Читать книгу The Honey Queen - Cathy Kelly - Страница 9

Peggy Barry had spent a long time searching for the perfect place: a town far enough away from home for her to flourish – and yet near enough for Peggy to drive to her mother if she was needed. Her mother was the reason she hadn’t left the country altogether, but nobody, including Mrs Barry, had to know that. Peggy wanted to remain in Ireland in case one day her mother would accept the truth and phone her daughter. Until then, she travelled, searching.

Since she’d left home at the age of eighteen, an astonishing nine years ago, Peggy had lived in all of Ireland’s cities and many of its towns and still hadn’t found the perfect place.

She had almost resigned herself to the likelihood that it didn’t exist, that there was no town or village or suburb where she could feel as if she belonged.

‘What are you looking for exactly?’ the owner of the last bar she’d worked in had asked her.

Peggy had liked TJ, even though he wasn’t her type. Mind you, in the past year, nobody had been her type. Men and dreams of a future didn’t appear to work well together. Guys mistakenly thought that tall, leggy brunettes working in bars wanted quick flings and couldn’t possibly be serious about saving money for their own business or about waiting for the right guy to settle down with.

The bar – lucrative, loud, boasting a vibrant Galway crowd – had been quiet once the last stragglers had been sent home. TJ was cashing up and Peggy was cleaning. Her shift ended in half an hour and she yearned for the peace of her small flat two storeys above the dry cleaner’s, where there was no noise, nobody gazing drunkenly at her over the counter and telling her they were in love with her, and could they have two pints, a whiskey chaser and a couple of rum cocktails, please?

‘Sanctuary,’ said Peggy absent-mindedly in reply to TJ’s question as she went from table to table with her black plastic bag, bucket, spray and cloth. She’d already gathered up the ashtrays from the beer garden and put them to soak in a basin. The glass-washing machines were on, the empty beer bottles collected. The floor, sticky with alcohol and dirt, was somebody else’s problem in the morning.

‘Saying “sanctuary” makes you sound like a nun,’ remarked TJ.

‘OK, peace, then,’ Peggy said in exasperation.

‘If you want peace, you need one of those villages in the middle of nowhere,’ TJ said, reaching for another piece of nicotine gum. ‘Sort of place where you get one pub, ten houses and a lot of old farmers standing at their gates staring at you when you drive by.’

‘That’s not at all what I want.’ Peggy moved on to the next table. Somebody’s door key was stuck there in a glue of crisps and the sticky residue of spilt alcohol. Peggy scrubbed it free and went back to the bar, where she put it in the lost property tin. ‘TJ, you can’t run a business in a village in the middle of nowhere and I want my own business. I told you already. A knitting and craft shop.’

‘I know, you told me: knitting,’ TJ repeated, shaking his head. ‘You just don’t look the knitting type.’

Peggy laughed. She seldom told people about her plans for fear they’d laugh at her fierce determination and tell her she was mad, and why didn’t she blow her savings on a trip to Key West/Ibiza/Amsterdam with them? But whenever she did mention her life plan, it was astonishing how often people told her that she didn’t look ‘the knitting type’.

What was the knitting type? A woman with her hair in a bun held up with knitting needles, wearing a long, multi-coloured knitted coat that trailed along behind her on the floor?

‘I want to run my own business, TJ,’ she said, ‘and knitting’s what I’m good at, what I love. I’ve been knitting since I was small: my mother used to knit Aran for the tourist shops years ago. She taught me everything. I know there’s a market for shops like that. That’s what I’m looking for – somewhere to start off.’

‘You told me, but I’m not sure I believe you.’ TJ’s eyes narrowed. ‘What exactly are you running away from, babe? You should stay here. You’re happy, we appreciate you.’

What got a woman like Peggy trailing all over the place looking for peace? A man, he’d bet tonight’s takings on it. When women moved all the time the way Peggy did, a man was usually behind it all.

Women like Peggy, tall and rangy with those steady dark eyes half-obscured by curls of conker-brown fringe and a hint of vulnerability that she did her best to hide, were always running from men. Not that she couldn’t be tough when she was dealing with angry drunks pulling at her clothes and making suggestions. But she was soft inside, despite the outer tough-chick exterior and the black leather biker jacket and boots. Too soft. He wondered what had happened to her.

‘I’m not running,’ Peggy said, straightening up from the final table and facing him squarely. ‘I’m looking. There’s a difference. I’ll know when I find it.’

‘Yeah.’ He waved one hand wearily. The soft women who’d been hurt by men all said that.

‘It’s not what you think,’ Peggy insisted. ‘I’m looking for a different kind of life.’

But as she walked home that night, hand wrapped around a personal alarm in one pocket of her leather jacket, she admitted to herself that TJ was sort of right – only she would never tell him that. He thought she was running away from a man, and in a way she was. Except it wasn’t the ex-lover TJ undoubtedly imagined. She was running away from something very different.

On a beautiful February day, shortly after leaving the bar in Galway, an Internet property trawl led Peggy to Redstone, a suburb of Cork that somehow retained a sense of being a town.

On the computer screen, the premises near Redstone Junction had it all: a pretty, Art Deco façade, a big catchment area and lots of other shops and cafés nearby to bring in passing trade.

Now, as she drove her rattling old Volkswagen Beetle slowly through the crossroads, she felt a sense of peace envelop her. This might, just might, be the place she’d been looking for.

