I am trying to think about the last time we were all together like this. It may have been Christmas, it has to be. Being here in this living room, sitting around watching shite on the television covered in fleece blankets and throwing popcorn at each other, feels like a memory from way before Meg got married and settled. She used to come back home and bring bin bags full of her laundry because the washing machine in her flat share was a ‘shower of shit’ and then spend most of her time eating the contents of the fridge and using us as some sort of detox facility because she felt her liver was failing her and/or her heart had been broken. I remember one time she stole our kettle because some artsy knob she’d been dating had taken hers. If the stars aligned then Emma would be here too and we’d all be in some shared uniform of trackies and big socks, hair nested on top of our heads. We’d share blankets and chocolate on the sofa and watch Gossip Girl. Someone would fart halfway and stink out the room and we’d all shriek like harpies but that memory is a comfort blanket to me. There are moments now when I feel completely lost and I zoom in on that like some magnetic north, hiding under that blanket, even enduring the smell of Grace’s farts. We always knew it was her.
The only thing about now is that things are a bit different. Mum and Dad are having a night out today, away from us kids, so they’ve left us to fend for ourselves. They did this a lot when we were teens, it was necessary for Dad to escape the faint radioactive glow of hormones in the air, but they used to buy us pizzas and bottles of Coke and remind us to lock the French doors because Mum was always paranoid (having watched too much crime drama from the nineties) that someone was going to kidnap one of us. I mean, that’s a brave bloody kidnapper who’d try that. Can you imagine that poor criminal? He’d leave this house without an abductee and most likely without a face.
Those nights would sing with joy, fun and laughter. Tonight though, they sing with the sound of Beth snoring. Like drooling levels. I swear if we turned off the TV then we’d hear the walls rattle lightly. Someone close that girl’s mouth. I guess she’s allowed because she’s a new mum. Emma hasn’t changed. We’re watching a quiz show and she still answers all the questions on the edge of her seat, competing with no one else but herself.
What has changed are the snacks. It used to be all about the pick ’n’ mix but now we drink wine and eat olives and posh crispbreads with dip that has pecorino in it. My sisters ask what they marinade the olives in. Is that thyme? It tastes woody. Are these Greek? They’re so plump. It’s oil and herbs, girls. Grace, you used to pick the olives off your pizza and say they were the devil’s grapes.
‘Who the hell doesn’t know who Anne Boleyn is? They’ve made about six BBC dramas about the bitch,’ screams Meg into the telly.
Meg’s animated critique of people on the television is a thing of legend. What the hell has he done to his house? I could sew a better dress like that if I was drunk and didn’t have hands. That chicken isn’t cooked, it’s so not cooked. He’s going home! Except back then it was just a loud young opinion. Now she’s drunk on the wine, it’s a bit lairy. If we were in public, she’d start on someone outside a kebab shop. I like that Meg so I won’t discourage her. It’s excellent value Meg.
‘I don’t get this show. They have to catch the things and then they win the money?’ I ask, my hand straight into the crisps.
‘But if he catches both balls then he wins the lot. If he drops it then he’s going home with nothing…’
I pretend to feign interest. For some reason, it seems to be essential primetime viewing to at least three people in this room, except for my girl, Beth. In fact, I lie. There is also another being in the room. Pussy graces us with her presence tonight. Pussy still has yet to endear herself to anyone in this house. She slept on Meg’s head the other night, attacks the washing machine when it’s on and smells like egg. There is a look about her that one would liken to some old lady who just wants to sit in her house, eat tinned goods all day and be left the hell alone. Don’t touch me, or I will seriously have your eyes. How did I pick her to be my pet companion in life?
‘I can’t believe he went for that answer. He’ll regret that… Use your lifeline,’ Grace yells, studying the screen and talking to Matt, Essex, like she knows him. Grace and I used to sneak down here at night with our duvets, camp on the floor when Mum and Dad had gone to bed and watch Channel 5 documentaries about sex toys and then laugh so much we wet ourselves.
