“You missed a bit.” I smiled and lifted up a soggy pile of Stena Line leaflets so he could clean underneath. Then I pointed at the scar.
“War wound?”
Karen kicked me under the table. A therapist, she knew better than to ask people where they got their scars.
He grinned. “I’m Dan, by the way.” He couldn’t keep his eyes off Karen. “Sorry about this. Let me buy you all a drink.”
Karen sat upright and threw him the haughty look she kept for attractive men. “A glass of Sauvignon Blanc would be lovely.”
Joe frowned down at his white shirt which had taken the brunt of the dousing and shook his head.
I nodded. “I’ll have a Sauvignon too, thanks. I’m Carmel Doherty. This is my husband Joe and this …” I waved my hand in the air, “is my amazing friend Karen.”
He smiled and I watched him walk back to the bar, a straggle of hair slipping from his ponytail onto his neck.
When I looked back Karen was cocking her head and smiling.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“You are. You are so drunk.”
“Yep.” I knocked back more wine. “My only brother died a year ago today. Why wouldn’t I be?”
By the time Dan had arrived back with our drinks Joe had moved to the other end of the table to talk to a friend of Mikey’s who’d just arrived on his own. Karen had gone to the bathroom after placing a glass of water in front of me and telling me to get it down my neck. Dan looked around, disappointed as he put the drinks down on the table. I gestured at him to take the chair next to Karen’s. He didn’t need telling. He sprang towards it like a gazelle, pulling it back to make room for his long legs before he sat down.
Picking up a Guinness beer mat, he cartwheeled it between his forefinger and thumb.
“I think I met you briefly before at another Heart Foundation gig.”
“Probably. My brother passed last year and Tess – that’s my mum – and I used to come to some of the fundraisers in his memory.” I reached for my wine. “And to get bladdered. It’s what he would have wanted.”
He smiled. “Sounds like a good man.”
“Most of the time.”
“I think I met your mum too. She said she was from County Mayo, like my family.”
“Tess passed in November too.”
He dropped the beer mat. “I’m sorry. That’s very tough.”
“I’m a walking talking tragedy at the moment.” I gave a brittle laugh and raised my glass. “Anyway, here’s to beautiful Mayo!”
He lifted his glass. “To Mayo. My wife’s family are from Achill Island.”
I gulped my wine. “I know Achill well. We used to go to Keem Bay all the time when we were kids.”
He downed his Guinness, the liquid barely touching the side of his mouth, just like Mikey used to. Then his eyes travelled around the room and he picked up the beer mat again.
“Why did you call your mum by her first name, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“She was more of a girl-woman, I suppose. Vulnerable. I looked after her more than she looked after me.” I sighed. “Anyway, how come you hang out at Heart Foundation gigs?”
“I raise funds. My son’s been in and out of the children’s hospital for a while now. He has heart problems.”
At that moment Karen arrived back from the bathroom, hair and lipstick refreshed. Like most men, Dan stared at my best friend of thirty years like he was shielding his eyes from a blinding sun. Five eleven and willowy, she had the startling combination of her Scottish mother’s translucent blue eyes and the brown skin and ebony hair she inherited from her Nigerian father. When we were teenagers, people used to stop and stare at her in the street. It’s never been easy living in her shadow. I was the ugly friend, a tall scraggy bottle-blonde with bandy legs and no chest. I’ve always been full of nervous energy and, as much as I tried, I could never put on weight. Joe always told me I had beautiful eyes, though. Cat-like, he said.
Karen and I were approaching forty but she looked ten years younger. In the past year grief had ravaged my face as well as my heart. Burgundy half-moons hung under my eyes, my skin was pockmarked and lines had started spread across it like an expanding Tube line.
The three of us chatted. Dan was good company. I couldn’t place his accent. It was a curious mixture of educated London peppered with Mancunian. It was like listening to a symphony with a quirky guitar thrown in.
The wine started to make my thoughts wander. I kept thinking I could see them in the corner of my eye. Mikey was chatting up a random girl at the bar and Tess was sitting in her corner seat, smiling her enigmatic smile. I felt myself welling up. I missed the bones of them.
Dan and Karen were getting on like a house on fire, so I left them to it and looked around for Joe. He was chatting to Bryonie Phillips by the door. She was standing behind a table stamping hands and selling raffle tickets under a heart-shaped helium balloon. Bryonie knew everyone and everything going on in Manchester’s grooviest suburb. She was a gossip and her daughter Tallulah was one of my first-year students. She waved and threw me a tight little smile. Little did I know how much grief those prying eyes would cause me later.
I waved and gestured at Joe to join me at the bar. It was closing time at the pubs so people were flooding into the club and the small space was heaving with sweaty bodies.
“Karen’s copped,” I said, as he joined me.
He glanced over the table where Dan and Karen were engrossed in conversation and frowned. “He’s married. Didn’t you see the ring?”
“I did.
