The Girl I Used to Know

by Faith Hogan

  The students were moving far ahead and she doubled over, as though catching her breath, for a moment, then she slipped into a doorway, invisible, watching, crumbling. He was waiting, for something. For somebody? Then, she spotted a taxi, pulling in, slowly, just a few feet from her. A reedy-looking woman, maybe thirty, tops thirty-five, got out. She glided, rather than walked towards the restaurant and in that moment Amanda knew for certain, this too tall, red-haired clothes horse was meeting Richard. Suddenly, Amanda thought she might be sick. Spew right there where she was standing, all across the path. Then she remembered, she’d hardly touched any food since breakfast. It was her new normal; somehow, her broken heart was overriding her empty stomach.

  The woman greeted Richard with the kind of kiss that was a hell of a lot more than a sociable peck on the cheek. After a moment, Amanda wanted to scream, let him up for air, for God’s sake, let him breathe. What she meant, of course, was, let me breathe. Let me get some oxygen into my lungs. Some clean air that isn’t tainted by the taste of betrayal.

  *

  God knows how she made it back to the Square. She couldn’t remember most of the jog or walk, she may have crawled. Certainly, inside she felt that’s what she was doing.

  She rounded into the square, a sobbing, hysterical heap of a woman, unrecognisable from the Amanda who went about her business with the casual confidence that comes of being moneyed and stupidly content. The last twenty yards were the hardest to walk, as though she was coming to a finish line, except how would she know when she’d crossed it?

  She couldn’t face the house, plopped onto the bottom step and keened like a banshee. It didn’t matter if anyone saw her, she didn’t see them and being respectable was the very smallest of her worries now.

  How could he do it to her? Selfish bastard, how could he do this to her, to their kids? Had he given any of them a second thought? After all the years they’d spent together, she’d invested everything in this life that they’d created. What would she do now? She couldn’t think, she just couldn’t think and then, a noise, the familiar dreadful creaking of a door nearby. What did it matter what people thought of her now, anyway? After all, she could see it was just a sham.

  Her breath came out in pockets, hitting the air in doom-packed clouds. Each heave of her chest filled with fear for what lay ahead and as her body shook with sobs she didn’t notice the door beneath her open. It closed and opened again with the trepidation of footsteps on a frozen lake. It was karma or the ultimate ironic payback that Tess should be the one to see her at her lowest point. Amanda finally heard those familiar footsteps move towards her in their owner’s usual blunt manner. She wiped her eyes, not that it did much good, because all the wiping in the world wasn’t going to change the damage done. Of all the people to come upon her, why did it have to be Tess? she thought. Some small part of her sought consolation that things couldn’t get any worse and here was Tess bloody Cuffe to delight in her misery and add to it, if she could no doubt.

  ‘Not you. Not now – I can’t take it anymore. Not on top of everything else. Really. No.’ Amanda held up her hands before her face. She couldn’t look at Tess’s sneering victory. ‘Leave me alone, just this once.’ The words came out broken between sobs. ‘If you’re going to say something horrible, just get it over with and go away.’

  ‘Come on, you can’t let Robyn see you like this.’ Tess pulled her arm, yanking her from the step with a ferocity that jerked her without warning. Amanda had no choice but to tumble behind her into the little flat.

  She found herself tripping onto a flimsy and threadbare old couch in front of a dying fire. When she looked up, the old biddy was holding out a fat glass half-full with copper whiskey, the smell enough to bring her to senses sharp and painful.

  ‘Drink it.’ Tess stood over her and it sounded more of an order than an invitation.

  ‘I don’t like…’ Amanda shook her head, but she gulped it back and too late realised its burning aftershock. It slid menacingly down her throat, landed in her empty stomach and seemed to stretch its heat to regions that she’d forgotten could be warm. Amanda’s eyes watered, her toes tingled and her breath struggled to free itself from the hold the panic of earlier had clasped around her chest. Old men, hardened up with years of drinking, would have had to catch their breath. ‘What are you trying to do to me?’

  ‘I’m trying to help you.’ Tess sat opposite and sipped her whiskey easily from a matching glass. ‘I heard you outside, if I hadn’t pulled you in, the whole square would have heard you.’ She shook her angry head. ‘Robyn would have heard you,’ she said more softly now.

