If Only You Knew

by Claire Allan

  Karen was like a whirlwind when it came to shopping. As Ava contemplated a very sensible one-piece, Karen pushed her aside. “Ava, pet, live a little!”

  All Ava could think of was the map of stretch-marks curving up her stomach and she had no desire to live a little – not when it came to swimwear anyway.

  Karen handed her a piece of dental floss masquerading as a bikini and grinned. “How about this little number?”

  “Erm, no. Not with my stomach,” Ava said, feeling herself blush as if she was letting Karen down in someway by concerning herself with matters as trivial as stomach scars.

  “Oh God, don’t talk to me,” Karen said, hanging the bikini back on the rack. “Mine are awful. Not to mention that Caesarean scar I was left with. I tell you, never again! Not for anyone!” She lifted the all-in-one swimsuit and handed it back to Ava.” Maybe this would be better.”

  Ava nodded dutifully and went and paid for her purchase, feeling like a big, fat, mammy frump.

  She really needed to cut Karen out of her life – and fast. Then again she felt sorry for her. Beneath all that bravado and utter bitchiness, there was clearly a woman who was desperately unhappy with how her life had turned out.

  “Drinks!” Karen declared loudly, causing a few fellow shoppers to spin round in surprise. “We should go for drinks. No kids. No husbands. No worries. Drinky poos!”

  Yes, shopping with Maisie was infinitely easier.

  Karen seemed more palatable after three glasses of wine. In fact, she even seemed fun. Maybe Ava had been walking around with “a stick up her arse” this whole time as her friend had claimed.

  After three glasses of wine Ava even found herself feeling a pang of affection for her friend who was swirling the wine around in the bottom of her glass and declaring that this was the best damn Saturday afternoon she’d had in years.

  “God, this is great. And you know what, Charlie can just look after Sophie all evening. I might even stay out. Should we stay out? I mean, c’mon, we don’t often get the chance. You have work. I have the joys of being a stay-at-home mammy and domestic slave – we deserve it.”

  Ava thought of just how much of a domestic slave Karen was. Sure she didn’t work – because she hadn’t much wanted to and Charlie very much wanted to have her at home caring for Sophie. But he didn’t expect her to be a slave. She had a cleaner three times a week. Ava would kill to have a cleaner in three times a year. But still, Karen was clearly unhappy.

  Yet, there was no way Ava could stay out later. The three glasses of wine had knocked her three sheets to the wind. Any more and she would be in danger of reaching the ungainly stage of drunk where she would start to sing loudly, dance in public and tell taxi-drivers she loved them.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “I’m a lightweight.”

  “You’re a boring lightweight!” Karen snapped back with a strange smile on her face which made Ava really confused about whether or not she was being insulted or whether Karen was just being funny. She tried to shrug it off, and even changed the topic of conversation to Lady Gaga, who in all honesty she knew very little about but figured was a trendy conversation topic, but her mind kept screaming “boring” over and over again.

  “Am I really very, very boring?” she asked eventually, staring into the bottom of her glass which she had decided absolutely and categorically she was not refilling. Her car would have to sit abandoned in the multi-storey car-park at this rate which would cost a fortune and her mother and Connor would be less than impressed with her sailing home three sheets to the wind. So no, even though the wine tasted very, very nice indeed, she would not have any more.

  “No, darling,” Karen purred, as she topped up her own glass – clearly without the same reservations Ava had. “But you do need to loosen up a bit.”

  Ava looked at her wineglass and tried, and failed, to block out the voice that was telling her that she really didn’t want to loosen up all that much – not as much as Karen had anyway – and drained the last drops.

  “I need to go home,” she said, gathering her one bag with the very sensible probably-designed-for-pensioners swimming suit in it.

  “Come on, stay!” Karen chimed, waving the open bottle of wine at her.

  “No. I need to go home. Maisie will be wondering where I am.”

  “Maisie will be fine with CBeebies and a colouring book. You let her run your life!” Karen said, her eyes tightening.

