‘Go through to the kitchen, Katie, if you wouldn’t mind,’ says Jude as Harry sets her down on the sofa, ‘and put the kettle on. Then we’ll talk about what to do.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ says Harry firmly. ‘I’m going back for your crutches. I’ll wait till a bit later, when the roads are quieter. I’ll be there and back in no time.’
At least three hours, probably more. I wouldn’t call it no time.
‘I can’t let you do it…’ begins Jude, but he silences her with a raised hand.
‘I absolutely insist. I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’m going to pick up my cousin, and we can drive down there together. We’ll have a meal at the same pub, where we had our lunch, and drive back later in the evening. Is that OK?’
‘Well, if you really want to do that – it’d make me happier to think you were having an evening out, with your cousin, so it would,’ says Jude doubtfully.
‘Excellent. That’s decided, then. Get the kettle on, girls!’ he adds playfully.
‘There are some chocolate biscuits in the cupboard,’ Jude calls after us.
‘What do you make of all this?’ Emily asks me as we’re standing in the neat little kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil.
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it? I knew Jude would choose somewhere nice, but I had no idea how…’
‘No, Katie – not the flat. I mean Harry. What’s he after, do you think?’
‘After?’ I ask faintly, pretending not to understand. I busy myself with the teabags and biscuits, aware that she’s watching me.
‘Yes. What’s he after? Going all that way, halfway back to Dublin, to look for Jude’s crutches…’
‘He’s going to phone the pub first, to make sure.’
‘Yes, I know. But even so – he’s certainly putting himself out, isn’t he?’
‘I think he’s just a nice guy. And he feels bad about leaving the crutches behind, that’s all.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Hmm, what?’
‘Oh, nothing. Call me suspicious, but I think he’s trying to impress us.’
‘Well, fair enough, I
am
quite impressed.’
‘Exactly,’ she says, giving me a pointed look.
I turn away again and look in the fridge for the milk. Everything in here is tidy too. No smelly remains of vegetables going rotten in the drawer at the bottom. No mucky crusty dollops of spilt yoghurt or dried blood from dripping steaks. It’s hard to believe that a man has been living here.
‘That’s who I’m
most
impressed with,’ I say, turning back and surveying the clean work tops and empty sink. No washing-up piled up waiting to be done. No coffee grouts slopped into the sink congealing around the plughole. It’s just miraculous!
‘Who?’
‘Fergus. The mysterious, house-trained, house-proud boyfriend. I admit I had my doubts about him, but now I can’t wait to meet him!’
And this is so bizarre, I feel like I must be dreaming. Because, at the exact same minute I’m telling Emily I can’t wait to meet Fergus, the doorbell rings and we hear Harry go to answer it while we’re carrying the tea and biscuits through to the lounge.
‘Hello young man,’ says someone with a very broad Cork accent. ‘I saw the car outside – would Judith be back from her trip? I’m Roisin from upstairs, and I’m very pleased to meet you, so I am. Shall I come in? Only I’ve brought Fergus.’
I nearly drop the tray with all the mugs of tea all over the rose pink carpet with no curry stains. Roisin appears in the lounge doorway, jumps in surprise at the sight of Jude and her plastered foot, and deposits a very small, short-haired cream-coloured cat in her lap.
‘He’s been a good boy while you’ve been away – haven’t you, Fergus!’ she croons. ‘But for the love of God! What have you been doing to yourself with your foot?’
You could hear a pin drop; if it wasn’t for the cat, who’s settled down immediately and comfortably on Jude’s lap and is purring louder than most of the men I’ve ever heard snoring.
‘Fergus!’ I say faintly, staring at Jude. ‘You’ve… you’ve named your cat after your
boyfriend
?’
‘No,’ she says, with a long, thin sigh, without looking up at us. ‘No, Katie. Not at all. I should have told you. I was going to, when Harry’d gone. My boyfriend…
is
a cat. This is Fergus, everybody.’
The silence grows deeper. We don’t seem to want to look at each other. Roisin hovers, half turns towards the door, obviously uncertain whether to stay or go. Harry gets to his feet. I pick up one of the mugs, meaning to hand it to him, to tell him to sit down, don’t go, stay for tea and biscuits. But he’s not thinking of leaving. He walks over to the sofa where Jude’s sitting, bends down, takes Fergus’s delicate little paw in one hand, shakes it very solemnly and says:
‘Good evening, Fergus. Very pleased to meet you.’