It helped that it was such a lovely day, the low-angled winter sun burnishing everything with warm light, but she sensed that she’d have liked the place even if it had been bucketing down with rain. There were trees planted on the footpaths, stately sycamores and elegant beeches with a few acid-green buds emerging, giving a sense of the country town Redstone had been before it merged with the city. The façade of one entire block was still dedicated to Morton’s Grain Storage, pale brick with classic 1930s lettering chiselled into the brickwork itself, although the grain storage was long gone and the ground floor had been converted to a row of shops that included a pharmacy, a chi-chi delicatessen-cum-café and a clothes shop. Peggy parked the car and walked back through the little junction, loving the black wrought-iron street lights with their curlicues where the lamps hung. It was impossible to tell whether they’d been installed a hundred and fifty years ago or were a more recent addition.

She loved the trees and the flowers planted diligently around them, probably by a team of local people involved in the Tidy Towns competition, she thought. They’d obviously chosen a host of bulbs, for now buttery yellow early crocuses and pale narcissi were sweetly blooming in wooden troughs at the base of each tree along both arms of the crossroads.

Nobody had ripped up the flowers or stubbed cigarettes out in the earth. The people here obviously admired how they brightened up the street.

Even before she’d looked over the premises for rent – a former off-licence, which had unaccountably gone out of business – she’d felt a kind of peace in Redstone.

The vacant property was a double-fronted shop with two large rooms out the back and a flat upstairs, should she wish to rent that too, the estate agent added hopefully.

The downstairs would need only cosmetic work, but the upstairs needed a wrecking ball, Peggy thought privately. The fittings were old and hazardous. Besides, living over the shop was a mistake, she knew that after working as a waitress in a Dublin bistro and living upstairs.

‘Downstairs is enough for me,’ Peggy said. ‘I don’t have a deathwish.’

The agent sighed. ‘Ah well, plenty of people are looking for bijou doer-uppers,’ he said over-confidently.

‘As long as the floor’s safe and they don’t come crashing down to my place when they’re using the sander,’ Peggy replied. ‘The landlord’s responsible.’

The agent laughed.

Peggy eyeballed him. What was it about a woman in tight jeans and a leather jacket that made people think you were both ignorant of the law and a pushover?

‘I mean it,’ she said.

The deal to rent the shop was signed five days later.

She found a small cottage for rent at the end of St Brigid’s Avenue, on a 1950s estate of former council houses, about a mile away from the shop. The house wasn’t overly beautiful with its genuine fifties decor, but it was all she could afford.

Peggy celebrated her new life with a quarter-bottle of champagne and a takeaway pizza in front of the cheap television-cum-DVD player she’d bought years ago. She slotted Sleepless in Seattle, her favourite film of all time, into the player, sipped her champagne and toasted herself.

‘To Peggy’s Busy Bee Knitting and Stitching Shop,’ she said, happily raising her glass before biting into the pizza. She’d achieved her dream and her life would be different from now on. The past was just that: the past. Then she settled down to watch Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks nearly but not quite miss each other, and she cried, as she always did.

The process of renovating the shop had to be accomplished as quickly as possible so she could begin trading. Peggy knew exactly what she wanted and loved the hard work of rolling up her sleeves and getting into it – discussing the finish of the shelving with Gunther, the carpenter and shopfitter, and working with a sign-maker to get precisely the signage she had in mind.

‘You certainly know what you want,’ the sign designer said. ‘So many people dither for ages over different styles.’

Peggy had smiled at her. ‘I’ve been planning this for a long, long time,’ she said.

But in spite of all the activity over paint, wood finishes and what shape to have on the cast-iron sign that hung at a right angle to the door, what Peggy hadn’t expected was to fall quite so much in love with Redstone itself.

She loved the small-town feel of it all, though it was nicer than any of the many towns she’d lived in through her life.

She loved the way people greeted each other cheerily.

‘How’s the leg, Mick?’ one man had yelled at another at the crossroads one morning as Peggy made her way to the shop.

‘Ah, you know,’ replied a tall elderly man with a stick and a small dog bouncing at the end of a lead. ‘Not up to line dancing yet, but some day. Did you ever get that thing sorted out?’

‘No,’ said the first man solemnly, adjusting his briefcase so he was holding it under the other arm. ‘It’s the timing, isn’t it? Still, I might yet!’

The lights changed and the man with the dog limped off in the direction of the small shopping centre tucked snugly away behind Main Street.

What was the thing, Peggy wanted to know. Why wasn’t it sorted yet? She had to control herself not to run and ask Briefcase Man, who was crossing the road and heading off in the opposite direction.

What was this madness that possessed her? Wanting to know about people? It was unlike her. She’d spent her entire life avoiding getting to know anyone. That way, they didn’t want to know you. Peggy was the girl who’d live in a town for a year, blending into the background as far as possible, remaining on the fringes of everyone’s lives. She’d spent too long as a solitary child to learn the gift of easy friendship as an adult. After a while, when she’d had enough, she would simply pack up her belongings and drive away. She had never allowed herself to put down roots. But for some reason here in Redstone she had an urge to belong, and belonging meant meeting people.

Because she was nice and early, there was plenty of parking outside the shop. She felt her spirits lift as they did every time her old blue Beetle shuddered to a halt at the kerb and she looked up to see the old-fashioned swing sign that read Peggy’s Busy Bee Knitting and Stitching Shop.

Nobody looking at this modest establishment with its fresh lavender paintwork and unfinished inside could imagine the sheer joy it already brought to its owner. It was still something of a miracle to Peggy. The miracle had involved years of hard work, hard saving and loneliness as she’d gone from job to job, getting experience in wool shops when she could, doing accountancy courses at night so she’d know how to run her own business, and working in bars or restaurants when she could get nothing else.