The only thing that hasn’t changed here is the crisps. Thank you, Doritos, for still staying triangular and crispy and coated in good flavours that still stick to the roof of my mouth. I rake through the bowl with my hands.
‘You want some dip?’ Emma asks, handing over her posh cheesy stuff.
‘I’m good.’
She senses the sullen version of myself in the room. ‘You OK? You love cheesy dip.’
‘I do?’
We never had posh cheesy dip growing up. We had houmous and salsa out of a jar. Snacks in front of the television were microwave popcorn and big tubs of chocolates, which we’d physically wrestle each other for and pull hair over the toffee fingers. It was cheap crisps that felt like polystyrene in your mouth. Big mugs of tea. But my sisters all became posh grown-up bitches in the last decade with their wine and olives.
‘And the answer is Reese Witherspoon, not Judi Dench,’ I say.
They all turn to the television where Matt from Essex has lost his money. Bye, Matt. Have a good trip home with your zero pounds. Had I been in that studio, I’d have won £350,000. Grace slaps my arm.
‘How did you know that?’ she asks in disbelief.
‘Because that was in 2006 which to me was only a few years ago. I can’t remember who I’ve shagged in the past decade but I can tell you anyone who’s won an Oscar in the noughties.’
The sisters all go deathly quiet, bar Beth, who may as well be in a coma anyway.
‘Should we get a board game out?’ Emma asks.
‘Operation?’ I joke feebly. The sisters all side-eye each other, so much so that I feel I need to comment. ‘Like, when did you guys get so grown-up?’
Meg and Emma look at me, insulted. Yes, I’m calling you hags old.
‘Because we are grown-ups,’ Emma protests. ‘We have families now.’
‘Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you had to get boring. Is this what you do on Saturdays now?’
The way they all shift looks to each other and then to the ceiling tells me yes.
‘And what is wrong with that?’ Grace asks. ‘We’re not party girls like you. I can’t do those sorts of nights any more. The last time we had a big night out, you jumped off a pirate ship.’
I sincerely hope I was dressed for the part.
‘Christ, it takes me a weekend to get over a hangover these days,’ Meg adds.
‘This is just not what I remember. What I remember was…’
They all wait with anticipation to see what I say next. It seems they’re hoping for some breakthrough moment when I’ll be eating roast chicken and then the memories will flood back to me. Unfortunately, my mother’s roast chicken is far too dry for that.
‘I remember we’d sit here and watch a crap DVD or an episode of Dawson’s Creek and hear all the stories you guys had. Meg and Beth talking about their nights out, men and sex. You made it sound so fun. I worshipped the tits off you all. All that freedom and fun. The way we’d laugh for hours till our stomachs hurt. Now you’re talking about herbs.’
Emma laughs under her breath, ‘I never had sex stories.’
‘True, you just stayed dull.’
‘You can watch all of Dawson’s Creek on Netflix,’ Meg informs me. My eyes widen with excitement. ‘I watched it all again recently and still crushed over Pacey Witter.’
We all sigh. God, we loved that boy. He’s the only man I’d fight this lot over.
‘But what other stories are you talking about?’ Meg asks, curious. ‘We had sex stories?’
I sit up for a moment to prepare myself. ‘You once told us about some Dutch man you met on a night out. You brought him back to yours and shagged him in the kitchen and you said you didn’t even know his name.’
Meg flares her nostrils. In fact, she rolls her eyes back in her head to have to think back that far.
‘I did do that. Once. Don’t tell my daughters I did that, please. That is everything I’m trying to tell them not to do.’
‘But you gave us every detail. You said he had abs like a draining board and you both lay naked on your kitchen table and swigged at a vodka bottle in the moonlight.’
Grace and Emma look at each other almost in worry at my corny recalling of these events.
‘You remember more than I do and you weren’t even there,’ Meg adds.
‘I was thirteen, fourteen? When you came back and told me that story I thought you were a goddess.’
