‘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. Lightning 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 lockjaw 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 Dermot, you’re so sweet to include me …’
‘Why do I sense a big, fat “but” coming?’
‘But tempting and all as A Zombie Ate My Boyfriend’s Brains sounds, I’d really be no company at all. I wouldn’t inflict myself on you. Besides, I’d really rather get through the whole day alone. I’m not ready to do any more right now, I’m so sorry. Not this year anyway.’
Dermot however is good at hearing rejection, claiming he gets enough practice at it in his sex life.
‘Offer’s always there if you change your mind,’ he says cheerily. ‘Just remember, this could be your one and only chance to see The House of the Devil on bootleg DVD.’
It’s like he and Joy are in cahoots though, because that very night when I get home, she’s already there ahead of me and I can just tell by the look on her face exactly what’s on her mind. Time for the Big Chat, that is. The same one I try my level best to dodge my way out of every other year.
‘Tick-tock,’ she says, even pausing Netflix on the telly as I burst in and clatter down Tesco shopping bags, while peeling off layers of all my winter paraphernalia; multi-weather brolly/handbag/coat/scarf etc. Everything you need to survive in a country like Ireland, where we effectively have two seasons: winter and winter minor.
I think the very fact that Joy has torn her head away from Netflix is warning enough that there’s just no dodging the Big Chat right now, try as I might. The giveaway being that she freeze-frames the telly on Breaking Bad, her all-time favourite US TV import at the moment. She’s an out and out Breaking Baddict and no matter who calls her in the middle of it, anyone from Krzysztof to her own mammy, she’ll snarl at the phone and then at me, ‘Nobody calls me in the middle of Breaking Bad. NOBODY.’
I play for time by asking her whether or not she wants tea and a sticky bun, but she’s well wise to me after all this time.
‘Now we’ll have none of your diversionary tactics, Missy,’ she says tartly, getting up from the sofa and following me into the kitchen while I stick the kettle on. ‘Come on, Holly, you know right well Christmas is only ten days away and you’ve got to make some kind of a decision here. You can’t just bury yourself away again this year, like you always do. You’ve got to make plans.’
‘And so I already have,’ I tell her, busying myself whipping milk out of the fridge and unpacking groceries I stopped off for earlier.
‘You mean hide out here, all alone with nothing but the duvet, the telly and a bottle of Pinot Grigio