Ruth had fallen behind. There were all those areas in Statistics that she was unsure of. Attending 9 o’clock lectures would have helped. There were reams of economic theory. It couldn’t compete with the chain-smoking, coffee-swilling, soul-baring chats into the still hours of the morning.
It didn’t help that no one in the flat crawled into bed before one in the morning. Conversation seemed so much more interesting at one or two in the morning than at eight o’clock at night.
Ruth was not a straight A student. She’d never excelled academically, but up to now she’d done enough to get respectable grades. The previous year she’d lived with a local family near college. There had been regular meal-times and regular comings and goings.
This year things were different. Meal-times were haphazard if at all. Sleep was irregular. There were so many excuses not to study – the impromptu visitor, the whiff of a party, there was always a distraction. In these last few weeks, Ruth had the feeling that things were spiraling out of control.
This week was even more disorganised than usual. It was Rag Week. There was no point trying to concentrate in college buildings. A giddiness permeated every stairwell, lecture theatre, and every library seat on campus. The mayhem was fueled by high spirits, alcohol, and the abandon of those who knew they were doomed to fail.
Ruth turned down the chance to join in crazy drafts on the college concourse. She wasn’t stupid. She’d seen the havoc it wreaked. Each draft piece was a shot of supermarket rum or vodka, each shot one step closer to projectile vomiting, or worse – a visit to the hospital.
She might just clear her work backlog if she got down to it. While everyone else was acting the fool – she’d make up the time. She couldn’t bear the thought of re-sitting exams. She didn’t want to see the hurt and disappointment on her father’s face. She was the first in the family to go to university. She couldn’t shatter his pride. As far as Ruth could make out, repeat students were serial offenders. They didn’t learn from their mistakes.
Ruth was not the only one in trouble. It was time they all knuckled down. Sarah had sworn she was going to study today. She was full of good intentions yet Ruth could have sworn she’d seen her earlier in the day, shouting at the college rowing team racing down the river in fancy dress.
Sarah would dive-bomb into despair as soon as Rag Week ended. Ruth had little doubt of that. She’d seen it before and found it all so tedious. Listening to her moan about how far she’d fallen behind. How everything was pointless. Threatening to douse herself in petrol and set herself alight in the Quad. This time Ruth would tell her to go right ahead. Sarah would sit up in bed all night smoking. She’d be unable to get up until noon the following day. She’d cough and wheeze and suck on her inhaler. She’d miss more lectures, and fall further and further behind. Sarah was going to be an all-round-pain-in-the-ass. Ruth could see it coming.
Ruth wasn’t falling into the same trap. She wasn’t wasting time gawping at stupid Rag Week spectacles. She wasn’t getting involved in bed-pushes, or stupid drinking competitions. She was going back to the flat at the harbour. Walking past the cathedral and past Nun’s Island, Ruth prided herself on her resolve. She would study for the afternoon.
Nearly home, Ruth spotted Mikey Fahy. He was outside washing the pub windows, putting as much energy into it as he did into everything, which wasn’t much. What a loser.
“Hi there, Ruth,” he said, leering at her.
How the hell did know her name?
The guy creeped her out.
Ignoring him, Ruth hurried inside. The flat was messy but quiet. It was mid-March and watery sunshine seeped through the grimy panes. She’d get her duvet and park herself at the chair by the window with her notes. Opening the door of the twin bedroom, there was a fumbling movement from Kathy’s bed. A throaty laugh.
“For Christ’s sake, Kathy!” Ruth exploded. “It’s Rag Week, not Shag Week.”
“Good one, Ruth. I like it.”
Josh White, auditor of the Literary and Debating Society propped himself up in bed. “That’s clever,” he said, flicking his long hair.
“Sorry, Ruth,” said Kathy, looking sheepish. She hugged the sheet to her chin. “Josh is just going.”
“Really? I was under the impression he was just coming.” Ruth yanked the duvet from her own neat bed.
“Comedy actress I see,” said Josh.
