Looking for God in a Pint of Guinness and Finding Nothing Instead.

She is lying in bed sick and sentimental. The Ikea bin that has seen her through all her hangovers is sitting beside her bed. Memories niggle between her ears; she can’t remember last night but she is covered, like a scratchy blanket, in all the embarrassing moments from when she was thirteen.

She wretches. She hears her phone ring. She is late for work – again. She throws up in the bin, looks at the bright yellow bile with little clouds almost like sea foam floating to the top and vows that she will never drink again as she stalks into the bathroom. 

The light in the bathroom is too good. She feels her eyes burn as the extractor fan whirls. She uses her phone torch as ambient lighting and brushes her teeth for fifteen minutes. She can still taste the seven pints of Guinness that she drank the night before. As she brushes, she remembers offering to buy the bartender a drink; he refused then they made fun of one of the people she was with. On her arm, she notices that he wrote his number beside the stamp for entry. Both the stamp and the number fill her with shame and seem to make the hangover more acute. She wretches again and drops to her knees, her head resting gently on the clean toilet seat. It is cold against her feverish skin. She is lying on the floor in the foetal position using the bathmat as a pillow when her manager calls her.

‘Where are you?’

‘Leaving now, I’ll be like five minutes. Sorry, sorry.’

He hangs up; she leaves.

She turns up almost half an hour late.

‘Sorry guys, the traffic was crazy.’ She lives a ten-minute walk away; everyone she works with knows this.

‘Just go on the till,’ her manager tells her.

She throws on her apron, careful not to tie it too tight. Her favourite coworker is behind the counter.

‘You look like shit.’

‘I know.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Like shit.’

Her coworker laughs: she sits on the top of the food bin nursing her water bottle. She moves the fan so it is blowing the stale, coffee drenched air straight in her face.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she announces before running off to the toilet. She doesn’t make it; she is sick on the floor. She cleans it up then her manager sends her home after he tells her they’ll need to have a chat when she’s next in.

The park near her work is busy. It is Sunday and families are wearing their church outfits, drinking coffee, and sharing ice cream. She walks to one of the local churches and tries to go inside but the doors are locked. She walks back through the park and notices a group of Mormon men looking dejected, their whiteboard sitting limply beside the bench. She walks over to them.

‘Can I ask you a question?’

They perk up, ‘Yeah, please. Anything.’

‘Do you know Lisa Barlow or Jack Barlow? Did he actually go on his mission?’

‘Who?’ they look confused.

She pulls out her phone, searching for Lisa Barlow on Instagram. ‘I’m not making fun of you, I promise. She’s on the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and I wanted to know if she was actually Mormon. She says she’s new wave, but I don’t know if that’s actually a thing. She owns a tequila company…’

She shows them a photo of Jack and Lisa, they look blank. ‘No, sorry.’

‘What about Heather Gay?’ They shake their heads. ‘Bad Mormon?’

‘Do you have any other questions?’ They look bored of her; she might be the first person to discourage a Mormon.

‘Have you seen the plates?’

They, like the plates, light up at this. They tell her about Joseph Smith and invite her to church next Sunday. She promises she’ll come, and they give her a new, fresh-smelling copy of the Book of Mormon. She is so taken by their patience and kindness, that she can’t bring herself to tell them that she already has a copy at home from the time her friend went to Salt Lake City. She thanks them and promises to study up before church next Sunday. They shake her hand; she almost hugs them as if overcome by the spirit of the Angel Moroni. She waves goodbye and walks towards her flat.

She sees a magpie sitting on the roof of the Union Theological College and she walks towards it. It flies away from her, scared when she is almost at arm's length. She watches as it weaves between the trees flying over the university library, and then down past the Mormons. She wonders if they care about magpies. She wonders why she pretends to care about magpies. Presbyterianism made her wary of superstitions, she’s not sure if she’s allowed to be superstitious.

Looking at the building that her distant relative designed, she realises that so much of her lineage is deeply entrenched in the Presbyterian church, yet she feels no claim to the church halls with shiny yet scuffed floors. With diluted juice that is somehow too strong yet too weak; bright and artificial.

One day in work she had to pour the tea and filter coffee for a tour group of elderly people. The overpowering smell of the tannins made her feel like she was a young girl, in wool tights hiding, behind her mum while she talked to the women from the church choir. She could smell the shortbread and scones as she asked the group if they wanted tea or coffee. They called her 'pet' and 'good woman', and she blushed wishing she had the community of church to fall back on when she felt lonely and overly sentimental.

On the steps, she flicks through the Book of Mormon and cries. One Christmas she asked for a Bible, but her parents forgot about it, so it showed up, randomly, on the 27th of December. The cover was a watercolour of Noah’s Ark; she liked the way the pink blended into the orange and the way the illustrator drew the animals in pairs. She kept it at the foot of her bed so it would always be close. Now, she can’t remember where it is.

Still crying, she walks home.

The hangover has settled in her chest, making her hunch her shoulders and walk slowly. She wants to sleep for a year until everyone she knows has forgotten about her. Maybe, she’ll run away and become a nun, convert to Catholicism – she’s always preferred their architecture, and she likes the Pope.

The flat is warm from the midday sun and it smells like stale alcohol. She opens all the windows and then climbs into bed. She hears the flat below her having a party, she misses her friends from Glasgow, so she decides to text them tomorrow.

She puts in her earplugs and goes to sleep.

The hangover dissipates and she becomes a human again.