Chapter Eight

      So now it’s the morning after that hellhole of a night at the Fade Street Social restaurant and all the love bombardment from Andy really has started, full-on and furious.

      The phone calls. First thing in the morning, last thing at night. Texts flying into my face throughout the whole day. Emails coming through to me constantly and that’s before the giant, oversized bouquet of flowers arrived. Pink stargazer lilies. With a note that read, ‘Forgive me for what happened, Holly. And give me a chance to explain, at least. Please.’

      As for what my best buddies have to say about it all?

      Joy: ‘Good riddance to Captain Fantastic, then. I know he had a perfectly valid excuse for standing you up, but I have to say half of me is relieved. All I can hope is that this’ll be a lesson to you to wrench yourself away from those bloody dating sites once and for all and stop lying your head off online. Just be yourself, Holly, and in time you’ll meet your perfect man, trust me.’

      Dermot: ‘Oh please, if you heard some of the last minute call-off excuses I’ve heard over the past few years, you’d sit back and laugh. Honey, I’ve heard it all and believe me, this is nothing! So just get back online and start flirting with other guys and if Mr Wonderful suggests another date, then let him do all the organizing and arranging. If it suits you to turn up, fine and if not, the he gets a taste of his own medicine. Either way, it’s a win-win, babes.’

      Mind you, I think I’d probably caved long before any of their well-intentioned Tweedle Dum – Tweedle Dee advice ever kicked in.

      Truth is, I believe him, and what’s more there’s hard evidence to back him up. Andy’s a pilot after all, is my reasoning. And wasn’t this kind of carry-on all part and parcel of a pilot’s life? Yes, I’m sure it’s a rarity that there’s a ‘mid-air emergency’ and that a flight suddenly has to be re-routed to the nearest hospital, but still, there you go. And what’s so awful about giving someone the benefit of the doubt anyway? Is it so terrible to believe the good in people and not be so bloody cynical all the time?

      Whether I like what happened last Saturday night or not, the fact is, if this is to move forward, then I have to accept that this guy’s whole professional life is at the whim of weather reports, flight schedules and of course the great unknown, passengers themselves.

      ‘So after my letting you down so badly like that last week, Holly,’ he drawls down the phone at me, during one of his umpteen phone calls this week alone, ‘Is there even the slightest chance you’d still be prepared to meet up with me again? To give me one more shot?’

      One more shot. And why not, I ask myself. After all, it’s hardly like there’s another queue of eligible guys waiting to ask me out, now is there?

      ‘Sweet Jesus and the Orphans,’ says Joy exasperatedly when I tell her. ‘If you’d brains, you’d be dangerous.’

      So it’s all arranged. Yet again. Or take two, as Andy refers to it. This Thursday night, he’s flying into Dublin (yet again), same deal, and yet again, he’s staying at the Radisson airport hotel where apparently Delta always overnight their crew, jammy feckers. He begged and pleaded to meet up at the same restaurant, but I was having absolutely none of it.

      Once bitten, etc.

      Anyway, this time the deal goes thusly; Andy is due to arrive into Dublin that morning, and will call me as soon as he ‘touches down’ to confirm. Then we’re due to meet in the Shelbourne bar right in the dead centre of town at 8 p.m. and it’s actually the perfect spot for me, as my plan is to just stride through the bar and if he’s there he’s there, if he isn’t he isn’t and I’ll just keep on walking.

      Worst-case scenario, I’ll end up looking like a girl who’s zigzagging her way through a crowded bar scouting around for a pal who hasn’t shown yet. Public humiliation factor: zero.

      Not that it’ll happen. Lightening doesn’t strike twice.

      ‘Holly,’ Andy reassured me over and over, ‘if I have to swim the Atlantic this Thursday night, I’ll be there in that bar at the Shelbourne hotel waiting for you. And that’s a good old Southern promise.’

      What can I say? It’s less than two weeks and counting to Christmas.

      And I need all the distraction I can get.

      *

      Second week in December now, the weather is lock-jaw cold and just trying to navigate my way up the quays to work in sub-zero temperatures is treacherous, with icy pavements and early-morning shoppers banging stuffed shopping bags off me at every turn. A school choir of carol singers are warbling out ‘Adeste Fideles’ and all I want to do is wallop my umbrella off each one of them for having the barefaced cheek to show Christmas cheer.

      Even Starbucks is at it, with their special seasonal red coffee cups and ads all over the shop for eggnog latte. Not even they are immune to schmaltzy Christmassy music and, I swear, by the end of the twenty minute wait to get served, I really think I’d rather listen to human nails being scraped down a blackboard than one more chorus of, ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’. Staff are stressed off their heads and customers look completely strung out, which pretty much sums up what the holiday season is all about. If your name is Holly Johnson, that is.

      And I know all this makes me out to be a terrible Bah Humbug altogether, but I’ve good reason to dread this time of year. A few of my pals have gently started asking me what my plans are; my married friend Sue has very kindly invited me for dinner with her husband and kids, while another old pal from college has asked me to spend the day with herself and her partner. Meanwhile Joy is on at me to join her family down in Limerick for the holidays, and although it’s a lovely offer and one I’m very grateful for, we both already know what my answer will be.

      Instead, my plan is to do what I always do; get my head under the duvet on Christmas Eve and stay holed up in the flat till the 26th when, thank God, it’ll all be over for another twelve blissful months. And I’ll have done it and survived it and somehow lived to tell the tale, with any luck.

      God bless my friends, though, that’s all I can say. I love that they’re concerned, I feel deeply blessed that they care so much. And I only hope that they’ll forgive me for pulling yet another Greta Garbo in just wanting to be alone. They know my reasons why. They know I don’t really have a choice.

      Anyway, Dermot and I grab a sambo together at what passes for a lunch break in News FM (generally a snatched ten minutes at your desk trying not to get crumbs jammed into your computer keyboard). But I can tell by the way he goes eerily quiet on me that there’s something on his mind.

      ‘So,’ he eventually says, wiping a wobbly lump of coleslaw off his mouth. ‘C-Day approaches.’

      ‘Don’t remind me …’ I groan back at him.

      ‘… And this year, I have a plan concocted especially for you.’

      ‘Dermot, you don’t have to—’

      ‘Just hear me out, Missy. You can’t stay holed up all alone same as you do every year. So here’s what I’m proposing …’

      ‘Please … there’s really no need …’

      ‘No … trust me, I think you’ll actually like this one. Myself and a gang of mates are renting a cottage in the wilds of Donegal where the plan is we barricade ourselves in with a car boot stacked full of vodka and spend the whole holiday watching horror films on DVD. Starting with Rosemary’s Baby and working all the way up to Paranormal Activity, by way of A Zombie Ate My Boyfriend’s Brains. So come on now, what do you say?’

      ‘Oh