam was standing on the lawn in a black silk nightdress (the kind of thing Alexis from
Dynasty
would have worn) surrounded by a suitcase and clothes scattered around her. A window opened and Hugh threw more clothes out on top of her. He shouted something and disappeared while Miriam howled and sobbed. Black mascara smudged, hair on end. If it was the King's Road, circa 1979, it might have worked. Here, now, no.

Hugh was at the window again and this time lobbed out two pink floral wellies which boinged off the ground, just beside Miriam's bare feet.

‘Just go and be gone!' Hugh roared. ‘I never want to see you again! You black-hearted bitch!' All of Miriam's make-up (all that Chanel, that Estee Lauder, the Laura bloody Mercier) rained down on her. She darted around, trying to dodge them. It was like some Japanese gameshow.

Steph and Rachel looked at each other, their mouths open. Nice Hugh gone all Shakespearean and mad. This is what lying and cheating does to all of us, thought Steph. Turns us insane.

‘So Aoife's gone and done it, Mum,' said Rachel. ‘Gone and told Hugh. She said she was going to.'

Steph nodded. ‘She had to, she couldn't keep that secret any longer, poor thing. Grown-ups are so stupid, aren't they?' she said to Rachel. ‘We are embarrassing. I can only apologize for my own kind.'

Another load of clothes was tossed out onto the lawn. Hugh was bright red in the face and yelling more obscenities. ‘You sour-souled, two-faced, lying cheating, marriage-wrecking doom-mongerer!' He was really getting into his stride now.

‘Poor Aoife, Mum, look.'

They peered out and Aoife was now on the lawn with her mum, trying to pull her indoors. The look on her face was stricken. It was horrible to see.

‘We have to do something, Mum.'

They could hear Miriam's racking sobs, and Aoife's increasingly hysterical pleadings, and Miriam was shouting, ‘I'm sorry okay! It was a mistake! Come on, Hughie, please?!'

At that moment, the window was pulled open and Hugh's furious face appeared and a leopard-skin bra and matching knickers floated feather-like to the ground while the words ‘bloody tart!' echoed around the Sunday morning quiet.

‘My
Agent Provocateur
,' said Miriam, in a whisper, who was now on Steph's path. ‘I only bought them the other day.'

And then Miriam noticed that a little crowd of neighbours had gathered and curtains on Kish Road were twitching. She tried to pull down her black silk nightdress and smoothed her hair back and braced herself, while Aoife stared, eyes like saucers, worried. However, Steph couldn't help noticing – hell, the whole street couldn't help noticing – that Miriam's breasts looked perky, defying not only age but gravity as well. Surely not. They were literally
unreal
. However bedraggled Miriam was, she still looked sexy, like a batty Brigitte Bardot.

And then the last anguished shout from Hugh. ‘You have broken my heart,' he half wailed, half keened across the street, before he slammed the window shut.

Steph went downstairs, with Rachel on her heels, and opened the front door. There was palpable excitement from the neighbours, a frisson rippled through the air, they all knew the whole story, obviously. What would Steph say to the woman who shagged her husband? She began walking towards Miriam. Even, Hugh, she could see, was peering out from the upstairs window, waiting to see what would unfold.

‘Miriam?'

Miriam looked at her, tear-streaked and beaten. ‘Yes?' she said in a small voice. She looked wary and anxious.

‘Do you…' Steph looked at her. ‘Do you want to come in and have some tea? You and Aoife. It looks like you need a cup. The kettle's on.'

Miriam stared back. ‘Tea?'

‘Yes, come on,' she said. ‘You can't stay outside in your nightdress. Come on.' She looked at Aoife whose eyes had welled up, and then quickly she ran down their path, through their gate and over to Rachel. The two girls hung on to each other, both crying. They ran indoors, and straight upstairs to Rachel's room.

It was just Miriam and Steph left.

If this was a soap opera, they would have been rolling around on the lawn, dragging clumps of hair out, screaming at each other over some stupid fucking man. But she looked at Miriam's skinny body, the bird's nest hair and Alice Cooper make-up, and all she could see was a lonely woman. Welcome to the club, Miriam. Welcome to the club. But she had a feeling that Miriam wouldn't be lonely for long. The curtain-twitching was getting frenzied. You could sense that whole families were peering out, phone calls and texts were being made, the energy in the road was fizzing with gossip.

‘Look, Miriam, I know,' she said. ‘I know everything. But, as Rachel might say, whatever. I'm over it. Rick has moved out and I'm moving on. I don't quite know how, yet, but I am.' She looked at the neighbours who were practically taking pictures for the Dalkey Newsletter. ‘I think,' she said, ‘we should have a cup of tea inside.'

Miriam nodded quickly and made her way to Steph's garden. ‘Thank you!' Miriam called out. ‘Thank you for watching. The next performance will be the matinee.' She smiled her big smile. ‘Come back then!'

Steph had to marvel at how quickly Miriam was making a return. She was never going to be down and out for long.

In the kitchen, Steph put on the kettle and began to dig out cups, milk, teabags, while Miriam sat on her only armchair, shivering and feeling sorry for herself. Steph pulled over one of the kitchen chairs and sat beside her and waited to see what Miriam would say.

