Hello, Heartbreak Page 10

  I’d rather have chewed dried shite off a donkey’s arse. What was it with my friends wanting to set me up with people who repulsed me? First Greg, and now I’d have my pick of the anaemic ferrets. Had any of them actually got to know me over the years at all? Or had they been zoning out all along, just pretending to listen to me anytime I’d opened my mouth?

  And what match?

  ‘What match?’ I asked.

  ‘Liverpool versus Bolton. It should be a terrific game,’ said Susie, smiling broadly. Definitely feigned interest.

  ‘Oh. What time does it start? Sleepless in Seattle is on later.’

  ‘No fuckin’ chance, man, we’re not watchin’ that fuckin’ poncy shit about girls wantin’ a ride and cryin’ and shit. The fuckin’ match is on!’ He closed the discussion by shovelling another fistful of greasy chips into his mouth.

  Should I remind him that I lived here and he didn’t?

  Better not. I had a lot of work to do tomorrow and I wouldn’t get much done in a neckbrace and an arm sling. I decided to hunt Keelin down for some post-Jonathan reencounter discussions instead. Hopefully she’d tell me I hadn’t made too much of an arse of myself.

  ‘And then you did what?’ Keelin shrieked, as she whipped her head out of her wardrobe. She was taking off her work gear. ‘You must have looked like a beast – you haven’t waxed in months!’

  Obviously this was not going to be one of those compassionate-lying moments. I’d been kind of hoping to hear something along the lines of ‘No, listen, I’d say he’s actually fallen in love with you. Honestly, guys love it when you do quirky, stupid stuff, they find it endearing. And perhaps he’s spent a lot of time on the Continent and is used to hairy women.’

  I stared at her pleadingly. Lie, woman, lie! I’d started from the beginning and told her about my slight indiscretion in the bathroom at Caroline’s party. And now I wished I hadn’t.

  I also wished I was dead.

  I watched her as she rooted through her wardrobe for something to wear. Silence, as she crawled even further into it. What was she doing? Looking for the door to Narnia?

  ‘Here they are, my new jeans – had to hide them from Susie. She’s such a thief.’ She reefed the tag off and poured herself into them. Wow, they were gorgeous. I might have to steal them some time. I’d just blame Susie. She’s such a thief.

  ‘Listen,’ Keelin said, as she surveyed her arse in the mirror, ‘I bet he didn’t even notice the grey knickers…’

  ‘Do you think? So maybe it wasn’t that bad, then?’

  ‘No, not at all… snughf, snughf.’ Was she sneezing? Was Keelin allergic to Dermot now, too? Ah, poor Dermot…

  She wasn’t sneezing.

  She was laughing!

  ‘… I’d say he didn’t notice the knickers because he was too distracted by your thigh brows,’ she shrieked, as she collapsed into a heap at the end of her bed. ‘Izzy, I’m sorry for laughing, but it’s just so… funny!’ she wheezed.

  ‘Keelin, shut up! I already feel like such a twat. It’s not funny.’

  ‘It is funny.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I know.’

  After Keelin had got over the hysteria of my flashing episode, we spent the next hour chewing over the details of that afternoon: the encounter at the front door, my flame-red cheeks, the awkward walk up the stairs with my bum in his face. She even offered the well overdue ‘No, seriously, it’s graaaaaaand!’ lie once or twice when I told her about my severe sense-of-humour malfunction.

  ‘But I couldn’t think of anything funny to say – he probably thinks I’m a boring shite.’

  ‘Well, it was better than coming over all girlie and pathetic and laughing insanely at every little thing he said.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Seriously, it’s graaaaaaand!’

  ‘No, but I eventually did come over all girlie and pathetic. And I’d say the laughing was more manic than insane.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’d even go so far as to say my laughter was disturbing. Think the Joker in Batman. My makeup probably wasn’t too far off his either, with the amount of sweating I’d done.’

  ‘Makeup meltdown.’

  ‘Literally. So after we went into my boss’s office to discuss the presentation, I knew I shouldn’t be doing it, but I couldn’t help it! I must have been trying to compensate for all the damage I’d already done, but I just couldn’t stop. I was like an eight-year-old at a McFly concert. I’m telling you, all he’d have to say was “profit shares” or “Revenue rebates” and I’d literally collapse into a fit of laughter, stamping my foot and slapping the desk. It was horrific. And, of course, I couldn’t spell or write or add… and when he did try to help me subtract four hundred euro from nine hundred and fifty, all I could do, after an agonizing three-minute pause, was snort-giggles!’

