On that note they took themselves off back to the living room.
WHAT A STRANGE TURN the evening had taken, Roisin thought, wiping the last of the dishes dry as Aisling, the washing up done, began making everybody coffee. Patrick was regaling them with stories about life in the LA fast lane while Mammy sat on one side of him on the sofa, Moira on the other, hanging off his every word. Poor Cindy was squished down the end next to Mammy and hadn’t taken her eyes off Pooh; her legs were tightly crossed. Neither Pooh nor Noah who was sprawled on the carpet, elbows resting on the floor, chin cupped in his hands, had taken their eyes off Cindy.
It was then that her phone began to vibrate in her pocket and pulling it out she expected it to be Colin wanting to know they’d arrived safe and sound. It wasn’t Colin though. It was Shay.
Chapter 11
Clio
Clio stared down at the card, open on the table in front of her, almost afraid to read the words squeezed around the bog-standard Christmas greeting. The phone ringing in the hallway jolted her from her trance. ‘You’re being silly, Clio, old girl. It was over four decades ago. And you can sod off.’ She directed the latter at the telephone. It was probably Mags, her agent, and she could wait. Sure, if it was that important, she’d call back she decided, waiting for it to ring off. She’d always thought the literary agent’s role was to support their author but Clio felt as though she were the one keeping Mags on an even keel since the book had hit the shelves. When her house was once more bathed in silence apart from him next door’s motorcycle engine revving off into the distance she began to read.
Dear Clio,
I realise this card will be a bolt from the blue but when I read the review of your book in the Irish Times I had to write and congratulate you. You always said you’d write a novel that would be a bestseller and now you’ve only gone and done it! Congratulations, what an achievement. Of course, I rushed straight out and bought a copy which I devoured over three days. It’s wonderful, but Harry and Lyssa’s story raised a lot of questions because I can’t help but wonder if you wrote it about us. Or am I being arrogant? That’s something I’ve been accused of before. I still live in Boston in case you were wondering but I’ve always liked to keep my finger on the pulse of what was happening in Dublin. I’ve subscribed to the Times for over forty years. I followed your reporting and well-written pieces with interest over the years too. I miss stumbling across them. I always felt inordinately proud when I’d see your name in the byline. I’d want to nudge the person on the train next to me and tell them that I knew you when you were a girl. And that you were the most feisty, determined woman I ever met. I’m going to run out of room and there’s so much more I’d like to say. The thing is, Clio, I’m writing to you because I’m coming back. Your story made me nostalgic for all my old haunts from that wonderful year and now that I have finally hung my hat up and retired, the time is ripe. I arrive on the afternoon of the 24th and I would like to invite you to share Christmas dinner with me. I have made a booking for two at the Merrion Hotel in the Garden Room at one o’clock and will be waiting in the Drawing Room at 12.45pm. Please don’t think me presumptuous, merely hopeful.
Yours, hopefully,
Gerry.
Clio’s tea had gone cold and her toast, although filling the air with its malty aroma, was long since popped and had been forgotten about. The almost milky scent of fresh toast usually filled her with a sense that all was well in her world just as cigarettes once had. Oh, how she used to eat the things when she was working! She’d given up before it had a chance to catch up with her though. Right now though, feeling as though her world had been upended, she’d kill for one. Gerry had always had that effect on her but she’d been too young to know better then. At eighteen her defences had been down and she’d had a trusting openness to seize all the possibilities life had to offer her. Now she was a fifty-nine-year-old woman who should know better than to allow her breath to quicken and pulse to race at the memory of the man she’d once loved with her whole being. A man whose heart she’d had to break.
A thought struck her then, rather like the stinging slap her mother wielded to the back of her legs when she’d been cheeky as a child. ‘He won’t look like you remember him, Clio. He’s been forever frozen in your mind as he was but time hasn’t stood still. He’s a pensioner, old girl.’ It was swiftly followed by the realisation that she no longer had the dewy skin of a girl on the cusp of womanhood. She too was rapidly approaching her pensionable years, unless of course the government pushed back the age for hanging one’s hat up as they’d been making noises of doing. Of course, it made no bones to her. She was a long way from putting her hat anywhere other than firmly on her head. Still, fifty-nine, how on earth did that happen?
How did one go from being a girl who thought she had the right to have it all to being a woman who now thought nothing of holding a discussion with herself?
She remembered how bereft she’d been when Gerry left. He’d never lied to her. He’d never made promises he couldn’t