Shit, shit.
Why did she have to say that? Why should she care how Kathy spent her time?
Why should she care who Kathy screwed?
Josh White was going think Ruth was nothing but a sour old bag. She had a fair idea what the guys said about her behind her back. It was just so annoying to find a succession of different men in her bedroom all the time. No wonder Kathy had fallen behind. She was too bloody wrecked from her love-life. Ruth decided to be more amenable when Josh resurfaced.
Making a mug of coffee, Ruth swaddled herself in her duvet and took out her statistics notes. She tried to concentrate but it wasn’t working. She was too annoyed. Was she annoyed because she was the only one in the flat without a boyfriend, she wondered?
Charlotte was seeing Tomas Walsh, whose ubiquity had rendered him merely human from his previous god-like status. His netting had devalued his currency.
Kathy had a succession of men – Josh White being the latest in the series. And Sarah had someone new. She had sent that poet packing when he’d turned up a few weeks earlier begging for her to take him back. Sarah hadn’t let him past the front door. She’d thanked him for his interest and gave him the bus fare for his journey back to Dublin.
Guys fell hard for Sarah. There then followed another poor sucker who only made it to a fortnight. Even now, weeks later, he was throwing Sarah lovesick looks across the college canteen. Sarah seemed oblivious to the carnage all about her – she moved on quickly. She was now dating a member of the work-force, not a student. Students were too passé.
Ruth wondered what Mrs Nugent would make of Sarah’s antics. The old dragon would shudder if she knew her precious daughter was going out with a stinky fisherman. It occurred to Ruth that it’d be worth telling the woman just to see the look on her face.
Sarah was spending fewer and fewer nights at home, eschewing the spartan comfort of their flat for the damp and pungent surrounds of her boyfriend’s trawler. She’d met him in a pub where he’d bought her three bottles of cider. “I dazzled him,” she’d said dancing around the flat. Ruth doubted any dazzling was required. When Sarah decided she wanted a man, they seemed to fall at her feet.
Luke had a blood-burst outdoor face and he told filthy jokes that Sarah found amusing. Ruth did not. How long would this guy last, she wondered? Sarah was enjoying the novelty for now but Ruth predicted that just like all the others, the romance would be short-lived.
Charlotte had looked at the positive side of Sarah’s relationship and what it might bring to the group. When Sarah appeared after a weekend’s absence carrying two large bags of hake and mackerel, Charlotte was in heaven. Free food! They’d had fish pie for a week.
Cosy in her duvet and scribbling away, Ruth consoled herself in the knowledge that she wasn’t missing out. If Luke the fisherman was the best she could hope for she’d really rather do without.
Anyhow, what was the point in entering into a relationship at this late stage of the year? There were scarcely two full months left to the exams. There’d be plenty of time for men in the summer. Her J1 visa had come through and she was heading to the States for the summer.
The others could party and go clubbing in Salthill. They could go to the Holiday Hotel and the Warwick. They could dance in the Oasis club with their best white T-shirts under UV lights. They could go for chips and kebabs and fall asleep in phone-boxes. They could steal road-signs and shopping trollies. Ruth would not be joining them. Ruth was going to study.
But things happened that middle term to thwart her. Things not of her making. Firstly, there was the incident with Kathy and that weirdo, Mikey Fahy. How was it that Kathy always managed to create trouble?
Having decided it wasn’t safe to leave her bike in the pub’s backyard, Kathy decided to venture out to the same unsafe backyard with her laundry. She’d rigged up a makeshift line between piled-up kegs on a blustery Saturday. When she returned to take in the clothes, she stumbled on Mikey Fahy – he was dreamily caressing the padded cups of her best pink bra. Aghast, she turned on her heel and left the clothes exactly where they were, refusing ever to retrieve them. They could rot out there for all she cared, now they’d been touched by that pervert.
