We are in Bennett's, the best pub in Portadown, my two friends and I. The older of the pair is sipping a watermelon alcopop, which is actually the colour not of watermelon but of deep-pink candyfloss. The younger one - blond and baby faced with aquamarine eyes - is having a soft drink. We chat. The talk turns to boys
Baby Face is sick of them. Sick to death. They tell you how much they like you, then they text for a while, then . . . And then what, I ask. Nothing. Nada. Rien. Why, she wonders, do they make out they like you if they don't? And the latest one, well, they'd gone out to the cinema, and he seemed right enough, and keen and all the rest, but do you think he texted her again? No. And what is that all about? We move on.
Watermelon's on-again, off-again relationship has been rocky, to say the least. He is a man with issues. Abandonment ones. Self-esteem ones. But it's been going fine lately - if you don't count last weekend, when it all went a bit crazy, as it tends to now and again. Baby Face rolls her lovely eyes at the memory. He's fine without the drink, but with a few on him, well, he turns into a bit of a monster, imagining things and getting paranoid. He kicked them out of his house during a party, accusing Watermelon of talking to another boy. She's been half-living at his house lately. She thought it might be wise, after this incident, to pick up her stuff and the stuff of her gorgeous son - not his son - from his house, but he soon calmed down again, and she liked to imagine the dark clouds had passed.
They are all heading out tonight together. And he's fine about it, she says, as though it were normal to have to worry about whether your boyfriend would approve of your going out. Sick of the man thing as she is, Baby Face is not about to stay in on a Saturday night, because what good is sitting alone in your room? Anyway, it's the weekend, and the very least that will happen is that she will get a good dance in.
I tell her about my single friend in Dublin who has just met this wonderful guy who, wouldn't you know it, has just got a job in France for a year and leaves today on a jet plane. They are going to see if the long-distance thing works, but, really, does it ever? Typical, says Baby Face. Just typical.
We all drive to Tesco, and I buy my boyfriend an outfit for £13 - jeans and a T-shirt - which is unbelievably thrifty of me. Baby Face buys me a bottle of red wine for my birthday, then drives me back to my boyfriend's house. Enjoy your night, I say.
And it feels nice and safe just making fajitas and watching television on a Saturday night. Curled up beside a man in cheap, yet stylish clothes.
The next morning, Baby Face is on the phone, and she wants to know will we come around to Watermelon's house, because it has happened again, and now she needs to get her stuff and her child's uniform and books from her soon-to-be-ex-again boyfriend's house, but he won't answer the phone and he won't let her in.
We borrow a car and drive there, and Watermelon is deep pink about the face from crying. Then Baby Face, my boyfriend and I drive over to his house, and we can't get in with Watermelon's key, because, true to form, he has blocked the keyhole from the inside. We call and text, but he won't answer. I call the police. I can tell they think the story is strange, and they say it sounds like a civil matter, but they send someone anyway. A small, compassionate policewoman who takes Watermelon's number and tells us to tell her to get a solicitor. And not to go back to her boyfriend again.
On the train home to Dublin I get a text to say that the boyfriend let them in, to get Watermelon's belongings, but not before calling her every name under the sun and not before throwing her stuff and the child's stuff into the front garden, in front of all the neighbours. She is changing her phone number and has told her son that they won't be seeing him any more.
There is another development over the weekend. It turns out that the man who is going to France for a year isn't so sure any more. He sits in Dublin airport for seven or eight hours, intending to catch the morning flight he is booked on, then the next flight and then the next one and then the next. It's dark when the last one departs without him. He goes home, and the first thing he does is phone my friend, to tell her he is staying, to see how things go with the pair of them. He says that's more important. The best part was telling a disbelieving Baby Face.
