Chapter 11
In a previous life, the canteen of Mulligan O’Leary had once been the kitchen of the old Georgian house. There were still so many vestiges of the past, from the smoothed oak bannister which snake-charmed its way from the bottom to the top of the stained-glass fanlight above the door, or the stairs which had been worn away from 300 years of feet. But the building was also now firmly in the modern age, with neon signs and women and men in heavy-framed spectacles and geometrically precise hair.
Kitty was in the canteen, sitting at a large round table, beneath a high window, her coffee and tuna sandwich in front of her.
She took out her phone, checking to see if Dave had called. Nothing. Life, it seemed, was on pause and she was just waiting for it to start again. The uncertainty was agony. But, remembering Shazza’s wise words – something about his general eejittery – she knew she couldn’t call him… and she was just successfully slipping her phone back into her bag when she was possessed by her own inner eejit and, before she could stop herself, she dialled his number.
She held her breath, panic and anxiety mixed with shame, knowing that she was doing something wrong but desperately in need of reassurance. What if the phone just rang out? She would be back where she started. Limbo.
But, wonderfully, Dave answered. ‘Hello?’
‘It’s me…’
‘I know it’s you.’ He sounded irritated. ‘Your name came up…’
‘Sorry…’
There was silence for a moment before he spoke again. ‘Yes?’
‘Yes, what?’
‘What do you want?’
‘To see how you are, how you are doing… if you’ve… well, if you’ve got your… if you know, you’re feeling better…?’
‘Kitty, it’s only been a few days… I explained. No more pressure, all right? I can’t cope with it. Anyway, for your information I’m working from home and spending the rest of the time recovering.’
Recovering from what exactly, Kitty wondered. Recovering from her?
‘That’s good to know…’
She could hear Maureen’s voice in the background – and what sounded like the Countdown theme tune. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘I’m helping Mam with something… Bye.’
‘Bye…’
But he’d already put the phone down as humiliation seeped through her marrow. Shazza was right. Of course, Shazza was right. Never phone someone who doesn’t want to hear from you. Rule number one in life.
Kitty took a packet of sugar from the bowl in the middle of the table, ripped it open and poured it into her coffee. And another. And another. One more, she thought. Anything to try to make her feel normal again.
She took a sip. Disgusting. She’d ruined her coffee as well as her life. Why hadn’t she listened to Shazza? She must never call him again. From now on, she would have to not only listen to Shazza but act on her advice. Left to her own devices, she wasn’t safe. And anyway, Dave still didn’t sound like the old Dave, who was so much nicer than this new Dave. But perhaps the old Dave wasn’t that nice? Perhaps she was misremembering. It had been so long now since things had been good between them, she couldn’t quite remember.
She pushed her tuna sandwich away, ashamed with herself.
‘Not hungry?’ Mary Rose was standing with her tray beside the table. ‘Everything all right?’
Kitty nodded. ‘Grand, thanks…’
‘Mind if I sit down?’ Mary Rose pulled out the chair and sat down, placing her tray in front of her, with a sandwich which looked as though its filling was some kind of building material… ‘This doesn’t look too appetising,’ said Mary Rose. ‘It’s meant to be egg and cress.’ She picked it up gingerly as though it was a dead rodent. ‘But I’m starving, so I’m going to have to go for it.’ She nibbled at it. ‘It’s better than it looks,’ she said.
Kitty tried more of her coffee. If you pretended it wasn’t coffee, then it wasn’t too bad. Perhaps more sugar would mask the coffee flavour and you could pretend it was another drink entirely. She added another sachet. And then another.
‘How are you doing after the last pitch?’ asked Mary Rose. ‘I know Alex is still upset about it.’
‘She doesn’t like losing,’ said Kitty.
Mary Rose nodded. ‘No one does… well, some people hate it more than others. Some don’t mind because they get used to it.’ She smiled at Kitty. ‘I’m not one of life’s winners, you know? And that’s fine. It’s just the way things work out. They probably won’t extend my contract at Mulligan O’Leary. My three-month probation is nearly up and if we don’t win the Welcome Ireland pitch, then I would say I’m gone.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s grand… I’ll find another job. There’s one going in the local further education college. I’m going to update my CV and send it off.’
‘Do you want to leave?’ asked Kitty.
‘No… of course not,’ said Mary Rose. ‘I love it here. And working with you three is great. You’re all so creative and full of ideas…’
‘We were,’ said Kitty. ‘We’re all a bit stuck at the moment.’
Mary Rose nodded. ‘Being creative is not like turning on a tap, and out it comes. You have to be in the right frame of mind for it to flow.’
‘Perhaps the three of us are in the wrong frame of mind at the same time.’
