‘He slept with a stripper?’ she says, twisting the bottle top from the neck.
‘Sleeping wasn’t what they were doing on my sofa.’
‘All that fake tan and glitter . . . ’
‘Eww,’ I complain.
Ignoring me, she fills my glass almost to the rim. ‘How long had it been, you know, going on?’
‘He said it was just the once, not that it matters.’
‘I should hope not. I’d like to give him just the once, right over his pretty feckin’ useless head.’
I hadn’t expected to feel so hollow, admitting that this is the end. Niamh’s the first person I’ve confided in completely.My humiliation. My abject shame. Isn’t it supposed to be cathartic? I thought I’d feel unburdened—a problem shared and all that?
Stage Three Alert: The Void. Or so I’m reliably informed by my newly purchased break-up book,Leaving with Healing. Or as Niamh renamed it,Heaving while Reading. She wasn’t impressed, picking it out of my hands with a contemptuous look.
‘Chapter 4: It’s Okay to be Sad,’ she’d read aloud. ‘Let me know when you get to theIt’s Okay to be Angrychapter and I’ll get the scissors out.’
‘What did your mum say?’
‘What?’ I raise my head, Niamh’s question breaking through my thoughts. ‘Oh. We haven’t talked about it much. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her everything. She shed a few tears, stoically, of course, like he’d been cheating on her almost. When she realised people would have to be told the wedding was off, I thought she was going to take to her bed. Not so much worried about losing a daughter, but you know.’
‘I do,’ she replies with a small shake of her head. She’s seen it all first-hand.
Introspection fills the room, neither of us possessing the appropriate words to address my mother’s response.
‘Well, Kitty-Kat,’ Niamh says eventually. ‘I’ll say this; you don’t do things by halves.’
‘Me? What did I do?’
‘Most women get a new haircut, buy new underwear.’ She shields a growing smile behind the rim of her glass. ‘Gets drunk, then gets even by shagging the next half-decent man that crosses her path. You, babes, moved to the other side of the planet.’
‘I haven’t run away,’ I mutter defensively. ‘I just needed a change, that’s all.’
‘A change,’ she repeats sceptically, raising her glass in a toast. ‘Memento mori.’
‘What-a-mori?’
‘That’s my one bit of Latin, and a bit worth remembering.’ One blue painted fingernail points in my direction. ‘You’re a long time dead.’
‘Remind me not to come to you if I’m ever feeling suicidal,’ I mutter in response.
‘Good on ’ya, taking life by the balls, I say, because there are plenty in the cemetery would swap places with you. So long as you’re on this side of the grass, you’re doing all right.’
‘Wish he was in the cemetery.’
‘That’s my girl!’ Leaning over the sofa arm, she clinks her glass against mine. ‘Fuck him and the stripper her rode in on.’
‘Fuck them both,’ I add vehemently.
‘You’re really staying?’
‘I said so, didn’t I,’ I reply, licking the spilled wine from my hand.
‘You did so, but I didn’t think you would. Not really. I got that you’d had a fight. And now I understand why you wanted to get away, but it’s still a big step. This place is nothing like Australia.’
‘They’ve both got sand. And camels,’ I reply. ‘And I’ve accepted the job now.’ I say this more to myself than to her. ‘I couldn’t pull out, especially as it’s apparentlyGod’s willthat the old teacher didn’t come back after her holiday.’
