Jesus, Joan and her shagging ornaments. I wouldn’t put it past her to have diagrams drawn of where they all go.
‘I can explain about the figurine, honest, but the thing is right now I need a lend of your car…It’s sort of an emergency.’
‘A lend of my car? Well Madam Woods, I’ve a few home truths for you. You’re constantly borrowing it to go to the supermarket so you can avoid meeting neighbours on the street and you’ve never once put a single drop of petrol into it.’
‘I know and I’m sorry and I will, as soon as—’
‘I know, I know, as soon as your emergency dole money comes through. You’re like a broken record. You’d think you were about to collect on the Euromillions lottery, the way you keep going on about it. May I remind you that at the end of the day, it’s only dole.’
‘Please Joan, it’s just for tonight, I’ll make it up to you.’
‘Out of the question. Besides, tonight I’m going to my musical society meeting.’
‘For “musical society” read “sing-song down at the Swiss Cottage”,’ snorts Sharon, thudding down the staircase and barging past us on her way into the kitchen. ‘The landlord got a piano put in the back room and the last time Ma got up and sang, he barred himself. Boom, boom.’
‘We’re rehearsing for a production of The Mikado,if you must know,’ Joan fires back at her. ‘And look at the holy state of you, still in your night attire at this hour of the day. You’re a holy disgrace, so you are.’
‘Give me a rest, it’s my day off.’
‘Don’t suppose…you’re in any way…emm…flexible on this?’ I plead to Joan in a last-ditch effort to get around her.
‘Do I sound flexible? Now not another word out of you; the matter is closed,’ she snaps on her way upstairs. ‘And that kitchen better be tidied by the time I get back down.’ She glares at me furiously and then, to really ram her point home, snatches her car keys off the hall table and takes them upstairs with her.
Bugger it anyway. I half feel like shouting up after her that she could always use her broomstick to go out tonight. What’s really annoying is that she was in wonderful humour only this morning. In fact, if I’d told her what I was at then, she might even have offered to drive me, purely so she could get a good look at the inside of Sam’s house. Then, out of the corner of my eye, under a stack of unpaid bills, something glittering catches my eye. The keys to Maggie’s little Fiat Uno.
Well whaddya know, my luck’s turning. Two seconds later, I’m in the kitchen where she’s snacking on the microwaved remains of last night’s chicken tikka masala, while Sharon peruses the collection of takeaway menus, deciding what the pair of them will order in for dinner later. Brilliant timing. Perfect. Couldn’t have planned it better, in fact. Maggie is always at her most agreeable directly after food. A bit like a hippo.
‘Maggie, could I talk to you for a second?’
She looks at me a bit puzzled, then, being Maggie, reaches for a wisecrack. ‘If you want to communicate with me, Cinderella Rockefeller, then I suggest you leave a Post-it note on the fridge. And by the way, is your hair on purpose?’
‘Ha, ha, HA!’ I force a laugh to try and win her round. ‘You are so dry and witty, ever thought of going into stand-up?’
‘Not a bad idea actually, Mags,’ Sharon chips in, with her mouth full of grub. ‘You’re always saying it would be the ultimate doss job and you’d be amazing at it. Jeez, you’d be like another Jo Brand.’
‘I insult you,’ says Maggie, folding her arms and slowly turning to glare at me, ‘and then you compliment me? Hmm…can the request for a favour be far behind?’
‘I need a lend of your car. Please. Just for a few hours. And in return, I’ll emm…’ I was going to say ‘…do all your laundry and clean out your room for the next month,’ but I do all that anyway. ‘Well, I’ll find some way to pay you back, Maggie. And that’s a promise.’
She sits back, flinty-eyed, and, for a split second, I get a flash of how terrifying it must be to be stuck in the Inland Revenue office with her, having a tax audit.
‘There are thousands of reasons for me to say no,’ she eventually says. ‘Would you like me to enumerate them all, so you can pick your favourite?’
‘You know what the best bit is?’ sniggers Sharon, a bit disloyally. ‘She only wants your car so she can stake out Sam Hughes’s house. Isn’t that the most mental thing you ever heard? I’d nearly go with you myself for the laugh, Jessie, only Coronation Street’son tonight and I’ve been dying to see it all day.’
Next thing, there’s a ring at the doorbell and we all stare at each other in shock. No one calls here. No one.Only total strangers who don’t know us.
‘You get it,’ the two of them say to me together.
‘And if it’s anyone looking for either of us,’ adds Sharon, ‘we’re not in. I mean, what kind of a gobshite calls to your house on a Wednesday night, when everyone knows Corrieis on?’
I race down the hallway, muttering PleasebeSampleasebe SampleasebeSam.But when I fling the door open, it’s not him at all. It’s a ridiculously tall guy in white linen shirt and black leather jacket, in his early thirties or so; light, fair-ish hair and thin as a reed, carrying a neat little bouquet of chrysanthemums and carnations, all wrapped up in cellophane. Something familiar about him too. I’m slowly taking him in, like he’s a foreigner whose accent I can’t quite place and he’s staring back at me hopefully, expectantly. As though I should know who he is, but I don’t.
‘Em…I’m really sorry, but I think you might have the wrong house,’ I say as politely as I can, given that I’m in the middle of an emotional meltdown. Perfectly reasonable assumption; I mean, come on, who’d be calling here with flowers?
‘Jessie? Don’t you remember me?’ I squint up at him and while, yeah, there is something vaguely familiar about the light blue eyes, otherwise I haven’t a clue.
‘I’m Steve,’ he says, a sounding a tiny bit disappointed. ‘Didn’t Joan tell you I was going to call?’
Steve, Steve, Steve…?
Oh for feck’s sake, I do not believe it. ‘You’re Steve Hayes?’
‘The one and only,’ he smiles down at me, all delighted.
Oh my God, Hannah’s big brother. I’ve a vague memory of Joan mentioning something about bumping into him recently and him promising to call, but what with everything else that’s been going on, I must have just blanked it out.
‘Hannah’s just living a few streets away from here now, you know,’ he beams just as another trait about him comes floating back to me from all those years ago. I’d forgotten that he’s one of those always happy/good-natured/glass-half-full, /even-tempered people. God, no wonder Maggie and Sharon used to make his life hell. ‘She’s just had another baby, number two. Mad, isn’t it?’ he grins cheekily. ‘I often feel like we’re still just kids ourselves.’
‘Yeah! Yeah, completely mad. Well…you’ve…ehh…changed so much, Steve, I’d hardly have known you!’ The truth too. Last time I saw him I was barely twenty-one, right before I got my first job in Channel Six. His hair was far blonder back then, and he used to wear roundey jam-jar glasses which kind of gave him a look of the Milky Bar Kid from certain angles. Funny how the intervening years have changed him; he’s grown, not so much in height as in stature. The guy I used to know was slightly gawky and unsure of himself, but the Steve standing in front of me now is a man. And a very cool-looking one at that too.
‘Oh, these are for you, by the way,’ he smiles, thrusting the flowers clumsily at me. ‘Just to say welcome back to the estate and that I’m sorry about what happened to you with your job. Like the hair, by the way. Big change to the way you used to look on TV. Very…let me pick my words carefully…yes, got it: very Nicole Kidman.’
I laugh nervously, at the back of my mind wondering how the hell I’m going to get rid of him. Sorry, no rudeness intended, but cosy reunions with ghosts from the past are NOT on tonight’s agenda.