Lindy texted back a single middle-finger emoji and hopped out of bed. The café was only ten minutes’ walk, but her sister was always so pass-remarkable about Lindy’s clothes that Lindy had to factor in at least ten minutes of agonising before probably still just pulling on the same bland shite she always wore since leaving her office job – jeans, vaguely nice top, expensive but boring khaki jacket.
‘You’re jiggling again.’ An hour later, Lindy was watching her sister shifting around on her seat on the other side of their marble-topped table outside Egan’s, their favourite spot. Drumcondra was close to the city centre but still had a nice villagey feel. If someone could spot you in your school uniform having a cheeky smoke at the bus stop and report you to your mother, that had to be the definition of a village, no matter how close to the city you were.
She’d lived here her whole life and had indeed been spotted smoking at fifteen by Mrs Connelly. It was the best neighbourhood – all the families she’d grown up with were still around and cohabiting peacefully with the blow-ins, who could usually be identified by whether or not they’d had the windows done on their houses.
Finn’s jiggling was intensifying. ‘I can’t believe I need to wee. Again,’ she moaned. ‘I’m worse than you after Max decimated your bladder control. The new serum formula we’re trialling is throwing up some very random side-effects, but look, justlookat my under-eye area.’ Fionnuala thrust her face at Lindy.
‘I’m not seeing anything.’ Lindy examined her older sister’s flawless, make-up-free, nearly-forty-four-year-old face.
‘Eh, fucking exactly, Lindy. No darkness, no discolouration, no …pouches,’ Finn pronounced with disgust. ‘Skin Love is going to completely overhaul the industry – I can feel it. We’ve all been relying on the “no make-up” make-up for too long. Skin Love is going to liberate us. I haven’t put on a scrap of base in months.’
‘Yah, but you’re an anomaly, a sideshow oddity,’ Lindy remarked dryly. ‘You’ve got the skin of an influencer’s child avec Paris filter. The rest of usneedthe bit of base. Welikethe bit of base. Don’t forget women use make-up for a lot of reasons. Be careful you’re not alienating clients with the messaging.’
‘Hmmm. Good point.’ Finn’s eyes narrowed, and Lindy instantly regretted wading any deeper into her sister’s business than her usual vaguegreats andwell dones. Finn was constantly trying to tempt Lindy on to the Skin Love team. Finn shifted to jiggle in a different direction. ‘This is why I cannot understand your refusal to come on board, Lindy. You obviously have an interest. Our relationship to our skin is very rooted in our psychology. Having you on the team with your background would add a whole other dimension.’
‘What “background”, Finn? I didn’t even finish my degree. I’m not a psychologist.’ Lindy hated that she hadn’t finished her BA, but you had to let these things go. Back when she was working in Heart Mind Solutions she’d fully intended to get back to studying, but then Maxxed Out happened and, well, her work now wasn’t helping people in the way she’d once hoped, but that’s what happened when you started a family. Responsibilities and kids and obligations started hijacking ambitions. It happened to everyone to some extent. Or every woman anyway.
Finn powered on with her job pitch: ‘You are clearly better than me on the sensitive-approach side of things. You’re right. I’m an outlier, my skin is incredible – always has been. I’m not the Skin Love client. You are. A woman desperately in need of “skinprovement” and some self-esteem.’
‘Finn, I can’t believe you think your approach isn’t sensitive enough!’ Lindy laughed.
Fionnuala was eight years older and, since they were kids, she had playfully cultivated a sort of faux pity for the (according to her) totally forgotten youngest child, Lindy – Séamus, in the middle, was the only boy and, as such, doted on. Lindy was fully immune to Finn’s ridiculous narrative by this stage and mostly just entertained by it.
‘You could be so good,’ Finn bulldozed on. ‘You never do anything for yourself. You’ve sacrificed your best years working for a narcissist.’
‘Adam’s not a narcissist. And anyway, I don’t workforhim.’
‘If you don’t get out now and go after your own goals you’ll be left pissed off and resentful.’
‘I’m fine with that – I’m not sure anyonealivedoesn’t wind up pissed off and resentful,’ Lindy deadpanned.
‘You’re turning into Mum. A slave to her family and now a bitter old slag.’
‘She’s right there,’ Lindy indicated mildly.
‘I am.’ Jean Reid sniffed, feigning upset.
‘Of course you are, Mum. Always right there, judging and martyring away.’ Finn could joke like this because Jean was the least martyrish Irish mammy since time immemorial. She adored her three kids and her husband, Liam, but also had a healthy detachment, giving as much time to her teaching career – she specialised in adult literacy – as she did her family.
‘IwishI was a slag,’ Jean mused. ‘It sounds fun.’
‘Jean, don’t be giving me cheek!’ Finn was unstoppable.Does the woman even need oxygen?Lindy wondered. ‘Right, the pisser beckons. Mum? I presume you’re coming? She’s on the same new products as me,’ Fionnuala explained as she grabbed her mask and her mother and marched towards the loos at the back of the restaurant.
Where does she get her energy?Lindy stared after them.And her nerve? Don’t call my husband a narcissist – only I may do that.
As for calling Jean a slag? Jean would only take that from Finn – her devotion to her eldest never wavered. The Jean–Finn dynamic did sometimes leave Lindy feeling out in the cold. Her mother just didn’t quite get what Lindy did – ‘home videos but on the internet; all very strange but I suppose they’re trucking along’ – and she wasn’t featured in the social pages of the magazines in Jean’s hairdresser’s like Finn was, so it was like it didn’t count.
It was the problem with having a fairly recently invented job: you spent a lot of time at weddings, funerals and family gatherings explaining it and always leaving the conversation with a sense that your relatives were vaguely concerned about you.
Lindy picked up her phone to check in on things.Life admin is becoming more work than work is. She knew it wasn’t just her. If you gave people a chance to complain about how ‘behind’ they were on their WhatsApp groups, body maintenance and dentist appointments, they’d whip themselves up into a stress-frenzy within minutes.
Everyone’s favourite part of socialising now was the pockets of time when friends went to the loo and you could address some of the notifications stacking up in the phone, Lindy reckoned.
A text alerted her to a voicemail. What kind of tormenter would leave a voicemail in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty-two? She put the phone to her ear. It was a robotic voice confirming the ‘Let’s Get to KnowYou’ interview for this Tuesday, 14 April
‘Hello, future Monteray Valley citizen! A reminder to please send through an up-to-date CV ahead of your Monteray Valley life curator’s arrival,’ said the voice.
What is with the automated voice? Why do they have to make everything so weird?She guessed it was supposed to be more personal than an email, but it was coming off vaguely demented. She’d forgotten the interview – she’d need to move her nail appointment. Feck.
