Kitty looked from one to the other. ‘So you just randomly propose to people when you’re out.’
‘Not just people. Just Mary-Rose. I know she secretly likes it.’
‘I hate it.’
‘She doesn’t always know how best to express it, though.’
Kitty laughed. ‘And you do this when you’re out.’
‘Restaurants, bars, cafés, you should try it sometime. You will always get a free drink. One time our entire meal was complimentary, another time we got that bottle of champagne, remember?’
Mary-Rose nodded.
‘So you do this for free food and drink?’
‘And to bring sunshine to Mary-Rose’s days. Now, now, don’t look so angry, sweetheart, we just got engaged. People are looking and here come our free drinks. If you don’t perk up I’ll kiss you.’
Mary-Rose pasted a smile on her face so quickly Kitty was in hysterics.
The free drinks arrived with a complimentary dessert plate for the happy couple with ‘Congratulations’ written in balsamic dressing at the bottom of the plate.
‘Last time we got a free meal,’ Sam said quietly so that the manager wouldn’t hear. He handed Mary-Rose a spoon.
‘You’ve proposed here before?’ Kitty asked.
‘Oh, no, always a different place,’ Sam explained. ‘A criminal never returns to the scene of the crime.’
‘Actually they do,’ Mary-Rose said. ‘That’s the saying. A criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.’
Sam frowned. They were almost nose-to-nose, they looked so comfortable together, so at ease and yet it was all fake. Kitty doubted that. Somebody must have felt something. She thought about her and Steve, how so often people commented that there must be more to their relationship, despite her persistent denials. They wouldn’t say it any more now he had Katja. She swallowed, feeling a shocking sadness sweep over her.
‘But that’s stupid,’ Sam said. ‘Why would they go back to the scene?’
‘That’s the point. They are stupid. They make mistakes and they go back or else it’s for self-gratification. They get cocky. Just like you wanting to come back here and do this again.’
‘I wouldn’t do that.’
‘In about a year I bet you’d risk it.’
They continued their debate and Kitty turned to watch everyone around her. It was undeniable that the atmosphere had completely transformed since Sam’s proposal. Everyone resumed their conversations but this time it was with more gusto. The energy had picked up in the room, it was louder, there was more laughter, people had fed off their happiness, and whether they believed in love or not they were willing to celebrate on the young couple’s behalf and bask in the glow of those who did. Sam had done more than get a free drink or a free meal, he’d done more than embarrass his friend, he’d lifted spirits, he’d brought everyone around them together, at least if only for a few minutes. He had done something very special.
Mary-Rose returned home to the sound of the television on upstairs as usual. She dumped her bag and coat on the stairs and went straight upstairs to her mother’s bedroom. She was sitting up in bed, propped up by cushions, watching late-night infomercials. Her new obsession was with the kitchen knives, not the knives themselves but she loved watching the chefs chop at top speed. Mary-Rose read into it that her mother missed being able to be so agile, to chop and cook as she used to, but it could simply be nothing more than a fascination with the speed of professionals. She didn’t like to think about it too much, though she was sure she probably would as she dedicated much of her day to thinking about what her mother could no longer do.
She greeted her with a kiss. ‘Do you need to go to the toilet?’
Her mother nodded and Mary-Rose took her arms and lifted them over her own shoulders, pushed back the bedclothes, scooped her arms under her mother’s legs and lifted. Her mother was heavy; it always surprised her how much heavier she was than she looked each time she picked her up. Trying to stay steady, she slowly made her way to the en-suite bathroom and lowered her mother to the ground, where her mother held on to the safety bar on the wall while Mary-Rose pulled her panties down and lowered her to the seat. She turned her back then, her mother liked her to, and she tried to drift away in her mind to give her as much privacy as she could.
Her mother’s muffled words snapped her out of her tired trance. Nobody but their care worker and her closest friend, Sam’s mother, would understand what she had said – her words were like that of a child – but Mary-Rose smiled, then laughed.
