Enya whipped around to face her friend; this was a revelation that she couldn’t allow to pass without comment. ‘Oh you can’t! I love him!’ She fished out the teabags and lobbed them into the sink. ‘Why do you hate him?’
‘It’s the moustache, it looks like liquorice, and it makes me feel sick.’ Jenny shuddered. ‘I imagine it going soft and then having to eat it.’ The thought clearly didn’t repulse her that much, as she reached for the second stick of chocolate.
Enya laughed loudly. ‘You can’t hate Poirot because you fear having to eat his moustache!’
‘I told you it was ridiculous, and I think you’ll find that, actually, I can hate whoever I want. It’s my list.’
‘So, who else?’ It was always a delight when after two decades of friendship, they revealed new facets of each other; she loved how her friend checked in like this regularly, chocolate craving or not.Although unspoken, it was obvious that Jenny understood how much Enya needed this companionship. She sloshed milk into the tea and took the mugs to the table, where she sat opposite her friend.
‘Erm, Blake Dunlop.’
‘Blake Dunlop?’ She repeated the name of a gangly boy who had been in their kids’ class at primary school. A name she hadn’t heard for a while.
‘Yes.’ Jenny, straight-faced, sipped her tea. ‘If he walked in right now, I’d punch him in the face!’
‘You would not!’ She did her best to contain her laughter.
‘I bloody would!’
‘You know he runs the reclamation yard up by the quarry?’
‘Does he now? Hmmm...’ Jenny stroked her chin as if making a plan.
It made her chuckle. ‘Why do you hate him?’
‘He made Holly cry.’
‘What, recently?’ Enya felt the flicker of concern. She loved Holly Hudson.
‘No!’ Jenny tutted. ‘Of course not recently. If it was recently, Phil would have punched him in the mouth.’
‘Or Aiden would,’ Enya pointed out. She had known Holly since she was in nappies on account of the fact that she had grown up next door but one. Holly had been (almost) surgically attached to her son, Aiden, by the hip, for the last decade. ‘Not that I can imagine Aiden, or you, punching anyone, for that matter.’
‘There’s always a first time.’
‘Mmm.’ Enya sipped her tea. ‘What did he do to make her cry?’
‘Karate-kicked her art project, broke it clean in two. I’m sure I told you about it at the time.’
‘Probably. But a lot’s happened since then.’
Enya swallowed, thinking of that time when Aiden was little, and she’d been so busy. Busy with mum jobs, her actual job,looking after the house, running around with a timer in her head that meant she leapt from chore to chore like a bee harvesting pollen.Busy...Unlike now, when lonely hours stretched ahead of her each evening and the night often felt endless.
‘Ain’t that the truth.’ Jenny nodded. ‘Holly spent hours making it, don’t you remember? They were about seven and had to build a puppet theatre in a shoebox?’
‘Vaguely.’ She couldn’t remember what she’d had for supper last night, let alone an event decades before that hadn’t concerned her.
‘Well, Holly walked into the playground with hers in her hands, she’d gone for aWind in the Willowsvibe, river background with weeping willow, Toad, Ratty and Mole stuck on to lolly sticks, it was lovely. Then Blake bloody Dunlop comes along, high kicks it right out of her hands and runs off. The little turd.’
‘That was over twenty years ago!’ She pointed out the obvious.
‘Your point being?’ Jenny sipped her tea.
‘Holding a grudge for that long only damages you. I bet Blake won’t even remember it!’
‘I’d still like to punch him.’
Enya laughed at her diminutive best friend, a talented florist whose hands were more used to arranging stunning floral bouquets than brawling. ‘I take it you couldn’t sleep?’
