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father he looked up to, he’d never given himself the chance. One day he’d just lost his temper and walked out of college, never to go back. Since then he’d taken on a succession of laboring jobs – farming, landscaping, construction. He claimed he liked the simple outdoors life, but Holly had never quite believed that.
    “We had some times, didn’t we?” he said now.
    They had. First boyfriend, first kiss, the first experience of that skin on skin thing – not just the sex, the intimacy , the sharing, the incredibly deep level of trust you have to have when you expose yourself to someone like that for the very first time. Lots of firsts.
    It was easy to look back and only remember those firsts. Easy to forget the awful ache of adolescent love, the hurt of being apart, of not knowing what was in his head, never really trusting that another person could feel about you the way you did about him . The even worse ache when you finally made yourself accept that you’d both out-grown a relationship that had meant so much.
    “We did,” Holly said. “Good times.”
    She broke off to pour Donald Dwyer another pint, and all the time Tommy was watching her. Remembering good times, perhaps; remembering the feel of her, the taste and scent of her.
    It was funny to think what she’d shared with him – all those intimacies – but now it was equally strange to think that even though she and Tommy had split up so long ago, he still carried those memories, could still conjure up the past inside his head. That here in the bar there was a man who knew her so well.
    “You’re miles away.” Ruby. She’d been saying something, and now she rolled her eyes and said, “I was saying to Tommy here how you’d managed to lose a job in record time up at the Hall.”
    “That right?” said Tommy. “So what did you do to piss him off so quickly?”
    “Nothing,” said Holly, probably a little too defensively.
    “And that was probably the problem,” said Ruby with a big wink.
    “Yeah?” said Tommy, and there was a flash of something in his eyes. Not jealousy, surely?
    “Stop teasing,” Holly said to her sister. “That man treats cleaners as if they’re disposable. I was his second this week. He’s just a bad-tempered pig who doesn’t care about anyone but himself. If I’d known what he was like I’d never have taken on the job.”
    “Seriously,” said Tommy, cradling his pint between both hands, “if the guy’s done anything–”
    “He didn’t. It’s fine.” She’d put a hand on Tommy’s wrist when she interrupted him. Now, she looked at that hand, wanting to snatch it away, but at the same time... that touch took her back.
    A hand on the small of her back, and the other on the curve above her hip where everything narrows, moving up to cup a breast. Clumsy touches becoming confident and assured. Skin against skin.
    She pulled her hand away.
    What had got into her lately? Ever since that encounter in Blunt’s kitchen, that brief, intense kiss... it was as if everything had been heightened, every touch, every look intensified like a magnifying lens capturing the sun’s rays.
    She wasn’t normally like this.
    Ruby was watching, looking amused, and then the moment had gone and Tommy was turning away in response to something his brother had said. Holly stepped back, then turned and headed along the bar to serve a middle-aged couple who had just come in, and for a time, at least, she was able to lose herself in her work.
    §
    “Hey, Ruby. You coming back to sleep over in your old room, then? Dad’ll be thrilled.”
    It was closing time, and Holly had left Robert to lock the place down.
    Now, she stood outside with Ruby and Tommy. There was a real chill in the air tonight, and the sky was dotted with stars. Holly gave a shudder and hugged herself, rubbing at the goosebumps on her arms.
    “No, I’m good, Holls. Work in the morning and all that. I haven’t had too much.”
    “You sure you should be