Time Out

by Emma Murray

  Outside I am pleased to see that the rain has stopped and a hint of sunshine has crept out from behind the clouds. When I get into the car, I contemplate opening the roof, berate myself for even thinking the sunshine is going to last, and get back just moments before the heavens open.

  As soon as I am home, I switch the oven on in preparation for the pizza. I am almost giddy with anticipation. David doesn’t ‘do’ Italian food (who the fuck doesn’t eat Italian food?) so I rarely have it in the house. I count this pizza, along with all the other rules I have broken, as part of my mission to give David the silent two fingers.

  As I pop the frozen goodness into the oven, my phone starts to vibrate in my pocket. It’s my mother. Shite, I have forgotten to call her back.

  I answer with a sigh.

  ‘Who’s dead then?’ I say. Might as well get it over and done with.

  ‘What? Who’s dead?’ she says, sharply.

  ‘Nobody’s dead – that I know of,’ I reply.

  ‘So why are you talking about dead people?’ she says, sounding irritated and perplexed.

  ‘It’s just that you left a message earlier,’ I explain, feeling slightly foolish. Clearly I had jumped the gun in my attempt to decipher her voicemail.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she says vacantly. ‘I did start to leave you a message but then a photo of Betty and her husband, Jim, popped up on the Instagram and I got distracted.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, and I’m just about to ask her what she had intended to say in her message when she goes into the story of Betty and Jim, whoever the hell they are. Apparently, Jim and Betty had split up a year ago because Jim had caught Betty ‘sexting’ some fella she met on an Irish dating website for the elderly, Sean.ie (‘sean’ meaning ‘old’).

  ‘And there the pair of them are – taking photos of themselves drinking cocktails together in Tenerife – as if nothing had ever happened,’ my mother finishes. I can almost see her shaking her head in disbelief.

  ‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘what did you want to say to me in the message?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Do you know who’s staying just around the corner from you there in Wexford?’ she says, with her trademark sniff, triumphant in the certainty that she knows something that I don’t.

  ‘I really don’t,’ I say in a bored voice. Someone who used to pick me up from playschool when I was three? I add silently. My pizza will be ready in two minutes and I refuse to waste any more time.

  ‘Jen!’ she announces.

  I am stunned into silence.

  ‘Jen! Your best friend from school! She’s spending a few days in her aunt Hilda’s place just down the road from you,’ Mum chatters happily as if she’s breaking the world’s best news to me.

  Of all the people she could have mentioned (dead or alive) Jen is the last person I would have thought of. What the hell was Jen doing in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere? Before I can ask, Mum rushes in to fill the gaps.

  ‘Anyway, it turns out that Jen has been jilted by Liam, that fella she’s been seeing for years,’ she announces.

  Jesus. I haven’t been in touch properly with Jen for a long time. Apart from the token ‘Happy birthday’ texts and a few ‘likes’ on Facebook, we haven’t had a decent conversation since Anna was born. But I am shocked to hear about her spilt with Liam. On Facebook they seemed the perfect couple. Always going away to exotic locations and posting lots of photos of their toes against backgrounds of impossibly blue oceans and dying sunsets, that sort of thing. They seemed destined for a life of togetherness and now it’s over.

  ‘I don’t think “jilted” is the right word,’ I say to my mother, crossly. ‘It’s not like she’s been left at the altar or anything.’

  There is a firm tapping and a brief silence. I should have kept my big mouth shut.

  ‘Now, I’ve just checked the Google, and jilted means rejected, left, dropped, ditched, deserted and abandoned,’ she says in her most pompous voice. ‘I don’t think a wedding is needed just to use the word “jilted”, do you?’

  I sigh, recognising that I have lost this particular verbal swordfight.

  ‘So, why has Jen been jilted?’ I say reluctantly.

  ‘Because of the Big C,’ she says with great casualness. ‘He can’t handle it.’

  My stomach dips and mind churns. Holy Christ, my best friend from home is sick – really sick. Her boyfriend has deserted her, and she’s all by herself in some old person’s cottage in the middle of nowhere. I gulp and try to form the words of my next question.

  ‘How far gone is she?’ I whisper.

