Finding Tom Connor

  When jilted bride-to-be Molly Brown arrives in the seemingly sleepy Irish seaside town of Ballymahoe, she has greasy hair, a fractured arm, a broken heart, three extra kilos and no time at all for the charm of the locals.

  It’s been a crappy few days and her wedding dress is starting to smell, so if she could just lose her terrifying aunt and find Tom Connor perhaps everything, herself included, could return to normal. Unless, of course, there’s no such thing …

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1 Wednesday, 17 February 1999

  Chapter 2 1967

  Chapter 3 Wednesday, 17 February 1999

  Chapter 4 1969

  Chapter 5 Wednesday, 17 February 1999

  Chapter 6 1969

  Chapter 7 Wednesday, 17 February 1999

  Chapter 8 1969

  Chapter 9 Wednesday, 17 February 1999

  Chapter 10 1969

  Chapter 11 Thursday, 18 February 1999

  Chapter 12 1969

  Chapter 13 Thursday, 18 February 1999

  Chapter 14 1969

  Chapter 15 Friday, 19 February 1999

  Chapter 16 1969

  Chapter 17 Friday, 19 February 1999

  Chapter 18 1969

  Chapter 19 Saturday, 20 February 1999

  Chapter 20 1971

  Chapter 21 Saturday, 20 February 1999

  Chapter 22 1989

  Chapter 23 Saturday, 20 February 1999

  Chapter 24 1989

  Chapter 25 Sunday, 21 February 1999

  Chapter 26 1989

  Chapter 27 Sunday, 21 February 1999

  Chapter 28 Early 1990

  Chapter 29 Sunday, 21 February 1999

  Chapter 30 Mid 1990

  Chapter 31 Sunday, 21 February 1999

  Chapter 32 Late 1990

  Chapter 33 Monday, 22 February 1999

  Chapter 34 Late 1990

  Chapter 35 1998

  Chapter 36 Monday, 22 February 1999

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Wednesday, 17 February 1999

  When Molly bent down to slip the garter belt over her boot, two crappy things happened.

  First, her left boob popped out of her wedding dress and, next, the shoes of the man she was about to marry ruined her life.

  From her vantage point beneath the cubicle door Molly could see right out into the street and had spotted the unmistakable footwear of her husband-to-be stopped outside the bridal shop in obscenely close range of a pair of spiky stilettos. Red ones.

  Slut’s shoes! Molly thought to herself as she wrenched the pale blue lacy garter up over the heel of her knee-high Bobby Clergerie boots and stood up, her heart beating in her ears. She stuffed her roving and by now slightly chilled bosom back into the bodice of her bridal gown.

  ‘Jesus bloody Christ,’ boomed a voice from the next-door cubicle. ‘I have got to lay off the smorgasbords,’ Molly’s bridesmaid Jess moaned loudly. ‘This outfit you’ve got me poured into is cutting me in half. I won’t be able to unravel myself let alone have some handsome devil of a friend of Jack’s do it. Molly? Hello-o-o-o. Earth to Molly?’

  The words kaboomed around Molly without entering her head as she checked herself in the mirror to make sure she was still, in fact, Molly Brown. She seemed to be having some sort of out-of-body experience brought on by the sight of her husband-to-be’s feet standing practically on top of the feet of what appeared to be a small strumpet.

  A meeting of shoes could often be innocent but, although Molly had no reason to suspect otherwise, something about those slut’s shoes just did not look right. Just did not look good.

  Shaking her head to snap herself out of her trance, Molly knelt back down on the changing-room floor and looked out under the door again.

  The red shoes were still planted somehow coquettishly between Jack’s Timberlands. Who knew that the view from below the calf could be so revealing?

  ‘Why?’ Jess boomed next door. ‘Why have two millennia already passed and still no-one has invented a changing room in which you can move your arms and legs, hang clothes and still have room for your handbag? And what about a little shelf to put your sunglasses on? Why hasn’t anybody ever thought of that, eh?’

  Molly was finding it hard to think about the impact of what Jack’s shoes were up to as her thoughts indeed drifted to Jess’ imaginary sunglasses shelf. With some effort she rounded the roving thoughts up and focused them back on the subject at hand (or foot). She craned her neck again to see if the stilettos had knees attached to them but the flouncy meringue of a wedding dress in the shop’s window blocked her view.

