Читать книгу Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 2: The House on Willow Street, The Honey Queen, Christmas Magic, plus bonus short story: The Perfect Holiday - Cathy Kelly - Страница 24

It had been nearly two decades since Danae had lived with anybody; two decades of being on her own in her cottage in Avalon with her animals and her beautiful garden for company. She didn’t realize how much she’d grown used to this until Mara came to stay.

At first, it had been novel to have Mara around the place with her vitality and her energy. Mara was forever cheery. Even being dumped by the man she’d loved hadn’t dimmed her light. Danae was astonished at this and wondered if perhaps Mara secretly cried in her room at night, sobbing over pictures of Jack. Danae suspected that, in Mara’s place, that’s what she would have done. She would have felt so devastated to be rejected by a man who’d been so important.

But if Mara was feeling utterly broken-hearted, she wasn’t showing it. No, there was this amazing strength inside her niece; it must be something to do with being brought up in such a happy family, Danae decided.

After a while, however, Mara’s presence began to – well, Danae decided, there was no other word for it: to irritate her.

Mara was so cheerful all the time and so at home, sharing the place. Not that she took advantage – no, not for a second. She did all the housework, every chore, cooked meals.

‘Well,’ said Mara, ‘I’m not out working and you are, so it’s only fair.’

She bought the groceries out of what must have been a dwindling supply of money and Danae fretted over this. Danae had fretted over money her whole life.

‘No, it’s fine really, Danae,’ Mara said. ‘I’m a good saver, you know. I’d money in the bank, plus I’ve been sending my CV off all over the place looking for work, although not many people are employing former estate agents these days.’

Even this didn’t seem to dim Mara’s enthusiasm. ‘I was thinking of looking around here for work. Do you know of anyone who might need someone to help? Part-time, to dip my toe back in the water. It’s a good time of year to get part-time work, people tend to need more staff in the build-up to Christmas, so I might be able to get a bit of shop work or something. I’ll do anything, I don’t mind: sweep floors, scrub, iron – you name it.’

Danae had laughed. ‘You’re brilliant,’ she said. ‘Nobody can say you don’t know how to work.’

‘Oh, I know how to work, all right,’ Mara said. ‘I was fabulous at my job.’ She turned quiet and reflective for a moment. ‘Cici told me I was mad to leave, but I couldn’t go on working there. It felt wrong. It was the principle of the thing. And … and then I couldn’t look for money from them for some sort of constructive dismissal case. No, that’s not my way. Jack marrying Tawhnee was a sign, that’s all. I had to move out.’

‘A sign?’ asked Danae, interested.

‘Oh yes,’ said Mara. ‘I’m a great believer in signs, aren’t you? It’s like … I dunno. A parking space is a sign, right? Someone’s terribly friendly to you in a shop – that’s a sign, isn’t it? There are lots of signs of happiness and good things out there, you have to be on the alert for them.’

And that was probably one of the big differences between the two of them, Danae thought to herself. Mara was exuberant, full of life, brimming with a gentle confidence. She was warm to everyone; warm in a way Danae was afraid she never could be.

There were several things about having Mara staying with her, Danae reflected, that made it hard. One was the simple physicality of having another human being about the house, even if that human being was a wonderful, loving, kind, thoughtful guest, like Mara. Another difficulty was the sheer contrast between them. Mara could walk into a room where she knew nobody and ten minutes later she would have made firm friends with at least half the people there. Danae, walking into the same room, would watch carefully from the sidelines. That was what she did: watch carefully. That was what she’d done for a long time. It was probably too late to change now.

But the biggest problem to do with Mara’s presence had nothing to do with their different personalities or getting used to sharing a house with her – it was the matter of how to keep Mara from finding out about her monthly trips to Dublin.

‘You’re up early,’ said Danae in surprise as Mara emerged from her bedroom in her pyjamas, hair tousled. She had counted on Mara still being asleep when she set off.

‘Yes,’ said Mara, ‘it must be the country air. In Galway I could sleep for hours at the weekend, but here it’s different.’ She yawned, ‘Cici would laugh if she saw me up at …’ she looked at her watch, ‘… half seven on a Saturday morning. Where are you off to at this hour?’

Was it her imagination, Mara wondered, or did Danae really look a little furtive this morning? There was definitely something different about her. On days when she wasn’t going to the post office, Danae’s uniform seemed to consist of a comfortable skirt and a sweater, possibly accessorized by a scarf or a long flowing cardigan. Today she was much more formally dressed, in neatly pressed trousers, a blouse and jacket.

‘I have a few errands to do in … erm … Arklow,’ Danae said, looking flustered and uncomfortable.

No, Mara hadn’t imagined it, there was something going on. Her imaginative mind ran over the possibilities: Danae was sick and she was going to an appointment with the hospital … No, that was crazy – what hospital or consultant had appointments on a Saturday? Honestly, she was being paranoid.

‘OK,’ said Mara. ‘What time will you be back? Do you want me to do anything?’

Again Danae looked furtive. ‘I was writing you a note, asking if you’d mind throwing a bit of feed to the hens at about five? Round them up before it gets dark and lock them in. I’ll probably be back by … by dinner time.’

Mysteriouser and mysteriouser.

Mara nodded. ‘No problem,’ she said. If Danae had secrets, that was fine by her.

Ten minutes later Danae set off in the car, leaving Mara sitting at the kitchen table with Lady staring up at her, those hypnotic, wolf eyes watching adoringly. Mara loved Lady, she was such a beautiful dog, so affectionate, content to sit beside Mara and Danae and occasionally put a questing nose up for a little pet, as she did now. And as Mara sipped her coffee, she wondered what her aunt was up to, what she had to hide. And then she told herself to mind her own business; everyone was entitled to their secrets.