Mary Rose nodded, picking up her cement sandwich again. ‘But it’s good to change. Maybe it would be good for me… who knows? I’m learning not to worry about everything and be happier.’
‘My friend Shazza was saying the same thing,’ said Kitty. ‘She reckons you should be happy in everything you do. Including work.’
‘Happiness is something we forget to prioritise,’ agreed Mary Rose. ‘We keep everything going, mind other people, stay healthy, force ourselves to go to the gym, drink green smoothies, send thank you cards, smile at people and show up at events we don’t want to go to.’ She shrugged. ‘But when I was going through my divorce, one thing that kept coming up was the fact that I had forgotten how to be happy, and joy and pleasure are like muscles we need to exercise but rarely do.’ She smiled at Kitty. ‘In the depths of my despair, I didn’t think I could be any more unhappy. But then, I thought, surely the only way is up. And so, I’ve been trying lots of things to increase my general happiness, working that muscle. Sea swimming. Sunrise walks. Getting a dog, Peaches. She’s adorable. Wearing more colour. That kind of thing.’
‘Why were you in despair?’
‘My husband left me last year and… well… that was something of a blow. And I can’t afford the mortgage on my own and my microwave blew up and… a few other bits and pieces. But as my mother always said, isn’t it great we’re not dead? The problem is my mother is actually dead. But at least I’m not.’ She gave a little laugh.
‘It sounds hard,’ said Kitty. ‘And I’m sorry about your mother.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mary Rose. ‘Sylvester… he was my husband…’
‘Sylvester?’
Mary Rose nodded. ‘It was a family name,’ she explained. ‘He was a fourth-generation Sylvester. Anyway, Sylvester decided he was better off without me and went off with one of my friends. Sandra. They’re now living in her house in Skerries, but he left me with a broken heart and a massive mortgage. I love my house. I’d done up the kitchen, papered the hall myself, stripped the stairs… and then this. I’ll either have to get two lodgers in or sell it.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll have to sell. I don’t want to live with strangers.’
‘Not when you get to a certain age…’
‘Exactly.’ Mary Rose shrugged. ‘When I was a child, I used to cry with laughter with my friends, even in my twenties. My friend, Ailish, used to make me laugh so much that I would collapse to my knees, tears rolling down my face. You know?’
Kitty nodded. ‘My best friend Shazza does that to me.’
‘Still?’ Mary Rose looked surprised.
Kitty nodded. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without her.’
‘She sounds like a great friend to have,’ said Mary Rose.
‘What about Ailish? Where’s she?’
‘We lost touch,’ said Mary Rose, with a shrug. ‘She moved to Galway. There was a job going in Shantalla as a teacher and I’d met Sylvester…’
And then Kitty remembered something said by Edith Waters the night before in the kitchen of the hall. ‘Life is messy,’ she said, ‘and you can’t sweep it up and smooth it out. You have to learn to love the rough bits and all the cracks because it’s in the cracks where the gold is hidden.’
‘It’s true,’ said Mary Rose. ‘That’s exactly it. If life was nice all the time, it would be boring. And you wouldn’t learn anything.’
‘I’m one of life’s tidy-uppers,’ said Kitty. ‘But you can spend far too much time tidying and not enough time having fun.’
Mary Rose looked up, just as Ben O’Leary, the chief financial officer of Mulligan O’Leary and son of one of the founders of the company, walked past.
‘Ladies,’ he said, his blond hair falling over one eye as though he was a bohemian artist, rather than the public-school posh boy he was.
‘Hello, Ben…’ Mary Rose gave him a polite nod.
He moved away, just narrowly missing a collision with one of the girls from reception.
‘Oh so sorry, Mr O’Leary,’ she giggled, as they sidestepped each other.
His hands shadowed her waist for a moment, as he flicked his hair back and moved on.
‘He reminds me of Sylvester,’ said Mary Rose, in a low voice. ‘There’s something slippery about him. He can’t look people in the eye. Have you noticed? Once you’ve witnessed a cheater up close, you can spot them everywhere. Your antennae are always twitching.’
‘It’s a great life skill,’ said Kitty.
‘It twitches so much,’ said Mary Rose. ‘That’s the problem. You realise the world is full of liars and cheats. The only good thing is that when it doesn’t twitch, it’s such a relief.’
‘We all need a twitchometer,’ agreed Kitty. ‘It would save a lot of time that is wasted on relationships that go nowhere.’
‘We’ll need to invent one,’ said Mary Rose. ‘We’d make a fortune.’ And the two of them laughed and Kitty thought how much she hoped Mary Rose would pass her probationary period. You needed people on the same wavelength, if you had any chance of enjoying your work. And even having fun at work.