Basorexia - J.MAGUIRE

[3.51] plumber

Ciara, after a rather awful session with Rosa, walked into Erin's bedroom and dropped her overnight bag to the floor just as Michelle exploded, "How many times do I have to fucking explain it?" Given the time, and the assumption that they had been at the dancing since returning home from school, she thought that they must have been at it for a long while. Her theory was proven by the layers of smoke hanging in the air, from Michelle's stress cigarette habit.

"Christ you still at this shit?" she asked with a laugh, walking to the nearest window which she quickly opened. It felt hard to even get a breath in the room, given the heat and constant overwhelming smell of smoke.

Michelle scowled, pointing a finger at her, "Don't with me Chip!" Ciara simply laughed as she walked through the row of people, her fingers brushing against James' as she went and sat on the bed - as to not be in the way. "It's two steps forward, two steps back. It couldn't be any fucking simpler. What the fuck is wrong with you all?" Chelle yelled, her hands conveying all the aggravation that was not clearly plastered on her face.

Chip, from then on, tuned the majority of their conversation out. She had taken out a book which she hadn't yet started from her bag and found herself instantly falling into the story, enveloping herself into the world on the pages before her. James, on the odd occasion he glanced back at her during the dance, smiled firefly at the title of the book - noticing it had been one that he had bought her and worried deeply whether she would like it or not.

"Piss off James!" the group collectively yelled, the sheer volume of their collected voices stunning her out of any sort of day dream to do with the book she had gotten a significant chunk into. As she looked up, Clare re-entered the room and immediately hammered against the door to catch the attention of the others. Frowns dispelled amongst the group as Clare began her usual charades like communication, which was about the least effective way of getting her point across. Guesses flew around the room, all of which were incorrect and only spun them all into further confusion.

"The plumber was trying to get off with Erin's Ma!" Clare exclaimed suddenly and completely without warning. Then, her previous desperate expression, contorted into one of guilt due to the fact she had broken her previous vow of silence. "I saw them together in the hall. He was whispering things to her, you know, suggestive things."

"My ma? What is he, some sort of reverse paedophile?"

"I bet Mary told him where to go," Chelle responded quickly and with hope hidden amongst her usual carefree tone.

Clare frowned, "Not exactly."

-

Later in the evening, Ciara sat on the sofa in Erin's living room whilst the others were all being served tea by Orla's Ma. She had her head in her book once again, unable to put it down during the time in which she wasn't talking to her friends. She was rather glad that she had already eaten with her Ma, as per her meal plan, because the others had some rather interesting looking chicken on their plates. She would not have gone within two metres of those plates, let alone actually ate something from them. Distantly, over the sound of her own mind concocting the tale pressed on the pages before her, Chip could hear Erin's Ma talking and she could rather easily feel the awkward tension that fluttered through the entire room. It only ceased for a moment when the front door slammed shut, the house falling into silence.

After dinner, where pretty much not a scrap was eaten in fear for their own lives, the group crowded in the hallway. "Do you think your Ma's getting plumbed by the plumber?" Chelle half whispered hurriedly the second that Chip shut the door to the living room behind her.

"Well I never trusted her, not since the day I met her."

"She's your auntie, Orla. The day you met her you were a newborn baby," Erin exasperated, vexation running riot through her mind so much so that she could not pinpoint the exact place it stemmed from and why.

"Exactly," Orla nodded as if the fact that she had disliked someone while literally fresh out of the womb was not completely implausible.

"He wrote something," Clare muttered, having replayed the sight over and over in her head to search for secret clues that could put Erin's mind at ease.clare. "There was a note. She put it on the shelf."

Erin turned and routed through the shelf by the phone. She pulled out a folded up and seemingly discarded piece of paper, then unfolded it. She gasped, "It's an address."

"Do you think your Ma's meeting him there? Do you think that's where they're going to do the deed? By do the deed I mean ride."

James, who she was pointing to and was supposed to receive the calcification, rolled his eyes. "Yes, thank you, Michelle."

"That's halfway up Pump street," Clare observed after reading the note herself.

Michelle turned to Ciara just as she stuffed her hands into her jacket's pockets. "Chip, you drive here?"

She smiled and pulled her keys from a completely different pocket in her jacket, this one inside the jacket itself. "Aye."

-

"Slow down!" James exclaimed as Chip turned a corner just a little too quickly, the car wheels skidding on the wet road.

Chip shrugged as she checked her middle mirror, both checking on the road and Erin. "Why? I'm not speeding and do you not want to get there quick enough to figure out what's going on?"

"Chip," Erin interrupted what would have been James' concerned reply. "Put your foot down."

Ciara, only following instructions, pressed her foot down and went just above the speed limit where it was safe and there was no one around that could catch her and take away her licence. It wasn't that unsafe really and it got them there a lot quicker. As she pulled up the car outside the house, the group all watched as Ma Mary laughed and closed the blinds with the plumber - each holding a bottle of wine. It didn't exactly paint the picture of innocence in the slightest. And Erin took it as much, the light behind her eyes withered.

"Ice cream anyone?" she suggested softly, knowing it was Erin's comfort food that she would definitely need. Erin slowly nodded, her mind completely and utterly elsewhere.