Love holly, p.8
Love, Holly, page 8
“My story?”
“Yes, yes, your story. What brings you here?”
“I, ah…” She couldn’t help it: She glanced at Emma, though whether it was for help in avoiding the question or permission to answer it, she couldn’t quite be sure.
“Holly’s an artist; that much is true.”
Presumably Emma said it to help, so that Holly didn’t have to talk about the crash, but Holly grimaced all the same—at the fact that she wasn’t, not even close. And despite what she told herself, the failure of that still hurt.
“Speaking of which, where’s my tiger, hmm?”
Pam looked questioningly at Emma, and she lifted the paper giraffe Holly had made earlier in the air. Holly hadn’t even noticed Emma picking it up. “Oh, how brilliant—can you make me one too, Holly? A lemur, I think—my soul animal.”
Emma was already handing her another newspaper, and with both women looking at her like that, Holly saw no choice but to take the paper and crack on with it.
“So that’s what you do, is it? Paper animals?”
Holly couldn’t help a small chuckle—at the fact that making paper animals sounded like a perfectly reasonable career choice when Pam said it. “No, I’m an art teacher.”
Pam sat back, nodding serenely and sipping more champagne. “Ah, filling young minds, a valuable career. I always thought I would have made a good teacher.”
Emma snorted. “I beg to differ.”
“Ignore her, Holly,” Pam said loftily. “She gets like this sometimes, but you just have to drown it out.”
Holly decided not to comment on that and focused on Pam instead. “What do you do?”
“Did, my darling. I’m a lady of leisure these days.”
Holly grinned. “What did you do, then?”
“Oh, this and that,” Pam said, with a casual hand wave.
“She never gives me a straight answer either,” Emma muttered.
“So are you good at art then, Holly?” Pam pressed.
Holly gave an awkward little shrug. “I’m all right, I suppose.”
“All right.” Emma huffed. “Don’t be self-deprecating. Either you’re good or you’re not.”
“Well, I am, I suppose.” Holly swallowed. “Or used to be. I lost it, after…Well, I just lost it.”
“But you’re making art now, aren’t you?” Pam said, gesturing at the tiger that was coming together between Holly’s fingers. “You can’t have lost it all.”
Holly was so stumped by the way she said it, the simple fact of it, that she couldn’t think of anything to say in response. Because on some level, she supposed this was art. Nothing grand, nothing special, nothing more than silly little entertainment—but art, nonetheless.
“It’s either in your soul or it’s not,” Emma said, matter-of-factly, “and I’m going to take a bet and say it’s the former for you, my girl.”
“Emma’s an art expert,” Pam said, nodding her head impressively.
“I am not.”
“You bring in all the art for Impression Sunrise, don’t you?”
Emma took a healthy glug of champagne. “I wanted to do it more seriously, at one point,” Emma told Holly. “I went back to university in my forties, after Richard had grown up and moved out and I had the time. Did Art History, then a master’s degree—all part-time. But then…Well…” She didn’t need to finish, because Holly understood all too well—a car crash had derailed Emma’s dreams, just as it had her own.
Pam reached over to the other side of the sofa and gave Emma’s hand a squeeze. Then she finished her champagne, putting her glass down on the table. “Time for some sherry, I think. Emma—you have sherry, don’t you?”
“About the only thing I do have.” Emma got up and shuffled out of the room, leaving Holly feeling a little baffled. They hadn’t even finished the champagne yet—and now on to sherry? It seemed like Pam was angling for a very merry Christmas indeed.
Pam was getting out her phone, putting on a Christmas playlist. “There’s no speaker in here, unfortunately,” she told Holly. “But even so, it lifts the atmosphere, don’t you think? I’m afraid starting a fire’s a little beyond me, though,” she added, eyeing the fireplace suspiciously.
She folded her hands on her lap and gave Holly a very direct look. “So, Holly,” she continued. “How’s the love life?”