  ‘Oh, Izzy…’

  ‘And to make matters worse, all my boss could do was make awkward, apologetic tut-tuts and say, “I don’t know what her problem is, she’s usually quite articulate,” over and over again. I’d say he’ll send me for a drugs test tomorrow.’

  ‘I wouldn’t blame him if he did.’

  ‘Neither would I.’

  ‘Well, either he’ll send you for a drugs test or he’ll set up a crèche in the office for you so you’ll have somewhere to play with your bricks and do your colouring-in assignments.’

  ‘Ha-bloody-ha.’

  Keelin had just launched into her latest update on getting Simon to fall in love with her when the doorbell rang. All I managed to piece together before we both moved off was that his stapler had broken so he’d asked for the lend of hers, which on Keelin’s terms was pretty much him saying he wanted to sleep with her. I really was incredibly out of touch. I didn’t understand the intricacies of flirting at all. Laurence had asked if he could borrow my yellow highlighter today, but I’m fairly sure it wasn’t a ploy to have sex with me. Anyway, I was glad that at least one of us had had a successful day at the office.

  As we made our way down the stairs, no one could have blamed us for thinking we’d been teleported to Ballymun circa 1988. Keelin inhaled sharply as she executed a Chinese burn on my right arm.

  ‘Keelin! Ow! For the love of God, woman! Are you trying to break me? You know the kind of day I’ve had.’

  ‘Looks like it’s about to get a whole lot worse.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ I whispered, as Redzer or Buzzer or Scuzzer, or whoever the hell he was, launched into a bargaining war with either Anto or Shanno or Deco or whoever the hell he was. The anaemic ferrets had arrived.

  ‘No, man, fuckin’ six cans of Dutch for five yo-yos [euros?].’

  ‘Bleedin’ robbed, man. Me oul one got seven Dutchies for four snots [again, euros?]. If not, that guy definitely got a raw deal there, especially when there were yo-yos on offer too with the fuckin’ club points in Crazy Prices.’

  ‘Crazy Prices, me hole! They do be robbin’ all the cents off ya!’

  ‘Wha’? How the fuck do dey rob the sense off ya? Dey’re a supermarket! You’ve got your bird to be doin’ tha’, robbin’ the sense off ya.’

  They all high-fived each other. I clung to Keelin, who was hunched beside me, her hands hanging limply under her chin. I wanted to tell her she looked like a little squirrel. Maybe later.

  ‘No, cents.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, sense!’

  ‘No, cents!’

  ‘No sense? Wha’? Are you callin’ me fuckin’ thick, are ya?’

  ‘Bleedin’ robbed me so, the oul baldy prick in the offy.’

  ‘Well, fuck it, at least you got your wacky half price cos you were ridin’ yer man’s sister.’

  ‘True, man. Did ya get the bumper box of skins and the free lighter off your man for the two jips?’ (Euro. I think. I hope! Either these guys had little pet names for our national currency or they were involved in all sorts of sexual favours.)

  ‘No, the pigs came along an’ f
uckin’ hauled his arse away before I got the skins, but I did manage to swipe four pairs of Adidas socks off him before they dragged him away. They’re only fuckin’ gorgeous, man.’

  At this rate if someone had thrown in seven rolls of wrapping paper and a free singing Santa we’d be set for Christmas.

  Keelin and I eased our way down the stairs, hoping we wouldn’t be spotted. Then we could leg it into the kitchen and hide there for the rest of the night. I had never had the pleasure of being introduced to Aidan’s friends, and if birds of a feather do flock together, it was a pleasure I think I could just about manage to live without, thank you very much.

  ‘Aido, man, you were right! Your bird’s mates are fuckin’ rides!’

  Too late.

  Three heads turned to face us: two shaved and one with spiky hair and a badly peroxided fringe. (I was fast becoming obsessed with silky hair and I wanted to run over and put leave-in conditioner in his damaged tresses.) We stood at the bottom step, grinning back at them as if we were tickled pink that Aidan’s friends had finally come to visit us and show us what the world was really all about. It was probably nerves. And who could blame us?

