The House on Willow Street

Spring (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue (#ulink_9c2d426f-d196-563b-9fe5-1ab1f702383f)

Danae Rahill had long since learned that a postmistress’s job in a small town had a lot more to it than the ability to speedily process pensions or organize money transfers.

She’d run Avalon Post Office for fifteen years and she saw everything. It was impossible not to. Without wishing to, the extremely private Danae found herself the holder of many of the town’s secrets.

She saw money sent to the Misses McGinty’s brother in London, who’d gone there fifty years ago to make his fortune and was now living in a hostel.

‘The building work has dried up, you know,’ said one of the little Miss McGintys, her tiny papery hands finishing writing the address she knew by heart.

Danae was aware the hostel was one where Irish men went when the drinking got out of control and they needed a bed to sleep in.

‘It must be terrible for such a good man not to have a job any more,’ she said kindly.

Danae saw widower Mr Dineen post endless parcels and letters to his children around the world, but never heard of him getting on a plane to visit any of them.

She saw registered letters to solicitors, tear-stained funeral cards, wedding invitations and, on two occasions, sad, hastily written notes informing guests that the wedding was cancelled. She saw savings accounts fall to nothing with job losses and saw lonely people for whom collecting their pension was a rare chance to speak to another human being.

People felt safe confiding in Danae because it was well known that she would never discuss their personal details with anyone else. And she wasn’t married. There was no Mr Rahill to tell stories to at night in the cottage at the top of Willow Street. Danae was never seen in coffee shops gossiping with a gaggle of friends. She was, everyone in Avalon agreed, discreet.

She might gently enquire as to whether some plan or ambition had worked out or not, but equally she could tell without asking when the person wanted that last conversation forgotten entirely.

Danae was kindness personified.

And yet a few of the more perceptive residents of Avalon felt that there was some mystery surrounding their postmistress because, while she knew so much of the details of their lives, they knew almost nothing about her,even though she’d lived in their town for some eighteen years.

‘She’s always so interested and yet …’ Mrs Ryan, in charge of the church cleaning schedule and an avid reader of Scandinavian crime novels, tried to find the right words for it, ‘… she’s still a bit … distant.’

‘That’s it exactly,’ agreed Mrs Moloney, who loved a good gossip but could never glean so much as a scrap of information from Danae. The postmistress was so tight-lipped that the KGB couldn’t have got any secrets out of her.

For a start, there was her name: Danae. Completely strange. Not a proper saint’s name or anything.

Dan-ay, she said it.

‘Greek or some such,’ sniffed Mrs Ryan, who was an Agnes and proud of it.

‘I don’t even know when her husband died,’ said Mrs Moloney.

‘If there ever was a husband,’ said Mrs Lombardy.

Mrs Lombardy was widowed and not a day passed without her talking about her beloved Roberto, who grew nicer and kinder the longer he was dead. In her opinion, it was a widow’s job to keep the memory of her husband alive. Once, she’d idly enquired after Danae’s husband, because she was a Mrs after all, even if she did live alone in that small cottage at the far end of Willow Street with nothing but a dog and a few mad chickens for company.

‘He is no longer with us,’ Danae had said, and Mrs Lombardy had seen the shutters coming down on Danae’s face.

‘Ah sure, he might have run off with someone else,’ Mrs Ryan said. ‘The poor pet.’

Of course, she looked different too.

The three women felt that the long, tortoiseshell hair ought to be neatly tied up, or that the postmistress should maintain a more dignified exterior, instead of wearing long, trailing clothes that looked second-hand. And as for the jewellery, well.

‘I always say that you can’t go wrong with a nice string of pearls,’ said Mrs Byrne, in charge of the church flowers. Many years of repeating this mantra had ensured that her husband, known all over town as Poor Bernard, had given her pearls as an anniversary gift.

‘As for those mad big necklaces, giant lumps of things on bits of leather, amber and whatnot …’ said Mrs Lombardy. ‘What’s wrong with a nice crucifix, that’s what I want to know?’

Danae was being discussed over Friday-morning coffee in the Avalon Hotel and Spa, and the hotel owner, one Belle Kennedy, who was very light on her feet for such a large and imposing lady, was listening intently to the conversation.

Belle had ears like a bat.

‘Comes in handy when you have a lot of staff,’ she told Danae later that day, having dashed into the post office to pick up a couple of books of stamps because the hotel franking machine had gone on the blink yet again and someone hadn’t got it fixed as they’d promised.

‘I swear on my life, I’m going to kill that girl in the back office,’ Belle said grimly. ‘She hasn’t done a tap of work since she got engaged. Not getting the franking machine sorted is the tip of the iceberg. She reads bridal magazines under her desk when she thinks no one’s around. As if it really matters what colour the blinking roses on the tables at the reception are.’

Like Danae, Belle was in her early fifties. She had been married twice and was long beyond girlish delight over bridal arrangements. It was a wonder the hotel did such good business in wedding receptions, because Belle viewed all matrimony as a risky venture destined for failure. The only issue, Belle said, was when it would fail.

‘The Witches of Eastwick were talking about you in the hotel coffee shop this morning,’ she told her friend. ‘They reckon you’re hiding more than pre-paid envelopes behind that glass barrier.’

‘Nobody’s interested in me,’ said Danae cheerily. ‘You’ve a great imagination, Belle. It’s probably you they were talking about, Madam Entrepreneur.’

Danae’s day was busy, it being a normal September morning in Avalon’s post office.

Raphael, who ran the Avalon Deli, told Danae he was worried about his wife, Marie-France, because she had an awful cough and refused to go to the doctor.

‘“I do not need a doctor, I am not sick,”’ she keeps saying,’ he reported tiredly.

Danae carefully weighed the package going to the Pontis’ only son, who was living in Paris.

If she was the sort of person who gave advice, she might suggest that Raphael mention his mother’s cough to their son. Marie-France would abseil down the side of the house on a spider’s thread if her son asked her to. A few words in that direction would do more good than constantly telling Marie-France to go to the doctor – something that might be construed as nagging instead of love and worry.

But Danae didn’t give advice, didn’t push her nose in where it didn’t belong.

Father Liam came in and told her the parish was going broke because people weren’t attending Mass and putting their few coins in the basket any more.

‘They’re deserting the church when they need us now more than ever,’ he said, wild-eyed.

Danae sensed that Father Liam was tired of work, tired of everyone expecting him to understand their woes when he had woes of his own. In a normal job, Father Liam would be long retired so he could take his blood pressure daily and keep away from stress.

Worse, said Father Liam, the new curate, Father Olumbuko, who was strong and full of beans, wasn’t even Irish.