  Something in that second snapped inside Ava – which she realised was more than likely down to the glasses of wine loosening her tongue.

  “She’s two. She should run my life. At least I care about her – which is much more than can be said of you and wee Sophie. Do you even realise you have a daughter half the time, Karen? You act like she’s the biggest inconvenience in the world to you when she should be your everything!”

  “At least I’m fucking honest!” Karen spat back. “I don’t wander around like a big martyr being Supermammy and moaning about it after. Don’t think you’re any better than me, Ava. You are so not.”

  With that Karen picked up her bags and stormed passed Ava, leaving her red-faced and humiliated, and feeling utterly ashamed as she made her way through the gawping afternoon drinkers to the taxi stand.

  Well, that was fucking disaster of a day, she thought to herself as she climbed into the back of a taxi and got ready to face her mother, Connor, Maisie and her own conscience.

  Chapter 9

  Cyndi with a Y and an I was actually quite nice. Hope had finally come face to face, or more accurately face to shoulder with her arch nemesis just after ten thirty on Saturday night.

  As she was packing away her laptop and disposing of the empty (family) bag of Maltesers, the door opened and she was startled by a loud, shrieking laugh followed by Dylan’s chuckle.

  Hope had frozen in the kitchen, aware that she was wearing her fluffiest, least attractive pyjamas and that her hair was scraped into a high ponytail on top of her head and in desperate need of a wash. Oh fuck it, she cursed under her breath, stashing the empty Maltesers bag at the bottom of the bin and hauling the scrunchie out of her hair in a desperate attempt to look at least half-human.

  With the only route upstairs being through the living room, she had no choice but to plaster on her best smile and pretend to be absolutely delighted to finally meet Cyndi.

  As she walked into the living room they were standing looking like the oddest couple – her tiny compared to Dylan’s large frame. Her head barely reached his chest and he looked awkward – but disgustingly, deliriously happy – as he bent down to kiss her. Hope thought of how she and Dylan fitted together, her head resting on the top of his chest, his hands caressing the small of her back. They didn’t look ridiculous together. They looked perfect. No, she reminded herself as she felt her smile slip. She must not come across as the psycho, bunny-boiling housemate. She must play this straight. Absolutely straight.

  “You must be Cyndi,” she said, extending her arm for a handshake.

  “Jesus! Are you Hope? Am I meeting the famous Hope?” Cyndi squealed in excitement. “I’m not shaking your hand, girl. C’mere for a hug!”

  As Cyndi’s face came into direct contact with Hope’s chest, Hope thought no. Definitely no. Cyndi does not fit at all. But she was nice, and friendly and complimented Hope’s hair (even though it was a state) and told she had done a great job of keeping Dylan in check. They had laughed together at that and Hope had felt herself warm to her a teeny bit. Not enough not to want her to disappear off the planet, mind – but a little bit.

  Hope had to admit she could see a bit of what appealed to Dylan. But later, as she tried to ignore the fact that she screamed like a banshee when she orgasmed, she felt her heart sink. Hope had tried not to listen. She had tried not to hear. She had stuffed her pillow over her head and put her iPod speakers in her ears but she could still hear Cyndi reach her glorious climax calling Dylan McKenzie’s name in a strong Ballymena accent.

/>   Hope’s cheeks burned and her stomach flipped. She felt embarrassed, flustered and jealous. She’d been intimate with Dylan herself – just the once – a very long time ago, but she could still remember just how good it had been. And just to remind her, she’d had to listen to a chorus of women call out his name in pleasure over the years. Fourteen years of friendship had brought a lot of relationships in and out of their lives and he had undergone a minor tart phase when they were on their travels. It never bothered her before – in fact, she used to rib him mercilessly about it, asking him to “stop murderin’ them poor women” and threatening to tell his mother about his wicked ways.

