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

‘Kitty, upstairs and get into your jammies,’ said Tess. ‘And don’t forget to brush your teeth. Then you can come down and watch twenty minutes of Disney Channel before it’s time for bed, OK?’

‘OK, Mum,’ said Kitty, running across to give her father a huge hug on her way out.

Instead of launching into whatever was worrying him as soon as Kitty was gone, Kevin stared deep into his cup, as if the secrets to life were contained therein.

‘I know what you’ve come to talk about,’ Tess said. ‘I understand. I mean, it’s difficult, obviously it’s going to be difficult, but other people have been through worse. We’ll manage somehow.’

Kevin looked up at her, incomprehension in his eyes. ‘You know?’ he said.

‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘I guessed: the finances. We have to do something, don’t we? I really think I’m going to have to close the shop and get a job somewhere else.’

‘Oh Lord.’ He went quite pale, which was no mean feat because Kevin’s face was always weathered from being outdoors. ‘That wasn’t what I came here to say,’ he said.

‘Go on, then.’ Tess took another biscuit. He’d got them from the deli. A local lady named Madeleine made them and she really was the most marvellous person at baking. Her Christmas cakes were much in demand; the last couple of years she’d baked one for Kevin and Tess, wonderfully decorated with sugarcraft Santas, reindeers and penguins – all manner of Christmas things that Kitty and even Zach adored.

‘It’s not about money,’ Kevin said. He took a huge breath. ‘I’ve met someone else.’

‘What?’ Tess stared at him in utter bewilderment.

‘I didn’t mean it to happen this way,’ he said, ‘it just did. I don’t want to hurt you, Tess, or the children, but the fact that we separated and the fact that I met someone means that separating was the right thing to do.’

Her language skills finally came back to Tess. ‘What do you mean, “the right thing to do”?’ she said. ‘We separated to see if we wanted to be together …’ she could barely get the words out, ‘… not to go looking for other people.’

‘I wasn’t looking,’ he said. ‘It just happened.’

‘Nothing just happens,’ hissed Tess.

‘Well, this did.’ He ran his hands through his hair. It was always spiky. No hair product would ever make it flatten down and it grew like crazy. Once a month he went to the barber and got a short back and sides: three weeks later, it was wild as a bush again.

‘Who is she, this someone you met?’ Tess said. She pushed her tea and biscuits away from her. She didn’t want any form of comfort as she took in this horrendous turn of events.

‘Her name is Claire. Her parents moved to Avalon about a year ago. She’s lovely. She’s an illustrator – you’d really like her.’

‘Oh God, I can’t believe you said that!’ Tess said. ‘I’d really like her? Why? Is she like me? Does she have kids? Is she married? Divorced? What? Tell me.’

‘She’s a bit younger, actually,’ Kevin said. ‘And no, she doesn’t have children – although she’d love to. One day.’

And that’s when Tess thought she was really going to lose it. ‘A bit younger?’ she asked, enunciating every word carefully. ‘Exactly how much younger?’

Kevin moistened his lips. ‘She’s twenty-nine,’ he said.

‘Oh my God, twenty-nine!’ Tess got up and began to pace. ‘She’s twenty-nine. She’s Claire. She’s an illustrator. Don’t tell me: she’s got long blonde hair and wears cool skinny jeans and goes to rock festivals?’

‘Well …’ began Kevin.

‘She is, isn’t she? Why? Why did this happen?’ Tess said.

‘I did some work in her mother’s house and I met her. And as to why it happened …’ He held his hands out in supplication. ‘I don’t know why. All I know is that I met her, we had an instant connection and we went out. We’ve been out three times now – not here though. We’ve never been out together in Avalon. I didn’t want people to talk,’ he added, his tone pleading. ‘You know what this town is like. We went into Arklow, but people are going to see us together soon and I wanted you to know.’

‘And it’s serious?’

Kevin couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘it’s serious.’

‘Do you know, I thought you were coming up here to tell me that you were having even more financial problems than we had been already and … oh …’ Tess shook her head. ‘I didn’t know what you were going to say, but not that. That wasn’t on the list.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘The thing is, how do we tell the children?’

