So I repeat Kai’s drunken assumptions. Why not? I’ve told her almost everything else. Besides, she can tell me just how mad it sounds. I give her theCliffs Notesversion. Five sentences max, while Niamh’s expression morphs from shock to a vicious kind of delight.
‘Oh-ho-ho!’she chants, as I contemplate scrubbing the dirty words from my tongue with my sleeve. ‘I can totally see it, though!’
‘Don’t,’ I moan, covering my eyes. Because, yes, I can see it. Every time I close my bloody eyes.
‘Sounds nuttier than a squirrel’s shite, I’ll grant you.’ Peeking out from under my fingers, her eyes gleam back almost maniacally. ‘But you’ve got to admit, babes, itsomakes sense.’
I lower my hands. ‘Don’t tell me you believe—he was drunk when he spouted his stupid theory!’
‘You hear about it, don’t you? Couples living the lifestyle?’
‘What’s that—notmyparents! They couldn’t be more square if they were shaped that way!’
‘It’s the quiet ones that are always the worst,’ she replies in a supercilious, all knowing, and very annoying tone. ‘Wives, submit to your husbands—isn’t that what the good book says?’
‘Somewhere, but—’
‘And they fit the mould. Your da’s always been a bit autocratic, lording it over your ma. And then there’s all the churching and stuff.’
‘Like I said. Staid. Straight.’
‘You hear about couples who live the lifestyle. Serious Christians, too.’
‘What, because they go to church, they’re kinky?’ My tone borders on incredulous.
‘Man’s word is law,’ she continues, loving every minute of my discomfort. ‘And woe betide the woman’s arse if she strays from her lord and master’s line. You have to admit, it’s a possibility.’
‘No, he’s wrong,’ I answer with vehemence. ‘Not them.’
‘Then all I’ve got to say is it takes a deviant to recognise a deviant.’
‘And which one of us are we talking about here?’ Ha! That shut her trap.
‘Kai, obvs,’ she says, undaunted and with a chuckle.
And no, I’m not touching that.
‘Jaysus, I’m like lego this morning.’
I’m eating my breakfast the next day in the kitchen when Niamh wanders in. ‘You’re colourful plastic bricks?’
‘God, I’m in bits.’ She plants her butt on the stool next to mine, reaching for my cuppa. ‘I’m hangin’. Why’d you let me drink all that wine?’ She grimaces at the taste of my cold tea dregs.
‘You should ask Santa for a cellar for Christmas. You spent enough time in Kai’s.’
‘Like a fat kid in a cake shop. You’d think I’d know my own limits by now.’ Still looking pained, her eyes flick over me, before her phone, left in the kitchen overnight, begins to ring. ‘Ow-ow-owwww! Turn that the fuck off!’
‘It’s yours, not mine.’
By the time she reaches the offending item, it’s stopped ringing but pings immediately with an incoming text.
‘“Sorry I missed you, hun,”’ she recites, laying the phone flat.
‘Rob? That’s cute.’
‘Like feckin’ Attila.’
‘What?’
