Thus comforted, I put my fears from my mind.

*

But I hadn’t reckoned on Helen and her surfermania and it all came to a dreadful head three short hours later.

‘… booked the flights on the Internet Net,’ Mum was saying. ‘No need to bother with travel agents, you just type in your details and they give you all these choices. This Net is a great invention!’

‘But I want to go home.’

‘Well you can’t,’ she said pleasantly. ‘We’ll need you to show us the sights. Sure, what difference can a few more days make, anyway?’

For God’s sake. I had to bite my knuckle to stifle a scream of frustration.

‘Where will you stay?’ Then I added very quickly, ‘There’s no room here.’

‘We wouldn’t dream of imposing,’ Mum said graciously. ‘I spoke to Mrs Emily and she gave me the name of the hotel that she stayed in when she came over. Only down the road from Emily’s and very friendly, she says, and the breakfast is nice and you get little yokes…’

‘What little yokes?’ I asked wearily.

‘Shower caps, sewing kits, the lend of an umbrella. Not that I’d be needing an umbrella,’ she sounded suddenly fearful, ‘because I’m coming to get away from the rain. If it starts raining in Los Angeles, I’m just booking myself into the mental hospital and let that be an end to it.’

‘Well, you know what they say?’

A mistrustful pause. ‘That you shouldn’t put butter on a burn?’

‘They say, it never rains in California.’ ‘Good,’ she said firmly. ‘It pours!’

But even that wasn’t enough to deter her.

‘They arrive on Tuesday,’ I reported to an appalled Emily.

‘Oh, good Christ.’

29

I clung grimly to sleep as though to the side of a cliff. Reluctantly I rose towards consciousness until I was covered only by a thin veil of sleep, but still I refused to surface. It was the sound of the ringing phone that finally made me give in and face the day.

God, was I sorry that I had. My first thought was of Troy and his horrible, humiliating rejection of me. The second was that, with my family coming to visit, I was trapped in Los Angeles.

Unless… unless they’d messed up their Internet reservations. The more I thought about it, the more I saw that the chances of them either a) getting seats on a flight that actually existed or b) booking themselves on a flight to Los Angeles instead of say, Phnom Penh or Tierra Del Fuego were very slim indeed.

I began to cheer up, and when Emily tapped quietly on my door I was able to smile at her. Until she handed me the phone and whispered, ‘Mammy Walsh.’

Within seconds, my worst fears were confirmed. It was a perfectly straightforward American Airways flight from Dublin to LAX – and they were definitely booked on it. ‘I rang this morning and got confirmation,’ Mum said cheerily. She even had a flight number. In fact, she’d even reserved their seats and a vegetarian meal for Anna! Which was the first I’d heard of Anna coming.

‘How long will you be staying?’

‘Helen’s got to be back to do Marie Fitzsimon’s wedding –seven bridesmaids, three flower girls, the bride, the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom – so we won’t get the full two weeks –’

‘Two weeks!’ I’d have to stay here and face Troy for another two weeks! For the love of Christ!

‘– so twelve days is how long we’re coming for. Now have a word with your father, he wants to know should he bring his shorts.’

As soon as I was off the phone, things got worse; Emily wanted to have a little ‘chat’ with me. ‘As you know,’ she began awkwardly, ‘I still haven’t heard from Larry Savage and I’m not holding out much hope. Lara made a suggestion the other evening–’

I already knew what was coming.

‘– about me looking for other work doing script polishes.’

I couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘Ring him,’ I said.

‘She suggested several people, one of them being… Oh! Do you mean it? Shay Delaney – you wouldn’t mind if I rang him?’

‘Why would I mind?’ Like, what grounds did I have? ‘Maggie, please be honest with me. Just say the word and I won’t go near him.’

‘Go for it.’

Anxiously she asked, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Completely.’

‘Thanks, thank you. I’m just so desperate for work and I know it was a long time ago, you and him, but first cut is the deepest, as they say. So I was afraid you might be cross with me, and–’

‘It’s fine,’ I interrupted, a little too brusquely. ‘Just fine.’

Quickly, she said, ‘I won’t ring him. I’m sorry I even asked you, it was wrong of me.’

‘Ring him, I don’t MIND!’ The yell hung in the air, shocking us both, then I took a breath and forced a more reasonable tone. ‘I don’t mind, I promise. Just don’t make me keep saying it.’

Bu–’

‘Nnnneh!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK’.

I was hoping that she’d take days to get round to it, but she rang him immediately – so I went to my room, where I could listen avidly without being observed. She didn’t get to talk to him, but when she said, ‘So he is in town right now?’ I watched my fingers begin to tremble, although nothing like as badly as the day I’d met him and I hadn’t been able to undo the zip on Dad’s anorak afterwards. Emily spelt out her name for whoever she was talking to, ‘O’Keeffe. O-K-E-E-F-F-E, yeah, O’Keeffe. It’s Irish. No, Irish. So if you could have him call me, that would be great. Bye.’

Then she came looking for me. ‘Maggie? He wasn’t there.’

‘Wasn’t he?’ I said neutrally, like I hadn’t been standing behind the door, holding my breath in order to overhear and slowly turning purple.

‘No. No, he wasn’t. So what would you like to do today?’ she asked solicitously. ‘We could go to the beach or for a drive – or how about we go out for lunch?’

‘You’ve work to do.’

‘I can skip it.’

I couldn’t help laughing. ‘I’m O-K!’