Danae felt rattled as she took the Dublin road out of Avalon. She hated lying, it had always felt wrong to her. Up to now, she’d managed without ever having to lie; she just didn’t tell people things, and that worked. But Mara was changing all that, Mara was making it harder. Living with another person was tricky. That was the word, Danae decided.

Now that Mara was living with her, Danae felt she owed her niece some explanation. But she couldn’t, she couldn’t talk about it, it still hurt too much. No, it was easier to keep it to herself. Mara would leave soon enough. She’d been talking about going to London some time, and then Danae would be there alone again. Why go through all that pain unnecessarily? No, no, she would be better off keeping quiet till then.

Of course the other problem was that Mara was so very sociable and she was determined that Danae would be sociable too. In the few short weeks that Mara had been living there, Danae had been out five times to the cinema with Mara and Belle.

‘Belle – she’s your best friend, isn’t she?’ Mara had enquired within a day or two of her arrival. Danae had been shocked. How had Mara noticed? Not that Danae had such a thing as a best friend really, but if she did, Belle was it.

‘Well, I suppose she is,’ said Danae, trying to appear normal.

‘OK, there’s a great film on in Arklow, what do you think, will we book it for Friday night? Maybe have something to eat beforehand – pizza, Chinese? What do you think?’ Mara had said, making it all sound so terribly normal.

Belle had been delighted. ‘I don’t know how you managed to get Madam here out of the house twice in one month,’ she’d said as she sat in the front of the car while Mara drove them into Arklow.

Mara giggled. She’d told Danae that she thought Belle was a riot, but she wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her. Belle looked tough.

‘Now, tell us, have you taken a vow of chastity since this desperate Jack fellow left you?’

Mara didn’t seem to mind Belle talking about Jack. Perhaps because Belle would probably knee Jack in the groin if she so much as set eyes on him.

‘No, but there’s a lot to be said for a vow of chastity,’ Mara pointed out. ‘I mean, with chastity you never have anything to do with men, which in my current state of mind sounds like a very sensible plan altogether.’

‘Ah no, men are great as long as you can give them back to their mummies afterwards,’ said Belle, with a riotous laugh. ‘I’m only kidding, Mara,’ she added. ‘I don’t care for the ones under forty: they know nothing. They are unformed under forty. Aren’t they, Danae?’

Sitting in the back of the car, squashed because there was no room for her legs, Danae nodded, as if she knew.

‘Totally, yes, I agree,’ she said.

Then, there’d been the impromptu night out that came about after Mara had gone into the café and met up with mad Vivienne from the clothes shop. Apparently Vivienne had said Tess Power needed a good night out because she was wasting away in the house watching the television in misery and somehow that had resulted in Belle, Mara, Danae, Vivienne and Tess ending up in the town’s Italian restaurant laughing, giggling, talking until one o’clock in the morning.

Jacinta Morelli and her sister, Concepta, had sat down beside them at closing time and joined in the chat, bringing over coffees and plates of delicious biscotti. Danae couldn’t quite remember how long it was since she’d been out past midnight. It felt odd to meet people like Tess and Vivienne socially. She’d been so stiff at first, she felt like the postmistress behind her plexiglass. Without the safety of that dividing screen there was a sense of being vulnerable, laid bare to their gaze. Not that anyone else appeared to feel that way or even notice. But it had been difficult for Danae.

From the beginning, Tess and Mara had got on like a house on fire. ‘So you’re not wasting away or withering away up there on your own watching television,’ Mara had said, tipsy on three glasses of wine.

Tess had laughed so much she nearly cried. ‘Is that what she said to you? Vivienne, you’ve got to stop telling people that I am wasting my life, just because Kevin has a lovely girlfriend.’

‘Whom he met when you were having a trial separation,’ Vivienne said loudly.

‘Say it more loudly,’ Tess said, ‘I don’t think the diners at the far end of the restaurant heard! I’ll get you a megaphone next time.’

And Danae had put a hand on Tess’s arm and squeezed it, because even if Tess was able to joke about it, she knew it must hurt unbearably still. Tess had looked at her gratefully as if to say, Yes, I can joke about it but there’s a lot of pain in there nonetheless. Danae, who knew a lot about pain, had smiled back warmly in return.

Danae joined the motorway that would take her to Dublin. There was so much different about her life now that Mara shared it. It was so much fuller, so much more fun. It made her realize what she had been missing and the loneliness that she’d go back to, once Mara was gone. But it was easier not to tell her, easier to tell nobody.

‘It’s strange, Mum,’ said Mara on the phone to her mother one evening. Danae was off on her solitary walk with Lady, climbing the hills, something she did come rain or shine, never mind that it was pitch dark this time of year. ‘I love her, and I know she loves me, but she’s not that comfortable around people, and I never noticed that before. I suppose in the past I’d never stayed here for longer than a weekend. Now, having been here for a while, I see how reserved she is. If ever I offer to do something nice for her, like doing her hair – you know how good I am with hair – she can’t accept it. It’s as if she doesn’t like people helping her. And then she went off last Saturday and she wouldn’t tell me where she was going. It was very strange.’

On the other end of the phone there was silence.

‘Mum, are you there?’

‘Yes, I’m here,’ said Elsie. ‘Mara, you know things have been difficult for your Aunt Danae.’

‘You see, that’s it,’ explained Mara. ‘I know there was some terrible thing in the past with her husband when he died and everything, but I never really knew what it was because you didn’t tell us. Whatever happened to her then, it’s like she’s closed off. I mean, what did happen, Mum?’

There was another silence, which was in itself very unusual because Elsie was not a woman given to great silences, as the rest of her family would testify.

‘Mara, that’s not my story to tell,’ said Elsie. ‘It’s up to Danae to tell you that, and she’s a very private woman. She’d be terribly upset if you brought it up, to be honest.’

‘But what if his anniversary happens while I’m here and I don’t say anything and she’ll think I’m being horrible and ignoring it? I mean, if I had been married and my husband had died, I’d want people to remember it. Go on, you’ve got to tell me what this is all about.’

