#ch:anikasutton

[hannahssimblr]

St Magdalen Terrace: a narrow street with telephone wires crisscrossing overhead. Lissa and Anika clambered onto a pavement with dandelions sprouting through its cracks, and a lone infant’s sock lying by the wheel of the taxi. They had changed into more casual wear, and Lissa had fixed her makeup, yet had not quite managed to scrub away the puffy, raw appearance of a person who had spent an hour sobbing. 

The door was on the latch, and they let themselves into a tiny house, low ceilings, old carpet and two dozen students crowding about, still in their Trinity Ball attire. It was not exactly like Lissa imagined a house party to be. She knew the script from American films. A broken vase, a keg, perhaps, and someone jumping off the roof into a swimming pool. No–this was a more civilised affair. A group of people smoking in the kitchen. Boxes of beer stacked up by the fridge. A speaker system wired up, playing that song about Polaroid pictures while a couple of girls bobbed their heads and tried to dance despite a distinct lack of available floor space. 

It was one or two in the morning by then–a surreal time to be awake and out, walking into a stranger’s house, but in her anxiety was exhilaration, too. The heady mixture of emotion prickled through her arms and out the tips of her fingers like a spell, and as she moved through the party, she had the sense of watching herself from a distance. 

“You go to Trinity?” someone asked her as she looked around for a clean glass for herself. A guy in a patterned tie with a goatee on his chin. 

She regarded him. “Um, yes.”

“And that’s what you wore to the ball?”

“No, I changed afterwards.”

“Oh, I was going to say, like, ballsy move, or whatever. Like, going against the grain there, a bit. Showing up in a pair of jeans.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. 

“Here, d’you want a can, or something? I have some going,” he handed her one, cold from the fridge, and told her his name, which vanished immediately from her mind, as though she’d hit the emergency eject button. He was saying something boring to her, some pop culture thing she had no notion of. Where was Anika? Leaving the can on the counter, she extracted herself and went to find her. 

“Lisssssa,” she was outside a bedroom, a bottle of rosé in her fist. “Come in. We’re going to crack these bad boys open.”

The small bedroom had the bed pushed against the wall. Four or five others were in there, lounging about in their crumpled finery. Nick, too–she expected to find him eventually–sprawled across the bed, one more button than before open on his shirt. He raised a hand in a lazy greeting. 

Anika sat on the floor and patted the space beside her. The carpet was coarse and worn, the stiff plastic mesh showing through in a desire path from the wardrobe to the bed. Lissa sat and watched as Anika jiggled the wine open with her keys, took a sip and passed it to her, drinking while the wrecked cork rolled about their legs. 

“Feeling better?” she asked quietly. 

“Sort of.”

“Good. The wine will help. Mum’s wine, yeah?”

“Mm. It’s like I’m in France right now.”

Anika laughed. She dug in her clutch for a small plastic baggie. “It’d be impolite not to offer, seeing as I’ve brought these to share,” she said. “You want? No pressure, obviously.”

Lissa looked at the pills, little cream coloured things with the euro symbol pressed into them like a topical joke she didn’t get. The pamphlets at school about the dangers of the things had never noted that they’d have fun images on them, just that they were evil, and she would die if she had one. 

“What’s it like?” she said. 

“Nice,” Anika said simply. “Everything just becomes… I don’t know. Very soft and lovely.”

Lissa took a long sip of the wine while she thought about it. Looked around the room. Caught Nick’s eye, his neutral expression. 

“I want to feel better,” she said. “If they could wipe my memory of the fight, then I might do the whole bag.”

“Start small,” Anika said. “Take half of one, and we’ll go from there.” With her thumbnail, she broke it in two. 

“It’s clean?” She felt justified in her caution, yet at the same time, deeply uncool, like an undercover cop trying to infiltrate a gang of hip young things. 

Anika’s lips twitched into a smile. “Yes, darling. Don’t worry,” she took one half herself, washed down with wine, and Lissa followed quickly before she could overthink. Bitter. Like a vitamin pill. Gone. 

And then nothing happened. 

She sat there with her back against the bed and listened to the conversations around her. To Anika, handing out the rest of the pills. The music from a stereo in the corner, tape deck in the front, a CD spinning behind blue translucent plastic—songs she didn’t know. 

Ten, fifteen minutes. She checked herself with forensic detail. How was her heart beating now? The same? Her pulse at the wrist, the inside of her elbow. She pressed her fingers there, and her blood thrummed steady through her veins. It wasn’t working. What a relief. It had been a stupid idea to begin with, and she was not the kind of person who—

Then Anika said something, and she laughed. And laughed, really laughed, a gorgeous laugh that seemed to beat through her like music. What was funny? She didn’t know, and it was as though she’d tumbled backwards into a bed of the softest moss. Carpet under her fingers, she was hypnotized by the cork rolling about, it’s lazy path through the worn fibres. 

Oh. She thought. This is the nicest thing I have ever felt. 

