Chapter 22
KEEP THE FAITH
Laura
Niamh has tried her best to give Laura a pep talk about seeing Becca. She has tried to reassure her that everything will be fine. Of course, Laura has nodded and agreed but she hasn’t felt it in her heart.
Of course it turns out that while Laura had traipsed over to Becca’s the previous night to try and chat to her friend, Becca had in fact gone to Niamh’s where they had fought over beautiful baby Clara, had tea and chocolate biscuits and a bit of a laugh.
Laura wishes she wasn’t the kind of person who felt a sting of rejection when she hears of her friends meeting up without her.
She feels like an absolute eejit that this is still able to get under her skin.
She wants to tell herself to wise up – she’s forty-seven for the love of God, not some adolescent, insecure little girl obsessed with making friends and being popular.
The logical part of her brain knows that Niamh and Becca are not wilfully excluding her, yet, but in her increasingly fragile emotional state, she can’t help but feel excluded. Since baby Clara was born, the two grannies have had an extra bond with each other – one that Laura can’t compete with.
And now when things feel a little messy, the two of them were in cahoots while she was walking the streets feeling like The Littlest Hobo.
The iconic theme tune from the eighties children’s show had been stuck in her head all day.
She’d even found herself humming it while queueing at the sandwich bar with Abby earlier.
‘What’s that song?’ her young friend had asked.
Laura had started to sing it, only to be met with a blank face.
When she tried to explain it was from a TV show in the eighties about a poor, wandering homeless dog who always seemed to go where he was needed and make a positive change, Abby had simply said, ‘Ah, cool. My mum was born in the eighties, 1987. She doesn’t remember much of it. ’
‘Well, to be honest, I don’t remember much of it myself,’ Laura had joked.
‘It was so long ago.’ But the truth is that she does remember it.
She could sing the whole theme tune to The Littlest Hobo, or Fraggle Rock, or Button Moon, without thinking twice.
She remembers the big hair, and the neon-coloured make-up, the Cabbage Patch doll frenzy, what it was like to be a Brosette and the phone number for the Saturday morning TV show Going Live (081 8118181 – if you wondered).
There was no way she was admitting all that to Abby though.
As lovely and friendly as Abby is, Laura still worries that their friendship won’t last and as soon as Abby settles in and makes friends with more people her own age, Laura will become the class loner.
She has to do her very best to shake those self-doubting thoughts out of her head as she crosses the room with Niamh to where Becca is standing with Deirdre. If Laura is not mistaken, Becca looks worn out.
‘You look like shite,’ Niamh says, pulling absolutely no punches.
‘Cheers,’ Becca replies.
‘You look tired,’ Laura offers, trying her best to sound kind but aware her voice sounds smaller than normal.
‘Yeah. I am tired,’ Becca says, and there’s a beat in which a whole lot isn’t said, but hangs heavy in the air all the same.
Laura doesn’t feel brave enough to get into it.
‘But what about you? Tell me about uni! Is it class? Are there any sexy teachers? If there are, what does Aidan think of it all?’
Laura opens her mouth to answer – to say that she’s not actually sure Aidan would give a shiny shite if Pedro Pascal himself walked to the front of the lecture hall to speak on the feminist gaze, but she is stopped by the small man in the black shirt shouting, ‘Okay, everyone. It’s time to Just Sing! ’
There’s a cheer from the people Laura assumes are the regulars, and a look of terror on the faces of the folk who aren’t.
‘Quick, let’s grab a seat in the back row,’ she says.
‘Oh no,’ Becca says with a grimace. ‘That’s against the rules. All new starts must sit in the first row under fear of death.’
‘Really?’ She doesn’t like the sound of that at all. Not one teeny tiny bit.
‘Absolutely really,’ Deirdre says, ‘unfortunately.’
‘Ladies! Please, grab a seat!’ the small man shouts again.
‘That’s Karl,’ Deirdre says. ‘The choirmaster. He has the best eyebrows I have ever seen on a man and I’m pretty sure he has his fingernails painted royal blue. Either that or he trapped his hand in a car door.’
With that, Laura feels herself relax enough to laugh.
She’s here and she might as well enjoy it as much as she can.
Sure it’s better than being at home with Aidan continuing in his grumpy huff at her for not making his dinner last night.
When she had got home he was acting as if she had intentionally starved him and not at all as if he could’ve just gone to the kitchen and made himself a bloody sandwich.
Shaking her head, ridding it of thoughts of her husband, she smiles.
‘I think we better sit down. After all, it’s time to Just Sing!
’ She adopts Karl’s sing-song voice and over-the-top cheeriness.
It’s true though, all she has to do for the next hour is just sing.
She can block everything else out, especially the awkward atmosphere between her and Becca, and her sensitivity of feeling like the third wheel. Again.
‘Welcome, everyone,’ Karl says, brightly. ‘Great to see so many of our members here tonight, and also really lovely to see a few new faces here for a trial session. Let’s all be on our best behaviour so they like us enough to stay!’
