Kate Thompson - The O’Hara Affair

What a cool job! Being paid to go to the theatre!Bethany was so excited that she was typing too fast.

Beats being on the dole, observed Hero.

Maybe you’ll get to see me in something some day!

Let me know.

How?

A box opened on the top right-hand corner of her screen. Hero is offering friendship,Bethany read.

Accept me as a friend,Hero continued. Then we’ll know any time we’re online simultaneously. We can meet up here and talk. Maybe we’ll meet other actors. That’s why I came to Shakespeare Island in the first place. I thought it would be full of actors all wanting to chat about things thespian.

Me too! You’d better not tell them that you work in casting! Then they’ll all be after you to try and get a job!

Good point. You won’t mention it to anyone, will you?

Not if you don’t want me to.

It’s bad enough having to cope with wannabe actors in real life. I don’t want to have to do it in Second Life too!

LOL!

A silence fell. But Hero didn’t look twitchy. He didn’t tap his foot, or look away, or scratch his head, as if thinking of something banal to say. Bethany knew he was only an avatar, but she could swear that there was something meaningful about the way he was looking at Poppet.

I have to go now,he said, finally. When are you likely to be here again?

I come most evenings.Yikes! Bethany hoped she didn’t sound like too much of a loser. There’s nothing else to do in Lissamore, she added hastily.

Why don’t you come back to Dublin?

Because of The O’Hara Affair. I would have gone back with Mum & Dad, but I want to get as much work as I can before I’m a full-time student and broke again.

Do you live with your parents in Dublin?

Yes. It’s great to have the place here to myself. There’s no one to nag me about the state of the bathroom.

LOL. Aren’t you lonely in Lissamore? No. Not with Second Life. I usually hang out with my mate Mitzy here.

There was another pause, then:

Well, Poppet, here’s to many more conversations,said Hero.

Yeah. Slainte! Hey – there’s an Irish pub here you know.

Cool! Maybe we should visit it together next time?

I’d like that!

It’s a date. Bye for now.

Bye.

Take care.

I will.

Bethany watched as Hero disappeared. She wondered where he was off to next. Back to real life? Or maybe he’d teleported to somewhere more interesting in Second Life. Maybe he’d found her boring, and had just made up an excuse to leave. Maybe he wouldn’t contact her again. But he was special – she knew he was! He had been the first person to offer her friendship on Second Life, and it had been the first time Bethany had had a half decent conversation with anyone apart from Tara. And he loved theatre! The only way to find out that he was genuine, she supposed, would be to come back tomorrow and see if he showed up.

Moving Poppet towards the stage, she wondered what it would be like to have someone watch her from the balcony. If she used her microphone rather than instant messenger, she could perform a soliloquy for her spectator, do a virtual audition! She could recite her favourite speech of Juliet’s:

Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night, Give me my Romeo; and, when I shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars…

Little stars. For some reason the words of the fortune-teller she’d visited last week came back to her. That special boy is out there somewhere, Bethany, waiting for you . But you must be patient… That special boy. Her Romeo! Her Hero!

Oh – don’t be so stupid! she scolded herself. Don’t be such a dreamer! One offer of friendship on Second Life hardly constituted a romance. But if – just if – she and Hero met up again and got on – well, why shouldn’t things develop further? She’d heard loads of stories about people meeting up in cyberspace and then afterwards in real life: she’d even read a magazine article recently that had related the stories of three couples who’d met online and gone on to get married. She’d heard the horror stories, too, of course, about the paedophiles who preyed on young kids and groomed them over the internet, but she was a grown-up. She was, as Hero had said earlier, ‘legal’. And she wasn’t stupid.

Moving her cursor, Bethany selected an action, and Poppet started to dance. She lay back against her pillows, watching her avatar through half-closed eyelids. She’d seen couples dancing together on Second Life, locked in a tender embrace. It would be nice to think that one day she and Hero might dance together like that…

Ten minutes later, a cloud had obscured the face of the moon, the stars were washed out, the waves had worked their lullaby, and Bethany was fast asleep. But Poppet was still in motion, swaying all by herself on the stage of the timberframed, cavernous theatre on Second Life’s Shakespeare Island.

Decluttering must be your number one priority. When it comes to decluttering, be ruthless. Declutter, declutter – then declutter some more.

Hell. This was useless. Dervla was bored by her own book, and if she was bored by it, it stood to reason that the reader would be bored by it too. She’d looked at the word ‘declutter’ for so long that it no longer made sense. Was it even a word? Should there be a hyphen between the ‘de’ and the ‘c’? Should she put ‘unclutter’ instead? She was utterly clutterly clueless. She wished she hadn’t accepted the commission to write the damned thing. But the contract was signed and the advance spent, and she could hardly back out now.

She stood up from her desk and moved over to the window, easing herself into a stretch and trying to think positively. Fleur was a great one for positive thinking. Dervla remembered how, way back when she and Fleur had first met, Fleur had shrugged off the break-up of her marriage with the words: ‘What can I say? The Mountie always gets his man. In this case, it just happened to be my husband.’ It had been a fantastic icebreaker, and Dervla and Fleur had kept in touch ever since. Now that Dervla had moved back to Lissamore, she was glad to have Fleur to turn to if she needed guidance. Río couldn’t be relied upon for objective advice, because Río was family .

So. What were Dervla’s alternatives – faute de mieux , as Fleur would say? If Dervla hadn’t accepted the commission, what would she be doing with her life instead? Everybody knew that writing was a solitary occupation, but she’d be even more solitary, rattling around in the Old Rectory with nothing to keep her busy. Christian was at work most of the day, so she had no company apart from the dog, and there was only so much dog-walking a gal could do. The decorators were finished, so there was no home-decorating to be done, and – because there was so little furniture – there wasn’t even much housework to contend with. Because Dervla’s passion for property had been so all-consuming in her auctioneering days, she had few hobbies or pastimes. Her gardening knowledge was rudimentary, and she didn’t enjoy cooking much – Christian had more culinary nous than she. How could she – a woman in her prime – be such a waste of space?