Mother of the Bride (28 page)

‘Ciara, that sounds really interesting.' Jess praised her, realizing that the awkward crazy kid who used to be the bane of herself and Amy's life was actually growing up to be pretty decent. ‘I wouldn't mind seeing it. I'm sure that something like that would be great for the kids in the school where I teach: get them to be more aware of the world around them.'

‘We haven't performed much to audiences yet, but kids would be great as they'd get it, and we could show them some of the moves and routines we've created.'

Jess smiled. She remembered when Ciara used to dress up in a pink ballet tutu and go to ballet lessons. She'd waltz around the O'Connors' house doing constant pliés and pirouettes. She'd always been good at dancing, and here she was taking it on to the next stage.

‘What do you think Amy's doing?' Ciara mused aloud as they saw a road sign for Kilkenny.

‘She's probably having dinner or a drink with him,' sighed Jess, putting her foot on the accelerator. ‘With any luck we should be there in about half an hour or so.'

As they neared Kilkenny they both fell silent, unsure of what the plan ought to be.

‘Do you even know what hotel Matt and Amy are staying in?' asked Ciara.

‘No, but we'll find them.'

They drove around for a bit. They stopped at a massive hotel
on the outskirts, but discovered that there was no Matt Kerrigan registered there. They tried two smaller places and drew a blank, but then, when Jess asked in the Castle Hotel overlooking the river near Kilkenny Castle, they got a response.

‘Mr Kerrigan checked in here a few hours ago.' The receptionist smiled.

‘Has he gone out to dinner?' asked Ciara. ‘Or is he still in the hotel?'

‘I think Mr Kerrigan and his partner had dinner earlier in the dining room, and they might still be in the bar.' The receptionist smiled again before turning to answer the phone.

Ciara and Jess raced to the bar. There was a big group of business men in one corner, and a few couples, but no sign of Matt and Amy.

The barman was helpful, and told them that Matt and his partner had been sitting at the table over near the window only a few minutes earlier, but must have just finished their drinks.

Jess sauntered over to the table he'd pointed out. Matt's signature, she saw, was on the hotel docket for room 305. She signalled for Ciara to join her in the lobby.

‘They're here, on the third floor!' whispered Jess. ‘But what should we do?'

They'd come here so impulsively, and now neither of them was sure what their next move should be.

‘We've got to stop Amy making an utter prat of herself,' insisted Ciara. ‘That's our mission.'

Nervous, they got into the lift, and found the room easily on the third floor. They could hear talking and laughter coming from inside.

‘What are we going to do?' whispered Ciara. ‘It sounds like Amy's there.'

Jess took a deep breath and knocked on the door. She felt like a private detective on a case. She held her breath, terrified, as
Matt came to the door and answered it wearing a pair of pale-blue boxers.

‘Jess, isn't it? You're Amy's friend. What the hell are you doing here?' he demanded.

‘I need to talk to Amy,' she said, standing her ground. Ciara was like a mute statue beside her.

‘Amy?' Matt seemed puzzled. ‘What are you talking about?'

Suddenly the door opened wider as Matt's girlfriend appeared, curious. Her dark eyes flashed as she asked in a strong Belfast accent: ‘Who are these two?'

‘I'm sorry, Matt, there's been a misunderstanding,' said Jess, praying that the ground would open up and swallow her. Ciara was trying to stop giggling, and had run off down the corridor leaving her to take the flak.

Making up a story about being there for an annual teachers' conference and spotting him in the distance in the lobby, and presuming that Amy was with him, Jess somehow managed to extricate herself from the situation and get back out of the hotel and to the car park, where Ciara was laughing and smoking.

‘Jess, you are so crazy!' she teased. ‘Now I know why Amy likes you so much. You are a blast!'

Jess began to laugh herself. It was so ludicrous that she had to see the funny side of it. Amy would kill her when she found out. The problem was, they still had no idea where Amy was and who she was with!

They stopped off in a small café for coffee and a snack, going over the humiliation of what they had done and reliving every awful detail, before the long drive home.

‘Try texting Amy again,' Jess suggested as they drove back to Dublin.