She turned to the people around, and they had the most beautiful faces. Like a host of angels, they were. The girl by the window with languid hands, like a Renaissance painting. What a lovely voice that guy in the corner had, deep and low and—and Nick—

When their eyes met, he smiled. One tooth was out of line. Slight crowding had pushed it forward in a way that made him look roguish. It was a wonder he didn’t get braces for that, but she hoped he never did. His teeth were so lovely just as they were. 

She was going to say that she never had braces either, even though her teeth weren’t right. She had carried this fear that the train tracks would be uglier than the teeth. 

“How are you doing?” He says, before she has the chance to fill him in on her thoughts. 

“Really good. Just so good,” she said, and really meant it. Getting to her feet, she moved towards him. Strange legs. Made of something lighter than bone. She sat on the edge of the bed near him. “Really just fantastic, I have to say.”

“That’s fantastic.”

“Yes, so fantastic.”

She smiled. What a nice conversation they were having. 

Someone opened a window to let the air in. Soft May breeze brushed across her arms, the back of her neck, an extraordinary caress, like being kissed all over. 

She was speaking to him again. Unsure of where she started, or what exactly she’d said to him, only that it was an important conversation. She was on the part where she ripped the thread out of the hem of her dress, and how the false eyelash floated there in a puddle of what had to be urine like a dead spider. The imagery was intense and fascinating on her recall. How profound—that eyelash. A metaphor for something she couldn’t think of.

“And I came back to him, and I saw him standing there so… just so annoyed with me,” she said. “And do you know what I thought?”

“No,” he said, his eyes all over her face. “What did you think?”

“I thought, ‘This is it? This is what I get for working so hard my entire life?’ I got a scholarship! I’m an ambitious woman! Why is it that my boyfriend treats me like a little girl? How is that fair?”

“It’s not fair,” he agreed. “I think… I think this age–university is supposed to feel like that, though, isn’t it? A long series of disappointing revelations about yourself and other people.”

He was so profound. His hair was falling into his eyes, and she wanted to push it back for him. 

“I’m sorry,” she said automatically. “I shouldn’t have mentioned the scholarship exams. I didn’t mean to brag about it.”

“No,” he said. “No, no, you weren’t bragging. They were just part of your story.”

“Yes,” she said. “But I should think before I speak.”

“It’s alright. I’m not going to really do them next year, like. I know my mam was saying that to you, but she was mostly just lying to make me look good. You don’t have to worry about making me feel bad, or whatever.”

“But why wouldn’t you do them?”

He was quiet for a moment. Then: “What’s the point, truthfully? I would just embarrass myself. I’m not going to get it. I’m not going to be the kind of student my parents expect me to be, so why bother trying?”

Lissa felt a rush of understanding so intense it was almost physical. “I know that feeling,” she whispered.

“Yeah?”

“All the time. Every single day. Like no matter what I do, it’s never going to be enough. I’m not talking about my parents. I mean, for me. Myself.”

Nick looked at her, and something passed between them—recognition. Fellow feeling.

“But you got your scholarship,” he said.

“I did. And I still feel like that.”

“Christ, Lissa. That’s bleak.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m extremely fun at parties.”

Someone changed the CD. Aerosmith. Lissa’s jaw felt tight, not unpleasant, just there. Nick too was touching his face, moving his jaw about, like chewing invisible gum.

“Can I tell you something?” She said. 

“Go ahead.”

“I think I ruined my life tonight.”

He pulled a face. “No… What did you do?”

“I might have broken up with Joshua.”

He searched for the correct reaction. His eyes, just like his father’s, really were patient, kind, sad… Good eyes for listening. It struck her that she was there with him—in the place of the people she’d privately envied—the subject of his fascinated gaze. At last, she was interesting to him, and what a wonderful place to be—the only girl on the planet, or at least the only one Nick Lynott was looking at. 

“You think you’ve broken up?” he said finally. 

“Yes. We had a huge fight, Nick. I was screaming. I don’t scream. I’m not the type of person to scream or curse…”

“And there you were, screaming and cursing?”

“Well, no, not cursing. I never curse.”

“Hang on, what?” His brows furrowed as though she’d said something weird. “You’ve never said a bad word?”

“No. I don’t approve of them. For myself. You can say them all you want in front of me. I don’t mind—I’m cool with it.”

“You’ve never been moved to say something vulgar?”

“Never.”

“Not even when—” he seemed to want to say something, then changed his mind, drawing closer to her then, a line of concentration between his brows. “Sorry. Go on, then, you were screaming at him… not cursing.”

“Yes, and I told him not to touch me. To get away from me and go home. I said I didn’t want to see him.”

“Did he get the message?”

“He went away.”

Nick nodded. “And is it bad if you’ve broken up? Is it a really awful thing?”

She gasped—the frightening thought. “Yes. I have a lifelong plan. I’m supposed to be with Joshua. We’re going to get engaged before we graduate, get married after college, buy a big red-brick house and start a family. That’s destiny.”

“And you’ll give up your career and stop voting in elections, too, I presume?”

