“I could ask the call centre for an advance,” I said, and then felt a wave of depression settle over me. I didn’t want to owe the call centre a favour. I already spent every bus journey hoping that it had caught fire the night before. “Maybe just a hundred, out of my next pay slip.”
“And you could tap up Fred and Deenie for another hundred,” James suggested. “Or maybe two. They love you. They’ll give it to you gladly.”
I squirmed. “I don’t know. I don’t want them to…to know this about me.”
I pictured myself telling Deenie and Dr. Byrne about my situation. Particularly given what I now knew about their own luck with pregnancy. She would hate me for this. I had drunkenly stumbled into a state that she had been trying to get into for years.
“You could ask Fred,” I said. “So Deenie wouldn’t know.”
He bit his lip. “I don’t know. I think he’s finished with me, again.”
I sat up. “Why?”
James was always so thorough about Dr. Byrne’s comings and goings. It was an act of remarkable grace that he hadn’t shared these new woes with me while I was dealing with abortion planning.
“He’s not answering my calls. I don’t know. Maybe Deenie looked at his phone or something. Although I’m in his phone as ‘dentist.’ Maybe she cracked the code.”
“No! You don’t think?”
He nodded sadly. “I do think.”
“Well, she hasn’t said a thing to me.”
“Yes, but why would she?”
I went to work the next day and asked to speak to my manager alone.
“I know I haven’t been working here very long,” I said, “but I was wondering if I could arrange an advance on this month’s salary. It’s an emergency. I swear I wouldn’t be asking otherwise.”
She laughed. “Nice try.”
Later that day I was visited by the payroll assistant, and I assumed that my manager had had a change of heart. “Rachel Murray?” she said, while I was still on the phone. “We still haven’t had your P45 through.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to do. I had never had a new job before. O’Connor’s had been my first. “How do I…?”
“You need to call your old company, and get them to send it.”
“Okay, I’ll do that today.”
She started to walk away. “I’ll still get paid on the right day, though, right?”
“Hmm?”
“If I get my P45 tomorrow. I’ll still get paid? On the last working day of the month?”
“No, it’s likely you’ll be put on emergency tax.”
“Likely?”
“I don’t know for certain,” she said. “But probably.”
I walked outside and sat on the grass next to the road, my head on my knees.
* * *
I received email confirmation of my appointment in Manchester, and realised that the day of my abortion was 26 October, the same as my graduation from UCC. That afternoon, I got a phone call from my father, asking when graduation was.
“Oh, I’m not going,” I said, as breezily as I could manage. “Me and James are going to take a trip to Manchester; go on a jolly.”
“Why aren’t you going?”
“It’s expensive for what it is,” I replied. “You know, gown rental and all that. It’s kind of a scam. And I never felt very connected to the course anyway. I think it would be awkward. I didn’t really have any friends there.”
“I think you should go, Rachel,” he said. He sounded disappointed. I was his eldest child, after all, and I’m sure graduation is a thing a parent looks forward to. They had so few days out any more. “I think you might regret it, in time.”
I closed my eyes and gulped like I was swallowing a pill. “I just had to work so much during college,” I said. “I’m not really sure I’d get much out of it.”
That did it. I knew it would. My poor father was now stricken with guilt at the university experience I did not have, because of the fees he could not pay.
“Well, if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
I didn’t want to get off the phone right away. Not so soon after disappointing him.
“Dad,” I said limply, “how are you, anyway?”
“I think your mother wants to say something,” he said, and passed the phone on to her.
Somehow it became the weekend again, and I had the dinner party at the Harrington-Byrnes’. It was too early in my pregnancy for my body to show it, but I was paranoid nonetheless. Every outfit I tried on I looked swollen in, and my boobs were just getting to the tender stage, so my bras felt dreadful.
James sat on my bed and watched me try things on.
“I feel quite weird about you going over there,” he said. “To their bougie little dinner party, while I stay at home, Cinderella with the mice.”
“Sorry,” I said, wrestling another dress over my head.
“Couldn’t you bring me? As your date?”
“First of all, it’s too late to bring a date into the equation. They’ve cooked already. Second of all, no. You and Dr. Byrne would be making eyes at each other all night.”
I settled on a floral tea dress in mint green. My mother and I had bought it years ago for a cousin’s christening party, and I had not worn it since.
“How do I look?”
“Like you’ve never had a finger in your ass.”
“James.”
He lay down and looked at the ceiling.
“It’s weird you’re having dinner with my boyfriend when I haven’t seen him in a week.”
I walked to their house, clutching a nine-euro bottle of wine and practising conversation starters for adults. I had to treat this dinner party for the opportunity that it was. I had to get my face in front of people. Now that I was definitely not going to be a young mother, I needed to sort this career thing out, recession or no.
I knocked on the door, and could hear loud chatter and music from the other side. It felt like I was waiting for a portal to an adult world to suck me in.
A woman I had never seen before opened the door. She was about thirty with a sleek ash-blonde ponytail and a backless black jumpsuit. “Oh hello!” she said, waiting expectantly for me to say my name.
“Hi,” I said shyly. “I’m Rachel? I work with Deenie?”
“Okay!” she said. “Come in, come in, sorry, Deenie is frying the scallops, I’m on door duty. I’m Ciara, by the way. I copy-edited the manuscript.”
I hung my coat up, thinking: I thought I copy-edited the manuscript.
There were ten people in the kitchen, and four bundled up on the couch in the small living room. Deenie was looking anxiously at the scallops, and didn’t seem to hear me come in. I couldn’t see Dr. Byrne anywhere. Ciara introduced me to everyone, a flurry of book people who all nodded politely when I explained my role.
“I’m sort of an assistant,” I said. “I helped with the permissions, and that kind of thing.”
“Sort of like an internship?” asked a man with sandy hair, cut to his ears. He was another editor at Deenie’s publishing house, and he looked like the sort of man who surfed in the winter. He had clearly never heard about me.
“Yeah, sort of.”
“Christ, did you hear that they have people with actual master’s degrees doing internships up in Dublin now?” someone else chipped in. “Do you have a master’s degree?”
“No,” I said, feeling deeply inadequate. “I’ve actually just finished my undergrad. I’m graduating soon.”