He's Got to Go

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  “But he’s talked about me already!” she wailed.

  “If the course of true love is giving you a bit of gyp then maybe he won’t be talking about you for much longer.”

  She groaned. “I don’t know how things will pan out between me and Michael,” she told Rick. “He’s nice but a bit juvenile, you know.”

  “Good-looking, though,” said Rick.

  “You know him?”

  He nodded. “He was in here last year when his Dad bought the car.”

  “OK, so he’s good-looking,” conceded Bree. “And there’s a lot to be said for looks, as all of you guys know only too well.” She cast a disparaging look at the Pirelli calendar which hung on the far wall.

  “But we all know that looking is one thing and loving is something else,” said Rick.

  “Please don’t get all sensitive on me,” she said. “I come in here so that nobody gets sensitive on me.”

  Rick laughed. “Go and drain a few oil sumps,” he told her. “That’ll take your mind off things for a bit.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled back at him. “You always know how to get things into perspective.”

  The interviewee was sitting in Cate’s office when she arrived back, twenty minutes late, from the Sports Council meeting. Cate pushed open the door, smiled briefly at her and took her CV from an intimidatingly high pile on her desk.

  “Anita Reid,” she said.

  “Yes.” Anita looked at her. She had auburn hair, clear skin and sparkling blue eyes. She was, thought Cate, extremely pretty.

  “So,” Cate said. “Perhaps you’d like to run me through your experience to date.”

  She looked attentively at her as Anita gave a rundown on her career but she wasn’t really listening. She was wondering whether or not she could download some information on abortion clinics in the U.K. from the internet. She’d looked up Clinics in the Golden Pages first thing that morning and found a variety of women’s health clinics sandwiched between Cleanrooms and Clocks. There were numbers in Ireland—where abortion was illegal and where, even if it wasn’t, she’d be sure to meet someone she knew in the damn waiting room—and numbers in the U.K. too. But she hadn’t been able to pick up the phone and call. She might have done if Ruth hadn’t barged into the office to tell her that Glenda and the other girls were out sick. But the moment had passed. Maybe there would be more information on the Net. Then she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  “And that’s how I’m here.” Anita Reid smiled brightly at her. Cate exhaled slowly. Anita could’ve told her that she was an ax murderer for all that she’d heard. But the girl seemed nice and capable and enthusiastic.

  “Where do you see yourself in two years’ time?” asked Cate.

  Anita raised an eyebrow. That was a rather old chestnut in the interview stakes, she’d expected more from the professional-looking woman sitting opposite her.

  “Hopefully I will have progressed in the company,” she said. “I like responsibility. I like working to deadlines. I enjoy challenges.”

  So do I, thought Cate. I was just like you when I joined the company first. I wanted responsibility and deadlines and challenges and I worked so hard to get all of those things. And I can’t, I just can’t throw it all away for the sake of smelly nappies and baby sick.

  Even though she now had Portia Laing’s phone number, Nessa knew that she wasn’t going to call her. Asking for the number had been a sudden impulse but Nessa knew that she wouldn’t be able to phone the girl up and say that she’d overheard her talking about her husband. It was too unbelievable. Portia would think she was some sad, mad cow. She thought that anyway.

  The more intelligent thing to do, thought Nessa, was to systematically go through the house and see if she could find the faintest shred of proof that Adam was cheating on her. Nobody could cheat on somebody else without leaving some kind of evidence lying around. After all, if he was seeing someone, maybe she’d given him a token, something to keep. When she’d been going out with him she’d sent him little cards. Maybe this other woman had sent him little cards too. And maybe he’d been stupid enough to leave one somewhere.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee and opened The Year Ahead for Cancerians. She hadn’t looked at it in two days. She was disillusioned by the fact that the biggest blow in all of her life had happened without any warning from her book. It wasn’t as though she believed everything, she told herself firmly, but the horoscopes had been fun and helpful in a light-hearted kind of way. If she couldn’t trust them anymore then what was the point of believing in anything at all?

  “By now you’ve made important decisions about your future,” she read. “You should be able to make progress from here although it won’t be easy. Getting information about the things you’re dealing with may prove more difficult than you imagined. Have faith. You are headed in the right direction.”

  So what’s that telling me, she asked herself. That if I dig deep enough I’ll find something that’ll confirm my worst bloody suspicions? That Adam will deny everything? Or that I’ll discover that Portia was the one who was telling lies? She leaned her head on her arms and sighed deeply. Things had been so great a few months ago. How could they have turned around so horribly now?

  She sat up and pushed her coffee to one side. She’d find out the truth. And it wouldn’t be as bad as she imagined. Things were rarely as bad as anyone imagined, she was sure of that.

  Cate looked at the printed sheets in front of her and felt sick. She’d now read about surgical abortions and medical abortions and what she should do in order to get either of them. The site she’d visited had given information for people who lived in the U.K., overseas and Ireland and she wondered just how many women had to travel for abortions. How many women were so desperate that they booked their tickets to the U.K. and saved for the operation because to do anything else would ruin their lives?

