I wish you’d told me you were coming back, she says.
She shifts from foot to foot. Cold. Awkward. The mist has thickened now, is spraying our faces. Pummelling around us dramatically before it takes off. I feel droplets drip down my forehead. My hair must truly be a sight now. Too thick for this island. It was made for the Catalonian sun and mountains. She looks back at the house, checks to see if we’re safe, maybe if she’s safe, then back at me.
Look, JP told me he told you about us, and about, you know. I could’ve killed him. It’s too early. We’ve told no one yet, you know anything could happen and then there’d have been no point in telling you at all.
Oh right yeah, like a miscarriage, I say, and she bristles.
Again there’s so much I want to ask her but I can’t be bothered. I don’t want to sound desperate, I don’t want to hear the bitterness that will drip from my words when I know I’m not entitled. My ex-boyfriend and my best friend. Ex-best friend now probably. We haven’t talked for months. When did the texts end. She was supposed to visit. Something came up. She never did. Maybe it was Jamie’s knob that came up. But I didn’t invite her again. I don’t know why I didn’t do that. I wasn’t planning on staying in Dublin for so long … well, yes maybe this long, but not permanently. My friends were supposed to be here when I got back, whenever that would be. Not screwing each other and making a baby. Just here, like on pause. Him on the car ferry, or working behind the bar in the hotel, her at the community hospital and doing hair nixers when she could.
We didn’t plan it, Allegra, she says. It was an accident. Me and Cyclops broke up. He’s changed, gone weird from the drugs. Like even more weird than usual. He’s concocting his own shit now. It was just me and JP. We missed you. I mean, I missed you.
I can’t help but picture her corned-beef thighs wrapped around his skinny waist. She was always bottom heavy, pear-shaped and pear-like with her pale skin with purple and blue spots, pockmarked with cellulite. She hated wearing a bathing suit. Always wore little shorts over it. A red rash from shaving her bikini line every day because she was allergic to the wax. I wonder what he thought of those legs when he saw them for the first time. Her pocked pear legs.
She keeps talking.
We got along better than I thought. Never really got to know each other properly before. When it was the four of us, you know, anyway JP encouraged me to stop being so afraid of doing the things that I wanted. The salon was his idea. I mean it was mine, but I’d never have done it without him.
She looks back at the house again. I don’t know why she keeps doing it, maybe she’s got a client sitting there with bleach burning through to her skull. It’s in the front room, I can see some equipment set up, they’ve also knocked the front wall and added a new patio door, for direct entrance to her business. Just a room in her parents’ house. The room we watched cartoons in. Hardly a business. Even with her cheap signs plastered all over the island I wonder who would go to her, past the scrap metal in the junkyard, to get their hair done. Well, maybe I would have.
I did it, she says proudly, with a huge grin that reveals her deep dimples, and a twist of fear that’s cute. And maybe it’ll be easier to work from home with the baby and all, she adds.
All that information and all I can wonder is why she’s called him JP. Only his mother calls him JP. All his friends call him Jamie. It’s twisted.
Most people have to leave the island to make things happen. Most of the people we grew up with are gone. Decimated with emigration a Wi-Fi ad for the Aran Islands says in its efforts to lure people back. I left. But not Marion. She stays here, opens a hair salon, has a baby. Dream made. By her. In the place I thought I had to leave to accomplish.
So did you see her, she asks, changing the subject. Allegra, say something, she says, smile gone now.
Her hair is soaking wet now, flat on her head, beads of water cling to the bits of wool on her cardigan. She’s shivering. I picture her e-tab-sized baby with goosebumps. Probably the size of a goosebump.
I came here looking for your dad, I finally say.
She looks at me in surprise. Then hurt. Then disgust. A sprinkling of hate. I do feel stupid but she should know me by now. I never say the right thing. I know I don’t say the right thing and I used to tell her that. I used to tell her all the stupid things I’d say to other people during sleepovers in her house and she’d either laugh and say it was harmless or she’d be patient and tell me how to say it better the next time, but it’s like she’s forgotten all those pep talks, just like Jamie, she’s forgotten who I am. The acceptance and patience that comes with friendship is gone. You’ve got to earn that shit. I’m past earning it. She turns on her heel and walks off, Rhurbarb and Custard at her heels, their chins high as if in a pompous huff. Away from the car graveyard and into the house. I’m not sure whether she’s going to pass the message on to her dad or not. Would it be foolish to wait.