P.S. I Love You (18 page)

“Yeah, a Budweiser, thanks.”

“Abbey?”

“Em…a white wine, please,” she said politely.

“Frank?”

“A Guinness, thanks, Daniel.”

“I’ll have the same,” said John.

“Sharon?”

“Just a Coke, please. Holly, you want the same?” she said, looking at her friend. Holly nodded.

“Tom?”

“JD and Coke, please, Dan.”

“Me too,” said Declan.

“Denise?” Daniel tried to hide his smile.

“Em…I’ll have a…gin and tonic, please.”

“Ha!” everyone jeered her.

“What?” She shrugged her shoulders as though she didn’t care. “One drink is hardly going to kill me…”

Holly was standing over the sink with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows scrubbing the pots when she heard the familiar voice.

“Hi, honey.”

She looked up and saw him standing at the open patio doors. “Hello, you,” she smiled.

“Miss me?”

“Of course.”

“Have you found that new husband yet?”

“Of course I have, he’s upstairs in bed asleep,” she laughed, drying her hands.

Gerry shook his head and tutted, “Shall I go up and suffocate him for sleeping in our bed?”

“Ah, give him another hour or so,” she joked, looking at her watch, “he needs his rest.”

He looked happy, she thought, fresh-faced and still as beautiful as she remembered. He was wearing her favorite blue top, which she had bought him one Christmas. He stared at her from under his long eyelashes with his big brown puppy eyes.

“Are you coming in?” she asked, smiling.

“No, I just popped by to see how you are. Everything going OK?” He leaned against the door ledge with his hands in his pockets.

“So, so,” she said, weighing her hands in the air. “Could be better.”

“I hear you’re a TV star now,” he grinned.

“A very reluctant one,” she laughed.

“You’ll have men falling all around you,” he assured her.

“Falling all around me is right,” she agreed. “The problem is they keep missing the target,” she said, pointing to herself. He laughed. “I miss you, Gerry.”

“I haven’t gone far,” he said softly.

“You leaving me again?”

“For the time being.”

“See you soon,” she smiled.

He winked at her and disappeared.

Holly woke up with a smile on her face and felt like she had slept for days.

“Good morning, Gerry,” she said, happily staring up at the ceiling.

The phone rang beside her. “Hello?”

“Oh my God, Holly, just take a look at the weekend papers,” Sharon said in a panic.

TWENTY

H
OLLY IMMEDIATELY LEAPT OUT OF bed, threw on a tracksuit and drove to her nearest newsagent. She reached the newspaper stand and began to leaf through the pages in search of what Sharon had been raving about. The man behind the counter coughed loudly and Holly looked up at him. “This is not a library, young lady, you’ll have to buy that,” he said, nodding at the newspaper in her hand.

“I know that,” she said, irritated by his rudeness. Honestly, how on earth was anyone supposed to know which paper they wanted to buy if they didn’t even know which paper had what they were looking for? She ended up picking up every single newspaper from the stand and slammed them down on the counter, smiling sweetly at him.

The man looked startled and started to scan them into the register one by one. A queue began to form behind her.

She stared longingly at the selection of chocolate bars displayed in front of her and looked around to see if anyone was looking at her.
Everyone
was staring. She quickly turned back to face the counter. Finally her arm jumped up and grabbed the two king-size chocolate bars nearest to her on the shelf from the bottom of the pile. One by one the rest of the chocolate began to slide onto the floor. The teenager behind her snorted and looked away laughing as Holly bent down with a red face and began to pick them up. So many had fallen she had to make several trips up and down. The shop was silent, apart from a few coughs from the impatient queue behind her. She sneakily added another few packets of sweets to her pile. “For the kids,” she said loudly to the newsagent, hoping everyone behind her would also hear.

He just grunted at her and continued scanning the items. Then she remembered she needed to get milk, so she rushed from the queue to the end of the shop to retrieve a pint of milk from the fridge. A few women tutted loudly as she made her way back to the top of the queue, where she added the milk to her pile. The newsagent stopped scanning to stare at her; she stared back blankly at him.

