P.S. I Love You (12 page)

It was about to get a lot worse.

“Next we have a newcomer to the competition. Her name is Holly and she’s singing…”

Holly ran to the cubicle and locked herself in. There was no way in this world they were getting her out of there.

“So ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Holly!”

There was a huge applause.

FOURTEEN

I
T WAS THREE YEARS AGO when Holly had taken to the stage for her debut karaoke performance. Coincidentally it had been three years
since
Holly had taken to the stage to do karaoke.

A huge crowd of her friends had gone to their local pub in Swords to celebrate the thirtieth birthday of one of the lads. Holly had been extremely tired, as she had been working overtime for the previous two weeks. She really wasn’t in the mood to go out partying. All she wanted was to go home, have a nice long bath, put on the most unsexy pair of pajamas she owned, eats lots of chocolate and snuggle up on the couch in front of the TV with Gerry.

After standing on an overcrowded DART all the way from Blackrock to Sutton Station, Holly was definitely not in the mood to go through the whole ordeal again in an overcrowded, stuffy pub. On the train, half her face had been squashed up against the window and the other half lodged underneath the sweaty armpit of a very unhygienic man. Right behind her a man was breathing alcoholic fumes rather loudly down her neck. It didn’t help matters that every time the train swayed he ‘accidentally’ pressed his big beer belly up against her back. She had suffered through this indignity every day going to work and coming home for two weeks and she could take it no longer. She wanted her pajamas.

Finally she arrived at Sutton Station and the very clever people there thought it was a great idea to all get
on
the train while people tried to get off. It took her so long to fight her way through the crowd to get
off
the train that by the time she reached the platform she saw her feeder bus drive off, packed with happy little people smiling out the window at her. And because it was after six o’clock, the coffee shop had closed and she was left standing in the freezing cold waiting for another half an hour till the next bus arrived. This experience only strengthened her desire to cuddle up in front of the TV.

But a good evening at home was not to be. Her beloved husband had other plans. She arrived home tired and extremely pissed off to a crowded house and thumping music. People she didn’t even know were wandering around her living room with cans of beer in their hands and slumping themselves on the couch she had intended to live on for the next few hours. Gerry stood at the CD player acting DJ and trying to look cool. At that moment in time she had never seen him look so uncool in her life.

“What is wrong with you?” Gerry asked her after seeing her storming upstairs to the bedroom.

“Gerry, I am tired, I am pissed off, I am not in the mood to go out tonight, and you didn’t even ask me if it was all right to invite all these people over. And by the way,
who are they?
” she yelled.

“They’re friends of Conor’s and by the way,
this is my house too!
” he yelled back.

Holly placed her fingers on her temples and began to gently massage her head; she had an incredible headache and the music was driving her crazy.

“Gerry,” she said quietly, trying to stay calm, “I’m not saying that you can’t invite people over. It would be fine if you had planned it in advance and told me.
Then
I wouldn’t care, but today of all days when I am so so tired,” her voice became weaker and weaker with every word, “I just wanted to relax in my own house.”

“Oh, every day’s the same with you,” he snapped. “You never want to do anything anymore anyway. Every night you’re the same. You come home in your cranky moods and bitch at me about everything!”

Holly’s jaw dropped.

“Excuse me! I have been working hard!”

“And so have I, but you don’t see me biting your head off every time I don’t get my own way.”

“Gerry, this isn’t about me getting my own way, this is about you inviting the whole street into our h —”

“
It’s Friday
,” he yelled, silencing her. “
It’s the weekend!
When is the last time you went out? Leave your work behind and let your hair down for a change. Stop acting like such a
granny!
” And he stormed out of the bedroom and slammed the door.

After spending a long time in the bedroom hating Gerry and dreaming of a divorce, she managed to calm down and think rationally about what he had said. And he was right. OK, he wasn’t right in the way he had phrased it, but she
had
been cranky and bitchy all month and she knew it.

