The Grace Girls (53 page)

‘
Coal?
’ Kirsty said in a surprised voice. ‘I thought it was alwa
ys turf they used in Ireland. Where my daddy’s famil
y come from in Offaly, it’s all turf. I never knew they used coal in Dublin.’ She halted, thinking. ‘D’you ever miss Dublin
? You said your mother was in Manchester, so I suppose
you don’t have much family back in Ireland . . . do you?’

‘None that I know of,’ he said. ‘Or maybe none that I want to know about.’

Kirsty looked at him strangely, but he just kept his eyes on the road, staring straight ahead.

Light flakes of snow had started falling by the time they arrived at the Clyde Valley Hotel.

‘It looks lovely, the garden all covered in white,’ Kirsty said as they walked across the car park and into the welcoming warmth of the hotel.

‘I don’t think it will come to anything much until tomorrow,’ Larry remarked. ‘It’ll be all melted by the time we finish.’

As she walked through the foyer, Kirsty mused that this was now her third time in the place, and she was quietly pleased with herself for not being in the slightest bit nervous about it now. She was already used to the plush surroundings and felt almost the same coming into the fancy hotel as she had felt with the clubs. It was part of her job and she had come to realise that the other people who worked in the hotel were only doing their jobs too – from the hotel manager to the waitresses and bar staff and cleaners. She would remind herself of that from now.

Larry was obviously used to grander things back in Ireland and it probably had never bothered him coming into a place like this, and it would be the same for people like those two McCluskey sisters – the kind who went to very posh places and played golf in exclusive clubs.

Kirsty felt a little pang of something she couldn’t quite describe when she thought of the dark-haired women, especially now that she knew that there was – or had been – something very serious going on between Larry and that Helen.

She doubted if she would ever know the story behind it, because any time she broached his personal life, Larry just put up a barrier, a barrier she just could not get through no matter how hard she tried.

She felt a bit foolish now, thinking back to how she had imagined that Larry was this single man who had just been a quiet Irish bachelor up until she met him. She couldn’t have been more wrong. He certainly hadn’t been living a bachelor’s life if Helen McCluskey had had a son by him.

Just recently Kirsty had started to realise that people were not always what they seemed. Helen McCluskey
definitely didn’t seem like a woman with a chequered past. H
er confident, uppity manner didn’t give the impression of a woman who had anything shameful to hide.

And then there was Claire, who Mona had been painting as this cold, snobby woman, who lived in a show-house rather than a real home. As soon as she had walked into her aunt’s house in Glasgow, Kirsty had realised that all the stories about Claire and her husband had been nonsense. Claire lived in the kind of beautiful house that Kirsty would absolutely love to have when she was older and married. If she ever got married.

She still worried that she never seemed to meet anyone who she liked or vaguely fancied. Apart from that daft notion she’d had with Larry Delaney, there hadn’t been anything else that remotely resembled romance in her life.

The dinner-dance evening went much the same as the dance at New Year. Kirsty had sung the same songs and felt very comfortable and easy as she slipped from one song to the other through her performance. The audience were every bit as enthusiastic as the one on New Year’s Eve which really delighted her as she had half-thought that the celebratory night had been something to do with it, and that they might have cheered on any singer. Kirsty had also felt easy enough about wearing another one of Helen McCluskey’s dresses tonight. She had suggested to Larry that she might as well get a couple of wears out of each dress before having them dry-cleaned and giving them back to him. Larry had just shrugged, saying she was more than welcome to the dresses. They had only been hanging in a spare room in his flat. Kirsty thought it made sense. And she wasn’t likely to come across the owner again. By the time she’d got her wear out of the borrowed dresses, she’d have picked up a few glamorous stage dresses of her own.

‘I was wrong about the snow,’ Larry told her when he came into the dressing-room at the break in the show. ‘It’s got quite heavy and it’s lying on the ground. As soon as you’re finished we’ll head off, because we might have to take it very easy going home if the roads are bad.’ He thought for a moment. ‘And don’t worry if you see people leaving early, it’s not because of your singing, it’ll be because they want to get home before the snow gets worse.’

