At First Sight by Hannah Sunderland (latest novels to read TXT) 📕

I leaned up a little and pressed my lips to his gently, where they rested for a moment before I moved away. ‘Me too.’

Chapter Seventeen

There had been many things that I’d seen in my life where I had asked myself the question: ‘Who the hell thought that this was a good idea?’ But never more so than right now, standing in what looked like a car park full of UPVC huts and staring at what can only be described as a Virgin Mary in a jar full of water, being sold under the guise of a snow globe. Mary stood in the middle, surrounded by trees and a village scene that she dwarfed in size and which was periodically rained down on by glitter and little chips of fake snow.

‘Fifteen euro,’ said the tiny, withered woman behind the counter, who looked as though she might be as old as Mary herself.

‘How much?’ I asked in horror but I’d already committed to buying it.

Ned had specifically asked me to bring him back a beautiful souvenir and I was prepared to use that adjective as sarcastically as possible. She raised her eyebrows, or at least I think she did. The hair above her eyes was so sparse that they barely constituted eyebrows at all.

‘Fifteen euro. That’s holy water in there, so it is,’ she said as if that was any consolation for paying thirteen pounds for a jam jar full of water with a plastic figurine and some glitter thrown in for good measure. She held my gaze with her wide, sweet eyes and before I knew what was happening, I’d already tapped my card against the reader and she was thanking me with a polite smile. ‘Would yer like a wee bag with that?’

I nodded, wanting to get as much from this transaction as possible.

She wrapped Mary up in a sheet of newspaper and put her in a bag, which was less ‘wee’ and more regular-sized, and I walked away feeling unsure as to how she’d managed to bamboozle me with her Irish charm and lack of brows.

I walked back out into the … I guess market is what you’d call it, and found Charlie exactly where I’d left him. He was standing sullenly, our luggage around his feet, beside a stand advertising large empty plastic bottles to fill with holy water and take home. Carrick had gone to find the car that he’d parked on a friend’s drive, leaving Charlie and I to peruse the souvenirs on offer.

Charlie leant against an electricity box, his brows lowered over his eyes, his teeth gnawing on his bottom lip. He pulled off the brooding look so well that I often had trouble deciding if he was angry or not. Was he simmering on a medium heat of fury or had his face simply forgotten how to pull any other expression?

‘What d’yer have there?’ he asked.

‘Something for Ned. I said I’d bring him something back.’

‘I never took yer or Ned as religious.’ He nodded towards the bag in my hand.

‘How do you know that I bought something religious?’ I asked, reaching in and taking out the paper-wrapped jam jar.

‘This is Knock, Nell; everythin’s religious.’

I unwrapped it and gave him a peek.

His eyes widened with what I can only assume was intense jealousy, that I should be the owner of such an exquisite object and he not. ‘I’m glad to see you went for the tasteful one rather than the tacky stuff.’ He took it from me, shook it a few times and grimaced at the pathetic scattering of glitter snow. ‘How much did they rob off yer for this?’

‘Fifteen euros.’

‘Fifteen euro?!’ he exclaimed and then immediately started laughing, violently shaking it around.

‘Hey, give it back!’ I pushed myself up onto my tiptoes and snatched it back. ‘I’ll have you know that this is holy water.’

‘Oh, well I do beg yer pardon.’

‘Yeah, jealous now, aren’t you?’ I said with a grin.

‘I am. I mean, just look at the craftsmanship, the … oh, good grief.’ He took my wrist in his hand and brought the globe closer to his face. I squinted through the glass and saw the Virgin Mary’s eyes staring at me judgementally. When I say eyes, however, I mean the twinkly sky-blue diamantes that had been affixed over her eyes.

‘Oh, that’s a nice touch.’ Charlie chuckled.

The sound of one of those jet-propelled boy-racer cars roared to life in the distance, disturbing the quiet town and causing milling tourists to look up from their purchases.

I’d always found the loud-engined, spoiler-clad, narcissism in car form thing baffling. All it spoke of to me was a larger than average ego and a smaller than average penis. I winced and watched as Charlie raised a hand to his forehead and rubbed calming circles into his skin. I turned in the direction of the roaring as a bright orange BMW skidded around the corner and, within a matter of seconds, screamed to a halt, the tyres bouncing away from the kerb as the car rebounded a few inches. I scoffed and rolled my eyes at Charlie, who looked nothing but overwhelmingly embarrassed. The driver’s side window opened and out popped Carrick’s beaming face.

‘Hop in, kids,’ he called.

‘They let you have your car back then?’ Charlie said as he gathered the bags and smiled apologetically at the tourists looking on judgementally.

‘On the condition that I get a silencer fitted,’ he called back, his head hanging out the window like a Labrador’s.

‘Uh-huh and when are you going to get that done?’

‘We’re on the way to the garage now … if anyone asks,’ he replied.

‘You get travel sick?’ Charlie asked me over the low top of the car as I popped the door behind the driver’s seat. I shook my head. ‘Good. But there’s a bag in the back of Carrick’s seat if you need one. His driving has been known to bring out the vomit in people.’

‘Excellent,’ I murmured, sliding into the back