But in her own house? No. The singing had stopped. The kitchen discos came to an abrupt halt. Singing in the shower was no longer her thing – once she would have come alive as she performed the big numbers fromLes Misérables, or indeedThe Little Mermaid, while washing her hair. She’d have fantasised about what it would be like to be a part of the human world. Or lamented the fact that her love was unrequited at full volume.
After her mother died, she couldn’t so much as listen to music never mind sing along without dissolving into floods of tears. Singing felt like opening a vein, and she didn’t feel strong enough to survive that, so she stopped.
But today, on her own little high, she finally feels brave enough to give music a proper joy-filled chance. So she sings, and she dances in her own slightly awkward but unique way. She’s letting the sheer joy of it wash over her when the living room door opens, pulling her abruptly from her incredible party for one with a metaphorical record scratch.
‘Dear God, Laura! I didn’t know what was going on in here! That music is so loud!’ Aidan is smiling at her, but he’s also walking across the living room and lifting the arm of the record player, silencing Carole King and her tinkling pianos immediately.
Laura watches as he looks around the room, at the candles and the fire, and the wine. He raises an eyebrow.
‘Is everything okay?’ he asks, his tone incredulous. ‘Drinking in the early evening? Curtains drawn and it’s not even fully dark yet? Music? Have you been radicalised into the student life already? Because if you have then you really should probably be drinking something more like a cheap cider than a New Zealand Sauvignon, and I’m not sure what music students listen to these days, but I’d bet my lunch money it’s something from this decade at least.’
He is speaking in a jovial, teasing manner and Laura knows how she is supposed to respond. This is supposed to be banter, but it doesn’t feel like banter. It feels a bit more like judgement.
It feels, she thinks, like what Niamh would describe as someone ‘pishing on her chips’ and she doesn’t know whether to be embarrassed at having been caught letting her hair down or just very, very pissed off at his judgement.
While she is trying to work out how to react, and what to say to him, he switches on the big light – which in and of itself is a hate crime – and lifts her now-empty wine glass and takes it out of the room towards the kitchen.
If she is wondering whether or not he is simply going to top up her glass, she doesn’t have to wonder for long. Within seconds he is popping his head back through the living room door – no glass in hand and a curious look on his face.
‘No dinner on?’ he asks, and she has to use every single ounce of her willpower not to throw a bowl of Kettle crisps at him, see if he likes having that particular ‘dinner on’.
‘I decided to have a night off,’ she says, trying not to sound terse even though she feels absolutely bloody terse. ‘There are a few M&S ready meals in the fridge that can be nuked or you can order a takeaway. Robyn is in town with her friends. She said she would eat there.’
Her husband, this man she has been with for more than twenty years, looks at her as if she is speaking a foreign language.
‘Oh,’ he says, and his shoulders slump. ‘I suppose I’ll see what’s there.’
‘Or just pour yourself a glass of wine, and I can put Carole back on and we can have a little living room disco?’
Laura doesn’t know why she says this. She and Aidan have never been the kind of couple to have a living room disco. Noteven before Robyn was born and they were more likely to be a bit more fun-seeking, Aidan’s music snobbery having always been a key factor in them not just letting loose around the coffee table after a couple of vodkas. It’s hard to act silly and have an impromptu disco when someone is taking off your Robbie Williams CD and mansplaining the lyrics to ‘Karma Police’ by Radiohead instead.
Aidan smiles at her – almost benevolently. ‘How much have you had to drink?’ he asks – and suddenly in her head, the voice of Velma Kelly – the femme fatale in the hit musicalChicago– launches into the ‘Cell Block Tango’, and Laura is starting to think that her beloved husband might just have it coming too, just like Ms Kelly’s victims.
17
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW
Laura
Laura finds herself on a familiar street, on a cold night, her car left at home because of course she would never drink and drive. She didn’t even wait to phone a taxi because storming out loses some of its dramatic energy if you have to repeatedly call the taxi company to be told your lift ‘is just around the corner’ multiple times.
What she had done instead was – as Aidan had asked how much she’d had to drink – lift the wine bottle to her lips, drink as much as she could in one go without puking everywhere, then put on her shoes, grab her coat, keys and phone, and walk out.
She had not uttered a single word. She had not trusted herself to say anything, knowing that if she did, there was a high chance she would say something that would not easily be forgotten afterwards.
Aidan had tried to engage her in conversation, in so much as he had talked at her while she had done her level best to tunehim out. She still wanted to be in her happy music moment. She still wanted to be on the high of her class. She still wanted to be in the bubble of joy and achievement she had been in earlier before her chips had been pished on.
But she is not in that place; she is instead standing outside of her mother’s house. Or to be more accurate, the house that used to belong to her mother. The sale of Kitty O’Hagan’s home had gone through six months ago, taking the house Laura had grown up in out of her family’s ownership. It was now inhabited by a very lovely couple and their toddler who were delighted to get such a beautifully cared for house in an area where houses rarely come on the market.
The lovely couple would fill the house with all the love it deserved. It had been a good home to the O’Hagans and now a whole other family would be making their own memories in it.
Laura knows it is how things had to be, and that the house would be alive again with all the noise and craic that comes in a house with young children. But she still feels a pang as she stands across the street taking in the full facade of the house. It was home and it wasn’t home all at the same time, and she’d have given anything to go back to when she was young and carefree and dancing in the living room had been normal. It had been encouraged even. She, Becca and Niamh would meet there every Thursday night when Kitty went out to bingo, and they would watch MTV and dance along to the music videos. They’d light some tea-lights and some incense and convince themselves they were cool and edgy when that couldn’t be further from the truth. They’d drink cans of own-brand Cola and talk about the boys they had crushes on before they would make up stupid dance routines and laugh until they burped. Or, as on one very memorable occasion, they peed. Or at least Niamh peed. Just a little but enough that it hasbecome one of those lynchpins of their friendship that they always return to any time they’ve had a few drinks and are reminiscing.
God, to go back to those days. It would be amazing. She would do things differently. Of course she loved Aidan. And she absolutely adored Robyn even though Robyn seemed determined to do everything in her power to make that difficult. But she knows she would still do things differently if she could. She’d have gone to university at the same time as Becca and Niamh. She’d have been the same age as Abby is now and would’ve been able to fit in with the rest of her classmates. She’d be youthful and energetic. She wouldn’t have the persistent tummy pouch that refused to budge post C-section. Her hair would be glossy and thick and not increasingly pube-like in texture. More than that, she would have embraced the joy of youth more. She’d have partied more and partied harder. She’d have definitely spent more time talking to Kitty – made sure to have every conversation she ever wanted to have, and no doubt many she didn’t because no mother–daughter relationship is perfect.
Most of all she would have used those defining years to discover who she really was, and lay down the foundations for building on her strength and her power.
Instead she had headed straight into the world of work – working her way up the retail chain pipeline in a series of shop assistant jobs, then a supervisor, then a department head, then an assistant manager and finally she had her own shop to manage for a well-loved chemist chain. It was hectic, and quite often thankless. Being a boss, she learned, meant it was impossible to keep everyone happy all of the time but she had enjoyed it. She’d enjoyed the income even more. It’s not so much that she regrets her path in life, more that she wonders how different itmight have been if she had followed the same path her friends had.
