‘Great. I’ve got to sign it off with my brother but it shouldn’t be a problem.’
As hope surges, I remind myself that job offers made verbally when three sheets to the wind are not binding.
Devlin turns back to me and I notice Lonely Glowering Man is now stood at his elbow, trying to get Devlin’s attention. He’s quite the knock-out, now I can see him fully: dark sweeps of eyebrow, sulky mouth, lightly stubbled movie star jawline, the works.
Hang on. I freeze. I realise I know this face. The terrain is altered, and it’s a long time since I’ve traced its lines, but it’s not as I’d thought, completely unfamiliar. Far from it.
The split second of recognition is a punch to the heart.
My breath stops in my throat as his gaze meets mine.
Blondie’s vocals soar as she sings about beautiful hair.
Devlin says: ‘Meet my brother, Lucas.’
‘Luke,’ Lucas says, hand outstretched for a brisk, brief shake as I chew air and murmur a vacant hello and the word Georgina.
(I bite back an irrational cry of: ‘Luke? Since when?’)
My skin is basted in a sudden flop sweat which I hope arrived after we made contact.
Lucas starts speaking closely into Devlin’s ear in a confidential way that doesn’t invite contribution, and after waiting enough seconds so it doesn’t look like I’m fleeing, I escape to the loo.
I’m glad of it being empty, a place where the air is cooler and the music pounds through the wall.
I lock myself in a cubicle, sit fully clothed on the toilet and stare at the partition between myself and the empty stall next door.
Devlin is a Devlin McCarthy? Lucas McCarthy is out there?
Jesus Christ. How? What? Why?
I recall Lucas having some looming threat older brother who’d left school, but he was that many years ahead I never even knew his name. Our mouths were usually fastened on each other rather than used for swapping family biographies.
Oh God, oh God. I wish I’d had some warning. Someone of his significance shouldn’t be able to simply walk back in without fanfare, without a build-up. It reminds me of that line about death just being another room. Lucas was dead to me and yet he’s in this room. It’s impossible.
I mean, I’ve always known it could happen. But after twelve years, you’re convinced it won’t happen.
After a forced wee – strategy: as now I can’t plausibly need a real one in five minutes’ time – I rinse my clammy hands in cold water and inspect my reflection, my vanity overclocking. I grit my teeth to check there’s nothing in them, furiously rub away some make-up that’s drifted from above to below my eye.
I’m shaking slightly. And look at him now?!
In my mind’s eye, Lucas McCarthy was still the skinny eighteen-year-old I once knew. The idea he’d blossomed into some sort of stunning leading man in the interim hadn’t once occurred to me. He’s turned from an underfed, slightly hunted-looking slender indie boy into fully fledged Byronic poetry.
And me? I’ve certainly not transformed into some femme fatale. I fear I’m the same fruit, gone mouldy in the bowl.
I hear Tony’s voice: ‘Julie Goodyear.’
I tuck my hair behind my ears and stand up straighter and try to think positive thoughts. I’m fine. It’s fine. I feel the waistband on my jeans pressing into soft flesh and wish I was hard-bodied and defiant, polished up like a gemstone, and oh God, do I have jowls?
Thing is, I’m fretting – but Lucas didn’t recognise me. Of this I’m virtually certain. I’m good at reading people. I know what it’s like to have people looking at you, talking about you. To be covertly observed.
With Lucas there was no microscopic tell – no whisper of awkwardness, or apprehensiveness, no acknowledgement whatsoever. His expression was the fixed absent-polite-neutral of someone going through the motions with a person who has nothing to do with you. His eyes were flat, they said nothing.
Is that possible? Georgina’s not a rare name, but it’s not one you meet everywhere either. It’s been twelve years. Is that long enough to forget someone entirely? A voice whispers: you have your answer. And you don’t know how many ‘someones’ there are, do you. Losing a Georgina in a huge playing field of other Georginas ain’t so difficult.
I don’t want Lucas to know who I am, yet the idea is also utterly gutting.
I decide to be pragmatic, wailing can wait. At least this earthquake has happened as the wake passes into its final hours.
Back out on the floor, and behind the bar, I get a crick in the neck from studiously not looking at whatever Lucas McCarthy’s doing. My customers are a trickle, then they dry up completely.
Devlin’s wife Mo says I can ‘probably get off’ and I crush her into a hug of gratitude, moving fast enough not to be asked how I’m getting home. Over her shoulder, Devlin makes the ‘I’ll call you’ sign with finger and thumb to ear at me and I respond with a thumbs up, and a hard weight inside.
There’s the exit, don’t look left or right, stay on target, door shut behind you … And breathe.
I smoke a much-needed Marlboro Light as I wait for the taxi I ordered to sweep round the corner, stamping my feet in the cold. I don’t care about the temperature, just relieved to have escaped. I check the tracking app on my phone: my driver Ali is 4 MINS away.
I pace around, ostensibly to warm my body up, more to cool my brain down. The music throbs through the door and I wonder how late they’re going to stay up with the remaining bottles of scotch, reminiscing.
Lucas McCarthy is Devlin’s brother. Devlin is Lucas McCarthy’s brother. I can’t get my head round this.
I clutch my elbow with my free hand and pace and watch figures flitting across the non-misted spaces in the patterns in the windows. If I can see them, they can see me.
What if someone asks why the barmaid is lurking, mentions it? It’s daft to think they will, but seeing Lucas has left me edgy as a stray cat. I wander round the side of the pub, out of view.
An open window nearby is letting heat from the kitchen escape. As I draw near it I can hear a conversation. Voices come in and out of range as they move around the room. I idly listen in, fiddle with my phone. Tracking app: your driver Ali is 1 MIN away.
‘Pick that up. No, it goes there. Look.’
‘Which …’
‘… Luke! No, there, look.’
I straighten. One of these disembodied voices is Lucas? I give their dialogue my full attention. I strain: they’re speaking rapidly, with forcefulness, but I can’t make out the words.
And suddenly, they must move so they’re positioned right by me, as I can follow it perfectly.
‘… Not a doubt. It was bedlam at times and she handled herself well. She’s got no attitude. Exactly what we want.’
‘Based on what? You’re spannered.’
The sound of a heavy weight being dropped, with control.
‘Yeah because she kept my glass full!’
The guffaw that follows is unmistakably Devlin.
‘Pouring liquid into glasses isn’t astrophysics, is it?’
‘Nor is running