Bitterhall, Helen McClory [red queen free ebook TXT] 📗

of the house were tipsy, and rapidly it seemed that she was in some parallel universe way a kind of version of myself, though, as far as she let on, without the hampering awfulness that at all times I have to fight back from my brain. Mind, how would I know such things? Battlefields are sometimes as smooth as a spring meadow to look at, the terror subcutaneous, twisting roots and expanding sinkholes at the biological level. Maybe atomical.

She resembled me physically as well, to my eye, and that was encouraging. She was exactly my height, and had grey eyes – to my brown – of the same long shape and heavy lashes, and brown hair a shade lighter than mine, thick and shiny and unruly. The hair that as a child your mother frets over with the brush and dabs of spit. Stupidly, dimly encouraging it seemed. Daniel . . . I told myself, as I handed her a beer from the fridge, exchanging it for the wine she had brought.

‘So,’ said Órla. ‘Thanks. I got it at lunch so it needs to cool down.’

Irish. I couldn’t tell where from. I shied away from looking at her, as I always did, getting overwhelmed with the contact, the contract, of shared human gazes, taking the time instead to scope out the fruit situation, still five bananas in a bowl on the table. Away elsewhere in the house the macho bonding hour was long in its cups. It seemed the godlike Tom liked to laugh about bad reality TV as much as the others in the living room, and I didn’t need to be in that or any other conversation such a crowd might have.

Órla stood there in the kitchen in her blood-red coat, alert, waiting for something.

At last, I tried to zero in on her face, thinking it was about time I said something, looked at her. Something welcoming, but all I could manage, the eyes too much, a clever, crackling lively stare, was to attempt a deeper picture of this enviable stranger from her atmospherics. Then she seemed like me and also like an open vista of the sea with a high wind blowing, like a glimpse of the shore below cliffs, and the white water and somewhere seagulls crying. Eyes grey but flashing. There was a depth, is what I’m saying. This impression is of course coloured by all that came after it.

But that night: Órla’s blue scarf covering all of her neck and that dark red coat, something I would wear if I was her, because it looked excellent, made her pale face shine and that red lipstick contrasted well with all. I was somewhat awed by the moment, you can tell. Standing together we both looked good, like conspirator siblings, full of health. All that lent strength by her clever way of dressing. I made a note to get myself some oxblood cardigan at some point in the future. Órla cracked the beer, made a face drinking. ‘Nice coat,’ I said. Her eyes sought me out again, and I looked down and away again like always.

‘You’re wondering the why, aren’t you?’ said Órla, ‘I hate beer, I always drink it and hate it. Does the job, but.’

‘Not really,’ I said, opening a bottle of bitter lemon, fingering the bottles on the counter for the right one. Basic gin.

‘Oh look at you, like you know what I was going to say,’ said Órla. ‘No “why what” from you. And thanks, it’s from a charity shop.’

We sat down at the kitchen table, her trying not to break eye contact, but me, the expert at breaking it, slippery, the kind of person a security guard in a shop tries to keep in view, but who always vanishes behind the stacks. I began to wish, despite myself, that I could stop being that way. It was because of her; she was offering me something, I thought. Was it more her almost tangible mood I found so distinctive, rather than what she actually said? From the living room, the throb of music. Badr had a few friends from way back and a few friends from his office, I’d met them and felt the need to be evasive, and Tom had himself, and that was enough. His laughter came often. A pang struck me, a deep ringing sound in my chest.

‘Don’t tease,’ I said, looking at her at last, ‘I know what you mean with your “why”.’

‘Oh aye?’

‘Tom, right? You’re asking me if I wonder why you’re with Tom. Instantly, like that, you’ve asked me a question to be the judge of you and him. But you phrase it or believe it – just in this instant you think I’ve come up in my mind first with the question – dilemma – of why you are together. Which is quite presumptuous of you, or—’

‘That I’d be thinking it was a preoccupation of yours?’

‘Just that,’ I answered.

Already

Órla looked at my drink, ‘Is it good, bitter lemon? I’ve never had it.’

‘Try some, I don’t have a cold.’

Órla raised the glass up to her lips. She would get red on the glass. She drank daintily. The bands on her throat moving, shadow and limn. I turned away—

‘Ah, how’d you like it?’ I said, thinking, already?

Órla wrinkled her nose, ‘It’s bitter.’

‘It is bitter,’ I said, looking at my finger swirling a circle on the table. Smiling.

‘I like it. Pour me some.’

I handed her a fresh glass. ‘I feel like I know you,’ said Órla, ‘isn’t it weird?’

‘Do you?’

Órla didn’t say anything for a while. Then – ‘You’re not – flirting with me?’

‘A moment. Could easily be confused for flirting,’ I said. ‘No, I’m not, I don’t think so anyway.’

‘You have one of those faces,’ said Órla, ‘the way you move about. Avoiding my eye. Smiling a lot.’

‘Does Tom have one of those faces?’

‘Is it nerves?’

We both laughed.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘This conversation’s all weird, isn’t it. Started the wrong way round.’

‘I like talking to you,’ said