Chapter Four
INT: SCHOOL CLOAKROOM / INT: ANNIE AND ROO’S HOUSE
My triumphant mood lasts roughly ninety seconds after I leave the room.
I stride through the open-plan office towards the lift, where I spot two of the other writers waiting for it to arrive.
The lift doors open, and as my new colleagues walk in I hurry towards them and they must have seen me (they must, right?), but one of them hits the button.
I can hear someone laugh as the doors slide shut.
And as I hurry down the stairs, because I want to get out of this building as quickly as possible before anyone else can patronise or ignore or snigger at me, the high of my last interaction with Art fades away and suddenly I feel very … alone.
I feel the way I felt before I met Roo.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the weather had stayed sunny for my whole first term of secondary school. Would I have kept on spending my lunch breaks on the far side of the playing fields? Would Roo have befriended someone else? Would I? Would my life have been very different?
All I know is that about a month into my first term, the weather, which had been beautifully sunny throughout September, changed.
It was too wet to sit outside, and I wished I’d never started going to the playing fields for lunch.
It was going to look really odd when I suddenly appeared in our form room at lunchtime after not showing my face there for four weeks.
The last class before lunch was geography, and I trudged along the corridor wondering how I’d got off to such a bad, weird start in school.
I’d always had friends in primary school, but none of them had gone to the same secondary as me.
My sister, Laura, had been in the same situation, but soon she was thick as thieves with two girls who are still her best friends now.
So I presumed I’d settle in as easily as she had.
But somehow it wasn’t clicking for me. Everyone had little gangs of friends already and there didn’t seem to be a place for me in any of them.
I couldn’t help worrying that I’d never make any friends there, and the more I worried the more nervous I got, and the more nervous I got the less comfortable I felt talking to anyone, and the less comfortable I got the weirder I sounded whenever I tried making conversation …
Hence the solo trudging.
I was almost at my form room when I passed one of the alcoves dotted around the school corridors that served as cloakrooms. That was when I had a brilliant idea.
I could spend lunchtime in there among the coats!
I could eat my sandwich and read my book and no one would notice me.
I ducked into the alcove. It was perfect. It was nice and quiet and cosy and—
‘Ow!’ said a voice from below me.
‘Sorry!’ I cried. ‘Sorry, sorry, I didn’t see you. Are you okay?’
‘Well, I don’t think you broke anything,’ said the voice. A head popped out from between the coats. ‘Oh. You’re in my class.’
I looked down at two large brown eyes peering up at me from under a shaggy black fringe.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m Annie. And you’re … Rosemary?’
The girl made a face. ‘Rosa Maria. Officially. But I’m called Roo.’
Neither of us said anything for a second. I was turning to leave and find another alcove when Roo said, ‘Were you going to eat your lunch here?’
I could have lied, but there was no point in faking it with someone who was clearly in the same boat as me.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Oh.’ There was a pause and then Roo said, ‘Well, I suppose you can stay here and eat with me if you like.’
I looked down at her. Her tone was carefully nonchalant to the point of total indifference, but there was something in her voice, a tiny, barely perceptible touch of hope, that caught at something inside me. Something that needed to be caught.
I kept my own voice as careless as I could as I said, ‘Yeah, sure. I might as well.’
And that was the beginning of me and Roo.
When I get home after my first day at Northside, Roo is lying on the couch staring at the ceiling, looking almost as young as she did back when I first met her.
Her long dark hair is in two plaits, she’s cleaned all the make-up off and she’s changed out of her Veronica Lake frock and into a pair of pyjama bottoms and an original Fleetwood Mac Tango in the Night tour T-shirt she found on eBay.
I’m fully prepared to go into a rant about how awful my day was but I stop myself when I see Roo’s sad little face. ‘Are you okay?’ I say.
She sticks out her hand and waggles it from side to side before giving me the world’s most tentative thumbs-up.
The break-up with Justin was a big shock and Roo’s still processing it.
When we were growing up, Roo was always the stronger one, the one who was totally sure that even though school was awful, we’d be fine once we got out of there and went to college.
I hate that Justin, that game-obsessed arsehole, has broken her spirit, or at least crushed it a bit.
‘So, how was your first day?’ says Roo.
‘Ah, it was grand.’ I don’t want to dump my problems on her when she’s feeling down.