Miriam had begun to cry. ‘I'm so sorry,' she said. ‘I am so sorry.' Great huge sobs choked her throat, her mascara even more smudged. ‘It's over, anyway. Whatever it was… it's over. All of it. I – I – we…' Miriam gave up. And she began to cry again. ‘He was seeing someone else, Steph, did you know? It wasn't just me.' She was actually trying to make Steph an ally, that they were both wronged by Rick, as though Steph was just another woman. But Steph didn't move a muscle, just gazed back at her. ‘I knew he wasn't interested in me anymore,' continued Miriam. ‘I could tell before we went to Rome, you know? I could just tell.'

Steph remained silent.

‘I know you must be simply furious with me, I would be,' said Miriam, trying to charm her. ‘He told me you and he were over years ago. So I didn't think it was so bad.' She looked at Steph beseechingly. ‘And I thought now he had moved out that maybe… maybe… we would… oh, I don't know.' She was hard to understand through the sobbing. ‘But anyway,' went on Miriam, ‘last week I saw him out with some girl in town and I confronted him… and he…' she began to wail again, ‘he told me to go away and said I was drunk and embarrassing. Which, it has to be said, is true. But…'

‘But not the point,' said Steph, a little too helpfully. I am the wronged one, she had to remind herself. Not Miriam. Focus, Steph.

Miriam was losing it now. ‘And then, and he tried to walk away and I grabbed him and threatened to tell everyone and ruin him. But he just walked away from me. Went off with that woman.'

‘So,' she said carefully, ‘how did Hugh find out?'

‘Aoife told him last night. She had to, poor lamb. She had known for ages as well. And it wasn't fair on her. So…'

‘Well, it's probably for the best that everyone knows. No secrets. They eat people up.'

Miriam nodded miserably.

‘Let's just try and deal with this, the best we can, and let's just think of our daughters. We have to put them first, don't we?' She stood up. ‘Now, would you like sugar in your tea? Six spoons?'

Miriam drank the tea in one – she mustn't have had sugar in years, but she did look a million times better when she placed the mug on the table.

‘Meeting?' It was Liam. ‘Could you honour us?'

‘Coming,' Melissa called and stood up, breathing in the stale office air. I used to love this place, she thought, this horrible air. I used to feel my heart lift, my soul soar in this building. And now? Now, I feel as though I'm going to go quite mad if I stayed another second.

‘Melissa!' Liam said, as she reached his office. ‘My favourite woman.'

‘I never know if you are being sarcastic or what,' she said, sitting herself down.

‘With you, Melissa, always sincere. With others, it all depends.'

‘On what?'

‘What I need from them,' he said, raising just the one eyebrow. ‘Anyway, ‘I've got a lunch appointment so we won't be long,' he said. ‘But I was wondering…' He smiled annoyingly, ‘…if you had any thoughts about your editorial for this week?'

‘Um…'

‘I mean, are you ready to have F-U-N-N spells fun?'

‘It doesn't.'

He laughed.

‘Liam …' Melissa thought about the years she had spent at this paper, the hours sweating over her copy, the excitement of seeing it in print and reading and rereading it again and again. She'd had fun, but it wasn't the kind that Liam wanted from her. Telling the stories of the dispossessed had been, if not actually fun, exciting, a blast. She had felt she was doing something important and that had been a wonderful ride. But it was over.

‘Well, actually, Liam' she said smiling sweetly, ‘I'm leaving. This is me handing in my notice. From now.'

‘What?' His grin faded as quickly as a shaken Etch A Sketch.

‘I've had fun. But I don't want to have the kind of fun you want. I don't want to interview celebrities, or ask people about their sex lives. Or dogs with over-large testicles or cats with one leg or a woman who has grown the largest tomato in the northern hemisphere.'

‘Those are good ideas,' he said. ‘What are you saying? You're not doing them or you are?'

‘Liam,' she said. ‘Let me spell it out for you…'

‘I-T,' he said, laughing at his own joke. ‘You said let me spell it out for you… never mind. Melissa Murphy are you
resigning
? Because there is no way you are.'

‘I am,' she said. ‘And this is what it sounds like. ‘I'm resigning. Goodbye Liam, goodbye
Standard
, goodbye computers which never work, printers that never print and the worst coffee I have ever tasted. Goodbye windows that need cleaning and farewell stained carpet tiles.'

He looked at her. ‘Why?'

‘Liam! I've already told you. I can't write the kind of features you want and I don't want to be squeezed on page fifteen below the personal ads and the horoscope. I'm going to write but not here, not like this. Not anymore.'

‘But I thought you were being your usual humorous self.' He looked stunned. ‘Melissa, wait a moment. Take some time off. We can arrange something. We'll come up with something. Okay? I know these changes have been difficult, I know my style can be a little abrasive…'

Melissa stood up and shook his hand. ‘I don't need to think about it. I'm just not the journalist for you.'

‘Let's keep this conversation going? Let's keep talking. Okay?'

‘I have to go. I have stuff going on… I can't be here anymore. This is it. I'm going to take some holiday… and then I'm gone.'