The Rachel Incident(46)

My rage started to melt away. I saw his point of view perfectly, but rather than empathise, I was stricken with this romantic idea of a Rachel that existed when I wasn’t around. Mysterious, desired, unable to be kept on a leash. Capable of driving a man crazy.

“I mean,” he carried on, “what? Do you just not want to be seen with me, is that the issue?”

A sober woman would have explained what was going on. A sober woman would have explained about London and saving money, would have owned up about her inability to say no to James and the effervescence of his Gaynaissance. A sober woman would have asked Carey if he wanted to move with her.

But I wasn’t a sober woman. I wasn’t even a woman. I was a girl, a drunk girl, in a tiny dress. And I was cold.

So I kissed him. I grabbed him, and trusted that the might of our physical connection would say all the things that I wasn’t presently capable of putting into words. He pulled away at first, his mouth tight, his jaw set.

“Come home with me,” I said, my finger on his collar. “Come home and we’ll talk.”

He came home. We didn’t talk.

The curtains in my room were thin. The street lamp outside shone a perpetual white shaft of light across the bed, one that narrowly escaped the pillows but cut a strip diagonally across the mattress. His skin looked lunar that night, like something the sky had given birth to.

“I love you,” I said, my thumbs on the famous stomach. “I love you like I’ve never loved anyone.”

“Rachel,” he said, sounding a little sad, “you love everyone.”

That wasn’t true. But it must have seemed true, to him. I loved him, and I loved James, and because that was the only sample group that Carey was working from, he had no idea how indifferently I felt about the rest of the planet. Everyone else could go to hell.

“No,” I said, starting to get upset. “You have to believe me, Carey. It’s never been this way with anyone else.”

I wanted this conversation to be as full of meaning and love as the roof chat between me and James, but that only worked if both people played ball.

“I have to go to Derry tomorrow,” he said. “Mam is sick.”

“What? Why didn’t you say? What’s wrong?”

“She’s got to go into hospital for a few days. I need to look after Dad. He’s a bit defenceless, you know. He’ll be making tomato sandwiches for every meal.”

“But you’re coming back? Aren’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

He fell asleep soon after that, and I watched him. Not the affectionate gaze of a lover, but the frantic, anxious stare of someone trying to bend spoons with their mind.

He was going again. He wouldn’t come back. The fear of heartbreak was almost worse than the reality of it. I felt as though I had swallowed a wet bath mat.

The worry and the vodka doubled on me, and I crawled on my knees to the bathroom. I vomited until I was too tired to stay awake.





18


I WAS FULLY PREPARED for Carey’s second exodus to be the worst thing that would happen to me that summer. I was ready to simmer in it, to make a feast of my devastation. James mourned Dr. Byrne at the start of the summer; now I would grieve Carey again at the close of it.

And then Ben fired me.

“It’s not that you’re a bad worker,” he said sadly, although I was. “I hate to do this. It’s just, I have to think of everyone here.”

“Are you firing James?”

“No.”

“What?” I screeched, all loyalty temporarily thrown out the window. “He’s worse than me.”

“I know. But, you know, you’ve got a degree, Rachel. You can get office work.”

I couldn’t believe it. Since when did Ben care about us, or anything other than the phantom “industry” he liked thinking he was a part of?

“I don’t know if I can, Ben,” I said. I sat, dejected, in his office chair, taking in every cracked ceiling tile. I had been working at the bookshop for three and a half years. Was this really the last time I’d see inside the back office, where I had bitterly counted out the morning float so many times before?

I couldn’t look at him. He felt too sorry for me. I just looked past him, at the printer with the sign above it that said, WORK USE ONLY, JAMES.

“What’s my redundancy pay?” I finally asked.

“Well, you’ve got ten days’ holiday you haven’t taken.”

“That’s it?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Fucking hell, Ben. Is that even legal?”

He blinked. “I’m afraid so,” he said again.

I glared at him. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t own the shop, after all. But the owner lived in Tipperary and we never saw him, so he might as well have.

“I think you’re full of shit,” I said.

“You can work out the rest of the day. Say goodbye to everyone, and all that.”

“Am I getting paid anyway?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then I think I’ll fuck off. I think that will be best for everyone, won’t it?”

I left quickly, my shoulder bag slapping furiously off my bare thigh, rage coming off me in a deep sweat. I regret it now. In the years since there have been many studies done on the nomadic work life of millennials, and sometimes I feel like my adulthood has just been a case study for a Guardian Weekend article. I have never been employed at a website, a magazine or a newspaper for longer than two years. After that I am usually made redundant, or the website goes bust. Now, on the cusp of maternity leave and still undecided about whether I’ll return to the office full time, I’m starting to wonder whether I’ll ever be a true member of anyone’s staff ever again.