Meg sits there, pensive to hear those words in her trackies and bed socks. She slowly sips at her wine, as if hoping it will help her work out where those goddess years went to and where she did indeed meet that Dutch man. Did he have a name? What happened to him? Why didn’t she lock that down?
‘Luce, it was just a one-night stand. Something to do in my twenties, some rite of passage. I’d almost forgotten about him…’
‘Because you married your grumpy man Northerner? Does he do the sad woodsman thing in bed too?’ I ask, giggling.
‘No, but the man has timber,’ she retorts, opening her eyes widely. ‘Hun, I’d be lying if I said I don’t think about Dutchman occasionally… once a year at most… but those days are behind me now, unless you want to hear about the time Danny and I—’
‘NO…’ Emma intervenes. ‘I don’t want to hear sex stories about a man I’m going to be sitting across the table eating roast potatoes with tomorrow.’
I flap my hand around to quieten Emma. ‘Tell me…’
‘He once dropped me during sex?’ she bursts out. Is this the most interesting sex story she has of late?
‘Oh, we knew this already… You may proceed…’ Emma says, going back to her dip.
‘He dropped me, I twisted my ankle. We broke some drawers.’
I search her face. This is not the same as her telling us how a Dutchman took her knickers off with a spaghetti server and I think she kinda knows it.
‘Or I could tell you about the time we had sex in our Volvo and got caught by the police?’ she says, a cheeky glint in her eye.
‘Noooo…’ Emma protests. ‘I’ve sat in that car. I don’t want to hear this story.’
‘Tell me more…’
‘I thought the policeman was going to shoot us so I hopped off too quickly and then Danny opened the door in his face and made his nose bleed.’
Grace cocks her head to the side. ‘You did the what now? Did you get arrested for dogging?’
‘It was not dogging. It was two married people having consensual sex.’
‘Outside,’ Grace says.
‘We are all judging me but Emma over there had sex with Stuart,’ Meg exclaims.
‘STUART?’ I squeal, glaring at my straight-laced sister. ‘YOU HAD SEX WITH STUART? SO HAVE I!’
Stuart is Meg’s brother-in-law and the urban legend is that he’s the only man on this planet to have had relations with at least two of the Callaghan sisters, now apparently three. He snogged Beth in a taxi. I slept with him at Meg’s wedding – if you could call it that, we were both quite merry, and I believe he spent most of the time half-mast talking to his penis, willing it to work.
‘Emma had outdoor sex in that instance too…’ Meg informs me.
‘I hate you all,’ she says, pouring herself another glass of wine.
‘Beth gave Will a handjob at a gig once,’ Grace casually says, trying to add to the conversation. We all look over at Beth, still asleep. I can literally see the scars from when they removed her tonsils.
‘I did. I had to wipe my hand down on my coat and the stain never came off,’ she mumbles before curling up into a different position and falling asleep again.
Grace looks over at her calmly. ‘I’m sleeping with a man with a ponytail, sometimes he ties it back with a scrunchie.’
Grace is dryer than a dry Martini served in a sand box. She and Emma won’t play these games but I hope ponytail man makes her happy. She deserves happy.
‘We do have fun. The fun just changed. It’s kids and relationships and work, it’s all just evolved,’ Meg explains. ‘Different things make us happy.’
‘Then I have a question?’ I ask, staring at the quiz show in the background. They have a new contestant on who thinks Asia is a country. He deserves nothing. ‘Why didn’t I evolve? Why didn’t I seek out these same things? I’m looking at Facebook and I just see someone who refused to settle down, some perpetual party girl. Was I allergic to love? Commitment? Men?’
‘That may have been my fault,’ Emma discloses. ‘You saw a lot of what happened there with my divorce with Simon, all the times he’d cheated on me. Beth and Will had a relationship hiccup when Joe was born too. They couldn’t work out parenthood. It was a bit messy.’
‘And then Tom and I had this big rollercoaster relationship, got married and then he died…’ Grace says. ‘So I always felt all of this made you see relationships a little differently. Being some free agent always kept you safe from hurt. I don’t think you trusted love.’
