Chapter 6
As Kitty cycled home, her phone rang and she pulled into the side of the road, fishing it out from her front basket.
‘Drink?’ said Shazza. ‘The Island? I’ve been at the council meeting because there was a vote on the cycle paths and there was the ongoing issue with the ice cream van stand-off. Franco is now not allowed to park within 500 metres of Fro-Ro’s frozen yoghurt. So, it’s all happening. And I need a drink.’
Kitty didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes please,’ she said, thinking that poor old Romeo would have to entertain himself, but if she went out with Shazza it would mean that she might be distracted enough not to think about Dave. But the most important thing was not letting it slip that he’d left because Shazza had never liked him and she would dislike him even more when she knew what had happened, and then it would be even harder for Kitty and Dave to get married without the full blessing of Kitty’s best friend.
‘You’re coming?’ said Shazza. ‘I didn’t think you’d actually say yes. You never come out on a Saturday evening. You always say you are staying in with Dave. I only asked you because I feed off rejection. I’m not comfortable when people actually want to spend time with me.’
‘Of course, I want to spend time with you. You’re my best friend. I love being with you. And I fancy a night out.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Shazza. ‘So what’s going on?’
‘Well…’ Kitty hesitated. ‘Dave’s gone to his mother’s… He says I’m controlling and pressurising him to get married… And that he needs to sort his head out.’ Kitty was wondering whether she should or even could text Dave or not. They hadn’t worked out the rules of engagement. When one is getting one’s head together, does one want to hear from the person who they claim has added to the pressure of their needing to get their head together?
Shazza let out a long whistle. ‘Well, I would agree with him there. His head needs examining. All of him needs examining. Not that I would want to examine him at close quarters…’ she groaned. ‘Are you all right, though?’
Kitty made a noise which she thought adequately expressed her feelings.
‘You sound as though you need that drink,’ said Shazza. ‘The Island, 7p.m. Okay?’
Kitty went home to change and feed Romeo. She kissed his fuzzy head, marvelling at his tiny paws and how he was the perfect encapsulation of feline beauty, and made sure he was tucked in his bed, and the cat flapped locked, before setting off for The Island.
The Island was one of the nicest of Sandycove’s pubs, a cosy place, which was always lively, with music and a small courtyard at the back. It was busy on this Saturday evening, but Kitty managed to find a table in the courtyard and waited for Shazza.
‘Quick! I need a drink before I keel over!’
Kitty looked up to see Shazza weaving through the tables towards her. She was dressed in a silver T-shirt and black biker jeans, her long blonde hair falling down her back.
Shazza slipped in beside her. ‘And then you can tell me all about Dave the Rave and the pressure he’s been under. The poor little dote…’ She looked up for someone at the bar and signalled to bring her the same as Kitty’s.
‘Dave has been under pressure,’ said Kitty, loyally. ‘Work was asking too much of him. And I’ve been my usual controlling self. You know what I’m like.’
‘Did you actually want to marry him, though?’ asked Shazza, pulling a face, which she always did when she was utterly perplexed about something, such as social injustice or not liking chocolate. Obviously, someone wanting to marry Dave was as outlandish as those. ‘It’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think? Not to mention unnecessarily drastic.’
‘Yes,’ said Kitty. ‘Why wouldn’t I? We fit well together, we accept each other’s foibles…’
‘What foibles of yours does he put up with?’
‘My neat-freakery,’ said Kitty. ‘My controlling nature…’
‘You’re not controlling,’ argued Shazza. ‘Just organised.’
‘I am,’ replied Kitty. She sighed.
‘Okay, so maybe you are a tiny bit, but not in an evil sociopathic way,’ agreed Shazza. ‘In a nice way. An efficient way.’ She paused. ‘But is he what you want in life? Do you love him?’
‘Of course I love him…’
‘But do you love-love him?’ Shazza narrowed her eyes, peering at Kitty, looking for cracks in her argument, her journalistic bloodhound nose sniffing out inconsistencies.
‘I’ve just said, haven’t I?’ said Kitty, as Michael, the barman, put down two fresh gin and tonics.
‘Well, if you need me to have a stiff word with him,’ said Shazza. ‘Or duff him up. Or… I don’t know… put cyanide in his tomato soup…’
Kitty laughed.
‘I just don’t want you to be unhappy,’ said Shazza. ‘You deserve more.’
