All I Want Series Boxset, Books 1-3: All I Want for Christmas, All I Want for Valentine's, All I Want for Spring (35 page)

Her sentence was cut off by a nearby guard shouting “Silenzio!”

Holly jumped, her heart sticking in her throat. He’d nearly given her a coronary.

The guard was snarling at Holly, his face too close for comfort.

She wasn’t about to argue. She stepped back to regain her personal space, nodding apologetically. Then she turned to Tori, who was scowling at her.

“Be quiet,” Tori whispered, one finger to her lips. 

“I was being quiet,” Holly whispered back. “That guy needs to chill out. He’s going to give himself an ulcer if he shouts at every tourist who speaks in here.”

This time, the guard stepped over to stand right next to Holly.

“Silenzio!” he said again, sternly. “No talking!”

Holly held up both hands, palms out, as if the guard was holding her at gunpoint. “Okay, okay, I get it,” she said. “I’ll be quiet,” she whispered, eyeballing him.

His flat stare told Holly he might shoot next time, given the chance.

Holly turned to take in a bit more of the artwork, lifting her head skywards, standing next to Tori who was doing the same. Holly tried to focus, using techniques from the mindfulness lessons she’d done online, but she hadn’t been very skilled at that, either. She was happy going around art galleries, but admiring a ceiling that you had to crick your neck at a certain angle to see wasn’t her idea of fun. Especially when she kept getting dizzy and nearly falling over from all the looking up.

Plus, she
really, really
needed the loo now. She began to hop from foot to foot, wriggling her bum in an attempt to stop her pressing need.

It didn’t work.

But what it did do was alert Tori to the fact that she still needed the loo. And Tori wasn’t very happy about that
at all
.

“For god’s sake, can you just stand still for five seconds and take in where you are?” Tori tried to keep her voice down, but her annoyance shone through.

“Silenzio!” shouted a nearby guard.

Tori immediately held up a palm towards him, giving him a contrite look.

Holly was still squeezing her legs together. “Sorry, I just really—”

“—I know, you need the loo. But you’re not five, even though you look like you are. You should have gone before you got in here.” Tori sighed. “I’m going over there,” she said, pointing. “Why don’t you see if the guard will let you out and let you back in again? I might enjoy it better without you here, anyway.”

Ouch.

Tori sighed, then walked to the other side of the chapel, guidebook in hand, shaking her head.

Holly closed her eyes: this was not going according to plan.

She scoured the chapel — she couldn’t believe there wasn’t a toilet in here. Disney would never allow that. Should she try to leave and come back again? She didn’t fancy queueing again, and Tori would hate her for it. But she couldn’t be the only person to have been caught short in here. She decided to give it a try.

The guards were human, after all, surely they’d listen to reason.

Holly approached the guard standing near the exit door at the opposite end to where she’d come in.

“Hi,” she said in a low whisper. “I need the loo. Can I get out and come back in again?”

The guard’s facial features didn’t move as he shook his head. “This is exit,” he said in mechanical English. “You leave, you go.”

Holly nodded her head, trying to preserve her smile and not roll her eyes at the man. It took a supreme effort.

“I understand,” she said. “It’s just, my girl… my friend over there is enjoying the chapel, but I need the toilet. Can I go and come back in?” Holly resumed her ‘humble tourist with a smile’ face, sketching out her ‘go out, come back’ plan with her hands.

The guard wasn’t buying it. “You exit, no come back,” he said. “You meet your friend outside.”

“Can I queue up again?”

He shook his head. “You exit, you leave.”

Holly began hopping from foot to foot again. If she’d needed to go to the loo before, her need now was off the scale.

“I understand that, but I really need to get back in again,” she told the man, pointing towards Tori. “For my friend. It’s her birthday.” Surely the tried and tested ‘birthday’ solution would sway the guard?

“You leave, you go,” the guard said, sweeping Holly past him along with the steady stream of tourists leaving the chapel. “You leave, you go.”

Holly began walking out, with the guard ushering her. She was on auto-pilot.

Only, she didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay and enjoy the Sistine Chapel with her girlfriend. She wanted to make everything right with Tori. She wanted to come back in.