‘Wasn’t I sensible that I brought my jumper and jeans?’ Kirsty said, laughing.

‘You’re a very sensible girl,’ Larry said, smiling warmly at her. ‘And one of the most down-to-earth women I know.’

It was only when she was on stage later on that it dawned on Kirsty that it was the first time Larry had used the word ‘woman’ when he was referring to her instead of ‘girl’.

Larry knocked on the changing-room door a few minutes after Kirsty came off the stage. He came striding across the room to her, his brow furrowed. ‘I think we might have a bit of a problem tonight, Kirsty.’

Her heart sank. This was it. This was the night when the bubble would burst. This was the night when she would discover that she had got it all wrong about people thinking her singing was good. Quite a few people had gone before the final part of the performance, so it was quite possible that they hadn’t enjoyed it.

Kirsty took a deep breath. ‘Did the manager not like me? Does he not want me to do the other bookings?’

Larry shook his head, laughing in amazement at her sugges­tion. ‘He loved you – the audience all loved you. How could you not know that?’

Kirsty shrugged, feeling all awkward and embarrassed.

‘I wasn’t talking about the performance,’ Larry said, shaking his head. ‘I was talking about the weather – about the blizzard that’s blowing outside.’

‘What?’ Kirsty said, her voice incredulous. ‘You’re not serious, are you? It can’t be that bad.’

He took his jacket off and put it over her bare shoulders an
d Kirsty caught the lovely smell of the expensive colog
ne he wore. He then put his hand out and caught hers.

‘C’mon outside and see for yourself,’ he told her, pullin
g her to her feet.

As their hands locked, Kirsty felt as though a little electric shock had gone through her body. A little shock that told her she had been kidding herself for the last few weeks. A little shock that told her she still had very strong feelings for Larry Delaney. When they reached the door he dropped her hand, as though he had just realised he was still holding it.

A hefty breeze took Kirsty’s breath away and whipped up her blonde hair when she stepped outside. She looked around her with wide disbelieving eyes. How could things have changed so much in five hours? The hotel garden was now a thick white carpet of drifting snow, and the shrubs and bushes looked like dazzling white sculptures through the lace curtain of snowflakes that were still falling.

‘All the roads outside Lanark are completely blocked,’ Larry informed her. ‘The police called in to tell the manager to ask anybody who was travelling locally to take it easy and anybody travelling further afield to stay where they were until morning. Apparently the forecast is even worse for tomorrow.’

‘What are we going to do?’ Kirsty asked, pulling Larry’s jacket tighter around her shoulders. ‘How will we get home?’ She gave a little nervous giggle, as a feeling of silly girlish excitement started to bubble up inside her at the thought of being stranded. As though it were some kind of adventure – the sort of adventure she used to read about in her Enid Blyton books. The sort of adventure she would have loved to happen to her and her friends when she was a young teenager.

But she wasn’t a young teenager, and she wasn’t with her friends. This could be more like a romantic novel. Being stranded often happened in those. And she was with a handsome older man.

Except that the older handsome man didn’t have the slightest interest in her.

Larry drew his breath in, weighing up the situation. ‘I honestly don’t think we’re going to be able to make it home,’ he told her. ‘It would be really dangerous on those narrow, winding roads. We could end up sliding back downhill and off the road.’ He nodded back towards the building. ‘The manager has said we can stay in the hotel for the night as they’re not too busy. They have a couple of spare rooms.’ He put his arm on her shoulder. ‘We’d better go back inside or we’ll get be soaked through.’ He guided her back into the hotel.

