Ailish’s post-divorce ‘moving on’. Or lack of.
Rhonda’s latest escapades on dating websites, or post-date post-mortems.
Or Gwen. Her treatment. How she was doing. How they’d make her smile today and take her mind off the bastard disease she’d been fighting for months now. Surgery. Chemo. Endless tests. Bloodwork. Scans. Their hearts were broken for her. They’d talked about it all in minute detail day after day untilthere was nothing left to say, so now they stuck to trivial stuff when they were going there and back. What mattered most was that they walked into the hospital upbeat and positive, and ready to lift Gwen’s spirits.
Ailish and Rhonda were Gwen’s chosen ‘framily’ and her most frequent visitors. Her elderly parents now lived in Aberdeen, she was an only child, and she’d never found anyone she loved enough to marry or have children with, so she’d led a very content, successful, unattached life until now, with a few long-term romantic relationships, but none that she’d chosen to make permanent.
‘Music for a bit. Unless anything mind-blowing happened since I saw you yesterday?’
‘I could make stuff up?’ Rhonda offered, with a teasing grin. ‘Or I could tell you about my dream last night, but you’d probably disapprove. There was nudity.’
‘Urgh, don’t make me wish I’d brought earmuffs,’ Ailish shot back, feigning horror. ‘Shove some music on and spare my fragile soul.’
Rhonda pressed a couple of buttons on her steering wheel and the opening bars of ‘One’ by U2 and Mary J. Blige filled the vehicle. Rhonda, eyes on the road, asked the most important question. ‘Do you want to be Mary or Bono?’
Ailish didn’t hesitate. ‘Mary. You know Bono gets right on my nerves. It’s the wearing dark glasses inside thing.’
Rhonda batted her eyelash extensions. ‘I forgive him for that because he contributed to the longevity of the holy male mullet back when I was starting out. There was a hairstyle that provided endless amusement, especially when it also involved squads of blokes coming in for perms, just to make the mullet extra bouncy. I think I washed the hair of the entire Scotland football team at one point or another – made a fortune in tips.’
The memory of that made Ailish smile. Back in the late eighties, before they were even old enough to legally drink, seventeen-year-old junior hairdresser, Rhonda, would regale her and Gwen with all the gossip of every famous encounter while they got ready to go out on a Saturday night. If they managed to use their flashing smiles and fake IDs to get into a club, the night would be a win. If not, they’d get chips and head back to Rhonda’s house to play a Simple Minds album and have a dance party in the bedroom, because her mum worked nights in a bar.
How did they get from there to being three fifty-four-year-old women so quickly? And what would the young girls they were back then think of the women they’d become? Ailish shrugged off the realisation that seventeen-year-old Ailish would be massively disappointed with her current situation. All that optimism of youth had gone the same way as her pert buttocks, her blue eyeliner obsession and her conviction that she’d one day marry George Michael – right out of the window.
Bono and Mary kept them company for the first few minutes of the journey, before Beyoncé, Shania Twain, Madonna, and Kelly Clarkson took over and got them the rest of the way there, with Ailish and Rhonda belting out all the hits at the top of their voices. By the time they pulled into the car park, it was almost 10a.m. and Ailish needed a throat lozenge.
‘Right, deep breath, slap a smile on and let’s do this,’ Rhonda said, as she pressed the button to kill the engine.
It was the same battle cry that had got them through every tough moment in all their lives.Deep breath, slap a smile on and let’s do this. Ailish had said it to herself more times than she could count in the last two years. The heartbreak of losing the love of her life. Betrayal. Separation. And then in the last twelve months, there had been divorce proceedings. The dog dying. Moving house. The loneliness that came with her new life.Gwen’s diagnosis. The absolute terror that she could lose her lifelong friend. It was too much. Way too much. And yet, she didn’t feel that she had a single right to be miserable because what Gwen was going through was so much worse.