  It bothered her now though – and not just because Cyndi had the audacity to be both really quite good-looking and rather nice to boot. She didn’t need to hear Dylan do the deed because it did absolutely nothing – nothing at all – for her bid not to think about him in that way.

  When the moaning and groaning subsided, Hope breathed a sigh of relief, praying that there would not be a round two to contend with and she started to drift off to sleep.

  It was the slamming of the front door which woke her and as she sat up, wiping the drool from her cheek and trying to get her bearings in the dark, she felt her heart thump as her bedroom door opened.

  Feck. Not only had she had the shitest night ever – listening to Dylan hump his way into the loudest orgasm in history record books – now she was about to be murdered in her bed by a complete stranger. She opened her mouth to scream, and lifted the lamp by her bed to use as a weapon but stopped mid-yell when she saw a bleary-eyed Dylan walk into her room and climb into the bed beside her.

  “Cyndi had to go home,” he said, “so you can be my post-bonk snuggle if you don’t mind.”

  Hope suddenly realised that being murdered in her bed was perhaps not the worst thing that could have happened to her that night.

  The good news was that she wasn’t needed for a post-bonk snuggle the following night. The bad news was that was because the shagging went on all night.

  “Well, we needed to take advantage of our last night before we went back on night shift,” Dylan had smiled and winked at Hope when he emerged from his bedroom the following day with the glow of a wee, shagged man about him.

  “But, Dylan, there are some things that I just don’t need to hear.”

  “Ah, you don’t mind,” he teased. “But tell me this – did she sound like she was enjoying herself?”

  Hope felt herself cringe, right from the bottom of her stomach through the tips of her hair. “Jesus, Dylan. There is a line in our friendship and you have just crossed it. In fact, you are so far over it, I don’t think you could still see it if you tried.”

  “I was just asking,” Dylan said, as he made two mugs of tea – neither of which was for Hope, “because I’m feeling this is something different.”

  “Yes, yes . . . I gathered that from, you know, the fact that you talk about her non-stop and want to spend every waking moment with her.” Hope hoped that she hadn’t sounded bitter and twisted when she said that, but she had a notion there was more than a hint of the “feck you, then” about her statement.

  “She might be the one,” he said, staring dreamily out of the window.

  Hope nodded, sitting down at the table and trying to pretend this conversation wasn’t happening.

  “Do you like her?” he asked, leaving the mugs on the worktop and turning to face his friend. She couldn’t help but stare at him, dressed in just jeans, her eyes immediately drawn to the fine line of hair which ran from his bellybutton to his . . .

  “Well, do you?” Dylan asked, jolting her from the hot flush which was threatening to surge through her body.

  “She seems lovely,” Hope said. “Loud – but lovely.” She decided to spare him her thoughts on whether or not their bodies moulded together the way bodies should, in her mind, mould together. She didn’t think he would get that whole ‘not part of the jigsaw puzzle’ thing – and, besides, she would have to tell him who she thought was the perfect fit.

  Dylan sat down across the table from her and lifted the flier for the local Chinese which she had picked up from the doormat earlier.

  “Your tea will go cold,” she offered.

  “It will be grand,” he said, putting the flier down and staring ahead of him before picking it up again.

  She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something was definitely up.

  He was fidgeting and unsettled and showing an unhealthy obsession with chicken curry specials. He sighed, putting the flier back on the table again and looked at her. “I need to talk to you, Hope, and the thing is I don’t know what way you might react.”

  She plastered on her best sympathetic face, ready to be there for him.

  “The thing is, Cyndi and I, well . . . we want to spend more time together.”

  “Well, of course you do,” she said. “Sure you’re in that first flush where you want to spend every moment together. You know, that blissful stage where you don’t realise just how much you rag the holy shite out of each other?”

  He laughed and she smiled. And then he smiled and she laughed. Then he stopped laughing and smiling and reached out to take her hand. She stopped laughing and smiling too.