  She rubbed her eyes. A baby would ruin her life. It would. Really. But she wasn’t desperate. She could afford the operation. She could afford the trip to the U.K. Hell, she could even put it down as a business trip if she wanted. She wasn’t getting an abortion because she was too young to have a baby, or because she had so many other children or because some bloke she hardly knew had got her pregnant and abandoned her. She wanted an abortion because she was afraid that a baby would come between Finn and herself, because she had other priorities in her life and because she was terrified of being pregnant. Surely those reasons were as good as any others. Her reasons mightn’t be as desperate as some women’s but she was desperate in her own way.

  She looked at the pages again. Everything was dealt with in a matter-of-fact manner. Nobody was preaching at her or making judgments about her or telling her that she was a foolish woman for getting pregnant in the first place. They talked about helping her, not lecturing her. They offered counseling to her and they told her that it was entirely her choice.

  But she didn’t need counseling. She didn’t need sympathy. She just needed to get rid of the damn baby.

  She began to shake. It sounded so final. It sounded so awful. It hadn’t seemed like that before but now it did.

  Those people who said that women used abortions as a kind of contraceptive didn’t know what they were talking about. They didn’t know how terrible it felt. To be the one who had to make the decision. To be the one who had to think about it. To be the one who tried to pretend that she was thinking of a simple surgical procedure when all the time she was feeling guiltier and guiltier about what she was proposing to do. She’d always wondered why girls who found themselves pregnant by mistake didn’t rush off and get the abortion straightaway. Why there were women who waited until it began to get dangerously late. But now she understood. It was a final decision. It was a terrible decision. It was a decision she didn’t know how she was going to make.

  Bree was on her break in the monkey room when her mobile rang.

  “Hi,” she said.


  “Hello, it’s me.”

  “Michael.” She couldn’t keep the pleasure out of her voice. “How’re you?”

  “Great,” he said. “I wondered would you like to go out on Friday night.”

  “Sure. Where to?”

  “I was thinking about what Dad said,” he told her. “So maybe to a restaurant? For a meal?”

  She laughed. “You don’t have to bring me for something to eat just because of your father,” she told him. “I’m quite happy to go into town and have a few beers.”

  “No,” he told her. “I need to treat women a bit better!”

  Bree grimaced. She was being lumped in with a collection of women again. It wasn’t exactly confidence-building.

  “Where would you like to go?” he asked.

  “Oh, Michael, I don’t mind.”

  “I’ll surprise you,” he said.

  “OK.”

  “Wear something slinky,” he told her.

  “What?”

  He laughed. “Only if you want to. I haven’t ever seen you in anything other than jeans.”

  “Haven’t you?” she frowned.

  “Nope.”

  “And you’d like to?”

  “Dad asked me if you had legs,” said Michael.

  “Oh.”

  “I said I reckoned you had. I said I reckoned you had the best legs in the business. I want to be proved right.”

  “Oh,” she said again.

  “So—seven on Friday?”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  She replaced the phone in her pocket. She didn’t have anything slinky. She’d never possessed anything slinky. But if it moved her relationship with Michael from being some kind of platonic friendship into something more romantic then maybe slinky was what she needed. It couldn’t be that hard to find slinky clothes. Cate wore them all the time.

  Maybe, thought Bree, as she strolled back into the workshop, she could give Cate a call. She hadn’t talked to her in ages and it would be nice to get her sister’s view on what would look good on her. Bree was a great believer in asking the experts for help on things. She always sighed whenever people came into the garage with the results of their DIY tinkering on their cars which had only made the problem worse. So it made sense that if she was going to move into a new area of her life she should get a bit of expert advice herself. And Cate was the very person to ask. She’d phone her later.

  Cate sat in the empty office building and thought that she was going to have a breakdown. She could feel it in the way her mind would race first one way and then another. Abortion. Have the baby. Could she live with herself if she went to the clinic and said that she didn’t want this child? Could she live with herself if she didn’t? Why had this happened to her now? Why not in a year, two years, when she might be ready for a baby. When she might want a baby.

  She needed to talk to someone. She’d never been much for talking to anyone before, she’d always believed she could solve her own problems. But this time she knew she couldn’t.

  Only she really didn’t know who she wanted to talk to.

  Nessa sat and stared at the postcard. She’d found it in the middle of a book about time management. It was hardly pulverizing evidence of an affair, it was a simple postcard with a picture of a blue sea, bluer sky and white beach. And it just said “Wish you were here xxx A.” It could have been anyone sending him postcards. A colleague perhaps. And he might have been using it as a bookmark. Anything like that. But she didn’t think so. She thought that she’d found the proof. And she didn’t know what to do.

  She could phone Paula. Her friend had gone through exactly the same thing and had survived it. Paula would know how she felt, what it was like to have your world collapse around you. But Paula would give her the pep talk, Nessa knew that. Paula would tell her that men were worthless shits and that what she needed to do was to get her hair cut, buy a new wardrobe, get a new job and start drinking red wine. It had worked for Paula. Nessa wasn’t sure that it would work for her.

  But she had to talk to someone. The pain was building inside her so that she was actually clutching her stomach. Everyone said that grief was an emotion. But it wasn’t. It was so physical that it actually hurt.

