Her voice dropped until it was virtually a whisper. Molly’s stomach contracted at the misery on her friend’s face. She leaned across the sofa and wrapped her arms around the slight frame. She’d no inkling Helen was interested in anybody, never mind running the gauntlet of thwarted love.
‘Is it truly hopeless?’ asked Molly.
‘Yes.’
Pause.
‘He’s married?’ prompted Molly.
‘No.’
‘Gay?’
‘No.’
‘A priest?’
‘No.’
‘In love with someone else?’
‘No.’
‘Indifferent?’
‘No.’
‘Struck down by a fatal disease?’
‘No.’
‘Helen, I submit. I can imagine no more obstacles. If it isn’t a love that dare not speak its name, seek its flame or shriek its shame, if it isn’t a love potholed by a wife and four children, or even a love with a continent, an incurable illness and a clerical collar between you, I don’t see the barrier.’
At this Helen sank her head on Molly’s shoulder and sobbed, while Molly furtively reached for her glass. It could be a long night, no point in it being a dry one. But after Helen had a weep and accepted Molly’s offer of a cup of tea she calmed down.
‘I’m being stupid,’ she snivelled, juggling alternate sips of wine and tea. ‘It’s not love, it’s infatuation. If I’m patient it will fade.’
Like curtains, thought Molly, unable to stifle the stray comparison that sneaked into her mind.
Helen continued, ‘I simply have to wait for the feelings to evaporate. It’s just so –’ and here her composure quivered – ‘dreary in the meantime. The one person to whom I could describe how confused and destabilised I feel, because he’s probably experiencing something similar, is the one person I can’t approach. Him.’
‘You can talk to me, angel face.’ Curiosity and compassion were battling it out within Molly as she wondered who this unattainable paragon could be. Helen steadfastly stonewalled efforts to probe his identity, and Molly assumed it had to be someone from work. Where else did thirty-two-year-old women meet men? It certainly wasn’t in the supermarket, despite those magazine articles about checking out the contents of a man’s basket in the check-out queue. Small cartons of milk, individual pizzas and a decent bottle of wine meant singles; trolleys with a rainforest of loo roll and reservoir-sized cola bottles equalled daddies. Or so the article claimed. Molly wasn’t convinced it could be so self-evident. People weren’t tailored from Lycra for a one-size-fits-all finish.
Whoops, Helen was talking again – concentrate, Molly chided herself. Mentally assessing other men, even mythical ones, was verboten when your best friend was in emotional hyperventilation.
‘I know I can talk to you, you’re a saint to put up with my moaning –’
‘Let me have that in writing,’ interrupted Molly. ‘I’ll never be believed unless I can produce proof.’
‘You know you’re a strawberry cream, not the nut brittle you like to pretend, Moll. The problem is I don’t feel free to go into details here. I can’t name names. This involves two people and it wouldn’t be right to reveal his identity. Information leaks out – honestly, I’m not pointing the finger at you – but it could be harmful. For both of us. Least said soonest mended, as the Bible doesn’t say. But probably implies somewhere.’
‘Right, of course you can’t say any more,’ agreed Molly, monumentally disappointed. ‘I expect it would be a breach of confidence if I knew him already …’
She looked hopefully at Helen to see if her shot in the dark had struck home but there was no response. Feck, she was longing to know the identity of this adonis who had the normally self-contained Helen sobbing into her wine glass. But after a brief internal tussle Molly acknowledged she was being selfish; the priority now was to distract Helen from her conviction that life was pointless. All this talk of staying on the DART until the end of the line had unnerved Molly with its bleakness. Depression ran in the Sharkey family – Helen’s uncle had thrown himself under a double-decker after he lost his job. She wasn’t about to stand by while Helen caved in to the black dog. This called for decisive measures.
What Molly liked to do when sad was to party. Also when she was happy, bored and feeling stressed. So her solution to Helen’s dilemma, or the two-dimensional aspect of it she’d glimpsed, was glaringly apparent.
‘We’re going on the lash tomorrow night, Helen,’ she announced. ‘That’ll take your mind off him. We’ll get chatted up and flirt outrageously. It’s cast-iron therapy. I’ll wear my foolproof on-the-pull T-shirt, Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a holiday humour, and like enough to consent – jackpot guaranteed every time. Perhaps we’ll even buy you one too, just to prove we’re both the answer to a young man’s prayer, cherchez la indiscriminate femme.’
‘But we’re not,’ objected Helen.
‘I know that and you know that, angel face, but no harm in stringing them along for a few drinks. So will I pick up one of my Shakespearean soundbite numbers for you? Something that intimates “Ready when you are, big boy”, only in ye olde English to show you’re sophisticated?’
‘No,’ shuddered Helen. ‘What works for you wouldn’t carry the same, er, conviction for me. I don’t know that I have the heart for a session, Molly. The city centre’s so congested, there’s nowhere to sit in pubs and you can’t hear yourself speak.’
‘You’ve lost the plot, my little wounded bird. That’s the whole point of Saturday nights on the town. We’re both thirty-two, not a hundred and two, so let’s get cracking and prove we’re irresistible women in the prime of our lives. I’ll meet you in the Lifer at eight and –’
‘Not the Life Bar, it’s too young and trendy,’ complained Helen.
‘So are we. And wear something jam-tarty.’
Helen looked dubious at this final injunction.
‘The nearest you can manage,’ amended Molly. ‘Nothing buttoned up or navy.’
No point in expecting an overnight metamorphosis.
Just as well, reflected Helen, in one of her frequent reflective moments, after Molly left, that friends didn’t have to share characteristics because the two of them would never have lasted the distance.
Just as well, reflected Molly, in one of her infrequent reflective moments, after she left, that friends didn’t have to share characteristics because the two of them would never have lasted the distance.
Instead they had instantly formed a bond when they’d met on day one at university fourteen years ago. Admittedly they’d been thrown together as first year Arts students by mutual terror of Sarah Daly, who was acquainted with Helen from school and Molly from sharing lodgings. Sarah had been superbly informed – she’d known which bus would take them to the Belfield Campus at University College Dublin and where the bus stop was located and she’d even