Holly wrinkled her nose. “Nonexistent, as of the day before yesterday.” Though she hadn’t thought of Daniel since she’d walked into Emma’s house. The realization caused a flare of guilt. Which was ridiculous. He broke up with her. She shouldn’t be the one feeling guilty.
“Hmm. Well, I had to go through four husbands to meet the right one—maybe you’re doing the right thing, choosing to be single.”
“My boyfriend broke up with me,” Holly said flatly. “It was hardly a choice.”
Pam pursed her lips. “Well, there’s always another one around the corner—young people today are too picky, in my opinion.” Despite the fact that Pam had just directly contradicted herself, Holly felt a little lurch in her stomach. Because it hadn’t been her being picky, had it? She would have quite happily ticked along with Daniel—was all ready to move in with him, for Christ’s sake. But he hadn’t picked her.
“Where is your husband now?” Holly asked, moving the subject along.
“Oh he’s next door, cooking Christmas lunch. He likes to sneak a glass of wine or two while I’m not there and pretend to open the first bottle of the day over lunch, and I like to pretend I don’t notice because that way I get dinner cooked for me. Speaking of which,” she said, looking up as Emma walked back into the room, a slightly dusty-looking bottle of sherry in hand, “Emma, what are you feeding this girl for Christmas lunch?”
Emma scowled, and Holly cleared her throat. “I think pasta’s on the menu. Which I love,” she added quickly, because Pam was looking almost comically shocked.
“No, no, no,” she said. “That just won’t do.” She held up a finger as she picked up her mobile, causing the Christmas music to stop and earning a “Thank God for that” from Emma. “Jim?” Pam said into the phone. “We’ll have two more for lunch.” A pause. “Emma and her friend…Don’t be silly, we have plenty of Brussels sprouts…. Neither of us even likes Brussels sprouts, for God’s sake. And it’ll do you good to have one less roast potato and you know Emma barely eats anything…Yes…Yes, exactly…Don’t worry, darling, I have every faith. We’ll see you shortly.” With that, she hung up the phone, and nodded brightly to Emma and Holly.
“That’s settled then. You’ll both come round.”
“Oh, I couldn’t—”
“Oh, nonsense. We’d love to have her, wouldn’t we, Emma?”
“Who said I even wanted to come?” Emma grumbled.
“Ignore her, Holly, she doesn’t mean any of it.”
Emma sighed but shot Holly a look. “I suppose you could help entertain Pam over Christmas lunch, if you were to stay, so I don’t have to.”
“Right, well, both of you go and get dressed, then,” Pam said, making a shooing gesture with her hands. “You’re not coming round unless you make some sort of effort.”
Emma slouched out first, leaving the sherry on the glass coffee table. Holly got up more slowly, glancing again at the three photos on the mantel.
“It’s a sad story,” Pam said, a gentleness coming into her voice now.
Holly looked back, saw Pam watching her.
“Do you know what happened—why her grandson doesn’t speak to her anymore?”
Pam looked at Holly for a long moment before shaking her head. “It’s not my story to tell. And to be honest, by the time we met it was already in the past, so I’m not even sure I have the details I’d need to do it justice.”
“Where is he now?”
Pam hesitated. “Last Emma told me, he was in London, working at one of those management consultancy thingamajigs.”
Holly’s heart gave a little jolt. He was so close to her. Windsor and London were different worlds—she knew that well enough, having escaped from one to go to the other—but they were just a short train ride away from one another. And she’d even be in London in March, for the school trip with Abi.
But she turned away from the photos, took a step toward the living room door. It was not her business. It was up to Emma to tell her about it, up to Emma to get in touch with her grandson if she wanted to.
“Germain & Co.,” Pam said from behind her, her tone mild, almost incidental.
Holly frowned as she turned back to Pam. “Huh?”
“I think that’s the name of the company Jack works for. Just in case you’re interested,” she added with a little shrug.
Holly paused, letting the knowledge settle into her, trying to read between the lines of what Pam was saying.
“Jack?”
“That’s his name,” Pam said with a little nod. “Emma’s grandson. Jack.”
