At a Time Like This

Catherine Dunne

PAN BOOKS

T
O
J
ACKIE
A
KERELE

With love

CONTENTS

Prologue

1.
Claire

2.
Georgie

3.
Maggie

4.
Georgie

5.
Nora

6.
Georgie

7.
Claire

8.
Georgie

9.
Claire

10.
Maggie

Epilogue

Prologue

So. This is how it happened.

It’s Friday morning, five o’clock. I’m standing in the porch, suitcase at my feet. Cold air radiates from the glass doors and crawls beneath my clothes, but I
haven’t time to go back inside and get a coat. I can already see the taxi as it swings around the corner and then slows, almost at once. I watch its measured approach, see it climb the ramp
and then descend, headlights glaring up and down like semaphore.

I step outside at once. I decide to carry the Samsonite: its wheels make too much noise on gravel this early in the morning. By the time I reach the gate, the driver has already leapt out and
has the boot open.

‘Mornin’,’ he says, reaching for my case. ‘That all the luggage?’

I nod. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That’s all there is.’

He heaves it into the boot and slams the lid shut. I don’t wait for him to open the passenger door for me. Quickly, I slide into the back seat, tugging at the seatbelt until it releases.
When I glance out of the window, I catch sight of Raffles, picking his way across the frosty grass. Each delicate paw is placed only after great deliberation. Raffles doesn’t trust the cold.
For a moment, I imagine I can hear the tinkling of the bell that hangs from his collar, but of course that’s nonsense. Carla’s ‘bird-warner’. I look away.

‘Airport, ’nt tha’ righ’?’ the driver looks at me in the rear-view mirror. He’s in his fifties, balding. Crankiness clings to him like a wet vest.

‘That’s right,’ I say.

The interior of the taxi smells of pine air-freshener, sad upholstery and stale perspiration. The driver turns up the radio to listen to the weather forecast: ‘ . . . And little change
expected for the capital city this morning. Rain and sleet until early afternoon, temperatures reaching a high of three degrees celsius. Driving conditions treacherous . . .’ I can see that
the sky is now a dirty orange, the Atlantic cold front already stomping its way towards us across the midlands.

‘Fuckin’ city,’ the taxi driver says, trying to catch my eye.

I can see his expression reflected, hear his eagerness for conversation. I peer instead into my handbag, busy, distracted, in search of something urgent.

‘It’ll be gridlocked now, within the hour.’ He keeps talking anyway, his tone one of satisfied disgruntlement. He shifts in his seat and runs one hand through what’s left
of his hair. Then he turns up the heat, blasting the foggy residue on the inside of the windscreen. Wipers scream suddenly across the outside of the glass. My stomach shifts towards nausea.

‘Dunno why people in this country can’t drive in the rain,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘We get enough of the fuckin’ stuff He turns left then, on to the main road,
and swerves immediately into the outer lane. Horns blare behind us and beside us, a cacophony of early dawn road-rage. ‘See what I mean?’

I don’t answer. I don’t want to be a memorable passenger, one too easily distinguished from all the others he’ll meet today. As it is, I am his first fare and that is bad
enough. I keep my mouth shut.

‘Goin’ anywhere nice?’ he asks, after a polite interval.

I lower my head. ‘Funeral,’ I say.

Ah, sorry, missus.’

And that’s that.

I shall not miss Dublin. Of that, I am certain. But there are some things I
will miss,
some people. Maggie, for example. Well, perhaps my other friends, too, but Maggie most of all. She
and I go back the farthest. I won’t be with her this evening, won’t be there to share in the festivities. Nevertheless, I can still predict how it’ll all go. It’s
Claire’s turn to be the hostess. At about eight o’clock, she will take the first bottle of Prosecco out of the fridge. She’ll stand it in the functional but elegant ice bucket
that she once brought back from Copenhagen. She’ll drape a white linen napkin about its neck. All her movements will be graceful, unhurried. Then she’ll probably enlist Maggie’s
help to check the four place settings, making minute changes to the position of the cutlery, or the wine glasses, or the angle of the flower arrangements: just as I’ve seen her do on
countless occasions over the past twenty-five years. A special night, a night of celebration, she’d said, one to mark all our years of friendship.
A silver anniversary of girlhood.
Even then, the phrase had made me wince.

‘You’re all excited by the idea, aren’t you?’ I asked her, on the evening she handed each of us an embossed envelope. Style was a matter of honour with Claire. The
invitations were on handmade paper, the black letters glossy as Chinese lacquer. Her smile was broad, her eyes sparkled with mischief. But some instinct drove me to burst her bubble. ‘Do the
four of us really need to be reminded about how old we’re getting?’

Maggie shot me a warning glance then. One of those that I’ve become accustomed to over the years. But I had no intention of taking back what I had just said. I had no intention of
softening it, either. Maggie knew when to give up. She’d learned way back how to recognize when such efforts were useless.

Claire’s colour heightened at my jibe, and she tilted her head to one side. I thought she looked at me a little coyly. ‘Don’t be mean, Georgie,’ she murmured, and changed
the subject.

I suppose it was mean of me, but by that stage I’d already withdrawn in all the ways that counted from my friends, my family, and the way they lived their lives. From the way we’d
all
lived our lives. Twenty-five years is a long time: long enough for some things to change and too long for so much else to stay the same. I’ve been thinking a lot, particularly over
the last few weeks, about what friendship is and what it means to me now, what it has meant to me over the years. I can still remember the night we made our pact: a bit like the three musketeers,
but there were four of us. One Four All. All Four One. Our motto, until things fragmented. Well, nothing lasts for ever.

