Chapter 3
By Sunday afternoon, having watched all the Alien movies and seven seasons of Black Mirror on Netflix, she decided it was time to open the curtains and face her next Everest: family Sunday dinner.
She’d managed to wipe out the past almost-forty-eight hours in fantasy worlds, but oh boy, this was going to be the ultimate landing back to earth.
She glanced around the apartment, which looked like the burrow of some small animal preparing for hibernation.
Pillows and a grubby pale-pink throw were piled on the sofa; an empty pizza box full of crusts was open on the counter; the remains of Singapore noodles were mouldering in the fridge.
Several mugs and bowls were stacked up, which wasn’t her fault, really, because the previous owner had opted for the washing machine rather than the dishwasher.
Right, Ally decided, she had to start somewhere.
Even the feeling of her hands immersed in the warm bubbly washing-up water made her feel slightly better.
Just do the next best thing, she kept repeating to herself, then the one after that.
We’ll get there. Wherever ‘there’ was. She sniffed herself – oh God, she smelled like a pigpen after her weekend of escapism.
There was only one thing for it: a long, hot shower.
She’d been planning to turn up in the clothes she’d spent the weekend in – sweatpants and beige sweatshirt; they were family after all.
Mercifully, somewhere between doing the hoovering and sponging the sofa, she copped on that although this might be some sort of a pathetic cry for help, it would actually backfire, like going into battle dressed in a bikini.
She leafed through her wardrobe and chose a ‘safe’ dark-green patterned wrap dress, teamed it with black boots and slapped on enough eyeliner and red lipstick to avoid worried looks from Mum.
She contemplated herself in the mirror: long, dark hair that could have a dramatic wave were it recently cut, which it wasn’t, so right now it hung flat around her face like Morticia Addams. She had large grey-blue eyes with long eyelashes and high cheekbones, and a well-defined mouth – a twin for her Italian nonna, Dad always said.
Mum would always refer to her as the ‘striking’ one, which could have been good, except Ally always heard something regretful in her tone that implied it was such a pity she wasn’t born with the same fair, feminine prettiness of herself and Maeve, her sister.
Being feminine had always opened doors for Mum, she’d confided to Ally.
Well, it may have opened doors but it looked like they’d firmly shut behind her.
Mum’s life these days seemed taken up with worrying about the family and gossipy lunches or the odd shopping trip with ‘the girls’ – her two lifelong best friends – or doing her volunteering. And that was a fate that haunted Ally.
* * *
‘Darling, there you are – oh, you look tired, have you not been sleeping?’
Ally had only just arrived at her parents’ door, but without waiting for a reply, Mum went on, ‘You’re just in time to make the gravy and set the table . . . Oh, and set out the high chair for your niece, there’s a lamb.’
For some reason Mum saw her as one of Santa’s little helpers, and never one of the adults, like her siblings, who arrived to jubilation from both parents.
Damo, her younger brother, turned up in his Leinster rugby shirt and chinos, upbeat and cordial, just like Dad.
Maeve arrived in her cream cashmere tailored coat with her adorable toddler Lu – short for Luna – while Rob, her husband, was in the States on business.
Maeve had been made partner in the family-law firm where she worked but, in fairness, was admirably modest and seemed to take every triumph with a shrug.
Dad emerged from the sitting room, oozing bonhomie, like a cross between Santa and David Attenborough, offering gin and tonics all round but not meeting Ally’s eye.
Ally felt the familiar clutch of rejection in her stomach.
OK, Maeve was busy with her tot and being the uber-successful daughter; Damo had just finished his shift at the hospital, saving lives – it all made perfect sense why they wouldn’t be asked to help. She was ‘just Ally’.
‘So . . .’ boomed Dad in a volume more suited to the stands in Lansdowne Road than a Palmerston Road residence, as he settled into his favourite chintz armchair. ‘I hear the pieces are shifting around above in Nutley Road?’
Dad was referring to St Vincent’s, where Damo was on his specialist rotation in cardiac surgery. Dad loved ‘insider lingo’, even though he was semi-retired, having recently sold his business in medical supplies.
‘Yeah, niente di ufficiale as yet, but si dice in giro.’
‘Damo, why the fuck are you talking in Italian?’
Ally couldn’t contain her irritation at this stellar display of smugness.