  ‘Robyn?’ The name was out of kilter here. ‘My daughter…’ She shook her head, trying to piece together the bits she’d missed while she’d sat on those steps.

  ‘She thinks you’re depressed.’ Tess studied the intermittent blaze escaping from around turf that looked too dark to discharge any real heat. ‘Here, you’re in shock.’ She placed a crocheted shawl about her shoulders. ‘I don’t know, running about the place, and at your age? It’s not natural, for heaven’s sake. I’ve heard you panting when you walk to the end of the garden, never mind gadding about as if you’re the bionic woman.’

  ‘It wasn’t the running that did it,’ Amanda said flatly, looking about the little room. She might have stepped back in to the nineteen seventies. It was a relic of a room; a medley of lino, fluffy rugs, velvet chairs, embroidered cushions, a holy picture, lamp now extinguished, and yes, there was beauty-board to finish off the melange. It was like stepping into a time warp, but it was tidy, clean and loved, in every way the antithesis of the conceited, sterile house overhead. This room was cosy in a way her aloof and chic house would never be. Tess Cuffe in her beige dressing gown was the final touch, a remnant from a time fashion would never reinvent. Then she looked at Tess’s face, something in her eyes had changed. Maybe it was because she was here, in this little flat, but her brown eyes seemed to convey sincerity, or was it just Amanda’s warbled imagination? Nothing was right anymore. The world as she knew it had tilted into frenzy. Only a few hours ago, she could have convinced herself that she could paper over the cracks in her marriage. Now, after what she’d just seen, she couldn’t kid herself anymore – there was no escaping the pictures that were playing out every time she closed her eyes. ‘Robyn, how do you know that…’ Amanda looked about the room again, trying to take in the incongruity of it all.

  ‘Well are you depressed?’ Tess leaned her head forward, her voice soft, so Amanda wondered if she’d practised for this moment.

  ‘No. I mean, I don’t know. Something has happened and…’

  ‘Your husband, he’s made you feel like this?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Robyn thought it was down to him…’ Tess Cuffe shook her head.

  Amanda couldn’t meet her eyes, so she looked into the bottom of the glass before her, as though it might contain wisdom worth sharing. She sighed, perhaps she knew better already.

  ‘Robyn knows?’ The words echoed through her and she began to sob again.

  ‘Oh, God don’t bloody cry, again.’ Tess Cuffe moved in her seat, perhaps considering reaching out in some physical way. Thankfully, she knew enough to realise that wasn’t going to give Amanda any great consolation. ‘She doesn’t know anything, not really. She’s just worried about you. She’s put two and two together and she’s torturing herself wondering what’s going on and if you’re all right.’

  ‘Really?’ Amanda wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse. ‘Robyn said this to you?’ Amanda wanted to be cross, she deserved the moral high ground on this at least, but then she spotted the cat. She was certain, it was the O’Hara’s cat and suddenly it all fitted together. Robyn would go to the ends of the earth for a bloody cat. ‘Oh God.’ The words flipped from her lips, it was all too much to take in.

  ‘You should be delighted she cares, plenty of young ones about the place wouldn’t even notice if their mother was upset,’ T
ess said quietly, her finger circling the top of her whiskey glass, as though there was something else she wanted to say.

  ‘You’re right, of course you’re right. She’s a good girl.’ The small part of her, the needy part of her, was happy that someone cared. God, that made her feel worse. ‘I don’t want her to be worried about me. I really don’t.’ She reached forward for another sip of whiskey. This time she only let it wet her lips, once burned, twice learned – she was still scorched from the last gulp.

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ Tess said shortly. ‘But you can’t go up there like this. You’re a fright. Honestly, I’ve seen better being carted off by the binman.’ She shook her head. ‘Just take a few minutes, pull yourself together…’ Tess smiled, or at least the corners of her mouth lifted in an unfamiliar way, and for a fleeting moment, there was a whisper of the beauty she might once have been about her face. ‘Pull yourself together – that’s what we’d have said years ago.’ Then she shook her head, ‘Sorry, that didn’t come out right, you know, if you’re depressed.’ She said ‘depressed’ as if it was a religious term – something she wasn’t used to using and it wouldn’t do to sully it by bandying it about the place.