Kirsty felt a small but intense pang of alarm running through her. She’d never stayed in a hotel room before, and she didn’t have a change of underclothes for the morning. What would she do? And, more to the point, what would her mother and father think? They would be worried sick when they got up in the morning and she wasn’t in her bed. ‘It’s too late for me to phone anybody in Rowanhill to let my mother and father know,’ she said anxiously as she walked alongside him, holding on to the lapels of his jacket. ‘I’ll have to wait until the morning. Hopefully they’ll not miss me until then . . .’

‘They’ll understand,’ Larry said, ‘and they’ll be glad you didn’t take the risk of going home in this weather. It’s just a case of getting a message to them as quick as you can in the morning so’s they’re not panicking.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Kirsty said, brightening up. S
he would have time to think who she could ring. The pri
est was definitely out after the call Claire had made earlier in the week. ‘I suppose I could always ring the post office,’ she suddenly thought. ‘The people live in the flat up the stairs, so they’ll be in to sort the mail out around eight o’clock as usual. The postman will let them know when he’s passing the house around nine.’

‘Good thinking,’ Larry said, as they walked into the bar. It was half-empty now as most of the people who had attended the dinner dance had left to make their way home through the snow. ‘Don’t be worrying about anything now, relax and enjoy the chance to stay in a nice place.’

‘You’re right,’ Kirsty agreed, ‘there’s no point in getting all worked up about it, when we can’t do anything to change it. Worrying isn’t going to make the snow go away.’

‘It would be a hell of a lot worse,’ Larry reasoned as they sat at a table, ‘if we set out and got stranded in the dark somewhere.’ He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about, and I don’t think we’ve really got any option. We’ll have a nice warm room here in the hotel –’ He suddenly halted. ‘A nice room
each
here in the hotel,’ he said, emphasising the word ‘each’.

Kirsty felt her throat tighten a little. ‘This is an absolute disaster . . . isn’t it?’ She looked up at him, at his white shirt and black bow-tie, and she suddenly remembered she still ha
d his jacket around her shoulders. ‘And you’ve no change of clothes, have you?’ she asked, taking his jacket off an
d handing it to him. The hotel was lovely and warm and she didn’t need it now anyway.

He nodded thanks and then put the jacket back on. ‘I’ve a zip-up bag in the back of the car with a sweater and a few bits and pieces of toiletries in it.’ He shrugged. ‘In case the car ever broke down . . .’

‘Thank God I’ve at least got my jeans and jumper and my boots,’ Kirsty said, ‘but I’ve no pyjamas or toothbrush or anything like that . . .’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said in a soothing voice. ‘The hotel will probably have some stuff you can borrow.’

‘D’you think so?’ Kirsty said, raising her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Do they have nightclothes and things like that?’

‘I’m sure they have bits and pieces in the lost property . . .
things that guests leave behind.’

‘Lost property?’ Kirsty repeated indignantly, her brow wrin­kling at the thought. ‘I’m definitely not wearing anythin’ that a stranger has left behind.’

Larry looked at her shocked face and laughed. ‘I’m sure they will have laundered anything they have . . .’

‘I don’t care,’ Kirsty said, trying not to laugh along with him. ‘It’s not a bit funny . . . I’ll be freezin’ in the room with no pyjamas.’

‘They’ll have radiators in all the rooms,’ he told her, ‘a
nd if you’re really stuck, you can wear my shirt or jump
er if you like.’

‘Lovely,’ Kirsty said, rolling her eyes and laughing.

‘Right,’ he said, standing up, ‘I’m going to get us a drink now and see if they have anything left for you to eat. I had a meal with the manager when you were on stage, but you must be starving . . .’

Kirsty shook her head. ‘I’m not hungry, I only have a bit of toast when I go home. I’m never really hungry when I’m singing.’

‘I’ll see what they have,’ he said. ‘Now, what are you having to drink?’ He grinned. ‘You can go mad now since you’re not going home!’ The look in his eyes and his tone of voice told her that he was only joking.

Kirsty paused for minute. ‘Anything but Babycham.’ She was terrified to have the bubbly drink again when she was with him, after what had happened the last night she’d drunk a few.