Now, she felt that all the sacrifices had been worth it. She, Peggy Barry, who had never been on any school’s most-likely-to-succeed list, had finally found exactly what she’d wanted all her life: a business doing what she loved best and financial independence. She was her own boss and she would never answer again to any man.

The money from her grandmother’s will – a grandmother she’d never even met – had been a godsend. The day the cheque arrived she had banked it in a high-interest account and then left it there, watching it grow year by year. Without that, she wouldn’t have been able to open her own shop.

Surveying her empire as she got out of the car, Peggy ran through the sums in her head. It would take only one or two more days at the most for Gunther, the carpenter, and Paolo, his apprentice, to finish. She’d considered several quotes before giving the job to Gunther. His had not been the cheapest, but he’d been the most professional of the carpenters she’d talked to, and he hadn’t given her a flirty grin, the way the young guy with the lowest price had.

As soon as the woodwork was finished, Peggy mused, she would clean all the dust from the shop and start painting the walls the same lavender as the outside—

‘How’rya, Peggy,’ yelled Sue from the bakery across the road as Peggy put her key in the shop door.

‘Hello, Sue!’ she called back.

Sue and her husband, Zeke, were always in at five in the morning. By the time Peggy arrived at half past seven, they were already halfway through their day’s work, baking organic breads and muffins to be delivered to shops and office canteens around the city.

Peggy enjoyed talking to them about the difficulties of setting up your own shop. And they’d been so helpful.

‘Advertise in the Oaklands News, don’t bother with the Redstone People. They charge twice as much and will mess up your advertisement every time,’ Sue advised. ‘Our ad for “hand-crafted cakes” turned into “dead-crafted cakes”. There wasn’t exactly a rush for them after that.’

‘What’s your web presence like?’ said Zeke.

‘A bit basic, but I’m working on it.’

‘Good. In the meantime, stick up your cards everywhere,’ he added, admiring the lavender-coloured notecards Peggy had commissioned with the shop’s name and pen-and-ink illustrations of wool and fabrics along with the shop’s address and fledgling website. ‘Be shameless. Ask everyone who has a noticeboard if you can put one up. Introduce yourself everywhere, even if you’re shy.’

Peggy had blushed to the roots of her dark hair. She’d spent a few days casting glances over at the bakery before Sue had marched across the road with a tray of muffins and said, ‘Welcome to Redstone. I thought I’d give you a week of staring at us like Homeland Security before I’d make a move. We don’t bite. Well, I might bite the odd time, but I only do it to Zeke and he’s used to me because we’re married.’

She had made it seem the easiest thing in the world to walk across the road and make friends but Peggy’s usual ability to put up a pleasant front seemed to have deserted her. It hadn’t ever been real, that was the problem. Years of moving from town to town had obviously taken its toll. The older you got, Peggy figured, the harder it was to put on a brave face.

That evening, Gunther had suggested that Peggy join him and Paolo for a Friday-night drink in the Starlight Lounge. Peggy, worn out cleaning the back room, which was full of junk and damp, had said yes straight away.

She was hungry, too tired to cook, and after a week of Gunther and Paolo, she was very fond of them and thought it might be nice not to eat on her own for once.

The Starlight Lounge was a quirky establishment about a quarter of a mile from the shop. The name and the decor didn’t quite match. The façade resembled a working men’s pub where women were only allowed in to clean up, while the inside turned out to be a confused combination of Olde Oirish Pub and fifties Americana, complete with mini jukeboxes in the booths.

‘My friend owns it,’ said Gunther when he saw Peggy looking round with amusement. ‘It’s a mess, I know. He was experimenting with styles …’

She admired the line of tiny disco balls on the ceiling behind the bar.

‘Crazy.’ Gunther shrugged. ‘He has no money now to do anything, but the bar food is good.’

Peggy chose a semi-circular booth with a round Formica-topped table. On the wall behind, a picture of Elvis hung beside a watercolour print of a forlorn Irish mountain. Gunther’s friend had clearly been trying to appeal to a very diverse audience, but it worked. Despite the mad decor, it was welcoming.

Gunther grabbed menus and studied his with total concentration while a languid bargirl lit the red lamp on the table. Paolo stood at the bar gabbling in Italian to some friends.

Glorious aromas drifted from the kitchens and Peggy realized she hadn’t eaten anything but an apple since breakfast.

‘What’s good?’ she asked Gunther.

‘The fish and chips,’ he said.

Peggy’s mouth watered. ‘Sounds good to me.’

By eight o’clock, Peggy had eaten cod coated in feather-light batter, and was considering a dessert, while a stream of Gunther and Paolo’s friends had come and gone after joining them for a drink.

Gunther was in no rush: his wife was at her mother’s with the children and Paolo was meeting his girlfriend in town at ten. The jukeboxes, disco balls and the house speciality cocktail, Starlight Surprise, were working their magic, and a few people were dancing close to the bar. Paolo was talking to a tall, athletic guy who’d arrived at the table. He couldn’t take his eyes off Peggy.

‘David Byrne,’ he said, leaning in to shake her hand.

‘Peggy Barry,’ she said, smiling.

He was good looking, but not really her type. Despite fighting it, she’d always been drawn to bad boys and David Byrne was clean-cut and good looking, the sort of guy who’d been captain of the football team, head boy and undoubtedly Pupil Most Likely to Succeed. He probably helped old ladies across the road, which wasn’t a bad thing – she helped old ladies across the road. But for some reason, those sorts of guys never lit her pilot light.

