Locked Out of Heaven

by Shirley Benton

  “That’s just horrific, Paul. Poor Luke! How do you come back from something like that?”

  “No idea. I’m not Luke’s biggest fan, but you’d have to feel sorry for him, living with that.”

  “I can’t believe it. You’d never think when you talk to him that he’s been through such a terrible experience.”

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t hear it from me, okay?”

  I could barely focus on the road for the rest of the drive. I’d never have suspected Luke was living with such tragedy hanging over him.

  When we got to Eire TV, Luke was the first person we met and he was full of his usual energy and joie de vivre. I made a general mental note to cheer up a bit. What I’d been through recently was nothing compared to Luke’s troubles.

  That night, the third episode was aired. It was all becoming . . . normal, almost, to expect to see myself on television. Sure enough, the main focus was on Eve’s reaction to her relationship with a famous guy ten years her junior being leaked. Stephanie’s chest didn’t take a backseat, though, and continued to get the recognition Eire TV seemed to think it deserved. As for me, I had my say too, but I knew I’d be relegated to third position in terms of who the public would be interested in this week. And quite frankly, that was no use to me when it came to making money.

  The flash of bitterness I experienced about the fact that my breasts weren’t much smaller than Stephanie’s but weren’t getting any attention only lasted a few seconds. It would all be fine. Something else would crop up.

  Wouldn’t it?

  Chapter 35

  14 November 1994

  Needless to say, Diary, it hasn’t taken Sammy long to settle into Dublin life. As I’m still living at home and commuting to college, I’ve been staying over with her several times a week since she moved up. She’d been so busy partying with her new friends that she hadn’t organised a night out with Damo, but I knew we’d meet when she announced her plans for a big get-together in Dennehy’s pub for her nineteenth birthday.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Terry would, of course, be coming with me, which I hoped wouldn’t cause any issues. Even putting the Damo factor aside, there was the fact that Cliff was overtly rude to Terry at the best of times, but a scenario like this where drink was involved could mean it would all end in trouble. I tried to focus on the fact that Sammy seemed to know half of Dublin already and would probably have more people there than the crowd who gathered in the Phoenix Park in 1979 when the Pope came to visit.

  Although Terry would be coming in later, I was glad of the chance to spend most of the night with friends. He was starting to suffocate me, Diary. After telling him I wanted a long engagement, he’s done nothing but give me information on wedding packages in different hotels and holiday brochures for potential honeymoon destinations. It’s driving me crazy and we’ve been rowing loads about it. I have so much work for college to do and he’s coming round distracting me with brochures! It’s really off-putting. At least if we were in company at the party, we wouldn’t end up fighting about all this again – or at least I hoped not.

  On the night of Sammy’s birthday, I called round to hers after college with her birthday present – make-up from an expensive new brand that I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have yet. It had put a nice dent in my grant, but she was worth it. She was delighted with it and shoved a double vodka in my hand as thanks.

  We drank non-stop as we got ready to go out, with her housemates joining in and knocking back cans. By the time we got to Dennehy’s, we were already sloshed. Terry said he’d join the party as soon as he finished work and he might possibly be late, but Damo and Cliff were already sitting at the bar sipping their pints and raising their eyebrows at each other as we fell into the pub.

  “Heeeyyy!” Sammy wriggled between Damo and Cliff then hugged them both with one arm around each of their necks, almost strangling them both.

  I burst into giggles as Damo wrestled her arm off him.

  “Sorry,” she tittered. “Beer strength.”

  “Vodka strength, actually,” I pointed out.

  “Shh!” Even over the background music playing in the pub, her shush was loud enough to wake the dead. “Damo doesn’t like his little sister drinking vodka.”

  Cliff put his hand in his pocket. “Will I get you a beer so, birthday girl?”

  “Christ, no! I wouldn’t drink that piss water. A double vodka and tonic, please.”

  Cliff ordered Sammy’s drink, seemingly oblivious to my presence. I turned round to talk to Sammy’s housemates, but they’d all made their way to the bar. Sammy perched herself on Cliff’s lap while she waited for her drink, leaving me standing on my own like a spare tit.

  “A drink, Holly?” Damo said.

  “I’m just going to order one for myself now, thanks.”

  “I’ll order it – I’m sitting at the bar, after all. Vodka and tonic as well?”

  I nodded then busied myself with my handbag, trying to find my money. It wasn’t easy when my handbag kept swaying back and forth as if it were tied to a swing. Eventually, I realised that it was – a swing of the human variety.

  “Hey, steady there,” Damo said. He reached an arm out to help me regain my balance.

  “I’m fine, just fine,” I said.

  I found a fiver and threw it down on the counter for my drink before Damo offered to pay for it. Then I fell sideways again.

  “Here.” He got up from his seat and guided me onto it.

  “I really don’t want to sit down,” I lied.

  “Yeah, well, I want to stand up and stretch my legs. If you don’t keep my seat for me, it’ll be gone in a second.”

  Even though it was early, the pub was already busy.

  Sammy turned round and asked me if I was all right. While I was talking to her, my drink arrived and Damo poured the tonic into the glass. I turned my attention away from Sammy and insisted that the barman took my fiver because Damo was trying to pay for my drink.

