How Many Frogs?

Chapter 1

Tom’s a crap liar, always has been.

In fact, I met him mid-lie in a bar, when he had just been sprung by his boss in the middle of the day and was trying to convince her that he had a rotten ’flu and was only there for a medicinal brandy.

So there I was, ear wigging as usual, and felt so sorry for his furiously red face that I jumped straight into the role of fake girlfriend, claiming I’d just had a phone call from him saying he felt too weak to walk back home, and could I come and get him?

The boss, Muriel, looked momentarily sceptical before hugging him into her massive bosoms and insisting he not come back to work until he was good and ready.

She was happy enough, he was punished enough, and I… was highly amused.

Of course he was totally out of my league. After all, why would a gorgeous hunk like him even consider chatting to a, less-than-average-looking, 5ft 2”, size twelve, Plain Jane, with mousey brown hair and one sticky-out ear? But we walked out of the bar hand in hand and I insisted on dropping him home.

By the end of the ten-minute drive we were laughing so hard we were crying and I can’t even remember what we were talking about.

I just knew that the next time he really had the ’flu, I wanted to be the one making his chicken soup.

“I know where you live,” I said, as he got out of the car, “so if I’ve caught the fake ’flu tomorrow I’ll be coming after you.”

He was climbing out at this stage and I was, ever so subtly, gawking at his ass, when he turned around, stuck his head back in the door and said, “Without sounding like I wish you to be struck down by a virus, I hope you are, because I wouldn’t mind you coming after me at all.”

And then he was gone.

The following day I called around after work with a tin of Campbell’s best, insisted he make it for me and the rest, as they say is history… much like our entire relationship today.

I think what’s hurting most right now is that I didn’t see it coming. There was no lipstick on his collar to tell a tale on him, there were no credit card receipts for diamonds or dinner and he was never ‘working late’.

It’s been four days since I called his mobile that lunch hour to ask him to pick up some pasta on his way home. It took me quite a while to realise what was going on when the call was picked up, but two people were already talking on the line, and it wasn’t him and me.

“Just leave,” a voice was saying. “If you don’t tell her I will.”

“Don’t be like that Sarah, I’ll do it,” a man responded.

“I’m sick of lunchtime kisses and an empty bed at night. It’s not a relationship and I deserve more – she deserves better than being cheated on too.”

“I know,” he replied, “but it’s been three years, I don’t know how to say it.”

“Two words, Tom. It’s over.”

“Oh, don’t say that.”

“Not this you fool, that’s what you tell her.”

“Oh right… but Geri is…” I didn’t hear the rest.

For a moment I had got carried away with the drama, like it was an episode of Corrie, but then he said my name.

How had I not recognised his voice? I suppose I hadn’t wanted to. But it was Tom. My Tom. And another girl. Not me, his girlfriend, another girl.

I don’t know where it came from, but all of a sudden I was howling; a mournful wail like a banshee… and then I could hear him again.

“Hello, hello?”

I didn’t answer, I couldn’t.

So I sat, hands cupping my mouth, receiver on the floor and he was still talking, trying to figure out what he’d done.

“Oh shit,” he said, “I must have answered by mistake when I tried to knock it off. Geri… Geri baby, please answer me.”

“The red button, you bastard,” I screamed before pressing it and cutting him off.

*****

“Hello, On the Lock, how can I help you?”

Despite my miserable state I was tempted to say, “Hello, are you drunk?” but I bet she got that all the time and besides, I needed her help and fast.

“Eh, hi,” I said, “I was just wondering how soon you could get someone out to change the locks on my apartment please?”

“How soon do you want us?”

“Eh, soon please.”

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

“OK very soon,” I said, with a sigh.

“Like in the next hour?”

“Yeah, like in the next hour then.”

“Or the next half an hour?”

“OK, the next half an hour then.”

“Sorry, I have no one available for two hours.”

I was about to go on a good rant at her when I heard a knock at the door. Shit, I hoped it wasn’t him.

“Two hours will be fine,” I said. “29, Joy Avenue, thanks.”

As I crossed the floor the banging on the door started again and I could hear him, out of breath, on the other side.

“Geri please, you have to listen to me, whatever you heard, erase it from your memory and let me tell you the story properly, we’re just fr…”

“DON’T give me that just friends bullshit, Tom, I know what I heard.”

“Let me in, Geri. I ran out of the office and left my bag with my keys in it behind.”

I thought immediately about the man bag. I bought it for him in New York last year and thought it was sexy at the time, but right that moment I wanted to wrap it around his head.

I was relieved though, he couldn’t get in now and by the time he went back to the office to get the keys, my locksmith would have been in and out, done and dusted.

So I put the latch on the door and, ignoring the tears that were welling up in my eyes, I opened it as far as it would go.

He smelled great, especially for someone who had just run for twenty minutes. But I knew I had to be strong and not be taken in by the blue shirt, my favourite on him, his cute, messy hair, just the way I like it, and his soulful brown eyes – the ones I fell in love with.

