Kate Thompson - The O’Hara Affair

The AD made his way past them to where Shane Byrne was sitting with his companion. ‘Mr Byrne, apologies for the inconvenience. I’ll call you as soon as we’re set up. May I get someone to bring you more coffee?’

‘Please,’ said Shane Byrne. Then he turned to his neighbour. ‘I’m afraid I won’t be congenial company for the foreseeable. I’m gonna have to go over my script.’

‘No worries,’ said the dark-haired man. ‘I have some business I can get out of the way.’ He reached for his BlackBerry as Shane reached for his script. ‘Some day soon, you’ll be learning your lines on screen,’ he observed.

‘Nah,’ said Shane. ‘I’ll stick to hard copy. I always auction scripts off when I’m finished with them, and send the proceeds to Cancer Research.’

‘Good idea.’

Behind them, Bethany and Tara were still slumped in their seats. The time on the screen of Tara’s laptop read 3.15. They could be stuck here for another three hours. On the screen, Mitzy sighed and yawned.

‘How did you make her do that?’ asked Bethany.

‘Easy,’ Tara told her, ‘I went to the gestures menu and selected “bored”. I can get her to do all kinds of things.’

‘Can I have a go?’

‘Sure.’

Tara passed over her laptop, and Bethany started playing around with the keys, selecting Page Up to propel Tara’s avatar towards a sign that read SLSC Academy of Performing Arts.

‘What’s SLSC?’ she asked.

‘Second Life Shakespeare Company. They put on plays apparently, but any time I visit there’s hardly anyone here.’

Bethany propelled Mitzy through a door.

‘Hey – look – we’re in some kind of a gallery! This is amazing!’ Around the walls were pictures of Shakespeare’s characters from Hamlet . Bethany guided the avatar past portraits of Hamlet and Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius and the Player King, before finding herself in the playhouse. She manoeuvred Mitzy up onto the stage, and stood looking around. There was something marvellously out-of-body about this.

‘Where else can we go?’ she asked Tara.

‘How about a beach?’

‘Yes!’

In the shake of a lamb’s tail, Mitzy was standing on a deserted beach. It was night in Second Life, and dark waves were crashing onto the silver sand. Above her, stars pinpricked the sky, and seagulls called.

‘I came here once,’ Tara told Bethany, ‘and there was an avatar of a girl in a bikini, waiting for her boyfriend. She told me she was living in Florida, and he was in the UK, and they used to meet up on the same beach at a prearranged time to go swimming together.’

‘How sweet!’ said Bethany.

‘Hey – how about we set you up an account?’

‘An account?’

‘On Second Life. We may as well do something creative if we’re going to be stuck here for the next couple of hours.’

‘Cool!’ said Bethany. ‘I’d love that.’

Tara reclaimed her laptop. ‘We’ll have to fill in a form. The usual crap. And you’ll need a password. Never divulge your password to anyone you meet on Second Life, by the way, because if you do they can steal your avatar and impersonate you. And there are some dodgy areas you’ll want to stay clear of.’

‘Like what?’

‘Porn, of course. Sometimes you stumble across some pretty icky stuff. Let’s go.’

The next few minutes were spent choosing a generic avatar for Bethany. They hit upon a pretty girl whom they decided to call Poppet, after Bethany’s cat. Then Bethany dictated her email address and her date of birth to Tara, and supplied her with a password.

‘You’re in!’ sang Tara, checking out Bethany’s in-box, and clicking to activate her account. ‘Welcome to Second Life, Poppet! Let’s go and make some friends!’

She passed her laptop back to Bethany, who took her first stumbling steps into Second Life in the guise of pretty little Poppet in a pink-and-white polka-dot frock. Someone called Arabella flounced past her. Someone called Rambo bumped into her. Someone called Samuel invited her to sit beside him. By the end of the afternoon Poppet had learned how to fly, how to shop, and how to blow kisses. She’d visited a pub, a club, and Trinity College Dublin. She had made friends with a girl from Toulouse and a boy from upstate New York. She’d laughed and joked and stuck her tongue out at a clown who’d tried to dance with her. Bethany wasn’t shy here! She had none of the hang-ups that stymied her socially in real life. And just as she was about to approach a haughty-looking diva and ask where she’d got her hair, Tara’s laptop ran out of juice.

‘We’ll meet up tonight, yeah?’ suggested Tara. ‘Mitzy and Poppet could go virtual clubbing together.’

‘Cool! What time?’

‘Ten o’clock on Welcome Island?’

‘It’s a date.’

Tara shut the lid of her notebook and yawned. Then: ‘Sheesh,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I got so caught up in that that I didn’t even see him go.’

‘Who?’

‘Shane Byrne.’

Bethany glanced over her shoulder. The place where Shane Byrne had been was empty, his coffee cup abandoned. But his dark-haired companion was still working away diligently on his BlackBerry.

Later that day, Fleur accessed Bethany O’Brien’s Facebook page. She’d changed her status to ‘Tiresia rocks!’

Tiresia rocks? A bogus fortune-teller with an imperfect understanding of amateur psychology? Fleur gave a mental shrug. Whatever. Maybe she had made a difference to Bethany’s self-esteem, and to the self-esteem of the dozens of other girls who had come to her for consultations. Her mumbo jumbo certainly hadn’t done any harm. She reckoned that, on the whole, she’d provided reasonably good entertainment and had been value for money.

Scrolling down Bethany’s update, Fleur smiled when she read the following: ‘Got myself a job on The O’Hara Affair ! Positive thinking works, mes amis !’

Bethany had, Fleur noticed, acquired some new friends today, on Facebook. Lola, Kitten, Carrie and Tara had all sent her messages, thanking her for the add. Hmm. Maybe it was time for her to add another one. Clicking on her web browser, Fleur typed ‘sign up Facebook’. Then she entered the following into the relevant boxes.

First name? Flirty.

Last name? O’Farrell.

Password? Tiresia.

Gender? Female.

Birthday? Here Fleur hesitated. If she put her real birthday, would Bethany bother responding? Probably not. Why would an eighteen-year-old want to befriend a forty-something, after all? She reread Bethany’s post. Positive thinking works , mes amis ! The girl was upbeat, happy. What if she started posting updates like the ones Fleur had read when she was researching her role as Madame Tiresia? She remembered the desperation, the fear, the loneliness in those posts:

…topping out at a hundred, I have more Facebook friends than real life ones. Sad, or what?…

some ‘friendships’ should never be resurrected, not even in a virtual sense…

Even tho I hate this person, I guess I’d better add them as my friend. I’ll take ANYONE now…

Fleur had helped Bethany recover a little of her self-esteem. She didn’t want to see that self-esteem plummet. Until Bethany was ready to take wing, Fleur would be there for her. She returned her attention to her Facebook application, typed 23/7/88 into the box marked ‘Birthday’, and pressed Save.

Flirty O’Farrell was just twenty-one, and she was going to make a new friend.

Poppet was flying over Shakespeare Island, wishing that somebody interesting would come out and play. Mitzy hadn’t turned up this evening in their usual meeting place, and when she’d texted Tara, the word back was that her broadband was malfunctioning.