‘You’ll never let me forget that business with the loan, will you?’ Chaquie exclaimed. ‘And it had nothing to do with me not being well. It was because the figures didn’t add up and I told you that before you ever went to O’Higgins with your stupid proposals.’

Dermot ignored her.

‘And all the time I was building up the business,’ he continued. ‘Working night and day to have the premier beauty salon [pronounced ‘premeer beauty salong’] in South County Dublin.’

‘I worked night and day too,’ Chaquie exclaimed. ‘And I was the brains behind most of the ideas. I thought up the idea of the special offers.’

‘You did in your…!’ Dermot paused. ‘You did not.

‘We do special offers, d’you see.’ He looked at Misty and me as he said this. ‘A whole day’s pampering, the works. An aromatherapy session, a mud-wrap, a go in the sauna, a pedicure or manicure, and a complementary danish pastry, all for fifty quid. A saving of fifteen pounds if you have the manicure or eighteen if you opt for the pedicure.’

Josephine opened her mouth, but she was too late.

‘We also cater for male clients [pronounced ‘clee-yongs’].’ Dermot was off with more of his salesman’s patter. ‘We’ve found that the Irish man is far more discerning about his appearance and, while in the past a man might be considered a nancy-boy if he took care of his skin, nowadays it’s the done thing, really. I myself…’ he placed a tiny, pudgy hand on a broken-veined cheek ‘… use skin-care products and feel the better for it.’

Clarence, Mike, Vincent and Neil stared at Dermot stonily. John Joe, however, looked interested.

‘Dermot,’ Josephine said sharply, ‘we’re here to discuss Chaquie’s drinking.’

‘He’s always at that,’ Chaquie interrupted, looking at Dermot with hatred. ‘It’s so embarrassing. Once, at Mass, when he was offering the woman next to him the sign of peace, he looked at her nails and said she’d benefit from a manicure. In the Lord’s house! Did you ever?’

‘I’ve a living to make,’ Dermot said hotly. ‘If we were relying on you, we’d have gone bust a long time ago.’

‘Why is that?’ Josephine asked, guiding the conversation back to Chaquie’s failings.

‘I had to stop her working in the salong because she was jarred on the job and upsetting the clee-yongs. And getting things arseways and booking people in for sunbeds straight after leg waxes and everyone knows you can’t do that and that you’re running the risk of being sued and once you get a bad name, sure you’re sunk…’

‘Is that true?’ Josephine interrupted. ‘Were you drunk at work, Chaquie?’

‘Indeed, I wasn’t.’ She folded her arms and pushed her face onto her neck, which gave her a double-chinned look of sanctimonious outrage.

‘Ask any of the girls who work there,’ Dermot interrupted passionately.

‘Ask any of the girls who work there,’ Chaquie mimicked nastily. ‘Or one girl in particular, isn’t that right?’

You could feel everyone’s interest expand dramatically.

‘I know exactly what you’re doing, Dermot Hopkins,’ Chaquie went on. ‘Make me out to be an alcoholic, deny that I ever contributed to the business, get your girlfriend in to agree with you and leave me with nothing.’

She turned to the room at large. ‘We weren’t even married for a year before he started having affairs. He hired the girls in the salon not on their abilities but on…’

Dermot was trying to shout her down, but she shouted even louder. ‘… BUT ON THE SIZE OF THEIR CHESTS. And if they wouldn’t sleep with him he sacked them.’

‘You lying bitch.’ Dermot was shouting at the same time as she was.

‘And now he’s decided he’s in love with one of them, a little nineteen-year-old called Sharon with her eye on the main chance.’ Chaquie’s face was flushed and her eyes were glittery with pain and rage. She took another deep breath and shrieked ‘And you needn’t think she’s in love with you, Dermot Hopkins. She’s just looking for a cushy number. She’ll make a bloody eejit of you.’

Chaquie’s accent had changed. The surburban tones had disappeared and a rough Dublin accent had appeared in its place.

‘And what about your carry-on?’ Dermot’s voice was sopranoesque with rage.

‘What carry-on?’ Chaquie screeched back at him.

Josephine was trying to calm things down but she hadn’t a hope.

‘I know about you and the fella that put down the new carpet.’

Things got a bit confused after that because Chaquie leapt up and tried to smack Dermot. But from what we could gather, Dermot was implying that the new carpet wasn’t the only thing that got laid. Chaquie hotly contested his version of events and it was impossible to know who was telling the truth.

In disarray, the session ended.

And the first person to reach Chaquie and put their arms around her and ferry her off for tea was me.

41

Over the next couple of group sessions, in a scenario that I now recognized, Josephine delved into Chaquie’s psyche and pulled all kinds of rabbits out of the hat.

It became clear that Dermot, unpleasant and all as he was, hadn’t been lying.

Josephine pressed Chaquie and pressed her until finally she came clean about how much she drank. When she finally owned up to drinking a bottle of Bacardi a day, Josephine questioned her further until she admitted supplementing the Bacardi with brandy and Valium.

Then Josephine searched for reasons.

She worried away at two things – Chaquie’s obsession with her appearance, and her insistence that she was a good, respectable, upper-middle-class citizen. And, as usual, Josephine’s instincts were spot-on.

It all came out. Chaquie’s dirt-poor origins in an overcrowded corporation flat in a neglected area in Dublin. Her lack of education, the fact that she had cut off all contact with her family because she was afraid they’d show her up in front of her new-found middle-class friends and her terrible fear that she’d have to go back to that background of deprivation. It became clear that she had nothing except Dermot.

She relied on him totally and resented him bitterly for it.

Chaquie admitted that she had never felt at ease with her friends, that she was afraid they’d realize that she was the fraud she felt she was.