Read Online Mr Lynch’s Holiday by Catherine O'Flynn - Free Book Online

them all the time now, often we haven’t any news for each other, but it’s just nice to see them, to be there … almost.’
    ‘That’s right,’ said David, ‘it’s not a big deal any more, we do it so often. No need for everyone to gather around the computer and have a big, formal conversation. Now it’s often just a quick “Hi” to Rachel or Jonathan, and then they take the laptop and put it in the room where the kids are.’
    Jean laughed. ‘George, he’s the little one, only four, he might trundle over and say, “Hello, Granny and Grandpa,” and tell us what new toy he has, or what he did that day at nursery, and then Olivia will come and chat for a minute or two, but then they just get on with whatever they were doing and we can just sit and watch them as if we’re in the room with them. It’s so lovely, just natural and relaxed, sometimes they completely forget we’re there.’
    ‘Yes!’ said David. ‘Last week they went out and didn’t even say goodbye, just left us there in the playroom, wondering where they all were.’ He laughed.
    Jean shook her head. ‘Well, we’re no better, we sometimes fall asleep in front of the screen. It’s just so soothing, hearing their voices. You know, sometimes, when we’ve felt a bit anxious about things here, we can just open the computer and straight away you feel that sadness lift. If we’ve had difficulty sleeping at night, we’ll find we nod off the next day when we’re there listening to them. It’s odd though, isn’t it,
David, waking up an hour or two later and seeing the empty room?’
    ‘Yes, it can be. If they see we’re asleep, they don’t wake us, they just leave us and go off doing whatever it is they need to do.’
    She nodded. ‘You see the empty room and you say, “Is anybody there?” and it’s a bit like a seance. I’m not sure who the ghosts are, them or us.’ She was quiet for a moment. ‘I suppose it must be odd for the kids.’
    They sat in silence for a while, Dermot looking at his hands. Eventually Jean turned to him and smiled.
    ‘And do you like word searches, Dermot?’

9
    The same faces at every funeral. The same but fewer. It reminded Dermot of the game Eamonn and the other kids used to play at birthday parties. When the music stopped – the desperate craning of necks to see who didn’t have a seat, who had been banished from the contest. It was the same thing now. Every few months a phone call and then a funeral, each of them wondering whose turn was next. Some deaths were shocking, others expected, others still felt long overdue. The florid, thickset ones were the first to go – stomachs pushing out their shirts, bacon every morning, beer every night, yellow spots in their eyes, they knew well themselves they would never live to see their kids married. Mick Fitzsimmons went at forty-two, collapsed in the car park of the Cash & Carry, a massive coronary. Others clung on despite all the odds. Nell Gahan, with her pills and her sticks and half her life spent in the doctor’s waiting room, was still scuttling about like a Dannimaced cockroach, whispering prayers at every graveside.
    Their promises to keep in touch and plans for future get-togethers ‘in happier circumstances’ never came to anything. There was an acceptance: they saw each other only when someone died. Long, bitter-sweet afternoons, sitting in the orange sunlight of a back lounge or function room. Recalling faded capers and well-worn one-liners. Half-hearted gossip still about long-ago scandals and comeuppances. Confiding small tragedies of estranged siblings and nervous illnesses. Endless ham sandwiches and double measures of Jameson’s. Joe Fahey still failing to get his round in, Jim Scanlon as full of it as ever.
At funerals, sitting with old friends, they felt their true selves, but later, in living rooms with televisions on and grandkids racing around the sofa, they would be tired and irritable and wonder why they’d wasted the