Everyone laughs. And Jude looks up at him, gratitude mixed with the embarrassment in her eyes. Roisin sits down and stays for tea and biscuits. And I look across at my oldest friend, sitting on her perfect sofa in her perfect flat where no slobby messy man has ever set his muddy feet on the perfect pink carpet, where her
boyfriend
sits on her lap, purring and looking at her with adoration in his slitty green eyes.
And I wonder if things can possibly get any fucking stranger.
Fergus is a Burmese, two years old, very clean and very affectionate. I got him from Kathleen who runs the pub at the end of the road. She’d bought him as a kitten, the runt of a litter, but her other two cats didn’t accept him and she was fed up with the fighting.
‘He needs to be an only child, so he does, bless his heart,’ she told me. ‘The other two eejits won’t give him a minute’s peace, poor little devil.’
He had red angry claw lacerations on his little pink nose, and a badly bitten left ear. What could I do? I said I’d take him in temporarily to get him away from his tormentors while Kathleen tried to find a home for him. It took nearly three weeks for his ear to heal up properly, and by then I’d fallen in love with him. And he with me. It was so nice to come home after work and find someone waiting for me, purring with pleasure at seeing me, winding himself around my legs as I dished up his food, jumping onto my lap as soon as I sat down and gazing at me as if I was the most wonderful person in the whole world.
I sent Katie an e-mail:
I’ve got myself a new boyfriend! He’s name’s Fergus, he’s sweet and funny and I love him to death!
I was going to wait for her reaction before I told her he was really a cat, and then we’d have a laugh about it together. But her reaction was so over-the-top, so full of patronising shit about how wonderful that I’d finally found myself a man, how much she hoped he’d be good to me and that we’d be happy together, blah blah blah, that I felt humiliated and cross and didn’t bother to reply. And as the months went by and she carried on e-mailing me and phoning me with this attitude of surprised excitement about the amazing news that poor old Jude had actually managed to pull, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth. I built up a little fictitious character for Fergus the boyfriend, not terribly far removed from Fergus the cat-friend except that I missed out things like him bringing mice in through the cat-flap. And I’m sorry – I know it was lying. I know it was silly, and deceitful, and in the end I’ve probably ended up making a complete arse of myself. But Katie was asking for it.
I’m her oldest friend and I shouldn’t say it, but she can be so
bloody
annoying. She really doesn’t have the faintest idea how easy life is for girls like her. Even when we were still at school together in England, going through that awful stage round about puberty when I spent my entire time suffering agonies of insecurity about everything –
everything –
from the way I looked to the way I walked, the way I spoke and even the way I smelt – even at that age, Katie always appeared supremely confident. And why shouldn’t she? She never had a single spot or pimple in her life. Her hair was never greasy or flyaway or just
wrong
– it always hung, sleek and glossy like a shower of dark satin. She didn’t need to worry, like I did constantly – about what might happen when she opened her mouth to speak in a crowd, how her voice might wobble or squeak or dry up altogether, leaving everyone to laugh while she blushed and stammered and wanted to die. She didn’t even have to give it a thought, because all she had to do was walk into a room, smile and laugh and say ‘Hi!’ to everyone, and they’d be falling at her feet, wanting to be her friend, wanting to be in her team, wanting to invite her to their birthday parties and their holiday outings and make up foursomes with the best-looking boys in the class.
I tried everything. I saved up for expensive clothes. I learnt how to use make-up properly. I went to the best hairdressers in town and copied the latest styles. I got into the habit, very early on, of taking care of myself, doing my nails properly and never letting my eyebrows get out of control. I even read books about how to walk tall and talk to people confidently. They didn’t help. I just felt even more of a failure than ever when I still hung around at the edge of the group, stammering with nerves when anyone asked me a question.
Because Katie was my best friend, I lived in her reflected glory. I knew people thought of me as Katie’s quiet little sidekick, but I didn’t mind – it meant all the popular girls and boys in the class accepted me. They were generally nice to me. They’d say kind things about my clothes or my hair and tell me I was pretty – but I knew it was only because of all the hard work with the make-up and blow-drying. It wasn’t much fun because I was scared to go swimming or run around on wet and windy days the way they did, without a care in the world, unless I had my hair stuck down with about a gallon of hairspray.
