Don’t be getting caught chatting in class! I’m using my best teacher voice when I say this.
Becks
Are you not in class yourself?
Niamh
Let’s not complicate this with facts. *smiling emoji* Now spill!
Becks
ROY BLOODY CROPPER! Who is actually called Kevin. I didn’t recognise him at first, then I clicked on his profile to investigate and sure enough it is our biscuit thief.
Niamh
LOL. That’s kind of cute though. Maybe he’s lonely?
Becks
Or a serial killer…
16
I HOPE YOU DANCE
Laura
Laura slips her phone into her bag. Niamh is right. The last thing she wants is to be caught chatting in class. Memories of third year history rush in – how she, Niamh and Becca had been called out for passing notes. She’d been utterly mortified and it is definitely not how she wants to start her university career.
Besides, she doesn’t want to be distracted by messages – not even from the girls. She is in her first class of the module she signed up for, called ‘The Female Body & Reproductive Rights’. The lecturer is a woman who looks to be in her twenties and as if she has her shit absolutely together in a way Laura could only have dreamed of at the same age.
She has the kind of curls that make Laura want to weep with jealousy. Voluminous, shiny, not one bit of frizz to be seen. She has the kind of make-up free natural beauty that comes from within. It’s not just her youth or the sun-kissed glow of her skin. She’s a woman who is utterly secure in who she is – and Laura is absolutely in awe of her.
Dr Imogen Dunphy speaks with such authority and knowledge that the whole class is rapt. They can’t help but be. There is a power that emerges when women come together to discuss issues which primarily affect them, particularly issues directly affecting their bodies and their rights to control their own personhood.
As Dr Dunphy outlines what they will cover during the semester, giving a brief rundown of how women’s healthcare has developed around the world and over time, and how most of modern medicine has been designed around the male body, Laura feels the fire inside her burn brighter and hotter. If it didn’t sound too wanky, she’d think of it as a kind of homecoming. A finding of her soul’s purpose – or at least knowing she was on the right path to her soul’s purpose. And that feels absolutely wonderful.
It’s the kind of wonderful that puts a sheen on everything in her world. It makes her think less about the problems in her life. After all, she’s got it quite good as these things go. She doesn’t feel particularly downtrodden. Not most of the time, anyway, and certainly not in the way so many women around the world are.
By the time she leaves the lecture hall, and has a debrief with Abby afterwards in the coffee shop, she feels as if her head might explode with thoughts, ideas and information and excitement and she loves it. It gives her so much joy. So what if Aidan made his stupid Game of Boobs jokes? He’d had a few drinks and was just being Aidan – goofy, silly, a bit of a dick sometimes. She knows he can be like this. So, instead of staying cross, she opens the fridge, takes out a bottle of her favourite Sauvignon Blanc and pours a very large glass. Next she rifles through the cupboards until she finds the packet of fancy sour cream and French onion Kettle crisps she hid a couple of weeks back andshe pours them into a bowl. Nothing tastes as decadent as crisps in a bowl.
Carrying both through to the living room, she switches on the lamps, lights a couple of candles and puts a match to the kindling already set in the wood-burner. Drawing the curtains closed, she then walks to the record player and removes the album from the turntable. The Verve. That one is definitely Aidan’s. She replaces it with her beloved Carole King’sTapestry. It’s one that her beloved husband hates. Robyn’s not a fan either, pulling a face that looks like she is having a stroke when Laura so much as looks in the direction of her own beloved vinyl collection.
A goth to her very bones, Robyn is not a fan of Laura’s eclectic musical tastes – most of which she had inherited from Kitty. Laura is disgusted her daughter didn’t feel the same rush of emotion she did when Carole King sang about being a friend, or when Madonna implored her papa not to preach. Crowded House could actually fall at her feet and she would just step over them in favour of some gothy noise that actually makes Laura’s head hurt.
And as for Aidan, he is a walking musical cliché. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a middle-aged white man must almost get hard listening to the testosterone-loaded warbles of Liam Gallagher instructing us ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, or Damon Albarn shouting ‘Parklife!’. When Richard Ashcroft sings that the drugs don’t work, or the opening bars of ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ kick in, Aidan O’Kane practically salivates and reverts to the emotional age of his teen self. He believes he is effortlessly cool and can still, some day, fulfil his own dream of being the guitarist in a successful band.
While Robyn and Aidan do not share the same taste in music, they do share the same disdain for Laura’s morepedestrian tastes. Well, they can stick their music snobbery up their arses, Laura thinks as the tinkling piano intro to ‘I Feel the Earth Move’ kicks in. If any song deserves a place in the music hall of fame, then surely it is this one.
Her plan had been to curl up on the sofa, sip her wine, scan through more of her course materials and eat as many Kettle crisps as she can without crossing the boundary of consumption that will bring on a godawful bout of acid reflux. She’s not sure what it is about menopause that has set her upper digestive tract on fire, but heartburn is never very far away. Some things are worth the risk though, and Kettle crisps fall into that category.
But as the music kicks in, she finds herself feeling the urge to move about instead. No one is home. She can throw some funky moves all she wants. She can sing too, if the notion takes her. It will make good practice for her session with Just Sing!
God, she used to love singing. When Kitty was still alive, they always sang together, for as long as she can remember. The O’Hagan household was always filled with every kind of music – from cheerful tunes Kitty seemed to have a remarkable ability to make-up on the spot, to hymns and Christmas carols, and the latest chart hits.
Their little kitchen discos were one of the informal traditions that they kept up until close to the very end. Yes, Kitty may have been sitting at the kitchen table at that stage, waving her hands and not her ass at the music, and her voice might’ve got a little quieter, but there was still as much love and joy in those moments as there had ever been.
Laura hadn’t even realised that she didn’t sing so much any more. She did sometimes, of course. She was not the Little Mermaid. She had not sold her voice to the sea witch as soon as her mother died. There had been some rowdy, relatively tuneless sessions with Niamh and Becca.
