Less Than Perfect Read Online Free PDF

that Mandy, with her somewhat haphazard appearance, wanted to be a hairdresser, and he liked that Brendan was quiet and introspective and sometimes drew diagrams of car engines for his benefit. It made me happy, Josh getting on so well with Mandy and Brendan.
    While the boys were absorbed with talk of steering or suspension or torque, Mandy would lean close and shamelessly enquire, in a conspiratorial whisper, about my relationship with Josh.
    â€˜So, youse two are getting on well, then?’
    â€˜Aye, we are.’
    â€˜And he’s good in the sack?’
    â€˜That’s none of your business, Mandy!’
    â€˜Ach, come on, don’t be so secretive. I tell you everything!’
    Without my asking, Mandy had shared with me intimate details about her love life with Brendan, so much so that sometimes I could hardly look at him without blushing. Mandy fondly called me her uptight, prim-and-proper friend, while I laughingly referred to her as my slapdash, blabbermouth friend. I
was
a little uptight – who wouldn’t be after living their first eighteen years under my father’s roof? – but I was a good friend, I was loyal and Mandy had been my friend forever. My mother often stated that there were two kinds of friends: friends for a reason and friends for a season. Mandy fell into the former category. My own more conservative nature fed off her openness and irreverence towards rules of any kind, and she always made me laugh. If that wasn’t enough reason to love her, she was as natural and open with Josh as she was with me. Mandy didn’t know how to be anything but herself.
    When we were home in Clonmegan we gravitated towards Josh’s friends rather than mine and as a consequence I often found myself socialising with Liam. The boys frequently played pool in a dark, poky room at the back of one of the pubs in town. Initially, Liam was uncomfortable with my presence among his circle of friends.
    â€˜You must be joking,’ he exclaimed the first time I turned up with Josh.
    â€˜Shut up, O’Reilly,’ Josh responded with a friendly push.
    Liam was equally unimpressed when I participated in the pool tournament they were running among themselves. ‘Jesus, you’re shocking, Caitlin. Don’t you know how to hold a cue? Look, watch me. Steady does it …’
    My pool skills improved dramatically under Liam’s tutelage, which was driven more by embarrassment on my behalf than by brotherly love or concern. But gradually he got used to me being there, and quite often the only female present, and we became closer, more like friends rather than brother and sister. In that dark pool room I came to know him as a person. He would tell me things he’d never say at home.
    â€˜God, I
hate
it. Mum fussing over me like I’m still a child, Dad watching every move I make, always ready with a fucking opinion. Jesus, Caitlin, I need to get a job and a place of my own before I lose my temper some day and throw a punch at him!’
    With his friends, away from the tension at home, I saw that Liam was good company, talkative, funny in an understated way. I saw that he was kind, considerate, and generous with the little money that he had. He was more sensible than some of the others, often the one to moderate their behaviour if they were getting out of hand, stopping them from launching their bodies across the pool table or using the cues to playfully, and quite painfully, whack each other on the head.
    Sometimes, when he’d had too much to drink, Liam would hook his arm around my neck, half choking me. ‘This is my sister,’ he’d announce to his friends. ‘Isn’t she just great?’
    I would smile sheepishly, waiting for them to unequivocally agree so that Liam would let go of me.
    I realised that not only did I love my brother, I liked him too.And I especially liked that Liam looked out for Josh, that he always did his best to include him in