Chapter 40
That evening, Shazza was already in the changing room when Kitty entered. ‘Hi…’ she said, but Shazza was examining the laces on her football boots and didn’t look up.
Kitty sat across from her and began removing her kit from her bag.
‘I didn’t think you’d be coming,’ said Shazza, still focused on her laces.
‘Why?’
Shazza looked up at her. ‘Well, not after you treated practically half of the team badly.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Kitty. ‘I don’t know why I said those things…’
‘What’s the point of saying sorry?’ said Shazza. ‘It’s what you think, isn’t it? I can’t be friends with someone who I will always be thinking that they hate me…’
‘I don’t hate you,’ said Kitty, near tears again. But Shazza was right. If the roles were reversed, she wouldn’t be able to forgive her either. ‘How do you know I treated Tom badly?’
‘Rory told me everything,’ said Shazza. ‘Tom was really upset… said he turned up, all happy and everything and basically you told him to get lost…’
‘But it wasn’t my fault…’
‘Of course it wasn’t. Those words didn’t come out of your mouth. Someone ventriloquised you.’
‘I’m so sorry, Shazza,’ said Kitty. ‘I wasn’t myself…’
‘You looked like you.’
‘I know… I’m sorry.’ Kitty felt more miserable than ever. ‘Do you think I should just leave now?’
‘What? And abandon yet another commitment?’
‘What other commitment have I abandoned?’
Shazza looked up, her eyes shining with tears. ‘Your commitment to me and our pact to have fun and be there for each other! Our commitment to be friends. Our commitment to be good people and not shout and put the other down…’
‘I’m sorry… I really am.’
‘Well…’ Shazza shrugged. ‘It’s done now. And you’ve hurt Tom. Why don’t you just kick him with your football boot, right in his testicles? You may as well finish off your hatchet job on the poor man.’
‘Shazza…’ she began.
‘It’s Sharon to you from now on,’ said Shazza, haughtily. ‘Shazza is only for my inner circle, of which you are no longer a member.’ She walked outside, leaving Kitty trailing behind her.
Tara had already got Rory and Tom started on their warm-ups and she was taking them through their jumping jacks. ‘Another twenty,’ she said. ‘And then push-ups.’ She smiled when she saw Shazza and Kitty walking out along the lumpy grass. ‘Here they are,’ she said. ‘The terrible twosome… how’s it going, girls? Any news? Recovered from Friday?’
Kitty could barely remember last Friday night, it seemed so long ago, but she managed to smile and joined in with the jumping jacks, standing beside Shazza. She spent the rest of the training running around, trying to show that she wasn’t miserable.
Tom had given her a polite wave and Rory had given her his usual ‘howsitgoing’ but she was feeling separate. Tom would be all right, she knew that. He’d move on and barely give her a thought. And that Robyn looked more than keen. But it still left Kitty alone with the horror of having ruined something lovely, this little group of five, this little band of brothers and sisters.
Rory kicked the ball in her direction, and she chased after it, not able to think of any of the tips Billy had filled her head with. She’d tell Tara at the end of the practice that this was her last session and that she would have to find someone else.
But, afterwards, Tara had to race off to pick her mother up from the train station after a week in Alicante. ‘See you all Friday,’ she said. ‘Big match against the Glenageary Goers.’
‘Yeah, see you, Tara,’ said Shazza/Sharon as she picked up her bag. ‘See you, Kitty. I’m getting a lift with the boys,’ she said, and she too was gone.
Kitty blinked back the tears, turned around and walked towards home. How did you get someone to forgive you, if they weren’t ready to forgive? What if Shazza/Sharon never forgave her? Shazza was the very person who made life fun, otherwise, it was just work and Dave… and work was definitely the more pleasurable of the two. But the worst of all, she didn’t love Dave. The affection and the regard she once had for him was pretty much all gone. She couldn’t pretend any longer.
