Fiona glanced up; our eyes met, and for some reason hers skipped away, too quickly. “Anyway,” she said. “They had that in common. I guess it was a big deal to them both, having someone around who understood. Sometimes they used to go for walks, just the two of them—like down the beach, or wherever. I used to watch them. Sometimes they wouldn’t even talk; just walk, like close together, so their shoulders were practically touching. In step. They’d get back looking calmer; smoothed out. They were good for each other. When you’ve got a friend like that, you’d do a lot to hang on to him.”
The sudden, painful flare of envy caught me by surprise. I was a loner, my last few years in school. I could have done with a friend like that.
Richie said, “You would, all right. I know you said college got in the way, but I’d say it took more than just that to make you lot drop each other.”
Fiona said, unexpectedly, “Yeah, it did. I think when you’re kids, you’re less… defined? Then you get older and you start deciding what kind of person you want to be, and it doesn’t always match up with what your friends are turning into.”
“I know what you mean. Me and my mates from school, we still meet up, but half of us want to talk about gigs and Xbox, and the other half want to talk about the color of baby shite. Lots of long silences, these days.” Richie slid into his seat, handed me a mug of coffee and took a big slug of his own. “So who went what way, in your gang?”
“At first it was mostly Mac and Ian. They wanted to be, like, rich guys about town—Mac works for an estate agent, Ian does something in banking, I’m not even sure what. They started going to all the super-trendy places, like drinking in Café en Seine and then on to Lillie’s, places like that. When we’d all meet up, Ian would be telling you how much he paid for every single thing he was wearing, and Mac would be, like, shouting about how some girl had been all over him the night before and the tide wouldn’t take her out, but he was in the mood for some charity work so he threw her a length… They thought I was an idiot for going into photography—specially Mac—and he kept telling me I was an idiot and I was never going to make the big bucks and I should grow up, and I needed to buy myself some decent clothes so I’d have a chance at bagging a guy who could look after me. And then Ian’s company sent him to Chicago and Mac was mostly in Leitrim, selling apartments in these big developments down there, so we got out of touch. I figured…”
She turned pages in the album, gave a wry little smile to a shot of the four lads making duck faces and faux-gangster hand signs. “I mean, an awful lot of people went like that during the boom. It’s not like Mac and Ian were going out of their way to be tossers; they were just doing what everyone else was. I figured they’d outgrow it. Up until then, they’re no fun to be around, but they’re still good guys, underneath. People you knew when you were teenagers, the ones who saw your stupidest haircut and the most embarrassing things you’ve done in your life, and they still cared about you after all that: they’re not replaceable, you know? I always thought we’d get back on track, someday. Now, after this… I don’t know.”
The smile was gone. I asked, “Conor didn’t go to Lillie’s with them?”
A momentary shadow of the smile flitted back. “God, no. Not his style.”
“He’s more of a loner?”
“Not a loner. I mean, he’d be down the pub having a laugh as much as anyone, but the pub wouldn’t be Lillie’s. Conor’s kind of intense. He never had any time for trendy stuff; he said that was letting other people make your decisions for you, and he was old enough to make his own. And he thought all the my-credit-card-is-bigger-than-your-credit-card stuff was idiotic. He said that to Ian and Mac, that they were turning into a pair of brain-dead sheep. They didn’t take it too well.”
“An angry young man,” I said.
Fiona shook her head. “Not angry. Just… what I said before. They didn’t match up any more, and that bothered all three of them. They took it out on each other.”
If I stayed on Conor much longer, she was going to start wondering. “What about Shona? Who did she stop matching up with?”
“Shona…” Fiona shrugged, eloquently. “Shona’s somewhere out there being the girl version of Mac and Ian. A lot of fake tan, a lot of labels, a lot of friends with fake tans and labels, and they’re bitchy—not once in a while, the way everyone is, but all the time. When we met up, she’d keep on making little snide comments about Conor’s haircut, or my clothes, and she’d get Mac and Ian laughing along—she was funny, she always was, but it didn’t use to be vicious funny. Then this one time a few years ago I texted her to see if she was on for pints, just like normal, and she basically texted me back saying she had got engaged—we hadn’t even met her boyfriend, all we knew was he was loaded—and she would die of embarrassment if her fiancé ever saw her with someone like me, so keep an eye on the Social and Personal sections for her wedding photos, bye!” Another dry little shrug. “Her, I’m not positive she’s going to outgrow it.”