‘What do you mean, we tell the children?’ she demanded.

‘Well, we have to.’

‘We don’t have to,’ said Tess grimly, ‘you have to. And do you know what, Kevin, right now I think you’d better go. Just go. Get out of here.’

He got up and crossed the room, turning back at the door to say, ‘I’m really sorry, Tess. I never meant for it to turn out this way …’

‘Just go,’ she said wearily.

After he’d gone, she sat with Kitty through twenty minutes of something on the Disney Channel, although Tess would never have any memory of what it was: she was in shock. Instead, she held Kitty’s hand and tried not to cry. She wouldn’t let it all out in front of her daughter, she couldn’t. This would devastate the children. Zach had hated it when his father had moved out, and even though Kitty had coped in her own childlike way by asking for a kitten, she was like all young kids and hated change.

Tess had worked hard to make the separation appear perfectly normal by saying things like: ‘Grown-ups sometimes live apart for a bit and then it all works out again.’ How could she explain this? Nothing would explain this. Her family had broken into two pieces – and it was all her own fault.

At two a.m., when she had finally given up on sleep, she rang her sister in Massachusetts.

‘I don’t understand it,’ Tess whispered, not wanting to wake the children. ‘What’s gone wrong? We tried counselling. All the magazines and books say that when people love each other, counselling fixes it. When that didn’t work, I read that separation can shock you back into realizing what you might lose. You know: it’s make-or-break time. Kevin didn’t want to try that, it was me who said let’s give it a go, separation could work.’

‘That’s bull and you know it,’ said Suki, who was an expert markswoman in shooting straight. ‘Listen to me, Tess. I may have screwed up more relationships than you’ve had hot dinners, and I made a mess out of my only marriage, but I get the two facts that have been eluding you for the past few months: separation never leads to anything but break-up and people change. When you met Kevin, you were vulnerable.’

They were both silent and the gulf of the Atlantic Ocean felt huge. The two of them were the only ones who really knew just how vulnerable Tess had been back then. Vulnerable almost wasn’t the word. Tess had felt so horrendously alone. Her sister was in America, her father was dead, Cashel had gone and there was nobody else in her life.

‘You needed to be rescued. Now, you’re a grown-up. If any rescuing needs to be done, you do it yourself. So you’ve changed. When Kevin met you, he loved being the strong silent type who could take care of you. But you don’t need him the same way any more. That’s probably why he’s fallen for this Claire girl. She thinks he’s the strong man who’s going to take care of her, and he loves that.

‘And what those magazines and books of yours didn’t tell you,’ Suki added in a dictatorial voice, and Tess could imagine her sister saying this in a lecture on the differences between the sexes, ‘is that men are far less likely than women to stay alone after a break-up. I can’t recall the precise statistic off-hand, but a high percentage of widowers remarry within a year of their wife’s death. The same isn’t true of widows. Men don’t like being on their own, honey, and you sent him off into the wide, blue yonder on his lonesome.’

‘He was living in the granny flat behind his mother’s house,’ Tess hissed, ‘in the same town as me and the kids. He said he couldn’t wait for the separation period to be over because the minute we were apart, he knew we ought to be back together!’

‘What about you?’ Suki asked.

She’d always known the right and hardest question to ask, even when they’d been kids.

‘I was changing my mind,’ Tess admitted slowly. ‘It’s been lonely.’

‘I know what that’s like,’ Suki said quietly on the other end of the phone, so quietly that Tess only thought she’d heard it. Any other time, she’d have dived in and asked Suki what was wrong, being the good sister, trying to help Suki sort out another tangled romance in her hectic dating life. But tonight she wanted it to be about her. Tonight, Tess needed Suki to put that fabulous brain to use and help her sort this mess out in her head.

‘I was used to being married, Suki. Used to waking up with Kevin, used to the stuff he did. Now, I have to do everything – the grocery shopping, the cooking, sort out all the school stuff, work out all the bills. And Kevin gets to play couple-in-love with his child girlfriend. Whom I’m going to really like, apparently.’

Tess exhaled and lay back on her pillows miserably. ‘I still can’t believe he said that.’

‘Honey, I wish I could help you but—’