“Mark,” he yelled.

A spotty young teenager appeared from one of the shopping aisles with a pricing gun in his hand. “Yeah?” he said grumpily.

“Open the other till, will ya, son, we might be here for a while.” He glared at her.

Holly made a face at him.

Mark dragged his body over to the second till, all the time staring at Holly. What? she thought defensively; don’t blame me for having to do your job. He took over the till and the entire queue behind her rushed over to the other side. Satisfied that no one was staring at her anymore, she grabbed a few packets of crisps from below the counter and added them to her purchases. “Birthday party,” she mumbled.

In the queue beside her, the teenager asked for a packet of cigarettes quietly.

“Got any ID?” Mark asked loudly.

The teenager looked around in embarrassment with a red face. Holly snorted at him and looked away.

“Anything else?” the newsagent asked sarcastically.

“No thank you, that will be all,” she said through gritted teeth. She paid her money and fumbled with her purse, trying to put all the change back in.

“Next,” the newsagent nodded to the customer behind her.

“Hiya, can I have twenty Benson and —”

“Excuse me,” Holly interrupted the man. “Could I have a bag, please,” she said politely, staring at the huge pile of groceries in front of her.

“Just a moment,” he said rudely, “I’ll deal with this gentleman first. Yes sir, cigarettes is it?”

“Please,” the customer said, looking at Holly apologetically.

“Now,” he said, returning to her, “what can I get you?”

“A bag.” She clenched her jaw.

“That’ll be twenty cents please.”

Holly sighed loudly and reached into her bag, searching through the mess to find her money again. Another queue formed behind her.

“Mark, take over the till again, will you?” he said snidely.

Holly took the coin out of her purse and slammed it down on the counter and began to fill the bag with her items.

“Next,” he said again, looking over her shoulder. Holly felt under pressure to get out of the way and began stuffing the bag full in panic.

“I’ll wait till the lady here is ready,” the customer said politely.

Holly smiled at him appreciatively and turned to leave the shop. She walked away grumbling to herself till Mark, the boy behind the counter, startled her by yelling, “Hey, I know you! You’re the girl from the telly!”

Holly swirled around in surprise and the plastic handle broke from the weight of all the newspapers. Everything fell onto the floor and her chocolate, sweets and crisps went rolling in all directions.

The friendly customer got down on his knees to help her gather her belongings while the rest of the shop watched in amusement and wondered who the girl from the telly was.

“It is you, isn’t it?” the boy laughed.

Holly smiled up weakly at him from the floor.

“I knew it!” He clapped his hands together with excitement. “You’re cool!” Yeah, she really felt cool, on her knees on the floor of a shop searching for bars of chocolate. Holly’s face went red and she nervously cleared her throat. “Em…excuse me, could I have another bag, please?”

“Yeah, that’ll be —”

“There you go,” the friendly customer interrupted him, placing a twenty-cent coin down on the counter. The newsagent looked perplexed and continued serving the customers.

“I’m Rob,” the man said, helping her put all her chocolate back into the bag, and held his hand out.

“I’m Holly,” she said, a little embarrassed by his overfriendliness as she took his hand. “And I’m a chocoholic.”

He laughed.

“Thanks for the help,” she said gratefully, getting to her feet.

“No problem.” He held the door open for her. He was good-looking, she thought, a few years older than her, and had the oddest colored eyes, a kind of a gray-green color. She squinted at him and took a closer look.

He cleared his throat.

She blushed, suddenly realizing she had been staring at him like a fool. She walked out to her car and placed the bulging bag in the backseat. Rob followed her over. Her heart did a little flip.

“Hi again,” he said. “Em…I was wondering if you would like to go for a drink?” Then he laughed, glancing at his watch. “Actually, it’s a bit too early for that, how about a coffee?”

He was a very confident man and he rested himself coolly against the car opposite Holly, his hands sat in the pockets of his jeans with his thumbs resting outside, and those weird eyes just stared back at her. However, he didn’t make her feel uncomfortable; in fact, he was acting very relaxed, as though asking a stranger out for coffee was the most natural thing in the world. Was this what people did these days?