Up close, she could see how handsome he was, with dark hair, blue eyes and a stylish suit – even though he’d taken the jacket off and loosened his tie. Despite the clean-cut handsomeness, there was something indefinably interesting about him that Peggy, who’d spent years watching people from the sidelines, couldn’t pin down.

And then, when Paolo slipped out of the seat to take a phone call, David slipped in and she found herself sitting next to him. He kept staring at her as though he’d been searching for something all his life and she was it.

Utterly disconcerted, Peggy stared back. His eyes weren’t blue, as she’d first thought, but a green-tinged azure, and around the black of the pupil were striations of amber like shards of sunlight. She couldn’t look away. His gaze wasn’t predatory or sleazy. It said: Finally, I’ve found you.

‘Paolo says you just moved into Redstone,’ David said, smiling.

His voice was deep, gentle. And kind. How could you tell that from a voice? You couldn’t, but still, he had a kindness about him that drew her in. Jolting herself back to reality, she said: ‘Yes, I’m new to the neighbourhood. I’ve taken over the old off-licence – now, how could a place that sells drink go out of business!’

Oh heck, she thought, now I sound like a deranged boozer who needs alcohol 24/7. And to prove it, I have two cocktail glasses in front of me!

She tried to surreptitiously shove the empty cocktail glass behind the ketchup and sugar containers.

What was wrong with her? Her stomach was swooping as if she was on board a ship in a force-ten gale.

‘That off-licence was a bit of a dive,’ David said. ‘Back when I was a teenager, it was the hot spot for under-age drinking. My father warned me and my brothers to stay out of it or there would be hell to pay – which isn’t really much like my Dad.’ He grinned. ‘What sort of business are you setting up?’

‘A knitting and craft shop,’ said Peggy, back on familiar ground. She waited for him to say she didn’t look like a knitting type of girl.

‘My mother knits. She says it’s meditation,’ he said instead.

‘Yes!’ agreed Peggy, astonished. ‘That’s exactly what it is – nobody else ever gets that unless they are a knitter.’

‘I can see it on my mother’s face when she knits,’ he admitted. ‘So, it’s just you on your own in Redstone, not your … family.’

‘No, just me,’ said Peggy, eyes glittering now.

This gorgeous man was interested in her. She wasn’t imagining it.

‘No husband, then?’

‘No husband,’ agreed Peggy, loving this courtship – because that’s what it felt like.

‘No harem of men relying on you …?’ His eyes were glittering too now, looking directly into hers, making Peggy feel as if they were alone and he was saying something wildly sexy to her, even though he wasn’t and they were in a busy bar. It was that low, rumbling voice and the way he looked at her. As if he knew her already.

‘No male harem,’ she whispered.

He had evening stubble on his jaw, she noticed, as he loosened his tie some more and undid the top button of his shirt. Why was that so erotic?

‘Good. Could I persuade you to go on a date with me, then?’ he asked. ‘Since we’ve cleared up the harem situation.’

‘You don’t have any harem situation yourself?’ she asked, even though she knew he didn’t. Exactly how, Peggy couldn’t have said, but she was sure that this man had no other women in the background.

He shook his head. ‘No, nobody for a long time. I thought it was because I was busy with work, but it turns out I must have been waiting.’ He smiled at her.

‘That was a bit—’ Peggy had been about to say corny, but she didn’t. Because he’d meant it. Waiting for her.

‘—sorry, I nearly said “corny”, but it’s not corny and you’re not corny, it’s lovely,’ she said instead, and then thought how ridiculous that sounded. She took a gulp of her cocktail to hide her embarrassment but then realized she hadn’t wanted to look like Drinker of the Year, so pushed the glass away.

‘What work do you do?’ she asked, then added: ‘I mean, people always tell me that I don’t look like a woman who knits, but you didn’t, so I don’t want to guess wrong about you …’ She had to stop this babbling.

‘I run an engineering company,’ he said, ‘which is not boasting about being a captain of industry. I’m an engineer and I’ve set up on my own recently. Every cent of my money is being ploughed into the company, hence the reason I live with my two brothers instead of in a magnificent penthouse, where I could invite you back for a glass of vintage wine and impress you with my riches.’

‘I wouldn’t be impressed by that,’ said Peggy truthfully.

David smiled at her, azure eyes meeting her dark ones.

‘I didn’t think you would be.’ He put his head to one side and looked at her. ‘I understand why people say you don’t look like a person who knits,’ he said.

‘Why?’ she demanded.

‘You’re more like a faerie from the forest,’ he said, ‘a creature from a fable or from the old Celtic myths we used to learn in school. It’s the trailing hair the colour of wet bark and those big eyes watching me, and the sense that you might disappear at any moment …’

He leaned forward and gently brushed back a coil of hair that had fallen over one of her eyes.

Peggy could feel redness rising up her cheeks. He’d got one thing right: she did disappear whenever she wanted to. But not this time. For now, she was perfectly happy where she was.

Peggy Barry, tired of being alone but almost resigned to it because she knew from experience that alone was the only way to go, somehow crumbled. When David said he’d been waiting for her, his words had the ring of truth in them – and suddenly she realized that was because it felt as if she’d been waiting just for him.

‘Would you come to dinner with me tomorrow night?’ he asked.

Peggy nodded first, then said yes in a voice that sounded too faint to be hers, ‘I’d love to.’

Peggy felt jittery and wildly excited all the next day. She couldn’t concentrate on the task of cleaning the filthy back room and kept stopping and staring dreamily into space, returning to earth to find her bucket of soapy water stone-cold.