‘Yes, Mom, he proposed again.’
Her mother spoke again, and Mary-Rose shook her head. ‘No. Don’t be silly. It’s just a bit of fun.’
But for some reason, that night, of all the nights that Sam had proposed, tonight her mother’s comment made her think. A startling thought that for the first time didn’t quite repel her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Three things happened that Sunday to make it officially the worst day of Kitty’s life.
First, after Kitty had got home from the restaurant she’d showered and fallen into a deep sleep when she was awoken at 2 a.m. to what sounded like an air-raid attack on her home. Outside her door, she learned afterward, a firecracker roll containing five thousand firecrackers had been lit and proceeded, with the loudest noise Kitty had ever experienced, to explode. When Kitty finally came out of hiding and opened the door, the floors and walls were black, stained with smoke and her landlord, Zhi Cheng Wong, was standing on the stairs surveying the damage.
He glared at her angrily and it was only then that she realised she could be held partly responsible for this.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, trying to hide behind the door and pull her T-shirt down lower to protect her modesty. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You must stop this.’
‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m sorry. It will. You won’t even know this ever happened. I’ll make sure it’s all cleaned and painted. Promise.’
He barely stayed till the end of her sentence and went back downstairs to work. Kitty found it an odd time to wonder when he ever slept.
Fully dressed and still shaking from head to toe, she downed three cups of camomile tea and sat at her kitchen table, jumping at the sound of everything around her. It was 3 a.m., it was still pitch-black outside and she was absolutely terrified. She called Sally, whose phone was off, and then she phoned Steve.
‘Can I stay with you tonight?’ she asked, her voice still shaking.
‘What’s wrong?’ He was suddenly awake.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, trying to be strong. ‘It’s just another stupid joke. Firecrackers. Outside my door. The place is a mess and Zhi wants to kill me but I’m fine. It’s no big deal. Actually, I should probably stay here – it’s not as if they’re going to come back –
but—’
‘Uh shit, did they hurt you?’
‘No, I’m fine, honestly, I’m fine. I’m just a little shaky.’
‘You need to call the guards.’
‘No, I can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘I just can’t.’
‘Okay. Fuck. Okay. Well, there aren’t any spare beds here, everyone’s home.’
‘What about the couch?’
‘They’re not like the other guys I shared with, Kitty, they’d go mad if they found you on the couch. We have fucking house rules here.’
‘Oh. Well, what about the one in your room?’
‘No. Eh. No. Em. Can’t really do that.’
‘Stevie, who’s that?’ Kitty heard a groggy voice in the back-
ground.
‘Oh, of course, I’m sorry. Katja is there. How silly of me. I’m fine, Steve, I’m sorry for disturbing you, I shouldn’t have called, I just—’
‘Kitty, shut the fuck up for a second and let me think,’ he snapped.
She shut up.
‘Okay. Come over here. You can sleep in my room. Katja and I will go to her place, okay??
??
She heard Katja say something, then the phone was moved and a muffled conversation continued in the background.
‘Yeah, that’s what we’ll do,’ Steve said into the phone. ‘Come on over here.’
‘I can’t let you do that, Steve, I don’t want to kick you out of your own house.’
‘Well, have you any other ideas?’
She hadn’t. She hadn’t had a good idea for over six months; she was all out. She couldn’t call Bob. He would be distressed enough as it was without her landing on his doorstep. Sally wasn’t answering her phone and she didn’t want to just turn up at 3 a.m. when she had a husband and an eighteen-month-old child asleep. Kitty’s family were hours away in Carlow and she had never gone home crying to them over anything. She contemplated a booty call to Richie but very quickly changed her mind. Steve was all she had right then, her only option.
‘Okay,’ she whispered.
It was not how she’d planned their first meeting: Kitty red-eyed and exhausted at 3.30 a.m.; Katja, clearly exhausted from being woken in the middle of the night and then tossed onto the street by some idiot woman who was a friend of her boyfriend’s, though she still had enough energy and politeness to hide whatever anger she was feeling and replaced it with a sympathetic look. They were whispering at the foot of the stairs, barely a conversation, just a handover of a bed.
