Chapter 41
41
DEATH BY CHOCOLATE (CAKE)
Becca
‘Jeez, Becca, you nearly jumped the height of yourself when that phone rang. Are you okay?’ Laura says after Niamh has left us to speak with Deirdre.
‘I am not,’ I tell her. ‘I’m like a fecking cat on a hot tin roof. I’ve not heard a peep from Grace since I submitted the article on Wednesday morning and this is now Friday and she said she needed it ASAP to get it in print. Surely that means she’ll have read it by now? Why have I not heard from her?’
There is a mild hysteria in my voice and even though I have not five minutes ago told my friends I have to make sure not to fall headfirst back into my comfort-eating ways I shovel a spoonful of chocolate cake into my mouth. But my mouth is too dry due to my absolute nervous breakdown state of being and I feel it stick in my throat.
Great, I think, this is how it ends. I can just imagine the headlines now.
‘Death by Chocolate’
Local woman chokes to death on cake
And the quotes from shocked onlookers…
‘She just horsed the biggest piece of cake into her mouth. It’s no wonder she choked on it.’
‘I suppose if you’re going to die, then at least it’s good she died doing what she so clearly loved.’
‘Becs! Take a drink!’ Laura says, pushing a glass of water towards me. I’m not sure if it’s going to help or just make it all gloopier and less likely to shift, but short of the Heimlich manoeuvre I don’t have much else to try. So I go for it and thankfully dislodge the cake and allow air to rush back into my lungs.
Laura is just staring at me, wide-eyed and half amused, I think, as well as half very, very concerned. ‘Oh, love. She is very busy, I suppose. It can’t be easy editing a magazine like that.’
She has a point – quite a reasonable one, if the truth be told, but I’m not feeling very reasonable. It has been one hell of a week and I just need to know if I hit the brief or if, as I fear, I sent Grace Adams and my one tangible chance at achieving my goal of writing for a glossy magazine running for the hills.
In less stressful but no less distracting news, I’ve also been overwhelmed with impure thoughts of Conal, which I’m clearly not going to admit to in any detail with Laura given that he’s her brother and eeewwwww .
I’ve not seen him since our big ‘almost’ moment on Monday, but we have been exchanging increasingly daring messages as the week has progressed. No nudes or anything like that. God forbid. If it floats your boat, then knock yourself out – I’m not one to yuck anyone else’s yum. But I refuse to believe there is any creature on the planet who will dissolve into a lust-filled frenzy at the sight of my stretch marks in a blurry selfie on a phone screen.
There’s no goddamn way I’ve ever felt confident enough to send a picture of my boobs to anyone. Except, I suppose, for the time I sent one to the girls. I had mastitis and needed some advice, so obviously it was not in a sexy way and definitely more about desperation than confidence. There is nothing sexy about mastitis.
So while no photographs have been exchanged between Conal and me, there have been several messages alluding to getting each other alone and finishing what we almost started. It doesn’t need to be explicit to distract me to the point of needing to take Daniel out on yet another walk to burn off the nervous energy.
It seems my libido has not only returned from the dead, it is hungry and demands feeding.
But it’s not like I can invite Conal over while Adam is still at home. It would be too weird. Too ick. I’d have to be too quiet and I really don’t think that by the time I get Conal alone and in my bed, I’m going to be able to stay quiet.
So, with all that to contend with, I am at this stage wound up into a giant ball of tension, likely to go off at a moment’s notice. I’d almost been tempted to hijack Niamh’s doctor’s appointment to beg for ‘some of the good stuff’ for myself.
Thankfully I’d managed to wise myself up before I’d embarrassed us all. And yet, here I am choking on chocolate cake like the gulpen I am and embarrassing us here anyway.
And I’ve still not heard from Grace.
‘But it’s Friday,’ I say. ‘And Friday afternoon at that. She’s hardly going to get in touch over the weekend, so I kind of need to hear from her now or else I know it will be at least Monday. I’m not sure I can cope with a whole weekend of this. My brain keeps telling me she hated it. Which of course she probably did.’ I rub my temples to try and fight off an incoming headache – no doubt brought on by my near-death experience with the chocolate cake. ‘Laura, I coloured outside the lines a little and didn’t write it as a straight review. I’d thought that was what she wanted, you know. Something a bit different? With a sense of voice. But gah…’ I stare at the chocolate cake on my plate, knowing better than to risk taking another bite.
‘Take a breath, Becs. I’m sure it’s perfect. You can write! You know this,’ Laura reassures me.
‘But can I? Can I really? To the standard Northern People needs? Maybe the limit of my talents really is listicles and interviews with personality-devoid CEO s who give one-word answers. Do you know how hard it is to make seven hundred words out of that?’
She laughs and shakes her head. ‘No. I don’t, but the fact that you can do it proves in itself you have talent. And if you can write proficiently with that level of material, then you can absolutely write a damn article about our weekend in Donegal. But do you know what, even if this one article is not for her, she still wants you to write a column. There will be other articles. Hang in there. This is your first go.’
Laura is right, of course. But I don’t know how to get across that while this is my first go, there is a part of me that just needs it to be a winner. More than anything I have ever needed in my career before. Maybe that’s na?ve of me, or ridiculously self-obsessed, but it’s how I feel nonetheless.
I want it to be good for me, of course. And for Grace. But I want it to also be a winner for Peggy, and Deirdre and all the women who danced around that bonfire on a cold January night a week ago.
‘I know,’ I say, cursing my phone for not ringing and trying to tell myself that maybe it’s because it took a mud bath earlier in the week. Yes, the rice worked. I will never doubt the power of rice again. But what if it only partially worked and for some weird, mud-related reason it now blocks all calls and/or emails from Grace?
‘You’re overthinking it,’ Laura says, interrupting my overthinking with impeccable timing.
‘I know,’ I say. ‘Honestly. I do. It’s a curse. One I need to work on.’
The tinkle of the bell above the door draws our attention to Niamh, who is making her way back to us with a smile on her face. ‘Deirdre’s in,’ she says.
‘In?’ I ask. ‘Here?’ I look around.
‘No. For the club! Or the group. Or the bunch of friends. Whatever you want to call it,’ Niamh says.
Nope. I’m still lost – a fact that is clearly written all over my face.
‘Remember last week? At the retreat? We said wouldn’t it be great if there was somewhere to do things like that together on the regular? That it can be hard to make friends in your forties and beyond?’
Ah, well, that does sound familiar for sure. It had simply been lost in the craziness of the week that has passed.
‘Oh, yes, I remember,’ Laura says. ‘I liked the sound of that.’
‘I haven’t had a moment to think about it,’ I say, opting for an honesty-is-the-best-policy approach. ‘Do you have actual plans?’
Niamh Cassidy might be the only woman in the world who could have a nervous breakdown, support her daughter through a threatened miscarriage and form a club for lonely middle-aged women all in the one week.
‘Well, not so much, but Deirdre wants to get on board. And I think, you know, we should invite her out with us. It doesn’t have to be anything mad. But we like her. Don’t we? And she’s good craic. It could be something really positive for all of us, and God knows we could use all the positive we can find right now.’
Just as she says those very words, my phone illuminates, with proof that there has been no Grace-blocking, mud-related anomaly. Her name is there, and she is calling. And I know I have to answer it.