Some Girls Do

Some Girls Do By Clodagh Murphy



Chapter One

I’ll try anything once (but I won’t try that)

You never know what’s going to end a relationship, do you? People break up for all sorts of reasons: money; infidelity; simply falling out of love; irreconcilable differences, like one of you wanting children when the other doesn’t. With me and Mr Handy, it was a disagreement over poo. I wonder if that’s a first.

If you’d asked me at the start what would make me end it with Mr Handy, I might have said it would be his cultural snobbery, the annoying habit he had of putting empty containers back in the fridge or that he was very stingy with his kisses during sex. In the beginning, I could see any number of reasons why I might break up with him. Poo was not one of them.

He was a slow burn for me. When we began dating, I didn’t think he was a keeper. He was too neat, too serious, too intense. He could be a bit tight with money. But he kept showing up, and eventually he made it into my regular rotation by dint of his persistence and his mad oral skills. He grew on me, and I started to consider going exclusive with him. He was perfect boyfriend material – nice house, good job, lovely chubby dick. And his hands! I’ve written whole blog posts about his hands. His incredible sense of touch more than made up for the lack of kissing.

But this week, over coffee and cake at Starbucks, I broke up with him. There were no tears, no recriminations, no bitterness. No one’s heart got broken – we weren’t in love. But it was sad. We cared deeply about each other and we always had fun together, both in bed and out of it. We were sad that it was over.

In the end there were irreconcilable differences: he wanted to take a dump on me and I didn’t want him to. It may not seem like enough of a reason to finish things. We could probably have compromised, worked around it. But I saw how disappointed he was by my refusal. I could tell that he saw me as his best shot for making something happen. I’m the most adventurous girl he knows – he’s told me so many times – and I wondered if that was the reason he’d stuck around. Had he been building up to this all along? When I realised how much the idea excited him, I knew it was time to let him go. Because the point is, we don’t have to compromise – either of us. That’s the beauty of not being in love.

I’ll miss his tongue, the way he would go down on me for hours on end, his snarky commentaries on movies and, most of all, his amazing hands. I hope he can find another girl who will be everything he wants. Someone who can deal with his shit – literally.

As for me, I’m an open-minded person, and I’ll try most things. But I won’t try that. It’s not a turn-on for me, and I don’t want to bear the brunt just because some guy failed his—


‘Toilet training!’

‘Sorry?’ Claire’s head snapped up as she simultaneously clicked out of her blog. A woman was standing in front of the cash desk, agitated, a toddler grizzling in a buggy beside her.

‘I’m looking for a book on toilet training,’ the woman said breathlessly, almost hopping from foot to foot, as if she was desperate for the loo herself, while she jiggled the buggy.

‘Okay, follow me,’ Claire said, jumping up from her seat. ‘I’ll show you where they are.’ As she stepped away from the desk, she glanced back at her computer screen to make sure that her blog was definitely closed. She led the customer across the shop floor to the Babies and Parenting shelves, and pointed out the section devoted to books on toilet training.

‘Oh, there are so many.’ The woman sighed. ‘Which one is the best?’

‘Why don’t you have a look through them and decide which you think would—’

‘I don’t have time for browsing. Can’t you recommend one?’

‘Well, this is very popular,’ Claire said, pulling out a book and handing it to her. ‘It’s got lots of great reader feedback online, and it’s recommended by Unholy Mother – you know, the blogger?’

‘I don’t do mummy blogs,’ the woman said, flicking through the pages impatiently and far too rapidly to take anything in.

‘Oh, you should read Unholy Mother.’ Claire smiled. ‘She’s hilarious. I don’t even have children and I love it. She’s done this really funny series of posts recently about toilet training her son that I think you’d find—’

‘Yes, well, I do have a child and I’m far too busy actually being a mother to have time to read about some bint’s hilarious escapades with her special little snowflake.’

‘Oh … right.’ It was on the tip of Claire’s tongue to say that Unholy Mother wasn’t like the typical mummy blogger, but she thought better of it.

‘I’ll take it,’ the woman said, shoving the book at Claire. Her child had kept up a low-level wail throughout the exchange and cranked it up a notch as they all trooped back to the cash desk.

When she had paid, Claire put the book into a bag and handed it to her customer with a smile.

‘Thank you.’ The woman tucked it under her arm. ‘Do you have a bathroom?’ she shouted, over her child, who had now graduated to piercing screams.

‘Er … no, sorry. Not for public use, I’m afraid.’

The woman tutted, rolling her eyes. She stuffed the book into the bottom of the buggy and turned towards the door, the child’s howls fading as they exited the shop. Yvonne was restocking shelves near the door and held it open for them.

‘Another satisfied customer, I see,’ Yvonne said, as she joined Claire at the desk. ‘What was her problem?’

‘She bought a book on toilet training, then asked if we had a loo she could use. I think she wanted to get stuck in right away.’

Yvonne laughed. ‘Pity she didn’t buy the latest Jamie Oliver. She might have made us lunch if we’d let her use the kitchen.’

‘At least she’ll bump up my weird-customer score,’ Claire said. ‘Put it on the chart.’