It was the first time in years Kitty had been faced with such uncertainty. When her dad and mum had sat her down when she was very small and told her that they both still loved her but from now on she would have two homes, a gnawing had developed in her stomach, along with a sensation that her heart had slipped into an irregular pattern and was skipping every few beats, like a bad piano player. Change was excruciating. And now it was as though she’d been released into the wild after a lifetime of captivity. She’d seen those television documentaries with the chimpanzees being let go from their cages, clinging to their keepers. She wished she had a keeper to cling to. But for now, she had to hang in there until everything returned to normal.
‘How’s everything with you?’ went on Kitty. ‘Anything interesting going on?’
‘Total disarray. My life is one long trail of destruction. My body has been trampled over by a stampede of wild stallions. The inside of my head seems to be scattered to the four winds. My heart shattered like a crystal glass dropped off the top of Liberty Hall. But apart from that, I’m grand.’ She shrugged. ‘You know me, just waiting for the next man to come along, behave abominably and leave me a husk of my former self…’
Kitty knew she was joking. Kind of. Shazza had always gone for the unattainable ones, the boys in school who loved themselves more than her.
‘Being rejected and surviving is now my whole personality,’ said Shazza. ‘One day I will write a book about it. When I am eighty and finally realise I am better off single.’ She looked at Kitty. ‘I would love to be more like you and less like me… But I think there’s a middle ground… between my chaos and your perfection.’
Kitty was confused. ‘You mean mediocrity?’
‘No, just you being less perfect and me being more perfect.’ Shazza put down her gin and tonic. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘I have worked out what’s wrong with us. Finally, after years of close research, I have deduced our problems. It’s about frills,’ said Shazza. ‘Too few or too many. My problem is I have too many, a surfeit of frills, and yours is that you have too few. A deficit of frills. Not frills on shirts and whatever, frills in life,’ Shazza went on. ‘It’s like a budget airplane. There is nothing fancy, no fripperies, no frills… there is nothing extra about the flight. They just get you from A to B. That’s you.’
‘I’m no frills?’ Kitty was suddenly quite hurt. Of all the things Shazza could have said, she came out with this no-frills theory? ‘So, I’m like a budget airline? Depressing, cheap and a weird smell of dubious origin?’
‘Of course not!’ said Shazza. ‘You couldn’t smell of anything except your Jo Malone pear and freesia… I may have taken my metaphor too far, but it’s just that your life is completely non-frilly. Mine, on the other hand, is far too frilly. I always have that third cocktail, that second bottle of wine, the bigger bag of crisps. I spend too much on clothes which have sequins or shoes which are too high and only suitable for hobbling from a taxi to a bar. I fall for deeply narcissistic men. I stay up too late watching programmes that aren’t good for me. I haven’t read a decent book for years and yet I know every bit of celebrity gossip there is, even about people I have never heard of. I haven’t done anything nourishing for my body, my brain or my soul in years. Neither of us is properly nourished in the good things in life, the fun things, the things that give life meaning. You’re too good, and I’m too bad.’
Kitty was silent, taking it all in.
‘I mean, you work. You go home. You work. You go home,’ continued Shazza. ‘Ad nauseam, to infinity and beyond, to hell and back. Now, are you having a morsel of fun in either of those two places? Work or home?’
Kitty shook her head. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘But you’re not meant to have fun at work…’
‘Au contraire, my little workaholic,’ said Shazza. ‘You are meant to have fun at work. You’re meant to have fun everywhere… I mean, you are not meant to have it all the time. But in all the cracks and the spaces around the serious bits, you are meant to cram in as much fun as possible.’
Kitty liked fun as much as the next person, except the person next to her was usually Shazza and no one could like fun as much as she did. However, the concept of squeezing fun into everything was new and as such worth mulling over. Fun, she had thought, was something that perhaps just happened, if you were lucky.
‘But moi,’ she went on, ‘sought fun a little too hard and crammed a bit too much in. I squeezed the orange past the juice stage and kept on going. Hence Mr Unmentionable. It’s just you could perhaps add in more frills and I need to go on a frill diet.’
‘And meet somewhere in the middle?’
‘Yeah…’ Shazza laughed.
‘But there’s no time for frills,’ said Kitty, perplexed. ‘It just makes life complicated, it means mess and chaos and craziness and I can’t cope with that.’
‘That’s if you do it wrong,’ said Shazza. ‘Which is how I’m doing it, but there’s a sweet spot, right in the middle, and neither of us is there yet.’
Kitty was silent for a moment, taking it all in. She wished life was as easy as Shazza made it appear. You lived hard, laughed lots, drank more… and lived as though life was a rollercoaster and you screamed as you went faster. Kitty’s life was, she had to admit, like being on the teacup ride. But there was nothing she could do about it. And anyway, the rollercoaster looked out of control.