So I stared straight at him and said, “Are you having an affair?” followed by, “Remember, I know what a bad liar you are.”

And before he could get the ‘n’ of the ‘no’ out, I knew. I knew by the red blotches on his neck that were creeping up towards his cheeks and, without even letting him finish what he was going to say, he bowed his head and I slammed the door.

*****

I didn’t wait for him to be gone, probably because I knew he wasn’t. I knew as I turned my back on the door, leaned on it for support and slid to the floor in a blubbering mess, he was doing the same on the other side.

Tom always cried when we fought. I had never been with a man who cried as much as me when things got hairy. I used to like it, not seeing him cry, but the fact he was able to do it in front of me. It was one of the things I loved about us.

That day, though, as he sobbed through the door my heart was breaking and my mind was racing. I didn’t have time for Tom and his tears, I only had time to try and keep myself together somehow, to stop myself breaking into pieces.

And as I tried to catch my breath I whispered through the door, “I would have done anything for you.”

“I know,” he whispered back. “I’m so sorry.”

Chapter 2

As I crawled away from the door, mascara running from my eyes to my chin, I felt cold and more alone than I had ever felt in my life.

I wanted to scream at someone, to cry until I died from it. I had never known a pain like it. Images were running through my head of my Tom lying with someone else. My Tom, putting someone else’s hair behind her ears as he whispered to her that he loved her and she had the nicest face in three billion.

My Tom, tickling someone else’s toes until she begged him to stop, just so he could see her eyes crinkle in delight. My Tom, who wanted to be someone else’s Tom and I hadn’t even known it.

All of a sudden I was frantic. The realisation that I’d lost everything had hit me, the realisation that there was no going back. I didn’t know what to do. Where would I go? How would I get through this? – and without Tom, my best friend.

Tearing off my clothes I ran the bath and as the steam filled the little room I climbed in, still sobbing, still shaking and after quite a while I realised… still in my bra.

As sunset dimmed the world outside, I reached for the overhead cord to switch on the bathroom light. It was a painful reminder that for the third week in a row Tom had forgotten to pick up a bulb on the way home. The nearest thing to hand was a torch and a half melted candle, so I switched the torch on and cursed myself for not bringing matches in to light the pathetic lump of wax.

I think I must have been in there for over an hour, because the water eventually became so chilly I had to drag myself out.

Wrapped in the fluffy white towel, which I kept in the bathroom only for show, I crept into the kitchen as though I might wake a baby – on the off chance he was still outside the front door.

As though I might wake a baby?… It suddenly dawned on me – Oh good God we’ll never have babies.

What about Mikey and Lauren and Janet and Ray (after Ray Charles… that was going to be his full name ‘Ray-after-Ray-Charles Harvey’), those children would never now exist? I let out a painful shriek followed by a low sob and a wobble, after which I needed to hold onto the table for just a second.

I opened the fridge and cursed myself for vowing to detox this week. A soggy banana, a slice of cheese and a tin of pear halves stared back at me.

I only shop for what I need each day, because if I have a fridge full of food I leave myself with no choice but to eat it. It works for me most of the time, but right at that moment my foolproof system was coming back to bite me in my round ass.

So I opened the freezer and said a silent prayer to the gods of dairy that some chocolate-chip ice cream would magically appear. But inside the freezer drawers, things were not looking much better than the top half of the fridge.

A lonely waffle shivered away in the corner beside… wait a minute, what was that?

Brushing away probably six months of ice buildup, I could just about make out the label. It was own-brand – no shame in that, forget the posh stuff… whatever this was, it was going to be perfect.

Hang on… this was… wait for it… chocolate-chip! Score!! The gods, it seemed, had heard.

Using a bread knife to help prize the tub away from the frosty clutches of the freezer, and despite realising my hoard had been there since Christmas, I sat on the floor with the biggest spoon I could find and crunched my way through a thick layer of ice before finally getting to the good stuff, which was more chocolate-drip than chocolate-chip, if I’m honest.

It was only some time later, still sitting on the cold of the kitchen floor, that I felt something wet seeping through my towel. The freezer door was still open and the ice had started to defrost in a puddle under my bum.

I had another little cry, and a ‘why God why?!!’ moment, before running back to bed.

I could still smell him in the sheets.

*****

Beep beep, beep beep, beep beep, beep beep… beeeeeeeeeeeepppppppppppp…

‘OK, OK’ I feel like screaming, ‘I’m up!!’ And for a minute, I am.

I’ve always been quite proud of the fact that I am a morning person. I like to get up at least two hours before work, three if I’m in the mood for a more exciting wake-up call… and get prepared for the day.

Song in the shower, cup of tea, iron my clothes, straighten my hair and never leave without eye shadow and mascara, at least.

Not today. It takes just a millisecond after lifting my head from the pillow to recognise the signs that I’d cried myself to sleep. My thumping headache and half-glued eyes are the initial giveaway, the raw, dull pain in my heart the second.