“Why would you say that?”

“That’s 1950s material. That’s a fantasy my granny would have.”

“I’m like your granny?”

Nick laughed. “I happen to like my granny very much. You could take that as a compliment. She’s a glamorous woman.”

“Well, I’m not glamorous,” Lissa said. “I’m just… I don’t know what I am. You’re glamorous. Maybe you get it from her.”

“Oh, I’m glamorous, am I?”

“I think you know quite well that you’re glamorous. You’ve been undoing more buttons of your shirt all evening and hoping everyone thinks it just flew open by itself.”

Nick thought this was especially funny and threw his head back. One hand, as though conscious of himself, slipped under his shirt and grasped the muscle at the side of his neck. 

He was quite attractive, she concluded. And it was okay to think, safe in the confines of her thoughts, actually handsome. She was normally not unfaithful or lustful even in secret, didn’t have celebrity crushes, or think about actors in movies in any way other than ‘man: acting’. It was Joshua for her forever, her one and only. 

And it was the drugs, objectively, the drugs were to blame for how beautiful Nick was with his hand inside his shirt like that, and his hair in his face, dark enigmatic eyes and his mouth… the way it was. She wondered how kissing might feel on ecstasy. Or off it, with anyone other than Joshua. Millions of men’s mouths all around that she would never kiss. She would sample not one other pair of lips, good or bad, if she committed to Nick’s grandmother’s 1950s fantasy for herself. She felt suddenly condemned to a life without experimentation—great metal shutters slamming down in front of a varied and full existence.

So she reached for him, fingers touching so lightly the crease of shirting material at his elbow. Skin—warm. Dark hair across his forearm. Goosebumps rose on hers. Skin was better on drugs. It made her wonder how—

He went very still. Their eyes met. 

“Tea?” he was saying to her then, lucid, loud, like waking her. “Would you like tea? I think I want to make tea.”

She pulled back. She wanted tea very badly. Yes. It was more than a normal yearning for tea. She would have tea.

Prev // Next

[hannahssimblr]

The ankle strap wouldn’t unfasten—not with the mud caked around the tiny mechanism, yet she tried her best, despite the tears that blinded her. It was the horrible, most hideous type of crying, thick and hot, and made her eyelids feel they might go inside out from squeezing them so hard. Her nose like a faucet as it leaked from her chin to the knee of her dress. 

Hunched on the steps of her accommodation was not the most ideal nor private place to have a meltdown. But the shoes… She’d thought she was being sensible in her decision to remove them before entering the foyer—some consideration she had for people who cleaned the floors, but now as she wrestled with the buckles with fingers that hurt, she cursed herself for even thinking about them. 

She conjured memories, clear as day, of Joshua. Joshua. What had she done to him? She thought of his face the first time they’d been skiing together, the terror in his eyes as he careened down the slopes, and later, after he’d slept it off, and he made them hot chocolates with mountains of marshmallows for them to share while they watched the sunset from the chalet window. Her mother had let them sleep on the pull-out bed by the fire, as long as they left the living room door open and promised to be good. They were always good. For years, they were good and chaste and sweet, and that night by the fire, he’d merely held her hand beneath the blankets. They were happy back then, right? There was proper happiness in the innocence of the first three years. Maybe they were star-crossed, and it was the sex that fated them. 

The heavy door of the building banged behind her, and she wiped her cheeks quickly with her fingers. 

“Oh, Lissa, darling? Are you alright?” 

There stood Anika. Her dress with hitched up on one side with a hair-tie, in wellington boots now, and two bottles of wine in one hand, held clinking together by their necks like chickens. There was something oddly rural about the image that Lissa could hardly appreciate through wet eyes.

She dropped onto the steps immediately and touched a cool hand to her arm. “Oh dear. Oh, darling, why are you crying? What’s happened to you? Tell me.”

Lissa collapsed into a fit of heaving sobs, her head between her knees while Anika smoothed her hair, fixing it back into place in a very loving, girls-supporting-girls type of way. It was still hard for Lissa to comprehend Anika’s pursuit of friendship with her. A female friendship absent from competition and backstabbing was a thing she’d never known. Mostly, others wanted to better her, prove her wrong or catch her out for something, but Anika was always just kind, in such a way that felt suspicious at first but now seemed simple. The thought opened a new cavernous hole of loneliness inside her chest, and she sobbed harder. 

“Get it all out, Lissa. That’s it. I’ve got you, sweetheart.” Then, more quietly, she said: “Was it Joshua?”

Lissa managed just a high-pitched, squeaking sound, nodding while tears studded the concrete step. 

“Oh,” Anika twirled a piece of hair at the nape of Lissa’s neck. “Have you split up?”

She raised her head. The thought had not exactly occurred to her, at least not in those terms. “Split up?” She echoed.

“Well, yes. Did you… did he dump you? Did you dump him?”

Lissa stared. “I don’t know. We had a fight. An awful one. How would I know something like that? If we’ve… split up?”

“Usually something would have been said to that effect.”