“What about Pat and Jenny?” I asked. “Did they want to be cool kids about town, too?”
Pain arced across Fiona’s face, but she gave her head a quick jerk and shook it away, reached for her mug. “Sort of. Not like Ian and Mac, but yeah, they liked going to the in places, wearing the right stuff. For them, though, the big deal was always each other. Getting married, getting a house, having kids.”
“Last time we talked, you mentioned that you and Jenny spoke every day, but you hadn’t seen each other in a long time. You drifted too. Was that why? She and Pat were on their own little domestic buzz, and it didn’t match with yours?”
She flinched. “That sounds awful. But yeah, I guess that was it. The further they got down that road, the further they got from the rest of us. Once Emma came, they were all about bedtime routines and putting her name down for schools, and it’s not like the rest of us knew anything about that.”
“Like my lot,” Richie said, nodding. “Baby shite and curtains.”
“Yeah. At first they could get a babysitter and come for a few pints, so at least we saw them, but once they moved out to Brianstown… I’m not sure they really wanted to come out, anyway. They were busy doing the family thing, and they wanted to do it right; they weren’t into getting pissed in pubs and falling home at three in the morning, not any more. They invited us around all the time, but the distance, and with everyone working long hours…”
“Nobody could make it. Been there. When was the last time they invited you, do you remember?”
“Months ago. May, June. After all the times I couldn’t make it, Jenny kind of gave up.” Fiona’s hands were starting to clench around her mug. “I should’ve made more of an effort.”
Richie shook his head easily. “No reason why you should’ve. You were doing your thing, they were doing theirs, everyone was well and happy—they were happy, yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean, the last few months they were worried about money, but they knew they’d be OK in the end. Jenny said it to me a couple of times, that she wasn’t going to let herself get all hyper because she knew they’d come out all right somehow or other.”
“And you figured she was right?”
“I actually did, yeah. That’s what Jenny’s like: things do work out for her. Some people, they’re just good at life. They do it right, without even thinking about it. Jenny always had the knack.”
For a flash I saw Geri in her savory-smelling kitchen, examining Colm’s homework and laughing at Phil’s joke and keeping an eye on the ball that Andrea was batting around; and then Dina, wild-haired and claw-fingered, fighting me for no reason she could ever have named. I managed not to look at my watch. “I know what you mean,” I said. “I would have envied that. Did you?”
Fiona thought about that, wrapping hair around her finger. “When we were younger, maybe. Probably. You know when you’re teenagers, no one has a clue what they’re at? Jenny and Pat always knew what they were doing. Probably that was one of the reasons I went out with C
onor—I was hoping if I did the same stuff Jenny did, I’d be like that. Certain about stuff. I would’ve liked that.” She unspiraled the lock of hair and examined it, twisting it to catch and lose the light. Her nails were bitten down to the quick. “But once we grew up… no. I didn’t want Jenny’s life: working in PR, getting married that early, having kids straightaway—none of that. Sometimes I kind of wished I wanted it, though. It would’ve made life a lot simpler. Does that make sense?”
“Absolutely,” I said. Actually it sounded like some teenager’s whine, I wish I could do things the normal way but I’m just too special, but I kept the zap of irritation to myself. “What about the designer gear, though? The expensive holidays? That must have stung, watching Jenny enjoy all that while you were stuck sharing a flat and counting your pennies.”
She shook her head. “I’d only look stupid in designer clothes. I’m not that into money.”
“Come on, Ms. Rafferty. Everyone wants money. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Well, I don’t want to be broke. But it’s not the most important thing in my entire universe. What I want is to be a really good photographer—like good enough that I wouldn’t have to try and explain to you about Pat and Jenny, or about Pat and Conor; I could just show you my photos, and you’d see. If that takes a few years of working at Pierre’s for crap money while I learn, then OK, fair enough. My flat’s nice, my car works, I go out every weekend. Why would I want more money?”