I never believed in heartache in the physical sense, but I can feel it now like a stabbing in the chest and a bug in the stomach that makes me want to hurl. As I lie in bed looking up at the ceiling I feel the tears rising all over again.

Slowly at first, stinging my eyes, and then thick and fast, followed by the sobbing, low and long. It’s been three years since I woke up on my own and the loneliness I am feeling right now is like nothing I have ever felt before. Lying over into Tom’s side I can smell him off the pillow so I hug it and close my eyes, hoping that when I open them he’ll be right there.

I wonder why crying was invented. It never makes me feel any better, no matter how much I do it – in fact it often makes me feel worse, and leaves me with panda eyes and unrelenting headaches. Then when it eventually subsides the reason for which I started crying, in the first place, is always still there.

Suddenly my head is filled with the horrible realisation that comes with knowing that you are thirty-one and alone again.

I have no idea how I am going to cope, not just on my own, but with the aftermath. The effect the news will have on my family and friends, as well as the delight on Yvonne’s face. She’s my bitch-face colleague who has always had the hots for Tom, and takes every opportunity to let me know that she thinks my fat behind is just not good enough for him.

“Excuse me, Geri,” she’ll say by the photocopier. “I need to get by – could you ask your arse to move to the right a bit?” Then under her breath, “Jesus, poor Tom.”

She’ll do a shop run in the morning too, to get coffees and soft drinks for everyone in the office (there are only four of us, so it’s not like she’s a good person or anything) and she’ll come to my desk and say, “Want a drink?” and I’ll say, “Yes please, I’ll have the usual,” which is a coke.

But every single morning she’ll say, “What’s the usual, Geri?” purely to hear me say “coke” to which she will reply, “Diet, is it?” purely to hear me say, “no, full-fat,” to which she’ll tut, and under her breath mutter, “Jesus, poor Tom.”

Hello! I’m not fucking deaf.

Summer is her favourite time of year. Not because we work in a travel agents and things really pick up, but because as staff we get discounts on our annual holidays.

For a fake-tanned, toned and tiny-waisted size eight, who just loves to mull over the latest edition of Heat-wave, choosing barely-there bikinis (are there any other kind?) and spending mornings on the internet ordering her wardrobe for her next holiday – it’s heaven.

It’s also her favourite time because, without fail, she’ll ask me for my opinion, at which point I will nod and ‘mmm’ and ‘aahh’ in all the right places at her choices, after which she will ask me what I am planning, swim-wear-wise, for my summer break.

Having actually been working all morning, I won’t have had the luxury of browsing through the glossy pages, green with envy at the sun-kissed, airbrushed figures staring back at me while picking what attire I might dare to wear, strolling around Lanzarote this year.

So she’ll force me to “have a look now, what would you pick?” and for the sole purpose of hoping she’ll fuck off if I do, I’ll point out a couple of ones in purple (my favourite colour) or green (second fave) to which she’ll say, “Ooooh, Geri best stick with the one piece… and maybe a sarong… a jumper even – avoid getting burnt, because you do have a lot of skin to burn.”

Then she’ll walk away, tut and under her breath and, as ever, “Jesus, poor Tom.”

How am I going to put up with her when she finds out that short, average, curvy me really wasn’t good enough for him after all?!

And worse still, how am I going to explain Tom’s infidelity to my Grannies who will now be faced with the stark reality that, not only is there no sign of a grandchild in the near future, a wedding is also off the cards?

My Nana Farrell will be devastated, having literally bought her hat three months after Tom and I got together.

Granny Mitchell could take grandkids or leave them and will say, ‘Get over it girl, go to a dance, you’ll find a new man.’

Seriously that woman still thinks people meet at the crossroads and cycle to Billy Brennan’s barn on a Friday night, were a man asks a woman to dance and they’ll live happily ever after. But Nana Farrell will mourn the loss of her once-possibly-future-grandson-in-law and say decades of the rosary for the grandchildren that will never be born.

Then she’ll finish will a little prayer for my older brother, Aaron, a raging homosexual, whom she hopes will one day wake up butch and discover he likes women after all.

It will be a cold day in hell, but she lives in hope. I reckon she’d be happy if he crossed over for a couple of years, churned out a few grandkids and went back to ‘wearing dresses or whatever it is that they do’ after that.

Then there are my parents, Michael and Imelda, happily married for thirty-six years and besotted with Tom. My Mam calls him ‘darlin’ and my Dad calls him ‘son,’ but I think they like him mostly because he has been around a lot longer than any of Aaron’s boyfriends. My parents are great and it will break their hearts, simply because I know their biggest desire is that their children are happy.

Clodagh and Lilly, my two best friends, will also be devastated for me, but being as they are happy ripping up the streets of Dublin every Friday and Saturday night on the prowl for passion, they’ll be secretly thrilled to have the third musketeer back.

The tears have stopped now and shock has set in. The snooze setting on my alarm is buzzing wildly and so I switch it off. I don’t think I can cope. I can’t even unravel the thoughts whirring around in my own head, so how am I going to explain it to anyone else?

