23

‘Are you in the bathroom, Ais? Why are you whispering?’

Sadhbh’s face fills the screen as she squints and positions herself properly in front of the camera, showing me glimpses of the city skyline behind her. I really must go to Thailand sometime, although Sinéad McGrath went for three weeks last year and, God forgive me, but her face was like a beetroot in every photo she posted on Facebook. The humidity would kill me. Sadhbh isn’t a bit sweaty now as I’m looking at her, but then she’s probably never sweated in her whole life. Her shorn silver crop means there isn’t even any hair to scrape back off her face. I’d be puce and firing up my mini fan.

‘Sadhbh,’ I repeat furtively. ‘How does tit tape work? I can’t get it to stick.’

I am in the bathroom. It’s the en suite off James’s room in his parents’ house in Buckleton and everywhere I turn there’s a towel – on every surface and hanging off multiple hooks and rings. If competitive towel hanging was a sport then the Matthewses would be world champions. It’s the same in the other three bathrooms in the house, and my nerves are gone knowing which one to dry my hands on. James is downstairs and I’m up here ‘checking in with Mammy’, which is my personal code for practising my outfit for tonight’s party and trying on the bra Sharon told me to buy in Victoria’s Secret in the airport. I’ve also relieved my very nervous belly ahead of tonight’s party and meeting Mrs Matthews, who has proven to be something of an enigma.

‘Get one with a real plunge. You’ve lovely boobs,’ Sharon said somewhat wistfully and, of course, I had to tell her that I have a terrible arse and child-bearing hips to make up for them. I’m thrilled to have a bit of me called lovely, but I’ve never met a compliment I didn’t instantly deflect. I was going to ask her what colour I should get the bra in, but she actually went into a bit of a mood, so I had to go with my instinct in the end and went with purple and black, but unless I can sellotape the suit to my chest everyone will be able to see it so I’ve entered crisis mode. I have the purple dress as a back-up, of course, but I met James’s twin cousins, Bryony and Georgia, last night and they seemed super glamorous so I feel like it will have to be the suit. Why didn’t I bring the nice red vest top?

‘Are you sweating, Ais? You look like you’re sweating. You need to be dry as a bone for it to stick.’ This feels like an attack from Sadhbh, to be honest. She knows how I get. Meanwhile, she’s leaning back on her lounger looking like she might even be a bit cold. I’d be wiping the Nile off my top lip.

‘Okay, feck it, I’ll worry about it later.’ Maybe I’ll go and stand outside for an hour and get really cold and apply the tit tape while I’m still a bit blue.

‘So how’s it going? Tell me everything!’

James picked me up from the airport in a Land Rover and we drove through flurries of snow and miles of countryside into the so-called village, which is almost aggressively picturesque with its cobblestone streets, quaint stone cottages and pastel shopfronts. I’d call it a town myself. The place was buzzing with people wearing wax jackets and expensive fleeces and generally looking posh, although I did spot one random lad outside a pub called the Drunken Sailor in a dressing gown and a pair of flip-flops holding a box of kittens. I suppose even Buckleton has its Mad Tom.

As we drove over a cute little hump-back bridge, James pointed out the Pig and Poddle and the village green, where the local fête is held every year, and the little gift shop where I can pick up something small to bring home to Mammy. To be honest, ATM or no ATM, Buckleton puts BGB to shame. There was the huge Christmas tree outside the post office, for starters, and then the truly alarming number of galleries and antique shops on every corner. I once got very into Cash in the Attic when I was off work for a week with the flu and became convinced we were sitting on a fortune, but it turns out Great-Uncle Brendan had been a terrible spoofer and his spoon collection was actually from Roches Stores.

James also pointed out the local school and revealed that he hadn’t gone there because he started boarding school at the age of eight. I was momentarily floored by the thought of tiny little James being sent off on his own so young, but he already seemed a bit on edge, so instead I grilled him about whether it was like Mallory Towers and St Clare’s. To my disgust, he didn’t even mention one midnight feast, which was my absolute dream as a child. Me and Maj and Sinéad McGrath once stole a packet of Rich Teas and two litres of Rock Shandy from Mrs Moran’s press at a sleepover but we were caught eating them at ten o’clock. Didn’t even make it to midnight and not a ginger cake or potted-meat sandwich in sight.