This event preceded a melt-down. Kathy’s melt-downs were not unusual, but on a scale of one to ten, this registered close to nine. In her mind, Mikey Fahy had graduated from annoying creep to weirdo sexual predator. Matters weren’t helped by her reading matter at the time – case studies on the causes and triggers of sexual crime. Not for the first time, Ruth seriously wondered about Kathy’s suitability to her course in Psychology. When she wasn’t like a praying mantis, devouring some guy, she was fantasising about some guy devouring her.
It wasn’t long before the guys in the courthouse got wind of Mikey Fahy’s antics. They scoffed at Kathy’s fear. Their attempts to trivialise the incident had the reverse effect. Repeated strains of ‘Psycho killer – qu’est-ce que c’est?’ only served to heighten Kathy’s fear.
The melt-down ended in a tearful declaration that Kathy was going to leave the flat. She could stand the threat of Mikey Fahy no more. But where would she go, wondered Ruth? Off to shack up with Josh White? The whole business was so annoying.
Ruth took it personally. She felt let down. The four of them had made a commitment to share the flat together for the year. Boyfriends could come and go but surely they owed one another more than a casual allegiance? It wouldn’t be the same with three of them. Bugger Kathy and bugger her disposition. She really was quite tiresome.
“Leaving the flat’s a bit rash. A bit over the top don’t you think, Kath?” Sarah said gently.
“For fuck sake, Sarah, what would you know? You’re never bloody here,” responded an upset Kathy.
“Pardon me for living,” muttered Sarah.
“Mikey Fahy is just a harmless fool, Kathy,” said Ruth. “Why don’t you get Josh to have a word with him?”
“Oh yeah, that’s what people always say – ‘He seemed so harmless, we thought he was just a bit slow, we never dreamt he’d attack anyone, and as for dismembering and eating them…who’d have imagined that?’”
Kathy had unfortunately.
“Good God, Kath, what do you and Josh get up to? Do you spend your non-coitus time watching ‘Friday the Thirteenth’ and ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’?” asked Ruth.
Sarah threw Ruth a withering look. Ruth hadn’t meant to be blunt but Kathy was working herself into a frenzy. Some psychologist she was going to make.
“Stop bringing Josh into this. Josh is a shit. He’s out of my life. I don’t expect I’ll ever be seeing him again!”
Now that was unexpected.
Silence.
Everyone stared at one another, stunned.
There’s more to this meltdown than meets the eye, thought Ruth.
“Why is that, Kath?” she said more gently this time.
“I’m late…”
“Late?” said Charlotte, Sarah, and Ruth together. And slowly realisation dawned.
They waited for Kathy to elaborate.
“When I told him, he asked how I could be sure it was him.” Kathy was indignant.
Unchivalrous of Josh?
Yes.
Unjustified?
No.
Surprising?
No.
They’d all discussed it in her absence. Kathy never seemed to understand that the easier she was with guys, the less loyalty she received in return.
There was another long silence.
“Have you done a pregnancy test?” Ruth asked eventually.
“No, not yet…”
“Why ever not?”
“I don’t have the money.”
“For God’s sake, Kathy.” Ruth shook her head. “I’ll loan you the money. Hell, I’ll give you the bloody money. It’s only a few quid. Jesus! Why didn’t you say? Why didn’t you just ask?”
“I’m always borrowing from you. You’re always loaning me money. I didn’t want to ask again.” Kathy hung her head in embarrassment.
“That’s crap. Don’t be ridiculous!” said Ruth.
Sarah had edged closer to Kathy, slinging an arm around her shoulder. Charlotte was staring wildly at Kathy. She offered no suggestions, no doubt thinking, Thank Christ this isn’t me.
Things couldn’t have been worse. There it was. Two situations. Two months left to exams. But Ruth could sort it out. She’d try at least.
The first problem was the possible pregnancy. It was nothing short of miraculous that the situation hadn’t arisen before. Kathy invariably forgot to take the pill, forgot to fill her prescription, or forgot she’d taken it and took it twice.