It happened shortly after the birth of Nora’s eldest son, Robbie. Maggie and I were sitting together on the overstuffed, buttoned leather sofa. Nora was upright in the armchair, holding
court. Claire was in her favourite place, on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees. Her red hair was backlit to perfection by the faux-Tiffany lamp on the nest of tables behind her. She
looked glorious, like one of Titian’s saints about to be assumed into somewhere a lot more interesting than Nora’s suburban living room.

‘Why don’t we make a pact?’ Nora was saying, nursing her one glass of wine of the evening.

‘What sort of pact?’ Claire asked drowsily, tipping her head sideways to see Nora better. The glow from behind sharpened her cheekbones, made her eyes luminous. Maggie nudged me
then. She made the faintest of gestures in Claire’s direction.

‘Wouldn’t that make you sick?’ she whispered. I grinned. I knew exactly what she meant.

Nora kept on talking. ‘Why don’t we arrange to meet every month to six weeks or so – I mean a real arrangement, a date we put in our diaries? Then we’ll make sure it
happens and that way, we won’t lose touch.’ She gave each of us in turn one of her brightest smiles. None of us spoke.

‘I’ll cook for us here,’ she went on, and I felt how her eagerness was almost a fifth person in the room. ‘You’re all still students, and you don’t have the
space. It’s so much easier for me.’

‘Oh, but that wouldn’t be fair,’ objected Maggie. At the same time, her leg jerked and the tip of her shoe glanced off the wine glass I’d set on the floor beside me.
Dear, clumsy Maggie with her two left feet. I watched as the red stain spread out in slow motion across the beige carpet, acquiring the contours of a rather tipsy Australia.

‘Oh, shite, shite, shite – sorry, Nora. Here, let me mop it up.’ Maggie was struggling to free herself from the sinking embrace of the sofa. But by then, Nora was gone, racing
for the kitchen.

‘Oh God, oh God,’ Maggie muttered, shaking her head. ‘Why does it always have to be me?’

Nora was by now on her knees, the kitchen roll in one hand, the drum of Saxa salt in the other, holding them like six-guns. She was more tight-lipped than usual. Maggie continued to grovel until
I nudged her to stop. Enough, already.

Dab, dab, sprinkle. Dab, dab, sprinkle. Claire looked on, fascinated. The soggy paper towels gathered on the sheets of newspaper and looked like the aftermath of a massacre.

‘Oh, but I don’t mind cooking,’ Nora said. She ran her hand over the pile of salt, pressing it still further into the carpet. We all watched as the wine began to bleed into it,
lifting the stain from the beige surface as if by magic. ‘I love entertaining. And with a new baby, well, I can’t get out much. You’d be doing me a favour. I mean it.’ And
she looked Maggie right in the eye.

Game, set and match, I thought. I may have been only nineteen, but nevertheless, I recognized Nora’s skill. I couldn’t help but admire it. Kind-hearted Maggie was caught in that
dangerous net of hospitality: she knew that resistance was futile. Any further struggle would pull the filaments tighter, enmeshing her all the more. So she just nodded, looking from Nora to me for
confirmation. ‘Oh, well, in that case, then, yeah – yeah, that would be really great. It would be lovely to meet here.’

‘I think it’s a wonderful idea,’ Claire interjected, softly. I don’t know which of them glowed more at that – Nora or Claire.

‘So it’s settled then,’ said Nora, as she knelt beside Australia. She couldn’t hide her delight. ‘I’ll get the calendar.’

And so it came to pass. A quarter century of monthly meetings. Occasionally, one or other of us had to cry off. I never felt as though I was missing out on anything spectacular. But I have to
say that each of us was afraid that those present would speak of many things, including the absent one. And for that reason, if for no other, nobody ever wanted to be the absent one.

I take out my purse as the taxi pulls up outside the departures terminal at Dublin airport. I glance at the meter and hand the driver twenty euro. He starts to scrabble for my one euro eighty
cent change.

‘That’s fine,’ I say, and open the rear door. He pops open the boot and is by my side in an instant.

‘Thanks very much, missus,’ he says, placing my luggage on the ground, snapping the handle upwards and into place for me. ‘I hope your day isn’t too sad.’

I look at him in surprise. What on earth can he mean? Then I stifle a smile with difficulty. ‘Thank you,’ I murmur, taking hold of the proffered handle. I settle the strap of my bag
more comfortably on my shoulder. ‘Thank you very much.’

He nods and slams the boot closed. ‘No problem,’ he says, and I walk away. All at once, I see myself through his eyes and experience a sudden surge, a rush of pure elation. If only
he knew.

I approach the check-in desk. There is no queue. I hand my passport and ticket to the smiling young woman who asks me all the usual questions about sharp objects, bombs, dangerous weapons.

‘Is Frankfurt your final destination?’ she asks.

I shake my head. ‘Florence,’ I say.

‘Would you like me to send your bag straight through?’

‘No, thank you.’ I realize my tone is firmer than I intended. In the recent past I’ve had far too much experience of lost baggage. ‘I’ll collect it in Frankfurt,
just in case. I’ve lots of time between flights.’ I don’t want to arrive to where I’m going unprepared. Not on this occasion. I don’t want to be caught without all the
things that make a woman’s life civilized.