What she wanted most of all, apart from perhaps Aidan to actually see her for who she is and not just some sort of housemate/domestic servant, was to march right over to Becca’s house and immediately tackle the awkwardness between them before it became something neither of them could easily put back in the box.
They had to learn from the mistakes of the past. When they had reconnected after their years in the wilderness, they had all spent considerable amounts of time pretending there was no big elephant in the room.
Kitty had literally just died, and Laura was too bereft, and too glad to see her former best friends show up at the wake, to wantto start digging too deeply into what had caused the falling out in the first place.
This approach had worked, at first. Mostly because, as previously explained, Laura was in the thick of grief and was so desperate to hang on to whatever felt solid and warm, and nurturing. That had been Becca and Niamh, both apologising for the falling out and holding her up when she thought she would fall to the ground and never get up again.
But eventually Nelly the elephant could not be ignored any longer. She was becoming more and more impatient – ready to trump, trump, trump very loudly. There had been an angry conversation – an expression of hurt, and sorrow, and guilt on both sides, and they had been able to re-establish their friendship properly, on a firmer foundation, after Nelly had run off to the circus once and for all.
Until now. Now she was popping her head around the door and giving Laura the sly eye. The only way to tackle this – really tackle it once and for all – was to face it head on.
So Laura pulled the hood of her coat back up and starting trumping her own way to Becca’s house. When she retells this story she will of course just say she started walking towards Becca’s, as ‘trumping’ has a more juvenile meaning among the young folk.
Now, as she walks up the driveway towards her friend’s front door, she feels nervous of course, but also sure of what it is she wants to say. Boundaries must be drawn. She cannot be used as a secret spy into her brother’s world. She cannot play piggy in the middle.
She cannot be asked to take sides, but there is no way that is going to end well for anyone. Most of all though, Laura knows she has to tell her friend that she loves her, is absolutely delighted to be friends again and values their bond above almostanything else, but needs everyone to be aware that her wound from their falling out is still a little raw. It wouldn’t take much, at all, to tear it open again.
When she reaches the door, she raises her hand to knock but freezes – a moment of doubt stopping her in her tracks. Taking a deep breath, thinking of how she is determined to stand her ground and not be seen as a soft touch any more, she asks herself one question. WWKD? What Would Kitty Do?
This would be a perfect time for her increasingly foggy brain to pull some of her mother’s amazing pearls of wisdom from deep inside its darkest recesses and serve them up to her in one of their imaginary conversations.
‘C’mon, Mum,’ she wills. ‘Tell me how to do this.’
There is just silence and Laura is tempted to turn on her heel and start walking home. It is getting late. Her feet are sore. She is wet and tired and a bit worried that she is now on the police wanted list thanks to her loitering earlier. The few Kettle crisps she had before she left, have not succeeded in, as her mother would say, ‘even filling a whole in her back tooth’ and her tummy is grumbling. Suddenly she wishes she were home, in her pyjamas, having served up a lovely home-cooked meal for her family. Aidan would be sitting with his feet up on the footstool, watching some panel show and laughing uproariously. Robyn would be padding into her mum’s bedroom and plonking herself down on the bed, head lying on Laura’s chest as she launches into a long debrief of the day that has passed. It could all be very normal and lovely, she thinks.
‘And very happy, on the surface,’ she hears her mother’s voice say.
‘Of course you’d pipe up now!’ Laura mutters into the night air, knowing exactly what her mum means. If there is one thing Laura O’Kane is good at, it is exuding an image of the perfectlife. In reality, Aidan would’ve left her to clean up the dishes without so much as offering to help carry them to the sink, never mind rinsing them and putting them in the dishwasher. He’d sit on the sofa and dominate the TV schedule for the rest of the evening.
Yes, Robyn would come in and lie beside Laura and fill her in on the day’s news. It was lovely – to an extent. Because more often than not, this was all just a big preamble to a request for something – usually money – and a bit of a huff if said request was turned down.
Laura shakes her head. She will deal with those elephants another time. She has a big enough one to deal with here first. As soon as she raps on the door, she is greeted by a fierce volley of barks as Daniel hurtles towards her jumping up at the glass, his paws and claws scrambling against the smooth surface.
Laura smiles, calling through the door to him that he’s a good boy as she waits to see Becca walking down the hall between them. But there is no Becca, only an increasingly excited Daniel. When she takes a step back, she notices that the rest of the house is not illuminated. The outside light is on, of course. The hall light too. But everything else seems to be in darkness. Bending down, she opens the letter box and comes face to face with a wet, black nose closely followed by a long and languorous lick of a dog desperate for company.
Biting down her first instinct, which is to swear loudly, Laura steps back, trying to get the feeling of Daniel’s tongue almost licking her eyeball out of her head. It’s not his fault. He’s just being friendly.
Hunching down again, but slightly further back from the door, she is greeted this time by a spaniel-sized paw poking out at her. ‘Is your mammy in?’ she shouts, immediately feeling likea complete dick. It’s hardly likely that Daniel is going to answer her.
When the dog’s response is to whine a little before barking at the top of his lungs, she decides that one of two things must be true. Either Becca is out and Daniel is just making the most of having some company for a bit – even if it is through a door; or Becca is lying half dead on the kitchen floor and Daniel is doing his best to try and summon help, à la Lassie – in which case he must be totally disgusted only to have her chatting back to him in a baby voice about where his mammy is.
Knowing that there is no chance on this earth that she will be breaking down the door on the off chance her bestie is stuck down some metaphorical well, she lifts her phone from her pocket instead, intending to call Becca. There are five missed calls from Aidan – the sight of which makes her feel like she will throw up. He has left two voicemails which she doesn’t even have to listen to to know what they contain. There will be some reference to her being silly and a little hysterical. He will say he was only teasing and that she has no sense of humour. There will be some jokey remark about her course radicalising her a bit too quickly for his liking before finally there will be a plea for her to come home – and maybe stop off at the Chinese on the way home because he’s starving.
‘Because God forbid you’d have to make yourself something to eat!’ she hisses at her phone before deleting the voicemails without listening to them.
There are two WhatsApp messages from Robyn, calling her Madre and asking for some ‘funds’.
‘And you can piss off and all,’ she hisses again, deleting the messages before closing the app.
Finding Becca’s number, she hits the call button and puts her phone to her ear. It rings out, because of course it does. Nothingabout this evening has been going as it should so it’s no surprise that she has walked all this way, in the rain, to no end.
Swearing under her breath, she bites back the urge to cry and instead just shouts to Daniel that she is leaving and that he has to be a good boy, before heading back down the driveway which, of course, is empty. Why, she wonders, did not that strike her before she started shouting through letterboxes and getting licked by dogs?
By this stage, she has had enough and even though she isn’t particularly in the mood for going home, she knows it would be a little too dramatic for her to follow her desire to go and book into a hotel for the night instead. Imagine what the receptionist would think if she walked in from the street, damp and bedraggled, wearing an oversized parka, with no bags or belongings and asking for a room for the night. Do people really do that? Just walk in and ask for a room? Surely everything is pre-booked these days? No, she can’t face anyone else judging her, so she simply heads back home and vows to make some toast, get a long, hot shower and crawl into bed. She will put her Loop earbuds in, her eye mask on and will cut off all sensory interaction with the outside world.
She might – just might – sleep in the spare room to avoid any interaction with Aidan too. He might, just might, see that as an act of war, but sure, what harm has a little war ever done anyone anyway?
Taking a stand is, of course, what any good feminist would do.
