Читать книгу Crazy For You - Emma Heatherington, Emma Heatherington - Страница 7

Girls Rush In Where Women Fear to Tread

“So how do you find modern day Killshannon compared to the bright lights of California, Eddie?” roared Daisy over the drone of the car’s vibrating engine. Eddie had insisted on getting his money’s worth from the hire company by pushing the convertible car roof back at every given opportunity, even in gale-force winds. “Is it much different to before?”

“Much the same, I’d say,” he shouted back. “Not as smelly, though, thank goodness.”

“It’s the weather! Wait till it warms up a bit and we’ll all be holding our noses again.”

Daisy pressed the button to put the roof back on. There was a time and a place to pose in a convertible, and now wasn’t it. Her hair resembled a garden hedge and her nipples were almost touching the dashboard with the cold. The car was so small that her knees were almost at her ears, and not in a good way.

“Not that I go back to Killshannon so often now,” she said, thankful for a bit of warm air around her face from the car heater. “Nothing to do with the smell of fish, though.”

“Why don’t you?” asked Eddie. “Doesn’t your mum make you? I know mine would if I lived anywhere in this country.”

Daisy fell silent and Eddie waffled on quickly.

“Jonathan thinks he’s doing well having escaped to Donegal Town, but he still has to show his face at least once a week, and always turns up for Mass and Sunday dinner, hangover or no hangover.”

Daisy turned up the radio when she heard the sounds of Snow Patrol’s latest song. Plus, she didn’t want to hear about Jonathan. Not yet.

“Mum comes to stay with me quite a lot in Belfast,” she said, to divert the conversation. “She loves Stranmillis because it’s like a little village within the city, and then we go for long walks along the river, into Cutter’s Wharf for a glass of wine and make a full Sunday lunch in my apartment, just like the old days at home.”

Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes and drifted back to those childhood Sundays when she and her brother had played out in the back garden with Jonathan and Eddie until they’d been called in for dinner. Jonathan had always thrown spiders down her good dress. Every bloody week. Even then he had been a pervy bastard. She sat up straight in the seat of the car and unstuck her legs from the leather upholstery. That was the end of that blissful memory.

“So what’s Jonathan up to these days?” she asked in a slightly sour tone. “I ask out of polite, mature conversation, not out of interest.”

“What do you care about how Jonathan is or what he’s up to?” Eddie replied with a casual smirk and changed the Mini into fifth gear as they approached the straight road into Donegal town.

“I don’t really give a shit, actually. Don’t tell me anything about him. I don’t want to know anything.”

Daisy turned her head against the window and watched the green fields race by. She hadn’t been home in three months – since her brother Richard’s wedding. On that particular occasion she’d been sure to make a swift exit as soon as the toasts were over.

“Does he have a girlfriend?”

“Who?”

“Jack the flippin’ Ripper. Who do you think? Jonathan.”

“Nah. Not that I know of. At least I hope he doesn’t.”

Good, thought Daisy.

“He has a wife, though.”

“Piss off, a what? A wife?”

Eddie sat up straight and kept a forward gaze, his mouth pursed into a pout. This was fun. Then he gave in.

“Not exactly,” he said. Daisy raised a fist playfully. “No, don’t hit me when I’m driving! Ow!”

Daisy shook her hand. If she could kill Eddie now she would, for taunting her like this.

“Jonathan doesn’t have a girlfriend, Daisy. He has a fiancée. That, I’m not joking about. But again, what do you care? You never see him anymore.”

Daisy’s stomach did a cartwheel. It must be the sea air, she thought.

“Since when?”

“Since forever.”

“Since when does he have a fiancée? Not, since when do I never see him anymore.”

Daisy’s reaction told Eddie to break the news gently.

“They got engaged at the weekend. I think they originally planned to announce it on his birthday but brought it forward to give Mum a lift. Didn’t your mum say?”

“Actually, no,” said Daisy in bewilderment. She felt a sudden pang of hunger. Or was it nausea? “But then I’m supposed to be in Spain, aren’t I?”

“Mmm,” said Eddie, waiting on her to prompt for more.

She did.

