Birdie’s cheeks pinked. ‘Goodness, I was getting ready for a chess game with Walter, I didn’t think a magazine would be suddenly doing a story on me.’ She laughed lightly and sounded like a little girl. ‘But I would be more than happy to try to help you with your story. I don’t know how much help I will be, though.’
‘Great,’ Kitty said, not feeling as happy as she should be. She had finally found somebody from the list but that person had no idea of the story. It was getting curiouser and curiouser.
Birdie sensed her hesitancy. ‘How many are on the list?’
‘There are one hundred names in total.’
‘My goodness,’ she whispered. ‘And do none of them know what the story is about?’
‘You’re the first I found.’
‘I hope you have more luck with the others.’
Me too, she thought, but didn’t say it out loud.
With a lot of encouragement from Kitty, Birdie talked about her life, starting from her childhood and going all the way up to her current life. Kitty kept it general, making a note of where she would like to question her further on her next visit. Birdie was shy at first, as most people were when talking about themselves, leaving out information, talking more about others than herself, but she seemed to warm up by the end, the wheels of her memory bank moving up a gear with each new question.
Birdie was eighty-four years old and had grown up in a small chapel town in County Cork, in the southwest of Ireland. Her father had been a school teacher, as strict at home as he was in the school, and her mother had died when Birdie was a child. She had three sisters and one brother and when she was eighteen she had moved to Dublin to live with a family to mind their children. That same year she met her husband, Niall. They married and immediately started having children. She had seven children, six boys and one girl, ranging in age now between sixty-five and forty-six. Her daughter was the youngest. At the age of thirty-eight Birdie had her last child. This seemed less to do with family planning than with her husband having to sleep on the couch. The seven children were raised first in Cabra and then in Beaumont, in the home Kitty had visited earlier that evening, with Agnes sounding more like the second parent who helped raise Birdie’s children, taking the place of the husband who was busy with his job in the Civil Service.
Though Birdie’s life was indeed interesting, nothing jumped out to Kitty as being particularly extraordinary about it. Birdie seemed embarrassed by it all at the end, apologising for not being more exciting, while Kitty reassured her over and over that her life was more than interesting, that she was an inspiring woman who lots of women could look up to and relate to.
On the way home Kitty glanced at her notes and felt guilty for feeling that Birdie’s beautiful rich family life was not enough.
From the bench in the now darkened garden lit by pathway lights and overhead lanterns, Birdie remained outside long after Kitty had left her, feeling aware of the lack of excitement in her life, feeling her simple answers had done nothing to inspire the lady who had spent an hour with her, though she had done her best to try to convince her her life was indeed interesting. Birdie had no doubt that it wasn’t interesting to any other person. It had at times been barely interesting to her but it was her life and she had liked it; had never been in it for more than she could handle. Birdie couldn’t help but retreat into her memory that evening and she stayed there for the entirety of the chess game, so that Walter had checkmate almost as soon as they started.
Birdie would be eighty-five years old the following week; of course she had stories, of course she had secrets, everybody did. It was a case of trying to decide which one she felt Kitty would like to hear and, after all this time, which one Birdie wished to tell.
Kitty ignored Pete’s call on her way home in another expensive taxi. She didn’t want to have to tell him she was nowhere with the story. She couldn’t bear the condescending tone in his voice, the judgement, the doubt that trickled through each of his words. She placed her phone on silent and as a result missed another call. When she picked up the voicemail it was a woman speaking so loudly the taxi driver gave Kitty a look, and she had to turn down the volume.
‘Hi, Kitty, it’s Gaby O’Connor, Eva Wu’s publicity agent. We received your call today. Sorry we missed you, we’ve just been so busy. Eva would be only too happy to give you an interview. We’re based in Galway but we’ll be in Dublin tomorrow. In fact, Eva’s doing an interview tomorrow in Arnotts on Henry Street if you’d like to come along and meet us there.’
Eva Wu. Number three of the one hundred names. She’d made contact with her second person, and this one had a publicity agent and was doing a television interview. Who on earth was she and how on earth had Kitty missed her?
When she arrived home after an exhausting day feeling a bit more upbeat about her story, she found dog turd smeared all over her front door.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I’m so sorry to drag you over so late,’ Kitty apologised to Steve as he got out of his car. She’d wiped her eyes roughly while she waited and now hoped it wasn’t obvious that she’d been crying. ‘I didn’t mean for you to come over at all, I just didn’t know who else to call. The dry-cleaners said they’d evict me next month if I didn’t sort it out and I didn’t want to call the guards and I didn’t know who else to call. Sorry,’ she repeated.
‘Kitty, shut up saying sorry, okay?’ he said gently, putting his arm around her shoulder and giving her as much of an embrace as his PDA-hating body would allow him, and though it was more the kind of hug a footballer would give another she appreciated that he even touched her. ‘What did they do this time?’
She didn’t need to answer, the smell hit as soon as they stepped in the stairwell.
‘Oh God …’ He pulled the neck of his sweater up over his mouth and nose.
