‘So, they all have babies, have they?’ Mam asked as Cassie walked through with the tea.
‘All except Louise but she’s pregnant after a load of IVF.’
‘God love them, that’s very expensive, but, sure, isn’t he a barrister?’
‘Still, it’s hard on Louise.’
Mam made a sympathetic face.
‘And what did they say to you? Are they all delighted now that you’re back home from London?’
‘Honestly, Mam, time moves on, they’re all very tied up in their own lives.’
‘I suppose they are. They’ve moved on, I suppose.’ Mam stopped herself but the thought reverberated around the room.And you haven’t.
Cassie sipped her tea and scanned the gallery of photos that crowded the walls and mantelpiece. Graduation photos, communion photos, her sister Maxine’s wedding photo from 2003 – she’d worn a dress of ivory sateen with huge ruffled skirt and leg-of-mutton sleeves.
Mam hadn’t held back with her comments after a few gin and tonics: ‘For the love of God, did she have to go down the aisle dressed in a cinema curtain?’ Ownie, her chap, looked surprisingly normal. How is it that men always ended up looking way less weird in retrospect? As chief bridesmaid, Cassie was right there next to Maxine, decked out in a mauve Grecian-style affair and beaming.
Of course, that was a long time ago.
‘You were such a lovely little thing.’ Mam was gazing wistfully at the photo of her daughter in a Kermit-green dress with a Celtic design on it, her hair styled with sausage curls and holding an Irish dancing medal.
Cassie felt a pang in her chest.I was seven. God, in my mother’s eyes I peaked at seven.A part of her wanted to shout,Mam, I’m so sorry for being a disappointment, I’ll make it up to you, I promise, but then the other side hollered back,I don’t owe you anything, my life is my own. Or is it ever? Do we really owe it to our parents to make them happy, make them proud? As Da had said to her in the hospice on one of his last good days, ‘You couldn’t make some people happy if you tried.’
Though he didn’t specify who.
* * *
She closed the bedroom door behind her before switching on the light to reveal a candyfloss-pink time capsule: the room she’d left at eighteen-and-a-half and only ever returned to for a week here and there during summers and at Christmas. There really hadn’t been any point in updating it; anything she needed came home in her suitcase. She settled on the bed, propped pillows up against the headboard, wrapped a fleecy rug around herself and gazed around at the photos of the old gang, from their Leaving Cert holiday in Corfu. All real, printed photos from 1999, a time when everything had felt more solid, before the virtual world took over.
There was one of Bryony in her low-rise denim shorts, with Celine in her stripy mini, clowning on the edge of a pier; one of Norah holding a guidebook and pointing at something cultural in the blinding white sun that made everything feel like a dream, while the other girls made faces and Louise waved at the camera. It was a perfect moment, she mused, and we had no idea.
Her old certificate from Mountway drama school was framed on the wall. She thought of her teenage self walking up the steps of the impressive, modern building in Peckham, thinking,Crikey, this is bigger than I expected, and feeling her already anxious heart take off as though someone had jammed their foot on the accelerator of a go-kart.
She closed her eyes and drifted back to that day, in the waiting room, dressed in her black leggings and tunic top that she’d chosen to look like a young actress ready for rehearsal. That couldn’t be wrong, could it? But perched on her plastic chair – sweaty hands clutching her three speeches on paper that was about to come apart at the creases – that wasn’t how she felt at all. Beside her had been a stunningly pretty girl, wearing loose dungarees over a perfect top which Cassie would never have even thought of wearing, let alone been able to find in Dublin. Oh God, being prepared didn’t come close to being up to the mark, you had to be fabulous. The other guy and girl waiting nervously looked admittedly a bit cooler than herself, but at least they weren’t light years ahead. From inside the holy-of-holies somebody could be overheard engaging in a very loud and exuberant audition, culminating in a resonant thump which suggested they’d just leaped off a high piece of furniture, to the evident joy of the adjudicators, who clapped and laughed uproariously. The atmosphere in the waiting room chilled palpably. From somewhere she found the presence of mind to breathe ‘into the diaphragm’. To her relief, the very pretty girl could hardly be heard at all, while the next girl gave an intense, tearful performance which sounded unnervingly good. By the time the thin guy with bleached blond hair went in ahead of her, from somewhere she’d remembered the last thing her drama teacher had told her: ‘Just get out of your own way. Keep it simple.’ Which turned out to be the best advice she’d got from anyone ever, about anything.
‘What have you got for us today?’ said a man with flowing grey hair and half-moon glasses, who looked like he wouldn’t have been out of place conducting an orchestra.
Cassie found she was able to do her best, plus add a bit of magic that she’d spun from who knew where. To her delight she was met with a round of applause at the end. The grey-haired man muttered, ‘Well, that was a pleasant surprise.’
She’d sailed back down the steps of the modern building like a different person. No longer feeling like an impostor. She’d a right to be there. Her black outfit was fine, her Irish accent was fine, her speeches were fine – she’d been herself and it was fine.
Three weeks later the letter had landed on the mat. She’d been so terrified, she’d forced Mam to open it while she’d hidden in the cupboard under the stairs with her fingers in her ears, singing tunelessly until she’d heard Mam’s voice shriek from the kitchen, ‘You got it, Cassie, they’ve accepted you!’
The family had gone out for a Chinese meal to celebrate, and Da had raised a glass of Merlot in jubilation and declared for the whole place to hear, ‘I always knew it, we have a star in the family.’ The whole restaurant had clapped.
‘Do you want a hot-water bottle?’ Mam hollered from the bottom of the stairs, startling Cassie out of her reverie.
‘No, I’m fine, thanks, Mam.’
‘Are you sure now? You’ve an outside wall there.’
Cassie decided to ignore this last comment and let her mind drift back to her first day at Mountway. She’d run straight into the peroxide blond guy and tearful girl who’d been sitting beside her at the audition. They’d all screamed and hugged as though they were long-lost friends.
‘I looked at you and I thought, she looks like a professional,’ confided the guy, Pal. Paldon’s family, it turned out, were originally from Tibet, though he was a London boy, through and through.
Cassie gasped in disbelief at the irony. ‘I thought you sounded bloody brilliant; I was terrified,’ she admitted to Josie, who’d become a firm and loyal friend from that moment onwards. That had been the beginning of four happy years of excitement, sometimes terror, but more than anything the sense of being truly, truly alive.
