Chapter 12
Annie could hear the clunk of the beer kegs landing on the road outside as the delivery driver dropped them from the back of the van and rolled them down the path at the end of the car park before dropping them with another clunk through the cellar door where she assumed Tadhg was there to catch them.
“No chance of any more of a lie in with that racket,” she thought to herself, well and truly awake now.
She checked her phone on the bedside locker for the time but it was dead, the red empty battery sign blinked at her as she tried the power button.
With a little bit of self-encouragement she hopped out of bed and tiptoed quickly to the other bedroom, still wearing Tadhg’s football jersey which was just about long enough to cover her bum.
“I hope Sadie doesn’t clean up here too,” Annie thought, scared of being caught.
Not that she was ashamed of anything, she had always considered herself a little too prudish about things like sex and nudity. She had been that way ever since she had been a young teenager, and even now that she was a little older she wasn’t any different. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed about the acts themselves, it was simply that she was embarrassed to talk about it. Or so she told herself, at least.
Grabbing the phone charger from the plug in the spare bedroom she quickly retraced her tiptoed steps back to Tadhg’s warm bed, keeping a close eye on the stairs in case Sadie appeared at the top of them.
“She’s probably still ill, actually,” Annie thought as she closed the door of the bedroom behind her.
She hopped back into the warm bed and plugged her phone in beside the bed.
Looking around the room Annie didn’t see anything give much away about Tadhg. There was a tidiness to everything that she hadn’t thought possible for a man like him. Masculine, burly men like Tadhg had always struck her as being slightly nonchalant about hygiene, cleanliness and tidiness but there wasn’t even a sock on the floor in this room.
He had left the wardrobe ajar when he had taken his shirt out and Annie could see all his neatly stored shirts and jackets, with all the hangers pointing in the same direction; just the way she liked. It was a hangover from her days working as a shop assistant in Next and Marks and Spencers.
Maybe Tadhg had worked in retail, she thought, though probably not. She imagined he had spent his evenings and weekends helping out his parents in the pub, between football training sessions with his friends.
There was an old blocked up fireplace in the room and on the mantel was a photograph of what she assumed must be his parents. It looked like it was a birthday, or maybe a wedding anniversary. The man had his arm around the shoulders of the woman. He stared directly into the camera, with a huge smile like Tadhg’s. The woman was smiling too, but not at the camera; she was smiling lovingly at her husband.
It made Annie happy and sad all at once.
The style of his Mum’s dress and her hair suggested it was taken a good few years ago. Tadhg had mentioned his Dad had died but he hadn’t mentioned his Mum. Annie assumed she had died too but didn’t feel like she could bring it up just yet.
Aside from that, there wasn’t much else in the room, except for a print of a painting of two fishing boats at sea that hung above the fireplace.
Annie’s phone buzzed into life. She was growing used to ignoring it completely.
No one she wanted to speak to ever called or texted. Her close friends were too busy planning marriages or having babies and she didn’t mind that they didn’t have time to keep in touch all the time. After all, Annie found it hard enough to look after herself, she couldn’t imagine how hard it was for her friends who had to look after a mini-version of themselves as well. Or four mini-versions like her friend Sharon.
Annie didn’t have time for social media either. She had long discovered that Facebook and Instagram were only for two kinds of people, that was her opinion at least.
The first group were the people who wanted to pretend they had the perfect lives. The kind of people who posted photographs of all the presents they had bought their children for Christmas with captions like ‘Santa has been good this year’, just to show off the fact they have money coming out of their ears.
The other group Annie had decided was the moaners of life; the people who only used social media when something was bad. She had given up unfollowing the people who posted to Tesco’s Facebook page because one of the bananas they had bought had gone off, or because they had been overcharged by 5p for a plastic bag they hadn’t used.
‘Maybe I should bin my phone completely?’ she thought to herself, ‘I could live here with Tadhg and help in the pub and no one would ever know just how happy I was.’
Unable to resist the urge, she checked her phone anyway. That was the problem; no matter how much she hated the technology she was always drawn back to it.
‘12 missed calls,’ the screen read, ‘7 calls from unknown, 5 calls from Mum.’
‘Give me a break,’ Annie thought to herself, ‘when will she ever give up?’
There were no text messages which was odd. When she usually tried to get a hold of Annie like this she would drop her a text message to tell her why it was so important that she answered the call. It was never important, not in Annie’s mind anyway.
Annie had a dilemma. Did she ignore the calls and enjoy moment she was in; feeling cared for, safe and warm in Tadhg’s bed, or did she return the calls and snap out of the dream she was in?
‘Well she’s ruined it already,’ Annie thought exasperatedly, ‘she’s already got me thinking about her.’
Annie unhooked her phone from the charger and pressed ‘call back’ next to the 5 missed calls. At least if her mum droned on for too long she could legitimately tell her that she only had 3% battery and her phone was about to die.
There was one ring before her mother answered.
“Why have you been ignoring me?!’ - The immediate stern shot from her mum’s corse voice; 20 cigarettes a day since she was 14 years old had left her with a distinctive growl that had been the fear of anyone who had crossed her path for as long as Annie could remember.
Their postman had started off a nickname for her many years ago after she had one of her famous tantrums at him. He began calling her ‘Scary Sue’ behind her back. The name caught on and before long the entire neighbourhood had picked up on ‘Scary Sue’. That was all anyone ever called her now, but never to her face.
‘I haven’t been ignoring you,’ Annie replied, calmly, ‘my phone has been off.’
‘Did you turn it off to ignore me?’ Sue shot back.
‘No, I’m travelling Mum, I haven’t always got access to somewhere to charge it,’ Annie lied, ‘I’m camping at the moment, so I’ve only just charged it in a Starbucks when I was getting a coffee.’
‘They have Starbucks over there?’ Sue asked, easing up a little.
‘They do, it’s not Timbuktu, Mum’ Annie laughed.
“Oh I didn’t know that,” she replied, finally calm.
‘So, what’s all these missed calls about?’ Annie asked, getting to the point so she could get off the phone as quickly as possible, now that she was sure her Mum wasn’t dead.
‘I’ve been talking to Greg, yesterday in the newsagents…’ she started.
‘Oh Mum, don’t start this,’ Annie cut her off.
‘I need to tell you…’
‘No, not again. I don’t want to hear you mention his name again,’ Annie replied wearily.
‘Now listen here, he’s dumped that floozy he ran off with, he’s realised the error of his ways and he want’s you back,’ Sue said firmly, “he wants you back, Annie-bells.”
There was silence. Annie let the silence hang over the call. For once in her life Sue was silent too.
‘I don’t want him back,’ Annie said finally.
‘He’s changed, I could tell. He was practically in tears when he seen me. Just talk to him,’ Sue pleaded.
‘I really don’t think…’ Annie started before being cut off by a loud beep.
Her phone had died.
‘Great. Now she’ll think I hung up on her to go with everything else,’ Annie thought, ‘and my lovely morning is completely ruined.’
She shoved the charger lead back into the phone. She needed a shower to wash the renewed memory of Greg away.
“Just when everything had been going so well,” Annie thought to herself, suddenly feeling very alone.