‘Though you did sleep with that one fella who gave you hives so maybe you were allergic to something in that case?’ Emma jokes.
‘Where were the hives?’ I ask, aghast.
All the sisters look mildly hurt that they have to think about this story again.
‘You’re allergic to walnuts, no other nuts, and you two were doing things with a carrot cake. Luce, you made me look at your labia. You made me apply antihistamine cream to it.’
Beth wakes up giggling to hear that story. She shouldn’t be laughing but, secretly, I like that sound.
‘And being this free agent made me happy?’ I ask.
‘The happiest,’ Grace says warmly. The older sisters look like they don’t disagree but seventeen-year-old me feels mildly disappointed that I didn’t strive for something grander. Back then, with Josh, I had plans. I thought about growing old with him and what our kids would look like. I thought about a version of my wedding. It would have involved an open-top bus of some sort, me being a slightly inappropriate bride. We would have danced into the night. It’s a sobering thought to think I leant away from this. I went down another path. This path that seems to be lined with shot glasses and bright glittering lights. I was always easily lured by shiny things but now I worry all of that was just an attempt to not grow old, to be forever young, forever sitting in this living room with my girls and refusing to adult in the real world.
‘Annoyingly happy,’ Meg tells me. ‘The beauty of you was that you didn’t want to fit in a box. So many things define women and you didn’t want that at all. You didn’t want to be a mother, a wife…’
‘You are amazing in that respect,’ Beth adds. ‘I was torn about being a working mum and you always told me to have it all, to not have guilt for doing that either…’ she tells me with a touch of emotion in her voice. ‘And that was everything because I think it makes me happier, a more complete version of myself to have both in my life.’
Deep down, I applaud this version of myself – life guru, Lucy.
‘And you’re universally loved for who you are. You ask any of our girls who their favourite aunt is and we don’t even come close. We don’t even resent you for it,’ Meg adds.
‘Well, I could have predicted that even at seventeen. Do I teach them dance routines?’
‘The worst sort,’ Emma says despairingly.
‘Did I teach them the TLC one?’
‘No, I don’t believe you have,’ Grace says.
Meg expels a laugh in exasperation. ‘You don’t remember anything but you remember that routine?’
We used to do that here, in this living room, all lined up like we were the best girl band you’d ever seen. We’d tie knots in the bases of our T-shirts and tuck them up and over the necklines, wearing big baggy combats and jeans perched on our hips. I was nine years old and Meg was eighteen and there’s an image so sharp in my brain of me perched on the edge of the sofa and her asking me to purse my lips so she could apply some of her Rimmel Heather Shimmer lipstick. There was a point where Grace released a limb into Beth and they both threw cushions at each other and broke a picture frame that we hid to escape our mother’s wrath.
‘I remember that routine…’ whispers Sleepy in the corner, rousing from her slumber. That’s what music does to Beth, it speaks to her soul; everything has a theme and a melody. With one eye open, she accesses some magic on her phone and the TV stops and starts playing the song. The technology still blows my mind. Meg is shaking her head as both my fingers are pointed at her.
‘You made up the routine,’ I say. ‘You loved TLC. You wore an eye patch for a while.’
‘Shush now, I am not dancing. I will pull something…’
‘You used to pull fellas with those moves.’
‘No, I pulled them because of my sparkling wit and great boobs.’
I jump to my feet, as does Beth, who starts with some gentle swaying. ‘It’s a banger, ladies. Remember when Emma didn’t understand why you’d call a man a duster.’
Instantly insulted, Emma rises to her feet, looking over at Grace. Lucy got hit by a bus. Maybe the music and the attempts to dance will mean she gets better, it will access something within the labyrinth that’s her brain and she’ll be Lucy again. Grace removes the old lady blanket from her knees. She may be lunging. Meg is still the one who remains seated, watching me closely as I go through the moves. Left to right shuffle, knee up and down, hanging out the passenger side, lean with attitude and booty pop. The accuracy with which I deliver the moves makes it seem like I’ve been practising them every day since 2001.