Richie said, “That’s not how the rest of the gang thought, but.”
“Conor did, kind of. He doesn’t care that much about money either. He does web design, and he’s really into it—he says in a hundred years’ time it’ll be one of the great art forms—so he’d do stuff for free, if it was something that got him interested. But the others… no. They never got it. They thought—I think even Jenny thought—I was just being immature, and sooner or later I’d get a grip.”
I said, “That must have been infuriating. Your oldest friends, your own sister, and they thought everything you wanted was worthless.”
Fiona exhaled and pushed her fingers through her hair, trying to find the right words. “Not really. I mean, I’ve got plenty of friends who do get it. The old gang… yeah, I wished we were on the same wavelength, but I didn’t blame them. Everything in the papers, in magazines, on the news… it was like you were a moron, or a freak, if you just wanted to be comfortable and do stuff you love. You weren’t supposed to be thinking about that; you were only supposed to be thinking about getting rich and buying property. I couldn’t really get all pissed off with the others for doing exactly what they were supposed to do.”
She ran her hand over the album. “That’s why we drifted. Not the age gap. Pat and Jenny and Ian and Mac and Shona, they were all doing the things you’re supposed to do. In different ways, so they drifted apart too, but they all wanted what we’re supposed to want. Conor and me, we wanted something else. The others couldn’t understand that. And we didn’t understand them, not really. And that was the end of that.”
She had turned the pages back to that shot of the seven of them on the wall. There was no bitchiness in her voice, just a kind of sad, bewildered wonder at how strange life could be, and how final. I said, “Pat and Conor obviously managed to stay close, though, didn’t they? If Pat picked Conor to be Emma’s godfather. Or was that Jenny’s call?”
“No! That was Pat. I told you, they were best friends. Conor was Pat’s best man. They stayed close.”
Right up until something changed, and they hadn’t been close any more. “Was he a good godfather?”
“Yeah. He was great.” Fiona smiled, down at the gangly boy in the photo. The thought of telling her made me wince. “We used to bring the kids to the zoo together, him and me, and he’d tell Emma stories about the animals having mad adventures after the zoo got locked up for the night… One time she lost her teddy, the one she had in bed at night? She was devastated. Conor told her the teddy had won a round-the-world trip, and he got all these postcards of places like Surinam and Mauritius and Alaska, I don’t even know where he got them—I guess online—and he cut out photos of a teddy like hers and stuck them on the cards, and wrote messages from the teddy, like, ‘Today I went skiing on this mountain and then drank hot chocolate, I’m sending you a big hug, love, Benjy,’ and he’d post them to Emma. Every single day, till she got all into this new doll and she wasn’t upset about the bear any more, she got one of those cards.”
“When was that?”
“Like three years ago? Jack was only a baby, so…”
That ripple of pain darted across Fiona’s face again. Before she could start thinking, I asked, “When was the last time you saw Conor?”
There was a sudden wary flicker in her eyes. The safe shell of concentration was starting to thin; she knew something was up, even if she couldn’t tell what. She sat back in her chair and wrapped her arms around her waist. “I’m not sure. It’s been a while. A couple of years, I guess.”
“He wasn’t at Emma’s birthday party, this April?”
The tension in her shoulders went up a notch. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I guess he couldn’t make it.”
I said, “You’ve just told us Conor was willing to go to a lot of trouble for his goddaughter. Why wouldn’t he bother with her birthday party?”
Fiona shrugged. “Ask him. I don’t know.”
She was picking at the sleeve of her jumper again and not looking at either of us. I leaned back, got comfortable and waited.
It took a few minutes. Fiona glanced at her watch and ripped at fragments of fluff, until she realized that we could wait longer than she could. Finally she said, “I think they could have maybe had some kind of argument.”
I nodded. “An argument about what?”
