Do You Want to Know a Secret? (3 page)

Laura first.

‘Look at you, not a line on your face, God bless your collagen levels, that’s all I can say. Honestly, you’re even more like Jennifer Aniston than Jennifer Aniston,’ she says, as we and ooh and ahh, and generally squeal at each
other
like two dolphins on a nature programme having a dire emergency.

You know, all the normal ladies-who-lunch stuff.

Not that you could call either myself or Laura a lady who lunches, not by the longest of long shots. In fact, most days I’m doing well if I manage to wolf down a wrap at my desk in-between strategy meetings at the office. This is just the type of restaurant that seems to bring out the inner diva in all of us. Oh, you know the kind: where they bring fourteen types of bread to the table, when a plain old roll would do, and where they call gravy ‘
jus
’, and when you ask for water they automatically bring the posh kind in blue bottles that immediately add another eighty euro on to the bill.

God, just listen to me. Age is definitely making me narkier. The only difference between me and my moany Auntie Maisie is a plaid shopping trolley and a tracheotomy.

‘Either you’re lying or else you’re only saying that cos I straightened my hair especially for today, but bless you anyway,’ I say, plonking down beside her and gratefully accepting the wine list she’s thrusting at me.

I’m really delighted to see Laura, I never get to spend enough time with her. She . . . well, she leads this incredibly hectic, full-on life and is never able to come out on the razz at night-time with Barbara and me. (Childcare issues, don’t even GO there.) So, anyway the
three
of us have this deal. The Saturday after any of us celebrates a birthday, said birthday girl is required to host lunch in the poshest restaurant that her budget will allow. This first commandment of our friendship dates back to when Laura had her first baby, not long after the three of us graduated from college together, and we’ve stuck to it through thick and thin, for richer for poorer, all the way from McDonalds, via Pizza Hut to the super-posh dining-room of Roly’s Bistro which we’re sitting in now.

On me. Ah sure, what the hell.

Plus I am so
bursting
to tell her about the exhibition we were at, and the law of attraction, and how it’s finally,
finally
going to turn my love life around – and all the amazing wonders I’ve learned since I last saw her. Oh shit, does that make me sound like a Southern Baptist preacher that’s trying to convert someone on the God channel? Better tread carefully, if so. If you thought that Barbara was a tad disbelieving, then I’m about to introduce you to the Dark Lady of cynicism. Like you wouldn’t believe. I mean, back in college, Laura was even a founder member of the Sceptics Society.

Really, I am
not
kidding.

‘So, another year older and wiser,’ she says. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Honestly?’

‘The whole truth and nothing but.’

‘OK, put it this way. It’s like Oscar Wilde said, the tragedy of ageing isn’t that you’re old, it’s that you’re
young
. I mean, look at me. I am now officially old enough to know that there’s more to life than sex and shoes and boyfriends and partying, and yet still young enough to know that they are the best bits.’

And up until yesterday I might have added that, lately, I’ve been seeing damn all of any. But then I always feel a bit guilty for moaning in front of Laura, on the grounds that there’s nothing worse than the failure stench from a lonely, single woman who desperately wishes that she wasn’t. Besides, note to self: now that I’m a new convert to the awesome power and majesty of the law of attraction, I really shouldn’t moan, sorry, sorry . . . ooops, I meant to say . . . attract negativity into my life.

Plus, further note to self: let’s never forget that the second commandment of being a good friend is ‘Thou Shalt not Bore’. So I opt for changing the subject instead.

‘No, you first with the news, babe. So how are things on the home front?’

‘Vicky. Today is your day. We’re here to celebrate
your
birthday lunch. So by asking that question you’ve just confirmed that the vein in my forehead must now be pulsing like a thunderbolt. Like Harry Potter’s proverbial scar, if you will.’

No kidding, this is actually the way that Laura talks. Sharp, clear and clipped. Witty, even without trying to be. She used to be a lawyer, which might go some of the way towards explaining.

‘Tell me everything, honey. Omit no detail, however trivial,’ I say in what I hope sounds like a sympathetic yet encouraging tone, which, trust me, always works best with her when she’s . . . well, whenever she gets a bit overstressed like this.