Elsie clammed up. ‘Pet, I can’t go into it, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘And how am I supposed to ask her about it then?’ Mara demanded. ‘What would you like for your dinner, Danae? We could have spaghetti Bolognese or perhaps some of that lovely vegetarian quiche I made yesterday, and oh, by the way, will you tell me all about your husband?’

‘For heaven’s sake, Mara, you’re a terrible child,’ Elsie groaned. ‘Look, I’m no good with this sort of thing. Ask your father. And tell me, what’s the story about Christmas? Are you coming to us?’ There was a faint hint of pleading in her mother’s voice.

‘Well, I’m sure I am,’ said Mara. ‘And I’ll try to get Danae to come this time.’

Danae had never come before, despite the offer always being there.

‘But it would help if I knew …’

‘Leave Danae be. If she doesn’t want to come, she won’t come,’ said Elsie quickly. ‘As long as she knows the invitation is always there.’

‘I’ll definitely try and get her to come this year,’ said Mara. ‘Leave it with me.’

There was no more to be got out of her mother on the subject. By the time she put the phone down, Mara had heard all the latest happenings on Furlong Hill, how the O’Briens opposite had got bay trees exactly like Elsie’s and how violently annoyed she was with them.

‘They copied us on the stone cladding and now the bay trees too! Well, that’s taking it too far,’ said Elsie, ominously.

Mara grinned. Her mother’s life-long battle with Mrs O’Brien across the road always made her smile. But when the call was over, Mara went back to thinking about Danae.

Rafe Berlin sat in the window of the café on the corner of Avalon’s main square and watched the girl with the green felt hat get out of her car. She was wearing weird clothes, he reckoned: a crazy red skirt with embroidery, alpine boots, a green coat cinched in tight around her waist and that hat. It was like a pancake stuck on her head. But the face made up for the mad outfit. Like a naughty angel with her dark red fringe in her eyes, amazing big eyes with lots of dark eye stuff smudged around them, making them shine out like jewels in that freckled face.

And now she was stomping over to the café.

Clearly plugged into her own personal music, she shimmied over, hips and shoulders moving to a beat he couldn’t hear. She didn’t care if she was half dancing as she walked. Rafe grinned. Cool chick, oblivious to what anyone else thought: exactly the sort of girl he liked.

She marched in and went up to the counter.

Deciding he needed a refill, Rafe downed his coffee and followed her.

She even smelled good, he decided as he stood behind her: something cinnamon? Did they make perfume with cinnamon in it? She was a small girl, and he liked that too, not being overly tall himself. He liked everything about her.

‘Hi,’ he said.

She whirled around, stared up, and he got a blast of those eyes. Viridian green, he decided, and flashing with anger.

The angry eyes said: Don’t talk to me, stranger.

She turned away with a flick of the dark red curls and gave the cakes on the counter further consideration.

Rafe was wildly entertained. He loved this. He hadn’t met a girl this sassy since he’d left New Zealand.

‘I said hi,’ he said.

The curls jiggled and she stared at him again. The green eyes raked him and she ignored him again.

‘Nice day,’ he went on.

This time, she turned round slowly.

‘Honey,’ she said, the glare ongoing, the eyes staring up at him, ‘I am Not. In. The. Mood. OK? Capisce?’ Her gaze swept over him again, taking in the worn work jumper and the stockman’s overalls. ‘Whatever “no” is in your language, cowboy.’

‘Vulcan,’ he murmured.

‘What?’

‘Vulcan, that’s my language.’

The eyes narrowed. ‘Like Dr Spock?’

‘No, Mr Spock. “Live long and conquer” sort of thing,’ he said. ‘Dr Spock gave baby advice.’

‘If it’s advice you’re after, I’ve got some for you: leave me alone,’ she said with a smile that could strip paint from a door.

‘Yes, miss, can I help you?’ said the guy behind the counter, carefully ignoring the atmosphere.

‘Large take-away cappuccino with an extra shot of espresso, please,’ she said politely.

Rafe approved even more. None of this ‘skinny cappuccino’ rubbish.

‘Are you a tourist?’ he asked. He had never seen her before, he was sure of that.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m an outreach worker with a care in the community centre and we’re rounding up all the local weirdos with a particular emphasis on ones who chat up women in cafés.’

‘Would you need handcuffs for that?’ Rafe said conversationally.

The freckled girl didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘I’m packing heat,’ she said, patting her hip as if a gun nestled under her coat. ‘And if that doesn’t work, I’ve got a staple gun in my handbag. Few men are immune to the staple gun.

‘Ouch.’

‘You bet.’

She whirled back again and paid for her coffee, purposefully ignoring Rafe.

‘Isn’t she something else, Brian,’ sighed Rafe, watching her shimmy over to the door, coffee in one hand. ‘I could eat her all up.’

‘It would be like eating a piranha,’ said Brian, who’d never had any luck with women.

‘Ah, Brian, she said no. Inside, she was interested, I can tell.’

‘Don’t know how you can tell,’ said Brian. ‘I’ve never had a clue what women are saying. It’s all in code.’

Mara stomped out with her coffee in her hand, irritated by the man in the café. She was fed up with the male of the species: always on the hunt, even if it was only for fun. Pity Cici wasn’t here though, he was precisely her type: all scratchy designer stubble, messy hair and, if that cow-minding outfit was anything to go by, not the sort of man who’d worry about his clothes too much. Jack had been a regular fashion hound, keen to have the hottest jeans, the now watch. The guy in the café probably chose his clothes of a morning by sniffing things from the laundry basket to see what would do. Still …

She angled her head as she got into the car to see if he was watching her. He was. He was something, there was no doubt about it. Probably had the local girls eating out of his hand with his flirty remarks. Not her. She’d had it up to her teeth with men.

