Julie

Money does funny things to people. To the people who have it, and the people around them.

I tried to keep things normal. I enjoyed the treats that came with wealth, but I didn’t particularly want to be a kept wife. Not then. Not at the start.

I got my first job shortly after we were married, in a secondary school not far from where we lived in South Dublin, just on the Wicklow border. It was a relatively new school and took on a gang of us recently qualified teachers all at the same time. My pal from college, Grace, got a job first, teaching history and German. She was only in the door and saw that they were advertising for an English teacher. I was interviewed the following week and started a month later.

Those first few years teaching were the probably the happiest I’d ever been. Harry worked long hours, but the staff at St Mochta’s were a lovely bunch and we got on just as well outside of work hours. We ended up in the pub every Friday night and, depending on how late our last class was, sometimes during the week too. It’s amazing those kids ever learned anything, the hangovers we’d have going in some mornings.

There were four of us in particular who hung around together. Grace and me; Anna, a redhead from Donegal, who taught Gaeilge in a dialect that none of us, including the kids, could understand; and Toby, the PE instructor, who was holding a candle for me but was gentleman enough not to be too obvious about it, me being a married woman and all.

Anna used to drive me mad at times. She was always making little digs about the staff I probably had, the holidays me and Harry must have taken – jibes that were repeated often enough to have lost any humour they might have once held and by then had an edge of meanness to them. She seemed offended by our wealth, even though I didn’t think I rubbed anybody’s nose in it. I actually spent most of my time trying to downplay it, to compensate for having what others didn’t.

We were out one Friday night, as per usual, when my mobile went. Harry had finished up early for once and was at home.

‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘Where do you think?’ I shouted over the noise of the packed bar.

‘She’s working very hard,’ Grace yelled. ‘We’re correcting essays. Tell him we’re marking, Julie. A double G&T for every twenty foolscap pages.’

Harry laughed.

‘Who’s there?’ he said.

‘The staff room minus the Trunchbull.’ We’d nicknamed our very lovely headmistress after the awful one in Roald Dahl’s Matilda, thinking we were hilariously ironic. The woman threw parties for us on our birthdays, and her idea of student discipline was having a stern conversation with them and suggesting some quite meditation.

Telling Harry everybody was there was a tiny white lie on my part. The evening had started off with more, but of course, it was us four hard-core drinkers who’d hung on behind while others drifted off. Harry suspected Toby had a thing for me. It was just easier not to make a big deal of it.

Toby, especially after several vodka and Red Bulls, wasn’t so diplomatic.

‘Tell him we’re hitting Coppers after this and not to stay up!’ he called out loudly, a hint of the devil in his eye.

‘Is that the bachelor PE teacher?’ Harry said into the phone. He managed to make ‘PE teacher’ sound like an acronym for sad, desperate bastard who can’t get a real job.

‘Yup,’ I said. ‘Pissed as a fart and doubling his own body weight with vodka.’

‘Why don’t I pick you up?’ Harry said, his voice still casual. ‘I booked us a table in that French restaurant you like in the village. I thought we could treat ourselves this weekend, given I’ve been working so hard lately and neglecting you.’

‘That sounds divine. I’ll see you soon.’

I put down the phone. I didn’t really want to leave, but it was so rare for Harry to finish early and he hated sitting home alone. Inviting him to join us wasn’t an option. We’d done it a couple of times and while he’d been perfectly polite, his very wellobserved opinions afterwards on my friends’ lack of maturity had stung.

Anna had just arrived at the table with four sambucas and overheard the tail end of the conversation.

‘You’re not abandoning us just because Richie Rich has snapped his fingers, are you?’ she said.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Grace draw her finger across her neck in an attempt to tell Anna to kill the conversation.

‘I know you take issue with my husband earning slightly more than your average impoverished state worker, Comrade Anna,’ I said, ‘but you can piss right off. He’s taking me out to Le Bar à Huîtres and, I have to say, the prospect of a bottle of Bolly and Tabasco-drenched oysters beats Coppers any day of the week.’

Anna pursed her lips.

‘So we’re only of use to you when your hubby is not around to splash the cash, is that it?’

‘Give it a rest,’ I said. ‘I’m out with you lot all the time. How often does Harry get home early?’

‘It’s not how often it happens,’ Anna said. ‘It’s the fact that, the moment it does, you ditch us. It’s very telling, Julie. But I suppose some things matter more than friends. Money talks.’

I looked to Grace, expecting some support, but she was nose deep into her sambuca and not making eye contact. Toby was resting back in his chair, his arms crossed, not looking best pleased either.

I shrugged.

‘Sorry, lads, but I think I contribute plenty to our little socials. I am married, ye are aware of that. Last time I checked, it wasn’t to any of you. And I’d still be married, Anna, even if Harry was ringing and asking me to come home for a pizza and a few beers. When the rest of you grow up, you’ll understand.’

I started to collect my things. I knew Harry wouldn’t arrive for at least a half hour, but I was angry and not willing to sit there and let Anna snipe at me for the next thirty minutes.

‘That’s right, little wifey. Off you run. Your husband has said “Jump”.’

‘You know what,’ I said, prepared for a fight by that stage, ‘bitter and single is not a good combination, Anna. You’d want to watch that.’

Toby and Grace sat forward, realizing we were on the tipping point of a full-blown argument that we’d both regret in the morning.

‘Don’t worry, Anna,’ Grace said. ‘We’ll go dancing and leave poor Julie to listen to Harry the Boring and the Tale of his Great Big Bank.’ She winked at me so I’d know she was only slagging Harry to calm things, and not to have a real pop.

It worked. Anna backed down.

I stood up to go and she followed me out to the door.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, grabbing my hand.

I shook my head.

‘Forget it. What happens in the pub stays in the pub.’ I smiled. It would all be forgiven by Monday.

‘Just … just be careful,’ she said. ‘Look, it might be the drink talking, but I want to say this to you anyway. You’re a nice girl, Julie. You’re smart and you’re fun and you’re gorgeous. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a Friday night with your husband. I’m saying that, most of the time, I think of you as being a single woman, because you’re always out with us. He obviously doesn’t give a fuck what you’re doing when he’s busy, but the minute he’s free, he expects you to be. It’s always the same with people who have it all – they think the world revolves around them. It would do no harm to remind him he doesn’t call the shots. And whatever you do, don’t drop your friends just because he wants you to himself. He doesn’t own you.’

I bit my lip. It was the sort of stuff Helen said to me regularly, but I didn’t want to hear it.

I knew it was true, which was why I couldn’t defend Harry – or myself, for that matter. And I was loyal. I wouldn’t be speaking about my marriage to Anna or anybody else.

‘I’ll see you Monday,’ I said, and pushed open the pub door. As the cold wind hit my face, I saw the look on hers. It wasn’t the usual resentful look. It was pitying, and I didn’t like it one little bit.