Just Between Us

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘It’s Holly Miller,’ said Lilli, awestruck.

  Donna rushed up to her two new best friends, who clambered out of their corner to greet her and Holly. This was true reunion gold. Looking round the room, most people looked almost the same as at school, just with better highlights, real jewellery and more expensive clothes. Pat Wilson had had her long dark hair cut into a bob, Andrea Maguire’s red hair was now dyed a startling blonde, and even Babs Grafton had finally had her teeth fixed and sported contacts instead of heavy glasses. But Holly was totally different, like someone who’d just stepped out of one of those six-month make-over things on the telly.

  ‘Holly, I wouldn’t have recognised you!’ said Lilli, determined to get the upper hand now that she was faced with this much improved Holly.

  ‘Isn’t she fabulous looking,’ said Donna.

  ‘You look wonderful,’ agreed Caroline. ‘That’s a real designer corset, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Holly, overcome with the urge to tell them it was borrowed, ‘although it isn’t…’

  Donna interrupted before Holly could say ‘mine’. ‘Wouldn’t we all like a staff discount at Lee’s.’ She gave Holly a prod in the arm and Holly took the hint.

  ‘…full price,’ Holly amended. ‘It wasn’t full price. We do get a discount.’ She hoped that Lilli and Caroline couldn’t tell there was a lie in the midst of all of this. Holly told lies with all the skill of a devout nun.

  ‘Tell us all about yourself,’ said Caroline eagerly. ‘I’d love to work in Lee’s; it must be amazing, all those famous people dropping in and out, trying on Versace evening dresses.’

  ‘I work in the children’s department,’ Holly said apologetically. ‘We stock Baby Dior but we’re drawing the line at sticking toddlers into sequinned evening dresses. It’s hard to get baby sick out of sequins.’

  Everyone roared with laughter and Holly felt herself relax marginally. Normally, she was too nervous to joke round other people.

  ‘Still,’ Donna pointed out, ‘you get a discount. I must come up and look for an outfit for Emily’s First Communion. They have lovely dresses nowadays, not like the terrible frilly things we had to wear. Do you remember mine, Holly? It was awful and my mother put curlers in my hair the night before and it went frizzy and stuck out at angles like I’d been plugged into the mains!’

  ‘I bet mine was worse,’ said Lilli, shuddering. ‘My grandmother had my mother’s old dress put away and she made me wear it. It was all yellowing and too tight. I was a sight!’

  And they were off, comparing stories about how awful they’d looked. Holly realised that it wasn’t as bad as she’d expected. Lilli and Caroline seemed genuinely interested in her, and they weren’t the same arrogant schoolgirls she remembered. Lilli was still capable of being a bit sharp but Holly could cope with that now. And they seemed to think she was funny. Holly knew she’d been funny when she was at school too, it was just that nobody but Donna noticed.

  As Michelle hadn’t turned up, Holly was certainly the most fashionable and interesting ex-Cardinal girl there that night and Caroline and Lilli attempted to stick with her. Holly would have preferred to talk to the other non-gang girls from school but she didn’t see any of them there. She’d met Andrea who used to sit beside her in art class, and Geena Monroe had thrown her arms round Holly and hugged her happily. Caroline’s once-great friend, Selina, who’d never even spoken to Holly in school, had been fulsome in her praise of Holly’s outfit, necklace and general improvement. But she hadn’t seen lovely quiet Brona Reilly who’d sat on her other side in art class, or Munira Shirsat and her best friend, Jan Campbell.

  ‘I think I saw Brona earlier, but a few of the girls didn’t reply to the letter,’ Caroline said when Holly asked her about Brona, Jan and Munira. ‘You’d think they’d want to meet up with everyone again. After all we shared together.’

  Holly wondered if the other girls had been so nervous of a reunion that they had deliberately not replied.

  ‘You’ve heard all about us,’ Lilli said, when they were waiting for dessert, ‘and we haven’t heard a thing about the man in your life.’

  ‘Or should that be men?’ giggled Caroline, who’d decided that Holly was simply being enigmatic by not talking about herself. That this glamorous woman could be shy never occurred to her, and anyone who looked so amazing must have some gorgeous bloke in the wings. ‘Go on,’ she urged. ‘Tell us.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ said Holly.