That was all that mattered. Today, on the last day of the year, all she cared about was helping her friend get through the challenges she was facing.
As for fixing her own life… Well, there was always next year. Right now, she’d settle for getting out of 2024 with no more surprises.
2
EMMY RYAN
A blast of Dolly Parton singing ‘9 to 5’ woke Emmy up and she stretched one arm out to the left and banged it up and down in random places until she hit the button that switched Dolly off for exactly five minutes until the next outburst. Yes, she still used an old-style alarm clock, because she was paranoid that she’d forget to charge her phone overnight and it would die and she’d be late for work.
Her other arm felt for Cormac, but his side of the bed was already empty. Groaning, she prised open one eye and aimed it at the digital screen on the clock: 8a.m. Still dark outside, as it would be at this time until the Scottish spring finally kicked the gloom away in March.
Emmy hated winter. When she was on day shift on the elderly ward at Glasgow Central Hospital, she went into work in the dark, and if she finished any time after 3p.m., the skies were already black when she left. The only bonus was the cosiness of the thick jumpers and furry boots that were her standard out-of-work wardrobe from October until the end of February.
She pushed herself up in bed and listened for signs of life. None. For a moment, she wondered if Cormac had already left,maybe headed to the gym before work, and her heart began to thud just a little bit faster. Surely he’d have woken her? But then, leaving her to sleep as long as possible was just the kind of thing that Cormac Sweeney would do, dammit. Or maybe… maybe he just couldn’t be arsed waking her. A month ago, she’d have said he’d never do that, but lately he’d been so preoccupied, so distant, that it wouldn’t be a surprise.
A deflated, half-hearted snap of her fingers had just flicked on the bedside lamp, when the door opened and in he walked, all six feet two of handsomeness. Not that she was biased. Even an objective eye couldn’t deny this man’s win in the genetic life lottery. Her mother, Ailish, was still convinced that he had such a strong resemblance to the Irish actor, Daryl McCormack, that they had to be related and fully expected some strings could be pulled to get them an invitation to next year’s BAFTAs. Not that her mother would agree to a swanky night out these days. It had been pretty much impossible to get her out of the door for any kind of social interaction since… well, since their whole bloody family had fallen apart.
‘Hey gorgeous, happy Hogmanay,’ Cormac said, as he placed a wooden tray down on the bed with her usual winter breakfast: a mug of black coffee and a toasted, buttered cinnamon bagel. The delectable aroma of the Colombian beans mixed with the warm, oozing buttery bun stirred any remaining sleepy senses to life.
Food and her man. This should be the very best way to start the day. The only things that stopped it from being perfect were that he was fully clothed and about to leave, and that creeping suspicion that something wasn’t right with them. He’d been acting strangely for days. Weeks even. And every spider sense she possessed was telling her that she knew the reason why. She just wasn’t ready to admit it.
Or was she just overthinking everything because of all that had happened with her mum and dad? The complete dissolution of the one relationship she’d never doubted for a second. There wasn’t a handbook for how you were meant to feel when you were a grown adult and your parents split. Or for finding out that your dad was a cheating arse who’d been having an affair with – oh, the cliché of it – his two-decades-younger assistant. Her poor mum had been absolutely blindsided, although, in hindsight, his sudden predilection for fake tan and teeth whitening should have been a dead giveaway.
Cormac hadn’t done either of those things, but still, her suspicions that he could be seeing someone else, or thinking about it, were keeping her awake at night. He’d been so checked out recently. He was jumpy if he was on the phone when she walked into the room and one time when – ashamed as she was to admit it – she’d checked his phone while was sleeping, he’d changed the password. He’d come home late a few times and once she could definitely smell perfume.
Now, seeing him doing something so sweet this morning, she was wondering if she’d been wrong.
‘Happy Hogmanay,’ she replied, stretching over to kiss him, oblivious that the angle made the hem of her pyjama top dip into her coffee. ‘I was worried that you’d gone off to work and I’d missed you.’
