Crazy For You. Emma Heatherington
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Crazy For You - Emma Heatherington страница 7
Название: Crazy For You
Автор: Emma Heatherington
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежный юмор
isbn: 9780007568819
isbn:
“Maybe it’s just a friend. A female friend, as opposed to a girlfriend, eh?” he said hopefully.
“I suppose. Most of his friends are fag hags,” agreed Christian. “It’s probably some American chick who wants to use his visit over here as an excuse for a free holiday. It almost happened to me when I first came home from Australia. You think you’re escaping from the place and the next minute everyone and their granny wants to follow you here to trace imaginary Irish roots that probably went down with the Titanic.”
Jonathan nodded. That sounded likely enough. But it was hardly good timing for an influx of extras around the Eastwood kitchen table, though.
“Nah, I’d doubt it. Eddie’s way too gutted over Mum’s bad news. If he’d invited a guest from the States, he would have cancelled once he heard Mum’s news. I’m sure Gerry’s made a mistake.”
“Probably.”
They supped their pints in a comfortable silence. The subject was closed. Jonathan tried desperately to think of a soccer conundrum to throw Christian’s way. It was the perfect conversation stirrer after the third pint. Then he remembered his bet.
“So, any word from Anna, then?”
Christian sat his glass down on the table and raised an eyebrow.
“Very funny. She wouldn’t even have arrived yet, you smart-ass. So much for trying to take my mind off her. It did work for a while. Good one with the Eddie story. I fell for it hook, line and sinker. Eddie with a girlfriend. As if!”
“No, no, I was serious about that. It’s what Gerry told me. I swear.”
“Gerry’s a liar. He makes up stories to make his life sound more exotic than it really is. He once told me that this place used to be a secret brothel in the seventies and that’s where he met his ex-wife. I mean, a brothel in Donegal? Gerry with a wife? Now if you believe that, you’d believe anything,” said Christian with a smug grin.
Jonathan squinted and looked at his friend for a second. Then he leaned forward and whispered.
“That was true, actually. Da told me that a few weeks before he died. Gerry’s wife was a Spanish prostitute and he met her here in 1977. They have a daughter too.”
“Swear!”
Jonathan held up his hand. “On my life.”
Christian stared back at him in disbelief. Gerry had a wife? And this place used to be an illegal whorehouse? He didn’t think he could handle any more excitement in one day.
“Cheers,” said Jonathan with a smile, raising his glass. “To Gerry, the liar, who seems to tell the truth after all?”
Christian shook his head. This was turning into an eventful day. If every day was to be like this, the six months till Anna came home would go by in a flash.
“And to that old dark horse, Eddie,” he said, clinking his pint with his friend’s. “Cheers to the bold Eddie who, despite all the rumours and all his absolutely fabulous ways, has gone and bagged himself a woman!”
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 СКАЧАТЬ