Thirteen Stops Read online

  She weaved her way carefully up the stairs in her high heels. Couples were sitting on nearly every step kissing and groping one another, and the sounds of sex came vigorously from behind one closed bedroom door. The loo was mercifully free, though, even if the person who had last used the toilet hadn’t bothered to flush it. Grimacing at the unsavoury sight (and the smell), Orla flushed the toilet and then parked herself on the edge of the bath and lit a cigarette. Nathan didn’t like her smoking but, fuck it, she needed one now and anyway she always carried a breath-freshening spray with her. She heaved a huge sigh of relief when she took those first few wonderful puffs. She was still upset that Nathan had thought the pregnancy test was hers, but she was even more upset about his violent reaction to the notion of pregnancy in general. He had more or less implied that she’d be left on her own, a single mother, if she ever found herself knocked up, a loathsome phrase she’d heard Nathan use before in connection with his mates’ wives or girlfriends. He always laughed his head off when he heard that another of his pals had been ‘caught’ by an unexpected pregnancy.

  “Poor bastard,” he always used to say scornfully. “That’s his life over now anyway.”

  He had a very cynical view of the whole love and babies thing, Orla reflected now as she puffed away furiously on her cigarette and ignored the bangs on the bathroom door and the impatient cries of “Come on, hurry the fuck up, will ya? I really need to go!”. Nathan seemed to think that women were always out to trap men with their bodies and their uteruses, or should that be uteri, Orla wondered idly, not really caring. She was starting to relax now that she had a fag in her hand and some time away from Nathan and his nauseating friends.

  She knew that Nathan’s father had left his mother when he had been around seven or eight, and that his mother, Deirdre, had for ever after bemoaned the fact that she’d been ‘saddled’ with Nathan on her own. Stuck with him, as she put it, she’d brought him up, but it had been grudging. Orla had met her and she still talked frequently about all the things she could have done with her life if she hadn’t had Nathan ‘dumped’ on her the way he had been. Orla had felt desperately sorry for Nathan, for his having been brought up by someone who had resented his presence, his very existence, even though she had carried him in her own body for nine months and given birth to him. How could you not love someone who was a part of you? Orla wouldn’t treat any baby of theirs like that. She’d love it to bits and smother it with love, the love that Nathan never got when he was a child and the love that she’d never got herself. Their baby would be the most loved baby in the world. Orla would see to that.

  Her own parents hadn’t been anything to write home about either. When Orla was about seven years old, her father had died and her mother had remarried shortly afterwards to a man named Colin. Colin was a good deal older than Orla’s mum, Yvonne. He’d been wealthy enough for her not to have to go out to work – she’d been able to stay home with, first, Orla, and then the twin boys who’d arrived about a year after the wedding. From the moment that Yvonne and Colin had found out that she was expecting twins, Orla might as well have not existed. Oh, she’d been well fed, clothed, housed and educated like Noah and Christopher, her new little twin brothers (the word ‘half’ as applied to the twins was never used in their house – they were Orla’s full brothers and that was that), but she’d never felt loved. It was the younger siblings who now got all the cuddles and kisses and whispered endearments, all the loving tuckings-in and bedtime stories. Yvonne worshipped her two new little blond-haired, blue-eyed sons and Colin was proud of his pretty, younger wife and his adorable twin boys. They were the perfect family. Orla was left on the outside, wistfully looking in. Sometimes she even felt her mother resented her presence in the household, as if Orla were part of her past and had no place in her present cosy and comfortable present existence.

  In the spirit of ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’, Orla had thrown herself into the care of her new little brothers while still a child herself. That had pleased Colin and Yvonne no end and Orla, young as she was, felt like she’d found her true vocation. From then on, her role in the family was redefined as willing minder, baby-sitter, nursemaid, nanny and chief-cook-and-bottle-washer to Noah and Christopher. Her parents noticed her only in the context of what she did for the twins, but it was better than nothing. She loved the twins to bits, of course she did. Who could resist such cuddly little golden-haired cherubs? But sometimes she resented them too, for taking up all the room there was in her mother’s heart and leaving her with virtually nothing.