She found herself thinking of Sleepless in Seattle and how love could hit you in the weirdest way, like Annie, who knew she could never marry Walter, hearing Sam on the radio and knowing, just knowing, she had to meet him.

Peggy had seen it hundreds of times: when she had the flu, when she wanted cheering up, when she was happy, when she was so sad she thought her heart might break. And she’d loved it. But she didn’t think something like that could actually happen …

At lunch, she went to buy a sandwich from Sue, and stood in the queue gazing at the bread behind the counter until Sue had to say ‘Peggy’ loudly to wake her from her reverie. She’d never felt this before about a date, ever, and she wished she had someone to share her feelings with.

If only she could phone her mother and tell her she felt as if she’d found ‘the One’. Mum knew all about Sleepless in Seattle. They’d watched it together. But she couldn’t call. Just couldn’t.

By seven that evening, she’d had a long shower to wash the shop dirt from her skin, had washed and dried her mane of hair until it fell in waves around her shoulders, and had rubbed handfuls of almond body cream luxuriantly into her skin. All this preparation felt right. She wasn’t ordinary Peggy getting ready for a dinner – she was the woman David Byrne stared at as though she was a goddess.

She was Annie waiting for Sam.

When David rang the bell at five to seven, she rushed to open the door.

‘I’m sorry I’m early,’ he began, his gaze locked on hers.

‘I’ve been ready since half six,’ said Peggy in reply. There would be no games here. This was too serious, too wonderful.

‘You look beautiful,’ he said, eyes travelling over the old-fashioned teal chiffon blouse tucked into skinny jeans that made her long legs look longer than ever. She’d worn kitten heels because David was taller than her. Few men were. Walking beside him to his car, she felt like the faerie he’d talked about, fragile and beautiful. She didn’t know what it was to feel beautiful. There had been no compliments in her young life and so there was no foundation on which to build even a hint of belief in her own beauty. But with David’s eyes upon her and his hand holding hers, she felt as beautiful and desirable as any movie star.

He took her to a small French restaurant a few miles away where the atmosphere of those Parisian bistros she’d seen in films had been perfectly recreated. With its red-checked tablecloths, low lighting and candles dripping wax everywhere, it was the perfect venue for an intimate dinner and she wanted to clap her hands with glee when she saw it.

‘It got a bad review in the papers for being a cliché,’ David said as they ignored the menu and stared at each other over the candles on their table. ‘But the food is delicious and the staff are great. So what’s wrong with candles and red tablecloths?’

‘I love it,’ said Peggy happily. ‘Let’s eat all the clichés tonight!’

‘And hold hands across the table,’ he added, reaching forward to take her hand.

‘Yes,’ she said, folding her fingers into his.

The bistro staff came from a variety of countries around the world and could speak a lexicon of languages, but all of them could recognize diners wrapped in romance and oblivious to everyone else. So Gruyere-topped French onion soup, crusty bread, boeuf bourguignon and good red wine were delivered to the table silently, leaving the couple to eat and talk uninterrupted.

Peggy felt as if they were encased in a magical bubble which nothing could break: this evening was simply perfect in every way.

David wanted to know all about her – unlike so many of the men she’d met over the years, who were too caught up in determining their own wants and needs. He asked what films she liked to see, what food she liked to eat. He’d cook her dinner at his place, he told her as they drank their wine: all he needed was to get his brothers out of the house.

Then, when talk inevitably moved onto their backgrounds and he asked about her childhood, she gently batted him away: ‘Let’s forget everything except now,’ she said. ‘Tonight is all that matters.’

As she said it, she knew this wasn’t merely a ruse to stop him asking about her past. Suddenly, her life before him had ceased to matter. Whereas normally, it coloured everything. But this wonderful night with this wonderful man had changed all that.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like Interpol – I want to know all about you, Peggy,’ he said, and she smiled across the table at him, lean and rangy in a casual grey shirt.

‘Why are you calling the shop Peggy’s Busy Bee Knitting and Stitching Shop? There’s nobody less bee-like than you. You’re so calm and serene. You don’t buzz around.’

‘I don’t have a very good answer, I’m afraid,’ she said, finally giving up on the boeuf, knowing that she would feel full for a week. ‘My mother does wonderful embroidery and for a while she embroidered napkins for a gift shop. The lady who ran it, Carola, said my mother was the most artistic person she knew and told Mum to embroider whatever she wanted. Mum chose bees. They were beautiful. Each napkin was different because she said no matter how hard you tried, each embroidered bee ended up different, same as people.’

Peggy’s bubble of happiness quivered and she felt the familiar emotions welling up in her. Thinking about her mother always made her want to cry. Sitting here with this good, kind man, she wanted to tell him everything because he ought to know. But of course, she couldn’t.

‘Dessert,’ announced David, as if he could read her face and wanted to spare her thinking about whatever was clearly hurting her. ‘I don’t think it’s very French, but they make a wonderful cheesecake here.’

And the sadness passed. Peggy pushed it all out of her mind. She’d been alone for so long and she deserved this, didn’t she?

During that glorious week, they went out three times. The second date was to the cinema; on the way there, David walked on the outside of the pavement, he automatically paid for the cinema tickets, and stood back to let her enter the line of seats so she could pick the one she wanted.

He was gentlemanly, she decided, as the film began. Such a weird, old-fashioned word, but it suited him.