  The boat-shoes outside were Jack’s, of that there was no doubt. The right one, the one she could clearly see the side of, was wearing a splodge of Oh Behave nail varnish. She’d knocked the stuff off her dresser and onto Jack’s shoe just a couple of days ago and, far from being angry, Jack had laughed his head off because his new white shirt had only just come back from the cleaner after she had tripped over the hall rug on her way to kiss him goodbye and smooched Gotcha! lipstick on it.

  ‘That’s my Molly,’ he had laughed.

  ‘Molly!’ Jess’ legs appeared at the bottom of her cubicle and blocked her view.

  Then Jess’ upside-down face appeared, her auburn hair cascading sideways.

  ‘What the hell are you doing down there?’ she asked. ‘Praying that I’ll keep away from the buffet between now and next weekend? Do I look fat in this?’

  She threw open Molly’s door and struck a Marilyn pose in her gold satin bridesmaid’s dress.

  Molly looked up at her.

  ‘Slut’s shoes!’ she said.

  ‘They’re Doc Martens, Moll. Get a grip, will you? I won’t be wearing them down the aisle, you know. What’s the matter with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What are you doing on the floor? Cramps? Better now than in a week’s time if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I just saw Jack with some slut’s shoes,’ Molly said, staring up at her best friend.

  ‘You’ve been into the ginseng tea again, haven’t you?’ teased Jess. ‘Stop your blathering and tell me if my butt looks like the back end of the number 17 bus or not.’

  ‘Jess,’ said Molly, slowly standing up. ‘I just saw Jack’s feet outside with another pair of feet and they were not walking side by side in a “just on our way to an important business meeting” fashion. They were facing each other in a “let me reach up and slip my slutty little tongue into your about-to-be-married face” fashion.’

  At that moment, Molly’s life had a chance to carry on the way she’d always imagined it would. She could’ve laughed her famous laugh and said: ‘What am I like? The pressure of being married to the city’s most eligible bachelor in front of 270 of our closest friends in four days’ time is finally getting to me. Get me to Margaritaville, Jess, before I start hallucinating about socks and underpants as well.’

  But she didn’t.

  It was something to do with the way Jess’ hazel-flecked eyes widened almost imperceptibly with what looked like fear before she twirled again in front of her girlfriend and said, ‘Butt, Molly. Butt!’

  But Molly’s head was buzzing in a funny way and she suddenly cared less about Jess’ buttocks than she cared about anything else in the world. Picking up her bag from under her street clothes, she stared at her best friend checking out her rear in the mirror and in a dazed and confused but decidedly speedy fashion walked out of the shop.

  She turned right and glided up High Street, squinting ahead at footpath level through a sea of lunchtime shoppers’ legs in search of the spiky stilettos. No sign.

  ‘What AM I like?’ she thought to herself a
gain as she became vaguely aware of a squabble behind her which she realised must have been Jess arguing with Chrissie Cliff, the dressmaker in the bridal shop.

  ‘I’m wigging out over two pairs of shoes?’ she asked herself.

  But in the pit of her stomach the bad feeling was still there. A feeling that her life — perfect in all respects — was about to unravel. Big time.

  ‘Moll-y-y-y-y!’ she heard Jess screaming in the distance. ‘For God’s sake come back!’

  But just as Molly was starting to think the feeling in the pit of her stomach was giving her a bum steer, the shopping crowds dawdling along the footpath in front of her dispersed just long enough for a blur of scarlet to waft into view, then into the doorway of the Cosmopolitan Apartments building.

  Molly’s stomach — so nicely toned after a six-month engagement at 150 sit-ups a day — lurched again and she broke into a sprint, making it into the foyer of the apartment block just as the lift doors closed.

  ‘Shit!’ Molly gasped breathlessly. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit!’

  ‘That’s lovely talk from a beautiful bride on the big day,’ beamed a burly security guard standing inside the automatic doors. ‘Lost the lucky man, then?’