  Orla had gone to a vocational college after school instead of to university, but her mother and Colin didn’t care where she was studying as long as she was home in time to make the boys’ dinners every evening, the way only she could (they preferred Orla’s cooking to anyone else’s), and see to their school clothes. She did a course in childcare since it seemed like the obvious choice, the only choice. Now, at twenty-seven, she worked in a crèche in Stillorgan and she loved it. She especially loved working with babies. She adored babies and they loved her. When she was holding a baby in her arms, she felt complete in a way that she seemed unable to achieve under any other circumstances. Her twin brothers were grown-up now and they didn’t need her any more, at least not in the same way (though they still counted on her for the occasional hand-out of money and advice on their complex love lives), but the babies in the crèche did need her, at least from eight in the morning until six at night, and she loved that. It was nice to be needed. It made her feel better about herself.

  Nathan needed her too. He’d told her so often enough. Although he didn’t bring it up, she knew it was because of his (mostly) loveless childhood that he liked having her around so much. She was kind and sweet and loving towards him and that was what he needed after the cold horrible way he’d been brought up. She would cry herself to sleep some nights thinking of Nathan as a fat little unloved schoolboy, fatherless and unwanted by his mother. It broke her heart to think about it. It was true that she found Nathan annoying at times, but it didn’t mean she didn’t still love him because, if anything, she loved him even more now than she had in the heady early months of their relationship. And he still needed her. She knew he did. Yes, he lost his temper with her sometimes and lashed out and did things that he would regret afterwards, but then he’d be so apologetic and loving that it would nearly be worth it. He’d bring her apology roses or chocolates and perfume and be so very gentle with her for ages after an ‘incident’. Orla liked to think that they’d been drawn together initially because they had something major in common: the fact that they’d each been brought up without the comforting cushion of parental love. They didn’t need anyone else now that they had each other.

  She let her mind slide back to the events of earlier that day. Whose pregnancy test had Nathan fished out of the bathroom bin anyway? Orla thought about it as she stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray on the side of the bath and used a generous amount of her breath-freshener spray. Her money was on poor Fauve, who’d seemed in the past few weeks to be what mothers everywhere tended to call ‘a bit peaky-looking’. She’d caught Fauve deep in a major pow-wow with Doireann a couple of times lately too, and they hadn’t looked as if they were talking about the X Factor auditions or who was to be sent home next in Strictly Come Dancing. And the weirdest thing had happened, now that she came to think about it. She’d come down to breakfast one Saturday morning recently to find Fauve in floods of tears in front of the television, which was just then showing an advertisement for the yearly fundraiser, Children in Need.

  “Fauve, what on earth’s the matter?” Orla had said, rushing to kneel down beside her friend’s armchair and put her arms around the shuddering figure.

  “The b-b-b-bear – P-P-P-Pudsey!’ Fauve managed. ‘He’s wearing a little p-p-p-patch over his – over his – over his – his eye!”

  The last word came out on a howl and no more sense was to be had out of Fauve. Doireann had come down then
and taken over the care of the sobbing Fauve, telling Orla it was all grand and she could go on back up to Nathan, who’d been staying over. That had been the end of it.

  Oh well, thought Orla as she came downstairs now in Ronan’s house, weaving her way once more through the amorous couples – had the crowd thinned out a bit, she wondered? – let Fauve and Doireann have their little secrets. She didn’t care. She was only sorry that Fauve hadn’t felt she could confide in her. She had been so wrapped up in Nathan lately, though. He was her everything now, and she knew that she was his. The occasional bust-up between them didn’t matter a damn in the scheme of things. They wouldn’t be a normal couple if they didn’t sometimes argue and squabble like a pair of kids.

