Offcomer Read Free Page A

the stairs from the bathroom, or in the kitchen at weekends when he made the morning coffee. His neat body in Grainne’s green towelling dressing-gown, his specs upstairs on her bedside table. His hair sticking up in odd tufts, the warm skin of his throat. Claire slipping anxiously from Grainne’s spare room, parched and headachy from another night’s insomnia, guiltily conscious of the memory of listening last night to what she should have tried to ignore.
    Paul ran a finger over his collarbone. He looked up, saw Claire, smiled. “How you doing?”
    “Fine.” She wound the teacloth round her hand, unwound it. “Is Grainne coming out later?”
    “She’s gone home for the weekend. You’ll have the place to yourself.”
    “Oh.”
    That meant an empty house all day Saturday, all day Sunday. An empty house tonight when she got in. Not even the dubious comfort of a stranger passed out in the front room. Anyone who needed a bed for the night seemed to end up on Grainne’s sofa. Friends of friends, little brothers, anyone who got stuck without the cab fare home. Claire kept stumbling in on them after work, switching on the light to find the room a stinking haze of smoke and alcohol and sweat and dirty carpet, and an unconscious drooling body lying on the couch. Grainne picked up strays like other people picked up colds.
    Paul was still looking at her. She could feel him looking ather. Was her make-up smudged, could he see up her nose? She held a hand up to her face, touched her upper lip which felt damp. “Dermot, if it’s no bother,” she said, “would you tell Gareth, when he gets back, if you see him, will you tell him there’s some guys in the front bar—” She felt the sentence bloat and twist and fall out of shape, but lumbered on, blushing. “It’s no big deal, I mean, they were just being a bit—you know—”
    “What?” Dermot said.
    “Just, well, just blokes in the snug, a bit drunk, a bit hassly. I don’t know, a stag party or tourists or something. No big deal.”
    “What happened?” Paul asked.
    “Nothing, really. Nothing.” She paused, glanced at him, embarrassed. “Just thought Gareth ought to know. Just in case.”
    “Should I get Dave?”
    “No. Really, it’s no big deal. It’s just it’s early days yet. There’ll be a lot more drink drunk before the night’s out.”
    “Aye, well,” Paul said, drawing himself up, puffing out his chest. “If you get any more trouble from them, you let me know.”
    “Right,” she said. She smiled at him.
    Music so loud that you had to shout to make yourself heard, shout louder to be heard over the shouting. The late custom swarming in. Young women in tight man-made fibres and unstable shoes, suntanned flesh and glossy hair. Claire, collecting glasses, rubbed a grubby hand through her own crop, thought she shouldn’t have cut it, realised it didn’t matter. Asshe slid between the close-packed bodies, drifted from table to table, lifted greasy empties and stacked them one inside the other in a Lego-like tower, leaning up her chest and against her shoulder, she knew that she was invisible. It was as if the glasses gathered themselves. She was more transparent than they were, only noticed when she lifted a glass with a breath of drink still in it, and the owner protested and clutched at it as it floated away.
    In the bottom bar, with its dark wood and its drink-tanned regulars, the spaces had been filled up by the younger crowd. Tommy still silent at the counter, Joyce and her husband’s still stares still parallel, the other tables full of the chattering slabbering blethering night-crowd, glad of a seat and the chance to talk over each other without straining their voices. One hand clutching the stacked glasses, the other reaching out for empties, Claire slid between the tables, slotting each glass into the one before. The barstaff were supposed to clear the bar, but she reached out to pick a glass, in passing, off the counter, and her hand