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

‘What’s happened, Primrose?’ said Suki, using the baby name she’d given her sister.

Tess was Primrose, and Suki was Fleur. Flower fairies, their father said. They used to laugh at the very idea.

Tess burst into tears. She had no words left.

Chapter Nine (#ulink_a5ce66db-b7bb-504f-b1df-04540468deaa)

The radio was the recently heartbroken woman’s worst enemy, Mara decided. Yearning love songs made her want to cry; feisty numbers by female singers made her want to take up kick-boxing and drop-kick Jack into the next century; and talk shows refused to stay away from subjects designed to make her guts tighten.

She’d been prepared as she got into the car for the three-hour drive from Galway to Avalon. She had her iPod ready to go in case the radio signal went bonky and she was left alone with her own thoughts for any length of time.

But the iPod turned out to have been a double-edged sword.

It transpired that there wasn’t a single album in her collection that didn’t have a Jack-shaped imprint in it.

The time she’d listened to Adele while driving for a date with Jack the previous summer; a Kings of Leon song she’d heard on the radio one day when they were having lunch in a pub near the office and he’d stroked her knee and she’d felt so happy, so loved. Every note in every song seemed to be tinged with heartbreak.

She’d switched on the radio instead and found herself hit from another direction by a talk-show discussion about women playing Russian roulette with their fertility.

‘… women do not have all the time in the world,’ said the voice of doom in the shape of a fertility expert, lamenting the fate of women who turned up at his clinic at the age of forty convinced that a baby was merely a credit-card pin number away.

Another contributor challenged his assumption that women were deliberately putting off getting pregnant until it was almost too late, pointing out that many were the victims of broken relationships, who’d found themselves left high and dry in their thirties. If they didn’t manage to meet a new man and start baby-making immediately, their fertile years would have slipped away through no fault of their own.

‘Nobody plans for this to happen,’ said the contributor fiercely. ‘Fertility has a sell-by date and life doesn’t always oblige. Women don’t choose to be in this situation …’

Mara listened numbly, powerless to change the station.

This was her they were talking about. She’d wasted her fertile years on Jack. Worse, she’d let him break her heart so badly, she didn’t think it would ever recover enough to let another man in. What was the half-life of a broken heart? Four years? She’d be thirty-seven, nearly thirty-eight before she could think of looking at another man. If Mr Fertility was to be believed, she’d have to start planning getting pregnant on the second or third date.

A crazy dating setting came into her mind: her and The Man, intimate in a restaurant, getting to know each other … and right before the waiter came to take their order, she’d drop the clanger:

‘No, I don’t really like red meat. I have a younger brother. Where do you come from in your family? Middle child, interesting. Yes, I’m from Dublin but I lived in Galway for a few years. Tell me, would you like a girl or a boy?’

A sign above the road promised coffee, beds and bathroom facilities.

Mara took the exit gratefully and flicked the radio off. If there was a book shop in the town she was stopping in, she was going to buy a talking book. Anything to stop the music and the radio talk.

Mara had forgotten how lovely Avalon was, particularly the hill upon which Willow Street sat. The road steepened slowly and then widened out as the houses dwindled. There were more trees up here, the elegant willow trees and many magnolias that bloomed with a scent almost like honey in the early summer, she recalled. Danae had once told her that the trees on the street were cuttings from the magnolias one of the De Paor ancestors had planted on the Avalon House avenue years before.

The notion that the owner of a big old house would ever give anything away had fascinated: it didn’t fit in with her notion of the Big House people.

‘Avalon House has a gentle soul,’ Danae said mystifyingly.

What was that all about, Mara wondered.

‘What’s more amazing,’ Danae went on, ‘is that the magnolias grew. These aren’t the best conditions for them. But look, the whole of Willow Street is a magnolia paradise. Magnolias and willow trees everywhere.’

On a wintry day like today, it seemed as if the trees were curling around the houses, boughs close to windows as if protecting them from the sea winds.

Mara looked at the big old gates of Avalon House as she turned into Danae’s gravel drive, and was immediately greeted by a flutter of red-and-white wings to her right.

A congregation of hens had gathered, beaks pressed against the wire of their run in anticipation of a visitor, squawking at the tops of their voices.