  ‘I could get you some if you liked,’ said the scariest-looking one in the green tracksuit.

  ‘Sorry, pardon?’ I asked, still grinning like a little girl on her First Communion day.

  ‘Some Adidas socks, man, they’re dead handy.’

  ‘Socks tend to be a bit that way, I suppose,’ I replied. It was like being back in Odds and Sods, where I’d felt like I’d just come off the set of Sense and Sensibility, as if no one would understand me without subtitles.

  Eventually Keelin broke the silence: ‘Anyone for trout?’

  Keelin, Dermot, a bottle of wine and I spent the rest of the evening in the back garden to keep out of the way of the football hooligans. How did Susie survive the night? She was so slight and delicate. Anytime a Liverpool player scored a goal, was fouled or sent off, I could imagine her caught helplessly in a cyclone of kicking and punching tracksuits, gold chains, hair gel, sovereigns and Adidas socks. Maybe she’d got into an anti-thug protective outfit after we’d gone outside. You can find just about anything on the Internet, these days.

  About halfway through the match, our next-door neighbours phoned to see if we were okay. ‘We’re fine honestly,’ Keelin assured them.

  ‘Are you sure? It’s just that we can hear people screaming, “Come on, move it, yous lazy fucks! Faster, faster or we’ll kick the fuckin heads off ya!” We were worried you were all being kidnapped by a drugs cartel or something.’

  ‘Just some extremely excitable Liverpool fans over to watch the match. Sorry, we’ll try to keep it down.’

  After ninety minutes of gangland warfare in the sitting room, Aidan and his friends flooded the kitchen to roll more joints and get more cans from the fridge.

  ‘Bleeding robbed we were, man,’ Green Tracksuit moaned, as he plonked a gigantic chocolate fudge brownie in the microwave. ‘Three fuckin’ two to those Bolton bastards!’ The microwave beeped and he took out the brownie. I would have had him earmarked as more of a raw-pig’s-flesh type. It was only when a distinctively sweet smell clawed its way through the air that it dawned on me that the giant chocolate fudge brownie was not actually a chocolate fudge brownie but was, in fact, the largest slab of hash I’d seen in my whole life.

  I watched as Green Tracksuit diced it into twenty smaller portions with our kitchen knife. Hey! That was the knife my gran had bought me as a moving-in present: the handle was shaped like a cute little housewife wearing an apron and slippers and holding a steaming apple pie. I felt sorry for her as I watched her hack away at the dark brown slab. If Gran had been here to witness it, we’d be calling for a priest. Poor Gran. She’d thought the knife would unearth a repressed desire in me to make my own apple pies. It hadn’t.

  ‘Sorry, I can’t sort ye out with some wacky. It’s just that it’s already been bought, ye know, and they’re comin’ around now to collect it off us.’

  I couldn’t find my voice to answer Green Tracksuit and tell him I was already sorted, that I had my own enormous block of hash upstairs on my dressing-table beside the picture of my gran and my powder puffs. It was only then that I noticed the large bag of white pills perched on the counter. And just as the fudge brownie had turned out not to be a fudge brownie, I doubted that the little white pills were actually an industrial quantity of Tic Tacs.

  They were using our house to sell drugs. To God knew who! Probably some tattoo brigade out on parole for murdering their own families! Coming to our cute little house with the pink walls and the fairy-lights!

  I looked at Keelin. She was staring wide-eyed at the pills. I could see beads of perspiration on her forehead. I figured she’d just ruled out the Tic Tac possibility, too.

  I stormed out of the kitchen to find Susie. This was not going to happen here.

  I found her in the sitting room having a blazing row with Aidan, surprise, surprise.

  ‘Izzy, hi,’ she said nervously, as I pushed open the door.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ I knew she was already upset, but I just couldn’t help it. I was shaking with anger. Aidan shrugged his shoulders. How on earth had she got herself involved in all of this?

  ‘It’s nothing. We’re just having a bit of an argument.’

  ‘Does it have anything to do with the drugs operation about to take place in our kitchen?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Izzy, I didn’t know they were going to do it here,’ she mumbled, unable to look at me.

