Lifesaving for Beginners (28 page)

Minnie says, ’Don’t worry.
I’m not going to ask you to be godmother or anything like that.’
But the way she says it suggests that perhaps she would ask me.
She’d like to ask me.
If I were different.
A different person.
A better person.

She says, ‘Well?
What’s your story?’

‘Me?
Not much.’

‘Don’t fuck around, Kavanagh.
The last time you called out here without letting me know was on your way home from the hospital.
When Ed was sick that time.’

‘I was worried.
I thought he was having a bloody heart attack.’

‘I know.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t have called in.
I’m merely illustrating the point that you don’t call in unless it’s some kind of an emergency.
Now, what is it?’

I take a breath.
It goes straight to my head.
It feels like the first one I’ve taken in ages.
‘I met Thomas the other day.’
I thought I was going to tell her about the man on the phone, but it looks like I’m not.

Minnie opens her mouth.

I head her off at the pass.
‘And don’t say, “So?”’

Minnie swallows the word like it’s one of those gigantic vitamin pills that are hard to get down, no matter how much water you drink.

‘Am I allowed to say, “And?”’

‘That’s pretty much the same as “So?”.’

Minnie makes her lips as narrow as they will go, like she’s trying to prevent words getting past them that might be considered offensive.
Then she says, ‘OK, then, what else?
Did you talk?
What did he say?’

‘He’s still going out with Sandra.’

‘Sarah.’
Minnie tries not to sound impatient.
‘Kat, I don’t understand.
I really don’t.
He would have taken you back.
All you had to do was apologise.
For all that carry-on after the accident.
And that ridiculous thing with Nicolas .
.
.’

‘It wasn’t ridiculous.’
Except it was.
And not just because Nicolas is quite a bit younger than me.
There were loads of other reasons.

‘It was ridiculous.
You said he wore a T-shirt under his shirt.
A Celine Dion T-shirt.’

‘I said I thought it was Celine Dion.
I wasn’t sure.’

‘If you thought it was Celine Dion, then it was definitely Celine Dion.
There’s no mistaking that woman.’

‘I was telling you about meeting Thomas.
The other day.’

‘Go on.’

It’s tricky to know where to begin so I begin at the end.

‘Ed told him about Faith.’

‘Faith?’

‘Remember when I got pregnant when I was fifteen and I went into labour on the couch in your mother’s front room and then I had a baby later on that evening – at twelve minutes past seven – in Holles Street?’

I don’t look at Minnie when I say any of that.
I look at the floor.
I recite it like it’s a poem I learned a long time ago but never forgot.
Like Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’.
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
No one forgets that one, do they?
It’s nice and short, for a start.
And bleak.
That was one pretty bleak poem.
I did it in third year.
Again.
I had to stay back because I missed the Inter.
Cert.
the first time round.
Minnie got to wear the blue jumper and walk up and down the blue stairs that year.
The year I had to repeat third year.
I spent most of that year in the library, reading Stephen King.
It
.
That was my favourite one.
I’ve never been able to go to the circus since.
The clowns bring back the dark corners of that book.
The dark corners of third year, when you’re supposed to be in fourth year.
On the blue stairs.
Wearing a blue jumper.

That’s when I started to write.
In the library.
I’d forgotten that.
Pages and pages of horror.
Awful stuff.
I don’t know what I did with it.
I must have thrown it away.
I really can’t remember.

Minnie says, ‘Yes.’
Her voice is quiet.
Much quieter than usual.

The thing is, we never talked about it, me and Minnie.
Not afterwards.
Not really.
I mean, yes, Minnie called round when I came home, said she was glad she didn’t have to hang around with a fatso anymore and asked me if it was true about hospital doctors being rides?
We talked about school and the Inter.
Cert.
and what she thought she got, which had no bearing on what she actually got (it was an easy result to remember because she got As in every subject), and the fact that I would have to repeat the year and how I was going to manage without her (badly, as it turned out), and how she was going to manage without me (very well, as it turned out).

But we didn’t talk about the baby.
Not once.
Maybe some adult – my mother or her mother, perhaps – told Minnie not to say anything.
I never asked.
I was just grateful that I didn’t have to talk about it.
It made everything more bearable.
Not talking about it.
And after a while of not talking about it and just going about my ordinary, dull, boring life, it was almost as if it had never happened.
Not really.
It didn’t seem real anymore.
Perhaps I had imagined it.
A bad dream I had that woke me in the night once, a long time ago.

Minnie waits.

I say, ‘Well, the baby was a girl.
A baby girl.
Faith.
That’s her name.
And now she’s twenty-four and she wants to meet me.
I got a letter.
I got three letters, actually.
From an adoption agency in London.
It said that her name is Faith and she’s twenty-four and she wants to meet me.’
I pick up my cup and put it down again.