Only Danae would have a posse of attack hens, thought Mara fondly.

She got out of the car and Lady uncurled herself from the mat at the front door, silver-grey fur shaking with delight at this long-absent visitor.

The hens, outraged at someone else being greeted and not them, began to ruffle up their feathers to twice their normal size, clucking loudly.

Mara let herself into the run and was instantly surrounded by the gang of fluffy-bloomered girls, some angling inquisitive heads at her, others content to peck happily at her boots.

‘Come in,’ said Danae from the back door, ‘or they’ll peck higher up. They are dreadfully nosy and subject to none of the boundaries of normal hens. They want to come into the house these days.’

‘Which one is my hen? Which one is Mara?’

‘The little red one pulling at your skirt,’ said Danae.

‘Hello, henny pennie,’ said Mara, picking her namesake up and holding her firmly under her arm.

The two Maras regarded each other solemnly.

The avian Mara did not look as if she’d been publicly dumped by a man anytime recently. She looked as if she’d had breakfast, an insect or two, and a few tiny stones. All was right in her world.

‘If you had any advice for me, Mara, what would it be?’ the human Mara asked.

The hen reached out and had an exploratory peck at Mara’s jacket. Then another, a sharper peck this time, which hurt.

‘Ouch. Go for what you want in life and don’t take shit from anybody, is that it?’ Mara set her namesake down. ‘I think your hens have the secret of life all figured out, Danae,’ she said, leaving the run to hug her aunt.

‘Who needs a Zen Guide when you could have a Hen Guide,’ Danae laughed.

Even though she’d barely arrived, already it felt comforting and relaxing simply being in Danae’s place. Mara’s possessions were out in the car, but there was no frantic rush to put everything away, no hurry to get the bag unpacked or to work out what everyone wanted for tea. That was how things would have been in Furlong Hill, and it was very restful to be away from the hustle and bustle of her home.

Danae didn’t even mention Mara’s bags. If Mara had turned up without spare knickers or a toothbrush, Danae wouldn’t blink an eyelid. She’d simply have produced something that would do.

She’d made an aubergine and goat’s cheese pie earlier and it was heating in the big cream oven, filling the cottage with lovely aromas, while she and Mara sat on iron chairs outside the kitchen window, with the menagerie at their feet, pecking happily. Danae had brought out a couple of rugs to wrap round themselves to ward off the breeze roaring up from the coast, while a pot of tea sat in a hand-knitted tea cosy on a matching iron table. Mara would have quite liked a glass of wine, but Danae didn’t seem to drink. Mara had never questioned this state of affairs, and she wasn’t about to start now. Tea in mismatched hand-thrown pottery mugs was exactly the right thing to drink as they watched the tide sweep inexorably into the horseshoe curve of Avalon Bay and discussed the world.

‘Would you have been happy with him, Mara, do you think?’ Danae said tentatively.

‘I was happy … I thought I was happy,’ Mara amended. ‘But he didn’t know I wanted to marry him – which is an excuse, really, isn’t it?’ She looked down where a hen was sitting on one of her boot-clad feet. It was strangely comforting, and nicely warm into the bargain. She hoped hens didn’t poop sitting down. ‘I thought he’d know what I wanted,’ she said. ‘I knew all the things he wanted. I knew he wanted to go to Monaco to a Grand Prix more than anything. I’d thought we could do that on our honeymoon. I was thinking ahead,’ said Mara sadly. She’d told nobody else about the Grand Prix. It was such an admission of futile love and she felt diminished even by saying it.

‘Love turns the wisest of us into complete idiots,’ Danae said. ‘We think we need love to complete us. And we don’t. Trust me, we don’t.’

All Mara’s life, Danae had had the knack for saying the right thing at the right time. She’d been the one who told Mara that the beauty inside a person could shine brightly out of them; that mean girls at school might never suffer for their meanness, and wishing for them to suffer was not only pointless but personally painful. All good advice, delivered in a distant and somewhat reserved manner, as if she was making a special effort to say these things to Mara.

It had never occurred to Mara to wonder how her aunt knew all this stuff; that was simply part of who she was: thoughtful and wise, yet somewhat removed from it all. Choosing to keep her distance. Mara had always assumed that Danae enjoyed her almost monastic life.

Until that moment.