The Daisy Picker (13 page)

‘Yeah, I will, honest – just as soon as Angela can give me a few days off in a row; she’s a bit stuck at the moment.’

She’s given them to understand, without actually lying, that she’s practically indispensable to Angela. ‘I don’t know how she managed before me; she was as good as
running the B&B single-handedly; she was worn out’ –
Sorry, Deirdre
– ‘and now that I’m baking for her regularly too . . . it’s a bit hectic, even
with the two of us.’ If they only knew she spends less than four hours a day working . . .

Hanging up, she feels a twinge of guilt: she really must get back home for a weekend soon. Maybe straight after Easter – The Kitchen should be fairly quiet then.

Next morning Lizzie stands outside Ripe and tries to put her finger on what’s different. It seems exactly as it always is: a big wheelbarrow on either side of the door,
one filled with fruit, the other with veg; windows shining, as usual – Joe keeps the place spotless . . .

And then she sees it, poking out from behind the beautiful wooden sign over the door. It couldn’t be – but it is.

Grass.

Tufts of grass are sprouting from the top of the sign, all the way across.
What on earth?
She blinks hard and checks again; it’s definitely there.

She goes inside. Joe looks up from behind the counter. ‘Hi, Lizzie. Nice day.’

‘Hi, Joe.’ Should she say anything? How exactly should she put it? ‘Your sign is growing grass’ sounds a bit silly.

He’s looking enquiringly at her. ‘Have you forgotten what you wanted?’ He always looks like a smile is just waiting to happen. And those blue eyes definitely grow on you.

Lizzie blinks. ‘No, no, I’ll just get them.’ She fills her bags, still wondering if she should mention the grass. Maybe he’s done it on purpose. Maybe it’s a sales
gimmick of some sort.

By the time she’s got everything, she’s decided to say something. She waits until she’s paid him. ‘Em, Joe . . . I want to show you something outside a minute.’

He hands her her change, eyebrows raised. ‘Outside?’

‘Yeah, just outside the door.’ She’s beginning to feel sorry she brought it up. Of course he knows about it – grass doesn’t suddenly appear overnight on a wooden
sign. Fruit and veg, growing stuff, all that kind of thing – it must be a marketing thing. But it’s too late now; he’s walking with her to the door. God, this is going to be
mortifying.

Outside, she says nothing, just points up to the grass. Joe looks up, then draws in his breath. ‘Good God. Where did that come out of?’

Whew – he didn’t do it, then. She’s not going to look like some prize eejit. They stand looking up, Joe shaking his head in bafflement.

‘I don’t believe it; it’s back.’

‘What?’ Lizzie’s head swivels back to him. ‘You mean it’s happened before?’

He nods his head, still gazing up. ‘Oh, yes. It always seems to happen around this time of the year.’

‘Joe, you’re not serious.’ Signs don’t suddenly start to sprout grass – even signs advertising things that grow. ‘Are you saying this happens
regularly?’

‘Yes. Very strange.’ He’s still nodding slowly, still looking up at the grass. ‘Every year, always on the same date.’ He looks back at her, his face serious.
‘Lizzie, you don’t think that it could have anything at all to do with the fact that it’s . . . April Fool’s Day?’

Not a flicker of a smile. How does he do it? Lizzie slaps his arm, half annoyed, half amused. ‘Joe, you eejit – have you nothing better to do?’

He grins, rubbing his arm. ‘Nothing at all; isn’t it terrible? What kind of a place have you decided to come to, at all, at all?’ He’s highly amused at the success of his
joke; and she’s the perfect target – such a gullible ninny.

She tries to look stern and fails utterly. ‘I’m beginning to wonder. Maybe I should go back home for myself – at least they leave the grass on the ground there.’ Damn
– she can’t keep a straight face like he can.

‘Ah no, stay – I’ll be good.’ He starts back into the shop. ‘Well, I’d better get back inside and wait for my next victim – I mean customer.’

‘God help them.’ She heads off down the street.

‘And, Lizzie –’

She turns.

‘Have a nice day, now.’ And he’s gone.

Lizzie smiles and walks on with her bag of fruit, shaking her head. He’s full of surprises, that man.

Wait till she tells Angela.

‘Turn around.’ Angela looks carefully as Lizzie swivels her head. ‘It’s gorgeous.’

‘Really?’ She puts up her hands and touches her hair – it still feels very strange. ‘You’re not just saying that?’

‘Absolutely not. It really suits you; it’s much nicer than before. I love the way the wax lifts it, shows off the layers. And the highlights are great – just in time for
summer, such as it is.’

That morning Lizzie had woken up and looked in the mirror and decided she needed a change – a totally new look. So she got into her car, drove to Seapoint, found the trendiest-looking
salon and marched in. Three hours later and a hundred euros poorer, she came out with a brand-new blonde crop.

She loves it – and so, it seems, does Angela. ‘We have to go out and show off that hair. There’s a session in Doherty’s on Sunday night. You’ll drive Johnny Morris
wild.’ Johnny Morris is a soft-spoken local man who occasionally plays the fiddle in Doherty’s. He’s also the wrong side of ninety.

Lizzie looks sternly at Angela. ‘I’ll have you know that I’ll be setting my sights a lot younger than Johnny Morris.’

‘Well, you never know . . .’ Angela edges towards the door of the caravan. ‘Joe McCarthy might be there too.’ And she’s gone, just before Lizzie’s cushion
hits the door.

Lizzie opens her wardrobe. Nothing jumps out at her; just the same old jeans and tops. She needs something new, to go with the new hair. She’ll head back into Seapoint tomorrow; there are
a few decent boutiques there. Maybe she’ll get a pair of those low-rise trousers everyone is wearing; if she sucks in her tummy, she just might get away with them.