  Jen with no hair. Jen looking frail, with dark circles under her eyes, the blush to her cheeks painfully absent.

  ‘What?’ my mother says, sounding impatient. ‘What do you mean “far gone”? I told you, she’s only around the corner from you there in Wexford, not far at all.’

  Irritation and anger replace shock.

  ‘No – I mean how bad is her cancer?’ I say, feeling the tears bubble into my eyes.

  There is a short silence.

  ‘Jesus, Saoirse. Jen doesn’t have cancer! Where did you get that idea?’ she says, with an indignant chuckle.

  If she was beside me now I’d probably give her a slap.

  ‘You said she had the Big C!’ I roar at her, expelling frustration and relief from every part of my body.

  My mother gives one big tut, and says, ‘I was talking about CHILDREN,’ spelling it out as if I’m both a bit deaf and stupid. ‘Liam wants kids, she doesn’t. That’s why they split up.’

  Bloody hell, poor Jen. That’s terrible. Not as horrific as getting cancer, obviously, but very sad all the same.

  ‘Anyway, she’s taking a break from that fashion work for a few days and staying in her aunt Hilda’s place,’ she explains. ‘Have you ever met Hilda?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I say.

  ‘Hilda Snowdon,’ she says.

  ‘No,’ I say again, feeling tired and impatient.

  ‘Prod,’ she replies.

  I sigh. I couldn’t give a shite if Jen’s aunt Hilda is a Protestant or a Catholic. My best friend is heartbroken, for goodness’ sake.

  ‘You should go and see her,’ she says. ‘She needs her friends around her at a time like this.’

  I swallow hard and tell her I will get in touch with Jen.

  ‘Ah, good. I’ll text you her address,’ she says softly, much calmer now.

  I’ve never told my mum the reason why Jen and I lost touch over the last few years but I have a feeling she knows that we’re not the friends we used to be.

  A burning smell emanates from the oven, and I tell my mum that I have to go and rescue the pizza, and I hang up in a hurry.

  Grabbing the oven gloves, I take the pizza out with slightly trembling hands and place it on a big wooden board on the kitchen island. My phone beeps and Jen’s address flashes up on the screen. I look at the mass of glistening pepperoni and gluey mozzarella and turn away. I seem to have lost my appetite.

  13

  It’s 10 a.m. on Monday and while I’m grateful my hangover is gone, I still wake up feeling tired and low. My mind is full of Jen. Jen and I doing ‘knick knacks’ (knocking on doors and running away) at an age where we really should have known better; Jen using free make-up samples in The Body Shop to try out different shades of lipstick on me; or Jen and I drinking ‘Fisherman’s Fuck’ (a concoction made up of a lethal mix of measures of alcohol sneaked from our parents’ supplies) on the local green, and then vomiting in miserable synchronisation directly afterwards.

  Staring at the ceiling, I think hard about the last time I spent some proper time with Jen. It must have been over four years ago. I was six months pregnant with Anna at the time and Jen had flown over from Dublin to London and taken me shopping for maternity clothes, so I would no longer look like ‘a fat bag lady’, as she put it. I smile at the memory. It was always handy to have a personal shopper for a best friend.

  A text from Maria, Bea’s nanny, pops up. It’
s a photo of Harry and Anna at the local park, each sitting on a swing, both making the types of silly faces that would never make it to a Facebook post. Seeing Anna so happy makes me feel more relieved than I ever imagined.

  I reach over for the remote control and press the button to raise the blinds. Might as well get up and start the day.

  As the blinds inch their way up from the ground, I am not remotely surprised to see a pair of pale pink runners, attached to pale calves and then as it rises further, two knobbly knees, followed by white baggy shorts, a green polo shirt, and finally Kitty’s upturned mouth and raised eyebrows. She shakes her rolled-up swimming towel at me and makes an impatient ‘come on’ gesture. I wait for the click of the blind as it reaches the ceiling before flinging my legs out of bed, and stomping over to the window, fully armed with a gesture of my own for Kitty. But then I think about David’s affair and how much I miss Anna, and Jen’s heartbreak… and I turn to Kitty and give her a reluctant thumbs up. What I have got to lose?

