Ashling felt no better thinking about Jack Devine. She’d only just started her new job and neither of her superiors seemed keen on her.
‘How do you know he’s good-looking?’ she asked.
‘He just sounds it. Geeky men don’t get their fingers bitten.’
‘’s true,’ Ted chipped in. ‘It’s never happened to me.’
But all that might be about to change, Ashling suspected. Joy jogged her. ‘Your boss?’
‘He’s – um – very serious,’ Ashling settled for. Then in a splurge she admitted, ‘He doesn’t seem to like me.’ She felt both better and worse for saying it.
‘Why not?’ Joy enquired.
‘Yeah, why?’ Ted wanted to know. How could someone not like Ashling?
‘I think it’s because I gave him the Band-Aid that day.’
‘What’s wrong with that? You were only trying to help.’
‘I wish I hadn’t,’ Ashling realized. ‘Let’s get some food.’
They rang the local Thai delivery and, as was customary, ordered way too much. Even after they’d eaten till their stomachs were painfully stretched, there was loads left over.
‘We just always have to go that Pad Thai too far,’ Ashling said regretfully. ‘OK, whose fridge do we want to leave the leftovers in for two days before we throw them out?’
Joy and Ted shrugged at each other and looked back at Ashling. ‘Might as well be yours.’
‘I’m worried,’ Joy announced. ‘My fortune cookie says I’ll suffer a disappointment. Let’s read our horoscopes.’
Then they got out the I-Ching and messed around with that for a while, taking several goes until they got the solution they wanted. After they’d tried and failed to find something they all wanted to watch on telly, Joy looked out the window in the direction of Snow, the club across the road. The door whores let them in free because they were local.
‘Anyone fancy going over the road for a dance?’ she suggested, casually. Too casually.
‘NO!’ Ashling said, fear making her emphatic. ‘I have to be on top form for work in the morning.’
‘I have a job too,’ Joy said. ‘The fastest insurance-claim processor in the west. Come on, just one drink.’
‘You have no understanding of that concept. I’m surprised you can even say it. If I go out with you for “just the one” I end up at five in the morning, wrecked out of my head, dancing to Abba, watching the sun come up in a strange apartment with a group of even stranger men who I’ve never met before and that I never want to see again.’
‘I’ve never heard you complain before.’
‘Sorry, Joy. I’m probably just a bit anxious about the job.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Ted offered Joy. ‘If you’re not afraid I’ll scare the boys away.’
‘You!’ Joy laughed scornfully. ‘I don’t think so.’
*
It was after nine before Dylan got home. Clodagh had managed to get both Molly and Craig to bed, which was nothing short of miraculous.
‘Hiya,’ Dylan said wearily, flinging his briefcase against the wall in the hall and pulling at his tie. Swallowing anger as the briefcase buckles scratched the paintwork again, she braced herself for his kiss. She’d have preferred it if he didn’t bother. It wasn’t like it meant anything, it was just an irritating habit.
She opened her mouth to launch into her horrible day, but he beat her to it. ‘Christ, the day I’ve had! Where are they?’
‘In bed.’
‘Both of them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Should we ring the Vatican to report a miracle? I’ll just go and see them, then I’ll be back down.’ He’d changed out of his suit and into sweatpants and a T-shirt when he came back.
‘Any news?’ she asked, eager for information and excitement from the outside world.
‘No. Any dinner?’
Ah, dinner.
‘Between Craig’s stomach-ache and Molly’s tantrums…’ She opened the fridge looking for inspiration. Nothing doing. The freezer didn’t help either. ‘Alphabetti Spaghetti on toast do you?’
‘Alphabetti Spaghetti on toast. Good job I didn’t marry you for your cooking skills.’ He shot her a smile. Was she imagining a certain tightness to it?
‘Good job indeed,’ she agreed, fetching a can from the cupboard. She couldn’t be sure whether he was angry or not. He always acted sunny even when he was raging. Not that she minded, it made life easier.
‘So how was work?’ She tried again. ‘What has you so late?’
