Behind The Cubicle Doors

The ladies toilets are a safe place where we go to share stories, compliments, secrets. Concealed behind their doors are words too delicate for bar stools and dance floors, and truths too fragile for round table discussions with people we pretend to like. When Lucy finished her pint of Heineken and told the group she needed to pee, I knew it was time to tell her the truth.

"Me too," I said. "I'll go with you."

We fought our way through the packed dance floor where drunk strangers moved with the sound of eighties pop music. The smell of fresh sweat and spilled beer mingled together and reminded me of my youth. A simpler time. A distant memory. Lucy reached back and grabbed my hand so we wouldn't lose each other among the crowd. She was a good friend. It stung that I couldn't say the same about myself. I clutched on to her, knowing that our friendship would never again be as tight as it was in that moment.

In the queue for a free cubicle we talked about the familiar things that, over the past twenty years, had become the soundtrack to our friendship. How's your Ma? How's work? Did you finish that book I gave you last week? The deeper conversations were reserved for later in the night when our tongues would loosen with stronger spirits. It was that kind of a friendship, now that we were older. Still strong, but always backed by a drug of some sort. At least on my end, anyway.

Although his mug shot was plastered on the front page of every newspaper in town, she didn't mention her brother Tony.

The queue moved slowly. There were only five toilets to accommodate the busy pub and behind them people spoke in drunken, unhurried slurs. Some of them took disco naps to reclaim lost energy, while others shared keys of white powder to achieve the same result. Less often, people entered the cubicles alone, released their bladders, and left again without any fuss. I liked those girls. I wasn't one of them.

"Does anyone have deodorant?" said a women of about forty who fixed her ruby red lipstick in the cracked mirror and, like me, clung onto her fading youth.

"Here," said Lucy. "It's only a roll-on, but work away."

I wasn't so quick to reach into my own handbag. My natural instinct led me to judge strangers, not help them. Lucy was kinder than I was. Less faultfinding. A walking manifestation of everything I lacked. When we were young I tried to be more like her. But when that failed, I took to bitterly resenting her instead.

A young girl shouted from behind a cubicle door for a tampon. I knew she was young by her voice and her choice of footwear. Scuffed black shoes peeked out from under the door, resting heel-first on a pile of loose tissue paper. And her voice, tipsy and carefree and so different from my own, made me resent her like I resented everyone and everything else in those ladies toilets. Lucy. Myself. The growing queue of innocent bystanders and the secret I was about to reveal.

I was a bitter, bitter woman. It was no wonder I did what I did.

"I do!" said Lucy, before pulling a handful of tampons from her handbag and passing them underneath the cubicle door. "Take a few so you're sorted for the night."

Back when we were in school Lucy started a 'Period Petition' on a long scroll of blood-red paper from the art room. She wanted free pads and tampons to be provided in the ladies toilets, and for girls to be allowed a timeout from classes when period pain attacked.

The nuns who ran the school said that the mere discussion of such a topic was sinful and unholy. The teachers called it melodramatic and unladylike. Not very becoming of you, Lucy. The male students called it, and anyone who signed it, vile and dirty. The female students, buried under the cultural stigma of menstruation, kept their heads down.

The number of hours the petition hung on the notice board before it was ripped down was the same as the number of signatures on it: One. Just Lucy's. 

She was braver than I was, too.  

It was that bravery that earned her promotion after promotion in the media company she worked for. She had recently interviewed for the position of lead presenter on the most watched morning show in the country, and speculation buzzed that she was a shoe-in for the role.

Until someone leaked the story about her brother and it all fell apart.

‘It’s too close to home’, the company had told her. ‘An accusation of sexual assault is too serious to ignore, and we can’t have the sister of the accused in such a prestigious role’. It didn’t matter that the accusations were false. Tony was guilty until proven innocent.

We were next in turn for a free cubicle. We'd go in together like we always did. When a door opened and three girls stumbled out, all glossy pouts and perky boobs on show, we stumbled in.

I used the toilet first while Lucy buried her head into her phone. She looked sad in that moment, sad and defeated, and without my permission my mouth formed itself into a twisted smile. There was something evil inside of me.

The beer moved through me slowly as if trying to buy me some time.  Then it was Lucy’s turn and my time was up. I almost spoke, I honest-to-god almost did. But she spoke first and I let her. Looking up at me from her seated position on the toilet, mid-piss, she said, “He’s innocent. You know that, don’t you? You know Tony. He’s fucking innocent.”

A woman banged hard on the opposite side of the cubicle door, pleading with us that she was about to wet herself. Every time she knocked she robbed more of my dwindling courage, the very stuff I needed to say the words. IT WAS ME. IT WAS ME. IT WAS ME.

I couldn't do it. I swallowed the words whole, and I opened the cubicle door while Lucy's skirt was still around her ankles, and I ran, and I ran, and I ran. 

Three months later I stood in a similar cubicle, with a racing heart and a shiny layer of sweat on my forehead from the white powder I'd just made disappear up my nose. Except this time I was alone.

Tony was in jail awaiting trial for a crime that only three people knew with absolute certainty he didn't commit. Tony. Lucy. And his accuser, Jo Roberts.

Lucy had quit her job with admirable pride and moved to the country, where she was now writing a book about standing up to false accusations and injustice in the legal system. I knew that she had won, but only in my eyes because I was the only one fighting. I stepped out of the cubicle into an empty space, and caught a glimpse of my haggard face in the painfully-clear mirror. 

"Happy now?" I asked myself. 

It was almost showtime. In less than five minutes, I would appear before the nation as the new lead presenter of the most watched morning show in the country. In the life that was meant for Lucy, the one I swore I'd do anything for, I'd step in front of the cameras and I'd say the words I always wanted to say.

"I'm Jo Roberts, and this is the morning news.”