‘Oh dear. You know what’s happening, don’t you?’ Sally jested.
‘Shut up, no, it’s not. Be quiet, okay?’ Kitty attempted to place her hand over Sally’s mouth to stop the words coming out. Sally giggled and the car swerved so Kitty took her hand away immediately.
‘Okay, fine, I won’t say it, but you know you know it,’ she said in a singsong voice.
‘He’s just seeing if I’m okay,’ Kitty said, closing her phone and putting it away in her bag, and as soon as she did that she regretted it because she wanted to see if he’d responded to her rather witty and well-planned last text.
They settled into silence again and drove towards the darkening night, the sky red in the distance.
‘Red sky at night,’ Kitty said, ‘shepherd’s delight.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ Sally said. ‘That doesn’t make any sense. It’s supposed to be torrential rain tomorrow.’
They fell into silence again and Kitty’s mind drifted from Pete and on to her story. She thought of all the people she had met so far: Birdie Murphy, Eva Wu, Mary-Rose Godfrey, Archie Hamilton and Ambrose Nolan. She tried to find the link between them all but just couldn’t see any. She twisted their life stories around in her head, tried to compare and contrast each and every little thing she knew about them, and while similarities could be found, there was no real link, no real story, but each was so strong in its own right. She needed to start with a fresh mind and listen to their stories – perhaps constantly trying to find a link was stopping her story from flowing. She reached for her bag and Sally teased her about going for her phone but Kitty had already forgotten about that. She took out her notepad and pen and Sally realised she was in the zone and left her alone.
She thought of Ambrose, of the framed butterflies and the pictures on her wall.
Name Number Two: Ambrose Nolan
Story Title: Kalology – The Study of Beauty
Kitty slept in Sally’s house that night.
When they returned from Straffan to Kitty’s flat, that day’s newspaper article was rewarded with horse manure trailing up each step to her door on which it had been used to write the words ‘Dirty Sell-Out Whore’. Even after so much abuse, Kitty still managed to feel hurt. She contemplated taking a photograph of the door and sending it to Richie along with a note of thanks, but decided against it as it would probably be tomorrow’s news. The one thing she could be thankful for was that the attacks were never inside her home and never on her physically.
Kitty grabbed a change of clothes, in fact enough to last her a week, and then she turned on her heel to escape to Sally’s car.
Zhi, the landlord, blocked her path.
‘I’m sorry, Zhi, I’m in a massive rush. Can you please just—’ She stepped to the right to pass him but he blocked her, so she stepped to the left and he blocked her again. She gave up and sighed. ‘I’ll arrange for this to be cleaned as soon as I can.’
‘It is not good enough. Last week paint, toilet paper and shit, last night firework, today more shit. It is not good for my business.’
‘I know, I know. I really don’t think it will happen for much longer. They’ll eventually get tired and stop it.’
He wasn’t having any of it. ‘The end of month I get new tenant. You out. You find other place to—’
‘No no no no no,’ Kitty interrupted, hands together and desperately pleading. ‘Please, please don’t say that. This is just a blip. I have been a good tenant, haven’t I?’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘I won’t tell anyone about the PERC.’
His face darkened. ‘You threaten me?’
‘No! I said I won’t tell anyone about the PERC. I won’t.’
‘Then why you it bring up? End of month you out,’ he said, and stormed back down the stairs.
While Kitty was still on the stairs contemplating how much worse her life could get and where on earth she was going to find a place to live on a much lower income, Zhi reappeared with an item of clothing on a hanger, wrapped in plastic.
‘And your friend,’ he added, coming back up the stairs. ‘He no pay for his suit jacket. He supposed to pay this morning. You pay. Ten euro.’
‘No, no, he’s not my friend. I’m not paying for that.’
‘He your friend. I see you all kissy kissy. You pay. Ten euro. You pay.’
‘No way. It’s not mine. No way.’
He started to back away.
‘Okay, let’s make a deal. I’ll pay for his jacket if you let me stay in the flat.’
He thought about it. ‘You pay for jacket and I think about it.’
Kitty tried to fight her smile. ‘Perfect.’ She rooted in her bag for the money and handed it over. He gave her the jacket. ‘So I can stay?’
‘No,’ he barked. ‘I say I think about it and I think about it and answer is no.’ On that note he stormed back down the stairs leaving Kitty open-mouthed.
After leaving Sally’s responsible Rathgar home, with responsible furniture, her responsible husband with a responsible car and job, who’d talked to her over a responsible breakfast about his responsible golf trip away the previous weekend, Kitty left the responsible child-minder with Sally’s eighteen-month-old and walked with Sally into the city. At 7.30 a.m. it was already warm, with a light breeze in the air. Though there was no need for a coat, Sally was wearing a thick sweater, had a raincoat hooked over her arm and was holding the largest umbrella Kitty had ever seen.
‘Are you planning on providing housing for the homeless?’ Kitty asked, eyeing up the umbrella.
‘It’s Douglas’s golf umbrella.’
‘I see that. Do you also hire it out for marquee events?’
Sally ignored her.
‘It’s warm today.’ Kitty took off her cardigan.
Sally looked up at the clear blue sky. ‘Supposed to have torrential rain today.’
‘Not likely, though, is it?’
Sally smiled a knowing secret smile as if she alone held the country’s weather secrets in her head. ‘So what are you doing today?’
‘I’m having breakfast with an ex-convict, brunch with a personal shopper, an afternoon with a hairdresser to the sick, an evening at a nursing home and