And she has no idea where Angela got the notion that she’s interested in Joe McCarthy. For goodness’ sake, she’s just over a big break-up.

Not that she’s lost much sleep over that. Sometimes she wonders idly how Tony and Pauline are getting on. Do they go out every Sunday night, like she and Tony did? Does he go around to the
Twomeys’ for his dinner every Thursday? She wouldn’t be at all surprised.

It’s funny: Sunday has turned out to be Lizzie’s main going-out night in Merway, too. For years it was the only night when she and Tony could go out together – and now, with
The Kitchen open every other night of the week, it’s the only one that suits Angela. Mind you, nights out with Angela – usually in one or another of Merway’s four pubs – are
a lot more fun than a couple of glasses of wine in the local with Tony.

One night Lizzie tells Angela about Pauline Twomey.

‘He has a new girlfriend – Mammy told me.’

Angela gives her a sympathetic look. ‘I bet you were disappointed when you heard.’

Lizzie starts to protest – ‘God, no’ – and then realises that, oddly, she was a bit taken aback. ‘Well, I suppose it
was
a bit of a surprise . .
.’

‘Human nature.’ Angela nods. ‘You don’t want him, but you’re damned if you want anyone else to claim him.’ She pauses. ‘When John left, I was devastated
– completely broken-hearted. But then, I still wanted him, very badly.’ She shrugs, runs her hand through her sleek blonde hair. ‘He was the love of my life. We grew up together.
Our first date was on Valentine’s Day, when I was fifteen – just Dee’s age, imagine.’

So she was with the love of her life for around twenty-five years. Lizzie can’t begin to imagine how that break-up must have felt. She remembers longing for a bit of heartbreak when she
was younger. Maybe she was as well off without it.

She glances sympathetically at Angela. ‘Poor you; it must have been horrible.’

‘Yeah, it was. Horrible.’ Angela looks down at the table and rubs her eyes with the back of her hand – is she brushing away a tear? Then she smiles faintly. ‘
We
hadn’t a long engagement at all – hardly any engagement, really. He proposed in February – Valentine’s Day again; I was twenty-four – and we married in June.’
She makes a face. ‘Actually, it’s a good job we did: Deirdre was born seven and a half months later. John’s mother convinced herself, to the day she died, that Dee was
premature.’

Then she looks up at Lizzie. ‘He’ll be here tomorrow.’

Lizzie looks back at her. ‘Who’ll be here?’

‘John; he’s due to see Deirdre. He phoned a couple of days ago and arranged it. He’ll take her out for the day to Seapoint – spoil her rotten, as usual. And then
she’ll come back and be down in the dumps for a week.’

Lizzie wonders if she’ll finally get to meet him; so far she’s missed him when he’s called.

Angela absently runs her finger along the side of the table. ‘Dee’s such a quiet little thing, it’s hard to know what she’s thinking. I hope she’s not bottling
things up; she knows she can always talk to me.’

‘No sign of a boyfriend yet?’ At fifteen, Deirdre must be beginning to realise that there’s an opposite sex.

But Angela shakes her head firmly. ‘Not a hint, thank goodness. Once she discovers boys, that’ll be the end of the studying, if she’s anything like her mother.’

John Byrne turns up the following morning. Lizzie is in the kitchen, trying her hand at making a sourdough starter, when Angela comes in and says, ‘Lizzie, this is John. John, Lizzie is my
new lodger, and my excellent baker.’ There’s something in her manner that Lizzie hasn’t seen before. Her smile snaps on and off; she seems ill at ease in the company of the man
who shared her life for so long.

John isn’t what Lizzie would call handsome – not in the way that, say, Joe McCarthy is – but he has a nice open face, and warmth in his eyes. She can see what drew Angela to
him.

Deirdre looks a lot like her father. They both have the same brown hair and green eyes – Angela is blue-eyed, and much fairer – and she’s inherited his height, too. At fifteen
she’s already an inch or so taller than Angela, who’s about Lizzie’s height – five four or five; John is nearly a head above that again.

‘Are you planning to stay long here?’ he asks Lizzie. He probably wonders what on earth brought her to Merway.

‘Not sure, really; I’ll just see how it goes.’ Instinctively she’s cautious with him, doesn’t feel like going into detail.

He nods; then Deirdre comes flying down the stairs, and they’re gone. Angela is quiet for the day, checking the clock often. Lizzie does most of the talking while they’re getting the
evening meals ready. When John and Deirdre get back, around eight, he doesn’t come in with her – just drives off.

As she watches Angela admiring Deirdre’s new make-up collection (‘Look, Mum, it’s got everything – look at all the brushes . . .’) Lizzie’s heart goes out to
her. She clearly still has feelings for John – maybe not love any more, but strong feelings all the same.

Lizzie thinks about the woman John went off with. She seems to remember Angela saying that she was local. Is she much younger than Angela? Does Deirdre ever meet her with John? Do her parents
know Angela – do they ever bump into her in the street? Lizzie can’t imagine how a meeting like that would go.

Then she wonders what hope there is that any love can survive, if a relationship that sounds like the perfect one can just crumble and die like that. Maybe couples like Tony and herself, who
didn’t have such a big emotional investment, would actually have a better chance of making it. If she’d stayed in Kilmorris, they’d probably have trundled along together for
another twenty years – not ecstatically happy, but content enough, maybe.

And then she tries to figure out why, in the face of all this doomed-relationship and heartbreak stuff, she still hopes to God she’ll find someone with the power to seriously break her
heart.

Angela looks at the brown-paper package, then back up at Lizzie. ‘How did you know?’