Chapter 9
9
‘POSITION OF THE FORTNIGHT’
It turns out we used to pretty much be the nerdy teenagers we remember. The box doesn’t hold a wealth of surprises. There are a couple of editions of Smash Hits magazine – one with Take That on the cover and another with Dean Cain as Superman. The part of my heart that was insanely in love with Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman does a little flip. God, that man was gorgeous back in the day. As was Teri Hatcher as Lois Lane. She was my first girl crush. I blush when I remember getting my hair cut in the same bobbed style she wore as if that would set the scene for a glittering career in journalism.
I lost hours of my youth daydreaming that Clark Kent and Fox Mulder would battle it out for my affection. I make a mental note to look up how they have both aged as if that will be the deciding factor now as to which one wins my heart. I don’t allow myself to think about how much I’ve aged.
There’s a copy of More magazine, which we roar with laughter flicking through, especially when we reach the page outlining the Position of the Fortnight. It was as close to hard core pornography as our teenage selves got. Niamh and I would hide the magazine from our mothers lest we be scolded for reading such filth. Laura didn’t have to hide the magazine from her mum, because Kitty was cool like that, but she would hide it anyway having determined she would rather die than discuss ‘The Wheelbarrow’ with her mother.
Not one of us had so much as seen a penis in real life and yet each fortnight we read that article as if we were nymphomaniacs with PhDs in the Kama Sutra .
There’s an empty bottle of West Coast Cooler in the box, which makes all three of us have the fiercest craving for the super sweet wine spritzer, but not strongly enough for us to actually do anything about it. There are a couple of tickets for Squires nightclub, which obviously had been placed in the box by Laura or Niamh because in the summer of 1994 I had yet to set foot through the hallowed doors of Derry’s most popular hot spot. It would be another year, and some, before I would finally lose my Squires virginity and join the heaving masses on the dance floor, giving it everything to ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ by D:Ream. The fact that the lead singer of D:Ream is a Derry man gave that song a much longer shelf life in our pubs and clubs than anywhere else. In fact, I’m sure they might still play it now.
We poke through other detritus of our teenage years – bus tickets, button badges with the CND symbol on them, a pair of love beads. We fancied ourselves as free-spirited hippy types when the truth was that the closest we came to being hippies was choking on Sandalwood incense and having to convince my mother it wasn’t in fact weed, as she suspected.
There’s an empty tube of Rimmel Heather Shimmer lipstick – the remnants of the glittery shade scraped out. We made things last back then.
‘You can still get that,’ Laura says of the shade that was ubiquitous in every cool girl’s make-up bag through the nineties.
‘No way,’ I say, immediately conjuring the colour in my mind’s eye and remembering the smokey-eyed, dark-lipped look that made anyone with a truly Irish complexion look like the undead.
Laura takes her phone from her pocket and taps at the screen before turning it and flashing it in front of my face. ‘See! Rimmel Heather Shimmer! Still on sale! I bought some for Robyn, but I don’t think she was impressed. It’s probably lying somewhere in the midden she calls a bedroom.’
‘You should retrieve it and steal it for yourself. Go old-school vintage with your bad self,’ Niamh says, with a laugh.
‘I think I’m just regular old these days,’ Laura says. ‘Things are starting to sag that did not sag before. And hair is growing in all the wrong places. I’m afraid I’ll wake up one of these mornings to a full beard. We’ll not even talk about the grey hair…’
‘I don’t know why I never realised that the hair on your head isn’t the only hair that goes grey,’ I say, blushing.
‘Oh yes!’ Niamh says. ‘I’m not over the trauma of having a badger stripe down there .’
I snort in response.
‘Tell me this,’ Laura says. ‘When all our other hair is turning grey, then why do the beardy whiskers come in thick and black? And how do they arrive on our faces already two inches long as if they’ve been there for weeks or months?’
‘As if we needed any further proof that God is a man,’ Niamh says. ‘No female god would put any woman through menopause and make us watch our bodies sag and wrinkle in front of our own eyes. And what do men have to deal with while we’re in hormone hell? A finger up the bum once a year to check their prostate? There’s men who would pay good money for that. Oh, and sagging balls. That’s it. That’s their lot!’
