Remind Me Again Why I Need a Man by Claudia Carroll

to the chase. ‘Suppose we had just heard something really, really awful and we didn’t know how to tell you?’ she says to me, genuinely concerned.
    â€˜We
have
to tell her. We wouldn’t be proper friends otherwise,’ Rachel snaps.
    â€˜WHAT? Tell me
what
?’
    â€˜OK,’ says Caroline. ‘When we were in the loo, I met my neighbour Sarah Daly …’
    â€˜Yes? And?’
    â€˜And you know how her sister is going out with Peter Hughes?’
    â€˜Well, no, but I do now.’
    â€˜And you know how his brother plays rugby with Greg?’
    â€˜Please, just tell me whatever it was you heard, the suspense is wrecking my head.’ I’ve got a nervous knot in my stomach and I don’t know why. I’m also finding it really hard to keep the impatience out of my voice.
    â€˜OK,’ says Rachel, taking up the baton. ‘Well, Sarah was playing Trivial Pursuit the other night with the sister and Peter and a gang of his mates and one of them is on the Leinster team with Greg—’
    â€˜No, you’re telling it wrong,’ Caroline interrupts. ‘Peter’s brother Seamus is the one who’s on the team with Greg. Remember? The guy who failed the Leaving Cert three times in a row? Oh, you know who I mean; high eyebrows, low IQ.’
    I know they’re both trying to be helpful and that they mean well, but by now I’m fit to be tied. ‘Girls, it doesn’t matter if Peter’s brother plays in a fly-half position with Ronald Reagan, what did you hear about my boyfriend?’
    They look at each other shiftily.
    â€˜He’s going out with Sandra Sweetman,’ Rachel eventually says. ‘For definite.’
    â€˜
WHAT?!
’ Try as I might, I can’t stop the tears from welling. I feel like I’ve just been punched.
    â€˜Hang on, hang on,’ says Jamie, taking my corner. ‘So you heard this from your neighbour’s sister’s boyfriend’s friend?’
    â€˜Ehh, yeah,’ says Caroline.
    â€˜Oh well, that’s practically CNN,’ he says sarcastically.
    â€˜It can’t be true,’ I sob into my Ritz, ‘Greg said he loved me.’
    â€˜What?’ says Rachel. ‘When?’
    â€˜The night of his debs in the back of his car.’
    â€˜He really said that?’
    â€˜Well, I told him I loved him and asked if he felt the same and he didn’t deny it. But then he did go back inside and spent the rest of the night chatting her up.’
    David Bowie is on stage now, singing ‘Modern Love’.
    â€˜And this was our song,’ I bawl, like a five-year-old.
    The others have all put comforting arms around me and then the single worst moment of my seventeen-year-old life unfolds. I spot Greg. With Sandra Sweetman. The bar is packed and smoky, but it’s definitely them. As if to confirm their couple status, he’s wearing his
Miami Vice
pants and she’s wearing the matching white jacket over her ra-ra skirt. She looks allblonde and tiny and is snuggled into him possessively as loads of her bloody student union pals at the bar call them over, offering to buy them drinks.
    All I want to do is crawl under the table and pray really hard for an aneurism or a heart attack or any medical emergency that’ll get me out of this, when Rachel takes over.
    Looking like the Amazonian giant that she is, even scarier than one of those girls in the Robert Palmer ‘Addicted to Love’ video, she picks up her pint of Fürstenberg and strides over to them.
    Greg blanches a bit under his designer stubble as he sees her thunder towards him at her most intimidating. Even over the noise and David Bowie and all the screaming fans in Wembley, I can still hear her loud and clear.
    â€˜Amelia is too sweet a person ever to say this to your face,’ she snarls down at him as the packed bar is eerily silenced, ‘so I’ll do it for her. You are a lying, cheating