her head back, she closed her eyes and drifted back to those childhood Sundays when she and her brother had played out in the back garden with Jonathan and Eddie until they’d been called in for dinner. Jonathan had always thrown spiders down her good dress. Every bloody week. Even then he had been a pervy bastard. She sat up straight in the seat of the car and unstuck her legs from the leather upholstery. That was the end of that blissful memory.
“So what’s Jonathan up to these days?” she asked in a slightly sour tone. “I ask out of polite, mature conversation, not out of interest.”
“What do you care about how Jonathan is or what he’s up to?” Eddie replied with a casual smirk and changed the Mini into fifth gear as they approached the straight road into Donegal town.
“I don’t really give a shit, actually. Don’t tell me anything about him. I don’t want to know anything.”
Daisy turned her head against the window and watched the green fields race by. She hadn’t been home in three months – since her brother Richard’s wedding. On that particular occasion she’d been sure to make a swift exit as soon as the toasts were over.
“Does he have a girlfriend?”
“Who?”
“Jack the flippin’ Ripper. Who do you think? Jonathan.”
“Nah. Not that I know of. At least I hope he doesn’t.”
Good, thought Daisy.
“He has a wife, though.”
“Piss off, a what? A wife?”
Eddie sat up straight and kept a forward gaze, his mouth pursed into a pout. This was fun. Then he gave in.
“Not exactly,” he said. Daisy raised a fist playfully. “No, don’t hit me when I’m driving! Ow!”
Daisy shook her hand. If she could kill Eddie now she would, for taunting her like this.
“Jonathan doesn’t have a girlfriend, Daisy. He has a fiancée. That, I’m not joking about. But again, what do you care? You never see him anymore.”
Daisy’s stomach did a cartwheel. It must be the sea air, she thought.
“Since when?”
“Since forever.”
“Since when does he have a fiancée? Not, since when do I never see him anymore.”
Daisy’s reaction told Eddie to break the news gently.
“They got engaged at the weekend. I think they originally planned to announce it on his birthday but brought it forward to give Mum a lift. Didn’t your mum say?”
“Actually, no,” said Daisy in bewilderment. She felt a sudden pang of hunger. Or was it nausea? “But then I’m supposed to be in Spain, aren’t I?”
“Mmm,” said Eddie, waiting on her to prompt for more.
She did.
“Go on…”
“He’s getting married in six weeks,” he said. “Rushing bull-ignorant into the whole thing if you ask me.”
“Oh,” said Daisy, her heart sinking unexpectedly. She looked out at the cows in the fields again. Flashes of black and white mixed with green whirred by, and she got a strange sense of longing to turn back the clock to her younger days, when she really hadn’t had a care in the world. No men you hate to make your tummy go swishy, no internet holidays that could crash at the last minute, no friends with rich boyfriends when you’d happily settle for a pauper. Well, not quite. Not yet.
“Woooh. Someone’s gone all quiet. Don’t you want to hear all the gory details about Jonathan’s wedding plans?” asked Eddie eventually. Gosh, she was taking this even worse than he’d expected.
“Strangely, that would be a no.”
“You’re on the guest list.”
“Like hell I am.” Daisy didn’t dream it for a second. “Am I really? I don’t really think I’d want to be there. Actually, I so don’t want to be there.”
Eddie decided to quit while he was ahead.
“Sorry that was totally made up. I haven’t seen the guest list. In fact they probably haven’t even drawn it up yet, but it’s all happening so fast.”
“Six weeks? Huh, they certainly don’t waste any time.” Daisy’s hunger turned into a dead, sickening feeling. She hadn’t thought of Jonathan Eastwood for ages. Well, not in the past six months or so. Occasionally he would pop into her mind as she stared out of the window of Super Shoes onto the hustle and bustle of Cornmarket and she’d shake her head to get his face out of her memory. There was no point wasting time on what could have been.
History was history.
As the yellow Mini zoomed along Donegal’s windy, stone-lined walls, Daisy closed her eyes and tried not to imagine Jonathan in a morning suit and his bride in a tight-fitting corset and a full skirt with a tiny waist and big, beautiful doe eyes, looking deeply into his as they shared their first dance.
“I bet she’s blond with massive tits,” she said, as they turned a sharp corner. Eddie faked a cough and Daisy reached across to turn down the radio again.
“She is, isn’t she? I bet she’s gorgeous,” she said bitterly.
Eddie turned the radio back up.
“Actually … now that you say it, and not that I would normally notice such things, but yes, she is. She is blond and I suppose she is quite well-endowed in the breast department.”
He let go of the steering wheel and made a big-boob gesture with his hands. Daisy threw her eyes up towards the heavens, or at least the roof of the car, but the effect was lost.
“I knew it,” she said in a higher pitch than she intended.
“Boy, you do have good intuition. I wish I’d inherited that particular feminine quality when God decided to make me gay. She’s very intelligent too. A teacher, like Jonathan. A science teacher at St Benedict’s.”
“Does she have a name?” Probably Sophie or Susannah or Samantha, thought Daisy, going by her description so far.
“Shannon.”
“I knew it again.”
Why was she talking like she’d inhaled a balloon full of helium? She couldn’t help it.
“How?”
“I knew she was an ‘S’. He always goes for girls with ‘S’ names. So bloody predictable.”
Eddie thought for a minute. Actually, now that he thought about it, Daisy was right. His brother did seem to have a thing about girls with names beginning with S.
“Do you remember Sinead from Strabane?” she spat.
“How could I forget?” Eddie laughed out loud at the memory of his mother’s face when she caught Jonathan snogging Sinead from Strabane on the new living room sofa with her skinny ankles wrapped around his waist.
“I thought he would never live that down,” said Daisy. “Or what about Sarah, the slapper? Do you remember the time you took a garden trowel to her make-up and then rubbed it onto your own face when no one was looking? And when your mother caught you, you said it was for me.”
“You wanted some too.”
“Just because I wasn’t allowed any of my own. I was thirteen, after all. I was supposed to do those things growing up. You, on the other hand…”
“Shut it, girlfriend.”
Eddie indicated left at the sign for Killshannon, its lettering almost hidden in the overgrown bushes so that it read ‘Kill Shannon’. Daisy hadn’t even