He sighed wearily. ‘You know that big American sale? The one that’s been dragging on for ever?’
‘Yes,’ she lied, sticking bread in the toaster.
‘I can’t remember what the state of play was the last time I talked to you about it. Had they actually made any decisions?’
‘They might have been just about to,’ Clodagh attempted.
‘OK, so after deliberating for ever, they finally narrow it down to three packages. Then they say they want to test them. Which, as you know, is a huge waste of fucking time so I offer them the reports from the trial sites. First they say OK, they’ll accept that. Then they change their minds and send over two techies from their Ohio office to run the tests…’
Clodagh stirred the saucepan and tuned out. She was disappointed. This was extremely fucking boring.
Slumped at the table, Dylan let it all pour out. ‘… Then I get a phone call this afternoon, they’ve only gone and bought a package from Digiware, and they’re not even going to test ours!’
This was the point where Clodagh tuned back in. ‘But that’s brilliant! If they’re not even going to test yours!’
10
In her cold lonely bed in the bleak room in Harcourt Street, Lisa tried to sleep, but she felt she was already in the land of nod. And in the middle of a terrible nightmare.
After the shocking day at the amateur office, she’d been quietly confident that things couldn’t get any worse. That was before she’d tried to find a home to rent.
She’d thought she’d be able to use a relocation agency, but the registration fee was extortionate. And a tactfully worded offer over the phone that she’d give them a nice mention in the magazine if they waived the fee was stonewalled.
‘We don’t need any publicity,’ the young man told her. ‘More business than we can handle due to the Celtic Tiger.’
‘Celtic what?’
‘Tiger.’ The young man had registered that Lisa’s accent wasn’t an Irish one, so he explained. ‘Remember when the economies of countries like Japan and Korea were booming they called it the Asian Tiger?’
Of course Lisa didn’t. Words like ‘economy’ just bounced right off her.
The young man continued, ‘And now that Ireland’s economy is going through the roof, we call it the Celtic Tiger. Which means,’ he said as tactfully as he could, which wasn’t very, ‘we don’t need any free publicity.’
‘Right,’ Lisa said dully, hanging up the phone. ‘Thanks for the lecture on economics.’
On Ashling’s advice, she bought the evening paper, scanned the letting columns for apartments and mews houses in fashionable Dublin 4, and made appointments to see a few places after work. Then she rang a taxi on the Randolph Media account to take her around them.
‘Sorry love,’ the taxi controller said. ‘I don’t know your name.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Lisa said silkily. ‘You will.’ It had been years since she’d used public transport – or paid for a taxi out of her own pocket for that matter. And she didn’t intend to start now.
The first property was a maisonette in Ballsbridge. It had sounded lovely in the paper – right price, right postcode, right facilities. Sure enough, the area seemed nice with plenty of restaurants and cafés, the quiet tree-lined street was attractive, all the little houses kempt and spruce. As the taxi inched along, looking for number forty-eight, Lisa’s spirits lifted for the first time since she’d clapped eyes on Jack. Already she co
uld imagine herself living here.
Then she saw it. The only house in the road that looked like it was inhabited by squatters; torn curtains at the window, the grass several feet high, a rusting car on concrete blocks in the drive. She counted along the house numbers from where she was now, wondering which one was forty-eight. Forty-two, forty-four, forty-six, forty-ei… ght. Sure enough, number forty-eight was the house that looked like it had had a demolition order slapped on it.
‘Oh fuck,’ she exhaled.
She’d forgotten. It was so long since she’d had to look for somewhere to live that it had slipped her mind what a living hell it was. That it was a series of disappointments, each one more crushing than the previous.
‘Drive on,’ she ordered.
‘Right you are,’ the taxi-driver said. ‘Where are we off to now?’
The second place was slightly better. Until a little brown mouse ran along the kitchen floor and disappeared in a wiggle of oily tail beneath the fridge. Lisa’s scalp buckled with revulsion.
And the third place had described itself as ‘bijou’ when the correct phrase was ‘unbelievably tiny’. It was a one-roomed studio, with the bathroom in a cupboard and no kitchen at all.