Thirty minutes later, a relieved Ciara said, ‘Hey, she just texted me back. You won't believe it, but she's at my gran's. Gran had some
kind of a turn and was in hospital, but they are back in Gran's house now and Gran's asleep. Amy said that she's going to stay there tonight with her. Poor Gran. I'll call over to her tomorrow.'

‘Phew,' said Jess, wondering how she was ever going to explain what she had done to her best friend.

‘Remember, nobody knows about us being down in Kilkenny,' Ciara warned, ‘and that's the way to keep it!'

Jess glanced over. Amy was always saying that Ciara was like a sphinx and that sometimes you could get nothing out of her.

‘What about Matt?'

‘He's not going to tell Amy he's off in a hotel with some girl from Belfast!'

‘I suppose not!' Jess agreed.

‘Did you see the look on his face?' teased Ciara.

‘Did you see
her
face?' laughed Jess, and the two of them got hysterics replaying it over and over again in their heads, both swearing to each other to keep it a secret.

Amy stared at the text again. All day long Matt had been phoning and texting her at work, begging her to come down to Kilkenny for the weekend with him. He kept pestering her about the two of them getting away from everything and everyone and having the chance to be together like the way they were before.

Despite finding Matt as attractive as ever, Amy had no intention of turning back the clock. What part of ‘no' did Matt Kerrigan not understand? She had texted back, irritated, wishing that he would just leave her alone with her broken heart!

Concentrating on a press release she was about to send out, she ignored her phone ringing again. It was a number she didn't recognize and she let it ring out. The number rang yet again. About to give Matt a piece of her mind, she answered.

‘Matt, I—'

‘Hello, is that Amy O'Connor, Sheila Hennessy's grand-daughter?' asked the voice.

‘Yes,' she replied, suddenly worried.

‘This is Cathy Jordan; I live next door to your granny.'

‘Is she all right?' Amy asked, panicked.

‘Well, actually, no,' explained her gran's neighbour. ‘I'm in St
James's Hospital with her. She's had a bit of an accident. She fell and cut her head, and she's had a few stitches.'

‘Oh my God. Poor Gran!'

‘She's going for X-rays as the doctor thinks she may have broken her wrist, and they are checking her ribs, too. But you know Sheila, all she wants is to go home.' Cathy Jordan sounded worried. ‘I tried to phone your mum, but there's no one at home, and there's no answer from your Uncle Tim's either. They are the only numbers that I could find. But I remembered that your granny told me where you worked one day when we were having a cup of coffee.'

‘What happened to Gran?'

‘She was up at the local shops and she was in a bit of a state. She didn't seem herself, and didn't even say hello to me! She was outside the chemist's when she suddenly stepped out in front of the traffic, and a young lad on a bike nearly knocked her over. She fell in the roadway and hurt her head. I called an ambulance and took her to hospital.'

‘Cathy, thanks so much,' said Amy gratefully. ‘My mum and dad are gone to my aunt's sixtieth birthday party in Cork, and my uncle is in France. Listen, I'll be over to St James's as quick as I can,' she promised.

Norah had taken the afternoon off as there was a parent–teacher meeting in the twins' school and Jilly and Gary had already left. Amy could see Niamh and a few others were busy on a presentation, but there was nothing to hold her, so she turned off her computer and grabbed her things. She'd race back to Jess's and get her car and a few things en route to the hospital, as she'd probably stay in Willow Grove if her granny was sent home.

To say the busy Accident and Emergency department in St James's Hospital was crowded was an understatement, and Amy could see two ambulances waiting to discharge patients as she walked into the reception. She searched around, looking for any sign of her
grandmother, the receptionist pointing her towards the back row of cubicles.

Sheila Hennessy looked pale and exhausted lying on the trolley bed, a big gash in the centre of her forehead stitched and covered lightly with a piece of gauze. Her hair was in a white halo around her face, her skin drained of colour, and lined like old paper.

‘Gran, what have you done to yourself?' asked Amy, rushing over to kiss her.

‘I was just doing a bit of shopping,' Sheila said emphatically. ‘I need to get a new coat and some boots!'

‘Gran, you were up at the shops! Do you remember that?'

Her grandmother clammed up like a small kid.