  She was still clutching her stomach, her body rolled forward so that her head was almost touching her knees, when the phone rang.

  13

  Leo July 23rd–August 23rd

  Naturally bouyant, loves to be admired.

  “Hi,” said Adam when she picked it up. “How’re things?”

  “Fine.” Why had she said that, she asked herself. Why had she given him her automatic response when things weren’t fine. They were as far away from fine as it was possible for them to be. They were nowhere near fine.

  “I’ll be a bit late tonight,” he told her. “Couple of things on. We’re meeting the management of a company we took on earlier in the summer. They wanted to talk about our report.”

  “OK,” she said.

  “It’s likely we’ll go for something to eat afterward,” said Adam. “So don’t bother with anything for me. If we don’t get food I’ll grab a takeaway on the way home.”

  “Sure.”

  “How’s Jill?” he asked. “Making the most of the good weather?”

  Nessa glanced out of the window. Jill, Nicolette and their other friend, Dorothy, had rediscovered the Barbie dolls which they’d rejected as too childish a few months earlier. She supposed that she should be slightly concerned that all of the Barbies were stark naked and therefore flaunting their enormous plastic chests but, right now, she didn’t care what awful game they were playing.

  “I guess so,” she said.

  “Tell her I’ll try and be home before she goes to bed,” said Adam.

  “OK,” said Nessa.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She felt her throat constrict and hot tears flood her eyes. “Yes.”

  “You sound a bit funny,” said Adam. “Hope you’re not getting a cold. Summer ones are the worst.”

  “I’ll see you later,” she told him.

  “I’ll try not to be too long,” he said.

  She replaced the receiver slowly. Rage and hurt still battled within her. The rage was as much at herself now, for not saying something to him. But what was she going to say over the phone? Women didn’t accuse their husbands of having affairs over the phone. You waited until he was home and relaxed and not expecting anything and then you laid out the facts in front of him and waited for the denial. Because he was sure to deny it. John Trelfall had denied it when Paula confronted him even though she had the incontrovertible proof of the message that the stupid other woman had left on the answering machine. Silly bitch had thought she’d got John’s mobile. Paula had been devastated, of course, but at least she had something tangible with which to back up her accusations. All Nessa had was a postcard with three x’s from someone called A.

  The only person that Nessa could think of whose name began with the letter A was Alicia Kearns who lived at the top of the road and, in her wildest imaginings, she couldn’t see Adam with Alicia Kearns who was almost masculine in her build, had short wiry hair and (as Adam had remarked himself) legs like tree trunks. Alicia had been walking down the road wearing a pair of Bermuda shorts and a long T-shirt while Adam had been cutting the grass at the front of the house. He’d come inside and asked Nessa for a tin of beer—to get over the shock, he’d said, of seeing the Kearns woman striding past the gate. It wasn’t Alicia, thought Nessa. It couldn’t be.

  She knew the sort of woman Adam liked. Slim—slimmer than she was, even though he told her that he liked her like this—with dark hair and big eyes. Adam preferred brunettes and he loved big eyes. Nessa knew that she’d scored heavily with him because of her huge gray eyes.

  Where was he going tonight anyway? Was it really a business meeting? Or was that a lie so that he could be with his A woman where he could behave with her in a way that he’d never behaved with his wife.

/>   Was it her fault? she asked herself. Had she done something wrong? Had she turned into a different Nessa to the Nessa he’d married? Had she driven him away?

  Cate wasn’t answering her phone. Bree had left a message on the phone in the apartment and on her mobile but Cate hadn’t called her back. Bree supposed that her older sister could be too busy to return her calls but she felt miffed all the same. It couldn’t be that hard to pick up the phone, she grumbled to herself, no matter how high-flying and busy her sister wanted to make herself appear. She wondered whether or not she’d be better off getting some advice from Nessa instead. Nessa could look quite nice when she put her mind down to it. But her eldest sister lacked Cate’s sophistication and style. All the same, Nessa did a lot of shopping and she could probably point Bree in the right direction. It was a terrible indictment of her fashion sense, thought Bree, that she really didn’t have a clue where the best shopping was in Dublin these days.

  She stretched out her denim-clad legs in front of her. Jeans were great. Simple, easy and they could look very stylish. She’d dressed up her jeans on a number of different occasions and she thought that she looked pretty good. In fact she was sure that she’d look a damn sight better in her Levi’s and top than she would in any slinky dress that Cate or even Nessa might recommend. But Michael wanted to see her in a dress and she wanted to make the effort for him. She wanted to think that it was worth making the effort for him.

  I’ll try Cate once more, she decided, and if she doesn’t answer then I’m going over to Nessa’s. She hit redial on her phone and was connected to Cate’s voicemail again.

  “It’s about the millionth time I’ve called,” said Bree. “But it doesn’t matter, it wasn’t important. You can call me later if you like. I’ll be in Nessa’s.” That’ll intrigue her, she said to herself as she slid the phone into her bag. I’m not at Nessa’s so often that she won’t wonder why on earth I’m there!