Page 110 of For Love or Money
Al grinned. ‘A happy coincidence indeed.’
Damn it, why had she kept Al at arm’s length for so long? If she’d found out sooner that they were dynamite together, they could have been shagging this whole holiday.
‘Want to go back to bed and see if we can beat our personal best?’ Al asked.
Lesley sighed. ‘We should probably join the others at the beach,’ she said reluctantly. ‘It’d seem a bit rude to ditch them on our last day.’ Maybe it would be better not to get hooked on Al when he was still hung up on Cassie.
‘Really? You want to go to the beach?’
Oh, what the hell! Al was an amazing shag. She should just enjoy it while she could. ‘No,’ she said, sliding a leg across the table and running her bare foot up his leg. ‘I really don’t.’
36
‘You look well,’ Katrina said grudgingly to Lesley a couple of days later as she let her in to their parents’ house. ‘Very tanned, and ... there’s something else.’ She tilted her head to the side and looked closely at her. ‘Have you lost weight?’
‘I’ve been having sex!’ Lesley hissed excitedly.
‘Well, yeah. I should hope so.’
Lesley forgot that everyone thought she was already having sex with Al, so there was no reason to be so excited about it. ‘Well, you know ... holiday sex,’ she amended. ‘Lots of it. Day and night.’
‘Thanks for the TMI.’ Katrina narrowed her eyes at her. ‘But there’s something different about you.’
‘Oh, I got my hair cut,’ Lesley said, tossing her head.
‘Yeah, that must be it. It’s not bad.’
‘Thanks,’ Lesley said because she knew that practically constituted gushing for Katrina.
They walked into the kitchen, and Lesley stopped dead in the doorway because her mother was standing on top of the kitchen table doing a pile of ironing, while her father sat at the table like a normal human being, fiddling with his phone.
‘Lesley!’ Miriam looked up as they came in. ‘You’ve finally decided to grace us with a visit.’
‘I only got back on Saturday night,’ Lesley said sulkily. ‘I needed to unpack and get my stuff sorted out. I have to get straight back into work tomorrow.’ In fact, she had spent all of yesterday shagging Al, and he’d only gone home this morning (quite reluctantly, she liked to think). She hadn’t been too sure where they’d stand once they got back to Ireland, but she knew she didn’t want the shagging to stop. So she’d been very relieved when he’d asked her on the plane if he could go home with her for the night.
‘You look great,’ her father said, hugging her hello. ‘You have a sort of glow about you.’
‘Must be the sun.’
‘Where’s Al?’ her mother asked. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve fallen out with him already.’
‘He’s going to the airport to pick up his aunt and drive her home.’ He was helping Jane move to Dublin for the start of rehearsals, and he’d be spending the night in Doonbeg. He’d invited Lesley to go with him, but she knew she’d never hear the end of it if she let another day go by without visiting her family. ‘Anyway, never mind all that,’ she said as her mother unplugged the iron from the socket board at her feet. ‘What in the name of feck areyoudoing?’
‘It’s extreme ironing,’ her father said proudly, standing to hold her mother’s hand as she stepped off the table onto a chair and from there to the floor. ‘She saw it on YouTube.’
‘Extreme ironing? Isn’t that supposed to be on the side of a mountain or something?’
‘I’m working my way up to that,’ her mother said. ‘I’m only starting.’
‘Next stop, the Sugarloaf!’ her father beamed.
‘Well,’ Miriam said tremulously, ‘maybe the Hill of Howth first. I don’t want to run before I can walk.’
‘But why on earth do you even want to do extreme ironing?’ Lesley said. ‘Isn’t that a young man’s game?’
‘Your mother has her heart set on being a YouTuber,’ her father explained.
‘There must be easier ways of getting on YouTube,’ Lesley said as they all sat down.
