Don’t You Forget About Me(22)

And me? I’ve certainly not transformed into some femme fatale. I fear I’m the same fruit, gone mouldy in the bowl.

I hear Tony’s voice: ‘Julie Goodyear.’

I tuck my hair behind my ears and stand up straighter and try to think positive thoughts. I’m fine. It’s fine. I feel the waistband on my jeans pressing into soft flesh and wish I was hard-bodied and defiant, polished up like a gemstone, and oh God, do I have jowls?

Thing is, I’m fretting – but Lucas didn’t recognise me. Of this I’m virtually certain. I’m good at reading people. I know what it’s like to have people looking at you, talking about you. To be covertly observed.

With Lucas there was no microscopic tell – no whisper of awkwardness, or apprehensiveness, no acknowledgement whatsoever. His expression was the fixed absent-polite-neutral of someone going through the motions with a person who has nothing to do with you. His eyes were flat, they said nothing.

Is that possible? Georgina’s not a rare name, but it’s not one you meet everywhere either. It’s been twelve years. Is that long enough to forget someone entirely? A voice whispers: you have your answer. And you don’t know how many ‘someones’ there are, do you. Losing a Georgina in a huge playing field of other Georginas ain’t so difficult.

I don’t want Lucas to know who I am, yet the idea is also utterly gutting.

I decide to be pragmatic, wailing can wait. At least this earthquake has happened as the wake passes into its final hours.

Back out on the floor, and behind the bar, I get a crick in the neck from studiously not looking at whatever Lucas McCarthy’s doing. My customers are a trickle, then they dry up completely.

Devlin’s wife Mo says I can ‘probably get off’ and I crush her into a hug of gratitude, moving fast enough not to be asked how I’m getting home. Over her shoulder, Devlin makes the ‘I’ll call you’ sign with finger and thumb to ear at me and I respond with a thumbs up, and a hard weight inside.

There’s the exit, don’t look left or right, stay on target, door shut behind you … And breathe.

I smoke a much-needed Marlboro Light as I wait for the taxi I ordered to sweep round the corner, stamping my feet in the cold. I don’t care about the temperature, just relieved to have escaped. I check the tracking app on my phone: my driver Ali is 4 MINS away.

I pace around, ostensibly to warm my body up, more to cool my brain down. The music throbs through the door and I wonder how late they’re going to stay up with the remaining bottles of scotch, reminiscing.

Lucas McCarthy is Devlin’s brother. Devlin is Lucas McCarthy’s brother. I can’t get my head round this.

I clutch my elbow with my free hand and pace and watch figures flitting across the non-misted spaces in the patterns in the windows. If I can see them, they can see me.

What if someone asks why the barmaid is lurking, mentions it? It’s daft to think they will, but seeing Lucas has left me edgy as a stray cat. I wander round the side of the pub, out of view.

An open window nearby is letting heat from the kitchen escape. As I draw near it I can hear a conversation. Voices come in and out of range as they move around the room. I idly listen in, fiddle with my phone. Tracking app: your driver Ali is 1 MIN away.

‘Pick that up. No, it goes there. Look.’

‘Which …’

‘… Luke! No, there, look.’

I straighten. One of these disembodied voices is Lucas? I give their dialogue my full attention. I strain: they’re speaking rapidly, with forcefulness, but I can’t make out the words.

And suddenly, they must move so they’re positioned right by me, as I can follow it perfectly.

‘… Not a doubt. It was bedlam at times and she handled herself well. She’s got no attitude. Exactly what we want.’

‘Based on what? You’re spannered.’

The sound of a heavy weight being dropped, with control.

‘Yeah because she kept my glass full!’

The guffaw that follows is unmistakably Devlin.

‘Pouring liquid into glasses isn’t astrophysics, is it?’

‘Nor is running a pub.’

They’re talking about me?

Oh, no … my taxi is here. I make a silent, frantic, ‘yes coming, just finishing my cigarette’ mime and the driver looks unimpressed.

‘… Great, our recruitment policy is whichever blondes happen to catch my brother’s eye. It’s not Hooters, Dev.’

I can’t believe this is about me, and yet it’s clearly about me.

‘She’s obviously a nice, sound lass. There’s a way about her that I like a lot. I don’t see your problem.’

‘We don’t know anything about her, we don’t know she’s nice. You’ve gone over my head and promised her, is my problem. Where’s my tick?’

‘Give her a chance, you cynical twat. The lesson of tonight was not to be a cynical twat.’

‘I thought the lesson was about not doing stupid things when you’re heavily intoxicated. Also, who puts shamrocks in Guinness? To be sure to be sure. Let her go work in Scruffy Muffy’s or whatever it’s called these days.’

A howl of laughter. ‘Ah God, I wonder how we’d fix a flaw in her like that, Luc, I mean it’s IMPOSSIBLE …’