“Em…” Holly thought about it. What harm could it do to go for a coffee with a man who had been so polite to her? The fact that he was absolutely gorgeous also helped. But regardless of his beauty, Holly really craved company and he seemed like a nice, decent man to talk to. Sharon and Denise were at work and Holly couldn’t keep calling over to her mother’s house, Elizabeth had work to do too. Holly really needed to start meeting new people. Many of Gerry and Holly’s other friends had been Gerry’s friends from work and from various other walks of life, but once he had died all those ‘friends’ of theirs hadn’t been much of a familiar feature around her house. At least she knew who her true friends were.

She was just about to say yes to Rob when he glanced down at her hand and his smile faded. “Oh sorry, I didn’t realize…” He backed away from her awkwardly, as if she had some kind of disease. “I have to rush off anyway.” He smiled quickly at her and took off down the road.

Holly stared after him, confused. Had she said something wrong? Had she taken too long to decide? Had she broken one of the silent rules of this new meeting-people game? She looked down at the hand that had caused him to run away from her and saw her wedding ring sparkle back at her. She sighed loudly and rubbed her face tiredly.

Just then the teenager from the shop walked by with a gang of friends and a cigarette in his mouth and snorted at her.

She just couldn’t win.

Holly slammed the door of her car and looked around. She wasn’t in the mood to go home, she was sick of staring at the walls all day every day and talking to herself. It was still only ten o’clock in the morning and it was beautifully sunny and warm outside. Across the road her local café, the Greasy Spoon, was setting up tables and chairs outside. Her stomach grumbled. A nice big Irish breakfast was exactly what she needed. She took her sunglasses from the glove compartment of her car, carried her newspapers with both hands and wandered across the road. A plump lady was cleaning the tables. Her hair was tied back tightly in a large bun and a bright red-and-white checked apron covered her flowery dress. Holly felt like she had walked straight into a country kitchen.

“Been a while since these tables have seen sunlight,” she said happily to Holly as she approached the café.

“Yeah, it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Holly said, and the two of them stared up at the clear blue sky. It was funny how good weather in Ireland always seemed to be the conversation of the day with everyone. It was such a rare sight that everyone felt blessed when it finally arrived.

“You want to sit out here, love?”

“Yes I do, might as well make the most out of it, it’ll probably be gone in an hour,” Holly laughed, taking a seat.

“You need to think positively, love.” She busied herself around Holly. “Right, I’ll get you the menu,” she said, turning to leave.

“No, it’s OK,” Holly called after her, “I know what I want. I’ll have the Irish breakfast.”

“No problem, love.” She smiled, and her eyes widened when she saw the pile of newspapers on the table. “You thinking of starting your own newsagents?” she chuckled.

Holly looked down at the pile and laughed at the sight of the
Arab Leader
lying on the top. She had grabbed every single paper and hadn’t even thought to check what they were. She doubted very much the
Arab Leader
contained any articles about the documentary.

“Well, to tell you the truth, love,” the woman said, cleaning the table beside her, “you’d be doing us all a favor if you put that miserable ol’ bastard out of business.” She glared across the road to the newsagent. Holly laughed as the woman waddled back into the café.

Holly just sat there for a while watching the world go by. She loved catching snippets of people’s conversations as they walked by; it gave her a sneaky peek into the lives of others. She loved to guess what people did for a living, where they were headed to as they rushed by, where they lived, if they were married or single…Sharon and Holly loved going for coffee in Bewley’s café overlooking Grafton Street, as it was the best place for people-spotting.

They would create little scenarios in their heads to pass the time, but Holly seemed to be doing this very regularly these days. Just another demonstration of how her mind was caught in other people’s lives instead of focusing on her own. For example, the new story she was creating involved the man walking down the path holding hands with his wife. Holly decided that he was secretly gay and the man headed toward them was his lover. Holly watched their faces as they approached each other, wondering if they would make eye contact. They went one better than that and Holly tried not to giggle as the three of them stopped just in front of her table.

“Excuse me? Have you got the time?” the lover asked the secretly gay man and his wife.