I’m not going to work today, I can’t go outside - So I dial the office number knowing that at 8am, Marian, my manager won’t be in yet and I’ll get away with a voicemail.

As the phone rings through I start to think about what message I will leave.

“Hello, ‘Come Fly With Me’, how can I help?”

Shit, who’s this?

“Eh, hi, Marian?”

“No, it’s Yvonne,” she snarls back like everyone should know. “Is this Geri?”

Double shit.

“Eh, yes, what are you doing in?”

“Nothing,” she says, and I believe it. “Marian said I could come in an hour earlier to get off early today, what’s up?”

“I’m not coming in today,” I say. “Can you tell Marian I’m not well and I’ll call later to let her know if…”

“You sound snotty,” she interrupts.

“Right, thanks,” I say. “Look can you just…”

“Has something happened, are you actually sick or is there something else?”

“No, I just don’t feel well.”

“Has someone died?”

“No.”

“Are you dying?”

“No.”

“Have you put on weight?”

For fuck’s sake.

“No, Yvonne, I’ve got to go, just pass on the message please.”

“He’s left you hasn’t he?”

I almost drop the phone. My heart is beating wildly and I can feel my eyes welling up again.

She’s hysterical now, confident she’s on to something.

“What did you do, Geri? Did he just have enough? Is your anti-cellulite cream just not cutting it anymore? Did he finally trade you in for a new model?”

It’s the final straw and the phone drops to the ground.

As I turn away, duvet over my mouth to muffle the sounds of my sobs, I can hear the sharp squeal of her pig-like voice.

“Jesus,” she says, “Poor Tom,” and with that the line goes dead.

*****

I don’t get out of bed for three days. The first day, I don’t even get up to use the toilet, I can’t be bothered. I don’t actually pee myself – I don’t feel the need to. My pain is all-consuming and if I have an ache in my stomach for the want of a wee, who cares? I ache all over anyway.

The crying wears me out a lot on the first day and so I drift in and out of sleep.

I am awoken in the evening at about 8pm by a thumping on the front door and a muffled voice pleading with me to let him in. It’s Tom.

“Geri, please I just want to talk to you, I’m begging.”

My head is still aching so I take some painkillers, which knock me right out and I don’t wake up until 4am.

I stare at the ceiling for two hours and sixteen minutes recalling the times we lay on this bed ‘dancing’ to Marvin Gaye. ‘Ly-dancing’ we called it. I think of the week I pulled a muscle in my back and was confined to this bed. He worked the five days from home, on his laptop in the bed beside me, so he could keep an eye and get me anything I wanted.

We laughed so much that week as he was taking and making business calls bollock-naked, imagining what his colleagues would say if they could see him in action.

I think of the hot nights of passion in our bed and the tender nights of love. Again I cry myself to sleep, surprised there are any more tears left and I awake into day two, desperate for a wee and a slice of toast.

I have the wee, skip the toast and eat a cereal bar Yvonne has most likely subtly dropped into my bag at work.

She’s a bitch, but in some small, and I mean teeny weeny absolutely tiny way, her heart’s in the right place.

Still mostly a bitch though.

The thumping on the door starts again at about 1.30pm so I turn on the TV in our, I mean my, room and raise the volume to the max. I watch ‘Murder She Wrote’, ‘Diagnosis Murder’, a pathetic made-for-TV movie about a boy whose dog goes missing and turns up in another country three years later, called ‘My Missing Dog’ – go figure - and four back-to-back episodes of ‘Jeremy Kyle’.

The show kind of puts my problems into perspective, but I forget about perspective the moment I fall asleep, dream about myself and Tom getting married and wake up with that horrible realisation once again.

Day three, I consider ordering some adult nappies off the internet, such is my lack of desire to ever get out of bed again, but I realise that to order them I have to get my laptop which is under the coffee table in the living room, and I have to pass the loo to get it so I might as well just go.

While I’m up I grab my phone from my bag. Seventy-three missed calls, fifty-one of those from Tom, six from work (shit, I haven’t called since that first conversation with Yvonne) and the rest from home and the girls.

I allow myself ten minutes to cry again then I dial work. It’s 6.10pm, the office closes at 5pm and Marian has badminton on a Thursday evening so she won’t be there for sure.

It goes to voicemail, I leave a message to say I’ll be back on Monday, sorry for any inconvenience caused, blah blah, and hang up.

I crawl back into bed. I figure I have two choices. Keep breathing or drop dead. It’s all I can do to be bothered.

On the fourth day I rise again. This time though I manage to stay up long enough to take a shower and change the bed sheets.

Progress I suppose.

Chapter 3

Saturday morning, usually my favourite time of the week.

I always wake at around 10am. I never understand it because I’m usually such an early riser but it seems that on Saturday morning my whole body knows that I can lie in. Tom and I used to stay in bed until about 11am and have lazy, lovely, Saturday morning sex – the best kind.

