Thirteen Stops

by Sandra Harris

  “Babes,” he said again, placatingly, “that’s not the kind of thing you casually drop into conversation over breakfast, you know. ‘Oh, by the way, Barbara, I’ve met someone new and I’m leaving you and the kids for her, and could you please pass the butter, dear?’ Oh yes, I can just see that going down really well at the breakfast table, can’t you?”

  Laura was in no mood to let him away with any of his usual mealy-mouthed sarcastic excuses or bullshit, or that thing he did where he put everything back on her, making her look unreasonable for bringing up the subject, the way he’d just done.

  “But you’ve had two years to do it in.” She was challenging him now and she knew it. “Two fucking years, and you still haven’t told her about us?”

  “It’s not that simple, Laura.” He sounded mutinous. “People can’t just go around dropping bombshells on people like that willy-nilly.”

  “Willy-nilly?” Laura was practically yelling now. “Willy-nilly? Paul, you’ve had two fucking years! How much longer could you possibly need?”

  “There’s no need to shout. You’ll have the neighbours in here in a minute.” Typical Paul, trying to deflect any negative attention away from himself, if only for a minute. It gave him time to regroup, get his story straight.

  “I’m not shouting.” Laura took a deep breath and tried hard to compose herself. “But what, for argument’s sake, would stop you from going home and telling her about us tonight, after you leave here?”

  “I told you, Laura, it’s not that fucking simple.”

  “Why not?” She knew her voice was rising to dangerously shrill levels once more but she couldn’t help herself.

  “Because,” he said, looking her straight in the face for once, “because Barbara’s fucking pregnant, that’s why.”

  Laura gasped in shock.

  “Pregnant? Pregnant? By whom, might I ask?”

  “By me, of course.” He looked genuinely puzzled. “Who else would knock her up?”

  “You fucking bastard! You swore you weren’t sleeping with her. You even swore it on your grandmother’s grave! Her actual grave!”

  “It only happened the once.” He sounded sullen now. “I had no idea that this was going to happen.”

  “It only takes the once, you idiot!” Laura snapped back. She felt angrier than she’d ever felt in her life before. “What are you going to do about it?”

  She jumped out of bed and tore the stupid purply basque thing off her body, replacing it with her long woolly brown dressing-gown, the belt of which she tied tightly around herself. There. That made her feel more armoured, ready for the fray.

  “And were you ever going to tell me about it?” She narrowed her eyes and gave him her coldest, hardest stare.

  He said nothing, just looked down at his feet in their stupid novelty socks, a pair with happy reindeer on them which his kids had given him for Christmas the year before. (It always annoyed her when he wore them. She knew it was unreasonable of her, but she couldn’t help it. And, anyway, you’d think he’d have the wit not to wear them when he went to bed with his mistress.)

  When the penny dropped, Laura’s blue eyes widened.

  “You fucking little shit,” she said softly. “You were never going to tell me, were you? What were you going to do? Just crawl back to that bitch Barbara and pretend that I never existed?”

  “Something like that.” He shrugged. “And don’t call her names, will you? She doesn’t deserve that. She doesn’t deserve any of this shit. I feel terrible about what we’ve – what I’ve –” he amended when he saw her furious face, “been doing to her these last couple of years. She may not know about this – this affair we’ve been having, but she certainly knows that things haven’t been right between us now for a long time. Our sex life is completely fucked and we haven’t communicated properly in months now. She’s been trying to talk to me about it, but I’ve been giving her the run-around because of you, us. I’m actually kind of surprised she hasn’t left me before now. How she puts up with me, well, I just don’t know. She must be a fucking saint.”

  He stood up after this little speech and began pulling on his shirt and jacket, seemingly unaware that everything he’d just said had only served to light Laura’s blue touchpaper.

  “Oh, Saint fucking Barbara!” she sneered. “Of course, we mustn’t say a word against the precious Saint Barbara the fucking Great! And just exactly when were you planning on leaving me?” A note of hysteria had crept into her voice.

