The Bright Side (10 page)

“Never mind,” he said, in a voice considerably smaller than the one he’d been using up to that point
.

I was beside him by then and I leaned against the side of his car, just to annoy him
.

“No, go on,” I said. “You mumbled some comment. Don’t tell me you’re too much of a coward to mumble it to my face.
”

He finished pumping and slotted the pump back into its holster
.

“Never
mind
that,”
I
said.
“I
asked
you
a
question.” “Look,
I’m
just
trying
to
fill
the
car
up,
I’m
not
trying
to
start
anything,
so
why
don’t
you
just
–
”

“
No
.
You
mumbled
something
and
I
want
to
know
what
it
was
.”

He shrugged and tutted
.

I stepped closer still and took a huge drag on the cigarette. Then I threw it in the general direction of his petrol tank. It bounced off the car about an inch from the opening and rolled away across the ground. The man’s entire body went into a spasm, as if someone had just hooked him up to the mains
.

“What …” he spluttered. “You stup . . . are you …
”

“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do,” I said slowly and quietly. “I’m having a very bad day.
”

He replaced his petrol cap and shook his woolly head at me. “You’re a bloody nutter,” he hissed. “You should be locked up!
”

I sneered at him and started back towards my car. The realisation that I had indeed behaved like a complete moron hit me like a bucket of ice water. It was closely followed by the realisation that, while behaving like a complete moron, I could have killed us both. For a moment I thought I was going to have some sort of freak-out and would indeed end the day locked up. But the moment passed. I threw the remaining cigarettes into a bin, got in the car, and drove away
.

CHAPTER
5

In
the
normal
course
of
events,
I
would
have
headed straight
to
Nancy’s.
She
had
been
my
next-door
neighbour but
one
in
the
first
proper
house
that
Gerry
and
I
ever
lived in.
For
a
good
few
months,
our
only
real
contact
was
on
the footpath
outside
our
front
gardens,
where
we
would
talk about
the
weather
or
the
incredibly
noisy
family
on
the
other side
of
the
street.
Gradually
though,
we
started
to
infiltrate each
other’s
kitchens
and,
more
importantly,
to
have
genuine conversations.
Nancy
scared
me
a
little
when
I
first
got
to know
her
properly.
It
wasn’t
just
that
she
was
more
than
a decade
older
than
me
–
she
seemed
to
have
done
so
much with
her
life.
Voluntary
work
in
Africa,
a
couple
of
years
in London,
another
couple
in
New
York,
even
a
brief
stint
in
Tokyo.
She’d
worked,
at
various
stages,
as
an
air-hostess,
a
night-club
manager,
a
fact-checker
and
a
hand
model
(I didn’t
even
know
what
the
last
two
were
).
The
only
thing
I had
done
that
she
hadn’t
was
have
kids,
and
even
that
was more
to
do
with
youthful
carelessness
than
pluck.
Her progress
from
neighbour
to
friend
to
best
friend
was
so gentle
that
I
almost
didn’t
notice
it.
But
in
1994,
when
she finally
made
good
on
her
long-dangled
threat
to
move
the fifteen
miles
into
Dublin,
I
cried
for
a
fortnight.
One
of Nancy’s
best
qualities,
alongside
her
fearlessness,
kindness, sense
of
humour
and
absolute
refusal
to
take
crap
from anyone,
was
her
ability
to
think
clearly
in
a
crisis.
There
were any
number
of
examples
–
the
time
I
somehow
locked myself
out
of
the
house
during
a
chip-pan
fire,
the
time Robert
sliced
his
hand
open
with
the
carpet
knife,
the
time Chrissy
drank
a
nice
tall
glass
of
fabric
softener
…
Nancy
was always
on
hand
to
talk
sense
and
take
action.
On
this
occasion,
however,
she
was
firmly
out
of
reach.
She’d
recently
acquired
a
“toy-boy”
(David
was
forty-nine
to
her fifty-two)
and
they’d
gone
to
Paris
for
a
few
days.
If
I’d known
the
name
of
her
hotel,
I
would
have
been
on
the phone
–
or
possibly
a
plane
–
like
a
shot.
Since
I
didn’t
know it,
and
since
Nancy
refused
to
carry
a
mobile,
I
had
to
think of
something
else
.

