Page 24 of Our Song

2019

The Birthday Party

You: So … guess who I met for lunch today?

Katie: Heads-up, I already know because I live with her, so let us please skip this guessing-game tomfoolery because I don’t trust myself not to blurt it out.

You: Okay fine.I don’t trust you not to blurt it out either.

You: I met Tadhg.

Aisling: What Tadhg?

Sarah: OMG TADHG Tadhg?!!!!!Hennessy?

Aisling: I’m sorry what?You know Tadhg Hennessy?????

You: Yup.We were in a band together in college.

Aisling:

Aisling: WHY DID NONE OF YOU EVER TELL ME LAURA WAS IN A BAND WITH TADHG HENNESSY?

Sarah: They had a big fight!And then we were forbidden to mention his name ever again!

You: He contacted me out of the blue and now I’m going to his house next week to work on some music.

Sarah: WHAT?!This is insane.

You: You’re telling me!

Aisling: How?Why?When?

You: It’s a long story …

Sarah: Please get a photo with him.I need to prove to Ellie that I haven’t been lying about knowing him back in the day.Why did we never take cameras on nights out back then?

You: There will be no photos!They almost made me sign a fucking NDA.

Sarah: WTF?

You: If you’re free to meet at the weekend I’ll tell you all about it!

Sarah: Hell yes.Friday 8pm at the usual place if we can get a table?

Aisling: I’ll have to see if Kev can look after Síofra.But if so then definitely yes!

I roll my eyes when I read this but I don’t say anything in the chat.It’s not my place to tell Aisling what I think about her husband’s approach to childcare, which is basically that he goes out with his mates whenever he likes without checking with her in advance, but on the rare occasions that she wants to see her friends in the evening she has to ask him to look after his own daughter.Like he’s doing Aisling a favour.And then he gets all helpless and acts like he doesn’t know how to change a nappy and rings Aisling when she’s in the middle of dinner asking where the wet wipes are.I’ve always got on really well with Kev, but I’ve seen a new side of him since he and Aisling became parents two years ago.It’s like she’s married to someone from the fifties.

Not that I would say any of this to Aisling.She seems happy, and I am very aware it’s none of my business.I have said it to Katie, though, more than once.But not Sarah.Three of us talking about Aisling’s marriage would feel really bitchy.Besides, Sarah could say, with justification, that Katie and I don’t know what parenthood is like.I don’t think shewouldsay it, but she could.

Sarah’s daughter Ellie is twelve now and a huge Tadhg fan.Sarah got pregnant with her when she was only twenty-four, very much not planned.Sarah seriously considered going over to England for an abortion, as Katie had done a year earlier.But she and her boyfriend Rob decided that they were (just about) able to have a baby, albeit about ten years earlier than they had intended.Back then, no one we knew had kids, so itwas pretty lonely for Sarah.But over the last couple of years, it feels like almost everyone has had a baby.Everyone except me, obviously.

You never really notice the path society sets out for you until you step off it.One minute I was doing the same acceptable middle-class thirty-something things as most of my friends.I had a long-term relationship and a permanent job.I was about to get married.I was about to have kids.

And now … I’m not.

But I’m about to do something else.

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