It was a disaster.

She lost track of the time every lunch hour because she had found a swan's nest at the canal near the office and would spend ages watching the birds and cooing over the eggs. (And rolling and partaking of several joints also, if the rumormongers are to be believed.)

But the day she suggested changing the filing system for the construction workers, so that instead of organizing them by their surnames, she would do it by their astrological star signs instead, Mr. Ballard, the office manager, decided that he had enough. Although Anna protested that really she had only been joking (she said, laughing, no doubt making things worse for herself, "Honestly, how could we possibly consider filing them by their star signs? I mean, we don't even know their rising signs"), she soon found herself once more without gainful employment.

Dad was furious and mortified with embarrassment. "What goes on in her bloody head?" he thundered. "I'd nearly swear she's on drugs."

Honestly, for an intelligent man, there were times when he was alarm- ingly naive.

Once she had established that I wasn't a psychic phenome-

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non, Anna, though disappointed, decided to make the best of the situation.

"Pour me a glass of that too," she said, gesturing at the bottle of wine, so I did, and we both sat down at the kitchen table.

It was about five AM.

Anna seemed to find nothing remotely strange at the lateness or, more accurately, the earliness of the hour.

"Cheers," she said, raising her glass to me.

"Yes, cheers," I replied hollowly. I drained the glass in one gulp. Anna looked admiringly at me.

"So what are you doing here?" she asked conversationally. "I didn't know that you were coming. No one told me...well, I think no one told me," she said a bit doubtfully. "I haven't been home in about a week."

"Well, Anna, it was a bit of a sudden decision," I said, sighing as I geared up for a long tortuous explanation of my tragic circumstances.

But before I could, she interrupted me abruptly.

"Oh my God!" she said, suddenly clapping a hand to her mouth.

"What?" I demanded, feeling very alarmed. Was the corkscrew hovering in midair? Had a banshee's face appeared at the window?

"You're not pregnant anymore!" she exclaimed.

I smiled in spite of myself.

"No, Anna, I'm not. Can you figure it out?"

"You've had a baby?" she asked slowly.

"Yes," I confirmed, still smiling.

"Jesus!" she screamed. "Isn't that fabulous!" And flung her arms around me. "Is it a girl?"

"Yes," I told her.

"Is she here? Can I see her?" Anna asked, all excited.

"Yes, she's in my room. But she's asleep. And if you don't mind I'd prefer not to wake her. Not until I've finished this bottle of wine, anyway," I said morosely.

"Well, fair enough," conceded Anna, pouring me another glass of wine, one alcohophile to another. "Get that inside you. I suppose it's a long time since you've been allowed to drink alcohol. No wonder you're knocking it back."

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"Well, it is a long time since I've been able to have a drink. But that's not why I'm so desperate to get drunk," I told her.

"Oh?" she asked me quizzically.

So I told her about James.

And she was so gentle, so sympathetic, so unjudgmental and, in her own flaky way, so wise, that I slowly started to feel a bit better. A little bit calmer. A little less weary. A little more hopeful.

I suppose the bottle of wine had also better get a mention on the credits. It played a small but not insignificant part in the lifting of my spirits. But it was mostly thanks to Anna.

She murmured stuff like "If it's meant to be, it's meant to be" and "We're all being taken care of, even if it doesn't feel like it at the time" and "There is a plan for all of us" and "Everything happens for a reason."

Hippie-type talk. But I found it very comforting.

And at about six o'clock, just when the birds were starting to sing, we abandoned the kitchen, leaving the table strewn with glasses, the well-and- truly empty bottle, the cork, the corkscrew and Anna's overflowing ashtray.

Dad would be getting up in an hour to make breakfast for himself and Mum. He would deal with the mess, we reasoned. He liked to do things, we agreed. He needed to feel needed.

We slowly climbed the stairs, our arms around each other, and I fell into bed, feeling sleepy and relaxed and calm. Anna spent a few minutes gazing in wonder at Kate and then insisted on getting the two helium balloons (which she had misappropriated from the party she had been to, along with the bottle of wine) and tying them onto Kate's bassinet. Then Anna kissed me good-night and tiptoed out of the room. I went straight into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Kate woke me fifteen minutes later screeching for her breakfast.

I fed her and then staggered back to bed.

Just as I was drifting back to sleep I heard Dad getting up. A few minutes later I heard him pounding up the stairs shouting to my mother, "Your daughters are drunken pups!" (They were always her daughters when they lost jobs, didn't go to mass, stayed out late and dressed indecently. They were his daughters when they passed exams, got degrees, married ac-

58

countants and bought houses.) "Drinking all night and lying in bed all day! Am I supposed to clear up the mess in the kitchen?"

Dad had obviously discovered the remains of our little party.

Mum wailed plaintively, "Oh no, they've found the drink again. I thought they'd never find it out under the oil tank. Now I'll have to find a new place to hide it."

After a while this commotion died down. Just as I was hoping against hope that I might catch an hour or two of sleep, someone started ringing at the front door. Naturally, this was quite alarming because it was only seven-thirty in the morning. I heard Dad open the door and engage in conversation with a man's voice. I strained to hear what was going on. Could it possibly be James? I felt such a surge of hope that it nearly hurt.

Then there was the sound of Dad running up the stairs. He shouted to my mother, "There's a madman at the front door with a shoe. He wants to know if we own it. What'll I do?"

There was a perplexed silence from my mother.

"I'm going to be late for work with all these interruptions this morning, you know," Dad told her, as if it was her fault.