The Matthewses have a driveway long and windy enough to be a pain in the hole for the postman – Pat Curran wouldn’t stand for it at all – and enough ivy covering the house for me to be worried about its structural integrity. And while it’s definitely big and rambling, it’s not the castle Majella had me convinced I’d be arriving at. It’s teeming with such high-end notions, though, that I’m afraid to put my hand anywhere in case I break a china pheasant or brush up against some family-heirloom tapestry.

‘I swear to God, when we arrived inside his father was standing beside the roaring fireplace with a brandy like something out of an ad for aftershave.’

‘No way!’ Sadhbh leans forward, loving the detail. ‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s nice, although he’s a bit scary – sort of booming rather than talking. He checked twice that he was pronouncing my name right, though.’ It was a tonic after enduring two ‘Ayes-leengs’ and an ‘Eileen’ in the pub last night, to be honest. ‘He asked me was I the girl keeping James across the Irish Sea, which was a bit mortifying, so I had to use up my Irish granny material straight away,’ I whisper to Sadhbh, exiting the bathroom and sweeping the phone around James’s bedroom to give her a quick look.

James’s mother’s mother was born in Dublin, so I made him tell me everything about her on the drive from the airport so I could have the chat with his parents. I pride myself on being a hit with them. Even Fran couldn’t resist my top-tier specialist Mammy topics: interesting supplements in the newspaper and the subsequent hoarding of them in case someone might find them useful, poor dead Eva Cassidy, draught excluders, evening primrose oil and its many uses. James’s granny sounds like no granny I’ve ever met, though. She was from a wealthy Dublin family who he doesn’t really know much about, but she lived a lot of her life in their holiday home in the west of Ireland. He didn’t exactly say the word ‘banished’ but that was the vibe I got. I was agog in the Land Rover beside him. It’s the most he’s ever talked about his family and I got the feeling some of it was a bit of a warning. He said he was only ever in his granny’s Connemara house twice as a child and it was a bit like a commune. Lots of candles and scarves and artists and bottles of wine and port. His mother grew up there but came to England for school and never really went back, which sounds a bit sad.

‘And what about the mum?’ Sadhbh is eager for more details.

‘I haven’t met her yet.’

‘What? Where is she? That’s a bit weird.’

It is a bit weird. When we arrived, James asked, ‘Where’s Celine?’ which threw me completely because the only other person I’ve known to call their parents by their first names was a girl called Esther who was in college with John. She was an only child and said she smoked weed with her dad and went on clubbing holidays with her mam. I got stuck talking to her at a party once and ended up making up something about Mammy and Daddy going to Woodstock. She got really interested and I had to make my excuses and hide in the bathroom.

‘Do you not call her “Mum”?’ I whispered as his dad turned around to stoke the fire.

‘No, she never wanted that,’ he whispered back. ‘Said it made her feel old.’

Anyway, George told James that Celine was ‘away with the gang’ and that she’d be back this afternoon. I did meet Marie the housekeeper, though, who came out of the kitchen to give James a bear hug, and I could see instantly that my time spent weeding the herbaceous borders with Daddy over the years was going to come in handy. Over her mauve skirt and high-necked silk blouse she was wearing an apron that read ‘gardeners spend all day in their beds’. It looked new. A Christmas present, no doubt. She gave me a hug too, which was a surprise. James had warned me that the Matthewses aren’t really an affectionate family – which I can sort of relate to, having never really hugged anyone until I was about nineteen. It’s just not the country way. I suppose Marie isn’t a Matthews, though.

‘Okay, show me more of the house,’ Sadhbh encourages and I give her another go around James’s room. ‘It’s very … floral. And frilly.’