So she stopped and turned around, causing the woman behind her to walk right into her, crashing her head into Holly’s shoulder with a thump.

The woman immediately clutched her head and bent over double, letting out an audible groan.

Holly frowned and rubbed her shoulder. That had hurt, so she was sure the woman was in pain too.

She bent down and put a hand on the woman’s shoulder to check she was okay.

However, before Holly could say anything, the guard jumped in the middle of the pair of them, glaring at Holly, speaking to the woman in Italian.

All around them, tourists began to chatter, as if given permission by the ruckus.

“Silenzio!” shouted the guard again, just in case anyone was under any illusions they could now have a chat with their mates. “No talking!” he said, for good measure. Then he turned his attention back to Holly, pointing.

“You, out!” he said, his eyes clouding over.

The woman was straightening up now, but still had a hand over her forehead.

Holly put a finger to her chest, her eyes widening. Was he kicking her out? She’d only been asking about the loo!

“Me?” she said to the guard, not bothering to keep her voice down now. “But I was just asking about the toilet, and now you’re kicking me out because I want to come back in again?” Holly’s ire was rising, and the man had just pressed the button to raise the pressure. There was no going back now.

Over the guard’s shoulder, she saw another guard on one side, and Tori on the other.

Holly closed her eyes briefly. The appearance of Tori and the second guard did not spell good news.

“Out!” repeated the guard, his voice now shrill. “You leave!”

“But I just want to go out to the loo and come back in to enjoy the chapel with my friend!” Holly said, pointing at Tori.

The guard turned, to where Tori was shaking her head.

“You’re getting thrown out of the Sistine Chapel?” Tori’s voice was laced with incredulity. “Quite an achievement.”

“I was just trying to come back in to talk to you,” Holly said. Her intentions had been pure, but somehow they’d got lost in translation.

Holly’s words were cut off as the second guard took her by the shoulders and marched her out the door. He was surprisingly strong, even though he was a couple of inches shorter than her.

Holly tried to put up a discreet fight, glancing back over her shoulder to see Tori following her, her face set to ‘supremely pissed off’.

Holly turned back to face front. She tried to shake the guard’s hands from the top of her arms, but he was holding firm. He showed her into the corridor, giving her a final push to make his message clear.

“There is the exit,” he said, pointing to the door at the end of the corridor. “No coming back,” he stated, before turning and heading back to the Sistine Chapel, wiping his hands together as if brushing Holly off them.

Dread began to fill up Holly’s insides, like someone was standing over her, pouring it in. And when she turned her head, that someone was Tori.

Holly took a deep breath, then squeezed her legs together. She held up a hand as she spoke.

“I know you’ve got a lot to say, and I know that didn’t go down exactly as we’d planned, but can it wait till I’ve been to the toilet? I
really
need to go now.”

She had already spied a loo as she was talking, so she sped past Tori and fell through the door. But there was a queue. Of course there was.

A tiny bit of wee came out as she stood there. She squeezed hard and concentrated on conjuring up dry thoughts. Deserts. Sunshine. Hot sands.

On top of everything else, she really didn’t need to wet herself in the Vatican.

She was 100 per cent sure Tori wouldn’t see the funny side.

***

Holly led Tori through the mass of tourists snapping photos in St Peter’s Square, keen to leave the Vatican as soon as she could. It hadn’t been a happy experience, the fates colliding to ensure she wasn’t going to have a stress-free holiday. In the back of her mind, she’d expected it. It happened every time. 

But Tori shook off her hand and stopped, so Holly was forced to stop as well.

“Why are you running off? You just ruined what was meant to be a beautiful, spiritual experience for me, and now you’re dragging me out of the Vatican at high speed? Can I at least look at St Peter’s Square? Take a look at where the Pope speaks? Soak up some of the atmosphere? Or does everything have to be on your terms, running to your schedule?” The sun was bright and Tori shielded her eyes as she spoke, before rummaging in her bag for her sunglasses. She put them on, which Holly was grateful for. When she couldn’t see Tori’s eyes, she didn’t look quite so angry.

