Chapter 8
8
WHO KILLED LAURA PALMER?
I feel so much better when I’m wearing a fresh pair of knickers. There was no way I’d have been capable of holding a prolonged conversation with anyone with my vagina not put away behind a good cotton gusset.
I’ve put on my favourite grey sweatpants with matching sweater. I give my hair a quick blast with the hairdryer before twisting it up on top of my head in a loose bun. In my mind I look like an effortlessly chic influencer who lives a life of brunches with the girls and exudes natural beauty. In reality I probably look like an inmate in HMP Maghaberry – and the kind who would cut a bitch at that. But now is not the time to think about vanity – my friend needs me and that is what matters.
By the time I get back downstairs, Niamh has already set up her very own ad hoc cocktail bar and has mixed us three syrupy sweet peach schnapps-flavoured drinks. Even the smell is enough to evoke a memory from the late nineties of great nights out and less great mornings after. There was nothing quite like the hungover sugar crash that came following a night on peach schnapps and pineapple juice. What on earth had we been thinking?
‘Here we go,’ she chirps, and hands me a glass. I look at her face, and at Laura, who has stopped crying for the moment but whose eyes are horrendously swollen and red. All three of us stare into glasses with trepidation.
‘Remember when this was all we would drink?’ Niamh asks.
‘We thought we were so cosmopolitan. Everyone else got wasted on alcopops or cider and we were drinking this,’ I say, my nose wrinkling at the smell.
‘I can’t remember the last time I had peach schnapps,’ Laura says, her voice hoarse from crying, and I want to tell her there’s probably a very good reason for that, and the reason is that it’s not actually very nice. I keep quiet though. I am putting all my energy into the girding of my loins to drink this sugar-laden concoction.
‘Well, ladies,’ Laura says. ‘Here’s to my lovely mammy who will be smiling down from heaven at the sight of the three of us together again. Cheers, big ears!’ she says and we all knock our glasses together before taking a drink.
The sweetness makes my brain hurt and I shudder. Niamh, meanwhile, has lowered her glass and is staring at me wide-eyed. I know that look well. The twins used to get that look in their eyes when they overdosed on Fruit Shoots. We were either heading for chaos or an emotional breakdown.
I’m distracted by a gagging sound to my left and turn to see Laura staring into her glass as if it has just personally offended her. ‘Dear God, that’s sickly sweet,’ she stutters.
‘That’s a very polite way to say rotten,’ I tell her with a grimace.
‘It’s worse than rotten,’ Niamh says. ‘It’s hoachin’.’ Now there’s a word I’ve not heard in at least a quarter of a century. In our younger years it was a frequent flyer in our vocabulary as a descriptor for really, really, really rotten. It could be interchanged with words such as bangin’, boggin’ and mingin’.
‘It probably wasn’t my best idea,’ Laura sniffed, on the verge of tears again. ‘I was just trying to do something nice in memory of Mammy and…’ I wrap my arms around her as she gives in to a fresh round of sobbing.
‘It was a lovely gesture,’ I soothe her. ‘And luckily, I have wine in the fridge so we don’t have to keep drinking it if you don’t want to. But if you do want to keep drinking it, then we will be brave and persevere in memory of the legend who was Kitty O’Hagan!’
Laura lets out a little laugh and then cries a bit more before settling herself. ‘No, I think Mammy would understand if we gave up on the peach schnapps and went for wine instead,’ she says.
‘Thank God for that!’ Niamh says, not wasting any time in fetching a bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc from my fridge and three wine glasses from the cupboard.
‘I’ll get some crisps out too,’ I say, realising that we are all old enough now that soakage is an absolutely essential survival tool in avoiding the dreaded three-day hangover that seems to wade in uninvited whether it’s a skinful or a thimbleful of wine consumed. ‘And then we can talk properly.’
I have my back to Laura and Niamh as I decant a few packets of my finest Tayto Cheese and Onion crisps into bowls, and I’m just trying to work how many crisps is too many crisps when I hear an exclamation from Laura – and this time it’s not a sob, or a cry, or an expression of grief.
‘Holy shit!’ she says. ‘Where on earth did this show up?’
I turn to face her and, of course, she has the time capsule in her hands and is examining it intensely.
‘Is that it?’ Niamh asks me. ‘Oh my God! Let me see it!’
