The Daisy Picker (23 page)

‘I knew you’d say that. You’re so predictable. And I’m not out of my mind, I’m perfectly sane – as well you know.’

Angela shakes her head slowly. ‘No, you’ve definitely flipped.’ Then she smiles. ‘Look, Lizzie, don’t think I’m not grateful; it’s the most generous
offer I’ve –’

‘Generous, my foot. Now you listen to me, Angela Byrne.’ Lizzie sits down across from her, and the look on her face makes Angela think that it might be wise to listen. ‘That
money is mine to do as I please with. It’s not up to you how I spend it; it’s up to me. I’m so bloody tired of everyone telling me what I can and can’t do.’

Angela looks at her in amazement. ‘Of course, I know that, but –’

‘Hang on – I’m not finished.’

Angela hangs on.

‘Just listen, right?’ Lizzie holds out her fingers and counts on them: one. ‘I’ve always wanted to bake for a living – and this is the first place where I’ve
managed to do that.’ Two. ‘We’ve got on well together since we met.’ Three. ‘Now, you need money to stay in business; you’ve been told that John is probably
entitled to forty per cent of this place, right?’ Angela nods.

Four. ‘You’ve worked out roughly how much that would be, and I have that money – or near enough.’ Five. ‘It’s not just going to help you – it’s
going to help
me
, too, to do what
I’ve
always wanted.’

She runs out of fingers and stops counting. ‘Angela, I’m talking about a partnership. You and me, running The Kitchen and sharing the profits; paying John off and making a fresh
start. Working together – really working together, not this half-assed arrangement we have now. Think about it, please. Daddy has given me this wonderful chance, and this is the way I’d
love to use it.’ Her voice wobbles and she takes a deep breath. ‘At least say you’ll think about it – don’t dismiss it out of hand. Sleep on it.’
And then
say yes. Please say yes
.

Angela finds her voice. ‘God.’ She stares across at Lizzie. ‘Partners.’

Lizzie nods furiously.

‘John paid off and The Kitchen still going strong.’

More nodding.

‘God,’ says Angela again, her eyes wide, ‘d’you really think it could work? Really?’

Lizzie feels a smile start somewhere inside her; Angela is beginning to believe in her brilliant plan. ‘What do you mean, do I think it could work? Isn’t it working now? The only
difference would be that you’d have someone to share all the hassle, and the security of knowing that no one could take the place away from you – and I’d get to share the
profits.’ She’s home and dry; she can tell. ‘What did you call us – a match made in heaven, the baker and the chef? We’re still that.’

She gets up and goes to the fridge. ‘And now I really need this . . .’ And she hauls out a bottle of sparkling wine she snuck in earlier.

‘Hey, poor man’s bubbly – lovely.’ Angela takes down two glasses.

‘So you’ll think about it,’ Lizzie says, easing out the cork.

‘Yeah, I’ll think about it.’ Angela puts the glasses on the table. ‘Now, don’t be getting your hopes up too much, Lizzie – I do need to think carefully about
it – but I will say that, in theory . . . your daft idea is slowly beginning to make a tiny bit of sense to me.’

Lizzie pours two glasses and lifts hers. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

Angela takes less than a week to agree to the partnership. She writes to John to let him know that she’s buying him out.

‘It’s only fair – and I want to avoid bad feeling if I can, for Dee’s sake. If I keep him informed right from the start, he can’t turn around later and say I sprang
it on him.’

Two days after that, John turns up at the restaurant, just as Angela and Lizzie are finishing the lunch clear-up.

He walks straight in the back door. ‘Ange.’

She spins around from loading the dishwasher, then just stands looking at him. Lizzie places the cutlery she’s holding on the table and wonders if she should leave – or will Angela
need some support?

She doesn’t have long to wonder. ‘Lizzie, could you give us a little while, please?’ Angela’s face is expressionless, but the colour has drained from it.

‘Sure.’ Lizzie nods at John and walks past him, out the door and straight down the gravel path to the pebbly beach. John doesn’t even glance her way. She’s gone about a
hundred yards before she realises that she’s still wearing her apron, the one that Angela got her with the giant ice-cream cone on it.