  “No, Damo! Don’t feel you have to buy me a drink.”

  “I like to buy my friends a drink at least once every few months,” he said pointedly.

  The barman gave my change back. I glanced at it as I was about to put it in my bag then noticed I’d been given too much.

  “Hey!” I shouted after him, but he’d gone to the other side of the bar. “He’s given me way too much back,” I said to Damo.

  “No, he hasn’t.”

  “I might have rubber legs, but I can still count! Look!” I opened my palm and showed Damo how much change I’d received.

  “I . . . might have just asked him for a tonic.”

  “What, by accident? Did he mishear you?”

  “No, it’s just . . . well, you look scuttered already, Holly. I was just trying to help. Sammy’s too drunk herself to look out for you.”

  “So you thought you’d play God? You might be a cop, but you don’t have the right to try to get people to do what you want them to!”

  “I wasn’t being a cop, Holly. I did that as your friend who’s trying to do you a favour.”

  “Do me a favour and let me make my own decision next time,” I snapped. “You haven’t seen me in months, but you think you have the right to do the big brother thing on me?”

  It wasn’t me at all to act like this, but I knew it wasn’t just the drink talking. I was trying to push him away before things got risky.

  “It’s not my fault I haven’t seen you in months,” Damo said. “You seem to have distanced yourself from our place. I know you’re engaged now – congratulations on that, by the way – but why did you go from practically living at our place to never calling over at all?”

  “College started and I just don’t seem to have a spare minute,” I said feebly.

  “From what I hear, you call round at Sammy’s every single day,” he said.

  I threw back a mouthful of my drink. “Where I go and what I do is my business,” I said.

  “Of course it is. I’m jus
t letting you know that it’s really obvious that you don’t want to see me any more. Cliff says he hasn’t had a falling-out with you, so that means it must be me. What did I do, Holly?”

  I looked over at Sammy and Cliff, hoping and praying that one of them would start talking to us, but Sammy was whispering something in Cliff’s ear and he looked miles away. Her housemates had vanished as soon as they’d bought their drinks, probably on the prowl and checking out who was around.

  “You did nothing, Damo.”

  “Bullshit. I need to know, Holly. I can’t keep bugging Cliff about it and God only knows when I’ll see you again to get a chance to ask you. I know you’re with Terry, but I don’t think I did anything to cross a line, did I?”

  “You never did anything but be nice to me,” I said honestly.

  “But you still wanted to stay away from me. I thought we were really good friends.”

  “We were . . . we are.”

  Sammy poked her head in between us. I could have kissed her – until she opened her mouth.

  “Cliff and I are going to the cash machine – I forgot to go earlier. Damo, sit down there and keep Cliff’s seat.”

  As she flounced out, I could have killed her.

  The pub was getting busier and people kept crowding around our area trying to order drinks. Damo pulled Cliff’s seat forwards towards me so that people wouldn’t stand in between us to get to the bar.

  “Cash machine, my arse! Is that what they call it these days?” I said. “Can you believe those two?”

  “That’s been coming since the night you came down to Offaly,” Damo said. “Heather and Tommy got in the way, but I knew it’d happen eventually.”

  “That was a great night,” I found myself saying.

  “Yeah. All of our nights out were great.”

  Both of us smiled. And then he came out with it.

  “If we’d met before you met Terry, would things have been different?”

  I could have been evasive, Diary. I could have found a way to pass his question off, or feign indignation and wax lyrical about how happy I was in my relationship. Instead, I found myself saying an immediate, “Yes.” When the drink was in, the truth came out. Because much as I cared for and respected Terry, were things really so great between us when I’d been trying not to think of Damo for the last few months? Or was this the drink talking?

  Damo’s face lit up.

  “But I did meet him first and now it’s too late. I’m with Terry now.”

  “But you don’t have to stay with him, Holly! If you want to leave him, that’s your choice. You don’t exactly sound enthusiastic about him.”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to leave him.”

  “Do you have feelings for me?”

  “I . . . it’s complicated, Damo.”

  “Do you or don’t you?”

  I was just too drunk to lie. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Damo, of course I do. You know I do – you must know! I think you’re amazing – and a total ride bag – but I can’t just dump Terry. He’s been so good to me and so supportive about Ricky dying—”

  “Who’s Ricky?”

  Oh shit. Cliff was going to kill me.

  “He’s . . . he was my brother. He died a few months before you met us.”

  “Holly, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  “Cliff didn’t want you to know because he’s trying to escape from what happened. I don’t think we ever will or can, though.”

  I gave Damo the short version of what had happened to Ricky.

  “And Terry’s really helped me to move on from everything that’s happened, Damo. I owe him.”

  “You owe him? You owe nothing to a single soul except yourself. You can’t throw your life away on the wrong person.”

  There wasn’t much I could say to that, either. But it wasn’t that simple, Diary. It just wasn’t.

  “Holly, say something! Do you really think that someone being good to you is a reason to stay with them for the rest of your life?”

  He just wasn’t going to let this go.

