Paula Spencer by Roddy Doyle

Leanne.
    That's a lie. She didn't want a long day with Leanne. Especially the journey home. Jesus, Ma, you'd need a drink after all that walking around.
    She isn't going to Enniskillen. But Rita has promised to get her as much stuff as she wants.
    —We're being robbed down here, Paula. And I'll tell you another nice thing about up there. The girls in all the shops and cafes and that. They're Irish. It's great. They know what you're talking about.
    Those girls must be great if they know what Rita Kavanagh is talking about. Five minutes in the car with Rita would drive Paula fuckin' demented. She'd be writing on the car window with her mad one's pen. Let Me Out! But Rita's going to get her all the selection boxes.
    She puts lines through the grown-up nieces and nephews. It'd be mad getting them anything. Carmel and Denise won't be getting anything for her older ones. Just Jack. Maybe Leanne.
    She hates Christmas. She always has – or since she was a few years married and she realised she was poor and she was always going to be. She hadn't liked it much before then either. It always seemed a bit much for just one day. It was always a bit of a strain. She remembers going through the supermarket with a trolley full of six-packs and mixers and the rest. She couldn't make the trolley go straight. Jack was in the carrier part. She was afraid the whole thing was going to topple over. Leanne was pulling on the other side of it, asking for every biscuit and family pack they passed. And she actually – did she? – she smacked Leanne, until she let go of the trolley. She tried to smile through the whole thing, piling the stuff onto the conveyor. She threw a few bars of chocolate onto the pile, to make it look more normal, the expensive black chocolate kids don't even like, and Jack was trying to climb out and Leanne was snuffling and refusing to look at her. A chicken instead of a turkey and four bottles of vodka on the table. That was Christmas.
    There were good ones too. But they were always a surprise.
    Do Carmel and Denise know about Leanne?
    Carmel knows everything. Denise knows nothing. They're a strange pair.
    She told them about John Paul. It was hard to start but she doesn't think she was too embarrassed or ashamed. Heroin was so foreign. It had nothing to do with her. She'd thought that then. He'd walked into the house and he'd walked straight back out with the television. And that was how she'd started to tell Carmel and Denise. It was so mad. Her own son. He was only sixteen. She hadn't seen him in weeks. She opened the door, he pushed right past her. Don't say Hello or anything. She watched him walk down the path, down the street. She didn't follow. As for the telly, she couldn't have cared less. It was only later, when Jack wanted to watch his cartoons, she realised what a pain in the neck not having a telly was.
    —He's a heroin addict.
    They'd probably known already. A lot of families had one – more than one. It was like an alien invasion. Nothing to do with them, but coming up the path. Junkies even look a bit like aliens. Like someone made a human but left out something – blood, colouring, something vital. It was devastating but safe. An accident. Nothing to do with her.
    She looks at the coffee. She puts down the pink pen. She picks up the cup. She tastes the coffee. She hears the little voice inside her – this is me drinking a nice cup of coffee. She puts the cup down – this is me putting the cup down. She picks up the pink pen. She'll show it to Leanne when she gets home. Will you look what I bought today by accident.
    She hasn't spoken a real word to Leanne in weeks.
    Leanne hasn't spoken to her.
    She picks up the menu. She has to hold it quite close to her eyes. There's a bit in small print at the bottom that she can't read at all, about vegetarians. It's in that slanting italic print. Even looking at it – it seems to shimmer – it makes her feel a bit sick.
    The list.
    She feels something coming.