And though Holly told herself it was ridiculous, that it couldn’t be, there was no possible way that Emma’s Jack could be the man from the café all those years ago, she felt a tug, deep inside her. Stupid, she told herself again. But still, she couldn’t deny it. That tug inside her—it felt like a thread, being pulled tight.
Chapter Nine
Jack sat at his desk, his back to the office window and the view of the city that it offered, the email on his computer screen going blurry in front of him even as he blinked to try to draw it into focus. He reached for the coffee next to him, only to find it empty. Probably a good thing. It was coming up to lunchtime now, and he’d already had four cups this morning—which was a lot of caffeine, even for him. But he’d been in the office until gone ten p.m. last night and had started again at seven a.m. this morning, and caffeine was sort of necessary in that situation. Only now he was starting to get a headache, and it was hard to know if it was because of the coffee or all the blue light.
He rolled his shoulders, read the email again. They were a team member down at the moment—Jenny having left for bigger and better things—which meant he was working on more projects than usual, and next week he’d be up in Scotland with a new client—a startup that had done pretty well for the first three years and was now floundering—so he was trying to get ahead of the curve. If there was one thing that could be said of his job, it was that it was never boring—and that variety, working across different projects all at once, was what had first drawn him to it. But coming up to eight years in the industry, he was starting to feel a bit knackered. Then again, he thought with a sigh, it might not just be the job—his whole bloody life felt exhausting at the moment.
His desk phone started to ring, the red light flashing. Reception. Jack stared at the phone for a moment, wondering whether to bother answering. They’d hired a new receptionist—young, just out of university, who wore a baffling combination of a T-shirt and tie—and he definitely hadn’t got the hang of things yet. He was frequently ringing the wrong person or directing client emails to the wrong team. Though it wasn’t that he wasn’t making an effort—he’d learned the name of everyone who worked here, as far as Jack could tell, and always tried to greet them with some sort of personal reference, trying, no doubt, to establish camaraderie.
Jack picked up the phone—who was he kidding? He’d never ignored a work call in his life—and switched the speakerphone on. “Hi, Mike.”
“Jack! Looking forward to Scotland next week?”
“It’ll be a ball.” Frankly, he couldn’t imagine anything worse right now than trekking to Glasgow in mid-March, but there you had it.
“Totally. Look, I’ve got a George Ham…” He trailed off on a cough. “Err, well, he’s from Create Construction, says he’s got a meeting with—”
“You want Sophia.” Jack did his best not to sigh. “She’s the project manager for that one.”
“Oh right, sorry, I thought it was you, because—”
“No worries.” There was a knock at Jack’s office door and he looked up, signaling for Ed to come in. “Got to go, Mike. Good luck.” He wasn’t really sure why he’d said that—luck just always seemed appropriate when it came to Mike.
Jack sat back in his swivel chair—he’d spent hours choosing it from a catalogue and it was arguably the best in existence—and nodded at Ed, who was now leaning against the inside of the glass door. How Ed always managed to look so put together was beyond Jack—he knew for a fact that Ed had been out in Soho until late last night, but there was no sign of baggy eyes or sallow skin, as Jack knew there would be if he’d been out drinking.
“All right?” Jack asked. He reached again for his mug, stopped his hand halfway and wrinkled his nose. Right. No more coffee.
Ed grinned. “Looks like this is good timing—I was coming to see if you wanted lunch. Or coffee, apparently?”
Jack sighed. “I’m not supposed to have any more caffeine.”
“Says who?”
“Me.”
“Well, tell you that you’re ridiculous.”
“Tried that,” Jack said with mock seriousness. “I didn’t believe me.”
Ed snorted. “Come on. Let’s go get food—I’m sure that bowl of granola feels a long time ago now.”
Jack got to his feet. “It’s odd that you remember my breakfast of choice.”
Ed put on a serious face. “It’s that kind of attention to detail that means I’m the one sent champagne from the clients, mate.”
“You only get champagne? I get champagne and flowers and those little truffle things—I’d say you need to up your game.”
Ed smirked. “Flowers, hey?”
