Yesterday's Weather by Anne Enright Page A

discovered her. Her features are sort of see-through, her skin is really pale and she has thin white-blonde hair. Which is why I say she should be a star, because the camera loves all that, close up. She hasn’t a single open pore. Though she needs to get her eyelashes dyed professionally. She did it herself once and all around her lids went pink, so she had to stop using anything for a while. Which made her look sort of blinky and peeved.
    When I say I am fat – even though, statistically speaking, I’m an eight and a quarter stone midget – my boyfriend says that I am not actually fat, I am just sleek. So that’s the new word for fat – ‘sleek’. But before I go completely self-hating, I do actually like my hair, which is black and really glossy, especially when it is, like, totally saturated with grease.
    Who else?
    Billy is a lot of trouble and I like him a lot. Hey, I like trouble. Or so I say to my boyfriend when he rolls his eyes up, the way he does. Billy has the kind of looks I used to go for a couple of years ago when I was about fifteen; soulful and soft, with absolutely no hair on his chest.
    Though when I say Billy is my boyfriend’s best friend, I don’t think my boyfriend has a best friend, actually. So maybe that’s the real question – Who knows what my boyfriend wants, or who he likes? Does he even like me? It’s a mystery.
    I am so in love with my boyfriend – at least I know that. He has eyes like George Clooney and beautiful hands. At least,the backs of them are beautiful; inside, they are a bit dry and shattered looking. I tried to get him to use some cream, but that’s like trying to put him in a tutu, as far as he is concerned. I literally had to chase him around the room, and he ended up pushing my hand with the cream on it all over my face, even though it is handcream and like lard, basically.
    My boyfriend has his own room and his parents gave him a gas heater to help him study in there, and I don’t know if it is the smell of the gas or the heat of it that made us feel so fuggy, all last winter. We did a lot of kissing in front of that heater – and yes, we have gone ‘all the way’; but that’s only when his parents are out, which, these days, is never. But I don’t mind. We kiss until we are dizzy, and my boyfriend is just so gorgeous and gentle about it. We tried to go further in the park but it was freezing and dark and I didn’t find it sexy at all; in fact, I think it made me a bit upset. (I am not saying I am leaving my boyfriend mad with lust, I am not that sort of person. And, actually, that’s all I am going to say about that).
    Our debs dance was on Friday evening, and I’m still getting flashbacks; it’s like a nightmare – that guy getting sick over my shoulder, and Billy’s mother flattened up against the sitting-room wall, and Natalie smiling like some kind of nun. But I am not even thinking about all this, as I lie there in the changing pink light. I am thinking, It is something else again .
    It all started with Billy’s Terrible Time last year, just a little while after he hooked up with Natalie. And we were all delighted he had her, because she is like a flame in the daylight – that’s what I think – unwavering, you can hardly see her, but she is always there. And after that mad bitch and, excuse me, cocktease ‘Peony’ Mulvey, we were really glad he had someone sane. Natalie is above all things sane.
    In the middle of the night I think, Maybe she’s not sane at all .
    Anyway.
    Billy’s mother (who I really like, actually) got cancer last year and she came home from her first chemo session high as a kite from the steroids and she told Billy – told them all, infact – that she didn’t love their father any more, had never loved him in the first place, and once her chemo was over then her marriage was too. It was like, ‘I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m not going to waste my life any more!!!’ At least, that’s how Billy described it. Then