Hundreds of WhatsApp messages fly in with tales of ‘honey trapping’ and fake Tinder accounts. I prepare myself for the first live caller.
‘Who do we have on the line?’ I grin across at Aoife, both of us aware of the potential for all hell to break loose as the women of Ireland begin naming and shaming their cheating partners.
‘Hi Abby, its Kara.’ Kara sounds about thirty-five with a distinctly unpolished Dublin accent.
Rightly or wrongly, I conjure an image of a woman with heavily pencilled eyebrows and a copious amount of lip filler. Kara sounds like the classic example of a woman scorned. Candice offers me a thumbs-up from the other side of the glass window, encouraging me to roll with it. I place my hands over my enormous headphones and adjust them as she begins.
‘My husband…’ She pronounces the word husband though it was the filthiest word to ever roll from her tongue. ‘My husband told me on Saturday morning that he was going fishing for the day, but who showers and shaves before they go fishing? I suspected he was lying. While he sat shovelling a greasy rasher sandwich into his big fat gob, I crept out and checked the mileage on his car. The lake’s a forty-kilometre drive. I wrote the current mileage on the back of my hand in a permanent marker.’ The tempo increases with every word. Kara’s on a roll now.
It’s decidedly more tragic than humorous, but her dramatic tone and delivery prove hilarious.
‘Sure enough…the cheating man-whore was gone for the entire day! When he arrived home, all smug thinking he’d got away with it, I slipped out the back door in me dressing gown and checked the mileage again. Low and feckin’ behold, he’d barely done twelve kilometres. I told him there and then he’s a dirty lying cheating bollocks and to get out me bleedin’ house!’ She peaks, approaching her finale.
‘We are live on national radio, Kara, just to remind you.’
‘Sorry! Sorry. I forgot meself for a second there. Talk about mileage, the feckin’ mileage was up alright, but he’d clocked it up in other ways surely.’
I place my hand over my microphone to muffle my snorts. Kara’s a legend; relatable and hilarious. The women of the country will love her.
‘You want to know the best bit about the whole bleedin’ lot?’
‘Uh-huh.’ I just about manage to compose myself again.
‘When I went back in the house to confront him, what did he smell of? Feckin…’
Aoife scrambles over the table and cuts straight over her with an ad break and the two of us howl with uncontrollable laughter. Even Candice is doubled over outside the glass window, hanging onto the wooden door frame for support.
‘That was brilliant. Make a snippet of Kara for an advertising jingle.’
‘If Kara wasn’t such a loose cannon, I’d have her on as a guest.’ I push my glasses up onto the bridge of my nose, unable to cope with my contacts every day of the week.
‘A guest speaker with an exceptional insight might be a brilliant idea for the ratings, you know.’ Candice places a hand on her hip thoughtfully.
‘Yeah, but it’d need to be someone seriously high profile to drum up enough interest,’ Aoife says.
‘Someone that you’d never expect to talk about love and other mushy stuff,’ Candice suggests.
‘Wait, I’ve got it! We need a man,’ Aoife exclaims.
‘Oh my God. That is an absolutely brilliant idea. The women of the country will go mad for a man’s opinion. I’ll see who might be available.’ Bubbling excitement simmers within. I’m determined to win that trip to New York, be it fair or be it square.
As I leave the studio, I ring Mam and Dad. They live in Carrick, my picturesque hometown on the River Shannon. A horrible sense of uneasiness edges in, even though I claim to be a non-believer. If Esmerelda’s first prediction came true, there’s a chance her second might.
Mam answers on the first ring, her only complaint is that next door’s cat is repeatedly shitting in her rose bush. She informs me that my sister Alicia has a new boyfriend. Dad doesn’t approve. I wonder if I’ll get the chance to meet this one. Alicia and I aren’t exactly close, not anymore. As I bid her goodbye, I exhale a weighted sigh of relief that everyone is healthy and make a mental note to avoid any Patricks, just to be on the safe side.