  “And I was wondering, if you would mind if she, well, moved in. We don’t want you to move out or anything but, you know, we work strange hours and living together would make this workable. And it would help with the rent – Lord knows we could do with the help. She works shifts too so she shouldn’t get under your feet –”

  “But you’ve only been together five minutes!” she blurted out before she could stop herself.

  “We’ve known each other much longer,” he said.“And sometimes when you know, you know . . .”

  “Two weeks,” Hope muttered.

  “We’ve known each other for months.”

  She wanted to shout “But we’ve known each other for years. Years!” But once again she thought this might just be crossing into bunny-boiling, psycho-housemate territory.

  Dylan prattled on but Hope could not hear what he was saying any more. She was too busy imagining the creak of the bed while she tried to work, and the screaming orgasms as she tried to interview her latest source. She was already imagining Cyndi making him his bacon sarnies in the morning while her services became surplus to requirements. She was already imagining Cyndi going back to the McKenzies’ Lisburn home each Sunday for dinner while she was left eating a Pot Noodle all by herself in her cold and loveless room. (Okay, so she was getting a little overdramatic, but she couldn’t help how she felt.)

  She glanced up and saw his face, now animated with love or lust or something for Cyndi and she couldn’t rain on his parade. So she plastered on a smile and she nodded while inside she was thinking if she could just move that week in France forward ten days, and maybe extend it indefinitely, life could be so much easier.

  The travel insurance was booked, printed out, filed in a Poly Pocket and stored in the spanking-new manila folder. The hire car – a Ford Focus, sensible and economic, complete with Sat Nav – had been booked and the booking details had been printed out, put in a different Poly Pocket and also stored in the manila folder. A travel guide to Saint Jeannet had been printed out and stored. And Ava had made sure they had priority boarding for their flight, were seated together and had extra baggage allowance for the return journey. She still had those stunningpurple shoes on her mind.

  The planning had taken her mind off the fact that she still hadn’t been in touch with Karen and Karen hadn’t been in touch with her. Connor had tried to reassure her that it was all fine and it would all blow over. He had even asked her if it was such a bad thing anyway – Karen clearly riled and annoyed her. But Ava couldn’t shake Karen’s words, or indeed what she had said in return, from her head.She felt weighed down by the guilt of it. Sick to the stomach, boke-on-standby guilty about it. And when she wasn’t lost in holiday planning, and packing her suitcase with the preci
sion of an army technical officer, she felt really quite weepy about it. When she had said goodbye to her class that day, wishing them well for their summer holidays and their big progression into Primary Two, she’d had to lock herself in her storeroom for ten minutes afterwards while sobs racked her body. Sure, she was usually a bit emotional to see her charges move on but this was excessive even by her overemotional standards.

  She had left work, weighed down by cards and boxes of chocolates, feeling exhausted, and had surprised herself by falling asleep on the sofa – taking full advantage of Maisie being on a playdate with one of her friends from nursery – and remaining unconscious until Connor had arrived in from work.

  “Pull yourself together,” she muttered as she lifted the phone to call Hope and finalise where they would meet before their flight in just three days.

  “Hey, cos!” Hope answered cheerfully. “Are you excited yet?”

  “Truthfully,” Ava replied, “I can’t wait. I usually feel a little nervous about travelling and I thought at this stage I would be going through the horrors at leaving Maisie but I think I need this.”

  “You’re preaching to the converted.”

  “More developments in the Long Sad Story?” Ava asked, imagining at least that Hope’s Long Sad Story would be more exciting than her own.

  “One or two.”

  “Ah grand, well, more to talk about on the famous terrace!”

  “Believe me,” Hope said, “you will love the terrace.”

  They chatted on for a while, easily, and made arrangements to meet in Departures after check-in at Belfast International Airport. Ava would drive the hire car because Hope hadn’t driven in years. Hope would do the mapreading and ask for directions if needed as she spoke French. It would all be lovely and uncomplicated.

  When Hope ended the call a good half hour later she had a smile on her face.The conversation had been a lovely distraction from the impending permanent arrival of Cyndi into her personal space.