Lifesaving for Beginners

would work. Faith would just laugh and call me a cry-baby.
    I’ll have to think of something else.

 
    Minnie’s not two steps into the apartment when she says, ‘There’s a guy.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘He’s the financial controller of this company we’re working with at the moment.’
    ‘The company you’re taking over? In a hostile manner?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, he mustn’t be very good at his job.’
    ‘Not the point.’ Minnie’s in the living room now, looking at the couch. There’s a pizza box on it. Lines of cards; I’ve taken to Solitaire recently. Last Sunday’s papers. A pair of shoes. Minnie moves the pizza box to the table and sits down. She says, ‘I don’t know how you can live like this.’
    ‘It’s great. There’s virtually no cleaning up to be done.’
    She withers me with one of her looks. It’s a good one. I’m thinking about getting the Hoover out when she’s gone. The thought is slight. Remote. But it’s there, which is an improvement.
    Minnie says, ‘Anyway, the guy. He’s set to make a mint out of this transaction. Plus, he’s attractive. Divorced. No kids. Good head of hair.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I’m ringing him.’ She grabs her phone out of her bag.
    I think about grabbing it and running away but then dismiss the thought. There’s no point. Not with Minnie.
    She punches in a number. Lifts the phone to her ear. Says, ‘It’s ringing.’
    ‘Hang up. Right now.’
    ‘Dammit. Voicemail.’ She hangs up.
    I breathe out. ‘Do you want something to drink?’ and she gives me daggers so I say, ‘I meant tea. Or coffee. A cold drink?’
    ‘Coffee is giving me heartburn.’
    ‘Tea, then?’
    ‘It’s giving me the trots.’
    ‘I have Coke and 7UP.’
    ‘I can’t drink fizzy anymore. It’s giving me nightmares.’
    ‘How about some water.’
    ‘Sparkling or still?’
    ‘Whichever.’
    ‘Well, I can’t have sparkling because . . .’
    ‘Still, then.’ I beat a retreat into the kitchen.
    Minnie follows me. She says, ‘How’s the book coming along?’
    ‘Did Brona put you up to this?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘The book is coming along fine.’
    ‘Liar.’
    ‘Do you want ice in your water?’
    ‘Yes, and a sprig of mint.’ I love that about Minnie. That she thinks this is the type of apartment where one might chance upon a sprig of mint. Although one might, if Thomas still lived here. He had a little herb garden going on, out on the balcony, back in the day.
    I make myself tea and hand Minnie her water. I spill a packet of Jammie Dodgers onto a plate. We sit down.
    Minnie says, ‘It’s time, Kat.’
    ‘It’s not time.’
    ‘Yes it is. You can’t stay here, pretending to write a book, for the rest of your life.’
    ‘I’m not pretending. I’m busy, as it happens. Very busy. That’s why the place is a little . . . messy.’
    Minnie says, ‘A little messy? I’ve seen playrooms that are tidier than your apartment.’
    All her analogies involve kids now. In some form or another.
    Minnie says, ‘You need to start dating again.’
    ‘I hate dating.’
    ‘Not every man rates bog snorkelling as a date, you know.’
    That makes me smile. ‘We never went bog snorkelling, in the end.’
    ‘A lucky escape.’
    ‘I got sick. I couldn’t go.’
    ‘Proper sick? Or pretending sick?’
    ‘Proper sick.’
    ‘I can’t believe you were even thinking about going bog snorkelling.’
    That was the thing about Thomas. He made everything sound easy. Feasible. Even the idea of me squeezing my way into a smelly wetsuit and forcing myself down a hole in the ground in a bog in Athlone didn’t sound as crazy as it should. Not when Thomas said it.
    Minnie looks at her watch. ‘I have to go. I’m meeting Maurice in town. There’s some seminar on breastfeeding he wants us to go to. I said I didn’t think he had the tits for it, but there you go.’
    When Minnie’s gone, I sit on the space on the couch where the pizza box used to be. I’m not thinking about hoovering anymore. I’m thinking about that day. The bog snorkelling day.
    I didn’t even ring him to cancel. That’s how sick I was. It was only when he rang the buzzer that I remembered. I crawled out of bed and answered the phone. I said, ‘I can’t go bog snorkelling. I’m sick.’
    ‘Ah, you cray-thur. Let me up till I get a look at you.’ Thomas had a way of talking about me as if I was a heifer that he was thinking about buying at a mart.
    ‘I’m probably contagious.’
    ‘I haven’t been sick since