‘No it wasn’t,’ says Roo. ‘I can tell when you’re lying.’
‘Because of your witchy powers?’ I say. ‘I thought you didn’t believe in actual magic.’
‘Because I’ve known you since you were twelve,’ says Roo. ‘Tell me everything.’
And so I do, starting with the surprise appearance of Art (‘Oh my God!’ says Roo. ‘Is he the one you used to call Director Dickhead?’ He was, though I’d forgotten about that until now) and continuing to the evilness of Bernard.
‘I thought he headhunted me because he believed I was talented,’ I say miserably. ‘But he doesn’t even want me there.’
When I finish my litany of woes, Roo says, ‘Stay there.’ Then she gets up, pads to the kitchen end of the open-plan space and returns with two steaming mugs of something that smells of apples and citrus and cinnamon and possibly vanilla. It’s the most comforting scent I could possibly imagine.
She hands me a mug. ‘Careful, it’s been steeping since just before you got home but it’s still very hot.’
‘What is it?’ I say, blowing on the surface.
‘My delicious Apfelstrudel tisane,’ she says.
‘Mixing your European languages there, aren’t you?’
‘Well, if you don’t want it …’ Roo reaches out towards the mug but I hold it away from her.
‘No! No, I want it.’ I take a sip. It’s sweet and tangy and soft and incredibly soothing. ‘Wow, this is amazing. Vielen Dank, Roo. Or should I say merci beaucoup?’
‘I’ll accept either.’ Roo takes a sip from her own mug. ‘I came up with the recipe after Justin moved out. I’ve made a giant tin of it so I can brew a pot whenever I need it. All the ingredients are meant to make you feel more hopeful.’
‘Does it work?’ I inhale the comforting scent of the Apfelstrudel tisane and feel my shoulders relax, just a tiny bit.
‘I mean, right now I’m hoping Justin’s new house is hit by a tidal wave,’ says Roo, with a forced little laugh. ‘So it doesn’t not work.’
I feel another surge of anger at Justin for making Roo feel like this. ‘He’d deserve it.’
Roo sighs. ‘I know I’m better off without him. I really do. It’s just … what does it say about me that he’d rather live in the arse end of nowhere with that board-game woman than be here with me?’
I could tell her it says nothing about her and everything about Justin and his terrible taste. I could tell her that he was a fool to give her up. I could tell her that she’ll find someone better. And I’d mean it. But I know that won’t cheer her up right now. So I adopt another approach.
‘But Roo,’ I say, ‘think what their horrible house must be like, stuffed with all those games. Like a hoarder’s den. I bet all the rooms are totally crammed with boxes and they have to squeeze into them sideways.’
A hint of a smile passes over Roo’s face.
‘Picture it!’ I say. ‘Games all over the floor, the pair of them eating their dinner standing in a corner because the kitchen table’s covered in games. Ugh, revolting.’
‘Climbing over boring German games about farming to get to the kettle,’ says Roo.
‘I bet they can’t even fit a bed in that house,’ I say. ‘They probably sleep in a weird little nest among piles of games.’
‘And they can’t have sex because they’d knock over the piles and get buried under the boxes,’ says Roo. ‘A fitting end for them both.’
‘If they did manage to have sex she’d probably want him to dress up as the Monopoly man or something,’ I say.
‘Or the old boot,’ says Roo.
‘He never made you dress up as a Settler of Catan or anything like that, did he?’ I say.
Roo laughs, a proper laugh this time. ‘No! Oh God, ugh, stop.’
‘Not even Miss Scarlet from Cluedo?’
‘Shut up!’ Roo hits me with a cushion, but she’s still laughing. It feels good to make her laugh. She hasn’t been laughing enough recently.
‘I was going to make a joke about him dressing as Colonel Mustard, but I’ll say nothing now,’ I say.
‘He’d hate us even joking about him being into Monopoly or Cluedo,’ says Roo. ‘As if he’d ever deign to play anything so mainstream.’
‘At least you never have to spend two hours listening to Justin explain the rules of some new game again.’
‘Good point,’ says Roo.
We sit in companionable silence for a moment, sipping our tisanes.
‘So do you think this Northside job is worth it?’ says Roo. ‘I mean, you’re still in the trial period. It’s a trial for them as well as for you. You can quit and go back to writing for Our Toon.’
She’s right. I could always tell them I was available again.