‘You okay?’ Steve asked.
‘Yes, I’m so sorry about this.’
‘It’s fine. I’m not sure when I’ll be back tomorrow so …’
‘I’ll let myself out early, they won’t even know I was here. I’m really sorry about this.’
‘If you see Alice and Dave, don’t tell them anything. It’s none of their business. Tell them I’ll talk to them later.’
‘I won’t see anyone, I’ll be gone before they’re awake. I’m so sorry about this.’
‘Okay,’ Steve quietly opened the door. It made a difference from his other rental properties, where coming and going at 3 a.m. and having randomers over to stay was the norm. She guessed he was growing up. What bad timing for her and her crises.
‘It was nice to meet you,’ Katja said, and gave her a sad smile before closing the door behind her.
Kitty stuck her tongue out at the closed door.
And so for the second bad thing of that day. At only 4 a.m., Kitty found herself in Steve’s unmade bed, though someone clearly had made the effort to tidy it. The window was open but there was still a smell of sex in the room. Kitty avoided the bed and sat on the couch, wrapping herself in a blanket, where she remained sitting upright, watching the sunrise and listening to the birds awaken with the rest of the world. She must have fallen asleep for a short time as she woke up with a crick in her neck. It was seven o’clock and she was parched. It was Sunday and outside everything was still. There was no traffic, no car doors slamming, no postmen, no deliveries. The house was as silent as it had been four hours earlier. She folded the blanket and placed it back exactly where she’d found it, she freshened herself up in the en-suite bathroom and tiptoed downstairs. She crept towards the kitchen and opened the door, and there at the table a woman, Lisa, looked up at her, expecting to see Steve, and was forced to do a double-take.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
A man in jogging clothes and a sweat-stained back and pits turned round and took headphones out of his ears. Dave.
‘Uh, hi,’ Kitty said, wishing she had gone straight for the front door.
‘You’re Kate,’ Dave said. ‘We met her at the Christmas party, Lisa. She’s Steve’s friend.’
‘Oh,’ Lisa said, clearly not remembering. ‘Did you stay here last night?’
‘Er …’ Kitty was afraid to say the wrong thing as Steve had clearly stated that she didn’t tell them anything, and he was intensely private. ‘Steve told me to tell you that he’d talk to you later. Do you mind if I get a glass of water? I’ll leave straight after.’
‘Sure,’ Dave said.
‘Is Steve okay?’
‘Yes.’ Kitty tentatively opened cupboard after cupboard, not wanting to intrude in their space any longer and wishing she had just walked to the shop for a bottle. ‘He said he’d explain later.’ It really sounded more mysterious than it actually was.
‘Is he upstairs?’
‘No.’
Dave opened the cupboard behind her and handed her a glass.
‘Thanks.’
She self-consciously went to the sink and they watched her.
‘Are you sure he’s okay? I heard him go to bed last night. He must have left in the middle of the night.’
‘He’s fine.’
‘Do you know what he wants to talk to us about?’
Kitty was confused. They were making a big deal out of something very simple. She wasn’t sure whether to stick to her line or explain. Instead she gulped down her water and they eventually looked away. Dave resumed buttering his toast and Lisa picked up her newspaper and what Kitty saw on the front almost stopped her heart as the third bad thing of that day happened. It also caused her to choke on her water and she circled her little spot in the kitchen coughing, spluttering and banging on her chest.
‘Are you okay?’ Dave asked.
Tears were streaming down her face.
‘Wrong way,’ she squeaked before convulsing with coughs again.
He watched her, not knowing whether to help her and choosing not to. Finally the fit eased and it was just the occasional cough here and there, mostly when she spoke.
‘Can I see that?’ She pointed at the Sunday tabloid.
