Cathy Kelly - Just Between Us

The walk from the bus stop was cold and she was chilled to the bone by the time she wearily opened her door. She switched on lights and the kettle, hung her heavy winter coat on the door and sighed with relief to be home. It was a tiny flat, but one of Holly’s great skills was making a house into a home. With her own special brand of shabby and very cheap chic, she’d transformed the place. All the walls were painted a calming apple white with big colourful prints in distressed white frames grouped on them, and in pride of place stood a big dresser with glass doors which Holly had bought for €20 from a market and had distressed herself. The dresser contained all sorts of treasures: china, books, antique brocade bits and bobs could be seen through the glass, while an embroidered Japanese kimono in saffron silk hung from one knob. Beaded tea lights, an enamelled French lamp and a pretty, carefully-mended chandelier provided the lighting. Two small couches, at least fifth-hand but expertly disguised by two amber velvet throws and a variety of mismatched cushions made of chintzy scraps of fabric, made up the seating arrangements. The single divan bed in her box-like bedroom had a draped canopy that wouldn’t have shamed the Empress Josephine and even her clothes hangers were padded floral ones, in colours that went with the rag rugs on her wooden floors.

Her home, unique and utterly individual, expressed her personality in the way she so often was too shy to do herself.

That night, Holly did what she always did when she was upset: she cooked. She slotted Destiny’s Child into the CD player, pushed the volume up, poured herself a glass of red wine, lit a cigarette and started cutting up fat juicy tomatoes for her pomodoro sauce. When the sauce was bubbling, she opened her small but perfectly organized freezer and took out a portion of frozen fresh pasta. Purists might have shuddered at the thought of freezing pasta, but it was home-made, then frozen into portions for the occasions when she didn’t have time to make it fresh. Her pasta machine had been a huge investment but was one of her most prized possessions: there was something infinitely calming about kneading the pasta dough gently and slowly feeding the sheets in and out of the gleaming stainless steel machine. It made her feel grounded, at home, as if endless Italian mamas or her own, Irish one, were looking kindly over her shoulder, helping her and comforting her.

The doorbell rang at half seven and Holly knew who it would be: either Joan or Kenny. She bit her lip, knowing that whichever one of them it was, they would instantly drag the humiliating story out of her.

‘Omigod what a day,’ groaned Joan, erupting into the room. She was thinner than a pipe cleaner but somehow seemed to take up a lot of space. She was in a purple phase this week, and dressed as befitted a fashion design student: Morticia Addams blue-black hair, an eyebrow stud, dyed purple army fatigues and a hand-painted lilac T-shirt decorated with her version of Japanese calligraphy. Kenny, who, when he wasn’t fantasising about Xavier, was cherishing a long-range crush on a handsome Japanese student who lived in a house down the street, was always begging Joan not to wear the T-shirt because he was convinced it said something rude in Japanese. Joan ignored him on the grounds that the Japanese student wasn’t gay and wouldn’t look twice at Kenny no matter what Joan’s T-shirts said. Now she tweaked Holly’s cheek, stuck a finger into the tomato sauce to taste it, turned the volume of the CD player up to trouble-with-the-landlord level and threw herself onto Holly’s smaller couch, all in a matter of seconds.

‘I didn’t make enough dinner. I thought you were going out tonight,’ said Holly.

‘I might be,’ hedged Joan, who was sure something was wrong with Holly and was determined to get it out of her. ‘What’s up?’ she inquired. ‘You look like you’ve had a shit day, too.’

‘No, why do you think that?’ asked Holly.

‘Your mouth is all droopy and you look like you might cry any minute,’ Joan pointed out. ‘So either you’re depressed or you’ve aged very badly in the twenty-four hours since I last saw you, in which case I recommend Botox. What happened, and tell me all about last night’s reunion? Did you look a million dollars and did you thump any of the horrible old bitches who used to ignore you?’

‘Are you hungry?’ asked Holly, only asking the question to avoid having to answer others. Joan was always hungry. Kenny said she had a tapeworm inside her.

‘Yes, and what’s wrong?’

Holly moved away from the counter which separated the tiny kitchenette from the sitting room. With her back to Joan, she lit up another cigarette. Joan was always nagging her to stop but Holly needed the crutch of smoking, and anyway, if she stopped, she’d just balloon up into a fat girl again. And then she’d be anti-social and fat…

She stifled a sniff but Joan heard.

‘Holly, what’s wrong?’ said Joan again in a gentle voice.

Faced with her friend’s kindness, the whole story came tumbling out: how Holly had felt good because everything had gone well at the reunion, but then how stupid she’d felt for lying about a boyfriend. And then, how utterly hurt she’d been by what Pia had said.

‘Stupid bitch!’ raged Joan, threatening death, destruction and the reorganisation of Pia’s facial features. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t go back and hit her. Did you mention this to Bunny?’ Joan and Bunny were on the same wavelength. Both were tough, unafraid of anyone and fiercely protective of Holly.

‘No,’ said Holly miserably. ‘I couldn’t tell her. I am a mess, Joan. Pia was right.’

Like many sensitive people, all it took was one push and she was down.

‘You’re not a mess,’ screeched Joan furiously.

‘When I lied to the people at the reunion, the boyfriend I invented was gay! I can’t even lie like normal people.’

‘Kenny is cute,’ Joan pointed out.

‘It wasn’t Kenny, I’m dating Xavier.’

Joan grinned. ‘Mr Throw-Pillow-Bottom Lip. Holly, love, you have to lie at school reunions.’ She decided that Holly needed cheering up before her morale could be boosted. ‘What else are you supposed to say? Everyone has a fantastic life according to what they say when they meet old enemies. Did you ever hear of anyone at a reunion who said: “I got thrown out of college, was busted for drugs and avoided a jail sentence by doing eight zillion hours of community service, plus I live in a squat, have never had sex and my job involves spending all day saying ‘would you like fries with that?’”

Holly burst out laughing. ‘Compared with that, I have a fantastic life and I don’t know why I bothered lying.’

‘I do,’ Joan said, ‘you lied, and it was only a teeny, weensy lie, by the way, for the same reason everyone lies – because we’re all basically insecure and we want people to think we’re wildly successful. Am I right or am I right?’

‘Right,’ Holly replied hesitantly. ‘But that makes me a very shallow person if I give in to that sort of thinking.’

‘Everyone does it.’ Joan was matter of fact. ‘My sister tells people her husband is in the merchandise relocation business when he drives a truck, and my mother tells my grandmother that I dress like this because we have to wear strange clothes in college. It’s easier than telling my grandmother to eff off because she’s an interfering old cow.’

‘That’s different,’ Holly said. ‘I lied because it was easier than admitting that I’m hopeless with men and just can’t talk to them. I lied so that all the girls I was in school with wouldn’t look at me the way Pia looks at me. She said there was no point in them fixing me up with a man because it would be a waste of time.’ Holly looked so downcast that Joan’s blood began to come to the boil again. Pia was so dead. ‘We’ll just have to find a fabulously hunky boyfriend for you then, someone who can race into the children’s department just before closing and ravage you on top of the Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer pyjamas, and that would show dopey Slut Face Pia.’