  Donna kicked her under the table. ‘What about that guy you were telling me about earlier?’

  All Holly could remember was Donna talking about reinventing herself.

  ‘I bet he’s a hunk,’ said Lilli enviously.

  ‘Look!’ sighed Andrea, as waiters converged to place plates of butterscotch mousse, double chocolate cake and Hawaiian Surprise in front of them.

  Donna took advantage of the lapse in everyone’s concentration to whisper into Holly’s ear.

  ‘Make someone up!’

  ‘Why?’ Holly hissed back.

  ‘Because I’ve told them you’ve got this fabulous life and I don’t want you to let me down. We were boring at school, we’ve got to make up for it now!’

  Three spoonfuls into their dessert, attention turned back to Holly. She wished more than anything she could have a cigarette, otherwise she was going to eat all her mousse, and lick the plate, and she couldn’t afford to burst out of her outfit.

  Caroline, Lilli, Selina and Andrea were waiting eagerly. Donna was smiling, encouragingly. Holly thought of how bad she was at lying, and then thought of how flattering it was that Caroline and Lilli really imagined that she could have a sexy boyfriend.

  ‘Is it someone famous?’ demanded Lilli, suddenly suspicious.

  ‘No,’ stammered Holly.

  Donna gave her another kick under the table and Holly winced. She’d be black and blue tomorrow.

  ‘Well…’ They all looked at her eagerly. In fact, their entire end of the table was looking at her eagerly. All conversation seemed to have ceased as everyone waited for news of the new, improved Holly Miller’s man.

  ‘Go on,’ urged Donna.

  Holly gulped. For some deranged reason, the only man who came to mind was the current object of Kenny’s longing: a male model named Xavier. Hard-bodied, blond-haired and with the face of a pouting archangel, Xavier reeked of sex, although Holly had it on good authority (from a drooling Kenny) that the only sex Xavier was interested in was not the female of the species. Trust her to come up with a fantasy boyfriend who was gay. Kenny would wet himself laughing when he heard.

  ‘Tell us,’ demanded Caroline.

  Holly proceeded to describe Xavier in each perfect detail, leaving out the vital facts that he was gay and not going out with her. Lying by omission, she knew. What had Kenny said? ‘His lower lip is like a big biteable, coral silk throw pillow. Yummy.’ Kenny’s imagination knew no bounds when he was in lust.

  ‘A throw pillow, imagine. He sounds amazing.’ Even Lilli was impressed.

  Holly smiled hollowly and took a huge gulp of wine. She’d kill Donna later.

  But as Caroline and Lilli began describing their other halves in glowing terms in order to prove that Holly wasn’t the only one who could nab a handsome man, Holly began to realise why she’d gone along with Donna and lied. Feminism was a wildly outdated concept to Caroline and Lilli. Having a man was a status symbol to beat all others. Without one, Holly was low caste.

  ‘Hi, Holly,’ said a voice.

  It was Brona, one of the few girls in school who’d been shyer than she was. Whereas Caroline and Lilli had disdainfully seen Brona as dull and unstylish, Holly’s kind eyes saw an old friend whose eyes glittered with a spark of fun.

  Holly leapt to her feet and hugged Brona warmly. ‘How are you!’ she said delightedly, ‘it’s so lovely to see you. You haven’t been here all night, have you? Where were you?’

  ‘At the back of the room, I didn’t like to interru
pt,’ Brona said, sliding mischievous blue eyes in the direction of Caroline and Lilli.

  Holly grinned and bore her off to a quiet corner to talk.

  ‘You look completely amazing, Holly,’ said Brona in genuine admiration. ‘Poor Lilli’s eyes are out on stalks with jealousy. How are you?’

  After a thoroughly enjoyable half hour, Holly had learned that Brona was working as a locum in Donegal having qualified as a doctor three years before. In her spare time, she painted, went scuba diving and she had just bought a recently-restored fisherman’s cottage on the coast. She was utterly happy.

  ‘Dr Reilly,’ said Holly, impressed. ‘Let’s go back and tell the gangettes and they’ll be wildly impressed.’

  Brona grinned. ‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘I’ve learned not to want to impress people for the wrong reasons. Whenever I find myself rushing to try and let people see how clever I am, I ask myself: Why would I want to impress them?’

