Chapter 2

“So what the hell was all that about?” I turned to Alicia once Anita had driven away.

“I have no fucking idea,” she spread her arms wide, “on my gran’s grave I swear, she was never like this at all. If I’d suspected, do you think I would have hung around? I would have been down the market while you two got better acquainted.”

She put her back against the wall while I closed the door.

“As god is my witness, I thought she was coming around to bible bash me.”

The subject of church and religion in general had indeed come up but only briefly. She’d talked more about her job at a solicitor’s office, her trip to Fiji and a recent holiday in Surfer’s Paradise. She’d moved out of home and into a house with two other women, who quite significantly, weren’t Christians.

“I needed to broaden my horizons, but I still go to church.”

We’d added each other on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and WhatsApp, for better or worse I was now part of her network.

“So maybe she’s changed,” I put my back to the door, “you haven’t seen her for a few years and she did say she wanted to broaden her horizons,” I looked at her.

“People change, you might turn onto women for all I know. It’s not exactly a scientific process, you never know which way someone will swing until they swing,” I stared at the ceiling. “But now that we’re dressed to kill we should hit the town.”

We Irish have a well deserved reputation for hard drinking and that afternoon and most of the night we certainly gave it a good lash. I wasn’t as drunk as Alicia but that’s because I’m older and tend to play the big sister role. She ended up picking up a guy and we got a ride home in his Subaru turbo, but I knocked back five good offers because I was too engrossed in my phone. You guessed it, I was on Anita’s social media feed.

The name of the church she belonged didn’t ring any bells but I’m not one of those gay pride devotees, I might go to the odd one or two but I’m too busy working or doing my own thing to get out and about. Alicia had said on the train into Flinders Street that they made the DUP look gay. They were into gay reversal therapy, which is pseudo-science at its most sinister. Granted they didn’t endorse lobotomies and shock treatment, but even so, casting out demons and praying the homosexuality out of someone is still pretty extreme. Alicia was right, they were as mad as a cut snake. There were links on Anita’s pages to talks by so-called experts on the evils of homosexuality, but by the end of the night the picture was becoming clearer even though my vision was getting a little blurry.

The last anti-gay post on her Facebook page was almost three months ago and prior to that the posts were about a week or so apart. I checked the dates and they all fell on a Sunday. So perhaps dear old daddy had been putting pressure on his daughter to share posts. Sure enough I found he had shared the same posts on the same day. I wouldn’t say I decided to set out on a rescue mission that night, but as I lay in bed listening to Alicia’s giggling and moaning I sent her a text message.

Colleen: Want to meet up on Tuesday night?

It was half past one in the morning and I didn’t expect a reply until the morning but just as I put the phone on the bedside cabinet it beeped for a new message.

Anita: I can’t at night, we have a prayer meeting but maybe the afternoon?

Colleen: Okay, when and where?

Anita: At your place, about five? Prayer meeting doesn’t start until eight, I’m sure God won’t mind if I’m late.

Colleen: No worries, I’ll look forward to it.

She sent me a good night reply, sealed with a kiss and so I had to send one back, with a kiss. I fell asleep not long after and woke with Alicia’s cat on my bed. Max always sleeps on my bed when she brings a guy home, it’s the only place he can get a decent sleep.

I had a Snapchat from Anita. She was in her Sunday best, a white blouse and black, long skirt and the message simply read, Watching over you and then love hearts and a kiss.

Alicia had a hangover from hell that morning and it wasn’t until Sunday night when I got back from an afternoon shift at the hospital that she was capable of coherent speech.

“So you’re saying she’s gay?”

“I can’t say for sure but she is curious. It stands to reason when you’re raised with that kind of bullshit, put up one of those keep off the grass signs out there and count the footprints in the grass tomorrow morning,” I buttoned my shirt.

“I’m not saying that I’m going to seduce her but I sure am going to find out more on Tuesday,” I sat down but pulled my phone out of my back pocket in the nick of time.

“Here, look at her Friend list, see anyone there who might be that way inclined? Like a friend from school?” I brought up her Facebook page and tapped the Friends link and handed the phone to her. She took it from me as if it was a bomb and started scrolling through it.

“Nope, nope, nope,” she kept scrolling, “nope, nope, oh, fuck,” she scrolled back up.

“Now that’s a blast from the past,” she pointed to someone called Tracey.