Then we’d get up, shower and Tom would go to the shop for the papers while I made breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast – never anything different.

When he got back we’d curl up on the sofa; he’d start on the sports pages while I’d catch up on what sort of a state Jordan got herself into the night before. In the background would be the soft hum of the TV, not for watching, just for the company.

Around 12.30pm we’d usually start a conversation about what energetic activity we were going to get up to that day, but the only one we’d ever manage was back in the bedroom. Bliss.

Not so today. It’s 7.30am and I’m cobweb spotting on the ceiling. Outside, an ambulance screams by and for a fleeting moment I imagine it’s coming to rescue me. With a heavy heart though, I realise that bar doing something really stupid, they wouldn’t take a call out for a broken one seriously.

Climbing out of bed I wonder what I’ll do. It seems that such a very, very long day stretches out in front of me. I consider going to the shop and getting the paper, then making some eggs just for me, but the thought turns my stomach.

Perhaps I could log onto ‘supermarket online’ and order something. I consider cheese or fruit or crab cakes… anything, but eggs. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat them again. In fact I’m not sure I could even say the word out loud.

So no eggs. In fact, no breakfast. I can’t handle food yet.

What I can handle, is a phone call.

I pick up my mobile and return Clodagh’s call. Clodagh and I have been best friends since secondary school. We didn’t know each other at all at the start, although we each had a reputation for getting into trouble for talking and for frequenting the principal’s office.

We were brought together by a nun, in our second year Religion class, when she asked us to paint a friendship circle – and we sort of never left it.

Clodagh is kind, she’s funny in a way she really doesn’t realise and she tells it like it is. She knows every little thing about me and as the phone buzzes through I feel awful that I haven’t even been able to contact her for the past few days. I knew she’d be worried sick.

“You better be dying, kidnapped or knocked down and suffering from amnesia, because you better not tell me you went to Vegas and got married without me,” she says sharply, after the seventh ring.

I almost laugh at the last bit, but it’s a bit too close to the bone and I say simply, “None of the above.”

“Oh,” she says. “Are you OK, hun?”

Fresh out of tears, I’m relieved that, for the first time in days, I’m not welling up.

“No, I’m not and I’m so sorry for not calling or answering your calls or texts but I, well I just haven’t been able.”

“Jesus, Geri, what’s happened?”

“Tom’s a lying, cheating asshole and it’s over.”

“What? Tom’s a what? Well, I knew he was a liar, a crap one, but I never thought that would come back on you. Tell me what happened.”

“Meet me in The Salty Rasher in an hour will you? I’ll tell you everything. I need to get out of this place.”

“Ok, but you have to wear your pyjamas.”

And we hang up.

Clodagh and I are culchies. Born and reared in Kilkenny, we share a number of pet hates.

The toll bridge, for Christ’s sake, it’s been paid for a million times over, yet they keep screwing money out of us and we keep giving it; mothers who scream at their children in public (or at home); priests who go swimming in their Speedos and young people in Dublin who, for some wholly inexplicable reason, go to the shops in their pyjamas.

Where did it all come from? Fourteen years ago when we came to Dublin as students, it wasn’t a rare occurrence to go to the shop in your slippers with a hangover. No one passed comment on it much, but when we finished college and entered the big bad world of adult reality it wasn’t cool or appropriate to forego proper footwear.

So we stopped with the slippers… but then all of a sudden ‘they’ started popping up everywhere.

At first it was one or two young girls, at the deli counter in Spar with a hoodie on and Tweety Pie pyjama bottoms. Six months later they were everywhere. Soon we couldn’t get down O’Connell Street without brushing past teenagers in PJs and trainers. Everywhere you turned there was some overgrown kid in a frickin’ vest top and bottoms. They were in cafés, shops, chippers and on street corners, and it was like we were on a completely different planet.

One day as Clodagh, Lilly and I queued in a clothes shop, for an emergency umbrella on a cold and wet summer’s afternoon, we were standing behind two girls who looked like they were in their late teens.

One turned to the other and said, “Did you get everything you needed?” to which she replied (to our absolute horror and disgust) “Yeah, got me knickers, nail varnish and some new day pyjamas.”

We could hardly believe it. Anyway, we wrote a letter to the local newspaper which started a bit of a debate, and that sparked a later article on daytime PJ wearers in general. Lo and behold the national stations started debating it, business people were ringing in and giving out and all of a sudden some places started putting signs in their windows saying ‘no pyjamas’ right there beside the ‘no dogs’ and ‘no food to be consumed on the premises’ signs.

Of course the girls and myself took complete credit for it, yet sadly today the epidemic is still spreading as fast as Kerrygold at a toast convention.

Now we joke every time we are meeting up, to ‘wear your PJs.’

The Salty Rasher is a greasy spoon around the corner from our… or my… or who even gets the flat now…?

I don’t want food, but I do want familiarity. I feel sick at the thought of going outside, but I know I need to. Clodagh makes me feel safe and it’s just what I need to meet her at one of our favourite places.

