Chapter One
‘So when you said you caught him with his trousers down...’
With a sigh, I reach for my fishbowl-sized glass, taking an unladylike slug. The dissection had to begin sometime. I can’t expect play Lady Macbeth forever, not without an explanation at some point, I suppose. Large gulp on the way to loosening my tongue, I finally answer.
‘Pants down. Literally.’
Niamh’s brow furrows as she waits for the punch line. So I deliver it while still examining my glass.
‘Jeans around his ankles, his bare butt working like a fiddlers elbow.’
‘He was... and you...’
‘He was and I did.’ I lean forward placing the much lighter glass down, the glass clattering against the table. ‘Coitus interruptus.Sort of. Anyway, he was doing her on my sofa.’
I don’t think I’ve ever shocked Niamh into silence. She isn’t the silent type. However, it doesn’t last long, her next sentence delivered in a verbal explosion.
‘Ohmyfuckinggod!’
‘Funny, that’s what she said. Only more like,Oh, Shane, oh, oh, ohhh my fucking... god! Shane, you’re so big!Total lie, by the way.’ I’d know, having laboured under his pimply butt for the last couple of years, affianced-to-be-married in, oh, a month or so.
‘The absolute bastardingshite!’
Australians are pretty sweary. I think it’s a cultural thing. Where else in the world is a stranger referred to as mate, while your best friend forever is greeted with abuse? Niamh’s lot, the Irish, are also pretty profane. But they seem to do it with a bit more style, somehow.
‘You’re serious? Of all... you walked in on him and he wasnutsdeep? Ah babes, what did you do?’
‘Just stood there.’ I shrug, shoulders hovering around my ears as it transforms into a slow but violent shudder, unwelcome snapshots of that evening filtering through my mind. A perverse Hansel and Gretel trail of slutty undies scattered from the front door to the lounge, the cheesy soundtrack playing softly in the background, punctuated by noises more suited to the gorilla enclosure at Taronga Zoo.
‘It was a bit like watching bad porn.’ Really bad, upsetting porn. ‘I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I had an out of body experience or something.’ The last part of my sentence comes out in a manic laugh, tears teetering on the edge of my lids. ‘Bloody ironic, seeing as it wasn’t my body he was in.’
Mistaking Niamh’s silence as sympathy, I raise my head. Her blue eyes are levelled on mine, mouth pursed like the ass of a cat.
‘Kitty, tell me you hurt him.Please tell me you trashed his car? Brained him with the nearest vase, at least?’
‘We hadn’t bought a vase yet.’ With a sigh, I reach for my glass, realising its almost empty status. ‘I thought you were supposed to be getting me drunk?’
‘Don’t change the subject,’ she says, despite heading for her tiny kitchen.
But vase ownership or not, that’s just not me. I don’t do confrontation well, or at all, really. So I didn’t reach for the nearest thing to throw at him, or give him the satisfaction of my tears. Not even afterwards, when modesty had been restored, and the slutty side piece escorted to the door. Even following, it never occurred to me to shove something unsavoury under the seat of his beloved ride, or to list his number in the gay classifieds. Instead, I did something way crazier. I packed a bag and got the hell out of dodge, joining Niamh on the other side of the world.
‘I wish I’d been there. I’d have brained the bastard,’ by bestie says, returning from the kitchen, brandishing the new bottle like a cranium-crushing weapon of destruction. ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’
‘Shame. Disgust. The possibility of herpes.’
‘What?’ she asks, suddenly horrified.
I wave a hand, silently conveying at leastthatwas okay. ‘It’s one negative I can turn into a positive, hey?’
‘Well, it’s something, at least,’ she replies uncertainly. ‘But you’ve nothing to be ashamed of. Those kinds of thoughts don’t deserve headspace.’
‘Deserve?’ The word hits the air in a rush. ‘No onedeservesto find their fiancé screwing a stripper on their new sectional sofa. The same sofa they’d waited twelve weeks for delivery!’
I hold out my glass, my insides twisting as I recall three uncomfortable months of bean bags and kitchen chairs. My delight as the sofa had arrived, my delusion of making our new house a home.
‘Calm down, Kitty.’
‘I am calm,’ I retort. Calm-ish, anyway.
