‘Definitely another PhD student in the making,’ Deirdre said.
Over dinner Deirdre, who had qualified as a solicitor the previous year, talked about the firm she worked for, a new outfit in Smithfield that sounded like a dream to Joanne; they specialized in family law, which was what she wanted to get into, and the partners were young and sounded decent and smart. Deirdre said the vibe in the office was always good, even if everyone was worked to the bone. She promised to introduce Joanne to one of the partners. There was a staff night out planned in May, she said, and Joanne should come as her guest.
‘You can pretend to be my new girl,’ she said, ribbing Sarah.
‘For that to work, they’d have to know you actually have an old girl,’ Sarah said drily, and for a moment nobody spoke. Sarah shook her head quickly then, and reached for the wine.
‘Sorry,’ she said to Joanne. ‘That’s beside the point. Deirdre’s right. You should go along and meet her bosses. I’m sure they’d be impressed. You can tell them you just helped yours to win another case.’
‘For all the good it will do,’ Joanne said. ‘Any job I get after I qualify is likely to be with Imelda and Eoin. Your firm will have its own trainees to promote.’
Before Deirdre could argue, Joanne asked Sarah about her group of Koreans this year, and Sarah rolled her eyes and launched into a long and comical description of her students, the questions they asked her and the gifts they gave her. But it was definitely going to be her last year teaching Koreans, she said, with an almost bashful glance at Deirdre. She was going to go back to college in the autumn. ‘And I mean it this time. I’ve applied and everything,’ she said.
‘That’s brilliant, Sarah,’ Joanne said. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Journalism,’ she said, and Deirdre gave a mock groan.
‘Another hack hanging around the Four Courts,’ she said, as Sarah swatted at her. ‘That’s all we bloody need.’
‘It’s great, Sarah,’ Joanne said, and poured them more wine. ‘You were always too good at English to end up just teaching it.’
Deirdre snorted with laughter. ‘There’s something not quite right about that sentence,’ she said.
‘Oh, well,’ Joanne shrugged. ‘Here’s to you anyway.’ She raised her glass to Sarah, and they clinked.
When they had finished eating, they moved to the sitting room. The Late Late Show was on, and they half watched it, passing occasional comment on the host and the guests. Deirdre and Sarah were merry by now, and Joanne knew that she must be well on too, but she didn’t feel it: as usual, she just felt tired. She was furious the first time she caught herself secretly longing to leave the girls by themselves in the sitting room and go upstairs to bed; it was rude of her, and more than that it was pathetic, she told herself. It was the thinking of someone who was too old and too boring to be open to even the mildest kind of fun. But as soon as she had thought that, she was thinking that if she excused herself to go upstairs and check on Aoife — which she would have to do soon anyway, which she would be expected to do — she could stretch out on the bed, just for a moment.
She shook herself, trying to wake up. She did not want to go to bed, no matter what her body was telling her: she wanted to be here, spending time with her friends, friends she loved, friends she hardly ever saw now. She wanted to throw herself into the conversation they were having — the conversation in which they thought she was participating — about the politician who was on the television screen now, and what a moron he was, and how insincere, and how dangerous, despite his homespun banter and his cartoon moustache. She wanted to talk about this with them, and to share with them the stories she’d heard about this politician, about other politicians; she wanted to express disgust like they were expressing it. She wanted to care. And she did care. She cared very much. She could not look at that guy, she had never been able to look at that guy, without wanting to tear that ridiculous moustache from his face. He was a gombeen man, and he thrived on it, and because of it he got away with things for which he should have been fired, and that was outrageous, just like Deirdre was saying, just like Sarah was repeating. Joanne agreed. But even as she was agreeing, she was thinking that it really didn’t matter what a politician did, or what he said, or what he lied about, or what he had on his upper lip. Or, rather, it mattered, but it didn’t matter as much as other things did. And she was furious with herself when she found herself thinking that, too, because if there was one thing she didn’t want to be, it was that kind of woman, that kind of mother, who thought that nothing in the world mattered except the shallow little breaths, the muffled little heartbeat of the person sleeping a fragile sleep in the room upstairs. But nothing else did matter, or nothing mattered as much. Was that true? Was she still so completely hormonal? Was this thinking going to stick? Was she going to shrug at everything except her daughter’s existence for the rest of her life? She couldn’t do that, Joanne thought, she couldn’t live with herself, and yet she didn’t see how she had a choice.
‘Oh God, stop lying, you fucking weasel,’ Deirdre shouted at the television screen, and Joanne stood and said she had to nip upstairs for a second.
‘Just need to make sure she’s still alive,’ she said, raising her eyebrows, as though to suggest the tediousness of the chore. ‘That kind of thing.’
‘Don’t fall asleep up there, now,’ Sarah called after her, and as Joanne stepped into the hall, she could hear that Aoife was awake. She tripped on the stairs. It must have been the wine.
The next morning, she took Aoife into town and bought her things. She bought her clothes in Dunnes and toys in the Early Learning Centre, and she went into Habitat and got some picture frames for her bedroom, and she took her into St Stephen’s Green and wheeled her around the flowerbeds and across the little bridge. She felt invisible; a woman with her child. There were so many of them around. Grafton Street was packed. She ducked up past Kehoe’s to get away from the crowds.
They had lunch in a café on Dawson Street. The waitress brought her a high chair so that Aoife could sit at the table with her. Afterwards, Joanne took out the little wooden farm animals she had bought her; they kept Aoife occupied long enough for Joanne to read almost a whole article in the Saturday magazine. Then she packed the animals away, and left the newspaper behind, and they walked out again into the sunshine. Joanne decided to walk through the grounds of Trinity, to find a bench and sit to soak up the day’s warmth.
Clive Robinson had aged so much in the space of a year that she barely recognized him. He must have been ill, she realized. He was walking towards the Berkeley Library, looking unsteady on his feet; maybe it was the cobblestones, but everybody else was walking on them perfectly well. She wanted for a second to avoid him, but she could not: he had seen her, and he was coming over. She waved and pulled the pushchair closer. As Robinson reached the bench, he pointed to the child with one hand and extended the other towards Joanne. He could not have looked more surprised. ‘This is news,’ he said, and he touched Aoife’s hair. She frowned up at him. ‘Bless every hair on her head,’ he said to Joanne. ‘She is yours?’
‘Mine.’ Joanne nodded, and they smiled at each other for a moment and then both looked down to the pushchair. ‘How are you?’ she heard herself ask in the very instant she warned herself, silently, not to ask that very question, and she cringed. She thought she saw him laugh a little as he sat on the bench beside her.