Lisa closed it over and handed it to her. She took it in her hands, looked at the photograph of herself smiling sweetly to the camera with nice make-up, nice hair, nice lighting, the network’s official press shot. Below the photo was ‘“My Year of Hell.” Thirty Minute star Katherine Logan’s exclusive interview with the Sunday World by Richard Daly’.
‘What?’ she shrieked, opening the newspaper to get to the article. On the inside, a double-page spread, there was a photograph of Colin Maguire and his wife leaving the courthouse, another photo of Donal, Paul and Kitty leaving with their team of lawyers looking like the Sopranos, the big nasty TV people, the big bad wolves, guilty as hell. But what took up most of the page was a photograph of Kitty leaving the Four Courts after Colin Maguire had been awarded damages, her face squeezed and pinched as though there were a bright sun glaring in her face. She had been caught mid-blink as though she were doped on methadone, not looking at all as she was trying to appear, and certainly not as she felt, which was contrite, apologetic and full of self-loathing. Elsewhere on the page, in contrast, was another official photo of Kitty looking sweet and innocent, honest and trustworthy. What that girl didn’t know then. What that girl hadn’t known two nights ago. Her old college friend had double-crossed her. Her eyes jumped across the words, barely able to read a full sentence and take it all in. She kept hopping from subheadings filled with tacky adjectives such as ‘shocked’ and ‘appalled’, to the photo of the journalist who got the scoop looking smarmy and as awful as she remembered him and his disgusting naked body from the previous morning. Richard Daly.
Colin Maguire and his crew of supporters are possibly behind the abusive attacks which Katherine has had to endure. The victim of a bully campaign, Katherine, known to some friends as Kitty, has been suspended by the network, cast aside at a time when she needed them most.
There was a pretty headshot of her and beneath it the caption said ‘Scapegoat’.
She now has been suspended from Etcetera magazine. Though the case had nothing at all to do with the magazine, terrified advertisers coming under pressure, possibly from Maguire’s crew, are withdrawing their support in the face of such shoddy and careless journalism, leaving the magazine in uncertain times.
Despite all that, Logan insists she is working on the most ‘exciting project of her life’ though she was reluctant to say what that was, leaving those who know her to speculate if there’s
such a story at all.
Beneath the article there was a poll taken with the public to see if Katherine Logan deserved the abuse she was getting. Seventy-two per cent said yes, eighteen per cent said no, ten per cent didn’t care.
Kitty narrowed her eyes and stared at Richie’s ugly face again. She wanted to do such violent things to him, it scared her.
‘Writing a book, my hole,’ she said aloud, then remembered she wasn’t alone. She looked up and the couple were watching her, a little disgusted by her words and presence. She dropped the paper down on the table and left the house.
‘Hey, is that her?’ she heard Alice ask before she closed the door behind her.
And then one good thing happened that day, the first good thing, the only good thing, but sometimes you only ever need one good thing.
Archie Hamilton called her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
They met in the Brick Alley Café in Temple Bar, a charming café on Essex Street that seemed to be the only place that wasn’t a pub or chain sports bar or establishment without a shamrock or leprechaun emblazoned across the front, Ireland’s version of the child-catcher to lure in the tourists. It was a low-key place with friendly staff, and when Kitty entered she saw Archie sitting alone at the back of the café. He was the first customer of the day and had been successful in finding a table alone. Later, customers would be encouraged to sit at large wooden communal tables. He looked up when she entered, seemed slightly amused, and then he looked back down at his paper again. He appeared even more exhausted than he had before, as though he hadn’t slept, but after two nights of very little sleep Kitty dreaded to think what she looked like herself. After calling Richie’s phone sixteen times and getting no answer, she’d leaped on her phone as soon as it rang. She was lucky it was Archie.
She sat beside him on a high stool at a counter that was a wooden bench secured to the wall. Above the counter was a blackboard with the daily specials, and above that it said, ‘Every table has a story to tell’. She knew that was certainly true of this table. She was just hoping Archie was going to tell it.