Second Time Around

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‘Great,’ she lied.

‘You’re a bright girl, Lucy,’ Dad said confidently. He had never so much as brushed shoulders with self-doubt. ‘If you put in the work, you’ll be fine.’

Lucy gnawed the nail, already bitten down to the quick, on her right thumb. She’d lied about her first-year results. Mum and Dad were under the impression that she was on track for a two-one, maybe even a first. But the way things were going, she’d be lucky to graduate with a third, or worse. And there was always the awful possibility that she’d flunk altogether.

In choosing Applied Mathematics and Physics, she’d thought she was making a logical choice. In a world where popularity was decided on something as capricious as appearance (and a whole shed-load of other, shifting criteria, too subtle for Lucy to comprehend) maths was a solid bedrock of evolving logic and reasoning. She buried herself in numbers that appeared to deliver unequivocal answers.

But her judgement had proved flawed. Now in second year, she struggled to keep up, and the more she studied maths the more she came to realise that it didn’t have all the answers. It was no less fickle than the friendship of her peers. No amount of calculus or geometry could answer the questions that preoccupied her mind, nor ease the iron grip of isolation.

Driving south, they crossed the junctions at Divis Street, where the road widened out to three lanes. Not long now. Lucy felt the muscles in her stomach tighten. Dad rested his elbow awkwardly on the narrow sill and asked, ‘So, any boyfriends in the picture, Lucy?’

Lucy jolted and looked at him in astonishment. Did he know her at all? Was he blind? No man – or boy – had ever so much as looked at her. ‘No.’

‘Oh, come on, there must be someone,’ he teased.

‘Honestly Dad, there’s not,’ she said firmly and folded her arms across her chest.

He glanced over and said chirpily, as if her single status was something she actually had control over, ‘No, you’re quite right. You don’t want to be tying yourself down just yet. Plenty of time for settling down later. Meanwhile just enjoy being young, free and single.’ He grinned happily, content in the knowledge that Lucy was having the time of her life at uni. She couldn’t bear to see the disappointment in his face if she owned up to being what she was – a social outcast, a freak.

At the Broadway roundabout they turned onto Glenmachan Street, eventually joining the Lisburn Road heading north, back towards the city centre. They were almost there. Lucy put a hand on her stomach, hard as a nut, and took a deep breath to quell the nausea.

On Eglantine Avenue she racked her brains for a way to get into the house without him coming too. Too soon, they turned into Wellington Park Avenue, lined on both sides with gardenless Victorian terraced houses. Dad pulled up outside a red-brick house with bay windows on the ground and first floor – and peeling white paint on the windowsills. Lights blazed in every window. Her heart sank – everyone must be back already.

‘Here we are then.’ Dad turned off the engine and took the key out of the ignition.

Lucy quickly unclipped her seat belt and cracked open the car door. ‘Oh, don’t bother getting out, Dad. There’s no need for both of us to get wet, is there?’

He gave her an indulgent smile and, completely ignoring her, put his hand on the door handle. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Lucy. Your bag weighs a tonne. I’ll carry it in for you.’

He got out of the car to open the boot and Lucy had no choice but to follow him. While he’d seen the house, she’d so far managed to avoid him meeting her housemates.

When he ran up the path with the bag she grasped its handle and tried to wrench it out of his hand. ‘I can take it from here, Dad,’ she said firmly but he simply pushed past her with, ‘Don’t be silly, Lucy. Let’s get out of this awful rain.’

She stumbled into the hall and watched in horror as he dumped her bag on the sticky floor – she was the only one who ever cleaned anything in the house – and headed straight for the lounge from which pounding music, and the sound of female voices, issued forth.

‘No!’ she cried out, desperately. ‘Don’t leave my bag there. It’s in the way. Let’s take it upstairs.’