She gave him one last filthy look.

I am not interested, she said telepathically. The next man who gets close to me will end up with terminal injuries. OK?

She turned on the ignition, let the talking book she’d got from the library switch on, and headed for Dublin.

Mara’s home was a two up two down in a quiet Dublin city street. The end of Furlong Hill where the Wilsons lived was home to families who’d lived there for donkey’s years, while the other end was lined with shops, bars, and the chip shop Mara had adored when she was a youngster. Even now, she judged fish and chips by the standards of Rizzoli’s and the velvety taste of Mrs Rizzoli’s battered onions. Nobody else could compete. And curry sauce for the chips. It was funny how many of her early dates had taken place in Rizzoli’s. The lads in her secondary school hadn’t been too adventurous when it came to dating. It was either the pub – difficult to get into when they were under-age – or Rizzoli’s, where you could sit at a table nursing a Fanta and sharing a single plate of chips and sausages for hours on end and Mrs Rizzoli wouldn’t throw you out. She’d understood young love.

Mara felt the pangs of hunger as she drove past Rizzoli’s. Listening to Becky Sharpe’s adventures in Vanity Fair had taken her mind off both Jack and the fact that she’d only had a coffee and that bun for breakfast. For a second she thought of the man she’d met in the coffee shop. He had been cute, she had to admit, but she was off men.

Mara parked outside her family home, switched off Vanity Fair and smiled, as she always did, at the stone cladding her parents had scrimped and saved for months to install on the front of the house. It was pale grey and ‘classy’, as Mara’s mother like to say. Not like the O’Brien’s cladding, which was a yellow colour and entirely unsuited to Furlong Hill in Elsie Wilson’s opinion.

‘They’re copying us,’ Elsie had been saying for years.

Mara’s dad simply patted her arm and said, ‘Ah, now, Elsie, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. You have great taste, that’s all. God love the O’Briens. What would they do if they didn’t have you to look up to?’

Mara’s mother had never been entirely convinced by this line of thought. The latest addition to the Wilson frontispiece were a couple of bay trees in pots. Elsie had got her husband to nail down the pots, just to be on the safe side. Then she had watched through narrowed eyes as the O’Briens suddenly decided that bay trees were the fashion.

Grabbing her handbag, Mara wriggled out of the car.

Number 71 was as gloriously unchanged and comforting as ever. The moment you were inside the door, there was the aroma of something cooking. In the hall was a pretty arrangement of crimson winter roses on the small hall table that Elsie had carefully covered with decoupage many years before. Mara knew her mother would have got the roses cheap from a flower seller in town at the end of the day, but she’d arranged them beautifully with bits of greenery from her own garden. Not having any money had never stood in the way of Elsie making their home beautiful. For a second, Mara wanted to cry. Standing here in her childhood home, the pain of Jack’s defection and wedding hit her anew.

Home was where you came to cry.

Mara had never told her parents that she and Jack were going to be married. But she’d been so sure that they would end up together, and that sureness had seeped into every conversation she’d had with her parents over the past year or so.

Jack had been to 71 Furlong Hill to meet her parents and little brother. They’d even slept together in Mara’s old bedroom – an unprecedented event in the Wilson household. It was immaterial that Mara was thirty-three and her boyfriend was thirty-eight. No, it was the principle of it having a single daughter sleep with her boyfriend under the Wilson family roof.

Elsie went to daily Mass and liked to say the rosary once a week. She never pushed religion upon her family, but they all understood Elsie’s devotion to the Virgin Mary. Letting Jack stay over had been a huge concession on her part.

And now Mara was back home, boyfriendless, having slept with said man and with her heart broken to boot. Great result, thought Mara. She was glad she’d decided to go to Avalon for a while before coming home: she’d have burst into floods of tears if she’d come here first. Here, Jack’s defection felt worse than ever.

She could hear the hum of the television from the sitting room. When Jack had been there, she’d seen the disapproval in his eyes at the amount of time her family spent in front of the box. Meals were often eaten on trays on their laps while watching the soaps. The Wilsons didn’t go to the theatre or frequent art galleries. They didn’t do any of the things that Jack’s family did.

He’d said nothing, except that her father was ‘salt of the earth’.

Mara had once been to his family home in Galway – modern, detached, with a lawn cut by a smiling man from Slovakia – where there was always someone round for dinner, where the walls were lined with books and where someone would play on the piano after dinner or else a conversation would start up about a show they’d all seen, a book tipped to win the Booker, a new play.

‘Nobody can ever better the genius of Synge’s Playboy of the Western World,’ Jack’s mother might say when she’d had her single martini with an olive in it.

A martini. Mara had stared open-mouthed the first time she saw the martini jug and the way everyone had just the one. Her father liked a glass of Guinness of an evening, but he’d never have it at home. He’d have it in Fagan’s down the road, where he went with his pals to talk about the racing or the state of the country and how it had all been different in their day.

Her mother didn’t drink, having taken the pledge when she was twelve. She was proud of her Pioneer pin: a sign of abstinence.

Mara was sorry she hadn’t taken a pledge and got herself a Man Abstinence pin.

‘I saw enough of what drink does to people,’ was all Elsie would say. But she didn’t mind Mara opening a bottle of wine for Jack when he was there, and never said a word about the new wine glasses coming into the Wilson home. They were bigger and more delicate than the ones Elsie kept in the good china cupboard, which were exactly like the ones they had for events in the bingo hall, where Elsie might have an orange juice.

With shame, Mara remembered feeling that her family were somehow inadequate beside Jack’s. No martinis before dinner, no talk of books and plays, no proper wine glasses.

How stupid and disloyal she’d been. Her family were wonderful, while Jack had turned out to be a complete fake.

She pushed open the sitting-room door.

‘Mara, my love!’ Her mother got to her feet and in a second, Mara was in the familiar and comforting embrace.