Holly was the type of person who finished work at 5 P.M. and had her computer switched off, lights off, desk tidied and was running for her train by 5:01 P.M. whether her employers liked it or not. She never took her work home and never stressed about the future of the business because, quite frankly, she didn’t care, and she phoned in sick as many Monday mornings as possible without running the risk of being fired. But due to a momentary lapse of concentration when looking for new employment, she had found herself accepting an office job that forced her to take paperwork home, to agree to work late and to worry about the business, which she was not happy with
at all
. How she even managed to stay there for an entire month was anybody’s guess, but nevertheless, Gerry had been right. Ouch, it even hurt to think it. She hadn’t gone out with him or her friends for weeks and she fell asleep the minute her head hit the pillow every night. Come to think of it, that was probably Gerry’s main problem, never mind the bitchiness.

But tonight would be different. She intended to show her neglected friends and husband that she was still the irresponsible, fun and frivolous Holly who could drink them all under the table and yet manage to walk the white line all the way home. This show of antics began by preparing home cocktails, God only knows what was in them, but they worked their little magic and at eleven o’clock they all danced down the road to the pub where a karaoke was taking place. Holly demanded to be first up and heckled the karaoke host until she got her way. The pub was jammed and that night there was a rowdy crowd who were out on a stag night. It was as though a film crew had arrived in the pub hours earlier and worked away setting the scene for disaster. They couldn’t have done a better job.

The DJ gave Holly a huge buildup after believing her lies of being a professional singer. Gerry lost all power of speech and sight from laughing so hard but she was determined to show him that she could still let her hair down. He needn’t plan that divorce yet. Holly decided to sing ‘Like a Virgin’ and dedicated it to the man who was getting married the next day. As soon as she started singing, Holly had never heard so many boos in her whole life and at such a loud volume. But she was so drunk she didn’t care and continued on singing to her husband, who seemed to be the only one without a moody face.

Eventually when people began to throw things at the stage and when the karaoke host himself encouraged them to boo even louder, Holly felt that her work there had been done. When she handed him back the microphone there was a cheer so loud that people from the pub next door came running in. It was all the more people to see Holly trip down the steps in her stilettos and fall flat on her face. They all watched as her skirt went flying over her head to reveal the old underwear that had once been white was now gray, and that she hadn’t bothered to change when she got home from work.

Holly was taken to hospital to see to her broken nose.

Gerry lost his voice from laughing so loudly and Denise and Sharon helped matters by taking photographs of the scene of the crime, which Denise then chose as the cover for the invitations to her Christmas party, with the heading ‘Let’s get pissed!’

Holly vowed
never
to do karaoke again.

FIFTEEN

“
H
OLLY KENNEDY? ARE YOU HERE?” the karaoke host’s voice boomed. The crowd’s applause died down into a loud chatter as everyone looked around in search of Holly. Well, they would be a long time looking, she thought as she lowered the toilet seat and sat down to wait for the excitement to settle so they could move on to their next victim. She closed her eyes, rested her head on her hands and prayed for this moment to pass. She wanted to open her eyes and be safely at home a week from now. She counted to ten, praying for a miracle, and then slowly opened her eyes again.

She was still in the toilet.

Why couldn’t she, at least just this once, suddenly find magical powers? It always happened to the American girls in the films and it just wasn’t fair…

Holly had known this would happen; from the moment she opened that envelope and read Gerry’s third letter, she foresaw tears and humiliation. Her nightmare had come true.

Outside, the club sounded very quiet and a sense of calm engulfed her as she realized they were moving on to the next singer. Her shoulders relaxed and she unclenched her fists, her jaw relaxed and air flowed more easily into her lungs. The panic was over, but she decided to wait until the next singer began his song before she made a run for it. She couldn’t even climb out the window because she wasn’t on the ground floor, well, not unless she wanted to plummet to her own death. Another thing her American friend would be able to do.

Outside the cubicle Holly heard the toilet door open and slam. Uh-oh, they were coming to get her. Whoever
they
were.

