The trouble was, she knew there were always plenty of women hovering around Brian, vying for his attention, while he was the only proper boyfriend she’d ever had. Confidence had never been Kate’s strong point, and when she had met Brian she had been at a particularly low ebb, dented by a series of encounters with increasingly hopeless men, who always seemed primed to run if someone better came along – and someone always did. She was beginning to rival even Freddie in her ability to attract the most awful men.
Then Brian appeared and changed all that. She had met him when she was working for a couple of months as a vegetarian cook at a retreat centre in Galway. He had come to do a weekend workshop and Kate had been instantly smitten. He was so attractive, so gregarious and charismatic. Amazingly, the attraction was mutual, and they had started going out together. Kate had expected it to follow the familiar pattern of her previous relationships and spent the first few weeks waiting for the other shoe todrop. Only when they had been together for about six months did it dawn on her that Brian was her boyfriend and she was finally in a proper relationship.
But they had been together for almost two years now, and she didn’t want to drift any longer. She loved Brian, but the three months in Africa, as well as doing wonders for her figure, had given her new self-confidence. Being away from her family had helped. She had always felt like the runt of the litter, never quite measuring up to her dazzling siblings. In Africa, she had felt powerful, sexy and confident, among people who knew her in her own right rather than as the youngest and least significant of the O’Neills.
She wasn’t at all confident about how Brian would react to her ultimatum. He strongly disapproved of possessiveness, but Kate was tired of trying to be cool and detached and wasn’t prepared to do it any longer. In reality, she was fiercely possessive of Brian and gut-wrenchingly jealous of the other women who were always hanging around him – his little coven of workshop junkies with their serene smiles, their homespun jumpers and their vegetarian shoes, who looked down on her because she worked for a living while they made a virtue of living off the State while pursuing their hobbies – writing poetry, throwing pots or making incomprehensible art. Their scrubbed-clean faces always wore an air of self-righteous superiority, as if they were somehow saving the world by not wearing makeup or nice clothes.
Well, she could give them a run for their money, Kate thought defiantly, applying a slick of deep red lipstick to her full mouth. Despite his principles, Brian was not averse to a bit of glamour. She surveyed herself in the mirror, twirling to inspect every angle. She looked fantastic. Luckily she had commandeered one of Rachel’s army of beauticians to wax her legs yesterday, and they were wonderfully smooth and brown. Brian’s acolytes wouldnever dream of waxing – they preserved their leg hair with the same zeal they applied to saving the rainforest, as though the entire ecosystem of the planet depended on it.
She was just putting on the big bead earrings she’d bought in Africa when she heard the buzzer.
Seconds later, Freddie rapped on the door. ‘Three minutes to curtain,’ he called.
It was one of the advantages, Kate thought, of living on the fourth floor of a building with no lift that you were never caught unawares – or perhaps the only advantage, she amended.
There was just one problem, she thought, looking at herself in the mirror. The sleeveless dress was far too light for an Irish summer’s evening. Scanning the room for inspiration, she spotted Will’s dinner jacket hanging with her bridesmaid dress on a hook over the door – the only things she had managed to unpack so far. She pulled it on, checked it in the mirror and was pleased with the effect. Rather than detracting from the glamour of the outfit, it lent it a slightly decadent, morning-after look, as if she was on the way home from a dinner dance. She took it off, so that Brian would get the full effect of the dress, and settled down to tweaking her hair and makeup for the final few minutes.
* * *
Brian was ensconced on the sofa, with Freddie grilling him mercilessly about yesterday’s workshop. ‘So, how do youteachpeople to scream?’ he was asking eagerly. ‘Do you do a course or something?’
‘I wasn’t teaching so much asfacilitating,’ Brian explained, always happy to talk about his work to anyone who would listen. ‘I was giving people permission to scream and providing a safe space where they could feel free to let go. It’s very cathartic.’
‘I’m sure.’ Freddie nodded vaguely.
‘As children we express our emotions so directly,’ Brian continued expansively, on a roll now. ‘When we’re angry or scared or outraged, we just come right out and scream. Then we grow up, become socialised and lose that spontaneity.’
‘Right,’ Freddie concurred. ‘So it was sort of temper tantrums for the over-twenty-fives.’
‘It was actually very moving,’ Brian continued, refusing to rise to Freddie’s bait. ‘Some people really opened up.’
‘Deafening, too, I imagine,’ Freddie said. ‘Your ears must be ringing.’
‘You’d be surprised at how little screaming there actually was. We’re all so inhibited. People find it incredibly difficult to make that noise, often for the first time since they were children – in some cases, the first time ever.’
‘Like this, you mean?’ Freddie opened his mouth wide and let out a blood-curdling shriek that wouldn’t have been out of place in a schlock horror movie.
At that moment Kate emerged from her bedroom and glanced worriedly towards the door, expecting the neighbours to be pounding on it at any minute.
‘Okay.’ Brian laughed. ‘Obviously you’re the exception.’
‘Oh, I’m just a screaming queen,’ Freddie quipped.
As Kate joined them, the look in Brian’s eyes was flatteringly appreciative and lustful. ‘Wow, you look amazing!’ he gasped. Kate rarely went in for such full-on glamour, which made the effect all the more stunning when she did.
‘Thanks.’ She smiled into his eyes. ‘Were you giving Freddie a crash course in screaming?’
‘He doesn’t need any help in that department. I was just telling him about my workshop yesterday.’
‘Was it good?’
‘It was very powerful. There was one woman who couldn’t make a sound all day, but in the last five minutes she screamed for about a minute solid. It was a real breakthrough for her.’
‘Amazing!’ Freddie breathed.
‘Suzanne, I suppose?’ Kate said caustically.
‘As a matter of fact it was.’
