Claudia Carroll - Me and You

OK, as of last week, when I was propelled back onto a dole queue, I’ve no credit card. It’s in the bin at home, slashed through with scissors, so I wouldn’t be guilted into buying last-minute Christmas pressies or led astray by the January sales. And if I give her a cheque, it’ll only bounce … So what in the name of God am I supposed to do now?

Somehow, though, kindly manager must sense the blind, sweaty panic I’m now in. Tells me a little bit more politely that it’s OK, they automatically charge the credit card of whoever made the booking. Says she still has all Kitty’s card details in their system.

Oh Kitty, am so, so sorry to do this to you … All that bloody money you worked so hard for …

Then the receptionist leans in towards me and says in a low voice that seeing as this is already paid for, there’s absolutely no reason why I can’t stay to enjoy the facilities. Shame to waste it all, just because your friend is no-show, is her gist.

I just look at her, dumfounded. Out of the question, I tell her, a bit haughtily.

Mother of God, how could I ever hope to relax or enjoy myself? Something is wrong, very wrong, and this one thinks I could possibly spend a pampering day having hot stones rubbed into the small of my back, while freeloading off Kitty’s credit card?

Not a bleeding snowball’s chance.

10.30 a.m.

Mercifully I’m now out of the highly uncomfortable, disposable, G-string/dental floss knickers combo, fully dressed in my depths-of-winter coat and back out on the busy, icy-cold street again. Bloody mayhem here, like something you’d see in Stalinist Russia circa 1939. Whole place is completely thronged as Christmas shoppers with pinched, hassled expressions, laden down with overstuffed shopping bags all shove past, impatiently banging against me.

Carol singers on street corner are joyfully belting out ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’, but I’m so stressed out of my mind, I nearly want to wallop them, just for having the barefaced cheek to show Xmas cheer.

10.45 a.m.

Starts to snow lightly, that lovely stage where you think, ah look, lovely, beautiful snow, how romantic and gorgeous and Christmassy. Though in approximately an hour, when cars start piling up against each other and all the buses stop running, I’ll doubtless be snarling, ‘OK, we’ve all had enough of this mayhem! When will the bloody snow ever give up?’

Yet again, I call Kitty’s mobile and landline. Yet again, nada . Yet again I try ringing all the gang and – holy miracle of Christmas – Mags actually answers. (Mags is the proud mother of three kids, all under the age of six, so it’s almost the seventh wonder of the world whenever she can even find her phone, never mind pick up.)

‘Mags? Hi, it’s me, in a bit of a panic here …’

‘Angie! What are you doing calling? I thought you and Kitty would be lying stretched out on massage tables, getting hot aromatherapy oil rubbed into your unmentionables by now! God, I get so mad jealous every time I think of you pair of complete dossers … And here’s me, trying to defrost a turkey with one hand, while glazing a ham with the other, before eagle-eyed mother-in-law-from-hell lands in on top of me. Just so the aul bitch can do her annual Christmas Eve inspection of my kitchen …’

Jeez, am inclined to forget how hard it can be to get a word in edgeways with Mags. Like she spends so much time round kids, that whenever she gets a chance to talk to adults, she physically won’t let them off phone.

‘I deliberately didn’t call you to say happy birthday till much later on!’ she says, still not letting me talk. ‘I was sure your phone would be on silent for the whole day … God, you single people have the life! Never get married, do you hear me? And NEVER have kids, ever!’

‘Mags, will you just hear me out?’ I’m almost shouting in frustration now, purple behind the eyeballs probably, from the need to talk. ‘Kitty never showed up.’

A short, stunned silence.

‘She what ?’

‘And I’ve rung just about everywhere I can think of and there’s no sign of her. So I was just wondering—’

‘That is so terrible!’

‘I know—’

‘On your birthday ?’

‘Well, yeah—’

‘You’re joking me!’

‘I wish!’

‘Can’t believe she’d just leave you high and dry like that!’

‘I know, but— ’

‘But nothing!’ she says firmly. ‘Now you just listen to me, love. I know it’s unforgivable carry-on, but I really wouldn’t invest too much time worrying about Kitty, there’s bound to be some perfectly simple explanation for this. Like … maybe she just slept it out, or something? You know what she’s like.’

‘But I must have rung the girl’s landline about a dozen times so far this morning. And her phone is like a bloody foghorn! How could anyone alive possibly sleep through that?’

Remember distinctly Kitty having to get the most blaring bedside phone ever known to man installed; she’d just got the job at Byrne & Sacetti and once got so bollocked out of it once for sleeping through an early shift, that she’d no choice.

‘I know,’ Mags persists, ‘but then, this is Kitty we’re talking about. Look, I know we’re kind of clutching at straws here, but she’s nowhere else to be found, so why don’t you just call round to her house and keep hammering on her front door, in case she’s there? Or … I dunno … maybe pelt her bedroom window with stones till she eventually hauls her lazy arse out of bed? Why not, Ang? I mean, where else could she possibly be?’

11.05 a.m.

I’ve a good twenty-minute wait at a freezing bus stop, before a number ten that miraculously isn’t stuffed pulls over and I squeeze my way in. Traffic’s dire; Christmas Eve – I’m inclined to keep blanking it out. And nearly an hour later, I’m puffing and wheezing my way down Berkeley Street off the South Circular Road, where Kitty’s been renting a gorgeous, cosy, two-up-two-down for about two years now, only about a ten-minute walk from restaurant on Camden Street, where she works. One of those recently renovated Corpo redbricks in a neat row of terraced houses, all just like it. Bit like Coronation Street, minus the Rovers and The Kabin and neighbours having bust-ups in public.

Mags is right, and thank God at least one of us is thinking clearly. I mean, where else could Kitty possibly be if not at home and still crashed out in bed? In fact, the more I think about it, the more I see how easy it would have been for her to go out on the batter, with a gang from the restaurant after work last night, for a few Christmas drinks, which somehow turned into about fifteen Christmas drinks, knowing her. Highly probable. With Kitty more than likely the ringleader, but then she’s a divil for dragging everyone off to the pub, ‘just for the one!’ And where Kitty leads, the party invariably follows. Then five hours later, of course, everyone’s still there.

So the chances are v. high she could well be lying under the duvet now, sleeping it off and totally dead to the world. Aren’t they? Admittedly, I’m still a tiny bit snippy with her for whole birthday standing-up thing, but still … It’s the season of goodwill; I’m prepared to forgive this one, tiny blip.

And, yeeessssss! That’s when I see it! Her car, her pride and joy, an ancient, battered little banger of a run-around Mazda that she insists on calling Doris, neatly parked right outside her house. It’s the miracle of Christmas! She is home and all is well! Wait till you see, I’ll knock her up out of bed now and everything will be fine, the birthday will be salvaged and we’ll still have a lovely Christmas Eve together. Just wait till you see. How could I ever have doubted her? Jubilantly, I hammer on her door.