“Holly?”

It was Sharon.

“Holly, I know you’re in there, so just listen to me, OK?”

Holly sniffed back the tears that were beginning to well.

“OK, I know that this is an absolute nightmare for you and I know you have a major phobia about this kind of thing, but you need to relax, OK?”

Sharon’s voice was so soothing, Holly’s shoulders once again relaxed.

“Holly, I hate mice, you know that.”

Holly frowned, wondering where this little pep talk was going.

“And my worst nightmare would be to walk out of here to a room full of mice. Now could you imagine me?”

Holly smiled at the thought and remembered the time when Sharon moved in with Gerry and Holly for two weeks after she had caught a mouse in her house. John, of course, was granted conjugal visits.

“Yeah, well I would be right here where you are now and nothing in the whole world would bring me out.”

She paused.

“What?” the DJ’s voice said into the microphone and then started laughing, “Ladies and gentlemen, it appears that our singer is currently in the toilets.” The entire room erupted in laughter.

“Sharon!” Holly’s voice trembled in fear. She felt as though the angry mob were about to break down the door, strip her of her clothes and carry her over their heads to the stage for her execution. Panic took over for the third time. Sharon rushed her next sentence. “Anyway, Holly, all I’m saying is that you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Nobody here is forcing you…”

“Ladies and gentlemen, let’s let Holly know that she’s up next!” yelled the DJ. “Come on!” Everybody began to stamp their feet and chant her name.

“OK, well, at least nobody who cares about you is forcing you to do this,” stammered Sharon, now under pressure from the approaching mob. “But if you don’t do this, I know you will never be able to forgive yourself. Gerry wanted you to do this for a reason.”

“HOLLY! HOLLY! HOLLY!”

“Oh Sharon!” Holly repeated again, panicking. Suddenly the walls of the cubicle felt like they were closing in on her; beads of sweat formed on her forehead. She had to get out of there. She burst through the door. Sharon’s eyes widened at the sight of her distraught friend, who looked like she had just seen a ghost. Her eyes were red and puffy with black lines of mascara streaming down her face (that waterproof stuff never works) and her tears had washed all her makeup away.

“Don’t mind them, Holly,” Sharon said coolly, “they can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

Holly’s lower lip began to tremble.

“Don’t!” Sharon said, gripping her by the shoulders and looking her in the eye. “Don’t even think about it!”

Her lip stopped trembling but the rest of her didn’t. Finally Holly broke her silence. “I can’t sing, Sharon,” she whispered, her eyes wide with terror.

“I know that!” Sharon said laughing. “And your family knows that! Screw the rest of them! You are never gonna see any of their ugly mugs
ever again!
Who cares what they think? I don’t, do you?”

Holly thought about it for a minute. “No,” she whispered.

“I didn’t hear you, what did you say? Do you care what they think?”

“No,” she said, a little stronger.

“Louder!” Sharon shook her by the shoulders.

“No!” she yelled.

“Louder!”

“NOOOOOOOOO! I DON’T CARE WHAT THEY THINK!” Holly screamed so loud the crowd began to quiet down outside. Sharon looked a little shaken, was probably a little deaf, and stood frozen in her place for a while. The two of them smiled at each other and then began to giggle at their stupidity.

“Just let this be another silly Holly day so we can laugh about it a few months from now,” Sharon pleaded with her.

Holly took one last look at her reflection in the mirror, washed away her smudged mascara lines, took a deep breath and charged toward the door like a woman on a mission. She opened the door to her adoring fans, who were all facing it and chanting her name. They all began to cheer when they saw her, so she took an extremely theatrical bow and headed toward the stage to the sound of claps and laughter and a yell from Sharon saying, “Screw them!”

Holly had everybody’s attention now whether she liked it or not. If she hadn’t run into the toilet, the people who were chatting down the back of the club probably wouldn’t have noticed her singing, but now she had attracted even more attention.