Elsie smelled of Blue Grass perfume, the only scent she’d ever worn. ‘I like it. Why would I want anything else?’ she always said.

‘I sat down to watch Dr Phil and he was talking about family – how’s that for coincidence?’

‘Oh, Mum,’ said Mara tremulously. ‘It’s lovely to be home.’

That evening, there were many conversations about Jack, Tawhnee and what had gone wrong. Opinion was mixed in the Wilson household about whether Jack was a cheating, conniving pig (Mara’s father), or an innocent man hijacked by a sultry beauty (Mara’s mother). Mara found herself trying to keep the peace between the two warring factions. She abandoned the effort when her brother Stephen mentioned that he’d met Tawhnee on a trip to Galway, where he’d joined Mara’s work crowd in the pub. He thought she was ‘hot’.

‘How can you say she’s hot?’ demanded Mara, vexed. ‘She ruined my life!’

Avalon had dulled the pain for her: here, it was as fresh as ever.

‘Exactly my point,’ said Elsie, who was bending over the oven, checking on her scones. Nothing like a bit of home baking to mend pain.

‘Don’t go letting Jack off the hook, now,’ insisted Mara’s father. ‘He was the one who took our beautiful daughter and ruined her.’

‘He didn’t exactly ruin me, Dad,’ said Mara, getting anxious. ‘Ruin’ sounded like a throwback to the days when evil men had their way with young women and then left them in the lurch. After which no decent man would have anything to do with them.

Maybe it had been a mistake to tell them everything. But how could she have kept it from them?

‘I never liked him,’ said Stephen from his position on the floor, where he was getting mud out of his football boots.

‘You never said a word to me!’ said Mara.

‘He didn’t like to, I’m sure,’ said her father grimly, shooting Stephen a fierce glare.

It appeared that after Jack’s visit to Dublin, the Wilson household had done nothing but speculate as to when Jack would ask Mara to marry him.

‘Well, she is hot, you can’t deny that, Mara,’ said Stephen, head still bent over his boots, oblivious to the dark looks from his parents.

Mara could tell from the tone of his voice that he was visualizing Tawhnee. She’d seen this happen to many other men, many other times. Jack included. Why was it that tall, slim women with enormous breasts had this effect on men? Was the male of the species really so easily distracted with physical things?

‘Does she have any sisters …?’ asked Stephen.

‘Oh God,’ muttered Mara crossly. He was only twenty-three, after all. Twenty-three-year-olds did not necessarily think with their brains. They weren’t always loyal, either.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Stephen, recovering. ‘I wasn’t thinking. Really sorry, Mara.’

‘Oh, it’s all right, Stephen,’ Mara sighed. ‘You’re not alone: I don’t think there was a single man in Kearney Property Partners who didn’t lust after her. In the beginning, Cici said I wasn’t being fair because she was so beautiful. Cici reckons beautiful women have it really tough because all other women suspect them of stealing their men.’

‘That Cici is a bright girl,’ said Elsie firmly. ‘She knew which she was talking about, that’s for sure, certainly when it came to that bitch.’

The other three members of the family gasped in shock: Elsie Wilson did not swear or utter vulgarities of any kind, so for her to come out with such an expression was highly unusual.

‘Ah, Mum,’ said Mara, conscious that the pain she felt on her behalf had poor Elsie in a muddle. ‘There’s no need to be upset. Cici wasn’t defending Tawhnee, she said all that before Jack ran off with her. Plus, he probably wasn’t the man for me anyway.’

‘He certainly didn’t deserve you,’ declared her father with thinly veiled anger.

‘I know,’ said Mara soothingly, and she realized that instead of her family consoling her, she was trying to console them. That was the way it had always been in the Wilson family: wound one of them and you wounded them all.

By bedtime that night, Mara decided she needed to get away early next morning or she’d go mad. All evening her father had alternated between treating her with kid gloves and telling her men were like fish in the sea.

‘Or buses,’ said her father. ‘Always another one along soon.’

Mara thought of the number 45, which came up their road. It had been notoriously unreliable ever since she could remember. If men were like the number 45, she was in big trouble.

‘Dad,’ began Mara, desperate to change the subject, ‘I wanted to ask you something. It’s about Danae …’

Seeing the look that passed between her parents, Mara could tell she wasn’t going to get any more from him than she had from her mother.

‘Do you have five minutes?’ Danae asked Belle on the phone the following morning. ‘I need to see you.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Belle, with the confidence of a woman who knew that minions would do her bidding in her absence. ‘I’ll drop over, will I?’

‘No, not here,’ said Danae.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Belle suspiciously.

‘I’m fine, but I need to talk to you.’

‘You sound rattled,’ said Belle, her suspicions growing. ‘Are you sure something’s not wrong?’

‘No,’ said Danae.

‘Oh, right,’ said Belle. ‘Something is wrong, but you’re not going to tell me over the phone. Fine, when can you come over?’

‘I was thinking of shutting the post office now,’ said Danae.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the saints!’ said Belle in alarm. ‘It must be something very serious. We’ll go into a corner of the coffee shop – no, better yet, the bar. I’ll have a big pot of green tea ready. No one will disturb us in there.’

‘Actually, I think I might have a strong coffee,’ said Danae.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Belle said again. ‘I’ve never seen you drink coffee in your life.’

‘Today is one of those days.’

Danae felt nothing like her normal self. She hurriedly shut the post office. It was half ten in the morning, hours away from her normal half-hour lunch break. She didn’t think she’d ever done anything like this in all the years she’d been postmistress; not even that time when she had the terrible flu and had to keep rushing in the back to go to the bathroom. No, nothing stopped her doing her duty. But today, she simply couldn’t cope. Not after the phone call from Morris.

She’d had an inkling of what Mara was up to when she’d casually said, ‘I’m going to set off for Dublin today, drop in and see Mum and Dad, stay overnight. I feel a bit guilty, you know, ’cos I did come straight to you from Galway, and you know my mam, she worries, she needs to see me.’