The image of a sagging ball sack dances through my mind and I grimace. Although, much like the virginal ‘Position of the Fortnight’ guru I was in 1994, I have no direct experience of sagging balls. In fact, it’s been quite some time since I’ve had any experience of balls at all. Simon’s were the last pair I had been up close and personal with and I’ve long come to accept that will more than likely stay the case for the rest of my days.
‘Nothin’ worse,’ Laura splutters, choking on her wine. I watch her closely, seeing the moment she remembers, of course, that there are greater tragedies in this world than the natural life cycle of male genitals and sobers up briefly.
I reach across and give her hand a little squeeze. ‘It’s okay to laugh, you know. Your mum loved a good laugh – especially at inappropriate moments.’
‘She did enjoy a good testicles joke,’ Laura sniffs, wiping a tear from her eye. ‘I was lucky with her, wasn’t I? She was the best of them.’
‘She was,’ Niamh says solemnly and I nod my head, aware that we have missed out on so much of each other’s lives. Here Laura had been caring for her mother in her final months and neither Niamh nor I had known about it until it was too late to be of any real help.
‘Do you want to talk about what happened?’ I ask gently.
Laura shakes her head and takes another long drink of wine. ‘I absolutely do not want to talk about it, but at the same time I think I need to talk about it. Conal’s been great. Even Aidan’s been great, but it’s not the same as talking about it with my girls.’
Guilt nips at me, knowing we have not been ‘her girls’ for a long time now, but I had felt I’d no choice back then. She had let me down so badly.
‘We’re always here when you want to vent,’ Niamh soothes, and she’s right of course, because regardless of what is nipping at me I know that Laura needs us to be her friends right now. She’s just lost the woman who raised her single-handedly. The only parent she really ever knew.
‘She was unwell for a long time,’ Laura says. ‘Breast cancer. We thought she had beaten it but the kind she had was a sneaky wee bastard. It kept creeping back and not giving her any peace. She fought as hard as anyone could’ve fought. Lost her breasts, and her hair. Never her sense of humour, mind. She kept that right until the end when it was all too much. I bet you didn’t even realise that was a wig she had on her in the coffin? She told me she would come back and haunt me if I didn’t put her best wig on her and make her look beautiful.’
Laura is speaking so tenderly and yet the pain in her voice is evident. I know it only too well. I had the same pain in my voice when my father died. It’s the kind of crack in you that can never be fixed so you just learn to live with it and adapt to its sharp edges.
‘She did look beautiful,’ I reassure my friend who nods.
‘It was the best she’d looked in months,’ Laura said. ‘Did I tell you that Robyn helped me do her make-up? The funeral home did all the foundation stuff – they’ve special make-up for that you know. To keep them fresh looking.’ She grimaces slightly. ‘But Robyn and I did her eyes, and her blusher and lipstick. It was very special, you know. Three generations of women together in the room. Just us. We joked we should go full goth or drag queen. I said I’d grab her old Dolly Parton wig from the cupboard and go all out. Mum would’ve loved that, I think. It would’ve given the neighbours something to talk about. But we decided less was more, in the end.’
The thought of Robyn having the maturity and wherewithal to help her mother with this most tender of tasks bring a tear to my eye. I look at the time capsule – at the silly mementoes of the carefree life we had at sixteen and I think of Robyn, the same age, supporting her mother so sensitively. It’s hard to believe the babies who crawled around our feet are now well on their way to adulthood and making us so very proud.
We three sit in silence, processing what we have just discussed, and where we are in our lives, until Laura jumps to her feet.
‘Right, none of this crying and being miserable. Kitty O’Hagan would not be a fan of that!’ She scrolls through her phone until the opening bars of ‘Simply The Best’ by Tina Turner blare out. It was her mother’s favourite song.
‘Girls, you know I’ve not a note in my head so you better get on your feet and sing this with me, for my mammy.’
Without thinking, I’m on my feet and Niamh is too and while it’s fair to say none of us are exceptionally blessed in the vocal department, what we lack in talent we make up for in enthusiasm. We sing at the top of our lungs until the very last bars of the song, before plonking ourselves back on the floor and raising a glass to Kitty.
‘She should’ve lived a bigger life,’ Laura says. ‘Don’t you think? If she’d been born in our generation she probably would’ve travelled the world, gone to see Tina Turner in concert loads of times, been fabulous and eccentric and beautiful.’