  Holly flushed. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ she said, shame washing over her because that’s just what she’d wanted to do: to impress her old classmates. Why had she bothered lying? She was what she was. What was the point of pretending?

  ‘I used to be miserably intimidated by the Carolines and the Lillis when we were in school,’ Brona revealed. ‘But I’m not quiet any more. Med school knocks that out of you, and I don’t feel the need to bother talking to people who once looked down at me.’

  ‘No, you’re right, I agree totally,’ Holly said.

  ‘I was a bit nervous of coming here tonight, you see,’ Brona said, ‘and now I have, I’m pleased because it’s shown me how much I’ve changed and become a new, stronger person.’

  When Brona left, Holly sat down beside Donna again, feeling like a fraud.

  The conversation hadn’t moved on from the subject of men.

  ‘You’re so lucky, Holly,’ Caroline said dreamily. ‘I do love being married, but there are times when I wish I was young, free and single like you. I’ve never had the chance to go out with lots of men and have wild flings…’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Donna, who was quite drunk now. ‘It’d be incredible to not be Mummy for a while, and party with gorgeous guys. You can look when you’re married but that’s it.’

  ‘You can look, all right,’ giggled Caroline, pointing at the waiter, who was very young and good-looking. ‘Holly’s the only one of us who can chat him up.’

  ‘Do you know something,’ Lilli said thoughtfully, ‘he’s the image of that guy you used to go out with, Holly. That guy you took to our debs dance. What was his name?’

  ‘Richie!’ said Donna, delighted to have remembered the name through the fog of alcohol. ‘Whatever happened to him?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Holly, shuddering. ‘It was so long ago I can barely remember what he looked like.’ She could, actually, but she didn’t want to even think about Richie. He’d been her first boyfriend and the first one to dump her unceremoniously. His image was embedded in her brain as the prototype guy-not-to-trust. Since Richie, Holly’s luck with men hadn’t improved. She didn’t really trust any of them.

  ‘He was cute, that Richie,’ Lilli said.

  ‘But not as cute as your new guy sounds,’ gushed Caroline.

  ‘We’ve got to meet this new boyfriend of yours,’ Lilli added. ‘You’ll have to bring him to Kinvarra.’

  Holly glued a smile to her face. ‘Yeah, sure,’ she said.

  The children’s wear department in Lee’s was heaving with pre-Christmas shoppers the following morning, which did nothing for Holly’s mild hangover. She hadn’t got drunk: you couldn’t and keep track of all the lies about a fabulous boyfriend with lips that resembled soft furnishings. But as she hadn’t been able to smoke, she’d certainly drunk more than usual – two Bloody Marys followed by a couple of glasses of wine at dinner.

  Getting up that morning had been hard and she’d had to hit the snooze button three times before she could haul herself out of bed. She’d only just remembered to grab the bag with the precious corset which she’d sworn she’d return to Gabriella that day.

  On her way back down to the basement from her third trip to the loos, she stopped on the staff stairs and had a little rest to revitalise herself. It was ages to her coffee break and she could kill for a sit down and the sugar hit of a chocolate biscuit.

  ‘Miss Miller, good morning,’ said a voice behind her.

  ‘Oh, er, good morning Mr Lambert,’ Holly said, fumbling frantically in her sleeve for a tissue. She blew her nose loudly so it would look as if she was preparing herself for going onto the shop floor. Trust her to get caught dossing by the store manager. Mr Lambert held the door open and Holly, still bleary-eyed and tired, had to follow him into the children’s department. Trying to inject a spring into her step, she walked over to the squashy child-sized purple and orange chairs by the changing rooms where Bunny was trying to convince a ten-year-old boy that he wouldn’t face immediate ridicule from his soccer-mad pals if he wore something as boring as a non-football-logo-ed shirt for his baby sister’s christening.

  From the grateful look on the boy’s exhausted father’s face, it appeared that Bunny was winning the war.

  ‘You can swap the shirt for anything you like once we’re at the restaurant,’ the father said eagerly once the despised shirt was wrapped and bagged in the Lee’s Department Store’s trademark red and gold carrier bag. Thank you,’ he added gratefully to Bunny.

  ‘Forget it,’ grinned Bunny. ‘It’s my job.’