The more Ruth thought about it the more she hoped that Kathy wasn’t pregnant. The prospect filled her with dread. Kathy with a child? She could scarcely look after herself. She always displayed such an alarming lack of responsibility for any of her actions.
They all struggled with their student budgets but Kathy was by far the worst. She had scant regard for money. It didn’t cost her a thought to shell out and buy flowers for the flat. Such reckless spending didn’t just annoy Ruth. Charlotte would often blow a fuse. “Buy flowers by all means,” she’d hiss at Kathy, “but with money of your own, we can’t eat the fucking flowers!” Kathy would also invite her ‘homme-du-jour’ for dinner, leaving the rest of them with tiny portions. “It’s all very well feeding your boyfriends, Kathy,” Charlotte would launch into a rant, “but do so at your own expense.”
Motherhood and university. Not easy bedfellows, imagined Ruth. Single motherhood alone would present challenges that she doubted Kathy would rise to. And there was telling everyone back home. The social repercussions of being a single mum in rural Ireland could be grim and dire. It was nearly the end of the century but had social thinking moved on that much, Ruth wondered? Kathy’s future could be bleak.
Termination? Would Kathy survive a termination, even if she could procure one? Ruth doubted it. Kathy having a baby or Kathy having a termination? Either might be her undoing. Raising money for the pregnancy test was easy. Ruth sold her secret stash of cigarettes to the guys in the courthouse. Handing the cash to Kathy, she told her to get on with the test and put herself and everyone else out of their misery.
Ruth then turned her attention to the more straightforward problem of Mikey Fahy. She’d thought about it long and hard. They would have to move. It was that simple. But what would she say to old man Fahy, their landlord? On what grounds could she get their deposit back? They could ill-afford to forfeit that. And more importantly, where would they set up home for the two brief months that remained?
Over the next couple of days, Ruth missed lectures trying to find alternative accommodation. She went to the usual student letting agencies and each time she explained how she needed accommodation for four well-behaved students for two months only. Each agent glanced at her askance. What misdemeanour or foul play had been committed to warrant eviction from their current accommodation, they no doubt wondered. Had they ripped radiators from walls? Taken doors from hinges? Broken furniture to burn? They didn’t have to say it. She could see it in their eyes. Careful not to disclose where they currently resided, Ruth assured them that the fault lay not with the students themselves, but with a rodent infestation that was not being attended to.
Just as she was about to give up, an agent with a dandruff-coated collar made Ruth an offer. It was not ideal. But it met the two-month requirement nicely. It was a three bedroom house in Laurel Park close to the university. And it was available immediately. The bad news was that it hadn’t been rented lately as the central heating didn’t work. But it was the beginning of April and if the students could manage without the heating, the house was theirs. Ruth took it. As long as the immersion worked and they could have a hot bath, the other three would jump at the idea. At least they’d be rid of Fingers Fahy.
Next was the problem of the landlord. Ruth braced herself. There was nothing for it but to brazen it out. The same afternoon she was offered the house in Laurel Park, Ruth went into the pub under their flat and marched up to the counter.
“Mr Fahy, your son has a problem,” Ruth said. “And I suspect your son’s problem is of a sexual nature.”
Old man Fahy looked nervous.
“The fact is, Mr Fahy, he’s been interfering with our underwear. As you might appreciate we’re not very comfortable with that,” said Ruth. “No way. In fact, one of the girls, whose father is a lawyer by the way, is quite upset. So you see Mr Fahy we have to leave. In fact, we have to leave this evening. That’s the way it is. So, if you’d kindly return our deposit now we’ll be on our way. In return, we won’t say anything to the Students’ Union about this inappropriate and threatening behavior. But if I were you Mr Fahy, I’d have a good talk with my son.”
A stunned and tremulous Mr Fahy opened the till and handed over the crisp paper bills without a word. She’d pulled it off!
That same evening, a ramshackle caravan of bodies transported their student belongings from the flat by the harbour to the house in Laurel Park. The guys from the courthouse helped to carry stuff with their bikes and a couple of shopping trolleys they’d stolen from Dunnes Stores.