‘Of course,’ Danae had said, thinking this was a great idea and what a lovely girl Mara was, always thinking of others, so kind and generous and always happy.

Plus it would be nice to have a night on her own again.

And then this morning Morris had phoned. Even before he said anything, she’d had the strangest prickling of anxiety that something wasn’t quite right. Morris almost never rang on the private line in the post office.

‘Hello, love,’ he said.

‘Hello, Morris,’ she’d replied. ‘Why do I feel this isn’t just a social call?’

‘Oh, well, it’s not,’ he said. ‘Mara’s here, as you know, and she’s been asking questions about you. Nothing horrible – you know she loves you, worships the very ground you walk on, Danae – but she knows there’s something not quite right and she wants me to tell her.’

Danae closed her eyes and leaned against the wall for strength, because otherwise she might have sunk on to the carpet in the back office. ‘Oh, Morris, I suppose she has to know, but I wish she didn’t, I wish nobody ever had to know.’

‘You did nothing wrong,’ Morris said. ‘You did the only thing you could, Danae. Nobody could blame you for that.’

‘But they do,’ she said quickly, ‘they do. His brothers. His mother. She blamed me until the day she died. She never forgave me. And his brothers – they hate me, hate the sight of me. And him … Oh, Morris, I don’t want Mara to know, I really don’t. And if she has to be told, I should be the one to tell her.’

‘Well, you should have thought of that before she set off all the way up here. Now she’s determined to get the information out of myself or Elsie.’

‘Did you tell her you were going to ring me?’ Danae asked quickly.

‘No, I didn’t. I’m not that much of an eejit,’ said her brother spiritedly. ‘It’s your secret, it’s your story to tell.’

‘Oh heck,’ said Danae. ‘Let me think about it. Can you put her off for a little while?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ said Morris.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’ll ring back.’

And then she’d rung Belle.

Belle greeted her in the front lobby of the Avalon Hotel and Spa, looking resplendent in her normal hotel outfit of crisp black suit, cream silk shirt and a large flower brooch pinned to one lapel. Even this bit of girlish femininity couldn’t detract from the steeliness behind Belle’s smile.

‘Come on, into the bar with you,’ said Belle, and marched her through.

Coffee arrived, filter coffee, in a beautiful silver pot.

‘I didn’t think you’d be wanting a shot of espresso or anything like that,’ Belle said. ‘Certainly given that I’ve never seen you touch a drop of the stuff in all the years I’ve known you.’

‘No,’ said Danae, ‘I don’t normally. But I feel so shaken now and this might help.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Belle. ‘It might give you the jitters. You could be climbing the walls in five minutes with all the extra caffeine in your system … but I suppose you know what you’re doing.’

Belle busied herself pouring coffee, leaving Danae to add a drop of milk to hers.

‘Right – spill,’ said Belle. ‘I’ve only got fifteen minutes. There’s a couple coming in who want to talk about their wedding in two years’ time. The function manager is off today with a sore throat. I’ll give her a sore throat when I see her! But anyway, we don’t have long. What’s wrong?’

‘It’s Mara,’ said Danae slowly. ‘You know I love her, and it’s been wonderful having her around but—’

‘But difficult,’ interrupted Belle. ‘Of course it’s been difficult! Sure, you’ve been living on your own up the side of a hill for donkey’s years. Of course it’s going to be difficult to have another human being there with you. Is that what this is about? Do you think it would be easier if she didn’t live with you? If she went somewhere else in Avalon? I’m sure we could sort something out.’

‘No, that’s not it at all,’ said Danae. ‘Granted, it is tricky living with someone when you’ve been living on your own for so long, but Mara’s so easy-going and lovely. She keeps trying to bring me tea in bed, and in the evening she cooks and insists on doing all the washing up. I feel quite spoiled. It’s strange.’

‘Course it’s strange,’ said Belle, ‘when no one has looked after you in a very long time. So if it’s not Mara, what’s the problem?’

Despite her anxiety, Danae grinned. No matter what the situation, Belle could be relied upon to get straight to the point. There was no going off on tangents for her.

‘She wants to know about Antonio.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Belle slowly. She looked carefully at her friend’s face. ‘And how do you feel about that?’

‘I don’t want her to know,’ said Danae, as if this was perfectly obvious. ‘I don’t like anybody knowing.’

‘I can vouch for that,’ Belle said grimly. ‘How many years did I know you before I managed to drag the truth out of you?’

‘It’s so painful, and people are bound to think worse of me. It’s easier if nobody knows.’

‘Of course,’ said Belle with an edge to her voice, ‘it’s much easier if your friends haven’t the slightest clue as to what your life has been like and what you’ve suffered and how difficult it is to live with it every single day of your life. Oh sure, much better if nobody knows. I agree with you there. In fact, I would say there are psychologists as we speak saying, “Oh yes, vitally important and painful things in people’s lives should remain buried for ever, then we’d all be much better off.”’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Belle, don’t go off on one,’ said Danae. She added a teeny bit of sugar to her coffee and took another sip.

She’d forgotten how nice coffee tasted. The richness on her tongue. Antonio, being typically Italian or half-Italian and half-Irish, had loved his coffee. They’d been drinking espressos and Americanos long before the rest of the country got round to finding them fashionable.

‘The thing is,’ Danae said, choosing to ignore her friend’s mild sarcasm, ‘Mara has now hightailed it off to Dublin to get the truth out of her father, and I don’t want him to tell her. Before I came to see you, Morris rang me to say that Mara wanted to know what had happened. It’s all my fault, I should never have let her come to stay here, I should never have suggested it.’