  “I never realised you were so argumentative,” I said, trying a deflection tactic. “You’ll be one of those auld fellas who bends people’s ears about religion and politics in a few decades’ time.”

  “Am I going to get a straight answer to my question, or will we be going round in circles for the rest of the evening?”

  “I like circles. Don’t you? Jammie Dodgers, Polo Mints, footballs and therefore the great game – some of life’s greatest inventions are circles. I hate football, by the way. I just added that one for your benefit. See? I do care about you.”

  “Please stop the flippancy. It’s not helping – and you’re not even all that good at it, if you must know.”

  He was so on the money that instead of taking the hump at being outed, I looked up and smiled. Slowly, he smiled back. It was glorious. For a few seconds, it felt like summer all over again. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his face. He seemed to have forgotten his frustration of a few seconds ago, too, and was now looking at me as if I was the most special person in the world – the only person in the world.

  I was suddenly engulfed in a deliciously heady feeling that had nothing to do with the alcohol in my system, Diary. I didn’t know what I was going to do next, but I knew one thing. If he leaned forwards right now and kissed me, there was no way I’d be able to resist him. One shared look had left me completely powerless.

  I felt as if I was in slow motion as an arm crept around my shoulders. Damo was right in front of me, with both of his arms visible. I recognised the touch. I jerked my head sideways, but it felt as if something was holding it in a forwards-only position and I couldn’t quite move it. I watched as Damo’s eyes moved from mine to the person beside me. His expression hardened. His eyes flicked back towards me, swimming in disillusionment and envy. Eventually, I managed to look up.

  “Terry!” The surprise in my voice made it sound like he’d just risen from the dead.

  If he was discomfited, he didn’t show it, but that was Terry. He never would. He looked from me to Damo. When no introduction came from me, he extended his hand to Damo.

  “Terry. Holly’s fiancé.”

  The pub was getting busier and louder by the second, but there was no mistaking the emphasis in his voice.

  “Damien.” Damo shook Terry’s hand.

  Face-off. Terry stood beside me, marking his territory and staring at Damo. Damo stared back. I just kept looking from one of them to the other. Over and back I went, left-right, left-right as if shaking my head – which I suppose I was, internally. Neither of them so much as blinked.

  Someone had to do something, Diary. This was starting to feel like 1985 when Willie had kept Ricky, Cliff and me up until all hours watching the interminable World Snooker Championship final between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor. Damo would definitely have been Steve Davis, being taller and leaner than Terry. Terry also wore round glasses sometimes when he was reading and while they weren’t quite Dennis Taylor-esque, they weren’t far off, either. Dennis Taylor had been the victor in 1985, but now that they were both in front of me, I had no idea whether Dennis or Steve was going to pot the winning ball tonight, so to speak.

  I stood up, wobbled, regained my balance and smiled at Terry.

  “I need to go to the cash machine,” I said.

  Terry nodded, realising he’d won but not as strongly as Damo realised that he’d lost. Terry glanced over at Damo. I did, too. I tried to apologise with my eyes. For all his bravado, I knew Terry would be gutted if I left him. I couldn’t treat him like shit when I’d taken things this far with him.

  Terry slipped his arm around my waist as we walked away. I rifled through my bag and hoped that the bank card I referenced as my excuse was in there somewhere. As I zipped open a side pocket, I looked back at Damo. He gave me one last searching look, then shook his head and looked away.

  Outside the front door, Sammy and Cliff were buried in each other, to the exten
t that Damo’s colleagues were surely on the way to take them to a cell. I should have been happy for them, but I was too busy trying to work out what was wrong with me. I had everything I’d ever wanted a few years ago – a great college course, a man who seemed to love me – and yet I was still miserable. Maybe people like me just weren’t ever meant to be truly happy. And maybe I’d just done Damo a big favour and Terry a huge disservice.

  Chapter 36

  “Me, open a nightclub? Not unless this nightclub is the name of a new type of chocolate bar, Luke,” I said.

  “Aren’t you off chocolate?”

  “I’m trying. It’s not quite the same thing.”

  “Okay. Anyway, this place wants the three of you, Holly. That’s the deal.”

  “But why? The other two, sure. Young, funky and gorgeous – they’re exactly the target audience for a club. But me?”

  “Since when is thirties not young?”

  “I feel as old as the hills – thirty-six isn’t all that young, or it doesn’t feel that way to me, anyway.”

  “Listen, you’re a teenager compared to me. You’ll get no sympathy from these quarters.”

  “What age are you, anyway?”

  “Old enough to consider thirty-six the first flush of youth.”

  “Go on, hit me with it.”

  “Nope. Private business.”

  “I’ll find out, you know.”

  “Find out, then.”

  “I will.”

  Nah, I wouldn’t. I’d already tried and exhausted every line of enquiry.

  “Back to the matter at hand.”

  He told me a few more details about the nightclub. It sounded like the type of place Terry would frequent – in other words, the type of place I hated.

  “So how much are they offering for this?”

  He told me.

  “It’d cost me more in getting a decent frock to wear to that kind of thing than I’d actually earn.”

  “It’s up to you. The other two girls are up for it, but remember, it’s all three of you or none of you.”