Don’t You Forget About Me(21)
As the night wears on, I’m exhilarated, I feel I’m half Gaelic now, in a superficial and appropriative way – like Rose in that bit in Titanic where she can somehow blend seamlessly into the revelry below decks by hitching up her skirts and dancing a jig to a tin whistle.
As I assemble a cluster of goblets and start doling out the second wave of champagne, I become aware of a man who’s walked in to the party, with a portly, sandy-coloured dog in tow.
He’s tall and dark in a navy jacket with its collar turned up. He has curling, jet black hair, just long enough to scrape behind his ear. I realise what’s drawn my gaze is that he’s not greeting anyone or joining in, but doing a studied, sulky performance of ‘brooding’, a modern disco’s answer to Mr Darcy at a ball.
These rowdy, twenty-first century commoners are swaying to Tina Turner’s ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ while he stares into the middle distance.
I get a funny feeling, watching him watch the room through the throng of people who keep blocking my view: should he even be here? Usually if you walk in alone you’re trying to get someone’s attention to announce your arrival? And why turn up this late to a wake anyway? Is he the wake version of a wedding crasher? But why would you make yourself conspicuous by bringing a dog? No. He must belong. I wonder what his story is, if he was close to Dan and can’t quite stomach the disrespectful raucousness.
His eyes move toward me and I quickly busy myself.
Ooh, Blondie’s ‘Atomic’. I dance a little while I tidy the bar.
‘Excuse me, blondie?’
I turn and laugh. Devlin beckons me over at the side of the bar and offers me a wad of notes.
‘You’ve been absolutely solid tonight, can’t thank you enough.’
I thank him and say honestly it’s been my pleasure and then flinch at the inappropriate phrasing when we’re marking a hideously premature death.
‘Listen. I’ve been to-ing and fro-ing over who to hire to run the bar full time because I hate interviews and CVs and that bollocks, I’d far rather meet someone and work with them. Get a sense of what they’re about. But holding auditions didn’t seem fair. How about if this was one, in retrospect? Would you be interested?’
‘Yes!’ I say. Then, with less windy desperation, more determination: ‘I’d be very very interested, thank you.’
‘Great. I’ve got to sign it off with my brother but it shouldn’t be a problem.’
As hope surges, I remind myself that job offers made verbally when three sheets to the wind are not binding.
Devlin turns back to me and I notice Lonely Glowering Man is now stood at his elbow, trying to get Devlin’s attention. He’s quite the knock-out, now I can see him fully: dark sweeps of eyebrow, sulky mouth, lightly stubbled movie star jawline, the works.
Hang on. I freeze. I realise I know this face. The terrain is altered, and it’s a long time since I’ve traced its lines, but it’s not as I’d thought, completely unfamiliar. Far from it.
The split second of recognition is a punch to the heart.
My breath stops in my throat as his gaze meets mine.
Blondie’s vocals soar as she sings about beautiful hair.
Devlin says: ‘Meet my brother, Lucas.’
9
‘Luke,’ Lucas says, hand outstretched for a brisk, brief shake as I chew air and murmur a vacant hello and the word Georgina.
(I bite back an irrational cry of: ‘Luke? Since when?’)
My skin is basted in a sudden flop sweat which I hope arrived after we made contact.
Lucas starts speaking closely into Devlin’s ear in a confidential way that doesn’t invite contribution, and after waiting enough seconds so it doesn’t look like I’m fleeing, I escape to the loo.
I’m glad of it being empty, a place where the air is cooler and the music pounds through the wall.
I lock myself in a cubicle, sit fully clothed on the toilet and stare at the partition between myself and the empty stall next door.
Devlin is a Devlin McCarthy? Lucas McCarthy is out there?
Jesus Christ. How? What? Why?
I recall Lucas having some looming threat older brother who’d left school, but he was that many years ahead I never even knew his name. Our mouths were usually fastened on each other rather than used for swapping family biographies.
Oh God, oh God. I wish I’d had some warning. Someone of his significance shouldn’t be able to simply walk back in without fanfare, without a build-up. It reminds me of that line about death just being another room. Lucas was dead to me and yet he’s in this room. It’s impossible.
I mean, I’ve always known it could happen. But after twelve years, you’re convinced it won’t happen.
After a forced wee – strategy: as now I can’t plausibly need a real one in five minutes’ time – I rinse my clammy hands in cold water and inspect my reflection, my vanity overclocking. I grit my teeth to check there’s nothing in them, furiously rub away some make-up that’s drifted from above to below my eye.
I’m shaking slightly. And look at him now?!
In my mind’s eye, Lucas McCarthy was still the skinny eighteen-year-old I once knew. The idea he’d blossomed into some sort of stunning leading man in the interim hadn’t once occurred to me. He’s turned from an underfed, slightly hunted-looking slender indie boy into fully fledged Byronic poetry.