Holly exhaled, then shook her head. “Go ahead,” she said, walking back towards the square. “But if you think the Sistine Chapel is spiritual, you need to think again.”

Tori gaped at her, mouth open. “Now you’re telling me what is and isn’t spiritual? The woman who sulked her way around the Vatican, then had a stand-up row in the Sistine Chapel and got
thrown out
?” Tori shook her head, before stabbing a finger in Holly’s direction. “I’m going to take some pictures, then I’ll come back and we can go for lunch.”

Holly went to reply, but Tori was gone, striding off towards the Basilica with purpose.

Holly put on her own shades and sighed: the feeling in her stomach was not quite a sinking, more of a shipwreck.

Today could only get better from here on in, surely?

***

Once outside the high, concrete walls of Vatican City, they were back into well-worn side streets lined with parked cars and Vespas. Passing a thousand more tourist shops, they eventually spied a decent-looking restaurant and snagged a table covered with a red-and-white chequered tablecloth. The table was inside but the concertina windows were drawn back, so they were exposed to the street and a welcome cooling breeze.

Now, at nearly 3pm, they were well overdue for lunch, so they sat down and ordered, Diet Cokes arriving at their table swiftly to quench their thirst. The street outside wasn’t busy with cars, just tourists clutching Vatican souvenirs. Holly didn’t have any — it hadn’t seemed appropriate to stop at the gift shop.

They’d walked in near silence, after Holly told Tori they should eat before they did anything else.

Holly was still shaky from the Sistine Chapel episode.

Her girlfriend was now looking at her with a tired, resigned expression on her face. The anger of earlier was replaced with crushing disappointment.

It was always the disappointment that killed you more.

Holly went first. She wanted to arrest this slide before it got out of control. This was a monumental day, but not in a good way: their first honest-to-goodness argument as a couple.

“I’m sorry.” And Holly was. She twisted a napkin between her thumb and middle finger, not daring to catch Tori’s eye. As she bowed her head, her floppy fringe fell in her face. She moved it out of the way. “I should have gone to the loo, shouldn’t have picked an argument with the guard, and definitely shouldn’t have got thrown out.” She raised the side of her mouth when she said the last bit, but quickly retreated.

It was a little too early to find this funny. And Holly didn’t. Far from it.

“You should be. You were a total fucking idiot.”

Holly bit her lip: she deserved that. She glanced up, to see Tori studying her.

“I don’t get it, though,” Tori said, her rings banging against the table as she brought her hands down on it. “Everything was fine this morning. If you really didn’t want to go, you should have said and I could have met you later.” She paused, fixing Holly in place with her stare. “A couple of hours there wasn’t too much to ask, was it?”

Now she posed the question like that, Holly had to admit it wasn’t. She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t.” She paused. “But I don’t like big touristy stuff like that. And I’m not mad about religion.”

“Neither am I!” Tori replied. “But it’s a lovely building, and the Sistine Chapel is historic. You go to art galleries and don’t kick up a fuss, so what’s the difference?”

Holly didn’t respond for a few moments, waiting for the Tori’s words to settle. “I can’t explain it, other than this is what always happens. I’ve told you before.”

Tori gave her a quizzical look, before knitting her fingers together. “You’re going to have to fill in the gaps because I don’t remember what you’ve told me.” Tori’s blue eyes were still flat, dulled with reality.

Holly hated to see them that way when she knew the explosions of happiness they could be. She uncrossed her legs and sat up straight in her chair.

“It’s just… things go wrong when I’m abroad with girlfriends. Stuff happens. We argue. Or there’s something we can’t get over. It happened with Rachel. And with Natalie.” She paused, looking Tori in the eye. “And now it’s happening with us.” Holly put her head in her hands. “But I
so
don’t want it to. But it just
does
.
Every time
. It’s like I’m cursed or something.”

After a few moments when Tori didn’t respond, Holly removed her fingers from her face. But she wasn’t expecting what she saw. Tori was regarding her with a thin smile of amusement on her lips.

“Don’t be so bloody daft, you’re not cursed,” she said, finally. “You’re just an idiot and perhaps you
make
these things happen. Ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

“Course I’ve heard of it.”

“That’s what just happened.”