Grace shakes her head. ‘I’m pretty sure it was lean and click and then the thing with the head.’ Beth cheers as we both booty pop together.
Emma glances at both her hands to try and work out what to do with her arms. C’mon, Ems, you’re a surgeon. Co-ordination is key. She senses I’m looking at her. ‘You forget you trained as a dancer, it’s all in your muscle memory,’ she lectures me, whilst also mouthing all the words.
Meg suddenly stands to attention. ‘It’s like you cows can’t do anything right without me. It’s like in the video. But the arms – NO – SCRUBS. Cross the arms.’
Grace does her best not to stifle her giggles to see Meg spring into action and Meg throws one of those woody olives at her.
‘Come on then, line up properly. And phones down, I don’t want this on TikTok. Beth, don’t freestyle.’
I can’t stop smiling and that’s because this is what I’m here for. This is what’s familiar. Let’s dance this out, bitches, but maybe not do that thing with our T-shirts any more mainly because I think Meg isn’t wearing a bra.
‘This better make your memory come back,’ Grace adds, grinning. She’s loving it too.
We all know the words, all of them. Every inflection and scaling of the notes, the little rap parts, the echoes of Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes. Pussy the cat looks over but her face creases into shock as Meg tries to hit a high note, belting out the lyrics. And all of us descend into giggles but sing right back to her. It’s a girl band of sorts but one that looks like they took advantage of the free alcohol before they went on stage and maybe forgot their costumes, and their make-up, and their goddamn minds. Meg puts a knee up and I hear a click of something, Emma hits Grace in the face with a hand. Beth looks at me and we sing the lyrics to each other, bodies rolling in opposite directions. We danced to this song like this before. Somewhere else? I’m sure of it. In a club, or was it at a wedding? I stop for a moment to try and remember. I was in a bandeau top. I was wearing a badge.
‘You’ll hurt yourself, Meg,’ says a voice from the hallway.
Mum stands there leaning against the doorframe. There’s a look there I can’t quite put my finger on. I don’t know if she’s reminiscing or grateful that the years of us trashing her front room and creating this wall of noise are gone. I’d hope somewhere she might miss it, just a fraction.
‘Why is there an olive on my rug?’ she asks.
‘IT WAS MEG!’ Grace squeals, regressing to her ten-year-old self.
‘YOU MADE ME DO IT!’ Meg throws another and it bounces off Beth’s forehead.
‘GIRLS! Pick it up. Are you all having fun?’ Mum asks. I’m not sure if anyone answers as the scene has descended into raucous madness. To my left, Grace and Beth cradle each other in laughter trying to prop each other up. This is what I remember, so very well.
‘Nice night out, Mum?’ I ask her.
‘Very nice. We went for a Greek meal. Are you OK?’ she asks me, catching my gaze. She does this a lot now and I suspect she did it less before. She gives me long lingering looks as if she has a world of things to say to me but also wants to check that I’m just alive, functioning. This girl band wouldn’t work without you, Lucy. Look at what happened when Geri left. It was never quite the same, eh?
‘Well, your father and I are off to bed, now,’ she announces to the room. ‘Lucy, tell them to stop throwing olives.’
‘Make sure you tell Dad to use a condom,’ I joke.
She pauses. Old Mother would have hated the crudeness. She’d have answered with a tut and a scowl. But instead she smiles, which makes me think they had the good wine with dinner.
‘Ever since you were born, I don’t let him near me without one.’
The sisters didn’t hear that but I did. Mum made a joke. It was almost funny. How did you miss it?
‘Keep the noise down or you’ll scare that cat and it’ll piss everywhere again,’ she says, studying the room, the noise, the song she’s heard a thousand times or more. She looks at my face beaming over at Meg, who’s doing the robot.
‘You girls just carry on. Tell Meg she really is too old not to be wearing a bra though. That’s just obscene.’