You, Me and Other People. Fionnuala Kearney

run my fingers through my hair like a comb.

      ‘You want crisps, you want salt-and-vinegar crisps,’ she taunts me again.

      The phone rings and I grab the receiver. It’s Mum. She’s brief, since she’s dashing out; just wants to make sure I’m still all right for tomorrow.

      I’m not all right for tomorrow. I feel like I lost a layer of skin with Caroline today, like somehow I’ll be painfully susceptible to a mother’s probing. Much as I want to cancel, I confirm our plans.

      The next day, as suspected, my mother is no pushover. Having worried myself sick that she will be able to read me like a book when I see her, I insisted we meet for lunch halfway, purely to keep her away from the house. Allowed into the house, she would, like an anteater, sniff out the absence of Adam. Instead, we are lunching and shopping at John Lewis in High Wycombe.

      Unusually, Mum is full of chat about herself. Her latest course at the local adult education centre, where she is learning how to manicure nails; her friend Trish who cheats at bridge; the vicar’s wife who’s seeing the guy who runs the off-licence. I listen for ages, smile, and laugh appropriately. I love my mother deeply. Sybil Moir has polar-white hair, having refused to succumb to hair dye like the rest of us. It is styled in flicked curls that curve away from her face. A few facial lines reveal she’s in her sixties, but it’s her grey eyes that light her face. If eyes can make a face smile, my mother’s, fringed with thick silver lashes, do – without ever needing the curve of her lips.

      Her staple clothes choice of jeans, a polo-neck sweater and Barbour jacket hasn’t changed in years. Today, a bottle-green sweater hugs her neck. Black jeans ride above black leather ankle boots, Chelsea style – Mum doesn’t do heels – and her black padded jacket hangs on the back of the café chair.

      I’m quite tickled at the fact that my phone lies have worked so far and all is going swimmingly until, grey eyes looking down into her latte, she asks me how Adam is. Really is. She just detects that maybe all’s not well. Then she looks up and stares right at me.

      I dig deep. Right down into that monkey-nut inner core, match her gaze and tell her that Adam’s fine. Really. He’s really fine. This isn’t even a lie. He is allegedly very fine. He’s having lots of sex with another, younger woman. What man wouldn’t be?

      ‘And you?’ she asks. ‘I suppose you’re fine too?’

      ‘I am. And Meg, she’s—’

      ‘Yes, she’s fine. I know. Meg returns my calls.’

      I take the dig.

      ‘Well, as long as everyone’s fine.’ She smacks her hands lightly on the edge of the table. ‘Let’s see what John Lewis has to offer?’

      A few hours of shopping later, she seems satisfied, heading back to the Cotswolds as I wave her off. I climb into the car and chew my cheek. I know I’ve only dodged the ball. She’s like Arnie, my mum. She’ll be back.

      After a fairly sleepless night, I wake to the sound of staccato showers and someone singing in my head. I always wake to some random track playing in my brain. Adam used to ask me every morning who was featuring and what they were singing. He believed it used to dictate my mood. Today, it’s someone whose name I can’t remember, but she’s telling me I’ve got to live my life and do what I want to do.

      I head to the shower clutching my stomach. Whenever I think of him, of what he’s doing with his day, I feel my insides churn, then coil around themselves so tightly that it physically hurts. I close my eyes, hold my head up to the scalding, pulsing water as I soap my body. I dismiss him from my head, deciding that I will have a proactive work day today and I will start by reading the movie script Josh gave me. Again … I’ve tried and failed before, finding anything love-related too sweet to endure.

      Three hours and four cups of coffee later, I’m sitting at the dual computer screens in the loft. The left one shows my petty attempt at a lyric while the right one displays the musical effort. My head is buzzing as I open YouTube and I watch the Twilight song Josh had spoken about. Again, I’m immediately consumed with song-writing envy. How does that woman Christina Whatsit do it? I watch the clip a few more times and then get back to the script. I can do this, I tell myself, my head in my hands. They asked for me. I’m one of three they asked for – I can do this. On the wall, all around my writing area, are the inspirational mantras I’d found weeks ago, printed in purple gothic font. Some I’d copied and some are all my own work. I stare up at ‘I AM A SONGWRITING PHENOMENON!!!’ And I almost believe it, as I set to work.

      I work through lunchtime and only move away from the screen when my stomach is doing a hunger dance. Downstairs, I eat a bag of crisps. A voice inside my head tells me that I have to do a food shop, as I tear open today’s mail.

      My bank statement shows me that, early last week, Adam paid the same amount that he has paid into my bank account for years, a monthly sum, to run the house, pay for food and bills, etc. I lick the crisps from the end of my fingers as a new fear blindsides me. What if he stops doing that? What if he just decides not to pay it? We have no dependent children any more and it’s all very well me telling him to fuck right off, but what happens practically? We both own the house, it’s not mortgaged, but I want to stay living here. Panic seeps from my brain through my entire system.

      The hard fact is that I do not make nearly enough money to run this house alone. Even with my latest increase in royalties, I would have to get a job as well … The thought of getting a job, a real job that pays me a regular wage, terrifies me. I’m forty-two. The country has been in a double-dip recession; thousands of graduates and highly qualified people are out of work. My eyelids droop momentarily. Maybe that termite email was a bit much. Maybe I need to calm down a bit and maybe we do need to talk.

      I don’t want to have time to change my mind, so I send Adam a text, asking him to come by the house. I keep it simple and it is only minutes before my phone pings a reply.

      ‘R u in tonite?’

      I feel immediately irritated, angry even. I hate text language, and anyone who knows me respects that and uses proper English words when texting me. I’ve told them for years not to be so bloody lazy.

      ‘No. I’m not in tonight,’ I lie. ‘I’m out.’

      ‘Wen then?’ chimes back.

      ‘You idle bastard. Since when have you forgotten I hate lazy texting? I’m not your stupid bimbo whore. Yes, whore is spelt with a “w”.’

      The landline rings and I ignore it. He has such an ability to rile me.

      ‘Idle?’ The mobile responds instead. ‘You call ME idle! Some of us are WORKING 24/7 for a living!’

      My hand goes automatically to my mouth. Shit. My eyes flash to the bank statement and I text him back.

      ‘Sorry. Come by Friday?’

      ‘C U Fri at 8.’

      I inhale a deep sigh and toss my mobile across the worktop.

      I’ve abandoned the idea of writing an Oscar-nominated song for film this afternoon and instead I’m riffling through random papers in Adam’s desk. It struck me, seeing my bank balance, that I haven’t seen a statement in months from Adam’s bank account. He has a habit of leaving paper around, but there’s nothing – no statements anywhere.

      I open up the bank’s web page saved on his computer. Keying in what I know to be his default password, ‘BeautifulMeg’, the account opens before me. I make a note of the common standing orders and direct debits on a blank page, just so I’m fully up to speed with what goes out on normal expenses – insurances, cars, etc., etc. On another blank page, I note all the other sundry spends, including the restaurants he’s been visiting with his bimbo whore. Nearly five hundred pounds last month. Then I see it. A transaction for two hundred and ninety pounds in Agent Provocateur … I set my pen down on his desk and stare at it until the letters become jumbled.

      Images of Adam shagging a faceless