But during all this time, Kathy wouldn’t do the test. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. She bought one. She looked at it. But she couldn’t pluck up the courage to do it, preferring instead the distraction of escape from Mikey Fahy, unlikely sex-fiend.
Patient at first, Ruth’s sympathy changed to irritation and then to anger. Traipsing home up the Newcastle road from college, she resolved to waste no more precious time on Kathy. She’d done what she could to help her out. The rest was up to her.
As Ruth opened the front door, the smell of a barbeque wafted throughout the Laurel Park house. What on earth was happening? Looking through the open kitchen window to the overgrown garden, she saw Sarah and Luke. They were celebrating something. The kitchen table had been hauled outside and covered with a flowery bed-sheet. Alison Moyet was blaring from the radio. Sarah had a daisy chain round her neck and Luke was cooking fish on a makeshift barbecue. He swigged from a bottle of cider.
“What’s going on?” Ruth called to Sarah. “I thought you were studying. The exams are only weeks away.”
Sarah swigged Luke’s cider. “Relax, Ruth. We’re celebrating. Have you heard the news?”
“What news?”
“Kathy isn’t pregnant after all – it was a false alarm.”
“Brilliant news!” Ruth was thrilled. “Kath must be so relieved. Where is she… inside?”
“She’s gone to celebrate.”
“Not with you guys?”
“Well… no, not exactly.”
For some reason Sarah was being coy.
“Then where?” asked Ruth.
“With Josh White,” said Sarah looking sheepish.
Kathy
Kathy snipped wheatgrass from the container on the windowsill. She sighed. It was lonely without Emma. Reaching for the blender, she threw in ginger and a banana. It might help counter the rising bile from the night before. That reminded her. She’d better go to the bottle bank before Andrew arrived back with Emma. She didn’t need to give him further ammunition.
Trust her to end up with a lawyer. A verbal gladiator. A linguistic contortionist. A man who twisted and used her words to tangle her up. Make her look incompetent. Flaky. Unreliable. Epithets that might have once been justified. But not anymore. Kathy was getting her act together.
In one of many moments of reflection, Kathy tried to think back to where it all started to unravel. Was it when she’d made that tipsy pass at one of Andrew’s junior colleagues? The guy had known she’d only been fooling around. Or was it that time it skipped her mind to collect Emma from school? Kathy had been meditating.
If she were being honest, the bad karma had started way back. As far back as all the business with Josh White. And before that again. Probably about the time things fell apart at the farm at home. It was her fault. Things could have turned out differently. Kathy might have had another life today, a better life, if she’d listened to her brother. If only she’d listened to Lawrence. That was where it all went wrong, she was sure of it now – back in the farmyard in Roscommon.
When he’d told her, she couldn’t say she was shocked. In her heart she’d always known. It was obvious. But Lawrence wanted acknowledgement. For those he held dear to him to say it was alright. Lawrence wanted validation of who he was, of what he was.
That day in the milking parlour, he’d asked for Kathy’s support – and she’d let him down. She had no excuse. How clearly she remembered it still – Lawrence hosing the milking parlour as both of them enjoyed a cigarette one Saturday in April. Kathy was home from college for the weekend attempting to study, away from parties. The exams were in another two weeks.
“How’s it all going, Kath? Still enjoying university?”
“It’s a blast, Lawrence. But it’d be a whole lot better still, if I didn’t have these bloody exams –”
“Too much socialising I expect,” Lawrence said, laughing. “How are you fixed?”
“I’m not in great shape, Lawrence, to tell you the truth,” she’d said. “I’m behind. I’ve had a few distractions these last few weeks.”
“I’ve heard the talent and parties are great in Galway. Count yourself lucky, Kath. There’s bugger all happening around here, as you well know.” Lawrence had scuffed the ground with his rubber boot. “It’s impossible to meet someone back here.”