It took them twenty minutes of much gagging and retching to clean the door and it seemed it would take eternity to get rid of the stink. As a further apology and thanks, Kitty treated Steve to dinner in a nearby bistro.
‘I have to wash my hands again,’ Steve said, rolling up his nose in disgust, ‘I can still smell it on me. I don’t think I can touch food.’
‘You’ve cleaned your hands six times,’ she laughed, watching him disappear to the bistro toilet.
‘So how is everything with you? Is Victoria Beckham’s new line Fit or Shit?’ she asked as soon as he’d returned.
‘Ha ha,’ he said, without cracking a smile. ‘I wouldn’t know, seeing as I’m no longer a slave to her fashion.’
Steve wasn’t a slave to any particular fashion but his own style, which wasn’t especially bad but it was consistent, had pretty much been the same since their college days, though the fabrics were now more expensive and he tended to wash his clothes more regularly. He was thirty-four years old, with a mop of unruly black curly hair on top of his head, a style he’d had since college and which, like him, never seemed able to be tamed. His curls often hung in front of his blue eyes so that he was constantly jerking his head to move his fringe away, having long ago given up on brushing it away with his fingers. He was always unshaven, his stubble a designer length, but Kitty had never seen him freshly shaven or reach beard stage. He lived in leather jackets and jeans and would have appeared more at home reviewing the alternative music scene than as a sports journalist, or at least a frustrated sports journalist. Even when going to matches he never wore a jersey, his love for the game not having to be proved by his T-shirt. He was the eternal student, never seeming to have any money and sharing houses and flats with unusual characters, chopping and changing accommodation according to their recent behaviour. He was currently living in the suburbs in a nice semi-detached three-bedroom house with a married couple who needed help from a third party to meet the mortgage payments of their negative equity. Living in non-violation of the married couple’s strict household code for the past six months, Steve found his lifestyle now mirrored theirs, and it was almost like he’d grown up a little
.
‘Actually,’ he shifted in his chair, a movement that told Kitty he was preparing to say something he deemed interesting, ‘I no longer work for the paper.’
‘What?’
‘I no longer work for the paper,’ he said in exactly the same tone.
‘Yes, I heard you but … they fired you?’
‘No,’ he said, insulted. ‘I left.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? I thought that would be obvious. Because a million reasons, but mainly because you were right about what you said a few weeks ago—’
‘No, no, no,’ she interrupted, not wanting to hear whatever it was that she’d said. ‘I was wrong. Completely wrong. Don’t ever let anything I say be of any value to you in your life at all.’
He smiled. ‘Mostly it isn’t.’
‘Good.’
‘But you were right about one thing. I was hardly setting the world alight by writing the stories I was writing, and even then the editor would change them so much I could hardly call them my own. And the thing is, Kitty, I never wanted to set the world alight with my writing. I just like sports. I like to watch sports, talk about sports, I like to read about sports and I wanted to be one of those people who wrote about it. It was never about anything else.’
‘So who are you writing for now?’
‘No one.’
‘I thought you left so you could write about sport?’
‘I left because I couldn’t write about sports. So what’s the point in staying there? Writing ridiculous articles that aren’t even true about people I have never met and have no interest in is not a job I want. It suits Kyle, who leaves meetings to watch breaking headlines on E! News. It’s for Charlotte who wants to be in every VIP room in every club in the world so she can stand at the wall and write about people she has odd obsessions with. The morning after our … chat, I went into work and the first thing I was asked to do was write one hundred and fifty words on how a certain footballer was allegedly having an affair with a glamour model.’
‘Oooh, who?’ Kitty leaned in.
‘It’s not the point,’ he said brusquely. ‘I didn’t want to write about it. It’s not what I’m about. Never mind not writing ground-breaking stories, stories that do nothing but numb the human mind is not my gameplan either.’
‘Yeah, but who was the footballer?’
‘Kitty.’
‘Okay, fine. Who was the glamour model?’
‘Not. The. Point.’
She sat back, disappointed.
‘How could I lecture you about your stories when that’s the work that I was doing? I have more self-respect than writing that crap. That kind of journalism … it was killing my soul.’
Kitty tried not to wince at the constant digging in her ribs. ‘I get it, it was an honest, self-sacrificing move, aimed to take a stance at the smut that the public are being forced to ingest, which is very honourable of you and I respect that, now cut the crap and tell me who the footballer and the slag were?’
‘I’m going to throw this prawn cocktail at you.’
‘You wouldn’t dare.’
He picked up a prawn, which was more of a mini shrimp, placed it on his fork, held it back like a catapult and let it go. The prawn flew through the air and landed on Kitty’s boob, the Marie Rose sauce splodging on the satin.
She gasped. ‘You little prick.’
‘Don’t talk about the size of my prick.’
‘My top is stained.’
‘So take it to the dry-cleaners. I know one that’s open all night.’
‘I’m going to stink of fish.’
‘Will go nicely with the shit.’
And they were right back at college lunch hour, having meaningless back-and-forth slagging matches.
She dipped her serviette in her water and ignored him for five minutes while she dabbed at her top, making it worse. ‘So what are you going to do now? It’s great timing to be an unemployed wannabe sports journalist.’