She gives them an hour. Apart from that night in the hospital with Mammy, when each minute seemed to go on forever, it’s the longest hour of her life. She paces across the pebbles, holding
the apron by the strings and trying not to panic.

Two little children are paddling; an older woman – Granny, maybe – is perched precariously on a canvas chair, watching them. At Granny’s feet is a tartan rug strewn with little
buckets and towels and clothes and sandals; it reminds Lizzie of the rug in the photo of her and Daddy on that long-ago holiday. She smiles absently at the woman, her mind full of what could be
happening a little way away.

What if John changes Angela’s mind – persuades her, even at this late stage, to take him back and make a new start? Lizzie would be happy for Angela if it worked out – of
course she would – but what if he comes back and it all goes wrong again? What if he decides, three months later, or six months later, that he’s made a mistake, and walks out for the
second time?

And what about the restaurant? Would they keep it going – or close it down and open a video shop again? Surely not – The Kitchen is ticking over, quite healthily, by the looks of it;
but with the two of them there to run it, Lizzie could forget about having anything to do with it. She wonders what John’s baking is like.

And of course she’ll have to leave the caravan. She doubts that John would take kindly to the person who almost bought him out living in his back garden. So she’d be jobless
and
homeless.

She crunches over the pebbles and tells herself to calm down. She might as well tell the Atlantic to part.

After an hour, she goes back. She stands outside the kitchen door and hears nothing. She knocks and waits. After a few seconds, it opens.

‘What are you knocking for?’ Angela looks pale, but she’s dry-eyed and seems calm.

‘I didn’t want to walk in on you and John.’ Lizzie follows her in; no sign of him.

‘He’s gone about twenty minutes.’ Angela goes to the sink and turns on the tap. ‘I was just going to make a start on the spuds; I know we’ve time enough, but I felt
like being busy.’ She hauls up a bag of potatoes and empties them into the sink.

Lizzie stands there helplessly. Should she ask how it went? Angela seems so calm . . . could it really have been that civilised?

‘Nothing’s changed, in case you’re wondering,’ Angela says, over the running water. ‘I told him that we’re serious about buying him out, and that I’ve
already told my solicitor that I intend to file for divorce when the time comes.’

But she’s so calm . . . is that natural?
‘How did he take it?’

Angela lifts her shoulders, picks up a potato and starts to scrub it. ‘Well . . . it appears his looking for half of everything I have was a big fat bluff – he thought I’d get
such a fright that I’d crack and agree to have him back. Not that he admitted it in so many words, of course. But I could tell.’

She puts the scrubbed potato on the draining board and starts on another one, head bent; Lizzie can’t see her face. ‘He must have got a right shock when he got my letter. He never
for a minute thought I’d be able to buy him out – why would he? So, once he realised I was serious, he tried to change my mind. He repeated everything he said in his first letter
– he must have been out of his head to leave me, he realises that now, blah blah blah – but I was having none of it.’

By now she has half a dozen potatoes done; they sit all higgledy-piggledy on the draining board. ‘I stayed very calm and told him my mind was made up. I said my solicitor told me
he’ll probably be entitled to forty per cent of this place; he didn’t comment. I told him I wasn’t interested in a reconciliation, thank you very much, and then I said he’d
have to leave because I had to get started on the evening meals.’

She puts the scrubber down and empties the earthy water out of the basin. ‘I suppose he took it fairly well, considering. Very polite and . . . civilised . . .’ She trails off,
watching the water vanish through the plughole. ‘He even arranged to come and take Dee out next Saturday.’ Then she runs fresh water into the sink and sloshes it around.

Lizzie stands where she is, watching Angela’s hands in the water. ‘Are you OK?’

Angela turns to her then, and Lizzie sees her eyes are bright with tears. But she nods. ‘I will be. But it’s just . . . very sad. How it can all . . . go wrong like that. When it was
so right for so long.’

