Be Careful What You Wish For. Martina Devlin

carrier. ‘This deceptively humble container is a receptacle for milk, cinnamon bagels and Sunday newspapers.’

      ‘Magnificent. If you remembered to buy proper coffee I could plunge us some. No? Never mind, saves me from overdosing and turning all jittery and thinking I need a cigarette, and if I could get through last night without buying, borrowing or mugging for them, I can get through the morning after.’

      ‘So you saw some of the morning?’ Helen was surprised.

      ‘Negative. Technically I saw nothing of the morning, unless you count last night. But “the afternoon after the night before” doesn’t have the same ring to it. Do the bagels have raisins?’

      ‘Naturally, Molloy.’

      Molly recoiled. ‘Helen, I’ve begged you from the first day I met you never to use that name. It’s meant to be a secret.’

      ‘How can the fact that your name is Molly Molloy be a secret when it’s splashed over the Chronicle on a daily basis?’

      ‘I don’t have a byline on a daily basis, only when I write a story – sometimes I only do a crossword puzzle and make personal calls. Anyway, when I’m not working I like to forget the tasteless joke of a name my parents saddled me with.’

      ‘So you’ve changed it by deed poll, excised it from your passport, driver’s licence, credit cards, electoral register …’ Helen periodically trotted out the list to torment Molly.

      Molly affected deafness, rustling through the carrier for bagels, which she jammed into the toaster – complaining when the raisins plopped out and joined charred bread crumbs on the floor of the gadget.

      ‘Library cards, bank account, P60, health club membership …’ Helen continued inexorably.

      ‘You know I promised my mother I’d never change the name – it was Granny’s.’ Molly passed a couple of used mugs under running water, her concession to clean china. ‘My only hope is to marry someone with a more acceptable name – let’s face it anything else would do – and, hey presto, no more Molly Molloy. I could be Molly Dunphy or Molly McGinty or Molly Popadopolis.’

      ‘Don’t tell me that’s Hercules’ surname.’

      ‘Haven’t a notion. But it’s bound to be something that defies spelling and pronunciation. And, you know what, it still has to be better than Molloy.’

      ‘Only when it’s teamed with Molly,’ Helen objected. ‘Although Malone wouldn’t be an ideal partnership with Molly either. You’d never hear the end of that cockles and mussels song.’

      Molly crunched on a bagel, spurting butter onto the worktop. ‘I never hear the end of that as it is. Even last night’s South Africans knew the words.’ She wiped her fingers on her tracksuit bottoms – ‘They’re for the wash anyway’ – and added: ‘Greeks have a sweet tooth. Everything is drenched in sugar and deep-fried; I saw the tail end of a programme about Greek cuisine on the television while I was waiting for the Fair City omnibus. They eat honey balls and baklava and all sorts of cavity fodder.’

      Helen struggled to follow Molly’s thought process. ‘So you’ve gone off him now because that svelte body is a blob waiting to erupt?’

      ‘Absolutely not.’ Molly was outraged. ‘What sort of a flibbertigibbet do you take me for? Don’t answer that. No, I just thought it showed a human side. The next time I go to the offie I can look at Hercules, lounging there all remote and disdainful, and imagine him with honey dribbling down his chin.’

      ‘Dangerous,’ cautioned Helen. ‘You’ll find yourself wanting to lick if off him.’

      Molly quivered, mimicking libidinous excess, and Helen set aside the Sunday Tribune headlines she was scanning. ‘Tell me what else you learned about Greeks before you bring the ceiling crashing down on top of us.’

      Molly sipped coffee and consulted a mental inventory. ‘The men are philosophical and like to discuss Socrates. That reminds me, I meant to look him up, check out his spin on life: the distillation of Socrates’ wit and wisdom in three sentences or less. Back in a second; I have to dig out the reference book.’

      Despite the chaos Molly lived in she always knew where to lay her hands on a book. She returned and read: ‘“The celebrated Greek philosopher, died 399 BC, whose method of teaching was to ask his interlocutors simple questions, thereby exposing their ignorance.”’ She frowned. ‘That’s all very well but I need a bit more to dig my teeth into, did he sodomise boys, commit suicide, live in a barrel – no, that was Diogenes, now he was a dude. Alexander the Great offered him anything he wanted and he simply asked him to stop blocking his sunshine.’ She tapped her teeth. ‘What did Socrates believe in? Was life a vale of tears or is that Catholicism intercepting my brainwaves? Was he all for carpe diem or did he believe suffering maketh the man?’

      ‘Check him out on the Internet at work. Now that the bagels are eaten shall we go to Blackrock market?’ Helen required continuous distraction. Patrick’s face kept superimposing itself on Molly’s.

      Molly’s voice spoke from Patrick’s mouth. ‘All the stalls will be shutting up by now. Besides, I’ve no money.’

      ‘Then don’t buy anything.’

      ‘Get thee behind me, Satan,’ shuddered Molly. ‘That’s always the time you see hordes of possessions you can’t live without. And apart from anything else –’ she cast a critical eye around her cluttered flat – ‘I need more chattels like I need liposuction. Correction, I do need liposuction, but that’s another story. So that’ll be enough temptation out of you, oh possessor of the face that launched a thousand guilt trips.’

      ‘I thought you prided yourself on being perennially temptable.’

      ‘No, it’s becoming too predictable. People don’t see me as a challenge any more. All the others in the office are coaxed when someone wants to drag them off to the pub or out to Bewley’s for a cherry bun but they just assume I’m game, my coat is reached to me and off we head.’

      ‘Will we take a walk, then?’ suggested Helen. ‘It can trickle past the off-licence if you like. You can check if the Geek is practising his profile angles?’

      ‘Don’t you mean the Greek?’

      ‘Whatever. Anyway, I want a look at him. I have a theory he might be squinty-eyed if he keeps presenting his side view to customers. Doing a Padraig Pearse?’

      Outrage emanated from Molly.

      ‘Sharkey, I’m sorely inclined to frogmarch you straight to the shop so you can see for yourself how unsquinty his eyes are, how clear and intelligent and sensitive those compelling orbs are, but I look like a bag lady and my hair’s a haystack. I can’t go spoiling last night’s lissom impression. Anyway, I suppose I should take a look at the Sundays in case any of the stories have legs and I have to follow up the follow-ups in tomorrow’s papers.’

      She deposited her chin in her palms and started speed reading. Never was there a reporter less interested in news on her days off than Molly. Colleagues took trips to the jungle and still managed to devour papers; Molly couldn’t so much as bring herself to turn on the TV headlines on a day off. It smacked of work.

      Silence punctuated by rustling lasted half an hour while Molly digested the main stories and Helen read about how to achieve the minimalist style in your home. Interior decorator’s suggestion: be ruthless. Helen’s conclusion: be patient and the post-minimalist look, otherwise known as how real people lived, would be back in vogue. At least she kept her clutter tidy. She glanced around Molly’s squalid kitchen and shuddered.

      Molly slammed down the last of the newspapers. ‘What about those rugged ruggers? We had a laugh with them. Why did we dump them again?’

      Helen, who could restrain herself no longer, was binning some flowers so deceased they were virtually desiccated as they sagged from a Mexican pottery vase on Molly’s