Authors: Marita Conlon-McKenna
‘You OK?’ Kerrie asked, making them some more coffee and giving them some cheese and crackers. She was ready to hit the bed herself.
‘Sit down and look at these,’ Matt said grimly, indicating some of the documents and his notes spread all over the table.
Dermot looked surprised.
‘Dad, it’s OK. Kerrie probably has a better financial brain than I have, and it’s good to get another eye on the problem.’
An hour later Kerrie couldn’t believe how foolhardy her father-in-law-to-be had been! It was like he had been putting bets on horses running in the Curragh Races, but instead he had gambled heavily on property and invested far too much in some high-risk retail and hotel schemes. His accumulated
debts now were massive, and she doubted he had anything like the necessary funds to service them. Grabbing Matt’s calculator she began to do her own rough calculation of his debts.
The Hennessys’ villa in Marbella would definitely have to go, their summer place in Connemara and, she suspected, Moyle House would also need to be sold off if Dermot was to have any chance of showing the banks he was making an effort at least to service his debts.
Leaving Matt to be the one to explain this to his dad, Kerrie crawled into bed. She had an early-morning meeting in the office, and wouldn’t get to see Dermot and Maureen before she left.
Alice looked over at her class. All were in their striped aprons tonight, eager and ready to learn to cook. They had been so supportive to her since Sean’s accident, and it was such a huge relief to her that if all went well then Sean was on track to return home next week. She couldn’t wait to have him back here with her.
‘Before we begin, I would like to thank you all for your amazing support over the past few weeks. It has been a difficult time for all of my family, but your messages and texts and lovely flowers and cards were all very much appreciated. Thank you for bearing with me.’ They all gave her a clap, and Alice had to restrain herself from going and hugging each and every one of them.
‘I hope that you have all been doing a bit of practising in the meantime!’
‘I made a brilliant dinner for my boyfriend.’ Lucy grinned.
‘I had a dinner party for six, and the sea bass turned out amazingly well,’ added Emmet. ‘I impressed them all with it.’
‘I managed to cook dinner for my mother-in-law, who is cordon bleu trained, and nothing disastrous happened.’
Kerrie beamed. ‘In fact, Alice, everything turned out perfectly. I still can’t believe it!’
‘I’m glad to hear it!’ Alice laughed, delighted. ‘And hopefully tonight’s dishes will also turn out equally perfect. We are starting with monkfish with a salsa and stuffed red peppers, followed by a French favourite of mine, a delicious cherry tart, for dessert.
‘Now, let’s get started,’ she said as she showed them how to prepare the sweet pastry tart and bake it blind before filling it with the frangipane and topping with the pitted and halved cherries, then baking again before serving. The monkfish was easy and she showed them how simple it was to poach it and then serve it with the salsa and the stuffed peppers.
As they all got on with their preparation and cooking she had to admit to a feeling of achievement at the level of calm and confidence that now permeated her cookery class. Most nerves had disappeared by now, and each member of the group was doing their very best to achieve perfection in serving food that was both enticing and tasty. How would her next group fare? she wondered. She had another ten people beginning next week!
After class Rob, Paul and Gemma sat around eating, and she joined them. She opened a bottle of red wine and they chatted easily as they finished off the evening’s meal. All were in raptures about the cherry tart. Usually she would have had Sean and Dara here, so it was good to have some company.
‘Alice, are you free next week to come to the cinema or for a drink with me?’ Rob asked as he got ready to leave. ‘You know I’ve missed our outings.’
She had been so tied up with hospital visits she’d had no
time to see anyone for weeks, but with Sean home in a few days, and her new class starting, she really wouldn’t have time for cinema trips. Sean would need her at home, and that’s where she planned to be.
‘I’m sorry, Rob,’ she said, explaining about Sean. ‘He’s going to need to have his mum around for a while, and to tell the truth I’d be too nervous to leave him.’
She could see the disappointment on Rob’s face, but it was only fair to let him know where her priorities lay for the moment, and not to lead him to expect any more from her.