But though he must’ve heard her, he paid no heed. He disappeared into the lounge. She crept to the door, moving silently like a cat, and peered into the room. Four of them were there, in the process of preparing to go out, competing sounds blaring from someone’s iPod docking station and the TV. Fran was putting make-up on in front of a magnifying mirror balanced on top of the slate mantelpiece, the only original feature left in the house after its butchery of a conversion. Vicky, swaying her hips to the music, held a pair of hair straighteners in her hand. Bernie knelt in front of the coffee table, measuring Tesco Value vodka into a pint glass. A rag bag assortment of glasses, made cloudy by too many cycles in the dishwasher without dishwashing tablets, salt or rinse aid, littered the dusty coffee table, along with a carton of cranberry juice. The girls never went out without getting pole-axed first.

They all stared when Dad, looking like a lecturer in fine brown cords and an open-necked checked flannel shirt, appeared in their midst. His hands were shoved into his trouser pockets, his arms holding back the tails of the suit jacket he wore over everything.

‘Hi,’ he said, raising his big hand in a friendly greeting. Then, realising they could not hear him over the din, he shouted. ‘I’m David. Lucy’s Dad.’

Someone turned the music off and Bernie, blonde hair tied up haphazardly on top of her head like an untidy nest, got off her knees and said, all friendly like, ‘Hi ya. What about ye?’ No one touched the TV control so the rest of the conversation took place against the sound of Dancing on Ice.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said, surveying the state of the room – clothes strewn on the floor; an overflowing ashtray on the hearth; a tube of hair product lying on the floor, greasy contents oozing out onto the cheap laminate; the stale smell of a room never aired. The girls looked uncertainly at one another.

He looked at the bottle of cheap vodka and for one awful moment Lucy thought he was going to say something about their drinking. But his face broke into a beaming smile. ‘Getting ready to go out, then?’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Vicky, putting the straighteners down on a pink towel she’d draped over the arm of the burgundy sofa. Underneath was a horrible black scar where she’d already burned it. The landlord would take money out of all their deposits for that.

‘Oh, that’s great, Lucy,’ he said, turning around and taking a step backwards to expose her to everyone’s gaze. ‘You’ve arrived just in time.’

Lucy felt her face redden as the girls exchanged puzzled glances and then all stared at her. ‘Where are youse off to, then? Thompsons?’ she asked, slipping into the vernacular, and dredging up the name of a nightclub she’d overheard people talk about.

There was a subdued titter of laughter. Cathy, the only natural blonde among them, looked up from her place on the sofa, where she was stretched out reading Now magazine. ‘No one goes to Thompsons on a Sunday night,’ she said evenly, her thin lips unsmiling. Lucy gripped her upper arms so hard they hurt, praying that the ordeal would soon be over.

Bernie lit a cigarette, narrowing her eyes until they were no more than slits. She inhaled then removed the cigarette from her mouth with a little popping sound. ‘We’re going to Kremlin.’

Pretending that this statement constituted an invitation, Lucy cleared her throat and said, ‘Well, I’ve other plans for tonight.’

This seemed to annoy Dad for he said, sharply, ‘What other plans? You didn’t mention them in the car.’ And he held out his arm in a sweeping gesture towards the girls, like a cinema attendant showing her to her seat. ‘Sure, why don’t you go out with the girls?’

What was wrong with him? Couldn’t he see they hated her? Or maybe this was his awful, clumsy way of trying to force her on these unwilling airheads. He’d been doing it as long as she could remember. But she had tried to fit in, delighted that Vicky, who’d shared a maths module with her in first year, had invited her to join them – even though she got the poky room at the back of the house that never got the sun. But she’d very soon discovered, eavesdropping, that she’d only been asked because they couldn’t find anyone ‘sound’. After that she stopped trying to ingratiate herself with them. And in some ways it was a relief.

‘I just remembered. I’m going out with Amy,’ she improvised, holding up her mobile phone as evidence of some prior arrangement. Then she remembered that Amy always went to church on Sunday nights – but anything was better than staying here one minute longer. ‘Look, I’d better get a move on, Dad,’ she said, retreating from the room. ‘She’ll be wondering where I am.’