Seized with panic, she straightened. “I told him to go away. To call his dad and get him.”

“And then he went?”

“Yes, he’s gone. I think. At least he didn’t follow me.”

“Bit of a grey area, isn’t it?” Anika chewed her lip. “Did you intend to break up? Was that the idea?”

“I don’t know! I’ve never broken up with anyone, or been broken up with. I don’t know the script.”

“There isn’t one. It’s just what you both agree the end looks like.”

The end. 

Lissa tried to picture it—the vista of her life without him opening to her, the possibilities of who she could be, single. Surely, she thought, it would not suit her. It would leave her untethered and floating off into the unknown, like the helium balloon she’d released at the millennium, with a big ‘2000’ printed on the foil. Days later she’d found it tangled in a tree by the smokestacks on Sandymount Strand. Punctured and forlorn, dangling there limply like an omen of what lay ahead. 

“Anika, I don’t know what I’ve done.”

“Oh, come on, surely it’s nothing that can’t be undone,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s the right time to try to fix it. It’s probably best if you both take space–sleep on it.”

“I couldn’t go to sleep,” Lissa said with rising hysteria. “I’ll be up crying all night over it, I’m sure. I’ll go inside that flat and I know I’ll just lie in bed all night wishing… wishing I was dead, or something.”

She felt she’d admitted something deeply shocking and disturbing, but Anika barely reacted. Just uttered a soothing hum while rubbing meditative circles on Lissa’s back. “I’m going to an afterparty soon,” she said. “Out in Irishtown. A few of us are heading out after the ball.”

Lissa tried to work out whether she was informing her or inviting her. “Oh, cool,” she said.

“If crying your eyes out in an empty flat doesn’t seem like your idea of fun, you know, you’re very welcome to join me.”

“I won’t know anyone.”

“That’s alright sometimes, isn’t it? Getting to know new people?”

Lissa gestured to the ridiculousness of her appearance, the unravelling hem, the dirt and wine and tears blooming all over the yellow satin of her dress, as though she’d been dragged backwards through the mosh pit. “I’m not exactly looking my best.”

“It’s lucky we’re right outside the building, you know, where your wardrobe and your makeup are just two flights up. Come on, we’ll sort you out, have you looking nice again, yeah?”

Lissa nodded. Shrugged. Maybe she could go to a party. An after party. Never been to one of those—only heard of them, and imagined people crowding around on the furniture in someone’s living room, leaving cans of lager on the floor, and cigarettes in the sink, and all that. She could try it. She might hate it, but at least then she could just come home. They couldn’t trap her at a house party. 

Anika patted Lissa’s knee. “Come on then. Let’s go.” She grabbed the bottles again, and Lissa’s eyes narrowed. 

“Hey, are those mine?”

Anika looked down with surprise, as though seeing them for the first time. “Oh!”

“That’s my mother’s rosé wine. I brought it back from the vineyard, see? Côtes de Provence. It’s written right there.” Even in her weary state, she could still find a reason to be precious. 

“You didn’t seem to be drinking them. They were in the fridge since January, so I thought maybe I’d just… replace them, and you wouldn’t notice?”

“I would have noticed,” Lissa said, getting to her feet. 

“Bit cheeky of me. Sorry about that.”

As Lissa looked at her housemate, the impish smile of someone who almost got away with it, and realised she didn’t have it in her to care. Wine was just wine, after all. And wine was better shared, not sitting in the fridge door like some sentimental item, waiting eternity for the right time to be enjoyed. 

“It’s fine,” she said. “I don’t mind. We’ll share them at the party.”

“Alright!” Anika said, and threw up a hand sign like a surfer from the 60s. “Sounds good!”

She held the door open, and they both slipped inside. 

Prev // Next

[hannahssimblr]

“Sorry, what on earth is math rock?”

“Doesn’t it sound like something you might enjoy, darling?”

“Really? Why?”

“Whatever, I don’t know. I was telling a joke. Math. Academia, that sort of thing. It’s all running on the same theme.”

Anika glided through the crowds, her lean body swerving elbows and hips like she was swimming. Lissa followed, nose halfway in the schedule brochure she’d procured from the front office. Trinity Ball, May 2005. She didn’t recognise a single act. 

Her other hand picked at a loose thread—the front of her dress, where a single rhinestone had come loose from its backing. It was the same one she’d worn to her school debs not ten months before, and it already felt incredibly like last year’s dress. The thing that had made her feel like a film star then, now stretched tighter around her hips, its yellow satin creased from the wardrobe in a way that hadn’t steamed out, and was now literally coming apart under her fingers. 

Anika wore a slinky black number, her hair pinned up from her face, a slash of red lipstick on her mouth. It was better to just resolve herself to the fact that Anika would look good in anything, a bin bag, even, and so comparison could only ever be an agent of self harm. 

Joshua was waiting by the Campanile. He wore his debs suit too—the square shoulders, the long tie that hung past his belt buckle—she felt a surge of something as she watched him, a moment before he noticed them. Affection. Or pity. 