‘Tell me now, what would you want with a kitchen? You career women don’t have time for cooking,’ the seal-plump landlord had flattered. ‘Too busy running the world.’
‘Nice try, fat-boy,’ Lisa muttered to herself.
Hopelessly, she trailed back to the taxi, and on the drive home to Harcourt Street had to converse with the driver, who had by now decided that they were firm friends.
‘… and my eldest fella is great with his hands. The nicest poor divil in the whole world, he’d do anything for anyone. Changing light-bulbs, assembling tables, cutting grass, all the oul’ wans on our road love him…’
She was certain the driver was irritating the life out of her, but when she got out of the car, she found she missed him. And now she’d never find out what had happened when he challenged the gang of girls who’d been bullying his fourteen-year-old.
Back in her joyless room, her soul gaped in a howl of misery. Everything was made even more hellish by tiredness and lack of food. She was twisted by déjà vu, from when she was eighteen, working on a shitty magazine and having no luck trying to rent a half-decent home. Somehow, in the board-game of life, she’d slithered down a snake and had arrived once more at the beginning. Though back then it had seemed to be a lot more fun.
She’d been desperate to escape the mean narrow confines of her home. From the age of thirteen she’d been bunking off school and taking herself up to London to shoplift. Returning home bearing eye-liners, earrings, scarves and bags and watched with anxious suspicion by her mother, who didn’t dare challenge her.
At sixteen, as soon as she’d got the business of failing her O-levels out of the way, she left home and went to London for good. She and her friend Sandra – who achieved instant street-cred by changing her name to Zandra – met up with three gay boys called Charlie, Geraint and Kevin and moved into their squat in a tower block in Hackney. Where a life of wild fun began. Taking speed, going to the Astoria on a Monday night, Heaven on Wednesday nights, The Clink on Thursday nights. Doctoring their out-of-date bus passes, getting the night bus home, listening to the Cocteau Twins and Art of Noise, meeting people from all over.
Clothes were central to their lives and first up was best dressed. Advised by the boys, who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of fabulousness at their fingertips, Lisa quickly learnt how to look amazing.
In Camden market, Geraint made her buy a red, stretchy-tight Body-Map dress with a cut-out on the thigh, which she wore with red and white candy-striped tights. Her handbag was a little hard white case with a red cross on it. To complete the outfit, Kevin insisted on nicking her a pair of Palladiums from Joseph – little canvas trainers with a truck-tyre sole. Which he got to her only just in time, because he was sacked the following day. On her head Lisa wore a knitted pirate-style hat covered with safety-pins – a home-made pastiche of a John Galliano, knocked together by Kevin, who wanted to be a fashion designer. And Charlie was in charge of her hair. Hair attachments were hot news, so he bleached Lisa’s hair white-blonde and affixed a waist-length blonde plait to the crown of her head. One night at Taboo, I-D magazine took her photo. (Though they bought it religiously for the following six months, the picture never appeared, but still.)
The squat had almost no furniture so there was great excitement when they found an armchair in a skip. All five of them ferried it home joyously and took turns to sit in it. Likewise, cups of tea had to be had on a rota basis, because they owned only two mugs between them. But it never occurred to anyone to buy extra ones – a terrible waste of money. The small amounts of cash they had were earmarked for buying clothes, paying into clubs (if there was no way of avoiding it) and buying drinks.
All of them eventually got jobs – Charlie as a hairdresser, Zandra in a restaurant, Kevin on the shop floor at Comme des Garçons, Geraint on the door in a cutting-edge club, and Lisa in a high-street clothes shop, where she lifted more of the stock than she actually sold. A wonderful barter system got going. Charlie would do Lisa’s hair, she’d steal a shirt for Geraint, Geraint would let them into Taboo for nothing, Zandra would give them free tequila sunrises at the restaurant where she worked. (A mini-barter system was in operation there, because the barman wouldn’t insist on dockets from Zandra in exchange for low-grade sexual favours.) The only person who wasn’t in the loop was Kevin because the shop he worked at was so expensive yet so minimal that, if he nicked one single thing, the entire stock would diminish by twenty-five per cent. But he added general, free-floating kudos to the whole group in these frenzied days of mid-to-late-eighties label worship.