‘Ordinarily, I’d prefer to have some alcohol inside me to answer that question, but . . . all right then, seeing as you’ve asked,’ she sighs, shoving her glasses into her hair and palming her tired, bloodshot eyes. ‘Firstly, my dearest eldest son was caught shoplifting last night and at 4 a.m. I was still in the police station trying to troubleshoot. Secondly, my daughter, who’s already behaving like a pre-teen, delivered me an ultimatum over breakfast. It seems the little madam now prefers living with Daddy and his new girlfriend, and that if I don’t stop nagging her, then she’s permanently moving in with them.’

‘And I suppose by “nagging” you really mean trying to coax her to eat a little bit more than one packet of breath fresheners every day?’

I’m actually not messing here; this is a child whose main ambition in life is to out-skinny Nicole Ritchie or one of those ‘sleb’ types you read about in magazines. You know, the ones who all go around Beverley Hills
looking
like malnourished thirteen-year-olds, toting handbags that probably weigh more than them.

‘Correct. Oh and speaking of my soon-to-be-ex husband, he is now almost four months behind on paying child maintenance. Which means I have to suffer the utter humiliation of going cap in hand to my mother to pay this month’s mortgage. Not to mention next term’s school fees which are also due. Does my self-esteem need any of this, I ask you?’

Well, I did warn you. Laura’s life makes mine seem like a Disneyland infomercial by comparison. I nod supportively, and do my best not to interrupt with insulting yet insightful comments about said soon-to-be-ex husband. With the balance tilted strongly in favour of insulting, on account of the fact that I can’t abide the sight of him.

On she goes. ‘Then for added entertainment value, my darling seven-year-old, who’s still bed-wetting by the way, not only is taking the divorce worse than the whole useless lot of them put together, but I was reliably informed by his headmaster yesterday that lately he’s started mitching off class and, as of this morning, my baby girl . . .’ she pauses here, just to catch her breath, ‘now has a highly infectious case of head lice, picked up from a neighbour’s child while I took my eye off the ball for all of two minutes. So, all in all, how great is it that I’m on Zanax?’

‘Ooh, honey, not good,’ I wince. ‘Anything I can do to help?’

‘Yes, dearest. You could do what you always do and make me laugh.’

‘OK,’ I say slowly, racking my brains for a decent gag. ‘Ehh, well I could try and hire a full-time nanny on your behalf, you know, the sort who’ll hopefully confuse child-rearing with criminal law enforcement.’

Bingo, I’m rewarded with a sly smile, just as Laura’s mobile beep-beeps.

‘Mary Poppins on a minimum wage, that’s what I need,’ she says, fishing around her overstuffed handbag for her mobile and dumping a tub of Sudocrem and a packet of Heinz banana biscuits on the table. It’s a text from her mother, who’s babysitting, to say that a Third Gulf War has erupted in the house over who had the remote control last.

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ says Laura. ‘I’m really sorry about this, dearest, but do you mind if I just phone home and really give my babies something to cry about?’

‘Course not, go ahead.’

‘Serves me right for thinking that I could actually skive off for two niggardly hours and, who knows, maybe actually enjoy myself for once,’ she says, furiously stabbing at the speed dial on her phone. ‘This is your day, and look what I’m having to deal with. Just wait till I get home. I can tell you right now, they’re in for a
WORLD
of pain. Yes, it’s Mummy here, kindly roll your eyes BACK into the forward position,’ she snaps crisply at whatever poor unfortunate child happens to answer. ‘Now go and get Granny for me this instant. WHAT did you just say? Well I hate to disappoint you, but no, you are not a secret agent and you do NOT have a licence to kill your brother . . . hang on, is that the unmistakable sound of a Band-Aid wrapper that I hear being unpeeled?’

Oh dear. Right then, nothing for it but to order a bottle of champagne from the wine waiter (what the hell, when you’re out, you’re out), and let her get on with doing a major damage-limitation number on the home front.

Poor old Laura. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that she doesn’t love and adore her kids, of course she does. It’s just that, well, things haven’t exactly been easy for her of late. In fact, not for a long, long time. Put it this way, if you’d met Laura when I first did, back in school, in a million years you would never have predicted this kind of life for her. No one’s fault, no one to blame, it’s just that things didn’t quite work out for her the way you’d have foreseen.