I’m not sure why I feel nervous as they read what we had scrawled on the outside of this box thirty years ago, but I do. It’s the kind of nervous where I feel itchy under my skin and very much on edge.
‘God, remember that! When you insisted we spelled Becki with an i because it was cool?’ Niamh laughs.
‘It was cool!’ I reply defensively, even though I haven’t spelled my name like that since circa 2001. There comes a certain stage in life when saying ‘It’s Becki with an i’ makes you sound emotionally stunted.
‘It was,’ Niamh agrees. ‘I was so jealous that you had all these variations of your name you could choose and I was stuck with Niamh. There aren’t any ways to shorten Niamh.’
‘Or Laura either,’ Laura says. ‘Apart from Laurs, and I hated that.’
‘But at least Laura was a cool name. Like Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks ,’ Niamh says and Laura shudders.
‘I hated that show. It scared the bejaysus out of me. Remember that creepy bloke who did all the killing… what was his name again?’
‘Bob,’ I say, thinking of the face of the supernatural killer who still haunts my nightmares.
‘That’s it! Bob!’ Laura says. ‘Absolutely terrifying.’
‘We have to open it, don’t we?’ Laura says once we have talked over the bizarre moments of the original Twin Peaks and agreed that the recent updated series was just a fever dream that made no sense to anyone.
‘I think it would be rude not to,’ Niamh says.
‘I think we need to,’ Laura says, her voice a little more sombre. ‘God knows I could use a distraction from today.’ The sad look on her face is enough to give me the push I need to lift the box and agree it is time for the great opening.
‘I think we’ll need scissors or a knife,’ I say, examining the very thorough sealing of what is essentially a box of tat. We really did want to protect our secrets, it seems.
‘And a top up of our glasses,’ Laura says, grabbing the wine bottle from the kitchen counter.
‘We might actually need a second bottle,’ Niamh grimaces. ‘And more Tayto.’ She retrieves another bottle of wine from the fridge, effectively wiping out my in-house alcohol content and leads the way through to the kitchen where she immediately plonks herself down on the rug in front of the fire – much to Daniel’s disgust. ‘That,’ his epic side-eye seems to say, ‘is my spot’.
I sit down beside her and start running the edge of one of the blades of my pair of scissors along the join between the lid and the box itself.
‘Do you know, I’d forgotten about this entirely,’ Niamh says. ‘It only came back to me when you mentioned it, Becca. I’d never have given it a moment’s thought, otherwise. I’d a very hazy memory in the back of my mind but if you told me I’d dreamt it, I’d believe you.’
‘We made it in Becca’s kitchen if I remember correctly,’ Laura says. ‘Though didn’t we all write our letters separately at home and bring them over? God only knows what utter guff I wrote. I can only imagine if Robyn were to write one now. It would be full of teenage angst and woe. I don’t think we were as woe-filled as teenagers nowadays. Even before Mammy got sick, my beautiful, happy wee girl had morphed into a walking streak of misery.’
‘It will pass,’ I reassure her. ‘Both my boys went through the horrors of thinking the world was a bin fire and that their generation are the only ones who ever gave a shit or tried to change things for the better. They seemed to care a little less once they got money in their pockets, were able to get into a pub without getting ID’d and didn’t live at home any more.’
‘We had our own dramas though,’ Niamh says. ‘And who’d be a teenager now. What with social media and the pressure to appear to have the perfect life all the time. At least when we were that age, and making absolute dicks of ourselves, we didn’t have to worry if we would go viral the next day.’
‘And we didn’t have to worry about the world and his mother seeing our geeky teenage years either – you know, when you’re still growing into your face. I swear I looked like Mrs Potato Head from 1990 through to 1996,’ I say as I slice through another layer of yellowed tape. ‘This is harder to get into than Fort Knox,’ I mutter.
‘You’re showing remarkable patience,’ Laura says. ‘I’d have torn into that by now.’
‘I don’t want to risk damaging anything inside it,’ I say as the blade of the scissors finally slips under the lip of the box lid. ‘God only knows what valuable treasures are hidden inside this box!’
The room falls silent as I slice around the final layer of tape until the lid is free and ready to come off.
‘I really hope this isn’t rubbish,’ Niamh says, as three sets of eyes fall on the shoebox that holds a snapshot of the people we used to be and the dreams we used to have.