‘For the love of God, it’s supposed to be a party, remember, not a bloody seminar on forgotten singers of the past century,’ she informed them. ‘If I wanted to be bored shitless about music, I’d have stayed in Dublin with Keith.’
Tara’s latest boyfriend Keith was a twenty-eight-year-old shop-assistant-slash-aspiring-musician. Like Tara, he was very beautiful, very tall and made everyone feel very bad about their own genetic makeup.
‘He still only knows that one song on the guitar, then?’ Alex asked.
Tara nodded, her heavily lined eyes rolling back so far in her head, she almost looked possessed. ‘Wonder-bloody-wall. Even I’m surprised I haven’t dumped him yet.’
Everyone in the room was surprised about it, too. Not just because Tara hated Oasis, but because her relationships never lasted longer than eight weeks and this one was almost at the four-month mark. A new record? Unlike Beth who’d been dating Paul Cooper since the first week of university, or Erin who was madly in love with fellow acting graduate Damien, Tara found the whole idea of long-term commitment completely absurd. She couldn’t even keep the same hair colour for longer than six months.
She’d once said,‘I mean, sure, love is great and all, but once you get to know everything about the other person, then what? You just sit there, never being surprised again until one of you dies? How is that remotely appealing? My parents alone are proof enough that marriage is the work of Satan himself. Why can’t we just properly ravage each other then move on?’
Alexandra felt a pang of self-pity. At the ripe old age of twenty-two, she’d never been properly ravaged, not in the way she’d have liked. She’d never even had a boyfriend, let alone been in love. Sure, she wasn’t as gorgeous as Tara, who’d inherited her face and figure from her former Miss Ireland mother, or as breastily gifted as double-D Beth, but she wasn’t exactly a bucket of snots either. She’d just never had that spark with someone and God knows, she longed for that spark. That moment when you meet someone and you just know that—
‘Shite, it’s almost midnight!’
Alex snapped back to reality to see Becky spring to her feet in a panic. ‘Calm down, Cinderella, there’s no curfew here.’
‘Let’s go, people!’ Becky insisted, clapping her hands like a schoolteacher. ‘Everyone outside, bring your notes.’
‘Yes, miss.’
Notes? Alexandra’s face fell. She’d forgotten about this part of the evening that Becky had planned. Luckily, she’d scribbled something down yesterday.
‘Oh Christ, she’s covering up her feet,’ Tara exclaimed. ‘She has shoes on! This is not a drill, people! Rebecca, darling, just how far are you expecting us to walk?’
Loughview was aptly named as it sat on the banks of Lough Currane, a sight impressive enough to make up for missing that rooftop bar. A small, slightly rocky path from the bottom of the garden led directly to a long stretch of deserted sandy beach where they found themselves at 11.55pm. It was time for Becky’s plan to unfold.
‘I cannot believe we’ve left that nice warm house to stand on the beach beside a bin,’ Tara mumbled in protest, watching Becky draw a circle around everyone in the sand with a piece of driftwood. ‘Rebecca Murphy, I love you, but I swear if you start summoning demons or walking on water, I will leave.’
‘I mean,technically, it's not a bin, it’s an incinerator,’ Erin offered cheerfully, as if that made the situation any less weird. ‘There’s some law against open fires and—’
‘Anything Could Happen’ by Ellie Goulding began drifting down from the house and over the beach.
‘Did you play this song on purpose, Becky?’ Alex asked, conceding that maybe the noise level had been a tad higher than she first thought.
‘Nope,’ she replied. ‘It’s just perfect timing. Now, ladies, have we all written down our intentions?’
Becky’s request for their final evening together was a peculiar one. Each person had been asked to write down their goals for the future, in present tense. The plan was to burn the notes, sending them off into the universe where they would become reality,so mote it be… or something along those lines, Alexandra wasn’t entirely sure.
‘I have!’ Erin replied excitedly, clutching what looked like a Post-it. Can you even do spells on Post-its?
‘Yep,’ Beth said, pulling her cardigan around her. ‘I have my words.’
Alex nodded, briefly holding up her offering as proof of participation.
Becky smiled, delighted that everyone had made the effort. ‘Tara?’
‘Um…’
‘Tara?’
‘But what if my intention is to not participate in any of this? Do I still have to write that down? Because I will, it’s really no bother—’
‘Tara, I swear to…’
‘Oh, calm down, Glinda, I’m only messing, It’s right here.’
Alex clasped her own piece of folded paper and giggled. Maybe this was ridiculous, but regardless, she understood Becky’s desire to mark the occasion with a ceremony. It was a big deal. This was the last night they would all be together until God knows when. In a couple of days Tara would leave for New York, Beth for Manchester and Becky for Glasgow. Even though Alex and Erin would remain in Ireland, at least for now, they’d be at opposite ends of the country. They had spent the last three years living together and now it was all coming to an end.