Bringing Sean home from hospital was overwhelming, and when her son gave a whoop of excitement as he crossed over the threshold of their home, Alice almost collapsed in tears herself.
A few weeks ago his life had hung by a thread, and now he was back in Martello Avenue, safe and sound with her; back to his bedroom and the routine at home. He would miss the rest of this year’s college term and doing his second-year exams, but the college had already agreed he could repeat the year next year. For the moment he had to concentrate on getting well and getting back to normal gradually. He would join a programme out in the National Rehabilitation Hospital, which was fortunately near them, and had been told to take things slowly until he began to feel better.
Jenny had come from Galway, and Conor and Lisa and even Liam were all there for his homecoming, and she had to act like a sentry on duty as so many of his friends wanted to see him and talk to him. She had to limit his visitors – even Becky, who clearly was very close to her son and cared about
him – but she had to make sure that Sean didn’t tire himself out trying to do too much. The doctor had advised him to avoid using the computer for a while and not to go on Facebook or email, as his brain still needed to rest. Even reading a page of a newspaper or book exhausted him!
Seeing him lying on the couch playing with Lexy she gave a silent prayer of thanks for his recovery.
Liam called frequently, and she tried to let him and Sean have time on their own together. Sean needed his dad, and that was obvious.
One evening when Sean had gone to bed early after having too many old school friends call to him, Liam came down to the kitchen and she made coffee and reheated some of the chicken casserole she’d made for dinner earlier for him. It felt strange having him back in the house … a weird sense of déjà vu.
‘Alice, I’m glad we’re on our own, as I need to talk to you,’ he said seriously.
She immediately felt her hackles rise, on guard for whatever he was about to throw at her.
‘I wanted to apologize for being such a shit over the past two years,’ he said slowly, ‘apologize for being such a bastard to you. I guess going through all this with Sean has made me realize how much my kids and you mean to me, and how I just took it all – my family – for granted. I can’t turn the clock back, but I promise to try to do better by you and the kids.’
She didn’t trust herself to look at him. He had hurt her so badly, but now she was beginning to live without him. He was no longer a pivotal part of her life. He was the father of her children, her ex-husband, ex-lover, but she had learned
the very hard way to survive and manage without him.
‘It’s been so tough without you, Liam, but I have learned how to live my own life now,’ she said firmly.
‘I know that.’ Liam looked somewhat ashamed. ‘I see you now, and you’ve changed. You have your cookery school, and your friends and a busy life. You’ve got on with your life!’
‘What did you want me to do?’ she said bitterly. ‘Cry over you for ever?’
‘No!’
‘I’ve had to stand on my own two feet. I needed money and am doing my best to be financially independent of you or anyone else.’
‘I admire you for what you have done, Alice, believe me!’ he said. ‘I just wanted to let you know that I’ve talked to my solicitor and have organized that the house will be totally transferred into your name.’
‘Why?’ she asked, immediately suspicious of his so-called generosity.
‘We both paid for the house,’ he explained. ‘But you and I know that it was really your inheritance from Betty that paid off most of the mortgage and transformed it. It was all your money that you put into this place. So I guess for the sake of fairness it should be yours. The kids might be grown-up, but they still need a home to come to. It’s also become your place to earn some income. I may be a right shit, but after all we’ve gone through in the past few weeks I can’t take that away from you.’
Alice held her breath. She couldn’t believe it. She had been expecting a battle with him over the house, and now he was prepared to cede it to her.
‘Liam, thank you,’ she said, taking a deep calming breath.
‘The office and the apartment in Ballsbridge are, however, still in both our names,’ he said, ‘and I need you to agree to them being transferred into mine alone.’
‘Oh,’ she said, surprised. ‘Why?’
‘I want to offload at least one of them, even if the market is poor. A lot of my work is now on contracts with Johnny Leonard in the UK, and I am back and forward there a lot. I don’t need a big office with all the overheads here in Dublin any more. Something smaller will do.’
She had never had any interest in the apartment he’d bought as an investment about ten years ago, and as for the office, it had always been his as far as she was concerned. He could have it!