‘It’s a tough field this week.’ Yvonne pulled a chart from one of the desk drawers. ‘You’re going to have to up your game if you want to topple the supreme champion,’ she said, gesturing to herself with a smug smile. ‘I’ve been top of the league every week since I started here.’

‘You have an unfair advantage,’ Claire said.

‘I do seem to be a bit of a magnet for the unhinged.’

‘It’s not that you’re a magnet for them. You encourage them, so you get all the loony repeat business.’

‘I just try to be helpful.’

‘Right, like the time that customer was looking for signed copies of Jane Austen’s books and you said you could get them for him.’ Jane Austen was his wife’s favourite author, he had explained, and he wanted them as a gift for her birthday.

‘And I did!’

‘Yes, signed by you. It’s fraudulent.’

‘No, it’s not. I signed them “on behalf of”, so it’s not like it was forgery.’

Claire rolled her eyes. ‘And every time someone comes in trying to find a book they can’t remember the title of, you always sell them something.’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing. I’m giving them what they want – that’s good service.’

‘You’re a charlatan.’

‘You’ll miss me when I’m gone.’


It was still a few months away, but she would miss Yvonne when she left, Claire thought, as they giggled their way through a quiet morning in the shop. Yvonne was only working part-time at Bookends while she was at college, and would leave at the end of the summer, when she was taking a year out to go travelling. Tom, the owner of the shop, would miss her too, much to his own bemusement. Yvonne had never ceased to surprise him since the day she’d turned up for work, looking like she’d got lost on her way to a Vogue fashion shoot. She’d been a vision in cashmere and silk, and the bag clutched under her shoulder would have cost most of Claire’s monthly salary. With her smooth blonde hair and flawless skin, she’d looked like she lived on Evian water and alpine air. Claire and Tom had watched with wary scepticism as she’d taken up her position behind the cash desk, clapped her hands and said, with kindergarten-teacher enthusiasm, ‘Right. Let’s sell books.’ But then she had proceeded to do just that, with breathtaking capability.

Claire had never met an actual trust-fund baby before, but Yvonne was the real deal. Her father, a multimillionaire who had made his fortune in plastics manufacturing, gave her everything his money could buy – from the pony she’d got when she was ten to the car she’d picked out for her upcoming twenty-first birthday. At first Claire couldn’t understand why she was working at all. She certainly didn’t need to pay her way through college, and her meagre salary wouldn’t cover so much as the tips of her Hobbs shoes or the taxis she regularly got to work when she was running late – which was most days. But she soon came to realise that what Yvonne craved most was her father’s attention, and this job was one way of making him sit up and take notice. Yvonne had father issues up the wazoo.

But she was unfailingly good-natured, a cheerful, willing worker and a good laugh, and Claire had grown very fond of her.

‘You’re still coming on Friday, right?’ Yvonne asked.

‘Oh, yes. Definitely.’ Claire made an effort to sound excited about the party. One of Yvonne’s friends was opening a new upmarket bar, and Yvonne had asked her to the launch. Claire wasn’t really a party person and she wouldn’t know anyone else there. She wished she had the excuse of needing to keep her mother company, which was her usual fall-back. Yvonne was constantly inviting Claire out, but Claire usually had to turn her down. This Friday, for once, there was nothing stopping her.

‘Yay!’ Yvonne clapped her hands. ‘It’s great that your mum’s in hospital and you can go out and have a bit of fun.’

‘Yeah, brilliant.’

Yvonne gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, God! Sorry. I didn’t mean it’s great that your mum’s in hospital—’

‘It’s okay,’ Claire said with a reassuring grin. ‘I know what you meant. And it is nice to be able to go out on a Friday night for a change – even if I do feel a bit guilty that I’m enjoying myself because Mum’s in hospital.’ Her mother was undergoing hip-replacement surgery.

‘Oh, you shouldn’t feel guilty. That’s not fair. You should be able to go out at the weekend anyway. Why should you always be the one staying home with her?’

‘Well, I live with her …’

‘Even so, you shouldn’t have to give up your social life completely. What about your brothers? Why don’t they take a turn sometimes and let you go out?’

‘Well, they have kids, so I suppose it’s difficult,’ she said, without conviction, parroting the excuses her brothers and their wives would make for themselves. It was okay for her to criticise them, but if anyone outside the family did, she automatically leapt to their defence. But neither of her brothers was much help, and Claire sometimes felt she might as well have been an only child. Neil and Ronan were both considerably older than her so she had often felt like one growing up. There were only a couple of years between her brothers, but Claire was what their mother, Espie, termed ‘the shakings of the bag’, arriving ten years after Neil, the eldest, when Espie was forty and her marriage to their feckless father was stuttering to its end.

‘All the more reason,’ Yvonne said. ‘Your need is greater. You’re single – you should be out there having fun and meeting people. They’re married. They have kids. Their lives are already over. They’ll only be sitting at home watching TV or talking about gardening and … kitchen islands and stuff,’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘They can do that just as easily at your mum’s house and give you a break.’

It was nothing Claire hadn’t frequently thought, but she didn’t want to dwell on it now. ‘Anyway, I doubt I’ll be meeting anyone on Friday. They’ll all be too young for me.’