  “Where’ve you been?” Nathan said when she returned to where he and his three mates were sitting. The four of them were lounging behind a giant potted palm that hid them from the rest of the big sitting-room.

  “I was in the loo,” said Orla, shrugging.

  “Must have been some big shite,” said Nathan nastily in a tone she hated because it nearly always meant that he was pissed off about something and spoiling for a fight. What was wrong now? His three friends, Mattie, Ronan the Birthday Boy and Georgie, each laughed at Nathan’s crude remark.

  Orla, flushed with embarrassment, sat down beside Nathan, crossing her legs and then uncrossing them immediately when she realised that Nathan’s pals were staring at them. Nathan pulled her onto his lap and began to kiss her neck in a slobbery way and paw her thigh in the sheer tights she was wearing. Orla removed his hand from her thigh, but he just put it back and moved it a little higher up on her leg.

  “Knock it off, Nathan,” she whispered angrily but he just laughed.

  “What’s the matter, babes? We’re among friends here, aren’t we?”

  He moved his hand from her thigh to her breast. He undid the first few buttons of her little lacy top and now her bra was visible. His friends, the friends she’d assumed were all as bad as Nathan, were starting to look awkward and uncomfortable, to their credit. One of them got up and wandered away to the drinks table. Another took out his phone and began scrolling.

  “Stop it, Nathan, please.” Her eyes were brimming with tears. “I want to go home now. Please.”

  “Ah, lighten up, will ya?” he said, squeezing her breast over her lacy bra. His breath reeked of beer. “It’s a party. We’re all having a good time, aren’t we?”

  As his hand moved over her back, looking for the clasp of her bra to unhook it, Orla jumped up off his lap. Deliberately, to cool his ardour, she tipped her drink over his crotch and then, grabbing up her bag, with her phone, her purse and her return ticket for the Luas in it, she made a run for it through the crowded sitting-room. Out into the hall she ran, then out the front door with her top still undone like Jodie Foster’s in The Accused. She’d have to forfeit her jacket, which she’d left on her chair, for the time being. It wasn’t her favourite jacket anyway. She belted down the garden path and out through the little gate as fast as her spindly high heels would allow her (which wasn’t very fast).

  “Orla! Orla! Wait! Stop, babes, please!”

  She whirled round, her hands flying to her top to do up the buttons he’d opened. “Fuck off, Nathan!” she screeched. “I don’t want to see you! In fact, I don’t want to see you ever again. Just fuck off, will you?”

  “Look, I’m sorry for inside, okay?” he said, running his hand through his hair and cursing when it came away all covered in Brylcreem. He must have been super-agitated, thought Orla in wonder, because he wiped his hand absentmindedly off the trousers of his suit and he didn’t even seem to care that he was ruining the expensive material. “But you’re the one that’s made me look as though I’ve fucking pissed myself,” he added, indicating his drenched crotch with distaste.

  “You’re sorry for inside?” she shrieked, drawing curious looks from the middle-aged couple across the road who were unpacking their groceries from the boot of their car. “You’re saying that as if you’ve just forgotten to buy teabags or something! You’re saying that as if what happened inside just now was nothing at all!”

  “Look, of course it wasn’t nothing,” said Nathan, edging a bit closer to Orla while glowering across at the nosey couple across the street. The couple were still looking over at them while pretending to be busy with their bags and boxes of shopping. “But let’s not get it all out of proportion either. It was just a stupid notion of mine that went tits-up, if you’ll excuse the pun. Feeling you up in front of everyone, I mean. That stupid notion. It was just meant to be a bit of fun. A bit of a turn-on, you know? Getting frisky in front of my mates.” Seeing Orla stiffen with disgust and disbelief, he added hastily, “And of course it goes without saying that I shouldn’t have done it and obviously, I’ll never, um, I’ll never do it again. I swear, babes.”

  “Don’t call me ‘babes’!” she shouted. “My name is Orla! Orla! Is that so hard for you to say?”