And there was no denying that she was intensely physically attracted to him. From the moment she’d spotted him walking towards her in the wine bar where they’d arranged to meet before the movie, broad-shouldered and handsome in a sweater and jeans, she’d found herself imagining that body close to hers. In the darkness of the cinema she experienced pure pleasure when David put an arm around her shoulders and whispered into her ear: ‘Are you enjoying the film?’

‘Yes,’ she said, although in truth she had hardly paid any attention to it. She’d been too preoccupied thinking about him, sitting beside her.

As the week went on, the real world forced its way into her head and reminded her that happy endings were for movies. She tried to dismiss the voice inside her head, telling her this, that it was better to stay away from people like David. The Davids of this world expected a girl to be normal, with an ordinary background and a loving family behind them. He wouldn’t know what to make of Peggy’s past. The voice said it was time to back off, to stop him from getting too close. The business ought to be her focus. She had no time for men. Even the nice ones couldn’t be trusted.

Persistent as the voice was, it was just possible to ignore it. Because David Byrne was trying so hard to prove that he could be trusted and because Peggy wanted the dream to stay alive for a little while longer.

He loved her beautiful shop when she showed it to him and said he and his brothers would give a hand with the painting. Due to lack of funds, Peggy had been planning to do it all herself.

‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, instinctively, aching inside at how hurt he looked.

In moments of clarity, she wondered how the hell she had attracted this gorgeous, decent man? His family sounded wonderful. The townhouse where he lived with his two brothers was only half a mile away from the home where they’d grown up in St Brigid’s Terrace, just round the corner from Peggy’s cottage. He and his two brothers often went home to Mum for Sunday lunch, he told her. On odd occasions – well, once a week, actually, he said ruefully – their mum turned up at the bachelor house to tut about the state of the place and do his brothers’ washing.

‘I keep telling her not to, but she insists on doing it.’

‘You do yours?’ she asked, thinking how utterly lovely this all sounded.

‘As I keep telling Brian and Steve, if they’re old enough to vote, they’re old enough to work the washing machine,’ David said.

He mentioned, too, that he had a sister, Meredith.

‘She lives in a pretty swanky apartment in Dublin,’ he said, ‘and runs an art gallery with someone else. None of us get to see her much.’

‘Oh.’ The words slipped out: ‘Do you not get on with her?’ Meredith seemed to be the one flaw in the Byrne family.

‘No, I get on with her fine,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘She’s changed, that’s all. I think she got caught up caring about the wrong sort of stuff. Money, labels – you know, that type of thing. I miss her, actually, but she’s moved on from us.’

Peggy detected a flash of something in his eyes: not rancour but sadness.

Though their own children had all flown the nest, his parents still had a teenager in the house: David’s cousin Freya. His face lit up when he talked about her.

‘Crazy like a fox,’ he said. ‘Knows everything. Fifteen going on thirty-seven. Myself and the lads keep an eye on her, because there’s no knowing what she might get up to next.’

‘Why does she live with your mum and dad?’ Peggy asked, not wanting to sound too much like a grand inquisitor but utterly fascinated all the same. Hearing about the family was like basking in the glow of their loving normality. Besides, asking questions was a great way of distracting people from asking about her, and the more she knew David, the more she didn’t want him to know her truth.

‘My dad’s youngest brother, Will, died in a car crash and his wife, my Aunt Gemma, had a nervous breakdown. I don’t know what the psychiatrists called it but that’s what happened,’ David said sadly. ‘She never recovered from his death. Not that anyone would recover from that,’ he added, ‘but afterwards, she literally ceased to function. She’d always been an anxious person but she simply went to pieces. Freya was their only child and, after a while, when it became apparent that Gemma wasn’t functioning, Mum stepped in and said Freya couldn’t live like that any more. Gemma would forget to buy food, forget to cook dinner, forget to get Freya from school, that sort of thing. So Freya’s with Mum now and it’s brilliant. She keeps Mum young, Mum says. We all get a great kick out of her. Gemma’s doing much better now, too. She can’t work, though, but she sees Freya all the time, things are good there.’

Peggy loved hearing about his family. Apart from poor Aunt Gemma, they sounded nice and normal: the sort of family she’d love to have been a part of. That’s when she knew the fantasy was over and that she had to listen to the voice telling her she should end it. Normal wasn’t for her. She’d screw up normal. She was probably a lot more like Aunt Gemma than anyone else in David’s grounded family. Not that she was likely to forget to buy food or cook – Peggy was incredibly organized and seldom forgot anything – but she was far from normal.

‘Now you know all about me,’ he said. ‘Tell me about you, about your family.’

Peggy had a well-rehearsed story about a small family who lived in a bungalow in a town in the centre of the country: a gentle mother who loved needlework and knitting, and a father who was a mechanic. He’d come from a farming background, while her mother had been born in Dublin’s city centre.

‘No brothers or sisters, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘I’d have loved to be part of a big family like yours. I’m jealous. I was such a tomboy when I was younger, climbing trees with the boys, having fights!’

Normally, people lapped up this story and laughed at the notion of Peggy getting into fights. It was a perfect distraction and nobody had ever questioned the truth of it. Until now.

David’s brow furrowed.

She looked at the face she wanted to touch, so she knew each contour and felt a yearning gap inside. It had to end and soon.

‘I can’t see you having fights,’ he said finally. ‘You’re too gentle. You’re joking, surely?’

Peggy summoned up a smile in the middle of her misery. ‘No, I was a tomboy, honestly.’

‘Apart from the knitting and sewing, then,’ David said, still looking as if he didn’t believe her.

‘Oh, yes, apart from that,’ Peggy agreed.