And, to her great relief, he followed her, calling out a cheery ‘Goodbye’ on his way. Immediately the music came back on. Lucy practically ran up the stairs, her stomach so tight it hurt, and unlocked the door to her neat and tidy room on the first floor. Dad followed her into the room and set the bag down on the floor. Lucy pulled out her mobile and, ignoring the cold water trickling down the back of her neck, pretended to read a text. ‘She’ll be here in a minute.’

When she’d finally got rid of him, Lucy covered her face with her hands. She’d tried so hard but she couldn’t do it any more. She hated everything about her life here in Belfast, in this house. There was only one thing that made it in any way tolerable. Quickly, she got her laptop out, went over to the small desk and plugged it into the large monitor. Immediately her heartbeat slowed.

She’d seen the TV ads for a new online bingo site at the weekend and she knew what that meant – special promotions. She’d already exhausted all the offers open to new players on every other site – and there were dozens of them. Sure enough, this site was offering a twenty-five-pound bonus to new players. The only problem was, you had to deposit ten pounds to qualify for it – and part of her current financial plan involved restricting herself to five pounds a day: thirty-five pounds a week. She frowned, but her hesitation was momentary – after tonight’s humiliation, she deserved a treat.

When the money was gone, Lucy sat staring at the debit card lying on the table. If she deposited another ten pounds she would earn a fifty per cent bonus. She liked that word ‘deposit’. It sounded safe, reassuring – and it reminded her that this was an investment in her future. She picked up the card and keyed in the number …

Later still, she sat on her bed, the music now thumping so loudly, she felt the vibration through the soles of her feet. The money was all gone and she’d won nothing. She tried not to feel disheartened. It was only a temporary setback. She looked at her watch. The girls would not leave the house until ten o’clock, maybe later, and they would not come home until the early hours. She could not bear it a minute longer. She grabbed her purse and keys and ran out of the room.

‘I didn’t think this would be your scene,’ said Amy, handing Lucy a glass of orange juice. There was wine – an unopened bottle of red and another of white on the sideboard – but no one seemed to be touching it so Lucy didn’t either.

She took a sip of the lukewarm drink and tried to ignore the wet jeans sticking to her thighs – she’d had to walk all the way over here in the rain to gatecrash this party. The party, if you could call it that, was in the lounge of a student house on Stranmillis Gardens, much the same as the house Lucy shared. Except this one was clean and it didn’t smell of chip fat and stale cigarette smoke. And this shindig was nothing like the parties the girls at Wellington Park Avenue threw. For a start, no one was smoking, shouting, vomiting or snogging someone they hardly knew on the sofa.

People stood around in small groups talking quietly and laughing, some kind of acoustic guitar music playing softly in the background. A smiling girl came round carrying a tray of cocktail sausages. Lucy took one and nibbled it thoughtfully. There was something else that marked these people out from her housemates, apart from their wholesome appearance – they were friendly. Yet Lucy felt as alien here at she did at Wellington Park Avenue.

‘You know what the girls in the house are like, Amy. They were getting stuck into vodka and cranberry juice,’ she offered to explain her presence. ‘The music was so loud I couldn’t stand it. I had to get out.’

Amy raised her right eyebrow, the same colour as her flaming red hair. With her sharp features, small pale eyes behind wire-framed glasses and translucent skin so white it almost glowed, Amy was not beautiful. But she had an inner goodness that drew people to her and she was a kind and loyal friend. She read Pure Mathematics and they’d known each other since the start of first year. And while Lucy had known from the outset that Amy was a committed Christian, she had only ever tried to force her beliefs on Lucy in the gentlest of manners, occasionally inviting her along to special events run by the Christian Union.

‘I don’t know why you share with them, Lucy,’ she said at last, shaking her head ruefully. ‘They’re not like you.’

Who is? thought Lucy. She wished for a moment that she had faith like Amy, so that she might feel connected to the people in this room. She wanted to belong – to feel part of something. But, while she believed in God, she could honestly say that she had never felt personally touched by His spirit. The compulsory religious studies she’d done in school had always felt like an interesting, but academic, exercise.