‘You better tell us, Damo, darling, but maybe in English this time?’ Mum smiled with an indulgent little twist of her mouth.
‘Well, Prof Morris is retiring at the end of the year and that’s going to leave a consultancy position disponibile. Sorry, I mean there’s a job going and it would appear—’
‘You’re in line for it,’ breathed Mum reverentially. ‘Can you believe it, Ray, our baby a consultant, at only thirty-three?’
‘Dad, I will never forgive you for sending him on that Italian exchange in transition year.’ Ally knew she was being a bitch, but the irritation just bubbled out of her.
‘Now, now,’ said Mum, ‘it’s just excitement. You know he doesn’t mean anything by it.’
‘Sorry, Damo . . . I mean congratulations,’ muttered Ally.
She knew it sounded about as sincere as a fabric conditioner ad, and maybe she would have been better off staying at home and finishing up the last of the Singapore noodles and the dregs of the Merlot, but the truth was that she couldn’t have stood another minute of solitude. Mum smiled indulgently.
‘Not in good form this evening, love?’
‘No, I’m great,’ she lied.
Dad, of course, tuned out anything that wasn’t of immediate relevance to him.
‘Bloody good game of golf with Francis yesterday. Crafty bugger chipped in a putt from . . . five feet! As I said to him, that promotion must be going to your head . . .’
Oh, what fresh hell was this? She and Francis had split up on New Year’s Eve the previous year.
Well, technically she’d split up with him, but it was one of those situations where, after five years of jogging along together, there was an unspoken recognition they’d stalled and someone was going to have to do the breaking-up.
They’d been drifting for ages like two leaves in the same gust of wind.
Mum, on the other hand, had spent the whole of New Year’s Day crying that she’d lost a son – she had even lost three pounds, at which she was secretly delighted, but Ally felt horribly guilty, especially when Dad had informed her in his most patriarchal tone that the day would come when she’d regret it.
Today was feeling a lot like that day, especially as Dad saw no reason not to continue his routine of Saturday golf with Francis and report on it at length.
‘And how was he?’ Mum’s tone was sorrowful.
‘Tearing form,’ declared Dad. ‘Senior management – next thing is a seat on the board. Francis is the one to watch, he comes up on the outside and pow! Gets his nose across the line when everyone’s eye is elsewhere.
No fool, that lad. Oh, and did I mention he’s put a booking deposit on a house in Kiltiernan? Lovely view of the sea.’
It wasn’t that Ally wished Francis ill – far from it, he was a decent, kind, dependable guy with soft hands and sandy hair that was thinning slightly at the crown.
They’d met after a rugby international with a group of mutual friends in a pub full of pints and scarves and jokes, and it had all seemed so suitable and so safe.
Her family had embraced him instantly. He joked with Dad and bounced off Damo, while Mum clearly saw him as her second son.
Family dinners with Francis had always been so happy, she thought ruefully.
She’d loved his company too. Dinner-Party Francis was delightful: he cracked jokes, told self-deprecating stories, laughed heartily at everybody else’s.
If only life could’ve been one long Christmas dinner, they’d still be together.
But once they moved from being a couple within the crowd to a couple alone together in an apartment, the high, exciting waves they’d been surfing seemed to recede and they were left bobbing around in something perfectly amiable while wondering how to get the buzz back.
They’d played house in their two-bedroom apartment.
They invited friends for meals that Ally cooked out of Jamie Oliver’s Comfort Food on a Saturday night.
They had regular sex, vanilla mostly, except when Francis got an idea from Pornhub and she obliged by dressing up as a Garda and spanking him on the bottom with a wooden salad server.
Francis loved it but she secretly had her eye on the digital clock the whole time. Half an hour was her limit.
Gradually, they’d found themselves living more and more separate lives.
Ally used to tell herself that it was perfectly healthy to give each other space and that all couples moved into that phase once the honeymoon period was over.
Although she couldn’t help noticing that Maeve and Rob hadn’t seemed to, and her parents were still embarrassingly tactile with each other for old people – she’d even caught Dad feeling Mum’s bottom during the heatwave.
‘Ally . . . Al . . . hello?’
Maeve had managed to drag her attention away from little Luna, who was busy making two bits of broccoli act out a very violent scene, and was waving at Ally, trying to get her attention.