Page 44 of The F*cking Fabulous Forties Club

‘What am I supposed to do?’ she’d asked time and time again, even though I’d told her that what she should do is pick me. Don’t have the man who left me high and dry sleeping under her roof.

She never heard me. She just kept asking.

Until the day I’d told her exactly what she was ‘supposed to do’ and it involved going and fucking herself.

It had been the only, huge, stand-up row we’d ever had. There had been lots of little rows, of course, over the course of our friendship. Petty little fallings out over things that didn’t matter. Like when she’d lost my favourite Mariah Carey tape. Or when we had battled over which of us would get to be which Spice Girl at Halloween. But there had never been a full-on, door-slamming, cursing fight. Not until that day.

We had been well into pretending we were coping with our new reality when Laura had invited me over for coffee. The men were at work. Robyn was at school. It was just going to be a coffee and chat, like we used to do. Niamh had urged caution when she’d messaged me from the staffroom. She’d told me to maybe wait until the weekend and she could come with me, but I’d been stubbornly determined to go anyway.

In the end it was something so small that proved to be the final straw. As I sat in her kitchen and we drank our coffees, she unloaded her dryer and started folding the clothes. I knew those clothes. Those were Simon’s clothes and I don’t know why but the sight of her balling his socks put me over the edge. How had he betrayed me and managed to end up having my best friend wash and dry, and roll into balls, his socks?

I remember staring at them and that shoulder demon was there whispering poison in my ear. ‘If you were important to her, she’d let him roll his own damn socks,’ it said. ‘If you mattered, she’d take a pair of scissors and cut the big toe out of each one of them, followed by cutting the crotch out of all his boxers.’

Needless to say, I didn’t drink the rest of my coffee. I’d asked her why she was looking after Simon and she had blinked back at me for a moment before replying, ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Becca. I’m only taking his laundry out of the dryer.’

I’d proceeded to tell her she wasn’t ‘only fucking taking his fucking socks out of the fucking dryer’.

‘You’re shitting on thirty years of friendship,’ I’d told her. ‘You’re choosing him. You’re prioritising his needs and Aidan’s needs and who the fuck is worrying about mine? Not you, anyway! You clearly couldn’t give a flying fuck!’

My voice had been shrill and angry and I’d felt red hot rage bubbling up inside me because why was no one looking out for me? Simon had let me down when I needed him and now Laura was.

‘That’s not fair,’ she snapped back. ‘I get that you’re hurt but all I’m doing is supporting my husband’s best friend because it’s important to him. It’s not always about you. And balling his socks doesn’t mean I’m okay with what he did. You know that. You’re not stupid, Becks. There’s no need to be so oversensitive about everything.’

She might as well have uttered the most unforgiveable words that can ever be said to a woman in pain – ‘calm down’. ‘There’s no need to be so oversensitive’ was so painfully close to crossing that line. Needless to say, I did think there was a need to be what she described as ‘oversensitive’.

So that was when I told her to go fuck herself. That was when I’d walked out.

And now, here we were, ten years later and that pain was resurfacing again because nobody had put me first. And my daddy had been added to the list of people who had left my life when I needed him most.

So here in Laura’s bedroom, just over a week after she buried her own mother and while I am supposed to be helping her start to sort through the remains of a life now gone, I force my pain to stay silent. I want to tell her how hurt I was, but I know she is vulnerable and I don’t actually want to hurt her. I just want her to know what it did to me. I want her to acknowledge it. I want her to see me. I’m so tired of being invisible. Becki never wanted to be invisible.

The anger that was building inside me suddenly, and maybe because it knows ultimately it has nowhere to go, transforms into the largest Unexpected Wave of Sadness to date.

‘I love you,’ I choke out, and I mean it. I love Laura. I wish it didn’t still hurt to see her and relive what we went through but it does. ‘And I don’t want to hurt you.’ I can hardly breathe while I force these words out of my mouth. ‘But I don’t think I should’ve come here today. I don’t think it’s the right time… for either of us. I thought I could put it behind me or work through these feelings but I can’t. It hurts too much. It’s too hard.’

‘It’s too hard?’ she replies, her voice a mixture of grief and anger. ‘You find it too hard? My mother has just died but I’m supposed to feel sorry for you? Or invent a time machine and go back ten years and make different choices? Just so the perfect Miss Becca Burnside doesn’t feel sad?’

Her words are slap in the face. ‘I didn’t say that,’ I stutter.

‘No, you didn’t. But it’s always about how you feel, isn’t it? It was then, and it is now. It’s always about how difficult your life is, as if the rest of us just sail along without a care in the world. I made mistakes, Becca. I’m big and ugly enough to admit that. But I can’t keep beating myself with the same stick over and over again. And I absolutely don’t have the strength to do it now.’ Her voice is cracking as it stumbles over the words and I hear the demon on my shoulder screaming at me that it was just stupid to think we could ever, ever go back. There was no act of fate, or time capsule or letters from our younger selves that could fix this.

Tears blinding me, and my head buzzing with a million jumbled thoughts, I feel my way down the stairs and back to the kitchen where Conal looks at me, his face full of concern. He makes to speak but I raise my hand to stop him. I just can’t.

As I pull my coat back on and clip Daniel’s lead to his collar, I mutter a stuttering apology and then I leave. I’m sure I feel Laura walking down the stairs as I walk up the hall. I don’t need to look up to know she is there. I can feel the weight of our collective sadness as I walk back out their front door and head for my car.

I drive away as soon as I can get my keys in the ignition, only to pull over at the side of the road as soon as I’m out of sight of the O’Hagan house. Daniel is whining, straining at his harness in the back seat, probably desperate to get back to his new BFF, Lazlo, as I cry like an absolute sad case, not caring if anyone walking by sees me.

So much for embracing life and finding my friends again. So much for moving on and being happy. Here I am, just a week later, and one of my best friends is MIA, and I’ve left the other hurt and angry in her dead mother’s house. I feel as if my heart has been ripped out as the pain of both my divorce and losing my dad hit me afresh. One of my sons seems to be set on a path of self-annihilation and even the flutter of something remotely akin to attraction to a man has just been rendered futile after I’ve left his sister devastated.

And to top it all off, everyone in Asda in Strabane knows that I am now the proud owner of size-eighteen full briefs.

Fudge my actual life.

30

FLOWER IN THE ATTIC

Still sitting in my car, I dial Niamh’s number once more. Again it goes to voicemail and I listen to her request that I leave a message, which I do, even though I know for a fact that Niamh Cassidy never listens to voice messages. Be it a voicemail or a voice note, it will be ignored because – in her words – ‘God invented WhatsApp for a reason’.

---