“Go on…”

“He’s getting married in six weeks,” he said. “Rushing bull-ignorant into the whole thing if you ask me.”

“Oh,” said Daisy, her heart sinking unexpectedly. She looked out at the cows in the fields again. Flashes of black and white mixed with green whirred by, and she got a strange sense of longing to turn back the clock to her younger days, when she really hadn’t had a care in the world. No men you hate to make your tummy go swishy, no internet holidays that could crash at the last minute, no friends with rich boyfriends when you’d happily settle for a pauper. Well, not quite. Not yet.

“Woooh. Someone’s gone all quiet. Don’t you want to hear all the gory details about Jonathan’s wedding plans?” asked Eddie eventually. Gosh, she was taking this even worse than he’d expected.

“Strangely, that would be a no.”

“You’re on the guest list.”

“Like hell I am.” Daisy didn’t dream it for a second. “Am I really? I don’t really think I’d want to be there. Actually, I so don’t want to be there.”

Eddie decided to quit while he was ahead.

“Sorry that was totally made up. I haven’t seen the guest list. In fact they probably haven’t even drawn it up yet, but it’s all happening so fast.”

“Six weeks? Huh, they certainly don’t waste any time.” Daisy’s hunger turned into a dead, sickening feeling. She hadn’t thought of Jonathan Eastwood for ages. Well, not in the past six months or so. Occasionally he would pop into her mind as she stared out of the window of Super Shoes onto the hustle and bustle of Cornmarket and she’d shake her head to get his face out of her memory. There was no point wasting time on what could have been.

History was history.

As the yellow Mini zoomed along Donegal’s windy, stone-lined walls, Daisy closed her eyes and tried not to imagine Jonathan in a morning suit and his bride in a tight-fitting corset and a full skirt with a tiny waist and big, beautiful doe eyes, looking deeply into his as they shared their first dance.

“I bet she’s blond with massive tits,” she said, as they turned a sharp corner. Eddie faked a cough and Daisy reached across to turn down the radio again.

“She is, isn’t she? I bet she’s gorgeous,” she said bitterly.

Eddie turned the radio back up.

“Actually … now that you say it, and not that I would normally notice such things, but yes, she is. She is blond and I suppose she is quite well-endowed in the breast department.”

He let go of the steering wheel and made a big-boob gesture with his hands. Daisy threw her eyes up towards the heavens, or at least the roof of the car, but the effect was lost.

“I knew it,” she said in a higher pitch than she intended.

“Boy, you do have good intuition. I wish I’d inherited that particular feminine quality when God decided to make me gay. She’s very intelligent too. A teacher, like Jonathan. A science teacher at St Benedict’s.”

“Does she have a name?” Probably Sophie or Susannah or Samantha, thought Daisy, going by her description so far.

“Shannon.”

“I knew it again.”

Why was she talking like she’d inhaled a balloon full of helium? She couldn’t help it.

“How?”

“I knew she was an ‘S’. He always goes for girls with ‘S’ names. So bloody predictable.”

Eddie thought for a minute. Actually, now that he thought about it, Daisy was right. His brother did seem to have a thing about girls with names beginning with S.

“Do you remember Sinead from Strabane?” she spat.

“How could I forget?” Eddie laughed out loud at the memory of his mother’s face when she caught Jonathan snogging Sinead from Strabane on the new living room sofa with her skinny ankles wrapped around his waist.

“I thought he would never live that down,” said Daisy. “Or what about Sarah, the slapper? Do you remember the time you took a garden trowel to her make-up and then rubbed it onto your own face when no one was looking? And when your mother caught you, you said it was for me.”

“You wanted some too.”

“Just because I wasn’t allowed any of my own. I was thirteen, after all. I was supposed to do those things growing up. You, on the other hand…”

“Shut it, girlfriend.”

Eddie indicated left at the sign for Killshannon, its lettering almost hidden in the overgrown bushes so that it read ‘Kill Shannon’. Daisy hadn’t even met Jonathan’s girl but she was tempted, for some reason, to do exactly what it said on the tin, or steel, or wood, or whatever the sign was made of.