He smiled, then. His face was oily, all the floodlights shining on him as he greeted her with a kiss. 

“It’s very warm tonight,” she said. “You look like you’re running a bit hot.”

“No, I’m fine, the weather is perfect,” he produced a handkerchief to pat down his face, then he lifted her worrying hand from the bodice. “Oh, Lissa, have you torn your dress already?”

“Oh, it’s a rhinestone. It fell off somewhere.” She mimicked a search for it—an ineffectual scan of the closest cobblestones, as though it wasn’t lost forever in the gravel somewhere around Botany Bay. 

“This girl, right?” he said to Anika, prodding a thumb at Lissa. “Can’t take her anywhere.”

Anika looked over her shoulder. 

Lissa stepped back and swiped her hands over the hips of her dress. “Have you seen who’s playing? Not a single name I recognise.”

Joshua took the brochure, “Pete Doherty?” and his brows shot up his forehead. “You don’t know Pete Doherty?”

“No, am I supposed to?”

“The Libertines, Princess.”

She shrugged. “Don’t know them.”

“She’s not the best with music,” he said again to Anika, now rummaging around her clutch. “I took her to Coldplay for her eighteenth, and she didn’t know half the songs. Imagine.”

“I did,” Lissa smiled, aware already, so early in the night, that she was teetering on the verge of a dangerous feeling. “I just wasn’t singing along to them, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t know them. You bought me their album the previous Christmas.”

“I recall, yeah. I was looking for it last week in your room, by the way—”

“Oh, hi!” Noise then, pleasant commotion as a crowd of Anika’s friends arrived and stood around them in a way that forced Lissa’s acknowledgement. The cool people. The ones she had come to know anecdotally, like Oliver–Olly–who didn’t yet know his open mic comedy was extremely poor, Emily, whose impacted bellybutton piercing recently landed her in the A&E, and Nick—Nick, of course, who she was no longer surprised to see. Who had become a fixture of Anika’s social life over nine months of pub nights and get-togethers that Lissa had faithfully missed, but she had heard romping tales about over the hum of her porridge heating inside the microwave. And then Nick said this, and Andrew was so shocked! Endless stories, it seemed, featuring Nick saying something to someone else.  

Nick wasn’t wearing a suit to the ball, but a shirt, the top three buttons loosened in a way she was sure—absolutely, sure—was accidentally-on-purpose. He had that look these days, a thrown-together, dishevelled disposition all the boys were going for. The boys on TV were growing their hair out that year, and so was he, a lock of it falling extremely trendily over his brow as he greeted Anika with a kiss to her cheek. 

She pulled back from him with her hand upon his arm, and pulled his shirt to expose a slash of collarbone, gleaming from the heat. On him, sweat seemed a stylish addition, and something he’d done to complete his outfit, rather than something that had overcome him. 

And Joshua, she glanced again at the Windsor knot of his tie, the way moisture beaded in his sideburns. Recently, there had been times when she’d looked at him and felt she was staring twenty years into their future. Like she could see the man he’d grow into—the patterns of his ageing face. There had been something boyish about him, a dimple-chinned cuteness that was eluding him as he became a man. He will look like his father, she thought as he scratched his jaw, and conjured up a vision of Cyril Dempsey stooped over to prod the coals with a pair of fireplace tongs. 

Nick had a face that seemed it would look like that forever. Sallow and lean, the skin taut across his cheekbones. Handsome, maybe, though she wasn’t sure she really thought it. Lively, at least. Striking. Comfortable in his youth and health. He was looking at her now. 

“Lissa,” he approached, then hesitated, like he was resisting a hug reflex. “I heard—my dad told me you passed your exams. You got your scholarship. That’s—congratulations, what a fantastic achievement that is.”

They were both self-conscious. Her, cradling herself with her arms, and him, his hands inside the pockets of his slacks, rocking back on his heels, yearning to be elsewhere.

 “Thank you,” she said. “I worked really hard.”

“I bet, yeah. It’s no mean feat, right?”

“Right. I’m so pleased.”

A pause. He smiled. She smiled. 

Joshua swaggered up,—chin jutted forward like a fighter. “Hey, man, what’s the craic?”

Nick nodded. “Hi.”

“Do we know each other? Like, have we met before at something, or?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Well, I’m Joshua. Joshua Dempsey?” A question, as if expecting recognition. “This is my girlfriend, Lissa.”

“Mm, yes. Nice to meet you.”

Joshua stared. “Yeah. It just seems like you’d met her before, by the way you were just talking to her, so I was just wondering.”

“Joshua,” Lissa muttered. “My father knows his. We’ve met once or twice, at—” she looked at him for affirmation. “At the hotel, and such.”

Nick nodded, a great amused, closed-mouth smile spreading across his face. “Her father’s hotel. Great acquaintances, Miss Lissa Mansfield and I, here. I was just congratulating her on her scholarship. Should have introduced myself.”

“Right, then, and you are?”

“Nick Lynott.”