‘Well, I don’t have much choice. I’m tied in by the lease agreement until the end of the academic year,’ said Lucy. Even if she extricated herself from the house, where would she go? Amy couldn’t help – she lived with her parents in East Belfast. She could live at home she supposed, but her parents would want to know what was wrong. They claimed university was as much about ‘the student experience’ as it was about academic achievement. They had no idea what it meant in reality for Lucy.

‘Well, I’m really sorry to hear that,’ said Amy, looking into her drink. ‘I know how much you hate it there.’

A loud ripple of laughter broke out on the other side of the room, giving Lucy the opportunity to look away, effectively bringing the depressing conversation to an end.

A small group of girls near the door to the kitchen were clustered around a very tall, well-built man, maybe six foot four, with a straight choppy fringe of light brown hair and a broad, clean-shaven face. His big hand encircled a pint glass of coke and he was casually dressed in distressed jeans and a faded rugby shirt with the collar turned up around his thick neck. He looked older than the rest of the group and the way he held himself – straight-backed and square-shouldered – combined with his imposing physique gave him an air of authority. His reserved, lopsided smile suggested that he was the source of the sudden mirth.

The laughter died away and the tall man glanced up, his eyebrows knitted together in an amused expression. His blue-eyed gaze, as bright and piercing as a spear, met Lucy’s and she felt a strange, unfamiliar sensation in her stomach. Her heartbeat fluttered momentarily, then stabilised again. Startled, she put a hand to her chest as if holding it there might steady her heartbeat.

‘I can’t stay long tonight,’ said Amy, glancing at her watch, and Lucy looked over her shoulder to see who the man was staring at. But there was no one there. When she turned round again, he was standing right in front of her. She let out a little silent gasp and, shyly, looked up at his face.

‘Hi, I’m Oren Wilson,’ he said, the smile replaced with a searching, curious look as if he was trying to remember if he’d met her before. To Amy he said, without looking, ‘How’s it going, Amy?’

‘Good. This is Lucy Irwin, Oren,’ said Amy absentmindedly, and she waved at someone on the other side of the room. ‘Did you win today?’

‘Fifteen-three,’ he said and, taking in Lucy’s blank face he added, ‘Rugby. We were playing against Malone.’

‘Oren’s captain of the first eleven,’ interjected Amy.

Lucy, impressed, said, ‘Oh.’

‘Yep, a couple of my team-mates are over there.’ Oren pointed at two ruddy-faced, muscled blokes amongst the group he’d been talking to. ‘They’re sound lads. The rest of them are out getting smashed somewhere.’ He rolled his eyes and his smile, when he shook his head, conveyed a kind of benign disapproval.

‘Look, would you two excuse me a moment?’ said Amy. ‘I have to speak to Carolyn about Talkshop on Thursday night. We’re nearly out of coffee and biscuits.’

Amy disappeared and Oren, who had not taken his eyes off Lucy, said, ‘So, are you a first year?’

‘N … No,’ said Lucy and she tried to smile but her heart was inexplicably full of a feeling akin to, but not quite the same as, dread. ‘I’m second year, like Amy. I’m doing Applied Mathematics and Physics.’

‘You must be very clever,’ he said, his tone one of mild amusement rather than conviction. Was he making fun of her?

‘Are you?’ she squeaked.

He laughed easily at this. ‘With humility comes wisdom. In that sense, I hope I have insight.’

She blushed, tongue-tied by confusion and said at last, ‘I … I meant are you a first year?’ And then she blushed again at the stupidity of her question while Oren looked on, his thin closed lips almost smiling. He was too old to be a first year; he must be a mature student, or a lecturer even. ‘So, what are you doing? I mean studying? If you’re a student, that is …’ Her voice trailed away and she looked at the floor, wishing it would open up and swallow her whole. Not only was she stupid, she could hardly string a coherent sentence together.