Or for any of us, come to think of it, but let me tell you a bit about Laura.

OK. For starters, she comes from a very well-known and highly regarded political family, the
Lennox-Coyninghams
. Now we don’t exactly have dynasties in this country, but believe me, Laura’s family come pretty darn close. On pretty much every page of our recorded history, there’s a Lennox-Coyningham in there somewhere: one of her illustrious ancestors had fought in the War of Independence, her granddad was Minister for Justice and her father served three terms as Attorney General. I remember as a kid going to play in their huge mansion of a house and being completely intimidated by the fact that they would hold heated political discussions around the dinner table. Honest to God, it was like being pals with a Kennedy, minus the suntan and the toothiness. Especially as in our house, mealtimes revolved around whatever soap happened to be on TV at the time, and the only house rule was whoever got to the microwave first, got fed first. (We were a very microwave and freezer-dependent family.)

Anyway, from a very early age, great things were expected of Laura, a cherished eldest child, all of which were entirely justified by her perpetually stunning grades. She effortlessly graduated from college top of her year in law studies, and everyone – absolutely everyone, from her tutors and lecturers down – agreed that Laura Lennox-Coyningham had what it took to be a minister, an ambassador or maybe even (and I can still hear her father whispering this in suitably awed tones) . . . President.

It wasn’t an impossible dream. She had everything going for her, the whole package. Brains, charisma, popularity, pedigree, wealthy political connections, great communication skills, the lot. She’s even good-looking, photogenic in an Emma Thompson, dippy-quirky sort of way; but you’d have absolutely no difficulty at all picturing her smiling face on election posters hanging from lamp posts far and wide with a caption under her saying: ‘Vote Lennox-Coyningham No. 1’.

But it wasn’t to be. That summer we graduated, when we were all aged twenty-one, in a long family tradition, Laura went off to King’s Inns to become a hardworking, high-powered barrister, a necessary stop-off on her merry route to the presidental office in the Phoenix Park. And shocked all of us, not least her family, by falling madly in love with George Hastings, one of her senior professors.

Now, kinder people than me called George, a dusty academic type, cuddly, if you didn’t have a problem with either dandruff or patterned cardigans. Put it this way, while the rest of us were all drinking Malibu and thinking ourselves fierce posh, slumming it around Europe on cheapie InterRail tickets and debating as to whether Heaven 17 or MC Hammer would have a longer shelf-life (no,
really
), George was escorting Laura to cello recitals and violin concertos at his elitist, members-only, old-man’s club on Stephen’s Green, that somehow
always
, always smelt of boarding-school food, stinky cabbage and watery rice pudding. And I wouldn’t have minded, but he can’t have been any more than mid-thirties then; a young fogey before they’d even invented the term.

Anyway, like him or loathe him, George and the lovely Laura were married before she’d even reached the age of twenty-two. By thirty she was a mother of three, still ambitious and still practising as a barrister you understand, but well . . . It was just so difficult, if not impossible, for her to put in all the networking hours and late-night drinking sessions in pubs near the Four Courts that you practically
have
to, if you want to get on in that profession. Her kids came first. Of course. Then she fell pregnant again and was forced to take a career break just so all her hard-earned cash wasn’t entirely going towards childcare. I often think she has the days counted until her youngest is in ‘big’ school, so she can get back to the workplace, knowing all her kids are safely tied up in full-time education. She’s aching for it, itching to get back inside a courtroom, but right now and for the next couple of years at least . . . she’s a separated, soon-to-be-divorced mother of four, while George is still actively, you might even say aggressively, dating some of his students right under her nose.

Like I say, not a destiny you might have foretold.

She finishes her call and apologizes profusely.

‘Look at me, I’m calm, I’m cool and I’m keeping my peace, even with God. Even with George Hastings.’

Oh yeah, that’s the other thing. She always, always, refers to her ex by his full name. I think, by doing so, she’s imagining she’s in court and about to send him down for arson or, you know, some grade A crime that carries a mandatory life-sentence and that his trial will end up on the
Six O’Clock News
with close-up shots of him looking miserable in handcuffs, with a raincoat over his head.