Minnie opens her mouth and then closes it.
She pushes her hair off her face.
She gets up.
She says, ‘Christ.’
She goes to the cupboard where the serious drink is kept and takes out a bottle of whiskey that has dust all over it, like a shroud.
She pours a measure into a heavy, cut-glass crystal tumbler.

Minnie-if-you’re-drinking-you’re-not-driving Minnie.
That Minnie.
She hands me the glass and I toss it down.
It burns.

Minnie says, ‘Christ,’ again.

I say, ‘Anything else?’

She shakes her head.
She looks different when she doesn’t know the answer.
She looks like someone else.

After a while, she says, ‘Did you respond to the letters?’

‘No.’

Minnie seems unsurprised by this.

‘Does your mother know?’

I nod.

‘What did she say?’

‘Nothing, really.’
Minnie nods, again unsurprised.

For a while, we sit there, the pair of us.
In two easy chairs in front of an enormous flat screen that is turned off.
For a while, all you can hear is a clock ticking somewhere.
It sounds like a timer, counting down the seconds until something big happens.

Minnie arranges herself straighter in her chair and I can almost hear her changing gears.
‘So,’ she says, back to brisk.
‘What are you going to do?’

I shrug.
Shake my head.
Minnie leans towards me, puts her hands on my arms.
I’d say she’d like to shake me a little bit but she doesn’t.

‘What is it you want, Kat?’

That’s easy.
‘I want none of this to have happened.’

Minnie nods, sits back in her seat, crosses her legs.
‘Let’s just suppose for a moment that that’s not possible.’

‘Well, you asked me what I wanted.
I was just saying .
.
.’

‘What else?’

I open my mouth.

‘Something realistic.’

I close my mouth.

‘Come on, Kat, you must have some sort of a plan.’
In Minnie’s world, people have plans.
In my world, people have hiding places.

I look at my watch.
‘It’s getting late.
I’d better go.’
I don’t stand up.
I sit on the chair in Minnie’s gigantic kitchen and think about the red flashing light.
I’ll have to press the button when I get home.
No way I can just leave it.

Minnie stands up.
‘Wait.’
Something about her tone, her stance, her new shininess, makes me suspect that she is thinking about hugging me.
Minnie and I don’t hug.
It’s like an unspoken pact we made a long time ago.
If she hugs me now, I think I’ll come undone.
I really do.

Into the kitchen at that precise moment walks Maurice, back from Mensa.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see him.

Maurice hugs me.
He’s terribly tactile.
His anorak makes a swishing noise when he moves.
He smells of anchovies.
Minnie was right about them.

Maurice takes down the hood of his anorak and says, ‘So, Kat, how’s life in the technical writing world?’

I picked technical writing because it’s such a safe haven.
Normal people don’t know anything about technical writing.
But Maurice knows.
Probably because he’s a genius.

And he’s interested in it.

He says, ‘What project are you working on at the moment?’
He always asks that.
It’s fine, though.
I know a hell of a lot about technical writing when you consider that I’ve never done a day’s work in it in my life.
I subscribe to a dreadfully dull blog about technical writing issues.
It’s called
Technical Writing Issues
.

Other than that, I make it up.
And because I’m a fiction writer I’m pretty good at that too.
I tell him about some obscure Java product that hasn’t come to market yet.
He’s heard of it.

‘Is that the New Field Communications Library?’
he wants to know.

‘No, it’s more for the Augmented Reality stuff on mobile,’ I tell him.

He whistles.
‘Impressive,’ he says and I take a step back because of his breath, which is atrociously anchovy.
Minnie doesn’t notice.
In fact, she puts her face right in front of his and kisses him, as if there is nothing anchovy about his breath at all.

‘I told Kat our news.’

‘I thought we weren’t telling people until week twelve?’
Maurice smiles when he says this but it is a bit of an effort of a smile, as if he wishes that there was no one else in the kitchen – or perhaps the world – only him and Minnie and Mensa and the baby in Minnie’s belly.

Minnie says, ‘I just told Kat.
She not people.
Besides, it’s practically twelve weeks.
And Kat won’t tell anyone.
Sure you won’t?’
Minnie’s smile is directed at me and edged with menace, like a warning of the things Minnie will do to me if I decide to spill the beans.

I shake my head and say, ‘Congratulations,’ which gives Maurice an excuse to hug me again and I hold my breath so I don’t inhale the anchovies, and Minnie is saying something but I can’t hear what it is because of the swishing of Maurice’s anorak.