Anyway, she’d spoken to Sam and knew about our break-up. Knew about it before I did, I’ll warrant. And her final word on the subject? ‘Yeah…you know, we’re really sorry but I suppose these things happen. Shame you won’t be coming away with us this Easter. You’re always such fun to be away with.’
Like I’m some kind of court jester. But however vague and dismissive she sounds, the subtext is clear as the crystal I bankrupted myself to buy for her; Sam was their friend long before I came along, so, foursome or no foursome, if anyone is going to get jettisoned, it’s me. Of course it is. I’m utterly dispensable. In Eva’s eyes, I’m broke = I’m out.
In fact, the only real friend that’s come out of all this for me is Emma. Before I’d even had a chance to ask, she said that I’d be more than welcome to stay at her flat in town. The only person I know who actually offered to put me up. There was a catch though; she’s on a few months’ paid leave from Channel Six and is going down to stay with her parents in Wexford for a few weeks, so she’d already sublet the flat before she’d heard about my, ahem, domestic difficulty. Nice of her to offer though. More than some people. A lot more.
‘So to recap,’ Judy the accountant is still droning on, ‘I’ll have to get on to credit control at Visa and explain the situation. Needless to say, your card will be cancelled forthwith. But, with luck, maybe we can stall them from referring this to their legal team.’ She smiles at me. God love her, she must think this’ll cheer me up. ‘Obviously with a commitment from you to come to a long-term payment arrangement with them,’ she adds.
‘A payment arrangement?’ I say, temporarily stunned out of my deadened stupor. ‘Emm…sorry to state the obvious, Judy, but payment from what exactly? I have nothing.’
‘Come on, you must have valuable items you could possibly sell? When you were earning, did you invest in paintings? Jewellery? Anything?’
I’m too embarrassed to tell her that the only investments I ever made were in handbags/shoes/designer clobber etc, so instead I just focus on dividing the snotty Kleenex that’s lying on my lap into half, then quarters, then eighths and not bursting into tears. Yet again.
‘Jessie,’ she says, softly, ‘you have to understand that I’m trying to help you as much as I can. And I want you to let me know if there’s anything else that I can do for you.’
‘You could lend me the bus fare home.’
‘Please, be serious.’
‘I was being serious.’
‘What I meant by that was, do you have any assets at all which I could liquidise for you? Something that would give you a cash injection to get you through this?’
Me? Assets? For a second I want to laugh. I’m a live now, pay later kind of gal.
‘Jessie, I hate bringing up a distasteful subject but needs must I’m afraid. When your father passed away, didn’t he leave you anything at all?’
‘No,’ I mutter dully. ‘Poor Dad had nothing to leave. Well, apart from the house that is.’
Her eyes light up.
‘He left you a house? Explain, please?’
‘Nothing to explain. Dad left our family home equally to my stepmother and me. That’s all.’
‘So this would be the house that you grew up in?’
‘Yup.’
‘And he left it to be divided fifty-fifty between both of you?’
‘Ehhhh…yeah.’
‘So, all this time, you’ve been part-owner of a house and you never told me?’
Swear to God, the woman’s eyes look like they’re about to pop across the room like champagne corks. ‘And was it sold? Is it rented out?’
‘No, my stepfamily still live there. The three of them. But I have absolutely nothing to do with those people and they’ve nothing to do with me. Trust me; it’s an arrangement that suits all of us.’
‘But you’re the legal owner of half of this property.’
‘Judy, I’m not with you. What do you suggest I do here? Turf them all out and sell the place from under them? They’d get a hit man after me. You have no idea what these people are like; they’d have me knee-capped. This is their home.’
‘You needed somewhere to stay, didn’t you? Well here’s the answer staring you in the face.’
For a second I look at her, my mouth I’m sure forming the same perfect ‘O’ that the kids do in the Bisto commercial.
‘Jessie, welcome to the wonderful world of “Got no choice”.’
It’s like a mantra with me the whole of the next day: I have no choice, I have no choice. I. Have. No. Choice. And in fact, if I don’t get a move on, chances are I’ll come home to find all my stuff in cardboard boxes outside the security gates, the locks changed and new people already living there. All of which fits in beautifully with the recurring theme of my life right now; when you’ve got everything, you’ve got everything to lose.
It’s late Saturday afternoon and I’m still in bed, paralysed. Praying that at this exact moment Sam is doing the same thing. That he’s dead on the inside too. Despondent. Missing me. Willing himself to swallow his pride, pick up the phone and beg me to get back with him.
I’ve been practically a ‘Rules Girl’ since our last, harrowing conversation and by that I mean I’ve only texted him approximately a dozen times and left around eight voice messages on his mobile. Per day, that is.
TV is my only friend, but as I’m avoiding the news for obvious reasons, I stick to the History Channel where there’s bound to be nothing on that’ll only upset me more. An ad comes on where they quote Buddha saying that all suffering stems from failed expectations. Yup, sounds about right to me. Next thing, out of nowhere, there’s a massive, urgent walloping on my hall door downstairs, which my first instinct is to ignore, but then it flashes through my mind, Suppose it’s Sam? Standing there with a huge bouquet of flowers and a speech all prepared about what a complete moron he’s been? I dive out of bed like I’ve just had an adrenaline shot to the heart and race downstairs, still in my pyjamas. Course, it’s not Sam at all though. It’s the estate agent, with a middle-aged-looking couple standing on either side of him like twin bodyguards, wanting to view the house. The estate agent is super-polite and says he’s mortified for disturbing me, but his implication is clear; just disappear for the afternoon and let people who can actually afford to live here get a once-over of the place in peace.
Which is how, about an hour later, I end up back in our humble little corporation estate in Whitehall, on Dublin’s Northside. My first time back to the house since I was eighteen, all of eleven years ago. I’m absolutely dreading what lies ahead and at the same time, so punch drunk by all the body blows I’ve taken in the last week, that the part of me that’s numb just takes over everything; all bodily functions like walking down streets and holding conversations
