Page 28 of Don't You Forget About Me

‘… Not a doubt. It was bedlam at times and she handled herself well. She’s got no attitude. Exactly what we want.’

‘Based on what? You’re spannered.’

The sound of a heavy weight being dropped, with control.

‘Yeah because she kept my glass full!’

The guffaw that follows is unmistakably Devlin.

‘Pouring liquid into glasses isn’t astrophysics, is it?’

‘Nor is running a pub.’

They’re talking aboutme?

Oh, no … my taxi is here. I make a silent, frantic, ‘yes coming, just finishing my cigarette’ mime and the driver looks unimpressed.

‘… Great, our recruitment policy is whichever blondes happen to catch my brother’s eye. It’s not Hooters, Dev.’

I can’t believe this is about me, and yet it’s clearly about me.

‘She’s obviously a nice, sound lass. There’s a way about her that I like a lot. I don’t see your problem.’

‘We don’t know anything about her, we don’t know she’s nice. You’ve gone over my head and promised her, is my problem. Where’s my tick?’

‘Give her a chance, you cynical twat. The lesson of tonight was not to be a cynical twat.’

‘I thought the lesson was about not doing stupid things when you’re heavily intoxicated. Also, who puts shamrocks in Guinness? To be sure to be sure. Let her go work in Scruffy Muffy’s or whatever it’s called these days.’

A howl of laughter. ‘Ah God, I wonder how we’d fix a flaw in her like that, Luc, I mean it’s IMPOSSIBLE …’

The driver shouts: ‘I’m starting the meter now, love, come on!’ and I startle and rush over, trying to pick my footsteps carefully so the brothers don’t twig to me having been nearby.

I just heard Lucas McCarthy equate the wisdom of hiring me with killing yourself.

When we pull up in Crookes, as I get money out to pay, I find Devlin’s given me fifty quid more than we agreed. Usually you’d put that down to inebriation but I get the sense that Devlin is always this garrulous and generous.

Damn. For a brief, blissful moment, I thought I’d fallen into a job that I’d like, for a person I like. But he’s Lucas McCarthy’s brother.

And since when was he ‘Luke’? I bridle at this, ludicrously, as if he’s committing a fraud. A betrayal.Betrayal.I turn the word over. It has pointed edges that cause lacerations. It’s like swallowing a Sticklebrick.

I walk, trance-like, from kitchen to bathroom sink to pulling on my pyjamas, not present in any single task, mind floating elsewhere.

We don’t know anything about her

Oh, really.

It’s not Hooters, Dev

Supercilious arsehole! How sexist is that?! Would any place hire you because of your hair? It may be lustrous but I’m thinking not. OK, he’s also possibly referring to the DD cup. Pig. Like I chose this pair in the Grattan catalogue.

So Lucas is now a grown-up who owns and runs places. I’m thirty and begging to work in them. The indignity.

I don’t want your job anyway, so the joke’s on you.

But oh God. Idowant the job. Before this encounter, I’d have said that working for Lucas McCarthy would’ve been what my dad called a cheese-before-bed nightmare.

Now the initial encounter is over with, my feelings are more conflicted. I’ve heard him saying I’d be trouble – or that they ‘don’t know I’m nice’ – and my pride wants to face that down.

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