  ‘Look,’ Amanda said and she took a deep breath, she could feel the despair flare up inside her again. ‘I’m not depressed.’ She stared long and hard at the fire in the grate. Small blue flames had taken off on one side and it reminded her of when she was young and convinced that the blue flames were a lucky sign. ‘I…’ Tears began to crowd up at the back of her throat again. She had to let it out. What was the point of keeping this a secret; Tess Cuffe wasn’t going to see anyone or tell anyone, was she? ‘Richard is… that is, my marriage is… not what I hoped it would be.’ Funny, but even though she felt the emotional doors burst open once more, after blubbering and spluttering for a long while, she felt a little better – well, better than she had since seeing Richard and that woman.

  ‘Well, that’s hardly news, is it?’ Tess said and then her posture yielded from its familiar rigid stance into something peculiar, something smaller and altogether more unassuming. ‘I’m not very good at this. What I mean is, you’re a long time married, aren’t you, things change…’

  ‘I just never thought that he’d… I never thought this would be us.’ And that was it, Amanda had signed up for happy ever after and suddenly it was being snatched from her. ‘I’ve just seen him,’ she half gasped and hiccupped at once, ‘in town,’ Amanda tried to catch her breath. ‘With someone else,’ finally she wailed and somehow, it seemed like she had released some of the pain.

  Tess handed her tissues, let her cry it out and in the end, she settled for a good old-fashioned cliché, ‘plenty of husbands stray and your husband is very wealthy, there has to be a lot more opportunity, more temptation.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t make me feel much better,’ Amanda doubted this night could get any worse.

  ‘Do you know for sure?’ Tess asked, but there was something in her voice, as though she was placating her and it was all over anyway. Her eyes searched her as though checking how much she could handle.

  ‘I’m almost certain.’

  ‘Well, when you’re sure, I mean, really sure, then you can make some plans. For now, you have two children up in that house and they need to know that you are all right. They need to know that if your marriage is over you’re still there for them.’

  ‘You’re right, of course, you’re right.’ Amanda leant forward, sipped the last of the whiskey.

  ‘Would you like another?’ A smile played about Tess Cuffe’s face, although, for the life of her, Amanda couldn’t tell where it was exactly, since her features hardly altered.

  ‘No, I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead.’ She could feel her head begin to swim, her thoughts taking on a soft furry feeling, as if there were guinea pigs padding softly about her brain. Guinea pigs could not do too much harm, could they? ‘Thank you,’ she said, inching her way to the edge of the couch, ‘for taking me in, pulling me together.’ Amanda pursed her lips; congeniality was unfamiliar territory for them both.

  ‘If there’s…’ Tess stumbled on ending the sentence. ‘Well, there’s probably not much I can do to help, but, well, if you just want to come down and take a moment, I always have a bottle open.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, but really, I should be fine now.’ Amanda said, looking about the little flat one last time. Funny, but if it was a couple of weeks ago, she might have been mentally measuring the place up for her state-of-the-art kitchen and family room. Now, she thought that she’d never realised how comfortable it was, tucked safely away from all the expectations of empty perfection. God, it was scary how suddenly everything could change.

  Chapter 22

  Forty-eight years earlier…

  It was strange, this new imbalance in her relationship with Douglas. She still loved him, perhaps she always would. Now they bumped into each other and it seemed as if they were stepping into a new dance with each other. The Christmas holidays were coming up and Tess had a feeling that the break might do them both good. Secretly, she hoped that if Douglas didn’t see her for a few weeks he’d be overcome with loneliness and realise that he loved her as much as she loved him. It seemed like her only chance at this stage.

  At least Nancy was happier in herself. She left each day for her secretarial course with a real bounce in her step and arrived home later each evening. When Tess quizzed her about her new friends, she fobbed her off with ‘Oh, just a bunch of girls from the course.’ Tess was happy for her because Nancy had never been one to make a big circle of friends. She wondered, too, if maybe she’d met a boy. There was something about her, a new-found lightness and Tess recognised it as that same feeling she had in those first few days when she would run into Douglas in the university corridors. Sometimes she thought about those days, the world was a different place then, before they’d kissed, before they’d gone to the ball. It saddened her to think that life would never go back to those carefree days. As far as Douglas was concerned, it was as though, she’d completely lost her value.