  Before I can chicken out, I hurriedly put on my swimsuit (which, now I come to think of it, Bea had told me to bring) with a heavy-cotton beach dress over it, grab a towel from the bathroom, and take off my wedding and engagement rings. I feel a flash of pain when I see the bare, lonely ring imprint on my left hand, but as cross as I am with David, I hate the thought of losing those rings to the crashing Irish Sea. I leave the rings on the bedside table and march out the patio doors in the kitchen, determined not to let David’s indiscretions get me down.

  In fairness to Kitty, she doesn’t gloat. She simply makes small talk about the weather – ‘There’s a wind out that will blow away a few cobwebs’ – and gives me advice about the tides and the currents – ‘Be sure to swim well behind the set of rocks shaped like a camel humping another camel and you’ll be grand’ – while we make our way down the steps to the sandy beach below. I ask her if she has any tips on actually getting into the icy and, quite frankly, choppy-looking waters without screaming, and she laughs and tells me to ‘stop being such a foreigner’. When we arrive at the bottom of the steps, Kitty guides me towards a small hollow naturally cut out of the rocky cliff face.

  ‘This is our shelter,’ she announces, spreading her arms wide.

  As I move closer, colourful graffiti across the rocky wall catches my eye, but the letters are illegible.

  ‘Oh, it’s a shame that some thug has defiled your swimming spot,’ I say.

  She looks at me in surprise. ‘That’s no thug, that’s Frank’s work!’ she replies, somewhat indignantly.

  I think about the sweet-yet-persistent old man who had tried to strong-arm me into swimming, and simply can’t reconcile this image with a senseless graffiti artist.

  ‘We were fed up of the young lads pissing and smoking in our shelters, so Frank came up with the idea of spray painting our names on the rocks. Just to show these eejits that this piece of rock is taken,’ she says, fondly tracing the letters with her hands.

  I look more closely and if I squint one eye just a little, I’m almost sure I can make out a ‘K’ or maybe an ‘F’. There also appears to be a third group of lopsided letters at the bottom and I think I can see an ‘R’ and an ‘N’. Kitty seems pleased when I tell her this.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you can see something, because I can’t make head or tail of it,’ she laughs. ‘Frank made a right balls of it!’

  I laugh along with her, relieved she thinks the whole thing is as muddled as I do.

  ‘How many names are there?’ I say, refocusing on the jumble in front of me.

  ‘At one stage there were a dozen of us,’ Kitty says, sounding wistful. ‘But there are only a couple of us now.’

  I have a feeling I’m not going to want to know what happened to the rest of the swimmers, so I decide not to say anything. But she tells me anyway.

  ‘Dead,’ she says.

  I am astonished. Ten out of twelve swimmers dead seems like quite a high number.

  Kitty uses her fingers to explain the reasons for the deaths: four heart attacks (‘I blame the local chipper’); one drowning (‘Eejit went beyond the rocks shaped like camels humping each other – let that be a lesson to you’); four of natural causes (‘Sure, they were all in their nineties – what do you expect?’); and finally, a suicide.

  I feel my head snap up.

  ‘Suicide?’

  ‘Yes, but we don’t talk about that one,’ she says sharply.

  I get it. Small Irish villages like this one tend to keep local tragedies to themselves. I’m not surprised Kitty won’t share this one with me, given I’m an outsider, not to mention a foreigner!

  Feeling sad, I look at the mess of letters and wonder which ones belonged to the poor soul who has taken his or her own life.

  Kitty turns away to put her beach bag down on the ground, and when she straightens up, her expression is relaxed, almost like she has used the moment to fix it that way.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, though,’ she says, leaning towards me with a glint in her eye. ‘The graffiti bloody worked. Those young eejits haven’t dared to set foot in our shelter again. They think Frank’s spray painting is a mysterious gang symbol – they’re terrified of us!’

  She bursts into more fits of laughter and I join in, relieved that the mood has been lightened. Besides, the image of a bunch of young lads being wary of a few harmless pensioners in swimwear is irresistible.

  Her eyes move past me, and her mouth sets into a hard line.

  I turn round, expecting to see Frank ambling over the sand towards us, but when my eyes come into focus, I stop dead, rooted to the spot.