His words are met with laughter, but Laura is willing to bet that Karl uses this line every week. He looks like the sort who would have a few catchphrases hidden up his perfectly pressed sleeves.
‘Tonight, we have members of the Fabulous Forties Club with us – so we are going back in time a bit and choosing a song that I think they will really love. There might be some dancing required…’
Laura freezes. Dancing? No one mentioned dancing. This is called Just Sing! not Just Sing and Dance a Bit Too. She wonders if it’s too late to run for the hills. As if reading her mind, Karl smiles.
‘Don’t worry, everyone. By dancing I just mean a little swaying if the mood takes you, and you might be surprised by just how much the mood takes you, especially as we give it our best Whitney Houston energy. We all love “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”, don’t we?’
A chorus of yeses follows while Karl lifts a bundle of paper from the table behind him and starts to hand them around.
‘Here are the lyrics. We don’t do sheet music here – I’m going to assume that most if not all of you are familiar with the song. But just in the unlikely event that you aren’t, let’s have a listen first of all.’
Karl scrolls at his phone, hits play and the opening bars of Ms Houston’s biggest hit start to sound out through a Bluetooth speaker.
Laura can’t help it – as much as she might want to.
She finds herself nodding her head and bopping a little in her seat.
Deirdre, who is sitting beside her, starts to sing.
Other voices are joining in and it feels a little like one of those flash mob things.
Secretly, Laura has always fancied taking part in a flash mob even though Robyn thinks they are cringey and Aidan would most likely have a stroke at the very notion.
She and Kitty had talked about maybe doing one someday, trying to raise some money for the Foyle Hospice perhaps, but it had never happened – and not just because neither woman could sing very well.
It surprises Laura that the voices around her already sound so in tune with the song.
She is sure she can hear some show-offs trying out their own harmonies and riffs, meanwhile she is feeling the urge to start singing, but her voice feels stuck in her throat.
Singing in front of other people isn’t something she does.
Apart from Kitty. And Kitty isn’t here. She feels strangely vulnerable, and emotional, at the very thought of it.
As if she would be exposing a part of herself that others might not want to see.
Closing her eyes, once again she feels as if she can hear her mother, as if she is sitting beside her and taking her hand gently.
‘I don’t want to sound all preachy or like some sort of righteous ghost, but seriously, child.
Be not afraid. Just look what you’ve done this week.
You’ve gone to uni. You walked in there and you registered, and you made friends and you spoke up in a lecture.
Don’t think I didn’t see that! And you made a stand last night with Aidan. ’
That didn’t exactly end well, Mum, she thinks, playing out this conversation in her head as if it were real while Whitney sings about wanting to get hot and steamy on the dancefloor with someone.
Laura thinks she wouldn’t really mind enjoying some of what Whitney’s after either – it’s been a while.
However, she pushes this thought out of her mind very quickly for fear her dead mother might get a sneak peek into her most private thoughts.
‘I don’t think it’s ended yet,’ she hears Kitty say. ‘You’re just finding yourself, my love. You’ll get there. Keep the faith and believe in yourself!’
Laura is about to tell the ghost in her mind that it’s not that easy when she feels Deirdre nudge her gently in the ribs. ‘C’mon, Laura,’ she says. ‘You have to join in for the bridge!’
Taking a deep breath, she decides to adopt a ‘stuff it’ approach and allows herself to sing along, quietly at first of course.
And when she looks across the front row to her friends, disregarding whatever state their friendship might currently be in, she sees that they too are swaying a little, singing and most of all looking as if they are enjoying themselves.
Maybe, she thinks, it’s time to give herself permission to enjoy herself as well. Her own voice seems to be increasing in volume, slowly but surely, as are the other voices around her.
Karl, of the perfectly pressed shirt and perfectly shaped eyebrows, is grinning from the front of the room, conducting with his arms to keep time with the music.
The musty, fusty church hall comes alive with the sound of the eighties pop classic and Laura savours the feeling of being a part of something, connected to all these other people just through their voices.
By the time the song ends, she has realised it wouldn’t really be that much of a stretch to get up and have a little bop along after all.
Maybe her mother was right and she just had to put aside her fear and allow some joy into her life.
Hadn’t she felt it yesterday when she was bopping to Carole King in her living room?
Hadn’t she felt it when she was in her lecture with Dr Dunphy thinking just how lucky she was to be in that space learning about something that really, really ignited her inner passion?
Even here with the Fabulous Forties ladies, small in number as they may be just now.
Isn’t she lucky to have the chance to connect with women of a similar age who just get it?
Women who don’t roll their eyes when she mentions a hot flush, or get frustrated when brain fog takes a word from her mind and she stands open-mouthed for a bit waiting for her brain to catch up.
Women who want to dance with somebody and that somebody being her.
To her shock, she feels tears prick at her eyes, but it’s not sadness that is washing over her. It’s hope.
When she catches Becca glancing in her direction, a realisation dawns on her that whatever happens, she will be okay because she is finally taking the reins to her own life, perhaps for the first time.