  ‘Aidan, get them out of here now!’ I heard Keelin screech from the top of the stairs. I turned to see the Adidas-sock lover with the badly peroxided fringe strutting down the stairs, shaking his head.

  ‘He was in my bedroom! Poking through my underwear drawer!’ she yelled, her cheeks purple with rage.

  ‘Would ya fuckin’ relax? I was just lookin’ for a lighter or a box of matches,’ he replied, calm as ever.

  ‘In my underwear drawer?’ Keelin’s eyes were bulging so much I was sure they were about to pop out of their sockets and plop down the stairs. Suddenly, she ran down after him and grabbed the black silky thong that was sticking out of his back pocket. ‘Pervert!’ she roared, while he just looked at Aidan with a nice-one grin and a nod. I could see Susie was mortified.

  This was a nightmare. I’d rather have pitched a tent in aisle three of Odds and Sods for two weeks solid than be with this mob. I wanted them out so I could disinfect the whole house.

  Just as Green Tracksuit poked his head out of the kitchen to ask me if I had any freezer bags to separate the pills into, the doorbell rang.

  The family slayers!

  Everyone stood eyeballing each other. Nobody spoke.

  ‘Well, it’s your fuckin’ gaff…’ Thong Thief said to me, as he jerked a thumb towards the door.

  Where were my manners? How inhospitable of me.

  Well, I was going to sort this situation. I didn’t care who they were, or how many of their family members they’d killed. I was going to tell them that they had the wrong house and that the only drugs we had here were Nurofen Extra and the contraceptive pill. And they were welcome to them if they left us alone.

  I grabbed Keelin, then picked up Dermot and tucked him under my arm. I didn’t want to run the risk of one of the knackers eating him while my back was turned. We scuttled towards the front door, propelled by pure adrenalin. The blood was pulsing through my head so fast I thought I was about to have a brain haemorrhage.

  ‘Open it!’ Keelin ordered, under her breath.

  ‘No, you!’

  ‘You do it – just tell them to piss off. Tell them they have the wrong address.’

  My heart beat in sync with the thudding on the front door. ‘Okay, okay!’

  I leant forward slowly and opened it.

  ‘Hello. Is everything okay, ma’am?’

  ‘Sorry, what? Yes! No! What?’

  I didn’t know whether to la
ugh or cry as I blinked at the two uniformed policemen standing at our front door.

  ‘One of your neighbours reported a few disturbances coming from your house,’ one of the guards explained. ‘Ye’re looking a bit shook up, girls. Is everything okay with ye?’

  I struggled to bring the two blurred navy blobs standing in front of me into focus. ‘It was the football!’ I answered, a little too enthusiastically ‘Bolton won three–two! Can you believe it?’

  ‘Football?’ the navy blob on the left asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Keelin. ‘We were watching the match and we all got a bit excited and were making lots of noise so our neighbours probably thought there was something dodgy going on, like a robbery or something, but we told them we were fine because they asked us were we being kidnapped by a drugs cartel or something – can you believe it? So we said no, we were grand, that there were no drugs here at all. Because there are no drugs here at all. There’s an ashtray on our coffee-table that I stole from the pub around the corner, but I’ll put it back if you want me to…’

  Keelin had gone mad. I could actually see steam rising from the top of her head.

  ‘Em, okay. Well, it’s standard procedure for us to have a quick look around to make sure everything’s in order,’ the navy blob on the right affirmed. I still couldn’t focus properly and I was beginning to sweat profusely.

  ‘Very kind, but no need. Thank you and goodbye.’ Keelin tried to close the door, but one of the navy blobs wedged his foot in it.

  ‘Excuse me, girls, step away from the door, please,’ they chorused sternly.

  There was nothing we could do. We pinned our backs against the wall as we watched them head into our house.

  ‘Come on in, yiz shower of fucks!’ Green Tracksuit called from the kitchen. ‘We have all the stuff sorted out for yiz!’

  ‘Is that right, lads?’ one of the policemen asked sarcastically, as he strolled into the kitchen. ‘Well, well, well, what do we have here, then, hah?’

  After a two-minute silence, Thong Thief and Aidan simultaneously burst into tears. I might have roared laughing at them if I wasn’t already preoccupied with the thought of rotting in jail for the next forty years.