  “I don’t know.” He ran his hands through his hair again so that it stood up like a chicken’s feathers all over his head. “Some time in the next few weeks, maybe. Barbara only found out about the baby a few weeks ago. We were hoping it might, you know, help to glue us back together as a family if we all rally round. Me, Barbara, Jessie, Lucy and the new baby. We were hoping it might be a boy this time,” he finished hopefully.

  The horrible realisation that she was being dumped, that she didn’t figure anywhere in Paul’s plans for his cosy family future, hit Laura like a swinging brick to the face.

  “But I’ve . . . I’ve spent the last two fucking years waiting for you to leave her!”

  “I never asked you to, not in so many words.” He was patting himself down now, checking for phone, wallet and keys.

  “You implied that we’d be together if I was prepared to wait for you!”

  “Well, you must have misinterpreted what I said. I can’t be held responsible for that, can I?”

  He actually had the nerve to sound bored now.

  Her voice rose ever higher as she said, “And I’ve done all that kinky stuff you wanted me to do. I’ve been your own personal fucking dominatrix and sex-slave for two fucking years now, for Christ’s sake! I even shaved my whatsit for you! I bloody-well nicked myself doing that!”

  “You got as much out of all that as I did, surely?” he said piously.

  “I fucking hated it, you sick pervy bastard!” she screamed across the bed at him.

  He looked at her as if he couldn’t quite make her out. “Well, you should have said so, then.”

  She should have said? She should have fucking said? She wanted to kill him. Instead, what came out was: “I straightened my hair for you every single day! For two whole years, I lived in fear of a bloody drop of rain!”

  He stared back at her uncomprehendingly, as if she’d gone off her rocker altogether. It enraged her, especially when she thought of all the agonies of effort and inconvenience she’d endured to straighten her naturally wavy tresses, just because he’d once commented that he loved her straight hair. The absolute fucking bastard.

  “If you leave me, I’ll tell Barbara!” she said wildly then. “You’re forgetting I know your home phone number!”

  “No, you won’t, Laura,” Paul retorted wearily, pulling on his tie. “You’re not that much of a bitch. You wouldn’t go around deliberately causing that kind of havoc, ruining my kids’ lives as well as mine and Barbara’s and the new baby’s. You’re better than that.”

  If he was trying to use reverse psychology on her, Laura thought, then he was bloody well barking up the wrong bloody tree.

  She took a step closer to him and said quietly, “I’ll tell her, Paul. I swear to God I will.”

  His face hardened into stone. “That’s your choice, Laura. It’s entirely up to you what you do. It’s got nothing to do with me any more. Now, goodbye, Laura. I’ll see you at work tomorrow, although it’s probably better if you look for a new job. There might be some – awkwardness between us for a while.” And, with that, he walked out of the flat, closing the door behind him.

  “Fuck you, Paul Sheridan, fuck you! I hate you, you fucking bastard, I hate you!” she screamed. She picked up the little bedside clock and flung it with all her strength at the wall, where it smashed, and then she grabbed up her phone. She hesitated for a moment, then dialled a number she knew by heart and waited.

  “Hello?” she said.

  STOP 2: STILLORGAN
r />   Suzanne

  Suzanne Carragher got on the Luas at Stillorgan. It wasn’t her usual stop but she’d been spending the night at her sister’s house. She’d received a garbled call from Barbara late the night before. Barbara had sounded almost incoherent with grief and rage, something about Paul and another woman. Once she’d established that nobody was sick or had died, and that Barbara’s kids Jessie and Lucy were okay, Suzanne had asked her sister to slow down and start from the beginning. Apparently a strange woman had phoned Barbara on her house phone, claiming to have had a sexual relationship with Paul, and even saying she was pregnant by him, if you please.