‘Whatever you want, Liam. If we need to sign papers and go to solicitors to set it up, just go ahead and organize it.’
‘Thanks.’
She could see the gratitude on his face.
‘Well, it looks like we are both getting on with our lives.’
She smiled half-heartedly.
‘I’ll be in the UK more and more, Alice, but you know I’ll be here if you or the kids need me. I’m just a phone call away.’
‘I know,’ she said, actually believing him. ‘What does Elaine think of you being away so much?’
‘She understands I have to go where the work is. She’s even talking about moving over herself, as her brother Tony has a wine bar in Putney and is thinking about expanding.’
She looked at Liam. Was he going to give the money to Elaine? But actually, she thought, it was none of her business what they did or didn’t do any more.
‘Well, I hope whatever happens, Liam, it all works out for you,’ she said, realizing that she genuinely meant it. Liam was
no longer hers. As her husband he was so much a part of her past but she accepted the fact that he would have very little to do with her future.
‘Look, I’d better go,’ he said, standing up. ‘I said I’d collect Elaine after work.’
They hugged each other awkwardly at the front door.
‘I’ll be in touch about the legal stuff, Alice,’ he said, walking out to the car.
It occurred to Alice, as she watched her husband sit into his car and drive away that, for the first time in over two years, she was no longer angry with him, and that another part of her life with him was finally over.
Tessa checked the dining room. It was strange to see her mother’s old dining room in use again. She’d polished the table and set it with her mother’s good Waterford crystal glasses and Wedgwood dinner service. She’d picked pink and mauve peonies from the back garden, and they made a pretty display in vases on the table and sideboard. She’d polished the silver and cleaned the big mirror over the sideboard, and with the light from the large bay window the room seemed brighter and airier, especially with all her mother’s old boxes, that used to be stored under the sideboard, banished to the garage. The room was ready, she thought, as she placed some candles on the table.
Florence Sullivan had gone to the hairdresser’s for a wash and a blow-dry and had tried on about three outfits before settling on a pretty turquoise two-piece to wear for tonight’s dinner party. Tessa’s mother was almost as excited about Tessa having a few friends to dinner as she was.
‘Mum, they are just some of the group from my cookery class!’ Tessa had reminded her. ‘It’s no big deal.’
In London she had regularly entertained her friends and
had people in. It was one of the things she had missed most since moving home. She’d mentioned it to Emmet one night and been surprised when he suggested that if so, it was high time she invited some of her new friends over to her home. She’d agonized over it, but had eventually asked Emmet and his friend Steven, Paul and Gemma, and Kitty and Rob. She’d also been surprised when Kitty had asked if she could bring her husband along.
‘Larry’s not a great one for going out, but I think that he might come along if he knew it was just the class crowd.’
Tessa opted to cook something a little fancy, and she hoped that she could pull it off, given that she was using a pretty antiquated gas oven. She had cooked a large leg of spring Wicklow lamb with garlic potatoes and spring greens. For starters there was a creamy salmon mousse, and she had made a sticky pecan toffee tart for dessert.
She had changed into a simple pale-blue shift dress that she hadn’t worn since returning home, with a pair of nude slingbacks.
It was no surprise that Rob was first, as he had promised to bring along some good wines for the night. He had also brought a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, which she put in the big glass vase in the hall.
‘They’re lovely, Rob,’ she said, hugging him, as she brought him into the sitting room where Florence was in her favourite chair.
Rob had already met her mother, as they had got into the habit of going for weekly walks, and once or twice when he’d collected Tessa he’d come in and had a bit of a chat with Florence.
‘You’re looking very stylish tonight, Florence,’ he complimented, as Tessa sliced some lemon and fixed three glasses of gin and tonic.
It was a lovely bright evening, and Tessa opened the French doors out to the garden. She’d mowed the grass the previous day and strimmed all around the edges of the flower beds. The big lilac tree was in full bloom, and some of the roses were already out. She’d always loved this room, with its sunny aspect, comfortable chintz-covered couches and polished wood bookshelves.