  *

  The Sunset club had grown smaller, warmer, duskier without Douglas. Tess felt something snake along her spine, a feeling that something had flipped within her since she last sang here. Stephen must have noticed it too. He handed her a tall glass of gin that burned her lips but imbued her with a sense of warmth that had nothing to do with the clamminess of the place. She drank the first half before she was due to sing.

  When it was her turn, she walked to the stage with a lazy, sensual languor that fitted well with the cocktail dress that clung to her but sat at odds with the girl who came from Ballycove and wanted only the boy who once sat silently with her sister, disapproving, if only she’d known it.

  She tried to put aside the fact that she felt more out of place in college with every passing day. Somehow, in that fuggy sultry music, the loneliness that had started to creep into her soul seemed to fizzle into a discontented energy that numbed the cloaking ache about her heart.

  She heard the band behind her begin to rumble into the opening bars; it was time for her to sing, but nothing came. She stood back a little from the spotlight; searched out the eyes she hoped would push her on.

  There was nothing. She was empty, there was no music – somehow it had deserted her. She waited until they rallied through a sequence that might have been a drawn-out introduction, but when it was time for her to sing, again she froze. It seemed she stood for an eternity, looking out into the anonymous darkness. There’s no counting minutes when time stands still and a life is turned on the loss of something irreplaceable. In those moments, the tight-lipped conclusion of an unremarkable club choked the harmony from her. It was enough to let her know that she didn’t want to be here anymore. She mumbled ‘sorry’ into the microphone and made her way into the wintry night outside.

  Without her, they were just background music – she knew that. They needed her, but she couldn’t do this anymore
. It cost too much. She was failing every written exam she sat – the only one she knew she’d pass was when she had to stand before the class and perform. And now? She wasn’t so sure of even that.

  The fresh air served the gin more than it cleared her head. Each breath seemed to bring a new wave of unsteadiness to her. She leant against a railing, for a minute, tucked her collar up, buttoned herself in as much against the night-time roving crawlers as against the winter chills. She wasn’t sure how long she stood. She thought of Douglas and how her life seemed to be suddenly changing. The knowledge that Nancy would move back to Ballycove only cemented the notion that she was, by comparison, adrift in some unfamiliar way. At this moment, she missed Aunt Beatrice and that common sense she could be relied upon to dispense in even the darkest moments.

  ‘Hey, Tess.’ Stephen was beside her. ‘You all right? What are you doing here? You know all kinds are about this area, it’s no place for a girl on her own, to be…’ He looked at her now, ‘Come on. I’ll bring you home.’ He placed an arm at her back; half held her up and pushed her along, all at once.

  They walked in silence; he wasn’t exactly full of sparkling conversation.

  At the door, he stopped, just long enough for her to catch his eyes. ‘You’ll be fine, it mightn’t seem like it now, but you know where we are if you want to come back to the club.’ He put his hand up to her face and placed it gently on her cheek and then he was gone and Tess had a feeling that it would be a very long time before she saw Stephen again.

  Chapter 23

  January 19 – Monday

  Tess walked towards Dr Kilker’s little car. It was too small for him, of course. Kilker was a bear of a man, with grey wiry hair and whiskers threatening to become sideburns. He was a tweedy, check-shirted barrel of a man. At six foot, he stood tall for his age, but then he wasn’t as old as he looked. Tess had to remind herself that he could not be more than sixty-five. He was the sort of man who would have smoked a pipe, but gave up in time to keep his lungs clear and his vices affable. He arrived three minutes early and honked his horn loudly; it was just to infuriate her, but she decided she would not rise to the bait. She had been waiting for him, if not exactly looking forward to his arrival; at least she was ready for whatever might lie ahead. She’d spent some time getting ready, because she had no idea where he was taking her. In the end, she settled on a suit she kept for best, its light blue might have brought her eyes up once, but these days that was by accident as much as by design. She’d smoothed down her hair, glad the bruising had subsided, and found herself arranging strands about her face to soften out the years. She’d spritzed just a hint of perfume on her wrists and felt she was as done as she’d been in many years.