‘Jo!’ Lorcan exclaimed. ‘That’s amazing. Wow, how exciting for you. Tell me you’re excited?’
She turned to face him. ‘Not so much excited as terrified.’
‘But maybe a little bit excited?’ Lorcan said as he raised an eyebrow.
‘A tiny bit,’ Jo admitted with a small smile.
‘Well, then. Here’s my advice, for what it’s worth. But please bear in mind that my advice mightn’t be great considering I’m in my late twenties and have run away to Ireland to escape the collapse of my existing life in England. Hang on to the excited bit. Ignore the terrified. Terrified is only good if you’re in actual physical danger, which you’re not. I’d assume that Libby wouldn’t have sent your work on to Ewan if she didn’t think it was good enough for him to read.’
‘I suppose,’ she said, picking a daisy from the grass and starting to pull its delicate white petals off one by one. Jo didn’t know if that made her feel worse or better about the situation, but she did like what he’d said about holding on to the excited part. Maybe she could try that.
Lorcan lifted his water bottle and took a long drink.
‘Will we get back?’ she asked, hauling herself up to standing and brushing the grass from her leggings.
Paddy jumped up, ready to spring into action for round two of their walk.
‘I suppose I can’t sit here all day,’ Lorcan said. ‘I’ve the lads in the street to call round for and get a game of football in before dinner.’ He laughed, and Jo felt a rush of warmth towards him. And maybe, just maybe, a little hint of terror that she couldn’t seem to dampen down her fondness for him even though they’d only known each other five minutes.
Terrified is only good if you are in actual physical danger, she told herself. And you’re not. So breathe!
‘Let’s go,’ she said, ‘before my legs seize up and I need a me-sized buggy, never mind one for the dog.’
Lorcan hauled himself to standing and they started to make their way out of the park, along the river and back towards Peace Bridge.
‘So, tell me more about you,’ Jo said. ‘I’m not prying. You don’t have to tell me the personal stuff. Not unless you need to talk about it.’
He shook his head. ‘Well, I probably do need to talk about it, but for the moment I don’t feel able. I’m still processing everything.’ He pointed his index finger at his temple and tapped it against his head.
‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘But you should know I’m a good listener if you ever want to.’
‘Noted,’ he said.
‘But for now, will we stick with the non-contentious stuff? You still haven’t told me what you do for a living?’
Lorcan laughed. ‘Well, if you remember Friends and Chandler Bing?’
‘I love that show!’ Jo grinned.
‘Yeah, well I’m a bit of Chandler Bing. I work in IT. I’d give you the full rundown, but, honestly, your eyes would glaze over and you wouldn’t take it in at all. I don’t think even Sophie ever truly understood what I did and she was with me from the day I got the job.’
‘Okay. I shall forever think of you as Chandler Bing.’
‘I’m sorry. I wish it could be something cooler. Maybe a Ross Geller? But I’m a nerdy guy, and I do enjoy the work. I’m not sure I’ll do it forever, but it suits me for now. I have learned, however, that most people really don’t find the intricacies of IT interesting. I think it would seriously make you run screaming, or fall asleep, or generally just decide that you don’t want to spend more time with me. And I think,’ he said, as he looked ahead, ‘that you’re a pretty cool person to spend time with.’ Jo felt something tug at her heartstrings, and this time she was pretty sure it wasn’t just Paddy reminding her to keep walking.
17
My Fair Lady
Clara sat, cross-legged, on top of Jo’s bed, with a curious expression on her face. Her little button nose wrinkled, her eyes squinting and her lips in a pensive pout as she watched Jo slather a creamy green goo all over her face.
The face mask was just one step in Jo’s plan to have her feeling her best when she met Ewan so that she would exude a confidence she most certainly didn’t feel. She’d already had a long soak in the bath, defuzzed a significant amount of hair from her body (not quite porn-star levels of hair removal, but early-days-in-a-passionate-relationship levels for definite). She had rubbed her most luxurious body cream into her skin, and her hair was currently deep conditioning and wrapped in a towel. It wasn’t quite the full-on pampering she had planned, but she’d had to cut her cloth after overspending on the new outfit to wear.
‘Why are you doing all that?’ Clara asked, cutting through her thoughts.
Jo looked at her, thinking how unbearably cute she was as she sat wearing a pair of white cotton pyjamas with tiny unicorns dancing across them in pale shades of pink and lilac. Her feet were clad in pink furry slippers, from the top of which bunny ears stood to attention. Her hair was silky soft, in smooth curls. In fact, her hair was exactly how Jo would like her own to look after this deep-conditioning treatment. She feared, however, that it might just look as if she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket.
‘Well,’ Jo told her. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to pamper yourself. I just want to make my skin feel nice and soft and make myself look beautiful.’
‘But you are beautiful,’ Clara said, with the sincerity that only a six-year-old can possess, and Jo’s heart melted just a little.
‘Well, thank you very much. You are very beautiful too. But because I’m a little bit older, sometimes I need a little more help to get there.’
Clara screwed her face up again, her brow furrowed. ‘But your face is your face. You can’t change it.’ She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.
It was pretty faultless logic as far as these things go. ‘Well, that’s true enough. But still, it’s just something some of us like to do, especially if we have something important or extra fun planned, like going to a party or a wedding. You know, like when you put on your favourite dress when you went to Lucy’s birthday party?’
‘Are you going to a birthday party?’ Clara asked, eyebrows raised. ‘Can I come too? Please! Please, please, please!’
Jo shook her head slowly. ‘No, darling, I’m not going to a party. I’m going to help Libby at the shop tomorrow and she is having a special visitor who I want to talk to about the stories I write.’
‘Does he write stories too?’
‘He does,’ Jo said. ‘And he might be able to help me.’
‘Like you help me with my homework sometimes?’ Clara asked.
‘Exactly like that.’ Jo smiled. It seemed a simple enough explanation for a six-year-old to wrap her head around.
Clara seemed to accept this and went back to playing with Buttercup while Jo went to the bathroom to wash off the face mask and rinse the conditioning treatment from her hair.
There was nothing wrong with wanting to look every inch the professional. Both Libby and Erin had loved her outfit choice. When she had dropped Paddy back to the pub, both women were clearly patiently waiting for her return and both were giving her what appeared to be very close to a death stare.