Kit and Tully | Love or Music?

2 - Girls in Black

Felice lives ten minutes outside the town but, because of rush hour, it takes twenty-five. Dad and I don't speak as he drives me out. We never do. Instead, I watch the windscreen wipers swish hypnotically back and forth. 

The rain driving against the windscreen of the car blurs the view of the twisting road. Hemmed in with ditches, the high hedges are lush and wet, weighed down with greenery.

The house is buried at the bottom of a narrow lane. People say the site is beautiful with its commanding view of the river below and prehistoric burial site brooding in the distance. 

The ancient passage grave is a listed monument, but it's so far off the beaten track the only visitors it attracts are lost hikers.

And us.

It's our special place.

Axel Carr's house is a statement piece of glass and thrusting angles that defies the forces of nature surrounding it.

Felice hates it.

She preferred the house that was there before, a modest bungalow, hidden in the landscape, barely big enough for Felice and her brothers to grow up in. That was before her parents got divorced, back when More Video 4 U was just a couple of stores in local towns. 

Now they've a massive home with only Felice and Axel left to rattle around in it. Perhaps that's why he doesn't mind when she fills it with her friends.

"Axel is there, isn't he?" Dad is always so suspicious. It's the lawyer in him.

The trick is to give him just enough of what he wants, so I keep my voice indifferent. "Yeah, he'll probably ask you in for a drink."

"No!" If it hadn't been for the seatbelt, Dad would almost have leaped out of his seat. The last thing he wants is to give Axel free legal advice over several whiskeys. "I'll just drop you off. I need to keep going."

"Fine!" I smile to myself. It's exactly the reaction I was hoping for.

As soon as we pull up, the front door swings open and Felice comes flying down the steps, oblivious of the rain.

"Her hair's not blue, is it?" Dad squints at her through the rain on the windscreen. In the grey evening light, Felice's hair has a silvery sheen but underneath, it's definitely blue.

"Jesus wept!" He shakes his head in despair. "That's a perfect example of why we didn't want you going to London." 

It's no secret my parents disapprove of Felice, but Drimshanra is a small town and, though they don't move in the same circles as her father, they know who he is. 

Everyone does. 

Drimshanra doesn't have many success stories, and Axel Carr is entirely self-made, the richest man in town. Plus Felice and I both go to St. Catherine's, an expensive boarding school in Dublin. 

But the main reason my parents tolerate our friendship is because, like Axel Carr, they find driving up and down to Dublin every weekend to collect me and bring me back to school is a total chore. But now that Felice is in St. Catherine's, a perfect solution has presented itself. We take the Drimshanra bus together on Fridays, and that's how we've become close. 

"Don't stay up all night," Dad says as I fish my bag off the back seat. "You girls have the whole summer to talk and catch up."

"Sure." I slam the car door shut behind me.

"Kit!" My best friend throws her arms around me and I feel alive again, for the first time since she left. We've barely known each other a year. Even though she lives just ten minutes outside Drimshanra, I'd never met her until she turned up as a new girl in St. Catherine's last September, but life before Felice came into my orbit has already become a distant memory.