‘I’ll tell you what you should do,’ said Belle firmly. She reached out and took one of Danae’s slim hands in hers. Belle’s hands were big and strong and there was a pearl ring on one of them, her engagement ring and a wedding ring from her last husband. Her first marriage had been a disaster – hence her slightly cynical views on young love and early marriage. But she’d loved Harold, her second husband, dearly, even though rumour had it in the town that he’d died under mysterious circumstances – a rumour that enraged Belle every time she heard it. ‘Cancer’s very mysterious all right,’ she used to say grimly. Anyone who mentioned the rumour in her hearing never repeated it again; Belle made sure of that. She held on to Danae’s hand tightly.

Danae’s hands were long and slender and her jewellery was of a totally different type. On one hand, she had a strange silver ring with a beautiful turquoise stone in the middle of it. Her nails were never painted, merely filed short. She had sensible, workmanlike hands, and they were cold. Bad circulation, some might have said. Belle preferred the old adage of ‘cold hands, warm heart’, because she knew her friend had one of the warmest hearts ever. And yet it had been frozen for so many years because of the past.

‘What I want you to do is ring Morris, get him to put Mara on the phone, then say that when she comes back, you’ll tell her the whole thing.’

‘I can’t,’ protested Danae.

‘Yes, you can. It’s about time you shared the load. I knew it would be good to have Mara living with you. I knew she’d not rest till she found out.’

‘You’re like a bloody witch,’ said Danae crossly.

‘You’re calling me a witch?’ laughed Belle. ‘You with the long, streaky hair with the grey bits in it and the mad jewellery! You do realize that half the aul fellas up the mountains think you’re the witch, living on your own up there with that wolf-like dog and all the hens.’

For the first time Danae roared with rich, true laughter.

‘Oh Lord,’ she said, ‘wouldn’t it be great to be a witch if you could cast spells to make yourself happy and spells to make other people happy. Sadly, no, I’m no witch, as you well know. Just a little sad right now.’

‘You know the old saying, “A problem shared is a problem halved”? There’s a lot of truth in it. You’ve been keeping people out for a very long time, Danae. Now you need to let Mara in. What do you think she’s going to do? Hate you? Think any less of you? Course she’s not! She knows who you are. And if you tell her the whole story, the whole, truthful, painful story, trust me, she’ll understand.’

Danae nodded. She pulled her hand away and started searching in her handbag for a tissue. She almost never cried any more. She didn’t know how: it was as if all her tears had been cried out years before.

Belle handed her a tissue. ‘I’ve got a box of them on standby for the engaged couple. You’d be surprised at how many brides-to-be start weeping when they think about the wedding day. The grooms generally start to weep at the price of the wedding day, but the brides get all moony and delirious once they see the ballroom and we talk about the whole thing. Then, when I show them the wedding suite, well, it’s a toss-up between tears and swooning in ecstasy. Most of them want to book in there and then, stay the night and have a go at everything. That Jacuzzi bath is a brilliant thing; I’m so glad I got it installed. Anyway, you’ve got your orders. I know what’s good for you, even if you don’t. So you’re going to take my advice, aren’t you?’

Danae wondered how anyone ever managed to resist doing a single thing Belle ordered them to.

‘Yessir,’ she said, and she meant it. ‘That’s what I’ll do. I suppose she needs to know sometime. And if she runs away from Avalon, screaming … Well, I’ll have to get used to that.’

‘If you think Mara’s going to run away screaming when you tell her the truth, you don’t know what sort of girl your niece is at all,’ said Belle.

Back in the post office, Danae phoned Mara’s mobile and left a message.

‘Mara,’ she said tiredly, ‘I’ll tell you all about it. But give me some time to get used to the idea, OK? I’ll tell you, eventually, OK?’

That night, Danae lay in bed and thought about the past. She spent so much of her time trying hard not to think about it, but it was always there, every single month when she drove to Dublin: waiting for her in ambush.

Danae was not a woman for clutter. Her home had a few beautiful pieces she’d picked up over the years – a bit of driftwood from the beach, a lovely earthenware jug made by a local potter, some blue glass that she sometimes sat flowers in during the summer – but there was very little junk. It was the legacy of a childhood spent moving around, never staying in one place for long. Her mother had taught her there was no point in having much stuff because it only got in the way when you needed to get out in a hurry.

‘Better to be able to throw your few bits into a suitcase and be off,’ Sybil would say, as if this was a great gift.

Danae didn’t know any other way to live. The tenement on Summer Hill was where they’d lived the longest. Not that they put down roots there or made friends among the neighbours.

‘We’re better than the likes of them,’ Sybil would say, ‘never forget that.’

She never went to the laundry with the other women on washing day. Instead, she washed her lovely silk lingerie herself, draping it over a chair in front of the fire.

‘They’ll never have seen a pair of silk cami-drawers in their lives,’ Sybil would say, holding up a delicate peach garment with its exquisite lace.

Danae knew what the other women made of her mother. She’d heard them talking: ‘Thinks she’s Lady Muck,’ they’d say. ‘All fur coat and no drawers.’

But they were wrong. Regardless of what she might say, Sybil didn’t really consider herself above everyone else. The reason she tried so desperately to cling to a sense of superiority was because it was one of the few things left to her. Dignity was long gone. The men had taken that.

Big Jim was the first that Danae could remember. She must have been about three or four back then. She’d thought he was her daddy, because they all seemed to live together and other children had daddies. Then one night he came home in his cups and hit her mother such a clatter that she flew clean across the room and landed against the window like Danae’s beloved rag doll before sinking to the floor.

‘Daddy!’ shrieked the little Danae.

‘I’m not your father, you stupid child,’ he’d hissed at her. And then he left.

Danae had rushed to her mother’s side. But Sybil was made of the sort of stuff that said you didn’t cry, you didn’t need to be comforted. No, you got up on your own two feet.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, dragging herself up by the curtains, wiping the blood off her mouth with one hand. ‘Do you know, I think it’s time we moved out of here.’