At 8.15am I nervously pull on a coat, brush my hair and teeth and creep over to the door like I’m sneaking out. I’m worried sick that Tom will be laying like a homeless drunk on the far side, waiting to pounce. So I eek it open to sneak a look first.

The hallway is dark, but I can see clearly enough to reassure myself that I’m in the clear. There’s a faint smell of sweat and cigarette smoke in the air and I’m half expecting to discover a sleeping bag, but when I step out all I find is a neatly folded piece of paper with my name on it. With my heart beating in my chest I unfold it slowly.

YOU NOW OWE ME €16.50. PAY UP OR DIE. MARTIN images

For Christ’s sake. I don’t answer the door for a couple of days and the milkman starts on me.

I fully expected a whining letter from Tom and am disgusted to find that I am a tad disappointed.

Martin is a good-natured man in his forties who we know simply from delivering our milk. Full-fat for Tom, slimline for me. He always has a funny story, which I rarely have the time to listen to, given my habit of being late, but he always manages to cheer me up.

Today I want to smile at his good-humored little threat, but can’t bring myself to do it.

Instead I crumple up the note, throw it inside the door before locking it and pulling my coat around me, as though it will give my aching heart some protection.

I pelt down the stairs for fear I’ll meet someone who wants an actual conversation with me and run all the way to The Salty Rasher. Inside Clodagh has already bagged a seat down the back and is thumbing the menu.

Lord knows why she does this because she is going to order a latte, two slices of brown toast and four of the saltiest.

*****

Good friends are hard to find – good boyfriends are harder – but almost every day in some little or, like today, big way, I remember why Clodagh and Lilly are my best ones.

We haven’t sat down five minutes when Lilly arrives. Myself and Clodagh both met Lilly about nine years ago at the dullest party ever, where we crowded around the bar, drinking shots, desperate to forget we were even there.

Lilly had previously arrived with a guy who had dumped her in favour of working the room so we took her under our party wings and we have all been inseparable since – which makes sticking it out at that shitty party one of the best decisions we each ever made.

Now here she is with her red curly hair like a frizz ball on top of her head and her cheeks flushed. She wears a hoodie, an old pair of tracksuit bottoms and a pair of flip-flops. She is just out of bed and out of breath and smells like a combination of toothpaste and our favourite perfume, Sea Breeze.

I hug her as soon as she arrives and look over her shoulder at Clodagh, who winks softly. I knew she’d call Lilly for me and now here we are all together.

After the food is ordered (brown bread and tea for me) and Lilly’s red face has calmed down to a mild pink, I tell the girls the events of the past few days.

“I need to just say it all in one big burst,” I say.

“If I stop I’m afraid I won’t be able to continue.”

They nod, understanding, and I begin with the phone call, the crushing realisation of the end of my world with Tom, the visit from the locksmiths, Tom turning up at the flat, my stereotypical breakdown, the lonely nights in bed, Tom at the door again, the incredible headaches I’m getting and the heart-searing pain every time I remember something I’ve lost like scrambled eggs and our four children.

Every so often the girls will take a deep breath or bite their lips, and at one point I see the white of Lilly’s knuckles as she clutches the table in anger. It isn’t the easiest story to tell, but by the end I feel slightly more at ease, despite the fact that I have wound my two best friends up in a major way.

“That bastard,” cries Clodagh, when I finally draw a breath.

“Total shit,” Lilly agrees nodding.

I have nothing left to say. I don’t think I can say anymore and they know it. So for a few moments we sit in silence before my phone starts violently vibrating on the table, and I look to see Aaron’s name flashing at me.

Having ignored so many calls for days, I think I’d better take it.

“What’s up our kid?” he says, as soon as I hit the green button.

Aaron spent a year living in England when he left college and still likes to use little sayings, which he believes ‘sets him apart’.

“Hiya,” I say softly.

“Jesus, Geri, Mam is having a heart attack. Where have you been? I’m outside your place. Where’s Tom? I told her I’d check on you. Why haven’t you been answering your phone? It’s Dad’s birthday tomorrow, she is expecting us both down, but thinks you’ve been kidnapped or something because she hasn’t heard from you, what the hell is happening?”

Where do you start after a barrage of questions like that?

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” I say and hang up.

As I get up to leave, cold tea in my cup and two hardening slices of brown bread uneaten on my plate, I apologise to the girls and say I have to go.

After reassuring them that I will call them later and that it really was Aaron on the phone, I wrap my coat around me once more and leave.

That’s the thing about best friends. Sometimes all you need is for them to listen.

*****

I run the three flights up to the flat when I get back.

I’ve run the whole way from The Salty Rasher, keeping my head down and avoiding eye contact with everyone. Had I not been running, however, I might have noticed the black Golf parked on double yellow lines right outside on the street.

