The Meet Cute

Chapter 1

The row of faces stared at her blankly.

‘Six grand to film your armpit?’ said Bryony, her frizzy blonde hair framed by a halo of flashing lights from a tired-looking Christmas tree which was starting to make Cassie feel slightly ill. The restaurant was full of groups, mostly consisting of women shrieking with laughter, apparently having the time of their lives. Cassie was meeting her old school crowd from Rockwood Manor – or ‘the girls’, as they still referred to themselves – for their Christmas meet-up, which in recent years always seemed to be relegated to the post-Christmas lull.

‘You make it sound insane, but it’s a deodorant commercial. I’ve officially one of the most famous armpits in the UK – and Ireland, of course,’ Cassie announced, expecting at least some hilarity. Silence. Jeez, tough crowd.

‘And did you have to be a member of .?.?. whatever it is .?.?. Actors’ Equity for that?’ Norah’s tone was incredulous.

‘Well, technically, yes.’

‘Not all of her, just her armpit.’ Celine chortled, always the comedienne. Cassie could feel her heart beginning to sink into the new green suede Doc Martens boots she’d treated herself to out of a chunk of the six grand.

‘I mean, any one of us could’ve done that. It’s not really acting, is it?’ said Norah.

Cassie knew in her heart the truth of the old adage ‘When you’re explaining, you’re losing,’ nonetheless she could hear her tone becoming more insistent.

‘It’s not just the armpit thing, obviously. It’s the girl-power spirit that we’re creating in the ad. It’s subtle, but that’s what creates the magic.’

There was a pause.

‘Magic?’ they chorused.

‘I mean, they were such an amazing group of women on the ad, really vibrant and empowered. It was so inspiring, being with them for the two days – and we’ve actually stayed in touch. We’ve a WhatsApp group called “Stay cool”.’

‘Two days, six grand? Girls, we’re in the wrong business,’ said Celine.

‘Well, of course, it’s not that simple, you have to hit your mark for the camera and things like that.’

‘What’s that?’ said Bryony.

‘Well, it’s basically an X on the floor.’

There was no point in trying to explain that you were one piece in a multimillion-pound jigsaw and whatever you did, big or small, you had to get it right.

‘Yeah, that’s what I’ve always thought. Anyone could do it,’ observed Norah in exactly the same authoritative tone that had earned her the level of Higher Executive in the civil service. She was also the mother of twin boys who were simultaneously cutting their back teeth and therefore had precious little time for nonsense of any sort.

Oh God, please, somebody change the subject, thought Cassie.

‘Well,’ said Louise kindly, her soft face dimpling, ‘at least you got paid, that’s the main thing, isn’t it?’

‘It sure is,’ agreed Cassie gratefully.

‘I still think it’s a racket, not to mention a closed shop,’ persisted Norah, which was probably why she was about to be promoted to Higher Executive, Higher Scale and soon thereafter, no doubt, Assistant Principal Officer.

Louise raised her glass. ‘Welcome home, Cassie, and happy belated thirty-seventh birthday, sorry we missed it.’

There was a chorus of cheers.

‘Thirty-seven already? My birthday’s not till July. I thought I was the oldest,’ said Bryony.

Silence.

‘I was thirty-six last month,’ volunteered Celine.

‘I’m not till next September,’ said Norah. ‘Cassie, how come you were always one of the oldest in the class?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, I think my mother forgot to send me.’

They all tittered politely. Mercifully, Norah continued her conversation with Bryony, who was way ahead in the baby stakes, with a ten- and a six-year-old, and had become quite an authority for the others.

‘It’s almost fizzy, isn’t it .?.?.?’

Cassie was catching snatches of the conversation, which was taking on a surreal quality.

‘The teething nappies. Yellowy .?.?. like—’

‘Ochre, that’s the colour!’ chimed in Celine who was apparently in the process of renovating an old bungalow. ‘That’s the exact shade we’ve chosen for the statement wall of the back sitting room, it’s so cosy.’

Cassie held out her glass gratefully as Louise gestured towards her with the half-empty Prosecco bottle. ‘Are you not having any?’

Louise shook her head and made a coy face.

‘Oh my God, congratulations!’ Cassie mouthed. ‘How long?’

‘Twelve weeks,’ said Louise with pantomime secrecy, to which Cassie obligingly responded by miming zipping her mouth.

‘Oh, it’s OK, they all know,’ said Louise, which caused Cassie’s heart to sink just a little. She was officially the only childless member of the group and for a moment felt painfully conspicuous, even though everybody’s attention had moved on to the gripping topic of children’s eating (fussy, for the most part) and sleeping – patchy to non-existent, apart from Celine’s nine-month-old who seemed to have the sleeping powers of a tiny Rip Van Winkle. She desperately wanted to add something to the conversation like, ‘I thought I was pregnant once but it turned out to be a false alarm,’ but recognised in time this was no place for it.

Among the white noise of chatter, she wondered how her old friend group could have changed so much and yet so little. She’d always felt like the odd one out, working to fit in when to everyone else it all seemed so effortless.

In Sixth Year, Norah had been the head girl; Bryony, with her unruly blonde hair and devil-may-care attitude, had been the popular one. Celine, with her dry wit, had been the class joker and Louise had always been the nice one who never spoke ill of anyone. Sometimes that had irritated the feistier members of the gang but now, as a grown-up who’d spent a long time out in the world, Cassie could well recognise the value of simple kindness.