  Barbara had gone into hysterics, screaming abuse at Paul when he got home from working late (if that’s what he was doing) and not allowing him to get a word in edgeways, it seemed, which was typical of her. When he was finally allowed to speak, Paul had point-blank denied the whole thing. Barbara, not believing a word out of his mouth – this was not the first time she’d had reason to doubt him – had ordered him out of the house, and Paul, obviously unwilling to go too far away from the family home in case he couldn’t get back in again, had spent the night in their garage, on the back seat of his car, wrapped in a slightly mouldy sleeping bag left over from their one attempt at camping. From the state of him at breakfast time, Suzanne reflected wryly, he’d had a miserable night. Well, it bloody well served him right.

  Barbara had called Suzanne, the older sister to whom she’d always been close, once she’d banished Paul from the house. After establishing the basic facts of the matter and stopping off at a supermarket to buy wine (before their off-licence shut at ten) and big family-sized bars of emergency chocolate for comfort, Suzanne had jumped on the Luas and gone straight to her sister’s house in Stillorgan.

  “Who is she, Barb?” she’d asked when they were both installed on high stools at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, knocking back the wine and breaking up the chocolate bars into bite-sized chunks. There was no situation that couldn’t be improved upon with wine and chocolate, the sisters had long since discovered.

  “Some absolute slut from his work.” Barbara chugged back the ends of a glass of wine and immediately poured herself a refill. “One of the tramps from the typing pool, I think. Laura!” She’d spat out the name with venom.

  “And you believe her, do you?” Suzanne asked tactfully. “I mean, she’s not just some young one trying to stir up trouble for Paul for some reason? Or maybe she tried it on with him, he rebuffed her and now she’s out for revenge? It happens sometimes, you know.”

  Barbara shook her head grimly, her long dark hair swinging in time with her movement, and lit a cigarette. She normally didn’t smoke in the house (smokers had to congregate in the back yard), but this was clearly an exceptional circumstance. “Too many of the things she said made sense, Suze. She told me what nights he’d been round at her place, fucking her. They were the nights he said he’d had extra work on at the office or nights he was pretending to see his mates to watch the football. I knew he was lying, the sneaky little fuck! All this wagon did was confirm it for me.”

  “And you really believe her when she says she’s pregnant?” Suzanne’s mouth was full of chocolate but Barbara got the gist.

  “Well, why not? It’d be just like him to be so fucking irresponsible. Knock up me and some slut as well at the same time. I’m going to have myself tested for venereal disease, and so is he if he ever wants to come anywhere near me or the kids again. I could kill him. Bringing all this down on us just when we’ve got a third kid on the way. He’s ruined everything, the spineless prick. Just because he couldn’t keep it in his fucking pants. Yet again.”

  Barbara’s brown eyes were bright with tears and Suzanne’s heart went out to her.

  “It doesn’t have to be the end of everything, Barb. Plenty of couples eventually put this kind of thing behind them, especially where there are kids involved. It’ll take time, but why should your marriage be destroyed by some little trollop from his office who’s just out for what she can get?”

  “She’s welcome to him,” Barbara said but there was a note of uncertainty in her voice, as if she didn’t really mean it.

  “You don’t mean that, Barb.” Suzanne warmed to her theme. “What are you going to do, just hand your husband meekly over to this little gold-digger in a gift-wrapped package? Tell her what time he likes a cup of tea in the evening and how he likes his eggs done? Why should she get the benefit of all the years you’ve spent training him to be your ideal husband?”

  “Much good it did me. Sure, I taught him to put the bins out on the right night and how to do the weekly shop on his own, but where did it get me? The second my back’s turned, he’s sticking it to some little hussy from his office. I can just picture her, this Laura, all glossy and perfect and blonde and petite. In other words, everything I’m not.”

  “Don’t you dare say that!” Suzanne was fierce in her sister’s defence. “You’re beautiful and you know you are. You’re just tired and you have no time to doll yourself up because you’ve got two small kids to look after and now you’re pregnant again. This Laura has obviously got all the time in the world to put on false fucking eyelashes and a stupid fake tan. Let’s see how much time she has left for prettying herself up when she’s as big as a house and puking her guts up into the toilet every morning.”

  Suzanne realised her mistake when Barbara burst into loud howls.

  “She’s having his baby, Suze! Oh Christ, his baby! I can’t bear it, I can’t!”