Kill Shannon. Slowly.

“I’m sure she’s lovely,” she said, as if she was spitting out nails. “Really lovely.”

She managed a faint smile when they drove past the poky, ivy-clad post office of her home village. Rebellious schoolgirls with skirts that could have passed for belts skipped past, celebrating the last day of the term by drawing over each other’s polyester shirts with permanent marker. Old Jackie still stood in the shelter waiting for the bus that seldom came, and the smell of freshly baked soda bread smothered the car’s interior, making Daisy’s stomach growl for some home cooking.

“Right,” said Eddie, slowing the car into a crawl and then pulling the handbrake firmly when they finally reached the entrance to Ivy Cottages. “Here we are in the grand old hamlet of Killshannon. We have driven approximately one hundred and thirty miles and hardly shut up the whole way. However we still haven’t figured out how to tell people how we miraculously became involved after not seeing each other for four years.”

“Three and a half.”

“Whatever. You’re missing the point.”

Eddie was starting to fear his abilities as an actor and was merely seeking reassurance from the more experienced Daisy.

“Oh, so now you’re starting to panic, Mr I’ve-got-a-great idea-but-haven’t-thought-it-through.’ Don’t start trying to come up with a plan now. We’re here and it’s too late to stage anything.”

Eddie gasped and clasped a tanned hand over his mouth in despair.

“Who or what rattled your cage? Don’t you dare back out on me now, Daisy.” He dramatically ran his fingers through his hair and Daisy was astounded they didn’t break off midway in a battle with all the wax and gel.

“I’m just saying, it’s way too late. If you hadn’t bored me to tears all the way home with tales of your pathetic love triangle with a Hollywood screen writer and his juvenile son, I might have been able to think of something. You snooze, you lose.”

Eddie bit his lip. If this backfired he would eventually have to tell his mother the truth, but the only problem was that she didn’t believe there was any other meaning to the word ‘gay’ than ‘happy’. It would kill her quicker than the cancer would.

“For the record, the son – Brad was his name – was not a juvenile. He was twenty-one years old,” said Eddie with an ever- so-slight American accent.

“Brad. Of course. I should have remembered that one.”

“Perfectly legal. So there. And if I recall properly, a lot of the conversation was dominated by Jonathan’s love life. Not that that you care one tiny bit, of course.”

Why was he taunting her like this? If anything he should be complimenting her and trying to win her over. He wasn’t doing himself any favours at all.

“Well, anyway,” said Daisy, reaching for the door handle. “Thanks for the free ride home. Good to see you again and all that. I’ll be over later to see your mother.”

“Daisy, don’t be like that!”

She stuck her nose in the air, knowing she was acting like a six-year-old. She didn’t care. The whole idea was bloody ridiculous anyway.

“I’ll just pop across and see my Mum, say hi to your Mum and then it’ll be back to Belfast for me. You come up with some other crazy scheme to convince your poor mother that marriage and babies are on the horizon…”

“But Daisy, we can still do this. Please. I’m begging.”

“Maybe sexy Shannon has a sister called Simone or Sorcha who would play along with you. That really would be keeping it in the family.”

Daisy opened the car door and stormed out, stomping across the cobbled road of her childhood. She then turned on her heels back to the car where Eddie was sitting with his mouth open, catching flies.

“Did, er, did you change your mind, Daisy?”

He reminded himself of Bambi. Pathetic, weak and unable to stand on his own two feet.

“Not a hope,” said Daisy, reaching into her car. “I just forgot my bloody shoes.”

She slipped on her new pink flip-flops, which felt horrible and squidgy under her feet that were wet from the rain and marched towards her mother’s house with an air of vengeance. She could hear the engine running in Eddie’s car and the wipers beginning to squeal as the rain subsided. She looked a mess. Her make-up was running, her feet were soaked and she looked rough from the two-hour drive, but she didn’t care.

She didn’t care one bit how she looked…until she glanced up at the house on the end of the row and saw Jonathan Eastwood staring at her from his old bedroom window as if he’d seen a ghost. Her heart hit the floor. Now she really did care how she looked. A lot.