Several options came to mind. I could have called my old pals Cathy and Helen or my current next-door-but-one neighbour Mags (a sort of Nancy-Lite, perfectly reliable in her own way). I could even have sprung Veronica from work. But I did none of these things. Another idea occurred to me
.

Right
throughout
my
childhood,
Melissa
was
a
world-class
big
sister.
She
joined
in
all
of
my
little
doll
tea-parties
and accompanied
me
on
my
many
fairy-finding
–
or
at
least
fairy- hunting
–
trips
into
the
woods
behind
our
house.
When
my friends
complained
about
their
monstrous
elder
siblings, with
their
practical
jokes
and
their
cruel
comments,
I
could only
look
at
the
floor
and
count
myself
lucky.
(I
sometimes wondered
if
Melissa
treated
me
so
well
because
we
weren’t actually
sisters
at
all.
We
certainly
didn’t
look
anything
alike. Her
hair
was
dark,
mine
was
either
dirty,
sandy
or
mousey blonde,
depending
on
who
you
asked.
I
was
sallow-skinned, she
was
pale
as
a
stone.
She
towered
over
me,
always.
And then
there
was
the
wild
disparity
in
our
body
shapes.
I
was
a robust
little
girl,
sometimes
verging
on
the
plump.
Melissa was
a
bean-pole
when
she
was
a
baby
.)
Her
finest
moment, without
doubt,
came
when
I
was
six
and
she
was
nine.
At
the time
my
mother
had
a
small
collection
of
porcelain
figurines, which
on
no
account
–
that
was
her
constant
refrain
–
were
we ever
to
touch
or,
if
we
could
help
it,
look
directly
at.
I
broke
this
golden
rule
on
one
occasion
only
and,
of
course,
managed
to
drop
(and
decapitate)
the
six-inch-high
Edwardian
lady
that
I
had
decided
was
my
new
best
friend.
The
feeling
that
swept
over
me
was
a
potpourri
of unpleasantness.
It
contained
not
just
fear
and
panic,
although
both
were
well
represented;
there
was
a
kind
of self-loathing
in
there
too,
a
sense
of
having
done
something that
was
so
awful
as
to
verge
on
outright
evil.
Melissa discovered
me
in
my
bedroom
with
the
Edwardian
lady’s body
in
one
hand
and
her
pretty
little
head
in
the
other. Naturally
enough,
I
was
having
a
nervous
breakdown
(a
very
quiet
one
–
Mum
was
in
the
kitchen
directly
below).
Melissa listened,
hugged,
listened
again
and
finally
planted
a
kiss
on the
crown
of
my
head.
Everything
would
be
all
right,
she assured
me,
before
taking
the
broken
pieces
and
calmly walking
out.
I
assumed
that
she
was
going
to
march
into
the kitchen
and
take
the
blame,
and
was
filled
with
gratitude and
awe.
But
Melissa
had
a
better
plan.
She
did
something that
would
never
have
occurred
to
me
–
she
walked
to
the end
of
the street
and dumped
the Edwardian
lady in
a builder’s
skip.
Later
that
night,
she
asked
me
a
very
good question:
when
was
the
last
time
I
had
seen
Mum
actually looking
at
any
of
her
figurines?
I
admitted
that
I
didn’t
think I’d
ever
seen
her
looking
at
them.
Mum
didn’t
collect figurines
so
she
could
look
at
them,
Melissa
explained.
She collected
them
so
she
could
have
something
that
was
hers and
hers
alone,
nothing
to
do
with
us
or
Dad.
The
whole point
of
them
was
that
no
one
was
allowed
to
touch
them. That
was
what
they
were
for
.
She’d
never
notice
that
one was
missing,
not
in
a
million
years.
I
was
stunned
by
this display
of
insight.
And
Mum
never
did
notice.
All
that
was left
was
my
debt
to
my
sister,
a
debt
that
she
never
called
in
.