Joshua’s nostrils flared. “Oh. You’re that lad who phoned me?”

“Hm?”

“From the pub.”

Nick squinted. “Uh. I have your number?”

“No, from her phone, you phoned me from hers.”

“Lissa’s phone? Was this recently?”

“No—well, a number of months ago.”

“Eight months,” Lissa said, her face heating. “It was in October.”

“Oh, God, eight months ago,” Nick scratched his head. “It’s been a while. I can’t say I remember the specifics. Nice to you, was I? Or was I a small bit of a dick?”

“You didn’t call me to chat, Lynott. No need to pretend.”

She wanted, for some reason, to laugh at how hatefully uncomfortable the conversation was. Joshua, with a face like a bull, and Nick, up on his high horse, literally looking down his nose. As if it wasn’t her humiliation, her ill-judged moment, dredged up and used as ammo in some petty battle of egos.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “Who cares? It was ages ago. I don’t remember either. Leave it. I want to get something to drink at the bar.”

“Alright then,” Joshua snipped. “I’ll go with you.”

And there, while she waited for her cup of wine, he hovered. Fussing with his hair, his shirt collar, with the pent-up energy of a housebound dog. She pursed her lips and exhaled slowly. 

“Your father’s?” He ranted on. “Which friend of your father? Lynott? Never met him. Isn’t known to my family. Was he at the wedding? Who Lynott?”

“Ben,” she said. “From RTE. His wife, Linda, was wearing that gigantic hat.”

“Which hat?”

“Gigantic one,” she said, and didn’t elaborate. Only Alexander had thought the hat was funny. Joshua was the one who insisted the hat was a normal size for that type of event, which it frankly couldn’t have been.  

“Well, anyway, they’re clearly not a good family. Judging by the way he’s turned out. Didn’t he get the email that this was a formal event, by the way?”

“Perhaps he didn’t read it.”

“Maybe he can’t read at all. What’s he even doing at Trinity? He doesn’t seem like the sharpest tool in the shed.”

“Good question.”

Lissa took her plastic cup and wandered towards the forming crowd. A crush of bodies shoved against the barriers at the stage, their faces underlit and strange. “We should find somewhere to stand.”

“Somewhere near the back. I don’t want to be stuck near people pushing.”

“Right, yes.”

And they hovered on the outside, his hand, as it would be all night, damp and insistent on her waist. 

It must have been an hour like that, the music throbbing through their feet, the crowd churning around them as act after act took to the stage. Seven, eight scruffy looking men with the same haircut, swinging guitars about. 

“Is that him? Pete Whatshisname?” Lissa kept saying, and Joshua would say no, not yet. I’ll tell you when it’s him, sounding so smug about it, like he possessed a secret knowledge about this random rockstar he was just delighted to withhold. She stopped asking. Stopped saying things altogether as he made quips into her ear along with the gurgle of his wine as he drank from his cup. Her temper simmered. 

As the night wore on, and the grass turned trodden and mucky underfoot, the hem of her dress became streaked with dirt. On a hike to the porta potty, which she had avoided for hygiene purposes until eventually reaching a point of desperation, she speared a plastic cup with her heel. Crunch. She shook it off. No matter, she thought, I will never wear this stupid outfit again. 

In the cubicle, as she held the great bundle of her skirts on her lap, she picked at a mucky thread, loosening it from the hem. A series of pops as it ripped and unfurled the seam, leaving it raw. Oh, right, okay, she thought mildly, then snapped the thread and left it on the floor among wads of wet toilet tissue and a single false eyelash.

Prev // Next

[hannahssimblr]

The pub was a stone’s throw from the gates of the college—an old traditional place, whose steps were now filled with banished smokers, as the late October wind tunneled down the street. It was the kind of dark, sultry venue that people flocked to in the hopes of finding an authentic experience, yellowed walls from decades of cigarettes, the thick, malty smell of beer, and a crackling fire. Later, Lissa would worry about the smell on her clothing, but now, she concentrated on her path through the crowd with Anika, the place so full and loud that she considered grabbing hold of her coat sleeve to guide her.

Anika navigated the space like she was from there, offering greetings as she passed, a hand on a shoulder, a back, I’ll chat to you later, yeah? Good to see you. She secured them two seats at the back, beneath signed posters of old rock stars and politicians. Half a table, already claimed by coats and half-empty pint glasses.

“Stay,” she said. “I’ll grab drinks. What’ll you have?”

Lissa struggled out of her coat, half-sitting on it already. “I don’t know. Whatever you’re having.”

She pulled her jacket into her lap and scanned the room with mild panic. Alone at a table, looking a bit gormless, like someone who’d never been to a pub before. They weren’t really pubs-and-pints people, the Mansfields, more wine bars and small plates, but she was keen to embrace the lifestyle. She was certain she could become someone who sat around holding a Guinness if she really put her mind to it. 

Like the people at the table across from her. Pints on the table in front of them, a packet of cheese and onion crisps torn open and flattened into a makeshift plate. She eavesdropped casually on their conversation, as if seeking instruction. 

