Past Secrets. Cathy Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ if the salty tang of the sea would drift out, scenting the air with memories of a foreign beach.

      They’d bought the apartment two years ago and the previous owners had been keen on beige, beige and more beige. It was like living in a can of mushroom soup, said Maggie, who’d grown up in a quirky house on Summer Street where her bedroom had been sky blue with stars on the midnight-blue ceiling. Dad had been going through his planetarium phase and the stars had been in their correct places too. Ursa Major and Ursa Minor would not be the wrong way round when Dennis Maguire was in charge.

      The cloakroom in the Galway apartment was the last room Maggie had painstakingly redecorated. Now it was all cheery blues and whites, like a small beachside restaurant from their last holiday, a glorious, special-offer week in the Seychelles. Holidays had been off the agenda for the past few months as they were broke but Maggie had an almost physical longing for the feeling of sweltering sun toasting her skin while her toes wriggled in sand.

      We need a break, she thought as she stepped out of the lift on to their floor. Sun, sand and no conversations with irritated students when they’d discovered that the very book they needed for that night’s rush-job essay on Greco-Roman funerary practices wasn’t in its place.

      Grey was a politics lecturer and Maggie was one of six librarians in the vast, modern Coolidge College library, a job she loved because it allowed her mind to wander over many varied subjects from medicine to literature. The downside was that pre-exams the stress levels of the students went up and people who’d spent six months working on the formula for the perfect Long Island Iced Tea to fuel a party suddenly required actual research materials for their courses. And Maggie was the one they got mad at when the research material in question was booked out by someone else.

      ‘But, like, I need it today,’ a radiantly pretty brunette girl had said only that morning, slim fingers raking through her hair, which irritatingly made her look even better. What hair product did she use? Maggie wondered briefly but didn’t ask.

      Instead, she said, ‘I’m really sorry but I can’t help you. We’ve only two copies and they’re both booked out every day for the next week. You’ve got to make arrangements in advance with some textbooks.’

      ‘Well, thank you very much,’ snapped the girl sarcastically. ‘You’ve been a great help, I must say.’ And she marched off in high dudgeon.

      ‘You can’t win ’em all,’ commiserated her colleague Shona. ‘Still, she’s not like the back of a bus, so she can always sleep with her prof if the going gets tough.’

      ‘Shona! That’s so sexist. I thought you were reading The Female Eunuch?’

      ‘I did and it’s marvellous, but I’m on to the new Jackie Collins now. I know Germaine Greer wouldn’t approve, but I’d have slept with my prof if it’d have improved my degree,’ countered Shona wistfully. ‘He was sex on legs, so it wouldn’t have been a hardship.’ Shona’s degree had been in European Literature. ‘When he talked about the Heart of Darkness that was in all of us, I swear, I felt a shiver run right down my spine into my knickers.’

      Shona was, in fact, happily married but she was an irrepressible flirt and batted her eyelashes at every passing cute guy, despite many weary conversations with the head librarian about appropriate behaviour in the workplace. ‘Just because I’ve eaten doesn’t mean I can’t look at the menu,’ was her motto.

      Fortunately her husband Paul, whom she adored and would never cheat on, was merely amused by all this.

      ‘Professors don’t have sex with students, except in the fevered imaginations of people like you,’ Maggie retorted. ‘Besides, she’s in third-year history. Have you seen Prof Wolfowitz? Brilliant, yes. Beddable, no. He is totally bald except for that one eyebrow. Every time I see him, I want to pluck a few of the middle hairs out and give him two eyebrows instead of one.’

      ‘Maggie, Maggie,’ sighed Shona. ‘The eyebrow is immaterial. Sleeping your way to success has precisely nothing to do with how good-looking the powerful person is. You may wear scuffed cowboy boots and a tough attitude, but you’re Haven’t-a-Clue Barbie at heart. You don’t have a calculating bone in your body – apart from the one hot Dr Grey Stanley puts there, of course.’ Shona laughed like a drain at her own joke.

      Maggie groaned. She was used to Shona by now. They’d become fast friends from the moment they’d met on Maggie’s first day in the library, where she discovered that her new friend’s second degree subject was indubitably Teasing: Honours Module. Now Maggie leaned over and swatted Shona on the arm with her ruler. ‘Brat.’

      ‘Haven’t-a-Clue Barbie.’

      ‘Slapper.’

      ‘Oh, thank you,’ Shona said, pretending to preen. She was impossible to shock. ‘Shona O’Slapper, I like that. Now, can you swap shifts with me? I know you’re on till six tonight, but I’ll do it and you can go early if you’ll do tomorrow afternoon for me? You could spend another hour honing your body in Extreme Fatness,’ she wheedled. Shona had accompanied Maggie to the gym once and hated it, hence the new name.

      ‘Are you and Paul going out?’ inquired Maggie.

      ‘I’m providing a shoulder to cry on,’ Shona informed her. ‘Ross has broken up with Johann.’ Ross was a hairdresser who lived in the apartment below Shona and Paul, providing the perfect opportunity for Shona’s fag-haggery and giving Paul a chance to watch football on the television while she and Ross sat in the apartment below, rewatching old Will & Grace episodes and bitching happily.

      ‘He’s inconsolable, even though he whined all the time they were going out about how insensitive Johann was and how he didn’t like Nureyev.’ Nureyev was Ross’s beloved pet, a lop-eared rabbit, who was spoiled beyond belief and had his own Vuitton bunny carrier as well as a purple velvet collar with his name spelled out in diamanté. He lived in luxury in Ross’s Philippe Starck-style kitchen and was house-trained to use a cat litter box. ‘Nobody’s ever truly gorgeous until they dump you, right? We’re partying to get him over it.’

      ‘On a Wednesday?’

      ‘Woe’s day, sweetie, as the ancient Danes would say. It’s apt.’

      ‘Who’s looking after Nureyev?’

      ‘We’re going to leave the Discovery channel on for him. He loves all those shows about meerkats.’

      Maggie was still laughing at the idea of the rabbit sulkily glued to the television when she got to her own front door and pulled out her keys.

      The mortice lock was undone. Grey must have got home early, she thought with a smile. That was good, they could have a blissfully long evening together. Good call, Maguire, she thought as she let herself in. Sometimes a girl’s gotta know when to miss stretching on a mat so she can stretch on a bed. And for all of his intellectual cool, Grey knew some pelvic contortions the Pilates teacher had never taught. It was funny though, Grey was supposed to be at a meeting – perhaps it had been cancelled?

      ‘Shouldn’t be too late, honey,’ Grey had said on the phone earlier. ‘You’ve got your class tonight so I’ll pick up Thai food on the way home.’ Grey believed in sharing cooking duties, although he preferred takeout to actual slaving and stirring with wooden spoons.

      Inside the apartment, Maggie heard muted noises coming from the apartment’s lone bedroom. Grey must be watching the TV, she thought, and, shedding her possessions as she went, handbag on to the floor, jacket СКАЧАТЬ