“There’s time enough for all that, Lawrence.” She was being deliberately obtuse.
“It’s not easy…” Lawrence had stared into the distance. “This isn’t the kind of place I’d meet someone. Not someone for the likes of me. Dublin perhaps, or maybe even Galway. Definitely not back here.”
“Come on. You’re a good-looking guy, Lawrence, of course you’ll meet someone.”
Even as she said the words, she knew she was being disingenuous. There’d never been a single girl in all his teenage years, despite his handsome looks.
“I doubt it, Kath.”
Lawrence coiled the hose around his arm and placed it back on its hook. “The way it is with me, I’m stuck back here,” he said. “We both know I’m going to inherit this farm. This is my life, whether I like it or not. It’s all mapped out for me, Kath. I’m expected to marry and have children and pass the land to any son I may have. And so it goes. But you Kathy, you can go off to university. You can get out of here.”
Lawrence examined his rubber boots to see if they were clean. “And then sometimes I think even if I did find someone, someone special… you know Dad wouldn’t approve, don’t you? You know what I mean, don’t you, Kath?” He spoke softly now.
Of course she knew. But she chose to ignore Lawrence’s plea for understanding, for sympathy, for support. And so she evaded the question. Kathy evaded anything that might prove problematic. She deliberately muddied their exchange so she wouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of telling her parents. She knew that Lawrence would never tell them. He wouldn’t be able for the stony silence, the refusal to countenance any deviation from the norm. Their parents were ordinary people. They reveled in their ordinariness. They didn’t want anything different.
“What you need is a holiday, Lawrence,” she’d said. “I’ll speak to Dad about it. I’m sure he’d cope on the farm for a week or two on his own. I’ll talk to him tonight.”
She remembered the look of grinding disappointment on his face. His mashing the cigarette stub slowly into the ground. “Thanks for that, Kath.” His eyes had been downcast. “You’re a good kid. Hey, you look after yourself down in university, you hear? Don’t let those exams get you down.” She remembered the feel of his calloused hand squeezing her shoulder. The pressure of those strong sun-freckled fingers.
She’d speak to their father about Lawrence needing a holiday. But not about anything else. Not about the fact they should stop asking him when he was bringing a woman home to the farm. Because that would never happen.
If only Lawrence had been as strong on the inside. If only he’d been more robust. If only Kathy hadn’t been so weak. If only she hadn’t been such a coward. She let the opportunity pass.
The following Saturday afternoon, on their return from shopping in the town, Kathy’s parents spotted something in the field beyond the hay-barn. Something odd by the horse chestnut, with its blossom of April flowers. Drawing closer to what was swinging in the breeze, Gretta Moran let out a chilling primal wail. It was heard all across the fields. Her only son had hanged himself and swirls of magenta-coloured blossom rained gently on his head.
Why did he do it?
What could have been so awful that he couldn’t have shared it with them?
They’d never known he was unhappy.
Was this true, Kathy wondered? She’d known Lawrence wasn’t happy for years. All he’d ever wanted was acceptance of who he was. He’d asked Kathy for help and she had turned away.
Ruth, Charlotte, and Sarah all came to the funeral. They were awkward. They didn’t know what to say. They’d been to funerals of elderly people with mottled skin and aged bones. But her brother Lawrence looked young and handsome lying cold and dead on the mortuary slab.
“Do you think you might come back to college next week, Kath?” Sarah took her gently by the arm.
“I’m not sure,” Kathy had answered. “I know I need to get out of here. This place is wrecking my head.” Since it happened, her mother had taken to bed, only getting up that one time for the funeral. Her father just stared into the fire until all that remained was embers.
So, a few days after the funeral, Kathy made her way back to university. She was weighed down with guilt, melancholy, and wearing Lawrence’s St Christopher’s medal. Her parents wanted her to have it. She’d had no idea why. St Christopher was supposed to guide people on their travels but the guy was a crock of shit. He’d let Lawrence down. He hadn’t shouldered her brother over rocky waters. But then neither had Kathy. Neither had their parents. Each and every one of them had let him down.