“Yes, but the library is always unbearable in the evening,” someone said. “I actually have to go home to study, and that means—”

Indistinct muttering, laughing, the door to the beer garden swooshing open, and a blast of frigid air over Lissa’s legs. She craned around looking for Anika, or at least someone on the staff to clear away the dirty glasses, but no one was coming.  

She looked back at the table. Students, for sure, the way they spoke. The arts, too, if she had to wager a guess. Maybe history, anthropology, or English or something else that produced the type of degree designed to trap you in academia forever. Future doctors of philosophy, she thought with a private smile. They will write their theses about a Wittgensteinian remark or something. 

“No, no, wait, quiet for a minute,” the guy nearest to her was saying, his hand up like halting traffic. “Let Maddie talk—Maddie, continue.”

There was something oddly calming about the way he controlled the table—not loud, not showy, just certain. He turned his head back to Maddie, and she saw him in profile. 

Nick.

Lissa jolted her face away immediately, heat rushing to her cheeks, body tense like a spooked cat. Anika chose that moment to return, one slim glass in each hand. 

“Are you a bit warm?” She frowned. “You’ve gone… slightly violet.”

Lissa fanned her hands over her face. “I’m fine. I have one of those complexions.” Grabbed the drink and brought it to her cheek, the ice clinking pleasingly by her ear. “All good. This looks so nice, by the way. Is it a cocktail?”

Anika slipped into her seat. “Just a vodka and tonic. Is that cool?”

“Oh yeah, totally.” She took a sip. It was horrible. 

She tried not to focus on Nick, but he was also right there, which made it a challenge. Over Anika’s shoulder, leaning in, listening intently. Extremely intently, like there was no one in the room except the person speaking. How odd that she felt hurt by it. And the memories from her father’s wedding resurfaced—the way he’d treated her like the most boring creature on the planet. This—knowing he was capable of such intense levels of conversational engagement—made his flippancy sting even worse, like he’d torn off her plaster and spat into the wound.

She would have her drink. Concentrate on having it. At some point, she decided it would be best to keep an eye on Anika’s, and make sure they were having the same amount, but by the time she’d even had the thought, her drink was already lighter than she meant it to be. Fine. The edges of her bitterness had been knocked off, and other people were arriving, obscuring the other table from view. 

Someone Anika knew from lectures. Someone else who knew someone else. Coats slung over chairs, then over each other, and then someone was sitting on Lissa’s. Trapped irretrievably. She stopped planning her exit and ordered another drink while the table filled with glasses she wasn’t sure were hers. 

Anika leaned back and laughed at something said at the other table. Her knee bumped against Lissa’s. 

“Oh, how rude of me!” She said to the person next to her. “This is Nick, from…what do you do, darling? Literature?”

She could only see the top third of his head, and his hand running through his hair. He must have been getting gel on his fingers. She hated that she even gave it thought. 

She drank again. 

Around her, the room was warmer, louder, the fire blazing against the side of her face. Words were arriving a second too late, like she was grasping for them, pulling them out of the air after two, three failed attempts. When she laughed, she was surprised by how easily it spilled from her, and how raucous. Someone brought her a drink without asking. She didn’t refuse. 

At some point, she realised she was no longer thinking about the taste at all.

The realisation she was drunk didn’t hit until she stood, staggered towards the door. Amusing how things spun when she moved, the exotic dance of the door handles, guessing which one to grab. She unleashed herself into the night air and thick smog of nicotine, cold lapping up and down her arms. Which way? This way, surely. 

Someone told her the bathroom was inside, actually, which made sense. She spun back as the door swung open…

…and bumped straight into him. 

“Oh, sorry, love, I didn’t see you.” Nick had an unlit cigarette between two fingers. “Are you alright?”

“Yes. Sorry. I was trying to find—”

“Oh, Lissa. Sorry, Lissa Mansfield, right? I didn’t mean to crash into you there, I was just heading out for a smoke.”

She just stood there. Thought of pretending not to know him as a form of revenge, but had some dim awareness that the ability to carry off a convincing lie would be difficult in her condition. 

He caught her eye with intention and added, “Or, excuse me, Bouchard-Mansfield, wasn’t it?”

“Hm, yes,” she muttered. “From the wedding.”

“I was just about to say. The wedding.” A pause. “How’s your father?”

“He’s fine.”

“And that wonderful extension?”

It was difficult to tell whether the nauseating wave that came over her was caused by the vodka tonics or the harrowing images she was conjuring of that monstrous cube. “Ugh,” she said. “It’s finished. They’re landscaping. The landscaping is…” she struggled to think of the word. “... fetid.”

“‘Fetid’,” he echoed. “That’s a great word.”

“It’s not the appropriate word.”

“I should use it in an email.”

“Hm. You may.” 

He was moving around in front of her. Once Nick. Two Nicks. He was more pleasant when she couldn’t actually make out his expression, or any of the things about his face that annoyed her. Maybe one was Good Nick, and the other was Evil Nick. One could only tell the truth and the other could only lie. Was she mixing up her allegories? 