‘Oh, come on, you’re not that much older than me.’

Though there were only seven years between them, Claire felt positively ancient next to Yvonne. That was the effect living with a sixty-eight-year-old woman had on her.

‘Anyway, there’ll be lots of people there. They won’t all be my age. Luca’s coming,’ Yvonne said. ‘He’s around your age.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘He might do for you,’ she said thoughtfully.

‘Please! I don’t want your sloppy seconds.’

‘Oh, he’s not! We went out a couple of times, but I never got jiggy with him in the end.’

‘But I thought you told me he had a huge willy?’

‘Oh, I’ve never actually seen it, but you can tell he’s got a huge one the minute he walks into a room.’

‘Why? Does he pull it after him on a trolley?’

Yvonne laughed. ‘No. But no one has that much swagger unless it’s backed up by a very large package.’

‘So, too much man for you, was he?’

‘I think he was. He kind of scares me a bit.’

‘But you think he’d be all right for me?’

‘Oh, he’s not creepy or anything,’ Yvonne said hastily. ‘But he can be a bit … dark. I suppose he has the artistic temperament. He can be a proper moody bastard.’

‘Sounds charming!’

‘And he’s such a player. I just like them a bit more on the tame side.’

‘That’s true.’

Yvonne usually went for rather fey, borderline-effeminate pretty boys, and would spend hours fretting about which side of the metrosexual/gay border they occupied. She was always asking Claire’s opinion about whether a straight man would have facials, watch Strictly Come Dancing or own a Kylie Minogue CD.

‘I think you were right – I only went out with him to piss off Dad.’

‘I never said that!’

‘But it’s what you were thinking.’

Claire smiled guiltily. She had indeed suspected that Yvonne was only interested in Luca for his shock value. She could guess Yvonne’s uptight, stuck-up father would consider him wildly unsuitable boyfriend material for his precious only daughter. An unemployed, permanently broke artist, he apparently lived in squalor in a notoriously rough area of the inner city.

‘And you were right,’ Yvonne said. ‘See? You’re so wise. That’s the advantage of age.’

‘Hey, a minute ago you were saying I wasn’t much older than you.’

‘Well, you’re older in wisdom.’


‘Anyway, if you couldn’t handle Luca, what makes you think I could?’ Claire might have been older in years – and even in wisdom – but she knew that Yvonne had far more experience than her when it came to men.

‘I have complete faith in you,’ Yvonne said airily.

‘Seriously, Yvonne, you know I’m out of practice. Don’t you think I should start off with someone a bit easier?’

Claire’s social life had taken a nosedive three years earlier when she’d moved back to Ireland to look after her mother, and somehow she’d never managed to kick-start it again. She still couldn’t understand how she had let herself get into such a rut, but time had gone by so quickly. Suddenly she’d realised she hadn’t been on a single date since she’d returned home. And the longer it went on, the harder it was to change anything. She felt like such a fuddy-duddy, compared to Yvonne, her life so circumscribed. When she had been Yvonne’s age, life had seemed full of possibilities. Studying in Edinburgh, she’d had a nice circle of friends, gone on dates … It all seemed like a lifetime ago now.

‘Luca might be just what you need,’ Yvonne said, her eyes bright. ‘Dive in at the deep end. I mean, you don’t have much time, do you? Your mother isn’t going to be laid up for ever.’

‘No, that’s true. All good things must come to an end,’ Claire said drily.

‘Oh, you know what I mean.’

‘Well, I’ll do my best.’

‘Still, maybe you’re right – from nought to Luca might be a bit too much. But there’ll be lots of cute guys to choose from. Don’t worry, you won’t go home empty-handed.’

It sounded more like a threat than a promise. Claire was dreading this party more by the minute. She was relieved when Tom emerged from the back room where he had been doing ordering and paperwork.

‘How’s your mother, Claire?’ he asked, as he joined them.

‘She’s fine. I called the hospital and she’s over the operation, back on the ward.’

‘Glad to hear it. She’ll be there for a few more days, I suppose?’

‘Yeah, they’re keeping her in for two or three days, and then she has four weeks in a convalescent home.’

‘Oh, that’s great. It’ll be a nice break for you,’ Tom said. ‘Why don’t you go early today? You can visit her and still get home at a decent hour.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive. Yvonne and I can cope with the hordes,’ he said, indicating the lone customer he had passed earlier, who was browsing the travel shelves. ‘Can’t we, Yvonne?’

‘Absolutely!’

‘Okay, thanks.’ Claire smiled gratefully at him.

‘Oh, look! He’s getting away!’ Yvonne wailed as the customer headed for the door.

‘He was looking for guides to Bolivia,’ Tom said. ‘We don’t have any.’

‘But we’ve got Chile!’ Yvonne said, already moving from behind the desk to chase after the man. ‘I hear that’s much nicer.’

‘She’s amazing, isn’t she?’ Tom said admiringly, as Yvonne accosted the man at the door and led him gently back towards the travel section. ‘Born to sell.’

‘No one goes home empty-handed …’