On New Year’s Day about twenty members of my family, plus assorted boyfriends and children, were crammed into the sitting-room, watching Raiders of the Lost Ark and shouting ‘Show us your lad’ anytime Harrison Ford came on screen. Even Mum shouted it, but only because she didn’t know what a lad was. Helen was drinking a gin and tonic and telling me what it felt like.
‘First you kind of get this lovely warmth in your throat,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Stop it!’ Mum tried to hit Helen. ‘Don’t be annoying Rachel.’
‘No, I asked her to tell me,’ I protested.
‘Then the burniness hits your stomach,’ Helen elaborated. ‘And you can feel it radiating out in your blood…’
‘Looo-vely,’ I breathed.
Mum, Anna and Claire were systematically ploughing their way through a big box of Chocolate Kimberleys and with each new one they picked up they said ‘I can stop anytime. Anytime I want.’
In the middle of all the high jinks there was a ring at the door.
‘I’m not going,’ I shouted.
‘Neither am I,’ Mum shouted.
‘Neither am I,’ Claire shouted.
‘Neither am I,’ Adam shouted.
‘Neither am I,’ Anna said as loudly as she could, which wasn’t very loud, but at least she’d tried.
‘You’ll have to go,’ Helen told Shane, Anna’s boyfriend. Shane was now unofficially living with us, because he’d been thrown out of his flat. So it meant we saw a lot more of Anna also, as she no longer had a bolt-hole to hide in.
‘Aaaaawwwwww,’ he moaned. ‘It’s just getting to the bit where he shoots the knife guy in the bazaar.’
‘Where’s Margaret when you need her?’ Adam asked.
‘LICKARSE,’ the whole room chorused.
The bell rang again.
‘Answer it,’ Mum advised Shane, ‘if you don’t want to be sleeping under a bridge tonight.’
He stomped out and came back in and mumbled ‘Rachel, there’s someone at the door for you.’
I jumped up, expecting it to be someone like Nola, hoping she liked Harrison Ford too. Certain that she would, though. Nola liked everyone and everything.
But when I got to the hall, there, hovering by the door, looking nervous and pale, was Brigit. I got such a shock, black patches scudded before my eyes. I just about managed to say hello.
‘Hello,’ she replied, then tried to smile. Frankly, it was frightening. We stood in silence, just looking at each other. I thought about the last time I’d seen her, all those months before, as she was leaving the Cloisters.
‘I thought it might be a good thing if we saw each other,’ she attempted awkwardly.
I remembered the millions of conversations I’d had in my head, where I’d humbled her with pithy putdowns. ‘So you thought, did you?’ ‘And tell me, Brigit, why would I want to see the likes of you?’ ‘You needn’t crawl in here, expecting me to forgive you, so-called FRIEND!’
But not one of them seemed remotely appropriate now.
‘Do you want to, um…’ I meekly gestured towards the stairs and my room.
‘OK,’ she said, and up she went, me following, checking out her boots, her coat, her weight.
We sat on the bed and did the how-are-you? bit for a while, followed by the you’re-looking-well thing. It made me very uncomfortable that she was looking so well. She had streaks in her hair and a groovy New York cut.
‘Are you still off the…?’ she asked.
‘Over eight months now,’ I said, with shy pride.
‘Jesus.’ She looked both impressed and appalled.
‘How’s New York?’ I asked, feeling a cramp of pain. What I really meant was ‘How’s Luke?’ followed closely by ‘How did everything go so wrong?’
‘Fine.’ She gave a small smile. ‘Cold, you know?’
I opened my mouth determined to ask how he was, but I hovered on the brink, desperate to know, but unable to ask.
‘How’s your job?’ I said instead.
‘Going well,’ she said.
‘Good,’ I said heartily. ‘Great.’
‘Have you an… er… job?’ she asked.
‘Me?’ I barked. ‘God, no, being an addict is a full-time occupation at the moment!’
Our eyes met, uncomfortable, alarmed, then speedily flickered away again.
‘What’s it like living in Dublin?’ She eventually broke the silence.
‘Lovely,’ I replied, hoping I didn’t sound as defensive as I felt. ‘I’ve made lots of good friends.’
‘Good.’ She smiled encouragingly, but there were tears in her eyes. And then I felt my throat thicken with tears of my own.
‘Since that day at… that place,’ Brigit began tentatively.
‘You mean the Cloisters?’
‘Yes. That old biddy Jennifer…’
‘Josephine,’ I corrected.
‘Josephine, then. God, she was awful, I don’t know how you put up with her.’
‘She wasn’t that bad,’ I felt obliged to say.
‘I thought she was terrible,’ Brigit insisted. ‘Anyway, she said something to me, about how nice it was to have someone to compare myself to, so that I was always the best one.’
I nodded. I kind of knew what was coming.
‘And… and…’ She paused, a tear splashing onto the back of her hand. She swallowed and blinked. And I just thought she was talking dross, I was so angry with you I couldn’t see that anything was my fault.’
‘It wasn’t,’ I insisted.
‘But she was right,’ Brigit ploughed on, as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘Even though I gave out to you, it made me feel good that you were so out-of-control. The worse you were, the better I felt about myself. And I’m sorry.’ With that she burst into noisy, energetic tears.
‘Don’t be stupid, Brigit,’ I said, trying to be firm and not cry. ‘I’m an addict, you were living with an addict. It must have been hell for you, I’m only just realizing how awful.’
‘I shouldn’t have been so hard on you,’ she sobbed. ‘It was dishonest.’
‘Stop it, Brigit,’ I barked, and she looked up in surprise, her tears shocked into ceasing. ‘I’m sorry you feel guilty, but if it’s any help the things you said to me the day you came to the Cloisters…’