  It was only then that Molly fully realised that wearing her $4000 gold-embroidered wedding dress around High Street on a Wednesday afternoon was slightly loopy. But then her life was falling apart, so what the hell.

  ‘This old rag?’ she smiled at the guard, whose name badge read Rangi. ‘Actually, the woman in red, the one who just came in? She was in the changing room after me and I think she has my sunglasses. They’re Versace,’ Molly gabbled. ‘Princess Diana had a pair just like them. Do you know which apartment she is in?’

  ‘Was she with Mr White?’ Hone asked her with a grin as he eyed her slightly heaving bosom.

  ‘Jack White?’ Molly asked, her heart sinking.

  ‘Yeah, from the White Board — you know, the advertising company. His place is on the fourth floor, Room 408,’ Hone supplied.

  What do you mean? Molly wanted to scream. What do you mean his place is on the fourth floor, Room 408? He lives with me in our renovated villa in Ponsonby and we’re very much in love and getting married next Saturday and what the hell is he doing on the fourth floor of the Cosmopolitan Apartments, Room 408?

  ‘I’ll just go up then,’ she smiled.

  ‘You can go where you like, Miss Runaway Bride,’ Hone grinned. ‘In fact, you’d give Julia Roberts a right old run for her money. Where is the lucky man, then?’

  Molly just smiled at him and raised her eyebrows in a suggestive fashion, repeatedly pushing the Up button and praying for the lift to arrive so that she could have hysterics in private.

  Inside the padded elevator she tried to slow her breathing and get back in charge of her head, which was doing mental gymnastics. She just couldn’t think straight. All she could pick out from the bombsite of her brain was that something was giving her perfect life a nudge and although it probably would be better if she didn’t find out what the something was, she appeared to be doing just that.

  The lift stopped at the fourth floor and Molly got out, then made her way to Room 408.

  There’s been a mistake, she kept telling herself. There’s a perfectly logical reason why he’s here with those stilettos. Maybe it wasn’t Oh Behave nailpolish on the shoes after all. In certain lights Yeah Baby looks exactly the same.

  Amazed at the steadiness of her own hand, Molly reached out and rapped sharply on the door of 408.

  Laughter erupted from the room and Molly rapped again, louder this time.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked a voice horribly like Jack’s.

  Molly bashed the door for a third time, and then it opened.

  She’d always thought that people were full of crap when they wrote that time stood still but that’s exactly what happened. In the phemtosecond it took to realise that her half-naked fiancé was standing in front of her with a petite blonde sitting in the bed behind him, clutching the sheets to her bare body, she also had time to think that she wasn’t going to be going to Hawaii on honeymoon, she shouldn’t have sold her jewellery gallery, her mum was going to kill her, and that to top it all off even if Jack wasn’t a whoring son-of-a-bitch he had now cursed their marriage by seeing her in her wedding dress.

  ‘Jesus, Molly,’ the whoring son-of-a-bitch said breathlessly as he hid his shirtless top half behind the door of the studio apartment. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘What am I doing here?’ Molly heard herself say in quite a calm and friendly fashion. ‘What am I doing here? Who the fuck is she?’

  The petite blonde had not moved a muscle. Only her baby blue eyes had grown larger as she took in the scene unfolding in front of her. A girl of little brain, even she could sense that having someone in a wedding dress knock on your door when you were about to do the wild thing with a guy you knew little about was not a good omen.

  ‘Molly, I can explain. Jesus, it’s not what you think,’ Jack started. ‘Can we go somewhere and talk about this?’

  As she stared at him, a crumpled pile of red seeped into Molly’s stunned consciousness: a uniform. And a name badge that she could clearly read. Tiffini.

  ‘Somewhere else, that is,’ Jack was at least having the decency to appear slightly flustered. ‘Moll, really. Just give me a minute. I love you, Molly. I do. I can explain. Stay right there. It’ll be all right, I promise you. Just a minute. Okay?’

  He closed the door on her.

  Without even thinking about it, Molly turned and fled, skipping the lifts and running down the stairs two at a time, her mind reeling and the pile of red uniform sprawled on the floor flashing in front of her eyes.

  Bursting back into the foyer, she startled Rangi and an older security guard.

