‘Rachel.’ Mum’s face loomed at me, alarmingly close. ‘You don’t think they thought I was showing off?’
‘Who?’
‘Anyone. Everyone.’
‘She has the Fear,’ Claire said. ‘So do I.’
‘And me,’ said Margaret, then Anna.
‘Me too,’ Helen said.
‘But you weren’t even drinking.’
‘Yeah. But …’ It was the stress of trying to get pregnant. I understood.
‘Any tranquillizers in that fruit basket?’ Claire asked.
‘Diazepam?’ Margaret asked.
‘That’s Valium,’ Claire said. ‘Give me two. No, make it six.’
Mum cut in. ‘How d’you know I’ve the Fear?’
‘Describe your state of mind.’
‘… Tremendously ashamed. Even though I’m not sure what I did wrong. Like everyone was secretly laughing at me, at all the money we spent on the steak and the gold-leaf –’
‘– that’s definitely the Fear –’
‘– and nobody likes me. So I’m deleting them all from my will. I think someone must have told them I only got a C in History in my Leaving Cert, even though I always said I got a B.’ Her mouth twitched. ‘And everyone thinks I’m too tall –’
‘You are.’ From Helen, of course.
‘– and my nose is too fat. And –’
‘Ah, stop,’ I said. ‘Last night you drank a lot and used far too much adrenaline, leaving you with a huge deficit today. It’s simple science. None of those thoughts are true. Keep your will as it is.’
Mum shifted her attention to me. ‘What about you? Claire says that Captain Spork broke it off.’
‘Dr Spork!’ From Helen.
‘Well, we both agreed that –’
‘Are you back with Luke?’
‘No, but I’m okay.’
‘How, though?’ Mum was distraught. ‘Now you’ve no boyfriend!’
‘Because I feel …’ I couldn’t find the correct word. ‘It’s over with Luke. And it’s over fully, properly. The way it should be.’
A sea of baffled faces was watching and suddenly I had the perfect analogy. ‘The door on my spare room, the crappy lock never fully catches, not even when I slam it. It almost closes, it seems closed, but I’m always tense, because I know it’ll slip free.’
The same five faces were fixed on me, one or two looking somewhat concerned.
‘But once in a blue moon,’ I said, ‘the right thing happens! The click.’ I clicked my fingers to demonstrate. ‘Click!’ I repeated. ‘The lock does what it’s supposed to – it catches and it’s genuinely closed. Do you get me? Click!’
Helen glanced at Claire. ‘You restrain her and I’ll ring the ambulance.’
In a gentle voice, Anna asked, ‘What exactly has “clicked”？’
‘Luke and I ended a long time ago, but it never felt …’ I sought the right word. ‘Real? Done? Now it is. Click!’
‘Uh-oh,’ Margaret declared, literally rolling up her sleeves. ‘I know what’s going on here.’
She didn’t often make those sorts of pronouncements, so I took notice.
‘All of us, at some stage, we’ve had a tooth out?’ she said, ‘For a while your mouth doesn’t hurt and secretly you’re proud of your high pain threshold. But it’s only because the anaesthetic hasn’t worn off.’ She shrugged. ‘Then it does and you’re crying on the couch, eating cloves like they’re M&M’s. Sorry, Rachel.’
‘Bang on,’ Claire said. ‘Rachel, you’re high, literally high, on all that Costello man-lurve.’
‘Exactly this.’ Margaret was earnest. ‘The phenomenon has been well documented. The Costello man-lurve has generated oodles of dopamine in you.’
‘I adore Angelo,’ Anna stated, seemingly apropos of nothing. ‘But I wouldn’t say no to a night of Costello man-lurve.’
‘And there,’ Mum muttered, ‘I’d have to agree with you. ’Tisn’t many a woman who’d turn down a night of Costello man-love.’
‘Lurve.’ Helen corrected, then with savage scorn: ‘I’d turn it down. State of him.’
‘Tell me.’ I was interested, almost amused.
‘His hair is too long, his jeans are still too tight. He’s preposterous.’