As I round the corner after the last flight, panting and wishing to God I had rung Mam so I could have avoided seeing another person today (not that I don’t love and appreciate Aaron, but I have just spent an exhausting hour reliving my horror), I hear them.

Aaron is regaling some sort of sordid tale from last night and Tom, ever the liar, is pretending nothing is wrong, listening to him and laughing in all the right places.

Freezing about two seconds too late I am, all of a sudden, face to face with someone who used to be my favourite person in the whole world, but whose face now has me feeling faint and heaving on the spot.

I always wondered what it was like to be so overwhelmed you just pass out. I always reckoned it was for lightweights and attention seekers. If it is, then I’ve just joined a new club. CLUNK.

Five minutes and a full glass of water to the face later, I’m opening my eyes to the sight of Aaron’s concerned face.

“Geri, are you OK? What the hell just happened? Tom has gone across the road to the hospital to get the paramedics. He figures the way things are these days that would be quicker than ringing an ambulance. Lie there until they get back, can I get you anything?”

I may be down, I say to myself, but I’m not out.

I can see the one and, possibly, only opportunity to get away from Tom and I’m going for it. I leap up, freaking Aaron out, and I bolt for the door screaming, “Come on!”

Bewildered, he runs after me and within seconds we are both inside. I bolt the door immediately and run to the kitchen, where I pour two large vodkas, and before even breathing one more word to my brother, I signal him to sit down.

“Geri, what’s happening?”

“Ok, I need to be quick as he’s coming back. Aaron just go with it. Tom has been having an affair. I heard him on the phone talking to her. He hasn’t been here for four days, I’ve kicked him out. I don’t know where he’s been, apart from when he’s been outside the door begging me to let him in.”

“But he was acting totally normal outside…”

“Yeah, I presume he saw his chance of getting in with you.”

Aaron sniggers, “I don’t think so, Geri. If he was like that I’d have known years ago.”

I shoot him a killer look.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

“It’s OK.” I’m on edge. I can almost smell Tom coming up the stairs.

“Look,” I say. “I’ll pack a bag. Let’s get on the road to Kilkenny today. I’ll fill you in properly on the way down.”

“That’s probably best to be honest, because if you tell me the whole lot now I’ll go out there and smash his face in.”

“Believe me I’d nearly let you, but we’d have a mess to clean up and I’m in enough of a mess as it is.”

BANG BANG BANG…

“Geri, are you in there? Is everything OK?”

“Get lost Tom, I’m fine, not that you give a shit.”

“Geri, please don’t be like that… God, it’s good to hear your voice.”

For a fleeting moment I close my eyes and imagine that all is OK with the world again. Tom’s voice has been such a constant in my life for three years that in a really strange way it still represents some comfort to me, despite the fact that it’s his voice that got him caught and stopped the world turning in the first place. BANG BANG BANG!

The fleeting moment has passed. “Tom leave now. I am not answering the door.”

“Geri, baby, please.”

From behind me I can hear spluttering and furious hissing noises of incredulity. I turn around to see Aaron, fists clenched, off his seat and heading for the door.

I don’t know why I do it, but I suppose I know my strength will be no match for his, especially as I have never seen my brother looking so angry, so instead of grabbing at him to hold him back, I swiftly put my leg out as he’s marching past and in one fell swoop take him down to the ground.

Lying there staring straight at the dusty floor – cleaning hasn’t exactly been high on my agenda these past few days - he pauses a moment, doesn’t say a word, and before I know it he’s up and throwing the door open.

Outside Tom is flanked on either side by two paramedics – who are looking extremely uncomfortable. The intended target looks stunned to be greeted by Aaron, who says, “You total fuck-up. She’s the kindest, most thoughtful, beautiful and funny girl you are ever likely to meet, and this is what you do to her? I’ve a good mind to take your head off.”

I’m choking back the tears now, not at the sight of Tom, but listening to my big brother say things about me I never knew he even thought.

“Man, I know,” Tom is sweating profusely and I notice that he hasn’t shaved in days.

He’s wearing tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie I recognise as his best friend Fat’s – so that’s where he’s staying. Fat’s an ironic nickname for a guy who is six foot tall and ten and a half stone. Extremely thin, Fat eats like a horse and is eternally single. His futon has probably been Tom’s bed for the last few days.

The bottoms are a little long on Tom and are hugging his larger frame in an embarrassing way. I find myself strangely gleeful at the fact that Tom looks so crap.

“Don’t ‘Man, I know’ me,” Aaron is practically screaming now.

“How fucking dare you stand there just a few minutes ago and speak to me like butter wouldn’t melt, like it was just any other day and as though you are not the complete shit it now turns out that you are? You aren’t worthy of even standing in her doorway now, so if you don’t fuck off and leave her alone for good I’ll make sure you don’t have two legs to carry you on if you ever try and get near her again.”

“Aaron, please hear me out.”

Stuck to my spot on the floor I barely dare to look at him, for fear he will look at me and I won’t be responsible for what I might do… which I admit is closer to running and hugging him than shouting the odds.

