Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

Alcohol was not going to fix this, but God never closed a door without opening a window.

For a moment she couldn’t think who he was. Plenty of familiar faces crossed her path, of course. All day and night she spotted ones who’d paid for her, and for a moment she assumed he was another; punters were as likely to be tall and dark and good-looking as they were to be sweaty, squat clichés. He was walking down the street with a couple of other guys, all in their early twenties or so, jostling, lively types. Ryan. She hadn’t seen him in such a long time. He was a grown-up now, all legs and cheekbones. She called after him and one of his companions jogged his arm and gestured backwards and he waited, God bless him, as she hurried over.

‘Ryan. It’s been a while.’

‘Jesus fucking Christ, Georgie.’

She flushed. She had lost weight, she knew. It might have been what she was wearing: a mini dress, black heels, but in that there was no difference between her and the chattering girls out dancing tonight, except intent. Maybe not even that.

‘It’s good to see you,’ she offered.

It was cold for April. There was frost settling while the city partied; it clarified the air, outlined the orange street lights, the glow from pub windows, the neon signs outside of the nightclubs. He was wearing a heavy jacket, dark jeans and thick white skate shoes, and even so he had rammed his hands into his pockets and was throwing his weight from foot to foot.

‘I wish I could say the same thing,’ he said. ‘What the fuck happened to you?’

There was no point in pretending she’d simply found her thighs again after a few years of Christian body-policing. She shook her head.

‘Really?’ she joked, feebly. ‘I got that old-looking?’

‘Have you even been eating?’

‘You’re not a bit saucy! Of course I’ve been eating.’

‘When? Last fucking summer? Jesus.’

She was needled. What if I’d had an eating disorder , she thought. Or cancer? Or lost a parent and was wasting away with grief? She chose to ignore his tetchiness. ‘How are you keeping?’ she said. ‘I think the last time I saw you was…’

Up at his father’s house. When she was pregnant with Harmony, and searching for Robbie, hormones backed into her brain, making her brave and crazy. Up in that poky council house, only a paper wall between them and Tara Duane, with Ryan’s father asserting his ignorance and exposing the frailty of the lead with statements she only understood months afterwards; his anger that she’d disturbed his children, and threatened his status. She tried to put it out of her mind, and Ryan picked up on the pitch and cut her off: ‘Did you find your fella?’

‘No,’ Georgie said. ‘He died.’

She might have expected commiseration under different circumstances. Instead she got exactly what she expected; he flinched, and changed the subject.

‘You had your kid, then.’

‘Yeah,’ said Georgie. ‘A little girl. Harmony. Isn’t that pretty?’

He nodded and looked over her shoulder and down the street.

Off his discomfort she conceded, ‘I didn’t just stop you to say hello.’

‘No?’

‘No.’ She asked his shoes, ‘Are you still dealing?’

‘Are you still on the game?’

‘Why?’ she snapped; the force of his rejoinder had surprised her. ‘Are you up for doing a swap?’

‘Funny,’ he said. He slouched and there was an echo of compromise to the action, but she wasn’t finished, freewheeling on the vodka burn and the echoes of their last meeting. ‘What business is it of yours?’ she said. ‘Are you going to save me?’

He neither answered nor moved.

‘ Judgey bollocks ,’ she quoted. ‘Isn’t that what you said?’

‘What d’you want, Georgie?’

‘I need something,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to know if you’re still in the habit of selling.’

‘Not on the fucking street I’m not.’

She felt the statement for an edge, but couldn’t determine if he meant to cut her. ‘What’s that mean?’

‘It means I’ve moved up in the world, girl. I don’t carry shit around with me.’

‘You don’t deal anymore?’

He paused. ‘Just what I said, girl. I don’t carry shit around with me.’

‘Oh.’ The chance of instant gratification faded into another night of hurried phone calls and bitten nails. ‘I’m kinda hanging, like.’

A group of girls skirted around them. Ryan moved back against the wall and Georgie stepped towards him; he put his hand up.

‘Hanging,’ he said. ‘Back fucking hanging again.’

‘It’s just a turn of phrase, for God’s sake. Fine, I’m not hanging. It’s Saturday. I’m just a bit bored, OK?’

He gestured tersely at the moving streets. ‘That’s Saturday boredom, Georgie. You’re wasting away. You’re not asking me for help with your night out.’

‘I’m not wasting away!’

‘Fucking look in a fucking mirror!’

‘What’s it to you? It’s not like you know me at all, is it?’

He remembered the words. ‘I don’t know you from Adam,’ he said, head back against the wall, staring again over her shoulder, like a bouncer, she thought, or a guard. ‘That doesn’t mean I’m stockpiling the crazy shit just to spite you.’

‘A dealer with a conscience,’ she said. ‘That’s rich. You weren’t so bothered about selling me shit when I was supposed to be in recovery.’

‘You weren’t doing such a good impression of a corpse at the time.’

‘Judgey bollocks,’ she said, stepping away, backwards for a few beats to watch for signs of concession, turning when she saw nothing of the sort. ‘You’ve changed,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘What happened to you? What happened to that decent kid?’

‘You killed him off with your custom,’ he barked. ‘Get your fucking act together, Georgie.’

She marched between groups of revellers and strolling couples, holding her arms tight against the chill. Then he was beside her again. He caught her arm, she yelped, and it must have looked bad, it must have, he was bearing over her, one fist bunched around her arm and the other at an angle as if he was going to swing for her, but she knew that even on the street on a Saturday night he wouldn’t be challenged on it, no one wants to interfere, never fucking interfere…

‘Where’s your kid?’ he said.

Her lips moved to whimper and he snapped, ‘Where’s your kid, Georgie?’ and she didn’t dare snap back, she cried, ‘I don’t have her, she doesn’t live with me, OK?’

‘Who has her then?’

‘Her dad. All right?’

He dropped her arm and stood chewing air and she took a chance on his new demeanour and pleaded, ‘Look, I’m gagging, Ryan, if you can even give me a number…’

‘I told you, that’s not me anymore.’

‘Like, even someone in your network or whatever, even someone from another crew, I don’t mind.’

‘Can’t help you,’ he said, and then, softer, ‘Jesus, Georgie, you had your shit together.’

‘What, hanging out with Cork’s slackest cult?’

‘Yeah, and now? It’s like an episode of The Walking Dead , Georgie!’

‘Look, I know I’ve slimmed down a bit…’

‘It’s not that. You look like shit.’

‘This coming from a guy who makes people look like shit for a living?’

It wasn’t a worthy comeback but it seemed to have done the trick. He fell back. ‘There’s a difference,’ he said, and she replied, ‘You’d hardly do what I do sober.’

‘I’d hardly do what you do full stop.’

‘And aren’t you lucky you were born a boy, then? All you have to do is sell drugs.’

He looked down at the footpath, shaking his head.