Mr Lynch’s Holiday Read Online Free Page A

had not yet resolved itself into any kind of comprehensible action. He had found her in the bedroom, moving from rucksack to wardrobe. She was wearing a top he hadn’t recognized. There was a time when they’d known all of each other’s clothes, had shopped together, had sought each other’s advice and approval. He wasn’t sure when that had stopped. As he watched her, he had tried to imagine what he would think if he was seeing her for the first time, walking towards him along the street. What would he make of her hair? Those sandals? That vest? And what might she make of him? He imagined them passing each other by. The thought of it made him want to touch her gently, to lay a hand on her arm. It was only then he noticed that she was putting clothes in – not taking them out of – the rucksack.
    He had not seen it coming. He found himself repeating that phrase. Laura had disputed it. She said he was deceiving himself. If that was true, he’d told her, he was doing a good job of it. He felt that if he had seen it coming he might have said the right things. But he had not.
    She needed time to think, she had said. She needed to get away from him. She was going back to her parents in England. She would be in touch. But she didn’t answer her phone. She didn’t reply to his emails or his texts. After eight years she had left him alone in a terrible, featureless limbo.
    He wasn’t sure if it was the lack of sleep, the lack of food or simply the lack of Laura that was causing the hallucinations. Several times since she had gone, lying in his bed, apparently awake, he had heard strange sounds at night. A heavy vehicle – a lorry or truck – chugging past on the road outside in the early
hours. Such a vehicle would have a purpose and therefore no place on such a purposeless road. He wondered at the symbolism of it. What clumsy metaphor was his subconscious trying to deliver? One night he thought he heard footsteps and voices beneath his window, but when he looked there was nobody there. In the days since Laura’s departure he’d been keenly aware of his isolation, the only occupant in an otherwise empty block, in an otherwise empty street.
    A knock at the door made him jump.
    ‘Eamonn?’
    He closed his eyes tight.
    ‘Eamonn. Are you awake yet?’
    He said nothing.
    ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
    A long pause. ‘Yes. Please.’
    ‘Right. There’s no milk I’m afraid … or tea bags. Except some that smell like toothpaste.’
    He lay still.
    ‘I thought I’d walk down to the town and get a few things. You don’t seem to have much in the way of food. I’m not sure what you normally have for your breakfast but all you have in is a jar of gherkins and a tin of grapes.’ There was a pause. ‘I didn’t even know you could get grapes in a tin.’
    Eamonn ran his hand over his face. ‘You can’t walk to the town, it’s over four miles away. I need to get the car battery recharged.’
    ‘I can walk that right enough.’
    ‘Are you sure?’ He sensed a reprieve. His father had always been a great walker. He’d enjoy it.
    ‘I am, yes.’
    ‘OK,’ he called from beneath the cover, ‘well, maybe I’ll stay here. I can get on with some stuff while you’re out.’ He closed his eyes, but waiting for him behind his eyelids was an
unwelcome vision of an elderly man in inappropriate clothing, struggling with bags of shopping in the blistering heat.
    ‘Right-o. I’ll be off, so.’
    He saw him losing his footing on the hillside, collapsed by the roadside, snapping a bone.
    ‘Bye.’
    He listened to his father’s footsteps move away from the bedroom and heard the jangle of keys in the front door, then silence. He threw the sheet off and ran.
    ‘Dad!’ He saw the front door close. There was a pause, then the sound of the key turning again, before his father’s head poked back in.
    ‘What is it, son?’
    ‘Wait. I’ll come with you.’
    Dermot nodded. ‘Good man. The air’ll do you