‘A-ha. That’s where you’re wrong. I’m not unemployed. I’m working on the allotments.’
‘No way.’
‘Yes way.’
‘Your dad’s allotments?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you hate the allotments.’
‘Hated.’
‘And you hate your dad.’
‘Hated. Again, there’s a distinct difference. Besides, now that he’s paying me a wage he’s not so bad. He’s needed help around the place since he put his back out, so I’m the go-to man. Looking for a rotavator? I’m your man. Looking for fertiliser? A tool shed? A polytunnel? Just give me a call. Instead of being cooped up all day in a sweat box, I get to be outdoors.’
‘You hate daylight. It does something to your vampire
skin.’
‘Kitty,’ he warned, lifting another prawn.
‘Okay, okay, I’m just shocked. You’ve made some very big changes for a guy who I remember changed his underwear on a weekly basis, and this is a lot to take in.’
Another shrimp missile was fired but this time Kitty dodged it. ‘What made you want to suddenly work with your dad? Last time you mentioned him, you said that was it, you had cut all ties with him.’
‘It’s been going on for a while. We’ve been slowly getting in contact with each other.’ Steve distracted himself with more bread, avoiding her eyes; he was never comfortable talking about anything personal. He mumbled the next part quite well. ‘Then Katja and Dad met and they surprisingly get along, and …’
He rattled on about the change in his life, none of which Kitty heard as she was still stuck on the word ‘Katja’.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
She realised he’d stopped talking.
‘Oh. Well. I thought I heard you say the name “Katja” and I got confused.’
‘I did.’
‘Katja,’ she repeated loudly as though he were deaf.
‘Yes,’ he smiled, amused at her.
‘The girl you went out for dinner with a few months ago?’
‘Yes, and who I’m still going out with,’ he confirmed, his cheeks turning pink and giving it all away.
Their main course arrived – two beef fillets – but suddenly Kitty didn’t feel hungry. ‘Katja,’ she repeated. ‘You never men-tioned you two were going out.’
‘Well, we are.’
‘Like boyfriend and girlfriend?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘You never mentioned you’d broken up with Glen.’
‘Because you found out before I did.’
‘I did?’
‘The coffee machine.’
Realisation passed over his face. ‘He just left?’
‘Something like that.’
‘He was a prick anyway.’
‘I thought you liked him.’
Steve shook his head, mouth full.
She sighed. ‘Did anyone like him?’
He swallowed. ‘You did.’
‘I was hoping for more people than that.’
‘Crusty liked him.’
They laughed. Crusty was Steve’s fourteen-year-old dog who he’d taken in from a shelter four years ago. No one had known his name but he had looked crusty then and even after a wash, his appearance never altered very much. It was the perfect name. Despite getting on in years, Crusty always managed to find the energy to hump Glen’s leg, which had always disgusted Glen and probably caused him silently to question his sexuality along with everything else in life he over-analysed, such as what kind of a woman he had found himself living with after the Colin Maguire case.
‘So how long have you been together? Two months?’
‘Five.’
‘Five? Jesus, Steve, you might as well get married. I should buy a hat.’
‘Don’t. They give away your Spock ears.’
She laughed. ‘This is the Romanian girl?’
‘Croatian.’
‘Right. She’s a painter?’
‘Photographer.’
??
?Right.’ She studied him.
‘What?’ he laughed self-consciously as though he was a twelve-year-old boy who’d just been caught with his first girlfriend.
‘Nothing.’
‘Come on.’
‘I don’t know, Steve,’ she cut into her meat, ‘you’ve changed. You no longer write about Victoria Beckham and you have a girlfriend. I think …’
‘You think what?’
‘I don’t know, I might be jumping the gun here, but I think there’s a possibility you might not be gay after all.’
A chip was hurled at her head.
Kitty spent the remainder of the meal eating as though she had a chip stuck in the back of her throat. Food wasn’t going down easily and she didn’t know why. She used to find comfort in the fact that Steve had an appalling job that he hated and refused to settle down. His realising that changes needed to be made in his life, and then making them, was upsetting. She simply didn’t want to be the only one with problems.
‘How is your new story going?’ he asked, finally filling the uncomfortable silence.
‘Oh,’ Kitty sighed, feeling drained by it already. ‘I don’t know. I met a very nice old lady tonight who told me about her very nice life and it’s all sounding very nice, but nothing …’ she scrunched her hands together, ‘nothing meaty, nothing juicy. I need to dig around in her cupboard for a few skeletons or something. Something that’s not so “very nice”. This is my chance to prove myself to so many people – probably my last chance – and whatever it was that Constance saw, I’m sure as hell not seeing it. It’s a little frustrating.’
Steve was quiet. She looked at him and his whole body had tensed up. His jaw had squared and he was looking at her as if he wanted to inflict physical pain on her.
‘Have you spoken to Colin Maguire yet?’
‘I will phone him right now if it stops you from saying whatever horrible thing is on the tip of your tongue.’
‘So it’s about you again,’ he snapped. ‘You apologising to him is all about you.’ His sudden change of mood took her by surprise.