Erin Kaye - Second Time Around

Ben’s face reddened with embarrassment. ‘It’s all right, Chris,’ he said, jumping up, as the stony-faced barman approached. ‘I’ll get it.’

He served her drink. She made no offer of payment, not that he’d have taken it. ‘I have to get back to work, Rebecca. Can you meet me later?’

‘You’re going to finish with me, aren’t you?’ she said flatly.

He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Let’s talk tonight, Rebecca.’

‘You are, aren’t you?’ she said fiercely, her eyes glinting with angry tears.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you here. Like this.’

She glared at him and drummed her painted nails like weapons on the granite surface of the bar. ‘Why?’

‘We’re just not suited, Rebecca. You’re a great girl but we’re not very compatible, are we?’

‘Tell me about it,’ she said viciously. ‘You and your stupid books and old black and white movies. And wanting to sit in on a Saturday night like an old fart reading bloody poetry when everyone else is out partying. Jesus, I don’t know how I put up with it.’

Ben felt his face colour. He thought she liked their nights in. Was this how she’d felt all along?

She grabbed her bag and wriggled off the stool, pulling the hem of her skirt down with her right hand. ‘Well, you can go screw yourself, Ben Crawford,’ she shouted, as a hushed silence descended in the room and all the diners strained to hear. ‘I never want to see you again.’

Lucy was the last to leave the three-storey terrace house on Wellington Park Avenue that she shared with five other second-year girls. She locked the front door and lugged the bag of dirty laundry down to the bus stop. There was a washing machine in the house but it was coin operated and she’d neither the money for that, nor to buy the washing powder. It cost nothing to do laundry at home.

She did not have to wait long for a bus into Belfast city centre. Settling into a seat by the window she jammed her knees into the back of the seat in front, nursed the bag on her lap and looked out on the overcast, calm afternoon. Already the leaves on the trees that lined the many avenues around Queen’s University were starting to turn and soon the grey pavements would be littered with their crisp, bronzed beauty. The nights would start to close in, forcing her indoors to her room, making it harder to resist what she knew she must.

At the next stop a group of students, boys and girls, laden down with bags, got on the bus and she listened with lonely envy as they chatted about their plans for the weekend. The other girls in the house often invited each other home for the weekend, but Lucy was never on the receiving end of one of those invitations. And she had no desire to bring any of them home. They weren’t her friends. They were housemates, nothing more. Because try as she might she simply couldn’t get on their wavelength – a mindset that seemed to revolve around dyed blonde hair and too much make-up, short-skirted fashion and boyfriends. Their conversation was so shallow and she didn’t understand much of it anyway, peppered as it was with references to TV shows she didn’t watch and music she didn’t listen to. To Lucy’s mind they spent far too much time partying, while she sat alone in her room most nights poring over books – not because she wanted to but because she was afraid of what might happen if she didn’t.

And so Lucy was both amazed and annoyed, in equal measure, that not only had these girls managed to make it into second year, most of them had done it with better exam results than her. She attributed this to the fact that her Applied Mathematics and Physics course was more demanding, the assessment process more challenging, the examinations more rigorous – it must be so. She tried not to dwell on the fact that one girl was reading Biochemistry and another Physics – subjects that could hardly be dismissed as lacking in intellectual rigour. For the idea that these girls might be pretty, popular and clever was too much to bear. She would never be pretty, her singular character precluded her ever being popular and she could barely scrape a pass in exams.

Once off the bus, the strap of her heavy bag digging uncomfortably into her bony shoulder, she popped into a newsagents and, after a long deliberation, settled on a card and box of chocolates for her mother’s birthday. The card, one of those jokey ones with penguins on it, wasn’t exactly suitable but the selection was poor. And, at one pound sixty-nine pence, it was all she could afford. In her closed fist she clutched her last five pound note, wilted and damp from her tight, sweaty grip. Reluctantly, she handed it to the shop-owner with a weak smile. The change, when she counted it, wasn’t enough to buy a sheet of wrapping paper. Outside the shop she crouched down on the pavement and stuffed the purchases into her bag with a terrible sense of guilt. Even though they didn’t always see eye to eye, her mother deserved better.

She walked briskly to East Bridge Street then, her shoulders hunched against the cold, head down against the roar of the endless, screaming traffic, her shoulder-length hair, the colour of dirty straw, hanging lank round her face. She crossed her arms, feeling the wind through her thin grey jacket, and thought over the events of the past week. It wasn’t that she had forgotten her mother’s birthday on Wednesday, not at all. It was just that she’d forgotten to put aside some cash for a decent present – and she’d run out of money on her mobile so she couldn’t even call. She was on a pay-as-you-go contract, not that her parents knew this. The phone company had cancelled her monthly contract after she’d failed to pay her bills.

She could kick herself now. She should’ve bought a card and present – maybe a handbag from TK Maxx – earlier in the month, before she was skint. But, to be honest, her mother’s birthday was the least of her worries. She’d had to go and see the bank manager this morning, an extremely distressing experience that had her truly, deeply worried for the first time. Up until now she’d managed to keep him off her back with hints of family wealth. Her father had guaranteed her overdraft – a safety net, he’d said, for dire emergencies only.

But today, the bank manager wasn’t having any of it. He’d let her have twenty pounds along with a stern warning that enough was enough. If she couldn’t manage her money, then he would have to warn the guarantor, her father, that the debt could be called in. She hooked a hank of hair behind her right ear and bit the inside of her cheek. If her father started digging around in her finances, he would unearth the root cause of the debt. She could not allow that to happen.

How had she got herself into such a mess? And how was she ever going to get out of it?

On the train, two suited businessmen sat down opposite her and opened the sports pages of the Belfast Tele . She sniffed back the tears with determination and fingered the gold watch on her wrist, an eighteenth birthday present from her father. She could sell the watch. Better still, she could pretend she’d lost it and claim the insurance money. And then, appalled by the idea of such deception, she yanked the sleeve of her jacket over the watch and turned her back on temptation.

The train creaked into motion and rolled out of the station. She would have to seek the answer to her problem – the immediate one of money, at least – in Ballyfergus, in the form of her parents and their deep pockets. And then, she resolved firmly, though not for the first time, she would take herself in hand. She would conquer this thing. This time she meant it. She closed her eyes, inhaling slowly, allowing this resolve to fill her up. And, when she opened her eyes, she found her spirits brighter, her outlook less gloomy.