“Kung Fu Tracey we used to call her, only she didn’t do Kung Fu. She was into Taekwondo, a lot of girls used to pick on Anita because she was well, born again but Tracey stepped in and rescued her one lunchtime. After that everyone laid off,” she closed her eyes briefly.

“I remember now, she said leave my girlfriend alone or I’ll kick your cunt in, but Tracey isn’t gay or she wasn’t last time I heard. Anita hung out with her group for a while and then teamed up with me and because I was besties with Tracey, they just assumed that if anything happened to her it’d get back to Tracey,” she tapped Tracey’s picture.

“God, will you look at that,” she pointed to a mini profile, “look at where she works as a bouncer?”

I knew the club well, come to think of it she did look kind of familiar.

“Is she or isn’t she?”

“Single,” she replied, “but here’s a recent post from your new girlfriend,” she showed me.

It was a picture of Anita in school uniform, one of those yearly routines I used to dread because I had to wear my full uniform. The message above it read, Remember this? Tracey had replied with her own comment. I sure do, girlfriend! We must catch up. Anita had liked it and replied with her own cryptic comment. No worries, got something to tell you. Catch ya later, girlfriend and after that was a single kiss.

“Okay, I take it all back,” she handed my phone back, “something has changed.”

“I do,” she frowned, “but how the fuck was I supposed to know?”

“Oh relax,” I nudged her, “you’re not Supergirl.”

“I feel like I’ve been run over by a train.”

“Maybe you should ask Anita to take you to church,” I poked her playfully.

“Fuck off,” she gave me the middle finger.

I got another Snapchat half an hour later as I was chucking my uniform and some other clothes into the washing machine. The picture showed Anita sitting on a bed with her back to the headboard. She wore a short-sleeved pink blouse and a button through, patterned skirt, a cat sat on her lap and she was stroking it. The caption read. Stroking my pussy.

I don’t know why I did it but I undid my shirt and put my hand down the front of my denim mini skirt and took a picture, I sent that back with the same caption and went to the toilet thinking I’d honestly gone too far, but when I came back there was a standard text message.

Anita: Nice picture. Can I ask you a personal question?

Colleen: Sure, go ahead.

Anita: How do you know if you’re gay?

How long is a piece of string? I thought of a million and one answers and reverted to Occam’s Razor.

Colleen: I guess it comes down to simple attraction. If you’re attracted to someone of the same sex then perhaps you might be gay.

Anita: I used to have a crush on Alicia, it was why I got back in contact.

That started a conversation about being gay, it lasted a good hour or so but by the end I’d come to one conclusion. Anita was gay but afraid to admit it even to herself. Coming out would be a major thing for her, considering her background. Her father was about as anti-gay as possible, to the point he spent at least two hours a night trolling LGBTQ sites leaving comments and bible verses. She gave me a few of his screen names and I did check up in the comments sections on You Tube videos and they were pretty extreme.

Which meant I’d need to tread carefully.

Thus, Tuesday found me in a more submissive mood. I definitely wasn’t going to go all out and seduce her but neither was I going to discourage her from making her own moves but that morning I thought she might chicken out because there were no text messages until just before she left and it was just a brief one.

Anita: On my way, see you soon.

There was no kiss and I sent a reply without a kiss and got changed. I decided on something a little more conservative. A blue and white pinstriped shirt with white collar and cuffs and a pair of black trousers, and sensible sandals.

Anita turned up about an hour after her text. She was also dressed conservatively in a white blouse and a tight, brown pencil skirt accessorised with a braided belt. A light tan V-necked, cashmere jumper and brown leather boots completed the outfit and I greeted her with a smile and led her into the living room.

“Do you want a coffee or tea?”

“Just coffee, thanks,” she replied.

It didn’t take long to talk about the elephant in the room, our text messaging from the other night, and it was Anita who brought it up as I set the tray down on the table. We got through the usual range of subjects, work was crap. She hated the solicitor’s office because the boss was such a bastard, I raised my eyebrows at her language but she merely shrugged and moved onto the subject of that text conversation we’d had the other night.

“It’s made me think,” she started, “and that’s supposed to be a good thing.”

“So, what were you thinking about?”

“A lot of things I wasn’t supposed to think about,” she replied, “my dad’s obsession with gays is really quite frightening. I’ve got friends who aren’t gay and they don’t troll gay websites.”

“People tend to react that way when they’re faced with something they can’t deal with,” I replied a moment later.

“Yeah, you said that the other night too,” she sipped her coffee, “that’s what I’ve been thinking about, I have felt this way for a while but I couldn’t tell anyone.”