An uncomfortable shrug. “When Jenny and Pat bought the house, Conor thought they were nuts. I did too, but they didn’t want to hear that, so I tried a couple of times and then I kept my mouth shut. I mean, even if I wasn’t sure it would work out, they were happy, so I wanted to be happy for them.”
“But Conor didn’t. Why not?”
“He’s not great at keeping his mouth shut and just nodding and smiling, even when that’s the best thing he could do. He thinks it’s hypocritical. If he thinks something’s a crap idea, he’ll say it’s a crap idea.”
“And that annoyed Pat, or Jenny? Or both of them?”
“Both. They were like, ‘How else are we supposed to get on the property ladder? How else are we supposed to buy a decent-sized house with a garden for the kids? It’s a brilliant investment, in a few years it’ll be worth enough that we can sell it and buy somewhere in Dublin, but for now… If we were millionaires, yeah, we’d get a great big place in Monkstown straight off, but we’re not, so unless Conor wants to lend us a few hundred grand, this is what we’re getting.’ They were really pissed off that he wasn’t supportive. Jenny kept saying, ‘I don’t want to listen to all that negativity, if everyone thought that way then the country would be in ruins, we want to be around positivity…’ She was genuinely upset. Jenny’s a big believer in positive mental attitude; she felt like Conor would wreck everything if they kept listening to him. I don’t know the details, but I think in the end there was some kind of big blowup. After that Conor wasn’t around, and they didn’t mention him. Why? Does it matter?”
I asked, “Did Conor still have feelings for Jenny?”
It was the million-dollar question, but Fiona just gave me a look like I hadn’t heard a word she had said. “That was forever ago. It was kid stuff, for God’s sake.”
“Kid stuff can be pretty powerful. There are plenty of people out there who never forget their first loves. Do you think Conor was one of them?”
“I don’t have a clue. You’d have to ask him.”
“What about you?” I asked. “Do you still have feelings for him?”
I had expected her to snap at me on that one, but sh
e thought about it, her head bent over his face in the album, her fingers tangling in her hair again. “It depends what you mean by feelings,” she said. “I miss him, yeah. Sometimes I think about him. We’d been friends since I was, like, eleven. That’s important. But it’s not like I get all wistful and pine for the one who got away. I don’t want to get back together with him. If that’s what you wanted to know.”
“It didn’t occur to you to stay in touch after he had the blowup with Pat and Jenny? It sounds like you had more in common with him than they did, after all.”
“I thought about it, yeah. I left it a while, in case Conor needed to simmer down—I didn’t want to get in the middle of anything—but then I rang him a couple of times. He didn’t get back to me, so I didn’t push it. Like I said, he wasn’t the center of my world or anything. I figured, same as with Mac and Ian, we’d find each other again, somewhere down the line.”
This wasn’t where or how she had pictured the reunion. “Thanks,” I said. “That could be helpful.”
I reached to take the album, but Fiona’s hand came out to stop me. “Can I just—for a second… ?”
I moved back and left her to it. She pulled the album closer, circled it with her forearms. The room was still; I could hear the faint hiss of the central heating moving through the walls.
“That summer,” Fiona said, barely to us. Her head was bent over the photo, hair tumbling. “We laughed so much. The ice cream… There was this little ice-cream kiosk, down near the beach—our parents used to go there when they were kids. That summer the landlord said he was raising the rent to something astronomical, there was no way the guy could pay it—the landlord wanted to force him out, so he could sell the land for, I don’t know, offices or apartments or something. Everyone around was outraged—the place was like an institution, you know? Kids got their first ice cream there, you went on first dates there… Pat and Conor, they said, ‘There’s only one way to keep him in business: we’ll see how much ice cream we can get into us.’ We ate ice cream every single day, that summer. It was like a mission. We’d only be finished one lot, and Pat and Conor would disappear and they’d come back with another big handful of cones, and we’d all be screaming at them to get those away from us; they’d be cracking up laughing, telling us, ‘Go on, you have to do it, it’s for the cause, rage against the machine…’ Jenny kept saying she was going to turn into a great big lump of lard and then Pat would be sorry, but she ate them anyway. We all did.”