‘But, but … we like it,’ Danae said fearfully. It was small, but she had her little bed in one corner, behind the chest of drawers, with the curtain around it. And she had her rag dolly, her only toy.

‘No,’ said her mother. ‘The rent won’t be paid now, with him gone. Time we were off.’

Two small suitcases and a small valise was all it had taken. Danae had had to drag one of them, small though she was.

‘Quiet now,’ her mother said as they crept down the stairs. ‘If you wake the landlord, there’ll be hell to pay.’ Sybil laughed, quietly. ‘Whatever’s to pay, we haven’t got the money for it.’

They’d made it out safely that time. Then on to the next place, the next town.

Sybil came from better stuff, she told her daughter. There were many stories about the good times in the past. Lovely times with servants and beautiful clothes and lovely meals. Always enough to eat.

‘Too much,’ Sybil would say. ‘Far too much. The waste!’

Danae’s mouth watered at the thought of food you could waste. They were living on a thin soup made of bones that her mother had beseeched from the butcher, saying it was for the dog. But we haven’t got a dog, Danae wanted to say, but she knew better. Her mother was also adept at digging up a few vegetables here and there from other people’s gardens.

‘They won’t miss them,’ she’d say. ‘Isn’t it a kindness to let someone else share a little of your good fortune?’

Each time they moved, Danae had brought her few books with her. Two on the lives of saints – her mother had been going to throw them out; the dratted nuns had given them to her. ‘Fling them in the fire,’ she’d said, ‘we might as well get some use out of them.’

‘No,’ cried Danae, ‘I like them. I like to read.’

So the lives of the Little Flower and Maria Goretti had been saved, along with the story of Edel Quinn and a copy of Wuthering Heights.

‘You’re a curious little thing, with your head stuck in a book there,’ said Mr Malcolm, one of the nicest men her mother had met up with.

‘I like to read,’ said Danae carefully, not really looking up into his eyes, because you never knew what sort of man Mother might bring home. Sybil never knew herself; that was the problem, Danae was beginning to see.

Sybil had never been what you would call a reliable narrator. All the stories of her past had to be taken with a pinch of salt because she was inclined to make her own role bigger or smaller, depending on circumstances.

When Danae had fallen out of the cot at the age of one, Sybil had barely been in the room at all, for goodness’ sake! A woman couldn’t spend her entire time watching a baby: she needed a bit of time to do her hair. The cat had taken much of the blame, on that occasion. When a chip pan caught fire and the whole house had been in danger of burning down, Sybil had risked life and limb to rescue her darling daughter. Any talk of the fire brigade’s involvement was glossed over, along with their reprimand for having two chip pans and a frying pan all going hell for leather on the one gas stove with the kitchen curtains flapping around nearby.

The fact that Danae had been left with a small burn on one leg was something she should be grateful for. If it hadn’t been for her mother’s speed, she could have been a lot worse off.

Sybil liked to be the heroine in every story. She was never happy until she was in the spotlight. It had taken Danae years to realize all this.

And then into their lives had come kind, jovial Bernie Wilson. He wanted to marry Sybil. Marry her and make an honest woman out of her, now that the baby was due.

Widows with children, Danae heard other women in the flats talking, were more likely to marry again rather than widows without children.

‘Men like ones who’ve been broken in, who know the score. And with chisellers, they know the score.’

But Bernie wasn’t like that: he was special.

Sybil was full of grand names for the baby, something to rival Danae.

‘Could we not have something nice and simple?’ said Bernie, ‘I was thinking Morris, if it’s a boy. That was my father’s name, God bless him. And maybe Alice, if it’s a girl?’

The baby had been Morris. Lying in her bed in the little cottage in Avalon, Danae recalled those years when she’d lived with Bernie and Morris as the happiest of her life. There had been stability then; a stability she’d never known before.

But for all her lack of clutter, on top of Danae’s big old wardrobe there were three boxes of things from the past.

In the first box was the diary she’d been asked to keep.

The second contained her wedding dress, carefully wrapped up in tissue paper – something she’d never been able to throw out.

In the third were her white satin shoes from the day, and her bouquet, also wrapped in tissue paper. She hadn’t thrown it. Somehow, in the wildness of the day and the excitement and the great drama of entering the Rahill family, no bouquet had been thrown.

Perhaps that had been the bad luck that marred the day, Danae thought. But no, the bad luck had been written in her life long before that. The bad luck meant she chose men the same way her mother chose them, for all the wrong reasons. Except her mother had finally found a good one in Bernie. Whereas Danae had made the worst choice of all right at the outset.

When she got home from Dublin, Mara hugged her aunt and said, ‘Whenever you’re ready to tell me, Danae, tell me. I love you, I wanted to understand so there wouldn’t be any danger of me hurting you inadvertently. The last thing I wanted was to upset you.’

Danae had stood in her niece’s embrace and closed her eyes.

‘You didn’t hurt me, love. I’m scared to talk about it. It was not a good marriage, not a good childhood either. That’s why your father and I are so different, because we have different fathers. Bernard, your grandfather, was a good man. Morris was lucky.

‘It was different for me when I was a child. Life was painful and my marriage was painful, that’s why I didn’t tell you. Give me a little time to get used to the idea of talking about it, and I’ll tell you. It shouldn’t …’ she paused, thinking of what Belle had said, ‘… be a secret.’

Later, she took down the box with the diary and the cuttings and all the various bits of paper relating to what had happened, and she laid them on her bed. They were all tied up with a black ribbon and Danae didn’t even want to undo the package. Opening it would be like letting a bad spirit out. As if the box was a genie’s lamp and undoing the ribbons was the spell that would release it into the world.

No, Mara could do it. As soon as Danae got up the courage to give the box to her. Mara could read everything, and then she’d know.

Because Danae didn’t think she had the heart to tell her beloved niece the whole story.