  Shit shit shit, Suzanne berated herself. Why on earth did she have to open her big mouth like that? Hurriedly she said, “Look, Barb, do we know for a fact that she’s pregnant? She could be lying. Women do that, you know, to hold on to a guy who’s trying to shake them off.”

  “Do you really think she could be lying?” Barbara whispered, her eyes huge and tear-filled.

  “Why not?” Suzanne hoped against hope that she was right. “A woman who’s low enough and nasty enough to sleep with another woman’s man would certainly be capable of lying her scrawny little arse off to get what she wants.”

  Damn Paul to hell, Suzanne thought angrily, causing all this hurt to his wife just because some tramp in a tight skirt and a low-cut top made goo-goo eyes at him and his stupid thoughtless willy responded in kind.

  “How can we find out?” Barbara said, sniffling.

  “Well, that’s up to Paul, I guess. He needs to find out whether this woman is genuinely pregnant or not, or if this baby is even his. It might be someone else’s kid, and she might be trying to palm it off on Paul. In which case,” she went on, glad to see that Barbara’s face had brightened, “he’d have to wait until the baby was born to get a DNA test to find out for certain.”

  “But that takes the full nine months!” Barbara sounded disconsolate again. “Do I have to wait nine fucking months to find out if some little slapper is going to wreck my marriage?”

  “It might not be as long as that,” Suzanne said in what she hoped were comforting tones. “I mean, it depends on how far gone she is now. That’s if there even is a baby. We shouldn’t be talking about it as if it’s a done deal. There might not even be a baby to worry about!”

  “Do you really think so?” Barbara whimpered.

  “I think we should wait to find out for sure before we start fretting about it,” Suzanne said firmly. “And now you should definitely go on up to bed. You’re exhausted and you’ve still got to get the kids up for school in the morning.”

  Barbara looked at the clock with eyes that were red and bleary from crying. It was twenty to one in the morning. The phone call had come about five hours earlier.

  “Will you sleep in with me?” she asked her sister.

  “Of course I will. But come on up now before you fall asleep down here.”

  “You won’t let Paul back into the house, will you?”

  “Just let him dare try,” Suzanne replied grimly. “He’ll get a taste of this if he does,” she added,
picking up the nearest thing that could pass muster as a weapon.

  At the sight of her older sister standing in the kitchen brandishing one of Jessie’s Barbies, a tennis-playing one with a tiny electric-pink skirt and baseball cap on her ridiculously disproportionate frame, Barbara burst out laughing.

  “Hey, I can stick these in some pretty small places, you know.” Suzanne made menacing jabbing movements with her weapon of choice.

  “Try Paul’s pea-brain, then. It’s the smallest part of him by miles,” Barbara said drily, and both sisters laughed.

  Before the laughing could turn into sniffling again, Suzanne determinedly propelled her exhausted sister out the kitchen door and up the stairs to bed.

  “Tickets please, love,” said the Luas ticket-checker, a big smiley-faced fella with a beard. All the Luas staff were lovely lads, Suzanne thought. And the ladies were lovely too, of course.

  “Sorry – I was miles away there,” she said, fumbling in her bag for her ticket.

  “Somewhere nice, was it?” he said, punching a hole in her ticket.

  “Not exactly.” Suzanne laughed wryly.

  “Then it’s no good for you, love.” The man grinned before moving on to the next passenger. “Keep out of there.”

  I wish I could, Suzanne answered him in her mind. But it wasn’t that simple. As the gentle motion of the Luas lulled her into a state of near-relaxation, she deliberately repressed the thoughts she’d been having when the ticket-checker had interrupted her reverie. Instead, she forced her mind to drift back to earlier that morning at Barbara’s house.

  She’d woken up the kids herself so that her distraught and hungover sister could have a lie-in. Poor Barbara, Suzanne had thought when she’d seen her in the bed, lying on her back with her mouth open, snoring lightly. Let her have this bit of oblivion. There’ll be time enough to face all the heartache and bullshit later, plus the big fat wine hangover.