None of them would spend money on food – like cups and furniture, that too was a waste. If ever they were hungry they’d descend on the restaurant where Zandra worked and demand to be fed. Or else go on a shoplifting spree at their local Safeway. Strolling around the aisles, eating as they went, then shoving the wrapper or the banana skin at the back of the shelves. Sometimes Lisa insisted on actually taking stuff out with her, she liked the thrill it gave her.
Life continued like this for eighteen months, until the wonderful intimacy began to disintegrate into squabbles and rows. The novelty of having a rota for cup use had begun to wear thin. Then Lisa’s magazine-executive boyfriend decided to take a risk and swing her a job on Sweet Sixteen. Though she had no qualifications and barely an education, she was scarily smart. She knew what was in, what was on its way out, who was worth knowing, and she always looked spectacularly, astonishingly, just-this-minute fashionable. Seconds after something had appeared in Vogue, Lisa was arrayed in a cut-price version of it, and, most importantly of all, dressed with conviction. Many people wore puff-ball skirts because they knew they should, but most of them couldn’t shake the accompanying air of confusion and shame. Lisa sported hers with aplomb.
Then, as now, the magazine she was working on was low-budget crap and it was hard to find a flat that she could afford to rent. But the difference was that back then having a shit job on a magazine was thought to be fantastic – being employed by a magazine at all was what was important. And trying to find a half-decent place to live was a huge step forward – after living in the squat. Those were circumstances to be savoured. A source of pride, not embarrassment. Even though she was at the bottom of the heap, she was still the success story of Five Live in a Squat in Hackney.
And now look at them. Charlie worked in a salon in Bond Street and had lots of private clients, all of them horribly rich women. Zandra reverted to Sandra, went home to Hemel Hempstead, got married and had three children in speedy succession. Kevin was also married – to Sandra. It turned out he’d only said he was gay because he thought it was fashionable. Geraint was dead, he’d tested HIV positive in 1992 and his lungs gave out three years later. And Lisa, look at Lisa now. All those years of hard work, just to
end up like this, back at the start. How had it happened?
Back in the nightmarish present, Lisa climbed into her hotel-room bed and smoked cigarette after cigarette, waiting for the Rohypnol to deliver four hours of merciful oblivion. But round and round the same ugly thoughts went. She was appalled at the huge task ahead of her on Colleen and hated being here. But there was no way out. She couldn’t return to London. Even if there was an editor’s job going – which there wasn’t at the moment – you’re only as good as your last ABC audit. She’d have to make Colleen a sure-fire success before anyone else would employ her. Trapped.
She picked up the foil card of Rohypnol and suddenly suicide seemed gloriously tempting. Would sixteen tablets be enough to kill herself? Probably, she decided. She could just close her eyes and eddy away from everything. Go out on a blaze of glory, while her name was still a byword for successful, high-circulation magazines. Preserve her reputation for all eternity.
She’d always been a survivor, and had never before contemplated suicide – and she was only doing so now because dying seemed the most appropriate way to survive. But the more she thought about it, the more killing herself wasn’t an option: everyone would simply think she’d cracked under the pressure and they’d gloat like mad.
She squirmed, thinking of every magazine person in Britain showing up at her funeral, bringing their murmury soundtrack of She couldn’t hack it, you know. Poor girl, couldn’t stay the pace. Turning to each other in their sleek black suits – they wouldn’t even have to change out of their work clothes for the funeral – and congratulating themselves that they were still, by virtue of being alive, players. No burn-out here, no sir!
Not being able to stay the pace was the worst crime in magazine publishing. Worse than hitting the burgers hard and becoming a size twelve, or telling the world that short hair was in when everyone else’s money was riding on shoulder-length locks. Working on the principle that there was only so much endurance knocking around, magazine folk joyously embraced the news that a colleague was ‘taking a long, well-deserved rest’ or ‘spending more time with their family’.