held her in her arms and waited till Ciara was ready to talk again.
‘He didn’t even come to the airport to say goodbye to me.’
Holly rubbed Ciara’s back soothingly as though she was a baby who had just drunk her bottle. She hoped Ciara wouldn’t throw up on her. ‘Has he called you since?’
‘No, and I’ve been home for two months, Holly,’ she wailed. She looked up at her older sister with such sad eyes Holly felt like crying too. She didn’t like the sound of this guy at all for hurting her sister. Holly smiled at her encouragingly. ‘Then do you think that maybe he’s not the right kind of person for you?’
Ciara started crying again. ‘But I love Mathew, Holly, and it was just a stupid fight. I only booked the flight because I was angry. I didn’t think he would let me go …’ She stared for a long time at the photograph.
Ciara’s bedroom windows were wide open and Holly listened to the familiar sound of the waves and the laughter coming from the beach. Holly and Ciara had shared this room together as they grew up, and a weird sense of comfort now embraced her as she smelled the same smells and listened to the familiar noises.
Ciara began to calm down. ‘Sorry, Hol.’
‘Hey, 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.