She was always labelled as the arty one, which felt like being told she was the one with the particularly bad case of impetigo. If she’d gone to an artier school, like the comprehensive where nobody had hair their own colour beyond the age of twelve, she might have blended in and been totally unremarkable, but Mam and Da wouldn’t hear of any of that namby-pamby, off-the-wall nonsense and had marched her down in her navy uniform to a decent, traditional all-girls school.

‘Declan’s a design engineer so he combines technical ability and creative thinking. I mean, that’s the future right there, isn’t it?’ announced Norah, who never missed a chance to remind everyone she had won the jackpot in life. ‘He’s a problem-solver, it just flows out of him: he’s adapted the baby sling so he can carry both Karl and Louis at the same time.’

She was commanding the full attention of the group, not to mention the couple at the next table, who discreetly swivelled in their direction so as not to miss any decent tips.

‘Anyhow, he’s fixed it so that instead of them being either front or back, they’re attached on either side of him so he can cook and hoover at the same time. They love it.’

The girls murmured their appreciation but as Cassie’s gaze inadvertently slid to the couple at the next table, she could see they too were struggling to envisage this contraption.

‘He’s actually going to patent the idea. Just wait, it’s the engineers will save us all.’

Crikey, Cassie thought, it sounded like a sort of Wild West-style holster where you could whip one of the twins out and point them at someone in an emergency. This was a totally un-maternal thought to have about a friend’s babies, but she just didn’t get the hype. They secretly knew it and she knew they knew it.

‘And you’ll be next.’ Celine nudged Louise conspiratorially. ‘One of our meet-ups soon is going to be a baby shower, waay-haay, I can’t wait.’

Cassie beamed and cheers-ed along with everyone else but she felt a stab in the gut, not that anyone else noticed. It hadn’t even occurred to any of her friends to ask her if she had any plans in that direction. Not that she wanted them to .?.?. exactly. Just then, Celine, whose tolerance for booze seemed to have plummeted in the years since the Leaving Cert holiday in Corfu, slurred slightly in her direction.

‘What about you, Cass? You going to make a solo run while there’s still time?’

‘Or .?.?. wait a minute, have you been hiding somebody back in London?’ said Norah.

‘Well, if I have, I can’t find him.’

There was an uneasy laugh.

‘Not since I finished with Gav, that is.’

There was a general murmur of sympathy.

‘How long ago was that?’ asked Bryony.

‘Three months, give or take – but sod it, it’s still Christmas, let’s just be silly,’ said Cassie brightly, eager to break the tension.

They all laughed, and she’d just refilled her glass and was settling in to have a giggle with the girls when babe-a-licious Bryony – as she used to be referred to by the boys at school – glanced at her phone and squawked.

‘Oh, my holy jeez, it’s half ten! My life is going to be hell if I’m not asleep by eleven.’ To Cassie’s dismay, the others immediately agreed and started waving and calling for the bill.

‘Pete’s outside, he says he’ll give everyone a lift, since we’re all on a loop. Oh, wait, there’s only four seats.’

Bryony looked guiltily at Cassie, who was actually feeling a rush of relief.

‘Don’t even think about it, I can get the Luas back to Mam’s.’

‘Are you sure? You’re so good,’ said Louise.

Everyone hugged her under the canopy outside the door of Casey’s Irish Cuisine (reimagined) and said it’d been ‘such a blast’, before piling into Pete’s silver Lexus which pulled out into the dazzling lights of the rain-soaked traffic .

Cassie mooched back down the road, the thick bushes alongside the path shielding her from the worst of the rain. Thankfully, a tram was on its way as she arrived on the platform. Diving into the sparsely populated carriage, she huddled into a window seat. There were about six stops to go, so she allowed her gaze to soften and follow the movement of raindrops trailing down the window as they crossed the M50 bridge, over the big roundabout and down towards the busier stations, heading in the direction of town. She hadn’t ever expected to be single and back in Dublin at her age. It wasn’t that she’d planned to marry Gavin, exactly, it wasn’t like that. She just thought they’d keep going as they were. Why wouldn’t they? A life where she was a jobbing actress, temping between gigs, and Gav came home between tours. Until one day, he didn’t. Thirty-seven last Sunday but she didn’t feel it, whatever this was supposed to feel like. She let her mind drift back over the evening and how her friends had regarded her septum piercing with scepticism.

‘Oh yes, my niece got that done to annoy her mother but she takes it out for school,’ Norah had commented. They’d also expressed surprise at her boots, which wouldn’t have elicited a second glance in cosmopolitan Camden. The girls had serious jobs: Celine was a solicitor, Louise was a speech and language therapist, Bryony ran her own lucrative little business from home importing baby and early-years equipment, and Norah was surreptitiously working towards taking over the country in the near future. When they’d asked about her job, she’d fudged, describing herself as ‘temping in offices, admin sort of thing’. She didn’t add that her colleagues consisted of a mixture of directionless youths and non-specific freelancers like herself, who recognised each other: actors, writers, dreamers. Miscellaneous, marginalised individuals whose lives were characterised by ‘staying available’, which was code for avoiding any sort of commitment that could compromise their ‘dreams’ or ‘the big break’, no matter how vanishingly unlikely that outcome might have become.

Oh hell, this was her stop. She leaped up and managed to squeeze out just before the doors slammed. Out into the early January night, with the tired Christmas lights sagging in the windows of apartment blocks. A whole chessboard of different lives stacked one on top of the other and each a little world onto itself. In London, everyone was from somewhere else, and once you’d arrived, you were as much part of it as anyone else. Here in Dublin there were private lives, family ties, with roots that ran deep into the earth. Although she’d been born here and grown up here, in that moment Cassie felt like a stranger.