Back in the Laurel Park house, it was business as usual. A different kind of mania gripped the house. Exams were about to begin and an edgy panic reared its head.
Kathy felt removed from all the hype, stuck inside her grief. The exams seemed ridiculous, irrelevant, and above all irreverent. How dare everyone carry on as normal? Didn’t the world know that Lawrence had died?
Kathy sank into a self-imposed solitude. She sat in the bedroom looking out the window as students cycled to and from the rows of uniform houses. Every now and then, Ruth would knock on the door and ask if there was anything she could do.
Charlotte’s brother Richard came to pay his respects. He tried to lift the mood by taking them for a restaurant meal in town. Kathy appreciated the kindness that was shown to her. Sarah would keep her company, into the small hours, as they got high on instant coffee. Kathy felt guilty knowing she was distracting Sarah from her studies.
One night, Sarah asked the question that everyone else had wanted to. “It isn’t any of my business, and tell me to get lost if you want, Kath, but do you have any idea why Lawrence did it?”
“He was gay,” she answered. “Can you just imagine what it’s like being gay in a rural town? Being the only son of a small farmer with an even smaller mind?” She was surprised at the vitriol that welled up inside her. And immediately she felt guilty for laying the blame at her father’s doorstep. Kathy herself had denied Lawrence.
But Sarah never judged. It was what made her easy company. She lit two cigarettes and passed one to her.
“Did your mum and dad not know that he was gay?”
“There was never an overt admission or a declaration or anything like that, if that’s what you mean,” said Kathy. “I knew he was. It was obvious to me so I don’t know about Mam and Dad. It wasn’t the kind of thing you’d talk about in our house.”
“It must have been ever so lonely for him.”
“Blisteringly lonely,” she agreed. “And I’m the useless sister he reached out to. I’m the bitch who ignored him. I could have tried explaining it to Mam and Dad. But I was selfish.”
“That’s not true,” Sarah said, reaching out to touch her arm. “Lawrence was trying to be someone he didn’t want to be. He was trying to be a farmer to please your dad. From what you’ve said, he never wanted to be a farmer either. Even if he’d been open about his sexuality he was still condemned to life on the farm.”
Sarah was right. How soothing it was to hear her words. There was nothing she would’ve been able to do about the farm.
“You were never going to be able to make things right,” said Sarah. “Lawrence had to do that himself. Trying to be something you’re not….” she paused, “it’s crushing – it’s stifling. Look at me for God’s sake – I mean do I look like a bloody pharmacist to you, well do I?”
“I don’t know,” Kathy said, smiling. “What does a pharmacist look like?”
Sarah made a V shape with two fingers to pull her under-eyes and push up the end of her nose with her other index finger so she looked like a pig. Kathy burst out laughing.
“Seriously though,” Sarah said, “this isn’t about me. It’s about you. And Lawrence.”
Sarah lit a cigarette from the dying glow of another. “Lawrence was trying to be something he was not, to please your parents. What happened is not your fault.”
“You’re the one who should be doing psychology, Sarah Nugent. Not me!” cried Kathy. “I’m going to end up basket weaving in Argentina. I haven’t a hope in hell of passing any exams. Unless of course I offer sexual favours to Professor Baker.”
“You mean you haven’t already –”
“I do have some standards!” She was indignant. “I draw the line at a paunchy beardy misogynist.”
“Christ,” groaned Sarah. “It’s two in the morning again. I’ve got to get to bed. I’ve a stack of missed lectures I need to photocopy tomorrow. You might as well have a crack at these exams – if only for a diversion.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Kathy.
She slept soundly for the first time since the funeral. Over the next few days she got to work. There was a blizzard of photocopying, a rash of creative mnemonics, and late night cramming sessions, all sustained by Lucozade and caffeine tablets.
There was a chance she’d pass those exams. A tiny chance. But a chance nevertheless.