He was too clever, too able to see inside her, she thought. How had he got inside her head so quickly?

In bed that night, unable to sleep, she practised different ways of telling him it was over: ‘I’m too young, David, too young for the picket fence and the two-point-five children.’

Even in her head, the mental David had an answer to that argument: ‘How do you have two-point-five children? I’ve always wondered.’

She’d never left anyone properly before. She’d had dates and boyfriends over the years, but nothing serious, nothing that couldn’t be undone by packing up and moving on. She had no experience of how to handle this.

Two days later, she was so preoccupied trying to come up with a way to end it that she somehow found herself agreeing to go back to his house for dinner on their third date.

‘The lads are out for the evening – I almost had to bribe them. They want to see this woman I can’t stop talking about,’ he told her on the phone.

Peggy beamed at the thought of David talking about her.

‘And I cleaned the house and told them that, if they messed it up, I would destroy Brian’s electric guitar and put Steve’s precious football jersey, the one signed by the Irish team, into the wash.’

They both laughed.

‘You’d never do that,’ Peggy teased.

‘What, you don’t think I can be cruel and dangerous?’ he said, laughing.

‘No,’ she said quietly.

How easy it would be to let herself fall further in love with this man and spend a lifetime with him. It seemed there would be no arguing, no fights, none of that constant tension in the house. But what if he changed? That’s what men did, and you had to know how to deal with that. Peggy already knew that she couldn’t. She was better off on her own.

‘What happened there?’ he asked, picking up on the change in her voice. ‘You sounded so sad. Tell me, please.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I can’t.’

‘There’s a lot about you, Peggy Barry, that I don’t understand. Yet,’ he added.

‘Gosh no, I’m very boring,’ she said lightly. It was her standard response and she’d used it during their first dinner, but she knew he wanted to know more now and that her made-up family background wouldn’t keep him satisfied for long.

‘Hey, Ms Knitting Shop Owner and future entrepreneur of the year,’ he said, ‘I don’t think you’re boring for one moment, but if that’s the story we’re running with right now, then being allegedly boring hasn’t turned out too bad for you.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ she said. ‘I’m trading the Beetle in next week for a Ferrari.’

‘Red or yellow?’ he asked.

‘Do they only make them in those colours?’ Peggy demanded. ‘Red is so obvious. If a guy gets a red Ferrari, he has to have pouffed-up hair, an open shirt, a medallion and a supermodel beside him.’

‘At least I’ve got the supermodel sorted!’ he joked.

On the night of their dinner date, David offered to pick Peggy up from her house but she suddenly decided that she might need to get away under her own steam.

‘No need for you to come out,’ she said brightly. ‘Give me directions and I’ll get there myself.’

‘It’s complicated if you don’t know the area – I’ll drive to the shop and you can follow me in your own car,’ he said.

She pulled up behind him as he parked the car outside one of a row of attractive townhouses. He came round and opened the car door for her then led her through a tiny front garden, and unlocked the door …

‘It’s not such a bad place really, for three men living alone,’ he said, as he showed her inside.

The house was very obviously a bachelor establishment. There was a big leather couch in the living room, the inevitable enormous television and fabulous stereo system, and a coffee table littered with papers and sports magazines.

‘Steve,’ he growled, moving swiftly to the coffee table and tidying the papers into a neat pile. ‘This was spotless this morning. He’s a menace.’

She couldn’t have imagined any of the other men she’d dated hastily organizing it all the way David did, sorting out the cushions on the couch.

‘Steve sits here eating breakfast and when he’s finished, he just goes off leaving all the papers left scattered around. I think he imagines we’ve a maid. That’s the only explanation.’

‘Is he an older brother or younger?’ said Peggy, looking at the family photographs crowded on the mantelpiece.

‘Youngest,’ David said, showing her a picture of a smiling young man holding a football. ‘I’m the second eldest after Meredith, then Brian, then Steve. Brian’s the one who’s getting married. He’s spending a lot of time in his girlfriend Liz’s flat so he doesn’t contribute as much as he once did to the mess, but he doesn’t tidy up any of it, either.’

‘It must be nice, coming from a big family,’ Peggy said idly, examining the photos. There were several big family groups. Three tall young men standing with an equally tall father and a shorter woman who was obviously David’s mother, big smiling face and fluffy white blonde hair clustered around her face. Beside them was a thin, dark-haired teenager wearing Doc Martens, ripped tights and a mini skirt, with a huge grin on her face. There was another young woman in some of the pictures.

She was always a little apart, a tall woman in her early thirties with long blonde hair and elegant, expensive clothes. In each one she was standing apart from the rest of the group.

More photos decorated the shelves loaded with CDs and video games. There was a Christmas shot, everyone except the tall blonde woman in Christmas hats at a table; and what appeared to be a family holiday snap, taken on a beach with everyone very wet because it was pelting with rain, but with genuine smiles for the camera. They all seemed so happy, so at ease with each other.

There was something almost voyeuristic about looking at these photos, Peggy felt: this was proper family life. She felt a void inside her.

‘Big families are great fun,’ David said. ‘It’s a support system, a team who are always there for you.’

She noticed that he didn’t say any of the stuff she’d half-expected him to say, like: ‘Big families drive you mad.’ No, he loved it, relished being part of it.

‘Is that your mum and dad?’ she said, pointing to the older couple all dressed up, smiles on their faces but still a bit stiff and formal in front of the camera, as if they weren’t entirely at ease with posing.

‘Yes, that’s their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. We sent them to Crete. Mum hates flying, had to go to the doctor to get something to calm her down for the flight. Dad said she was funny because she took one tablet and fell asleep. He practically had to carry her off the plane.’