  “Of course it’s not, babes, I mean, um, Orla. Look, please come back inside with me and we’ll talk. We’re not achieving much out here anyway.” He had another hard look at the couple across the road.

  “Do you need a hand, love?” the man of the couple said to Orla, coming a little of the way across the road. He was huge in build, and well over six feet in height. His wife, or whoever the woman was, stood by the car, smiling encouragingly at Orla who shook her head.

  “No, it’s okay, thank you,” she said to the man, although her voice was trembling. “I can handle this on my own.”

  “Well, if you’re sure, love,” said the man.

  “You heard her. Fuck off,” Nathan said nastily.

  The big man from across the road raised his eyebrows. “There’s no need for that kind of talk,” he said. In contrast to Nathan’s, his tone was pleasantly moderate.

  “Why don’t you just do as you’re told, mate, and fuck off out of here before I deck you one?” Nathan retorted, full of beer and bravado.

  “Shut up, Nathan! Don’t be so fucking stupid. You’re pissed and he’s bigger than you are!” Orla said, before turning and apologising to the man. “I’m sorry about that. Please don’t mind him. He’s locked and he doesn’t mean it.”

  “Yes, I bloody do.” Nathan swaggered nearer to where Orla and the man were standing, his chest all puffed up like a peacock’s. “I’m – I’m gonna knock his fucking block off.”

  “No, you’re not, you idiot!” screamed Orla. From where she was standing, she could see that he was sweating profusely. “Get back inside, will you, you pillock, or I’ll never talk to you again, I swear!” To the helpful man she said, “Please, just go in home, will you? I’ll be all right, honestly I will.”

  The big man hesitated, then said: “All right, love, if you’re sure.” He turned to go back to the woman who must have been his wife.

  She called over to Orla with a smile: “You know where we are, love!”

  Orla flashed the pair a grateful smile and a nod, then turned to Nathan and said quietly, “I’m not coming back in with you. I just want to go home now.”

  “I’ll take you,” he offered immediately. “Just let me go in and get our jackets.”

  “You’re just not getting it, are you, what I’m saying?” Orla was suddenly aware that the couple who’d been unpacking their groceries had gone inside their house and she and Nathan were alone once more on the wet darkened street.

  A few of the party people were watching the little scene delightedly from the windows of the party house, but they seemed to have no intention of getting involved or of coming to Orla’s aid. Watching the dispute was infinitely more fun. Would they still just stand and watch if she were being beaten to a pulp, Orla wondered, or would they finally intervene? Somehow she doubted they would.

  “Getting what?” joked Nathan. “Our jackets? I told you I was going back in for them now.” Seeing her expression, he backtracked immediately. “Okay, okay.” His voice was placatory now. “What is it
that I’m not getting?” It was the voice of a man who would have preferred not to ask, but who has no choice if he wants to move forward and end a deadlock.

  “That I’m breaking up with you, Nathan!” She wiped an unwanted tear from her eye with the back of her hand, not giving a toss about her mascara and eyeshadow. What did it matter? What did anything matter now, if she was losing Nathan?

  It was crucial not to cry while she was doing the breaking-up, though, or Nathan would think she didn’t mean a word of it. He always thought that way when she was crying. Whinging, he called it. What are you whinging about now, Orla babes? Time of the month again, is it? He was always saying things like that to her. It pissed her off and she felt belittled by it, but it was just Nathan’s way. He couldn’t change the way he was any more than autumn could prevent itself from turning into winter. Could he?

  “We just don’t want the same things,” she said now sadly.

  “That’s bullshit,” said Nathan confidently. “What same things don’t we want? That’s just an excuse people make up when they don’t want to be with someone any more. Of course we want the same things. Nice car, nice clothes, a nice house in a good area, decent holidays, a good night out with a few quid to spend, all that kind of thing, all that stuff that people usually want. I want it, and I know you do too.”

  “I want a baby!” screamed Orla, not caring who heard her.