‘Monica, it’s January, in Ireland. We’re going for a walk. I think that’ll provide all the precautions we need.’

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Well wrapped up in all the sensible clothing they had between them and with a bag of toffees in her pocket for emergencies, Laura waited for Dermot on the corner, as arranged. Just as she had convinced herself that he’d overslept and wasn’t going to come, a rackety old Citroen appeared and drew up next to her.

‘Get in, we’ve a way to go.’

She got in, reminding herself that she was sharing a car with one of the great names of modern Irish fiction – modern anything fiction, in fact. She made a decision to start keeping a diary, simply so she could record this moment.

The car got them up the hill a great deal quicker than the bikes had. At the top, they took the other road along the coast, in the opposite direction to where she and Monica had cycled a lifetime and several dramatic experiences ago. As they passed the sign to the village they had cycled to, Laura wondered if Monica would use the car and her free day to go and see the boy she’d been so keen to catch up with. Although she’d asked her, Monica had been non-committal but cheerful. Laura didn’t know if Monica had had a reply to the note she had stuffed through his letterbox but her new friend wasn’t one to let things lie. She would make the most of her opportunity.

Laura, on the other hand, wondered if her attempts to get Dermot Flynn to come the literary festival would come to anything. Would he just string her along?

Monica would get him to sign something, possibly in blood. If only she could make herself more like her feisty companion, all would be well. The trouble was, she couldn’t.

Laura realised these mental ramblings about Monica were a distraction from her own situation. What was happening to her was almost too wonderful, and she wasn’t sure she could cope. She just had to hope her ‘in-love state’ or whatever it might be, didn’t make her do anything stupid again. Although before, when she had so blithely agreed to sleep with him, she had probably just been in lust (and, of course, very drunk). Now she was in a position to spend a day with a writer she’d admired all her adult life – she mustn’t let anything interfere with that.