Liz Nugent - Lying in Wait

I emerged from my trance-like state. I needed to go home. I picked up the clothes I had frenziedly abandoned, and turned away to put them on, feeling again the shame of my size that I’d felt in Helen’s bedroom years earlier. Bridget walked up behind me and kissed my shoulder before reaching for her robe.

‘Do you have to go?’ she said, disappointed.

‘Yes, my mum… she doesn’t like…’

Bridget laughed. ‘You’re so funny!’ she said. ‘So sweet!’

I knew I wasn’t either of those things.

As I reached for the door handle, she said, ‘See you…?’ leaving the question hanging.

‘Monday,’ I said. ‘See you Monday.’

I didn’t look back, but when I walked down the stairs and out of the front door into the orange glow of lamplight, I could feel her uncertainty. I had no idea what had just happened. Was I sick in the head? What was going on between Bridget and me? Lust had led me to her door. Apart from that I wasn’t sure of anything either.

The next morning I informed my mother that I was going on a diet and that I was going to take up regular exercise. I asked her to exclude bread, crisps, sweets and potatoes from the shopping list.

‘Oh, Laurie, that is such a great idea,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘We can get some diet books from the library today and make a plan.’ Then she paused for a moment. ‘Are you trying to impress a girl?’

‘I might be,’ I said.

I was aware that Mum had some anxieties about my dating girls, but I wasn’t sure if it was about me getting hurt or about her being left alone.

‘Is it a girl from work?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

I dusted down the weighing scales that sat on top of the bathroom cabinet and stood on them as gingerly as an almost-sixteen-stone man could. I had work to do.

I walked five miles that weekend, having barely walked the length of myself since Granny had moved out three years earlier. I even tried some press-ups, but ended up straining a muscle in my shoulder.

The next Friday night after drinks in Mulligan’s, we had sex again in her dim and tidy bedsit, and though it was less fierce, less urgent, my eyes were still tightly shut as I refused to see Bridget smiling up at me. I used condoms that Arnold had given me. I would have to source them myself after this, from my sleazy barber probably. In the following weeks, I sat with Bridget at break times and we sometimes had lunch together and went out at weekends. I didn’t exactly keep my word about taking things slowly, but it seemed that Bridget didn’t want me to either.

I also followed Gerry Doyle, waited outside his house, sussed out his watering hole, where he bought his daily groceries. The pub he went to, Scanlon’s, was pretty close to our office. Over the course of a few weeks, I managed to make Scanlon’s our new regular Friday-night spot. It was a traditional Dublin pub where the clientele were a mixed bunch of older locals who drank Guinness and smoked Major in packs of ten. They served toasted sandwiches, which was the latest fad, and that was quite a draw. Alcoholic Evelyn was the hardest to persuade. She was a creature of habit, and food would never be as big an attraction as a pub where she knew the owner, his father, his dog and when the wallpaper had last been replaced. She was resistant to change, and as she was our lead drinker it took a bit of work, but when she realized that she was about to turn into a solo drinker if she didn’t come with us, she changed her tune. I saw Gerry in there from time to time and we nodded acknowledgement at each other, but I wanted to know more about him, I wanted to be in his company. The nods turned to salutations on my part, which he graciously returned, and when it was his signing-on day, I always volunteered to run that desk so that we could exchange a few words. Always courteous, always friendly. I felt I should do more for him, though, so I amended his claim to make it appear as if he had two dependent children and sent it to the Children’s Allowance section. I used my forgery skills to make it look like Dominic’s writing.

When Gerry spotted me in Scanlon’s three weeks later, he asked for a quiet word. ‘Someone gave me a rise,’ he said.

I pretended not to know what he was talking about.

‘I got an extra thirty pounds in my dole last week.’

‘Did you? Well, our staff make mistakes all the time. If I was you, I’d keep that to myself.’

‘Really? Will I not get into trouble over it, like?’

‘Not at all, not if it was our fault. I’ll be turning a blind eye anyway.’ I winked at him and tapped my nose. He offered to buy me a pint, but I declined and rejoined Bridget and the others. I had done a small thing to make him happy. As he raised his glass to me from the corner of the bar, I felt good.

I stuck to my weight-loss programme, and gradually the chins began to disappear again and my feet came into view. At first, I had walked everywhere. Running was out of the question because I wasn’t able for it and people would laugh at me. I did exercises in my bedroom and then Mum bought the Jane Fonda Workout book for me for Christmas, which was pleasing in many ways. After a short time, very strangely and without too much effort, my appetite nearly disappeared. I was suddenly a bundle of energy with too much vitality for sleep. I got up earlier and went to bed later. I can’t explain what happened. It was as if a switch in my brain had flipped. I was eating a quarter of what I had been used to. Which was probably what a normal person should eat.

‘Is it my imagination, or are you thinner than you were when we got together?’ asked Bridget one Saturday morning, post-coital. I hadn’t told anyone in work of my weight-loss plans, though my reduced lunch portions had been noted. In the six months we had been dating, she had never once mentioned my weight. I appreciated that. It was as if she had never noticed. I was grateful.

I was delighted by her question. ‘Yes, I think I have,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to be healthier anyway.’

‘Well, I think you’re very handsome, no matter what you weigh.’

We weren’t the type of couple to be romantic with each other or to pay compliments like that, so I was a little taken aback. It dawned on me that I should then say something positive about her. ‘You’re pretty cute too.’

She beamed.

I had developed a sense of obligation to her and she could be good company sometimes, but I felt no genuine love for her, just a warmth and a fondness. I hoped it could become something more real.

Of course, one night we bumped into Helen when we came out of the cinema. She was on her way from the pub with a gang, quite drunk.

‘Well, for fuck’s sake, look who it is! Where’s the rest of you?’ she bellowed.

I introduced Bridget as my girlfriend.

‘Girlfriend?’ said Helen with an unnecessary degree of incredulity.

‘Yes,’ said Bridget confidently.

‘Riiight,’ she said, winking at me, ‘so you’re getting the ride, then? Sure, come on back to my flat, I’m having a party. I just graduated, I’m a fucking nurse! Can you believe it!’

I politely declined but she insisted on writing down her address and phone number in case we changed our minds, and then she ran off, roaring up the street after her friends.

‘Who was that awful girl?’ said Bridget.

‘Just an old neighbour. She is awful, isn’t she?’

We laughed and I kissed Bridget on the mouth, grateful that she was no Helen. Everything was going well between us. We were a solid couple.

Until I met Karen in August 1985.

I waited a few weeks after Yvonne told me what James had said about a murder suspect. I guess I was learning to accept the truth. It wasn’t entirely a surprise, but thinking it and knowing it were two different things. Annie was dead.