A summer storm was gathering, and the rain began to fall as Kitty walked home that evening. Great puddles were forming around the gutters, the world waterlogged and sodden, the ground drenched. She sheltered under an awning for the new wine bar on Sandycove’s main street. There was a rattling roar of an engine and she looked up to see a van, Rory behind the wheel, and beside him was Shazza, both singing along to a song, totally oblivious to Kitty, who was standing on the pavement. The van beeped its horn and Rory waved… but not at Kitty, at a woman who was also sheltering from the rain. It was Roz, Tom and Rory’s mother.
‘What a dreadful evening,’ said Roz, coming over to her, holding her hood up over her head. ‘I’m meeting Edith for a drink in the wine bar. Would you like to join us? Or at least for one?’
But for some reason, Kitty began to cry.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Roz, the same look of concern in her eye that Kitty remembered seeing in Tom’s. ‘Everything all right?’ She caught a flash of the ugly ring. ‘You’re engaged… and you’re not… well… is it not what you want?’
All Kitty could do was shrug and shake her head and then nod. ‘I am perfectly all right,’ she managed finally, ‘couldn’t be happier, I really couldn’t…’
But Roz had her hand through Kitty’s arm and was manoeuvring her through the door. ‘Two glasses of the house red,’ called Roz to the waiter. ‘And some of those lovely Spanish almonds.’ Kitty found herself being seated on a chair at the head of a long oak table, Roz beside her. ‘Now, you tell me what’s going on,’ she said.
‘My problems aren’t as bad as some people’s,’ Kitty said. ‘I mean, other people have it so much worse. You lost Paddy…’
‘But he’s still with us,’ said Roz. ‘I still talk to him and he’s in my mind and my heart.’ She glanced up at the waiter as she tasted the wine he had just placed in front of them. ‘Thank you, Lorenzo,’ she said. ‘Delicious.’ She turned back to Kitty. ‘Yes, of course, we miss his hugs and seeing his face and the shock of that empty chair around the dinner table is…’ She stopped for a moment. ‘…It’s awful. It really is. But on we go. My greatest blessing is my three boys. That doesn’t change. I have Paddy’s heart and soul wrapped around me. Forever. No one can take that away from me.’ She smiled at Kitty. ‘And remember, heart and soul are the only things that matter. When they align with someone else’s, you have all you need.’ She took Kitty’s right hand in both of hers, and it felt so warm and comfortable, as though the human touch was what was needed to feel someone’s heart and soul. ‘Now, promise me, you’ll come for lunch on Sunday? You and Shazza? Promise?’
And Kitty found herself promising even though she knew she couldn’t be there.
‘I’ve been trying to have fun,’ she said, through her tears. ‘Shazza told me I wasn’t having fun and that it would solve everything and I did have fun and it was working for a while and then it made it all worse.’
‘But fun isn’t the point,’ said Roz. ‘Fun is something that happens when you have heart and soul. Fun isn’t something you can set out to have, it just happens, like all the other wonderful things in life. Love, happiness, success… they are all on the same paradigm. But you can’t force any of them…’ She patted Kitty’s hand again. ‘Just think about the last time you had a lot of fun, when you laughed, when you were happy, when you felt as though you were in love with life.’
Kitty immediately thought of diving off Pansy-Pearl, into the cold depths of the Irish Sea and resurfacing with a feeling of complete and utter freedom. And happiness. And Tom.
‘Well,’ continued Roz, ‘I bet your heart and your soul were at play that day, and without them, you don’t get fun, or love or happiness. Without them, nothing is worth it. And when they are, everything just flows.’
Flow. To be in flow with life, to glide through it, to stop struggling. It was a lesson Billy had tried to teach her. And what Edith had said about the cracks being where the light was to be found. You couldn’t tidy up life, you had to embrace the chaos because only then did you have a chance of your heart being open, your soul being free.
Kitty began to smile. That was it… that was the something missing from the pitch to the Department of Health, from her life with Dave, and the Welcome Ireland campaign.
Heart and soul. Without them, you were doomed to struggle, without them, there was no flow, no ease. Without them, you were lost. And Kitty was most certainly lost. A life without heart and soul stretched ahead of her, a life without love, a world without purpose. Without fun. Without Shazza. Without Annie. And without Tom.