‘Maybe, but she always seemed happy with you and Conal and your home was always a happy one,’ I tell her, thinking what use are ifs and buts at this stage of the game.
‘Oh, she was,’ Laura says. ‘She told me she’d no regrets about her life and I believed her. She seemed content but sometimes I wonder if she was content because it was all she knew?’
Niamh shrugs. ‘Possibly, but surely content is content. That’s all any of us can hope for at the end of the day.’
The word bubbles over in my mind. Am I content? Is this the life I thought I would live? The time capsule seems to call to me, and I can’t help but think of the sixteen-year-old version of myself, with all her hopes and dreams, and what she thought her life would look like when she reached my age. How she’d hoped to one day meet her own Clark Kent – which Simon most definitely was not. I don’t think sixteen-year-old me thought she’d be living alone with a dog who had a sensitive gut, and wondering when her offspring would get round to calling her next.
I dig through the box and the remaining trinkets until I reach the bottom and see what it is I’ve been looking for. It’s the girl I was all those years ago, speaking from the heart and sharing her hopes and dreams. Alongside the yellowed envelope are two more. One labelled with Laura’s name and another with Niamh’s. These are our love letters to ourselves, I think, as I pass them around, and this seems to be the perfect time to rediscover them. And it is almost 2024, after all, so we’re not cheating by sneaking a look now.
My heart thuds in my chest as I recognise my own handwriting on the envelope, the memory of sitting on my bed writing this letter all those years ago flashing into my mind as clear as if I am watching it on a TV screen. Each of us had written our letters on our own, in our respective homes and had placed them in the box already sealed. We did not discuss the contents, instead agreeing that what went in the letters was as private and confidential as could be and we were in no way obligated to share them with each other. Not then, and not whenever we would uncover them again. Which, of course, is now.
‘I’m not sure I’m emotionally ready for this,’ Niamh says, staring glassy-eyed at her envelope. Laura has gone very quiet too.
‘Me neither,’ she says. ‘And I think I definitely need to be sober.’
That isn’t the worst idea in the world. Doing a deep dive into where I thought my life would be around now is probably not a good idea on the day of a funeral when I’m feeling fragile anyway.
‘Tomorrow then, maybe,’ I say. ‘And we don’t have to read them in front of each other. We made a promise, remember. What goes in the letter is between us and our god.’
‘I think, actually, I need to get some sleep now,’ Laura says and yawns, still holding her letter close to her chest. Of course, her yawn sets off a domino effect and Niamh and I soon join in the yawn chorus too. It’s then I realise I’m already way past tired and that even climbing the stairs to bed will require significant effort.
‘We should call a taxi,’ Niamh says. ‘Neither of us is able to drive.’
‘You could stay here,’ I offer. ‘If you want. The boys’ rooms are available and they’re clean. I’ve been in with the hazmat suit on and gutted them after the lads went to university. There’s new bedding and everything on them – I know how gross teenage boys can be.’
Laura gives a small smile. ‘Teenage girls aren’t much better. Believe me.’
‘Seconded,’ Niamh smiles. ‘But yes, if you don’t mind, the thought of climbing up stairs and getting into bed instead of schlepping across town in a taxi and into the loving but extremely demanding embrace of my family sounds great. Laura, what do you think?’
Laura is already fumbling with her phone and I assume she’s calling a taxi, but she raises a finger to request we give her just one minute before she looks up. ‘That is my husband and child informed that I’m having a sleepover. Now, direct me to my resting place. Or is that too morbid a way to put it after the day we’ve just had?’
‘I think you get special dispensation for an inappropriate sense of humour on a day like this. Follow me,’ I tell her, before leading my friends upstairs where I hand them some of my oversized T-shirts, and spare toothbrushes from the bathroom cabinet and bid them goodnight.
The mess downstairs can wait until morning, I think, as I carry out my evening ablutions.
When I get to bed I find that Daniel has been performing his usual bed warming duties, making sure I have as little space as possible on which to sleep, but I don’t mind. It’s nice having a warm body to cuddle – even if it is just a dog’s.
If I expect to nod off straight away, I’m let down by my body’s refusal to play ball. The envelope, now on the nightstand, is calling to me and I know I haven’t a chance of sleeping until I’ve read it.
Frig it, I think. I’m going in.