Sadhbh is right. James’s room is teeming with rose patterns. He swears blind he had posters when he was a teenager, but Marie likes to keep the house looking its best so she had the paint testers and the fabric samples out the second he left for university, and from the looks of things, she just had the entire room upholstered. Mammy has never touched my sacred Forever Friends wall-hangings and I know she never would. I gently asked James if his parents didn’t mind Marie doing the decorating and he just shrugged and said his mother isn’t into it and his father would barely notice. The house belonged to his father’s parents and hadn’t changed too much since they lived there. We were lying in bed last night when I asked him, and I noticed how flat and cold his voice was talking about it. I didn’t really know what to say so I just gave him a massive squeeze and gently ran my fingers through his hair until his breathing got slow and steady. I lay awake for hours after that, listening to the sounds of the big posh house and thinking about little eight-year-old James in the far-away school with no midnight feasts.

‘Show me more,’ Sadhbh says. ‘Is there a gym? A garage full of cars? How many sitting rooms?’

‘No gym, although the housekeeper did tell me there are two exercise bikes in the sunroom if I wanted to do a workout.’ I can’t imagine doing a workout on my holidays, but thank God I packed the leggings in case someone forces me into it. The mysterious Celine, maybe?

‘Sunroom. Ooh-la-la.’

‘It’s about the size of Knock Town Hall – I’ll have to get you a look.’

I crack James’s bedroom door open and peer out. James and his dad sound like they’re in the study – a proper study too, not just a spare room full of bits of shite, one of which happens to be a desk – judging by the rise and fall of their voices. Marie is in the kitchen dealing with caterers for tonight’s party. I must go down and see how they operate. I might even pick up some hors d’oeuvres tips. This seems like the kind of house that’s seen its fair share of hors d’oeuvres.

‘But the dad is nice anyway? And show me more of the bathrooms. I bet there are toilet-roll covers.’

Sadhbh lives for minimalism, so any kind of frou-frou carry-on at all and it’s like she’s watching an episode of Hoarders. She’d get sick if she knew about the boxes under my bed containing the teenage diaries and every note me and Majella ever passed in school and every birthday and Christmas card I’d ever received. You just never know when I might need them again.

I tiptoe across the landing and bring Sadhbh into the main bathroom for a goo, making sure to pause on the massive sink and the Jacuzzi bath. ‘He’s very nice. He’s insisting I call him George but, you know me, Sadhbh. I just can’t get it out. He gave me a tour of his wine collection and I was forced to choke down a glass of red.’

Sadhbh gasps and pauses in her humming appraisal of the bidet. ‘But you hate red. I tried to get you to taste a lovely Malbec so many times.’

‘It’s just not for me, Sadhbh. It’s very rich and I’m just very loyal to the white.’ I’m also fairly sure I read something years ago about the Points in red wine being through the roof so, just like avocados and Elaine’s beloved nut butters, I can’t bring myself to enjoy it.

‘A wine collection is very swank.’

‘I know. James opened a white for me last night and when I said it was quite sharp he opened another one straight away. Fancy bottles, like!’

It was sharp but I would have drunk it out of a welly. I’m from the eight-euro-deal-in-Centra school of wine drinking, so who am I to judge a sharp unpronounceable French bottle?

‘What else did you do yesterday so?’

‘We walked down to the Pig and Poddle and met James’s cousins.’ I felt absolutely cat not helping with the party prep, but James looked at me like I had two heads and said it was all being looked after. ‘They had more hair than I’ve ever seen on a person’s head,’ I continue.

‘Rich hair.’ Sadhbh nods knowingly. ‘What about his brother? Oh, and won’t your friend Natasia be there?’

Natasia was Niamh From Across the Road’s Chernobyl child back in the day and wouldn’t you know it she ended up going out with Harry Matthews. It really is a small world.

‘They’re coming this evening. Flying in from Reykjavik.’ Natasia went on to be a pilot with KLM so she’s literally flying them in herself. I’m delighted there’s going to be a friendly face at the party, truth be told. Being on best-guest behaviour is exhausting, and if the tit tape goes arseways she can be my lookout.

I hear the study door open and James’s voice gets louder.

‘Sadhbh, I’ve to go.’

‘Okay, send me an outfit pic and have fun!’

I can’t resist it. ‘See you next year!’