you don’t need to be sorry at all,’ she said, squeezing her hand. ‘You should have told me all this when you came home instead of keeping it all inside.’
‘But this is only minor compared to what’s happened to you. I feel stupid even crying about it.’ She wiped her tears, angry with herself.
Holly was shocked, ‘Ciara, this is a big deal. Losing someone you love is always hard, no matter if they’re alive or …’ She couldn’t finish the sentence. ‘Of course you can tell me anything.’
‘It’s just that you’ve been so brave, Holly. I don’t know how you do it. And here I am crying over a stupid boyfriend I went out with for only a few months.’
‘Me? Brave?’ Holly laughed. ‘I wish.’
‘Yes, you are,’ Ciara insisted. ‘Everyone says so. You’ve been so strong through everything. If I were you I’d be lying in a ditch somewhere.’
‘Don’t go giving me ideas, Ciara,’ Holly smiled at her, wondering who on earth had called her brave.
‘You’re OK, though, aren’t you?’ Ciara said, worriedly studying her face.
Holly looked down at her hands and slid her wedding ring up and down her finger. She thought about that question for a while and the two girls became lost in their own thoughts. Ciara, suddenly calmer than Holly had ever seen her, sat by her side patiently awaiting Holly’s reply.
‘Am I OK?’ Holly repeated the question to herself. She looked ahead at their collection of teddy bears and dolls that their parents had refused to throw out. ‘I’m lots of things Ciara,’ Holly explained, continuing to roll her ring around on her fingers. ‘I’m lonely, I’m tired, I’m sad, I’m happy, I’m lucky, I’m unlucky; I’m a million different things everyday of the week. But I suppose OK is one of them.’ She looked to her sister and smiled sadly.
‘And you’re brave,’ Ciara assured her. ‘And calm and in control. And organised.’
Holly shook her head slowly, ‘No, Ciara, I’m not brave. You’re the brave one. You were always the brave one. As for being in control, I don’t know what I’m doing from one day to the next.’
Ciara’s forehead creased and she shook her head wildly. ‘No, I am far from being brave, Holly.’
‘Yes you are,’ Holly insisted. ‘All those things that you do like jumping out of aeroplanes and snow boarding off cliffs …’ Holly trailed off as she tried to think of more crazy things her little sister did.
Ciara shook her head in protest. ‘Oh no, my dear sister. That’s not brave, that’s foolish. Anybody can bungee jump off a bridge. You could do it,’ Ciara nudged her.
Holly’s eyes widened, terrified at the thought and she shook her head.
Ciara’s voice softened. ‘Oh, you would if you had to, Holly. Trust me, there’s nothing brave about it.’
Holly looked at her sister and matched her tone, ‘Yes, and if your husband died you would cope if you had to. There’s nothing brave about it. There’s no choice involved.’
Ciara and Holly stared at each other, aware of the other’s battle.
Ciara was the first to speak. ‘Well, I guess you and I are more alike than we thought.’ She smiled at her big sister and Holly wrapped her arms round her small frame and hugged her tightly, ‘Who would have thought?’
Holly thought her sister looked like such a child, with her big innocent blue eyes. She felt as though they were both children again, sitting on the floor where they used to play together during their childhood, and where they would gossip when they were teenagers.
They sat in silence, listening to the sounds outside.
‘Was there something you were going to scream at me about earlier on?’ Ciara asked quietly in a childish voice. Holly had to laugh at her sister for trying to take advantage.
‘No, forget about it, it was nothing,’ Holly replied, staring out at the blue sky.
From outside the door, Declan wiped his brow and breathed a sigh of relief; he was in the clear. He tiptoed silently back into his bedroom and hopped back into bed. Whoever this Mathew was he owed him big time. His phone beeped, signalling a message, and he frowned as he read the text. Who the hell was Suzanne? Then a grin crept across his face as he remembered last night.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was eight o’clock when Holly finally drove up her driveway, and it was still bright. She smiled; the world never felt quite so depressing when it was bright. She had spent the day with Ciara, chatting about her adventures in Australia. Ciara had changed her mind at least twenty times in the space of a few hours about whether or not she should call Mathew in Australia. By the time Holly left, Ciara was adamant she would never speak to him again, which probably meant she had already called him by now.
She walked up the path to the front door and stared at the garden curiously. Was it her imagination or did it look a little tidier? It was still a complete mess, with weeds and overgrown shrubs sprouting up everywhere, but something about it looked different.
The sound of a lawnmower started and Holly spun round to face her neighbour, who was out working in his garden. She waved over to thank him, presuming it was he who had helped her, and he held his hand up in response.
It had always been Gerry’s job to do the garden. He wasn’t necessarily a keen gardener, it was just that Holly was an incredibly unkeen one and somebody had to do the dirty work. It had been agreed between them that there was no way in the world Holly was going to waste her day off toiling in the soil. As a result, their garden was simple; just a small patch of grass surrounded by a few shrubs and flowers. As Gerry knew very little about gardening he often planted flowers in the wrong season, or put them in the wrong place so they ended up dying. Now the garden just looked like an overgrown field. When Gerry died, the garden had died along with him.
Which reminded her of the orchid in her house. She rushed inside, filled a jug with water and poured it over the extremely thirsty-looking plant. It didn’t look very healthy at all and she promised herself she wouldn’t let it die under her care. She threw a chicken curry into the microwave and sat down to wait at the kitchen table. Outside on the road she could still hear the kids playing happily. She always used to love when the bright evenings came; it meant Mum and Dad would let them all play outside longer, which meant she wouldn’t have to go to bed till later than usual and that had always been a treat. Holly thought back over her day and decided it had been a good one, apart from one incident …
She looked down at the rings on her wedding finger and she immediately felt guilty. When that man Rob had walked away from her Holly had felt so awful. He had given her that look as if she was about to initiate an affair when that was the last thing in the world she would ever do. She had felt guilty for even considering accepting his invitation to go for a coffee.
If Holly had left her husband because she absolutely couldn’t stand him any more she could understand being able eventually to be attracted to someone else. But her husband had died when they were both still very much in love and she couldn’t just fall out of love all of a sudden just because he wasn’t around any more. She still felt married, and going for coffee today would have