At this stage the two paramedics are darting looks at each other, most likely wondering what in the hell they are doing there, and so they start to take a step back.

Then, “Not so quick,” says Aaron, “take this bastard with you.” And with that he draws his head back and lunges forward with a hard smack into Tom’s face.

I can hear his nose break and watch as he falls to the ground in shock and pain. He doesn’t make another sound and as the paramedics drop to his sides the door is slammed shut and Aaron turns to me, not a scratch on his face.

“It’s a good job I don’t even know the full story,” he says “or that could have been a lot worse.”

I have never seen my brother harm a hair on anyone’s head, much less head-butt someone, and I have no desire to ever see it again.

Chapter 4

For ten long minutes we sit in silence. I don’t know whether to thank him for standing up for me or give him hell for smashing Tom’s face in.

“What if he brings us to court?” I eventually say.

“Well, he’ll need something to wear, won’t he?” laughs Aaron.

And with that he crosses the room and takes my hand, grabbing the bin liners on the way out, as we head straight for the bedroom.

Inside Aaron flings the doors of the wardrobe open dramatically, and without saying another word begins throwing all of Tom’s suits and shirts, jackets and jeans into the black bags. For a few minutes I am frozen, not knowing what to think.

I’m caught between frustration at having control of the situation taken off me, gratefulness at having control of the situation taken off me and fresh heartache at watching my brother rid my flat of Tom’s things.

Four bags in, I choose my side and tearing another bag off the roll I begin to help. Still reeling from the look of shock and pain on Tom’s bloodied face, my mind is racing as I plunge garment after garment into the bag.

I try not to run my hand over the soft materials and I try to ignore the smell of him on some of his jumpers, but before long I feel my bottom lip quiver and fresh hot tears sting my dry eyes, before I’m a sobbing mess all over again.

As I slump to the floor, Aaron does an amazing thing - instead of trying to force me out of my misery he slides down beside me and takes my hand again.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“No, thank you,” I splutter and he lays his head on mine.

Five minutes and a hundred tears later, I feel something cold and wet - a droplet of water - on the top of my head. As I look up, Aaron looks away embarrassed, before he wipes his own eyes. I know that thumping Tom wasn’t easy for him, but he did it for me. I say nothing and do the only thing I can think of that won’t embarrass him. I pick myself up, grab a bin bag again and we finish the job together.

It only takes about forty-five minutes, probably because we have never packed bags less carefully in our lives, and eventually we are done.

“What now?” I say.

“Let’s do what they do in the movies and throw them all out onto the street,” he laughs.

“No way!” I shriek, “the Garda station is right beside us and I’ve had enough drama for one day.”

“Ah, come on, Geri, imagine his disgust when he finds his favourite Armani shirt lying in somebody’s spit.”

I pause for a moment and, laughing for the first time in days, I say, “Go on then, just the one mind. The rest we can leave at the door.”

Like an excited child he then picks up the biggest bag and we both run to the window. Below on the street cars are whizzing by, a mother pushing a baby walks past our building and two young fellas with caps on and iPods in their ears almost dance down the pavement.

“Wait for a clearing,” I say to Aaron, who is standing bag in hand and, like a woman in the last throws of labour, ready to push.

“OK, go,” I say, after looking up and down the street.

“Damn it, Geri, these are impossible,” he says, panting now, struggling to get anything past the window bars.

“They are if you try to fit a full bag out them at the one time,” I laugh, in spite of myself.

He laughs too. “Plan B,” he says, and one by one we start to unload the bag again.

“Don’t think about it,” he says, “just throw and wish them good riddance.”

And with that we let shirts and ties, three pairs of jeans, socks, boxers and his favourite pair of shoes, fly down the three stories of our block and onto the rainy street.

A few passersby look up curiously, one little old lady appears very cross and then before we’ve even got our heads back in the window we notice a man, in a dirty overcoat and busted shoes, casually take a look around before he starts sizing the clothes up against himself and tucking them under his arm.

“Here you go,” I shout down, and throw the bin bag out for him so he has something to carry them away in.

He gives me the thumbs up and turning to Aaron I say, “Well at least we don’t have to worry about the guards coming knocking at the door to arrest us for littering. Now let’s get out of here before they come and do us for assault.”

*****

It only takes me a few minutes to pack; we’re only going for a night after all.

Outside we decide to give exercise a miss and hop on the 45 into the city centre. It’s only a twenty-five minute walk from my flat to Aaron’s, which is along the quays, but we bus it anyway because neither of us is in the mood to put forward an argument for walking or not.

Aaron is usually all on for exercise. He works out regularly, gets manicures and pedicures and only ever uses public transport as a last resort. He has a mild case of OCD so he really dislikes sitting on a bus in winter, when people are coughing and sneezing and handling the bars on the backs of the seats just after handling their noses to wipe the snot away.

The train he doesn’t mind so much, but he always buys a first class ticket because he says he feels at a more hygienic distance from people when he’s travelling at that end of the train.