  ‘Hey, Julia!’ Rangi smiled. ‘Any chance of a beer before getting to the church on time? I’ve just finished my shift.’

  ‘Now. Take me,’ Molly commanded, grabbing the man by the arm and dragging him out the door.

  ‘See ya, George.’ Rangi grinned behind him at his bewildered replacement. ‘I’ll send you photos of the honeymoon.’

  ‘God, please, I know this is weird,’ Molly said, only just holding on to her sanity. ‘But we have to hurry. Where can we go where we won’t be seen? Quickly.’

  Just across High Street was a dingy alley between a café and a clothes shop and without missing a beat Rangi directed Molly to the end of it, then into a wide but low door covered in graffiti.

  Inside was quite a cool-looking bar with no natural light but an atmosphere that didn’t need it. Ella Fitzgerald crooned softly in the background while about a dozen punters sat on leather sofas, reading the paper, drinking and talking in low voices.

  Rangi aimed Molly at a sofa in a dark corner of the bar and headed off to buy drinks.

  Molly thought she was probably in shock. She knew that her life was erupting out of control yet she felt strangely calm. Not angry. Not sad. Just calm. That couldn’t be right.

  ‘You look like a bottled beer sort of a chick,’ said Rangi as he plopped a bottle of Heineken in front of her and took a sip from his own pint. ‘Now what the hell is going on here, girl?’

  Molly looked at Rangi’s kind brown eyes and marvelled that minutes ago she hadn’t known he existed and now he was right in the middle of the mess she had somehow found herself in.

  ‘What do you know about Jack White?’ she asked. ‘How long has he had an apartment in the Cosmopolitan? Who does he take there?’

  Rangi looked at her with a hint of sadness in his face and said, ‘The name’s Rangi. And you are …’

  ‘I’m Molly,’ said Molly. ‘I’m sorry. You must think I’m completely mad, it’s just that …’ her voice caught in her throat. ‘I’m Molly.’ But as the words came out it hit her that she didn’t know who the hell she was and while the strange calmness remained, her eyes welled up and the tears started to flow.

  ‘I’m Molly Brown.’ She let a si
ngle sob escape before pulling herself together. ‘I’m Molly Brown and up until about an hour ago I was going to marry Jack White next Saturday in front of 270 people and a lot of white tulips specially imported from Holland but I have just found him in the process of nearly having sex with a small blonde woman in an apartment I didn’t know existed so I’m thinking the nuptials are kind of in doubt.’

  Molly wiped her nose on a napkin and took a swig out of her bottle. She didn’t normally drink beer but this one was going down a treat.

  ‘You were going to marry Jack White?’ asked Rangi incredulously. ‘Next Saturday?’

  ‘We’ve been together two years and engaged for six months,’ Molly hiccuped. ‘I can’t believe what is happening to me. What do you know?’

  Rangi blew away any chance of having a few laughs with the runaway bride and wished he was somewhere else. She was so pretty. She seemed so nice. What the hell was she doing with a shit like Jack White?

  ‘Look, Molly, it’s not really my business but you seem like a nice girl and you’re obviously having a pretty bad day, eh? All I can say is that I would have put all my money on the fact that Jack White was not getting married in three day’s time in front of a bunch of tulips.’

  ‘Because why?’ Molly pulled herself together to ask him. ‘Why not?’

  Rangi stopped and thought about what he was going to do but the girl was truly better off without Mr Advertising Whizz and she may as well know it.

  ‘Because for the three years that I have been working on the door at the Cosmo it has been practically revolving with women coming to see your Jack.’

  Molly burped herself into silence as she took in what Rangi was saying.

  ‘I’m really sorry, um, Molly. But the guy is a legend. He loves a girl in uniform. That little blonde one from Driveaway Cars has been up there with him about four times in the last week. Look, I don’t know you but you’re, you’re, well, you look gorgeous to me. You could have any guy in the world instead of a jumped-up stud machine like Jack White.’

  Molly lay back against the leather sofa and closed her eyes. ‘I need a glass of wine. White. Chardonnay. Money in my purse,’ she said. If Jack wasn’t the Jack she thought he was, then she wasn’t the Molly she thought she was, so she may as well get plastered — something the Molly she thought she was never did.