‘They look lovely,’ Peggy said wistfully.

‘They are.’ There was real warmth in his voice. ‘You’ll have to come and meet them. You could come for lunch next Sunday, if that’s not all going too fast? Mum would love that. Freya would love it too – I’m warning you, she’ll interrogate you. She’s a junior Miss Marple. Nothing escapes her.’

Peggy smiled at the vision of the teenager with the lumpy shoes as a Miss Marple.

‘Maybe I could come and meet your parents sometime?’ David said. ‘They need to know that their daughter isn’t dating a madman. I promise I won’t shame you dreadfully,’ he added, grinning.

‘Maybe,’ Peggy said, after an uncomfortable pause.

Ignoring this, David took her hand. ‘Come on, I’ll bring you into the kitchen.’

He led her into a kitchen painted blue and white, with jolly blue and white sprigged curtains over the sink and old stained-pine cupboards.

‘Mum and Freya did the decor,’ David said. ‘We keep thinking we’re going to change it. Steve wants to get one of those modern kitchens, shiny red cabinets and stainless steel splashbacks, but with Brian leaving to get married it’s difficult making decisions.’

‘It’s a bit old fashioned, but it’s nice,’ said Peggy.

The kitchen in her flat was nowhere near as pretty as this. It was full of odd freestanding bits of furniture. She was scared to look underneath in case there might be dead bodies or live mice. This sweet traditional kitchen was rather adorable and certainly sparkling clean.

‘We’ve got wine, tea, coffee, juice?’ said David. ‘What would you like before I start on dinner?’

‘Tea would be lovely,’ she said.

He boiled the kettle and Peggy leaned against a cabinet, watching him as he moved around the kitchen. He was so much taller than her, she thought absently, that she’d have to look up if he kissed her.

‘Excuse me,’ he said coming close, opening a cupboard right beside her. ‘Mind your head.’ He touched her gently as if to make sure the cupboard door wouldn’t hurt her. And then the cupboard was quite forgotten. Their eyes met, and in an instant his mouth was on hers and it was so tender and sweet that, for a crazy moment, she felt she was a flower opening in the sun.

Then Peggy wasn’t thinking any more. Their kisses grew hotter, suffused with passion and want. She buried her hands in his hair, pulling him to her. His hands slid down to her waist, fitting her comfortably against him.

After a few minutes, David’s long fingers began to undo the buttons of her cotton blouse. Peggy leaned back, letting him touch her, wanting him to.

But then he paused, took a step away from her, leaving her staring up at him, lost.

‘I’m sorry. Is this too fast?’ he asked. ‘It has to be right, Peggy. I don’t want to rush you. You’re too special, do you understand?’

Peggy had looked up at those azure eyes, darker now with desire.

He wanted it to be right for her. He wanted her to be happy, not rushed. How beautiful that was.

She reached for his hands and pulled them back to her blouse.

‘It’s right,’ she said softly. She laid her palms on either side of his face and drew his mouth to hers.

Peggy woke in David’s bed, wrapped in his arms, the duvet tangled around them. Outside it was still dark. She didn’t know what time it was, but she felt no panic at being somewhere different – only a sense of rightness at being beside him, a feeling she could honestly say she’d never felt before.

He was sleeping deeply and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness she could make out his profile against the pale colour of his sheets. She had been to bed with other men, but she realized now that with them it had just been sex. Sometimes wonderful sex, she knew, but it had been purely mechanical. Bodies merging in mutual need, and when the lust was slaked, both parties had been happy to go their own way.

But this …

Peggy closed her eyes again and snuggled against David’s warm body. In sleep, he shifted so that he was wrapped more closely around her and she relaxed into the sensation. They hadn’t had sex, they’d made love. There had been lust and tenderness, true closeness, and now that she’d experienced it, Peggy knew the difference. If she stayed with David, she could have this. She could come home and lie in his arms at night: loved and sated. She could tell him about her day and he’d touch her face gently, and be glad or sad for her, depending on the circumstances. He would be her support in all things and Peggy, who’d had no experience of such a thing in her entire life, began to cry silently at the thought of what had to be done.

She hadn’t told him about her background, for all that he’d asked her. She hadn’t told anyone.

He’d asked her to lunch with his parents, but there was no way Peggy could go, she knew that. She should never have slept with David. She should never have gone out with him. Right at the beginning, she’d known that he was different from all the other men she’d been with. He was a good man. And she was …

Well, she wasn’t able for that sort of relationship. He would want two-point-five kids and the white picket fence, and Peggy couldn’t do that. She didn’t know how. She would mess it all up because you did what you’d grown up with, right?

Silently, she slid out of the bed and picked up her discarded clothes. She dressed in the bathroom, then tiptoed quietly downstairs. David’s wallet and keys were on the coffee table. She’d leave a note there, better to do that than go back upstairs with it and risk him being awake. She found a scrap of paper and a pen, and wrote:

David, I’m sorry but I can’t go out with you any more. You are a lovely guy and you deserve to be happy. Just not with me. It would be easier for us both if you don’t contact me. Please don’t come to the shop.

No hard feelings,

Peggy

She slipped the note into his wallet, so he’d find it easily, then left. It was the right thing to do.

Her priority should be the shop, she told herself as she drove home in the yellow glow of the streetlights. She had no time for someone like David. There could be no place in her life for him. She knew that and it was easier to end things now, before it went horribly wrong, which it would. It was bound to. So why was she crying?