Page 70 of How Much Wine Will Fix My Broken Heart?
Drink erupts out of a nostril as she says that. ‘God forbid if his wife ever found out. She would murder him,’ I say.
‘Yeah, you mentioned that… You’ve knocked heads with his wife? How?’ Astrid asks.
I take a deep breath, knowing I need to hold back some detail or Lucy will find her. And burn her things. ‘She’s a busybody, judgemental sort. The worst kind of school-gate bitch. We’ve had words.’
‘Did you lamp her?’ Lucy asks, a bit too excitedly. This is where Maya learnt her fight tactics, wasn’t it?
‘No. Because that would drag me down to her level.’
‘But that’s the point, you go down to their level, you silence the bitch and then you rise up again like the phoenix you are. It’s what we Callaghan women do. It’s what our name means,’ Lucy informs us.
‘Your name means “Silence the bitch”?’ Farah asks, grinning.
‘It means contention or strife. Mum did one of those ancestry things. We had Irish ancestors who were keen on a brawl, it’s in our blood.’
‘I think half your blood is alcohol, which is why you like a fight,’ I say. ‘I’m not getting involved. In any case, by the looks of things, I don’t want to pile on that woman’s woes.’
Lucy, Astrid and Farah all stare over at Ross and Liz again, their noses wrinkled. That would be a whole lot of drama to break down and I wouldn’t know where to start.Oh, Carrie. So you’re quite hateful, we’ve known that for ages, and Ross is sleeping with Liz.I see that going down well at the next harvest assembly.
‘Well, you’re a better person than most but we knew that anyway, Gracie,’ Astrid adds, winking. ‘So where to now?’ she says with a hint of trouble in her eye. Farah downs her drink in one. Lucy bangs her feet like they’re the sound of a drum roll. I knew they’d do this. Oh, we’re just going out for a ‘quiet dinner’. That night in Amsterdam was supposed to be a ‘quiet walk’ after the reception. I can’t do another Amsterdam. The very thought is making me gag.
‘Yes, bitch!’ Lucy squeals, double high fiving her. ‘The night is young and so am I.’
‘You’re nearly thirty,’ I tell her.
‘Piss off.’
* * *
It’s 2.32 a.m. For the love of all that is holy, I need to lie down. I stop walking and lie on the cobbles, looking up into the sky. Hello, Tom? Are you up there? You’re not because you didn’t believe in any of that. You were a man of science with slightly spiritual leanings but it’s nice to think your body makes up part of the cosmos in some way.
If you were here, it’d be useful. I remember we went out in Bristol once and you managed to blag a lift from a random man in a white van at three in the morning as none of us knew where we were and we didn’t have any cash left. You were always the one still laughing, still standing at the end of the evening, still suggesting the night go on forever, until the sun came up. By that measure, you’d love this. The fact you’re dead and it’s basically an excuse for me to have spent a month beforehand getting horribly drunk with all these people we once knew. You’d approve of the drinking, of me getting out there and having fun.
But is this fun? I don’t think my liver is having fun. We went to another bar after dinner. No, we went to three bars. I reach into my pocket and there’s a salt shaker in there. Did we do tequila? All three of them are dancers too; they like to stand in a circle and throw shapes in a strange accentuated fashion. I danced. I mean, they had to drag me on the dancefloor against my will but I joined in. I jiggled to some funky house disco beat and watched them gurn and laugh through the flashes of light, occasionally stopping to hug me, pockets of sweat in the creases of their forearms. The alcohol helped. The fact I love all these girls dearly helped too. I think I had fun.
However, this part is not fun. Astrid and Farah have gone on a hunt to find us late-night snackage that I hope to god is something deep-fried and fatty, and I have been left here with Lucy, who has danced her way along the docks talking at the very top of her voice, which makes me worry for the state of her hearing.
‘Gracie, babes. Do you want me to carry you?’ she says, doing a muscleman pose. She’s serious. How would we do that? Can I piggyback? The cobbles are hard against my back but I hope there may be a therapeutic quality to lying here.
‘No.’ Instead, I do a very classy move of spinning my body round like a windmill and throwing up over the side of the docks. It takes a moment for my vomit to reach the water but, when it does, a group of men walking past cheer. This is not elegant. And now I know we definitely had tequila.
‘Woah, Gracie. Don’t fall in.’ Lucy puts a hand out to stop me from rolling into the docks and comes to lie down next to me, twisting my hair so it’s out of my face and not hanging down over the ledge. I can hear Tom laughing from here. She offers me her scarf to wipe my mouth and I use it to shroud my face.
‘Leave me here. I want to sleep here.’
‘Then you’ll need company.’
There is silence as she allows me a moment to burp loudly into the night sky and remember how to breathe.
‘I don’t remember throwing up in Amsterdam,’ I mumble.
‘No, but I peed on a line of bicycles. Do you remember? I have a picture. I got on all fours thinking I was a dog.’
I giggle uncontrollably.
‘To be fair, anything could have happened in the ’Dam and neither of us would have known what occurred. I had a handprint-sized bruise on my arse that night, did I ever tell you? It makes me think I may have got up on stage at that sex club we went to…’ she says, confused.
I flare my nostrils at the thought. She holds my hand and I notice her eyes scanning the stars.