And then my parents ruined my life forever, the way parents can when you’re fifteen, by taking me away from Katie, away from my school and all the friends I had, not just away but
abroad
. At the time, I thought my life was over, that I might as well be dead and I’d never get over it. Of course, I did, and I made friends too, but what I never did get over was my shyness – and I didn’t have Katie to help me any more.
We spent our holidays together, but the gulf between our lives seemed to grow wider every year. When Katie visited, and told me about her boyfriends, her parties and discos, her first kiss, the first time she fell in love, the first time she had sex… I listened, I laughed with her, I was happy for her… and I never stopped wishing it was me.
‘When are you going to get yourself a boyfriend, Jude?’ she used to ask cheerfully, completely oblivious to the fact that I was trying desperately, I’d have done anything to get one, but no-one ever seemed to notice me. I’d spend hours getting myself ready to go out, only to sit in the corner and wonder why I’d bothered.
In the end, I got very drunk at a party at university, threw myself at a fellow who was almost as drunk as me, and kind of ordered him to have sex with me. I badly needed to get rid of my virginity. Needless to say it wasn’t a pleasant experience, partly because he threw up as soon as he’d finished and partly because I passed out before
I
finished, but at least I didn’t have to spend the rest of my life wondering about it. I went out with a couple of guys after that, but normally they only wanted sex and then lost interest. And I didn’t enjoy the sex so what was the point? I might have tried being a lesbian, but none of the girls seemed to fancy me either.
I know Katie’s always been anxious about me. But I don’t like her anxiety. You know what annoys me most about it? Her continual nagging at me to
lighten up
. To stop worrying about my hair; to go out without my make-up on and
enjoy the freedom
. Freedom? The thought of it horrifies me. I’d feel even more vulnerable than I do already. What does she know about such things? She runs and hops and skips through her life, in her frayed jeans and trainers with her hair flying carelessly around her face, while I totter self-consciously beside her, in my high heels and my war paint and hairspray and my fixed smile. We must look an odd couple of friends. But I love her to bits and that’s the trouble. I can’t be jealous of her because she’s my best friend and I love her. So what could I do? If I invented a boyfriend, at least it kept her happy and kept her off my back. And it worked a treat.
Of course, one lie always leads to another, and I found myself having to make up a whole package of excuses for Fergus. Why he couldn’t come to the wedding; why he couldn’t come and pick me up from hospital. No wonder Katie and Emily were beginning to get that anxious look in their eyes. Well, I know I could have told them the truth by now. To be sure I should have done, especially once I realised they were coming back to Kinsale with me. But there was a wicked little part of me that was getting a bit of a kick out of seeing the disapproving glances between them. Imagining them thinking:
Poor Jude, sounds like she’s picked a right bastard – what a shame for her – after so long on her own and all!
I know it was mean of me, but I thought I’d keep up the joke just for a bit longer – till we got home and they saw Fergus for themselves. I thought we’d have a huge laugh about it all together. But looking at them now, they just look totally stunned and to be honest, I think they’re wondering whether I’m completely off me head. Poor old Jude, still on the shelf, can’t get a real man, has to make one up. Bloody sad, probably needs therapy.
I suppose I ought to put their minds at rest and tell them that actually, it’s been the most tremendous fun inventing Fergus The Boyfriend. Shame he wasn’t real – although to be honest, I’d probably have ditched him long ago if he was!
We drink our tea, eat our biscuits, and try to keep off the subject of Fergus. Not Fergus-the-Cat – we’ve done a lot of talking about
him
; about how cute he is, how sweet, fluffy, furry, purry and lovable. We’re all talking nineteen to the dozen about the bloody cat because we don’t want to broach the subject of Fergus-the-Fictitious- Boyfriend. Certainly not in front of Roisin-from-upstairs, who has the air of somebody who would spread the story all over town by midday tomorrow, and even more certainly not in front of Harry. However nice he is, I don’t know him well enough to have a full-on discussion about Jude’s mental health and her love life, or lack of it, until he’s well out of the way. That’s got to be girls-only stuff.