What was her eighty-four-year-old gran up to, walking almost a mile to the shops? What was she thinking of with her talk of buying a new coat and boots when there was only a supermarket, a butcher's, a chemist's, a hairdresser's and the post office in the small crescent of shops?

‘Hello, I'm Cathy,' the pretty dark-haired young woman sitting on the far side of the bed introduced herself. She was only a few years older than Amy and looked pregnant.

‘We bought the old house next to Sheila's and moved in about six months ago when all the building work was done. We've become good friends,' she said, patting Sheila's hand.

‘Cathy, thanks so much for being there, and helping Gran, and going in the ambulance and everything.' Amy was filled with enormous gratitude towards this stranger who had taken care of her grandmother.

‘That's what neighbours are for.' Cathy grinned. ‘But I'm glad that you're here now, because I've to collect my four-year-old from a friend's house. She was able to hold on to her. My husband said that he'd pick me up here once someone came for Sheila.'

‘Where are you going?' asked Sheila, getting all fretful when Cathy stood up to go.

‘I have to go home, Sheila, but I'll see you tomorrow,' Cathy promised, leaning forward and giving the old lady a hug. ‘Amy's here to look after you now.'

Amy sat for hours beside her grandmother waiting for someone in the busy Accident and Emergency department to organize for Sheila to go for her X-ray.

‘Where's your young man?' asked her gran, who had a soft spot for Dan.

‘He's not here, Gran. He's in work.' It was much too complicated to explain again to someone like her gran what was going on between them.

Amy was relieved when they were finally brought down to X-ray. Her grandmother, who was mad on medical programmes on TV, plagued the nurses and young doctor in the X-ray department with questions, displaying an encyclopedic medical knowledge few eighty-four-year-olds could match!

An hour later Sheila Hennessy's broken left wrist was in a cast, and she had been told to take things very easy as she had a broken rib on her left side, too. There were no spare beds in the hospital so they were discharging her.

‘Thank heaven,' said Sheila loudly. ‘I don't want to catch MRSA.'

‘No more gallivanting, young lady!' warned the A & E consultant, as she gave Sheila a letter for her GP and an appointment for the hospital the following week.

‘Come on, Gran, let's get you home to Willow Grove,' urged Amy, helping her.

It was late by the time Amy got her grandmother home and safely upstairs to bed. She made them both a toasted sandwich and gave Gran a big mug of milky cocoa. Sheila was exhausted, and half an hour later was fast asleep, snoring. Amy slipped back downstairs and made herself a cup of coffee, deciding there was no point ruining
her parents' night at the party. She'd phone them in the morning. Gran was safe and as comfortable as she could be, asleep upstairs in the bedroom. She'd text Ciara and Ronan to tell them and would text Jess to apologize for letting her down about the theatre.

Amy looked around the old-fashioned messy kitchen and began to tidy it: sorting out papers for recycling, bottles for the bottle bank, and chucking all the out-of-date jars and cans and packets from her gran's larder and fridge firmly in the bin. It was a wonder that her gran wasn't in hospital with food poisoning! How did old people live like this? she wondered. She stacked the new dishwasher her mum and her uncles had brought for her gran at Christmas with all the grimy mugs and bowls and plates and pots that were around the kitchen, then put it on to an intensive wash cycle. It was 2 a.m. before she realized the time, and with fresh sheets taken from the hot press, she made up a bed for herself in the back bedroom.

The next morning, as the sun streamed in, Amy couldn't believe how well she had slept. It was her first proper night's sleep since she had split up with Dan, and she felt drowsy and relaxed as she looked at the faded pink floral wallpaper and old velour curtains.

Cathy from next door called in an hour later with her little girl, Emily, to see how Sheila was doing.

‘We made some buns, and I know Sheila is partial to them.' She set the buns on the table and seemed delighted to be asked to stay for coffee.

Sheila showed Emily her cast, and ate two of the soft sponge buns with their pink icing straight away, and chattered away to the little girl, who was obviously a favourite. Ten minutes later Sheila's elderly friend Florence Byrne from across the street came over to find out how she was, and Sheila relished the attention as she told Florence all about her trip in the ambulance.