  I have always wondered what it would be like to meet a movie star in real life – what I would be like. Would I be cool and nonchalant and do that whole ‘Oh, I didn’t notice you there – sorry, what’s your name again?’ or would I immediately presume they were a wanker, purely because they’re famous and I’m not, and not even give them the satisfaction of acknowledging their existence. Or would I scream, cry and faint? Apparently, I do neither of these three things because as this movie star gets closer and closer, I become totally and utterly catatonic. It’s like being on the Irish ferry during a rough crossing, not daring to move in case you fill yet another plastic pint glass with vomit. Except this time there is no horizon to stare at – just him, straight out of Hollywood and walking oh-so-casually over the sand towards this botched graffitied shelter, where a frozen version of my former self is standing. Mouth open, I turn to Kitty, but she’s gone already, walking with what looks like angry purpose towards the thrashing waves. When I look back again, he is right in front of me. He flashes me a perfect white-toothed smile and I take a quick step back as if to shield myself from his beauty. It’s all too much. The designer-streaked blond hair, the blue eyes set slightly too close together, the narrow but in-proportion nose, and the full-lipped mouth. Not forgetting the hint of blond stubble on the chin and upper lip. Here is a movie god standing in front of me, in a plain sky-blue T-shirt and beige swimming shorts and there is nothing I can do about it.

  Somewhere in the distance, I hear an American accent asking me if I’m going in for a swim. I might as well be underwater for all the good it’ll do, for there is no way I can respond. I hang my head in shame. Jesus, at this rate, I’ll start drooling out of one corner of my mouth.

  When I have the courage to look up again, I see two startlingly blue eyes crinkled in amusement, looking back at me.

  ‘I’m Ryan,’ he says, giving me a curious stare.

  ‘Saoirse,’ I just about manage. Never has it been so difficult to say my own name.

  Struggling to look him in the eye, I simply say one word, ‘Gosling,’ in a sort of whispery groan, at the exact same time as he says, ‘Yes, we’ve met before.’

  What?

  My head snaps up and I fix my eyes on him properly now, and with suspicion. Movie star or not, there’s no excuse for being a smartarse. I mean, I think I would remember meeting a movie star, especially one as gorge
ous as this one.

  ‘At McGowan’s? The other night? You’re Dee’s friend, right?’ he says, scrunching up his nose in confusion.

  I blink my eyes several times in a valiant effort to focus. So, he isn’t Ryan Gosling, even though he looks exactly like him and even has a fucking American accent. Not only is he not Ryan Gosling, but it appears that I have already met this version before, and failed to remember him on account of being so outrageously hammered. How could I have forgotten that face? How?

  With a flush of shame, I realise that this is the Ryan that Dee had told me about. The one we chatted to in the pub for God knows how long. The Ryan who walked me home when I was too drunk to find my own way. Christ knows what I was babbling on about.

  I quickly think about my options and realise there is no earthly way of getting out of such an awkward situation without making it even more excruciating. So, with one impatient movement, I turn away from the Ryan Gosling lookalike, whip my sundress over my head, and march straight into the freezing cold Irish Sea.

  14

  Kitty is right about one thing. It turns out a voluntary dip into the freezing cold Irish Sea is just the thing to clear a muddled head. I stay in the sea, reaching borderline hypothermia levels, until Ryan is a dot in the distance. There is no sign of Kitty in the water either; she must have gone for a long swim. Part of me wonders about her hostile reaction to Ryan, but the thought goes out of my head as soon as my hands start to turn blue.

  Then, with shivering steps, I manage to make my way to the shelter, relieved to find the beach deserted, wrap myself in a towel and hurry up the cliff steps to the safety and warmth of my lovely holiday house.

  Dripping dirty puddles and sand all over the cool kitchen floor (David would have gone mental – he hates beaches!), I sit down at the kitchen island, flip open my laptop and check out the latest Vale Mums news feed. I don’t know why I do this to myself. The latest victim is a girl called Chantal, who announces that she has just moved into the area and she is posting on Vale Mums for the very first time. I already feel sorry for her. Chantal wants to know if she can borrow a pirate costume for her seven-year-old son’s drama performance taking place the following day. ‘With all the chaos of the house move, I completely forgot to organise his costume!’