Both Nicks were laughing, which was interesting. 

“I may? Thanks so much for your permission.”

“You can write whatever emails you like. I don’t care.”

“Noted.” He reached for his pocket. “Do you want one?” 

He was offering her a cigarette, which she certainly didn’t want. She had never smoked, nor intended to, and shook her head. “They’re illegal.”

“Well, they aren’t…” 

It’s not what she meant. 

“Indoors, unfortunately,” he continued. “I miss not having to freeze my tits off every time I want to go for one.”

“I meant—” she didn’t actually know what she meant. She reached for the word and clutched at air. The buildings behind Nick were rotating as if fixed to a wheel, and she lurched sideways as she spun with them.

“Woah, hang on a second,” he grabbed her arm. “Are you alright?”

“Fine, yes, thank you very much.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Alright, maybe I drank a little too much.” As her words slurred together into one long, drunken soup, he stared at her blankly.

“We might need to find someone to bring you home.”

“I’m fine.”

“I respect that, but I reckon if the bouncers see you, they’ll chuck you out. I’d feel better if that didn’t happen.”

It was reasonably logical. 

“Where are you staying, Lissa?”

“Botany Bay.”

“Of course you are,” he muttered, as if he thought somehow she wouldn’t hear him. She didn’t like that. And why was he still holding onto her arm? She snatched herself away. 

He was floating near her eyeline now, looking serious. Very brown eyes, he had. “You live with Anika, yeah? Anika Sutton?” 

She blinked hard, seized with anxiety. “Don’t interrupt Anika.”

“Then who do I get, Lissa? Who will be looking after you?”

“Joshua,” she said, although that seemed like a poor idea, too. But yes, it was probably about time for her to be handed back to him, to whom she belonged, like a slightly crumpled jacket someone forgot at the cloakroom. 

“Is he inside?”

“He goes to another college.”

“So he’s not here? Where is he? Can you call him?” Nick said. “And tell him where you are.”

She would, but her phone was inside her coat pocket, and underneath someone else’s arse. A situation that was impossible to solve, now that the table she’d sat at was a hundred miles away, and her arms were made of lead and gelatin. But she knew Joshua’s number. Tomorrow, when she was clearheaded again, she’d be impressed by her recall of his digits, and the way she rattled them off to Nick under extreme conditions, but of course she could. She called him every day she wasn’t with him. Talked until one of them fell asleep. Was it past her bedtime? Maybe he was calling her now.

“Hey, Joshua.” Nick had one of those flat, silver phones with a chrome coated number pad that reflected the colours of the city in pleasing, abstract blobs. “This is Nick Lynott. No–no, you don’t. I’m just calling about Lissa. She’s here at the—she’s fine—” he broke off and sighed. “Nick Lynott, I said.”

While they spent several minutes arguing over who Nick was, Lissa sat. He’d put her sitting on a bench next to someone whose cigarette smoke was billowing into her face at regular intervals. Oh, wow. I’ll be sick later, she thought brightly. Joshua would have to be in there with her watching her do it, because she didn’t like vomiting. Found it violent and frightening. How odd to think she’d be in a situation like that later, sobbing over a toilet bowl, while now she smiled blandly at the neon shapes crossing the keyboard of Nick Lynott’s phone. 

“He’s coming,” Nick snapped his phone shut. His mouth was pulled tight. “Nice guy.”

“Lovely Joshua,” Lissa agreed.

He asked her to stay put, and she did, swaying in place while he ventured inside to fetch her belongings and a glass of water. The cigarette he’d been preparing to smoke had ended up on the ground, whole and unlit, and she tried to hand it back to him when he returned. 

“I don’t want to smoke something that’s been on the floor,” he said, which had her feeling inexplicably sad for it. She let it roll off her palm.

“Here,” he said, and laid her coat across her lap. He put the water into her hands, tending to her in a way that made her feel comforted and faintly infantile. It was in a Guinness glass. The embossed harp felt nice under her finger. As she stroked it hypnotically, she began recovering some thought she’d had earlier about pubs. Or pub people. Something like that. She had been very clever. She was sure of that. Nick reminded her to drink.

She did, and the pub was an aquarium through the lens of the glass. Intriguing. 

“Oh, Lissa, there you are.” And there was Joshua, emerging from the cigarette smoke like a medieval knight through mist. He smelled nice, like deodorant and clean sweat from exertion. “Princess, are you alright?” She smiled sweetly and nodded, though she wished he hadn’t called her that in front of Nick. 

But Nick was gone already, two versions of him folded into one, vanished into the noise of the pub. She looked for him anyway, searched the crowds as she felt herself be taken—Joshua’s guiding hand at her elbow—though she wasn’t sure what she meant to say if she found him.  

She tried, in a way that only made sense to her while drunk, to work out which one of him it had been. The good one or the bad one. But she found, as she was steered onto the street, the distinction no longer seemed very clear.

Prev // Next