  Bunny’s speciality was small boys, especially when they came attached to good-looking fathers.

  ‘What’s your name, so I can ask for you again?’ the customer said.

  ‘Bunny.’

  The man smiled as if this was a perfectly normal name for a grown-up. Bunny was the only person Holly knew who could carry off a child’s pet’s name and get away with it.

  ‘My father thought it was cute,’ was Bunny’s answer that first day, before Holly could even ask why she had such a weird name. ‘I’m actually Colleen but nobody ever called me that. Why Holly?’ she asked conversationally. ‘Are you a Christmas birthday person?’

  ‘July, actually,’ Holly replied. ‘My mother likes unusual names. My father wanted us all to have traditional names but my mother won. My eldest sister is Stella Verena, I’m Holly Genevieve and my middle sister is Tara Lucretia.’

  ‘After the Borgias, I hope? How cool,’ said Bunny. ‘Is Tara Lucretia a poisoner type of girl?’

  Holly laughed. ‘The only person she’s ever likely to poison is our Aunt Adele. Tara writes scripts for National Hospital.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Bunny, impressed. ‘You see, that proves my dad’s point which is that people with unusual names end up doing out-of-the-ordinary things. Although I think he was hoping for more from me than the kids’ department of Lee’s.’

  Holly soon discovered that, in typical Bunny fashion, this wasn’t strictly true.

  Bunny had just finished an English degree and was taking a job to finance her year off round the world, when she planned to veg out in India before a stint working as an English language teacher in Japan.

  Bunny was one of those people Holly felt utterly comfortable with, and they’d instantly become good friends.

  Now Bunny waved off the grateful customer and turned to where Holly was studiously folding sweatshirts on a display. All it took was one person rifling through the clothes for an entire display to look hideously untidy. Miss Jackson, the department head, took a dim view of untidiness even in the war zone that was the pre-Christmas rush.

  ‘Do you mind if I take first coffee break?’ Bunny asked. One of the pitfalls of working in the same department was that Bunny and Holly couldn’t take their breaks together. There were four of them in children’s clothes and there had to be three members of staff on duty at all times.

  ‘Fine,’ said Holly, wishing she’d asked first.

  ‘I could kill for a fag.’ Bunny started rooting about in
the under-till cupboard for her cigarettes and her cardigan. Lee’s was strictly non-smoking, so smokers congregated on the rooftop level of the store car park. ‘See you in fifteen minutes.’

  Fifteen minutes more and Holly could pour herself a huge coffee. She closed her eyes and wished she could learn how to press the stop button when it came to red wine.

  ‘Are you feeling all right, Holly?’ inquired Miss Jackson, appearing from the baby wear department.

  ‘Fine, great,’ said Holly brightly. She smiled so broadly that her face felt as if it would crack.

  Miss Jackson approved of Holly Miller. Diligent and polite to the customers, she was always scrupulously turned out, and never gave a moment’s bother, even if she was a little on the quiet side. But then Miss Jackson had seen Holly chatting away nineteen to the dozen with Bunny, so perhaps she was only quiet with management.

  ‘If you have a moment, perhaps we can sort out the fancy dress rails…’ Miss Jackson began.

  ‘Have you got this in age ten to eleven?’ inquired a woman, holding up a pair of boy’s trousers.

  Saved by a customer. ‘Let me check,’ smiled Holly, turning her attention to the woman gratefully. Sorting out the fancy dress stuff was a nightmare job at the best of times as customers thought nothing of rampaging through the fairy and wizard costumes like tornadoes when they were looking for a particular size. The last time she’d done it, Holly had absent-mindedly stuck a pair of kitten’s ears on her head, forgotten to take them off, and had spent the morning serving customers with fluffy pink and black ears bobbing eccentrically until Miss Jackson had noticed.

  As soon as Bunny came back from her break, Holly raced off for hers. Desperate for coffee, she bypassed her usual cigarette-stop in the car park, and made straight for the canteen. This proved to be her undoing.

  There was a small clique of the store’s party girls in there gossiping about a Christmas drinks they’d all been to. Holly steeled herself for the inevitable queries about her social life. The clique never talked about anything else but parties and men, and they didn’t understand why anyone (Holly) didn’t share their fascination. Consequently, they thought Holly was a bit stand-offish, not realising that she was simply shy.