David tells me of his days growing up only miles away from me, and we swap stories of teenage life in the same small town.
‘Ah, Aaron was something special, all right,’ he says, as he recollects times with his dear friend who he’s told me so much about by now. ‘Do you remember him serving you in the shop? You’d have loved him if you’d got to know him, Kate. I’ve no doubt about that. He was a natural comedian when we worked together and even more of an eejit in school. We bounced off each other so easily.’
‘I’ll bet I would have, for sure,’ I say, seeing as always the pain behind David’s gentle eyes. ‘He sounds like he was great craic altogether. You miss him.’
‘I do. I miss him a lot,’ he says, and I long to reach across and comfort him with a friendly hand, but I refrain. We are having such a light-hearted, fun time together so far, and I don’t want it to become at all maudlin. Nor do I want to cross the line, as I feel any sort of physical touch might drive us both insane, plus I’ll never be the ‘other woman’ for any man. If we take this too far, we’ll break a lot of hearts, and I would never forgive myself for being the reason for another woman’s heartache. I’ve been there myself and it stung so badly.
‘I had a friend like that, who got up to all sorts of antics back in the day in school,’ I tell him, doing my best to keep us on the straight and narrow. ‘There’s always a class clown, isn’t there? She’d have done anything to give us all a laugh and torture the poor teachers.’
We reminisce about school days and about teenage discos, where I discover David had an almost-encounter with one of the prettiest girls from my youth club, and we marvel at how we spent years and years living so close geographically, yet so far apart in every other sense of the word.
‘I went to the local convent school, where the nuns put the fear of God in us should we even look out of the side of our eye at a man!’ I tell him, much to his amusement. ‘We wore our skirts below our knees – well we did untilwe hit the school gates at home time – and our punishment was prayer, though I don’t ever really recall any bad times there. We had the best of times and I wouldn’t change it for the world.’
We marvel at how our lives crisscrossed in the way those of any two people might if they grew up in the same vicinity, yet we both realize that of course it wasn’t the norm to be segregated like we were – not only divided into boys’ schools and girls’ schools, but also of course by religion, so we had no chance of getting to know each other properly, even if we had wanted to. Even our nightlife mainly took place at different ends of town and in different venues.
‘You know, the day you came into the shop and caught my eye,’ he says to me, holding my gaze as he does every time he speaks, ‘I was sure I’d seen you somewhere before. I even said it to Aaron, and I think I’ve just realized where.’
‘Go on?’ I reply, totally puzzled. ‘This will be interesting!’
‘You worked in the bowling alley for a while, didn’t you?’ he says, his blue eyes wide as the penny drops.
‘Yes!’ I exclaim. ‘Yes, I did!’
‘I knew it! Down at the leisure centre? You wore a red tunic as your uniform, like something you’d see in an American diner, and you wore a white hairband? I knew I’d seen you somewhere before! That was you, wasn’t it?’
I’m taken aback at his elephant memory for detail, but very impressed at the same time.
‘My goodness, I must have been about sixteen at thetime,’ I say to him, clasping my napkin in my hands. ‘That was my very first job and I loved it! How do you even remember that? Did you go there?’
Unlike other more traditional sports like Gaelic football or rugby, in our part of the world tenpin bowling was one of the few non-segregated activities our community did share, as the leisure centre was deliberately placed in ‘neutral’ territory for all to enjoy. Under that roof, the deep divides of our town were almost forgotten and, looking back now, I feel sad for all the friendships we missed out on because of the world we grew up in.
‘We went there every Friday until we got bored of winning too easily and a notion for playing pool down at the pub took over our interest,’ he says, his eyes sparkling at the carefree memory. ‘I knew it. I knew I’d seen you somewhere before.’
‘Hang on,’ I say to him, as my own memory serves me well at last. ‘Did you have purple hair back then? Oh my goodness, was that you with the purple hair and biker jacket?’
‘Yes,’ he exclaims. ‘Not my finest look, but yes!’
‘Ah, you were an awful rowdy bunch of eejits but we were all mad about you,’ I tell him, leaning back in my chair with disbelief. ‘You definitely stood out as the, very good-looking I must say, rebel of the pack.’
He shrugs in apology.
‘I told you I was a bit of a rascal growing up,’ he says,still savouring each mouthful of his steak as if he can slow down the clock. I’m enjoying his company so much I don’t want our evening to end. ‘Imagine you caught my eye even way back then. And I caught yours.’
We pause in the moment, an action replay of the innocent teenage years when our paths crossed but we didn’t realize it running through my mind.
I blink back any feelings of that sort, forcing myself to imagine his fiancée Lesley sitting in their home in England with no idea of the fun time we are having together, and I shift a little in my seat as the thought of Sam and Bridget getting up to their shenanigans behind my back flood my mind. I don’t want Lesley, even though I’ve never met her, to go through any of the pain and betrayal I experienced with Sam. The very thought of it makes my stomach churn.
‘There’s no point denying it, I did notice you back then and it wasn’t just for your standout purple hair,’ I say, ‘but we are where we are now in life, David, and isn’t it great we found each other and are lucky enough to be here to reminisce?’
I raise my glass, determined to set the boundaries exactly where they should be, as I feel our time together could quickly lead to something a little less controlled, especially if we keep going down a teenage memory lane where I fancied him even then.
‘I knew even in those days you were untouchable,’ hetells me, looking up at me as I lean my hands under my chin. ‘I knew you were from the other side of the community, the forbidden fruit, if you like.’
‘Yes, isn’t it mad how we just knew who was who back in those days? My parents would have been petrified if I’d mixed with a Protestant boy,’ I say, noticing how he rubs his jawline and his blue eyes flicker as we chat. ‘I remember most parents, including mine, didn’t allow their kids to cross into certain parts of town because sectarianism was so rife and dangerous. It’s mad now when you look back. We were all just kids being controlled by a society we were born into. We didn’t have a choice.’
His eyes widen as I speak. If I was untouchable back then, he is more untouchable now, and yet there is a magnetic force across the table, taunting us, teasing us to go as close as we can.
‘True. My father didn’t allow me to mix in your part of town either,’ he says, holding my gaze. ‘Catholic girls from the Green Park estate were totally out of bounds. It maddened me how he preached about peace and love in the pulpit yet whispered bigotry in my ear. You stood out back then, Kate Foley. I remember you.’