“Peonies. They’re my favorite—surprised you didn’t know that what with all your attention to detail.” Peonies were not, in fact, his favorite flower: That would be a ghost orchid, one of the UK’s rarest plants, which, unlike most, didn’t use sunlight to produce food but relied on a special kind of fungi. Which, you had to admit, was pretty damned cool. A rebel plant. Not that he’d spout that kind of thing out loud: Not only would Ed scoff at him, albeit fondly, for such knowledge, but it always gave him a pang of regret, thinking about his childhood dream of finding a way to work outside—something he’d given up on when he’d moved to London straight out of university.
Jack turned to get his winter coat off the hook by the window. He deliberately kept his desk facing away from the window—mainly because facing the door meant he could see who was approaching and wouldn’t be caught off-guard, but also because there was something a little depressing about the City of London. Though some of the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf were, he supposed, majestic in their own right, looking out at all the concrete and glass, with no sign of any green, made him feel a little trapped, like he couldn’t breathe quite easily enough.
“Shall we grab something from the canteen?” Jack asked, turning back to Ed, who held the glass door open.
“Nah, I’m sick of it there. Let’s go to Caravan.” It was one of the cooler eateries in the area—complete with a terrace that was always crowded in summer. Jack stole a quick glance out the window. He doubted they’d have that problem today, given the gray sky, the way it made you feel cold just by looking at it.
“Reckon I could get away with a beer before my client meeting this afternoon?” Ed asked, as the two of them headed through the office and toward the lift. They were up on the sixth floor, and though Jack routinely told himself he’d start taking the stairs, it was a habit he hadn’t managed to properly get into.
“Ah, no.”
Ed wrinkled his nose. “You’re the wrong person to ask, aren’t you?
Jack offered a sort of helpless shrug. “Sorry.”
Ed pressed the button for the ground floor. He gave Jack a look out of the corner of his eye as he did so. Jack knew that look, the not-so-subtle assessment. “Heard you were in the office late last night,” Ed said. His voice was casual, but Jack wasn’t fooled.
He shrugged. “Par for the course here.”
Ed hesitated. “Have you talked to Vanessa recently?”
Jack rubbed a hand across his face, the tiredness that seemed like a constant companion these days flooding through his body. “No. She’s called a few times but I just don’t have the energy.” He could feel Ed’s eyes on him as the lift arrived and they both stepped in. He sighed. “What?”
“Nothing,” Ed said, a little too quickly. “I just wondered, maybe if you talked to her, you’d get some—”
“Ed,” Jack said, his voice a warning.
“Right. Right, sorry, not my business.”
“No, sorry, it’s not that.” And really, he appreciated having a friend who looked out for him. Given the long work hours and what had happened with Vanessa, he’d let some of his friendships slide—and it wasn’t like his family was nearby. Wasn’t like he talked to them all that much, anyway. So he was grateful that Ed was looking out for him, even if he’d rather not talk about what a fuck-up his life was right now.
“So,” Ed said, his voice becoming brighter, obviously trying to lighten the mood, “you’re back on the twenty-third, right?”
Jack looked at him blankly.
“From Scotland?”
“Ah right. Yeah, the twenty-third.” He frowned. “That would make it the fourteenth today, is that right?”
“Yeah. Quick math. Why? What’s important about the fourteenth?
“Nothing. My mum’s birthday’s soon, that’s all.” He ought to send flowers. A card and flowers. Jesus, when did he last call her? Christmas, probably. He’d chosen to spend Christmas alone this year—the first one in nearly five years now—rather than opting to be with his mum and her family. It had never felt right, ever since she’d got remarried after he’d left for university. Derek seemed like a nice enough guy, and Jack was glad his mum had eventually found something after the awfulness of what had happened to his dad—but it still just felt…odd, at these kind of traditional family get-togethers. He had two half-siblings too, though they always treated him with a faint air of curiosity and suspicion, like they weren’t quite sure what to do with him or whether to trust him. Though maybe that was just because they were teenagers.
