Page 16 of A Second Chance Summer in Dublin

I unkink my fingers, reach across and pick up the envelope, sliding out the invitation. Its gold glitter sticks to my fingertips like reminders of my ex-relationship that I can’t peel off.

When Mia and I first met, she’d warned me her brother wasa player. Mia was at UCD studying journalism at the time and we converged in the Ilac Centre library and bonded over the September issue ofVoguethat we both reached for at the same time. It was instant friendship. I knew she had a brother but she always called him ‘Brohead’ when she mentioned him, which was rarely.

Later, when we realised I was dating her brother and she could see I had fallen head over heels in love with him she’d warned me. ‘He’s a player, not a settler. It’s infatuation,pleasebe careful. Our Logan’s selfish. Always has been. Listen to my words, because they aren’t easy to say about my own brother, but he’s a narcissist.’

Dear Grace,

You are invited!

Please come and celebrate a new chapter in my life.

Date: Saturday 28thJune.

Time: 8 P.M.

Location: House Bar, Leeson Street.

RSVP by 20thJune.

Dress code: Be Yourself!

Mia Hunter x

I slip the card back into the red envelope, gazing at Donal’s profile once more. I’m not trying to make Logan jealous, either, that’s not my vibe. I just don’t want to walk in on my own. I won’t lie to Donal, I’ll be honest with him. I just want to walk into House with someone, get a drink, sit down and wait for Logan to approach me. Or, go to the bar and let him follow me up. And he will come after me, I know that for sure. The little white butterfly still hasn’t flown out of my rooftop door and it flutters above my head. Belinda arrives tomorrow afternoon and chaos will ensue, but the thought makes me smile.

‘Right, Donal, let’s meet again.’ I talk to his image as I hold my phone in both hands and my fingers hit the letters.

Hi Rebecca. It’s a ‘Yes’ to the date, please. I’d love to meet him for dinner and drinks. I’ve a crazy work schedule coming up this week and I know it’s very short notice, but is tomorrow night any good for him? His choice of venue, city centre, preferably.Let me know?

I hit send.

Chapter Nine

‘Gurl!’ A bellowing Belinda flicks out a finger click with a sharp jut of her hip. ‘You like, just gotta, like, ya know, like, have a pescetarian option on the wedding menu!’ She tosses her hair as she shrieks in her fabulous, broad Dublin accent. A highly successful businesswoman, with three after-school facilities to her name and her business empire expanding by the day, I’m in awe of her.

‘Stop jerking! And what are you talking about?’ I’m on my knees looking up at her totally confused.

‘Our Kathleen! That’s what she says to me on the phone, the crazy LA head on her. Pescetarian, me arse, I says to her. It’s a roast beef dinner at my weddin’ reception and that’s it. You used to suck the bejaysus out of a pig’s foot our Uncle Peter would boil us when you were a baba!’

‘Please stop moving,’ I command in muffled tones with yellow-topped pins held in my mouth.

‘Can ya get over that, though, Grace? She makes me laugh with all that Hollywood health hoopla. Hanging out with the rich and famous has gone to her head. They’re all too brainwashed to understand we’re mortal!’ Belinda bangs her chest.

‘Oh, I hear you. Not on the pescetarian diet, but I had a vegan convert in my life. Nothing against vegans whatsoever, just this particular one.’ I shake Logan’s obsessive diet from my mind; it was impossible to enjoy a meal with him. I concentrate on sewing a final sturdy chain stitch into the hemline.

‘Only eating fish. Is she on them edible gummy yokes, I wonder? I mean for years when we were growin’ up, all we had was a jumbo-size bag of pasta shells and tins of tomatoes to last the five of us a week!’

‘That must have been tough?’ I throw my eyes up to her in shock as I pull two pins free, but she’s smiling.

‘Ah, we made the best of it. Da was well gone by the time I hit fourteen. He wasn’t built for this century, by his own admission, he was a drifter .?.?. wasn’t it well for him? Our ma’s battle with the drink came and went as often as the 46A bus. I swear, only for Peter R. – our older brother – doing a paper round in the middle of the night, followed by a milk round, followed by delivering flyers and basically goin’ around the posh houses from Malahide to Foxrock with an old petrol lawnmower and cuttin’ their lawns without askin’ so they had to pay up, we’d have starved! I mean, I did my bit as a novice beautician, but Peter R. kept us alive. And she only eats fish now. Feckin’ spanner!’ Belinda wobbles dangerously.

‘You have to stay still, Belinda!’ I splutter again now with a mouthful of thinner, green-topped pins clasped tightly between my lips. Belinda, as always, is dressed in vibrant pops of pink. She’s a woman who knows her worth. I crawl out on all fours from under her satin and lace dress and stand up slowly, my knees aching, having finished the hem stitches and pinned the bottom of the under lace.

‘No more footwear changes now, okay? I mean it. That’s it. Stay out of BTs!’ I stretch out my tight back. I’m wearing my loose-fitting, vintage, yellow daffodil print pinafore and my biblical sandals, my hair tied back in a white bandana.

‘Is that you putting your foot down? If ya pardon the pun!’

I glare at her jokingly as she nods, steps down off my dressmaker’s block, and saunters towards the brass floor-to-ceiling mirror. I’m still paying off a credit-union loan for thepartitioned area off my bedroom.