Mr Lynch’s Holiday Read Online Free

forgot to turn them off. Sorry. You’re not really seeing it at its best, been a while since anyone cut the grass. It used to be … you know … short. All that.’
    ‘Is there any prospect of it ever being finished?’
    ‘Well … I think … not currently, no.’
    Dermot rubbed his face with his hand. ‘Can I ask how much are you in for now?’
    Eamonn screwed up his face. ‘Pfffffff – hard to say really.’
    ‘Roughly, like.’
    ‘Roughly … roughly – I’d say the mortgage is somewhere in the region of a hundred and two thousand euros now. We put down a big deposit.’
    ‘Right.’
    They were silent again for a while before Eamonn turned to Dermot and gave him a small smile. ‘Ours was the third property to be bought. We got in early. Before the rush.’ He paused. ‘Mom always thought I was cleverer than I was.’
    Dermot said nothing.
    Eamonn kicked a stone out over the hillside. ‘Still, it’s not so bad. I mean, it’s a nice place. Quiet. Plenty of time to think.’
    Dermot looked back out at the horizon. A distant ship was heading towards Africa. He remembered something in his pocket and reached for it. He held a small paper bag out to Eamonn. ‘Do you still like these fellas?’
    Eamonn didn’t seem to hear him.
    ‘Coca-Cola bottles? Is that right? Do you still eat them?’
    Eamonn turned slowly. ‘Cola bottles?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    He peered cautiously into the bag as if it contained spiders. ‘I haven’t eaten them since I was about ten.’
    ‘Seemed to remember you eating them sometimes when you came out on the buses. Devil to find now, they are. Can’t get them round the corner any more. I found these over in a place in Shard End the other day. Thought maybe you were missing them.’ Eamonn just stared at him. ‘Maybe you’ve gone off them. You don’t have to have them if you don’t like them any more.’
    Eamonn reached out and took one. He held it up to examine it. ‘No sugar on it.’
    ‘No, had an idea you preferred the ones without the sugar on.’
    Eamonn brought the sweet slowly to his lips. ‘I do.’
    Dermot nodded. ‘Good. I’m glad I got them, then. That’s something I got right.’

4
    It was a large flat, not much furniture, tiled floors. The sound of his father busying himself had been filtering through his bedroom door for the past two hours. Footsteps this way and that, washing up, kitchen cupboards opening and closing. Before that he had heard him go to the toilet at midnight and again at three. Eamonn must have slept briefly, then, as he’d thought it was Laura in the bathroom, and he’d experienced a moment of peace before he woke fully and his thoughts became jagged and unmanageable once more.
    He had dreamed he was holding a baby with shining eyes. The baby had spoken and he had called to Laura in amazement, but she had not come, and he could not tear his eyes away from the face of the infant to look for her. Awake he felt the ache of the baby’s absence but now he saw that it had not been a baby in the dream at all, but a fluffy kitten, and the banality seemed only to compound the loss.
    He had been willing himself for the past hour to get up and attend to any one of the things that needed attending to. The folder of unmarked work, the lack of food, the piles of laundry, his father. He turned in bed and tried to imagine once more that it was Laura, not his father, on the other side of the bedroom door. He pictured her clutter on the side table. The oversize and now filthy teddy-bear key ring, bought to help locate keys in her cavernous bag, staring up at him with an unjustified expression of self-satisfaction.
    He had told his father a partial truth. Laura had gone away for a few days to research the novel. What he’d omitted to say
was that she had returned from the trip five days before Dermot arrived. He’d omitted to say this because it was as yet unsayable. It was as yet unthinkable. It had happened, that was undeniable, but it