But I won’t. Not now. I can’t quit after one day, even if Art is really irritating, even if Bernard is a psychopath. Maybe things will get better. Maybe Roo’s tisane is actually working on me.
‘No,’ I tell Roo. ‘I have to give it a chance. And besides,’ I add, ‘I like being back in Dublin. And here with you.’
Roo isn’t one for effusive declarations of emotion but she says, ‘Well. Good.’
We order a takeaway, and while we’re waiting for it to arrive, I put the telly on to watch tonight’s episode of Northside. I’d rather forget all about its existence for a while, but I wouldn’t put it past Bernard to spring a test on me tomorrow about the latest on-screen developments.
The episode begins outside the shop, and the first thing I see are the words ‘Written by Simon Adebayo’.
‘That’s the Simon I told you about!’ I say, pointing at the screen. ‘The one writer who was actually nice to me.’
‘So it’s all right to say if I like the episode?’ says Roo.
‘Definitely,’ I say.
When the final credits roll thirty minutes later and Bernard’s name appears on screen Roo looks at me, flexes her fingers in the air and says, ‘Should I do some cursing?’
I sigh. ‘No. He’s not worth it.’
Roo and I were always fantasising about cursing people when we were in school but we never had the heart to actually do it.
It was mostly because we’d watched The Craft and feared our cursing coming back to us threefold or whatever (we clearly had a huge amount of faith in our latent magical powers).
But it was also because we knew we’d feel genuinely guilty if, for example, we cursed our classmate Lizzie Lattin because she’d said Roo’s name like a cow going ‘moo’ and then she came down with a horrible skin disease or something.
Of course, if we didn’t curse Lizzie and she happened to come down with a horrible skin disease, well, we wouldn’t have been sad about it …
Anyway, there will be no cursing Bernard, no matter how much he might deserve it. And no cursing Art, no matter how patronising and annoying he is. There will be no cursing at all.
I try to relax for the rest of the evening.
As Roo and I watch a Korean series about a high school overrun by zombies, I think about how lucky I am to be living here.
Even with my decent new salary, I couldn’t afford anywhere on my own with the housing situation the way it is.
Moving in with my parents was not an option – I love them and everything, but I’d probably murder them if I had to live with them for longer than a week.
My sister and her husband offered me a room in their house, but much as I appreciated the offer, and I’d have taken them up on it if I’d really had to, it wouldn’t have been ideal.
There’s no way they’d charge me rent, but I’d feel like I was sponging off them. Which I have vowed never to do.
And I’m lucky that living with Roo is working so well, even though we haven’t lived in the same country for more than a decade.
Our friendship might have been conducted mostly via constant texting since I moved to England, we might not be the co-dependent little duo we were at school and we might have plenty of other friends now, but we still have a bond I’ll never have with anyone else.
Roo goes to bed early because she’s doing readings at a beauty-brand breakfast tomorrow morning and has to get up at the crack of dawn.
After she heads upstairs I pick up my phone and reply to messages from my friends áine and Claire asking how my first day at my new job went (I keep it vague and optimistic).
I text Sinéad and tell her I’m sharing an office with her brother’s mate Art (but don’t mention how aggravating I still find him).
I get a message from my sister asking me to dinner at her house on Sunday week (I say yes) and then, well, then …
Okay, I’ll admit it. I google Art Sullivan.
The first thing that comes up is his page, so of course I click on that.
It shows his screenwriting credits in reverse order, so the latest projects appear first. The most recent is a popular but extremely cheesy American show set in a hospital, for which Art is credited with multiple scripts.
I’m guessing he must have been in the writers’ room but his last credited script is from well over a year ago.
Before that there’s a film I’ve never heard of, starring one actor I vaguely remember from a noughties teen drama and lots of unfamiliar names.
Next on the list is a generic cop show, for which Art apparently wrote for several years and also directed quite a few episodes.
Before that, he wrote many episodes of a prestigious drama set in a 1970s newspaper office over the course of its entire run.
He wasn’t nominated for an Emmy, but several of his colleagues were, and the show won several.
At the bottom of the list is his first film, the one that won two awards.
It’s a long way down from indie glory to writing on a deeply uncool medical drama, let alone writing for Northside.
Well, well, well, I think. Look how the mighty have fallen.
But somehow the thought doesn’t make me feel as smug as I thought it might.