She rubs a hand across her eyes, turns back to the sink and picks up another potato. ‘Life will go on, and hopefully it’ll be better – eventually.’ She scrubs hard,
shifting little clods of earth under the running tap.

Lizzie shakes out the apron she’s still holding and puts it on. Her heart goes out to Angela, trying to scrub away her heartache – and then a thought strikes her. She and Angela are
both in mourning: her for Daddy, and Angela for her marriage.

Maybe it’s a good thing they’re joining forces; they can help each other through, maybe.

The next three weeks are a flurry of phone calls and solicitor’s appointments and ‘Sign here, please’ and trawling through inventories and getting valuations. Lizzie is
relieved to discover that they don’t have to come face to face with John during the process – she isn’t sure what reception he’d give her. Luckily, their solicitors do all
the liaising.

And six days before her forty-second birthday, Elizabeth Mary O’Grady uses Daddy’s money to make a cheque out to John Byrne, and becomes a partner in Angela Maureen Byrne’s
restaurant business.

That evening she phones Mammy, and cries.

Lizzie and Angela decide a quiet birthday celebration is in order; there’s a session in Doherty’s on Sunday night. ‘But if you tell anyone my age, I’ll
kill you.’ Lizzie scrunches her newly trimmed hair and turns her head to check the sides.

‘Well, that’s just lovely,’ Angela says, ‘when the whole of Merway knew the day I turned forty.’

Lizzie pulls the door of the caravan closed and they walk up the gravel path. ‘Forty is different. Forty is – special. There’s nothing special about forty-two.’

Angela links her arm. ‘Relax, Granny – your little secret is safe with me. Not that you’ve anything to worry about, anyway – who’d believe me?’

‘Thanks,’ Lizzie says, grinning at her. ‘You don’t look too ancient yourself.’

‘Well, I should hope not – I’m years younger.’

As they approach Doherty’s, Lizzie looks at Angela. ‘Now remember – Johnny Morris is mine.’

Angela sweeps past her into the noisy, crowded pub. ‘Not if I see him first.’ She makes for the bar. ‘You find seats, I’ll get the jars.’

Lizzie weaves around a group of young tourists in bright-coloured raincoats and spots two stools and a table at the back. She makes straight for them – they won’t be free long
– and one of the tourists steps backwards and bumps into her, sending her colliding into a man on his way to the bar. ‘Oops –’

He puts a hand out to steady her. ‘Are you OK?’

American. She steps back and looks up at him. ‘Sorry about –’ She stops, has another look. ‘Hey, I know you.’

After a second his face breaks into a wide grin, and she remembers the lovely white teeth. ‘Yeah . . . hey, yeah; the lady with the cat.’ He snaps his fingers. ‘Lizzie,
wasn’t it? Headin’ off on your adventure.’

She’s ridiculously delighted that he remembers. ‘Wow, I’m impressed. And you’re . . . don’t tell me . . .’ What was it? Mike? Dave? Some short name –
Paul? Suddenly she remembers. ‘Pete – the only man in Ireland wearing sandals in January.’

‘That’s me; eccentric Yank,’ Pete says, amused. ‘Actually –’ He takes a step back and points downwards, and Lizzie sees the same sandals, minus the thick
socks.

She laughs. ‘Sandals in the rain – yes, still daft. Are you on your own?’

‘Yup. Came for the session.’ He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out his tin whistle, and she remembers him playing it in the car. ‘Are you livin’ here
now?’

She nods. ‘Yes, this is where I ended up – and you?’

‘I’m workin’ just outside Seapoint.’ Seven miles away.

‘What are you doing there?’

He shrugs lazily. ‘Farmin’, mostly – bit of this, bit of that . . . ’ Lizzie smiles, remembering how much she liked his easygoing manner.

‘How did you get here from Seapoint?’

He grins. ‘Hitched, of course; how else?’

‘Of course.’ She makes a silly-me face. Then she gestures towards the two stools at the back. ‘Look, I’m going to grab those seats for me and my pal – why
don’t you see if you can find another stool and join us, till the music starts?’ Angela will get a big kick out of Pete.