Page 18 of One Day and Forever
There was no queue at the desks, so they were checked in and upstairs at the café in no time. Weirdly, this was one of Alice’s favourite places. There were only a couple of cafés in Glasgow that were open twenty-four hours, so ever since she’d bought her very first Fiat Panda at eighteen, her and Morag would jump in the car and come here for a late-night hot chocolate and a pile of snacks. They’d watch the people milling around, arriving too late for night flights or too early for the first flights of the day. And they’d talk for hours, until it was time to go home and get ready for college, or later, for work. There would be plenty of time to sleep when they were old, that was their motto.
Strangely, though, Morag still wasn’t her usual chatty self tonight. Cillian and Larry went off to the counter, with instructions to bring back two coffees, four packets of pickled onion crisps – Larry hated it when she ate those, but it was her and Morag’s favourite flavour – and two walnut whips.
‘Nervous about meeting Cillian’s family? Is that why you’ve been so quiet today?’ Alice asked, as soon as the guys were out of sight. ‘They’ll love you; I know they will.’
Morag had only started dating Cillian a couple of months ago, so no one was more shocked than Alice that her pal had quit her job at the firm and decided to go back to Ireland with him. He’d been in Glasgow working on a construction project for his Irish employers, so he had a good job that could support them until Morag found work, but still it was a bit out of character. Morag had always been the more sensible one of the two, thelevel-headed one that didn’t get carried away or swept up in her emotions. At least, until now…
‘No, I’m not worried,’ Morag answered, pulling the cuffs of her sleeves down over her hands. That was what she always did when she was worried. ‘I just… I’ll miss you.’
‘Oh, Mo,’ Alice wailed, as she stretched over and wrapped her arms around her friend. ‘I’ll miss you so much too. You know it’s not too late to change your mind.’
Pulling back, Morag fanned her face, trying to dry the tears. ‘No, I can’t. It’s the right thing to do. I know it’s quick, but I really like Cillian. And it’s time for a change of scene. I want to see different places. I can’t go through life only having lived in Glasgow.’
This was the same story she’d been telling since she first broke the news and Alice still didn’t get it.
‘That’s not true, we’ve been to Benidorm. And Magaluf. I’ve still got the scars from when I fell over the sea wall.’ Alice hoped bringing up one of their favourite memories would cheer them up, but it actually did the opposite. She had to pull a napkin from the silver container in the middle of the table to dab her cheeks.
‘I am happy for you, though, I promise. Cillian is so lovely. Look at us, all grown up and somehow we both managed to land really great guys.’
Bloody hell, Alice watched her friend’s face crumble and realised cheery stuff wasn’t working either. Morag was getting more upset by the minute.
‘Did I hear something about “great guys”? That has to be us, Cillian,’ Larry interrupted with a cheeky wink, as he put down a tray with the coffees and four packets of plain crisps. ‘They didn’t have pickled onion, so I got these instead.’
Alice frowned as she cast a glance over at the counter. She was sure she could see what she’d asked for in a basket behind the tills. Larry must not have noticed.
‘And I didn’t get the chocolate because you told me you were on a diet. Don’t want to lead you astray.’
Okay, so sometimes he took things a little too literally, but he was only looking out for her and he was right. She did want to lose a couple of pounds so that she could squeeze her size-twelve body into the two new dresses he’d bought her for their holiday next month to Marbella. Both the dresses and the holiday were his birthday gifts to her, but he’d somehow managed to buy size tens. He’d told her they were non-returnable because they were designer, so she was just going to have to make it work. Walnut whip deprivation was a small price to pay.
Morag didn’t seem to be quite as understanding about it and didn’t even thank Larry for the coffees. Alice would never in a million years say anything, and she felt terrible for even thinking it, but sometimes she wondered if Morag was a little bit jealous of her relationship with Larry. All the girls in the office used to talk about how gorgeous he was and maybe Morag had fancied her chances with him a little bit. It would definitely explain how weird she’d been acting towards her lately.
Hopefully some time away in Ireland would sort it all out, and when Morag was ready to come back, whether that was in a few months or a year or whenever, she’d be her old self again.
Cillian sat down on the same side of the table as Morag and spotted her red-rimmed eyes. ‘You okay?’
Morag nodded. ‘Yep. I was just telling Alice how much I’m going to miss her.’
Alice handed out the coffees from the tray. ‘I’m going to visit you as soon as you’re settled though. Just let me know when I can come. I’ll be over so often you’ll be sick of me.’
Beside her, Larry coughed and she felt his knee nudge hers, so she changed the subject. Not that he would mind her going to visit Morag, but he did like her to be with him at the weekends,even if it was just waiting at his flat for him to come home from one of his bars.
‘We’d like that, Alice,’ Cillian said, and she thought again what a nice guy he seemed to be. Not that she knew him well yet. When Alice had been seeing the footballer, Morag was dating a guy who did something in finance, and they would all hang out together most weekends. There had been no double dates lately though, so Alice had never really got to know Cillian. She’d change that when she visited, or when they came back to Glasgow for weekends.
‘Tell me about your home over there, Cillian,’ she asked, taking the pressure off the situation by changing the subject of her best friend leaving.
For the next ten minutes, while they drank their coffees, they chatted about Ireland and Cillian’s family and all the things he had planned for Morag when they got back to his hometown on the outskirts of Dublin.
‘His friends sound so nice,’ Morag chipped in. ‘All really good, decent men. Not like some of the ones here.’
Alice wasn’t sure where that was coming from, but she didn’t dwell on it. It was only right that Morag was viewing her new life through rose-coloured glasses. ‘Then you’ll have to bring some of them over when you come back. A couple of the girls in the office are still single,’ she joked.
Their laughter was cut short by the scraping of Larry’s chair as he pushed it back. ‘Right, Alice, we’d better be going. I don’t know what the traffic will be like on the way home and I need to stop in to speak to a couple of my managers.’
‘But their flight doesn’t leave for another?—’
‘I know, and I’m so sorry, but it’s work,’ he said, and Alice could see from his apologetic smile that he felt bad dragging her away.
Reluctantly, she got up, and Morag and Cillian did the same.
