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

‘I saw enough of what drink does to people,’ was all Elsie would say. But she didn’t mind Mara opening a bottle of wine for Jack when he was there, and never said a word about the new wine glasses coming into the Wilson home. They were bigger and more delicate than the ones Elsie kept in the good china cupboard, which were exactly like the ones they had for events in the bingo hall, where Elsie might have an orange juice.

With shame, Mara remembered feeling that her family were somehow inadequate beside Jack’s. No martinis before dinner, no talk of books and plays, no proper wine glasses.

How stupid and disloyal she’d been. Her family were wonderful, while Jack had turned out to be a complete fake.

She pushed open the sitting-room door.

‘Mara, my love!’ Her mother got to her feet and in a second, Mara was in the familiar and comforting embrace.

Elsie smelled of Blue Grass perfume, the only scent she’d ever worn. ‘I like it. Why would I want anything else?’ she always said.

‘I sat down to watch Dr Phil and he was talking about family – how’s that for coincidence?’

‘Oh, Mum,’ said Mara tremulously. ‘It’s lovely to be home.’

That evening, there were many conversations about Jack, Tawhnee and what had gone wrong. Opinion was mixed in the Wilson household about whether Jack was a cheating, conniving pig (Mara’s father), or an innocent man hijacked by a sultry beauty (Mara’s mother). Mara found herself trying to keep the peace between the two warring factions. She abandoned the effort when her brother Stephen mentioned that he’d met Tawhnee on a trip to Galway, where he’d joined Mara’s work crowd in the pub. He thought she was ‘hot’.

‘How can you say she’s hot?’ demanded Mara, vexed. ‘She ruined my life!’

Avalon had dulled the pain for her: here, it was as fresh as ever.

‘Exactly my point,’ said Elsie, who was bending over the oven, checking on her scones. Nothing like a bit of home baking to mend pain.

‘Don’t go letting Jack off the hook, now,’ insisted Mara’s father. ‘He was the one who took our beautiful daughter and ruined her.’

‘He didn’t exactly ruin me, Dad,’ said Mara, getting anxious. ‘Ruin’ sounded like a throwback to the days when evil men had their way with young women and then left them in the lurch. After which no decent man would have anything to do with them.

Maybe it had been a mistake to tell them everything. But how could she have kept it from them?

‘I never liked him,’ said Stephen from his position on the floor, where he was getting mud out of his football boots.

‘You never said a word to me!’ said Mara.

‘He didn’t like to, I’m sure,’ said her father grimly, shooting Stephen a fierce glare.

It appeared that after Jack’s visit to Dublin, the Wilson household had done nothing but speculate as to when Jack would ask Mara to marry him.

‘Well, she is hot, you can’t deny that, Mara,’ said Stephen, head still bent over his boots, oblivious to the dark looks from his parents.

Mara could tell from the tone of his voice that he was visualizing Tawhnee. She’d seen this happen to many other men, many other times. Jack included. Why was it that tall, slim women with enormous breasts had this effect on men? Was the male of the species really so easily distracted with physical things?

‘Does she have any sisters …?’ asked Stephen.

‘Oh God,’ muttered Mara crossly. He was only twenty-three, after all. Twenty-three-year-olds did not necessarily think with their brains. They weren’t always loyal, either.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Stephen, recovering. ‘I wasn’t thinking. Really sorry, Mara.’

‘Oh, it’s all right, Stephen,’ Mara sighed. ‘You’re not alone: I don’t think there was a single man in Kearney Property Partners who didn’t lust after her. In the beginning, Cici said I wasn’t being fair because she was so beautiful. Cici reckons beautiful women have it really tough because all other women suspect them of stealing their men.’

‘That Cici is a bright girl,’ said Elsie firmly. ‘She knew which she was talking about, that’s for sure, certainly when it came to that bitch.’

The other three members of the family gasped in shock: Elsie Wilson did not swear or utter vulgarities of any kind, so for her to come out with such an expression was highly unusual.

‘Ah, Mum,’ said Mara, conscious that the pain she felt on her behalf had poor Elsie in a muddle. ‘There’s no need to be upset. Cici wasn’t defending Tawhnee, she said all that before Jack ran off with her. Plus, he probably wasn’t the man for me anyway.’

‘He certainly didn’t deserve you,’ declared her father with thinly veiled anger.

‘I know,’ said Mara soothingly, and she realized that instead of her family consoling her, she was trying to console them. That was the way it had always been in the Wilson family: wound one of them and you wounded them all.

By bedtime that night, Mara decided she needed to get away early next morning or she’d go mad. All evening her father had alternated between treating her with kid gloves and telling her men were like fish in the sea.

‘Or buses,’ said her father. ‘Always another one along soon.’

Mara thought of the number 45, which came up their road. It had been notoriously unreliable ever since she could remember. If men were like the number 45, she was in big trouble.

‘Dad,’ began Mara, desperate to change the subject, ‘I wanted to ask you something. It’s about Danae …’

Seeing the look that passed between her parents, Mara could tell she wasn’t going to get any more from him than she had from her mother.

‘Do you have five minutes?’ Danae asked Belle on the phone the following morning. ‘I need to see you.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Belle, with the confidence of a woman who knew that minions would do her bidding in her absence. ‘I’ll drop over, will I?’

‘No, not here,’ said Danae.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Belle suspiciously.

‘I’m fine, but I need to talk to you.’

‘You sound rattled,’ said Belle, her suspicions growing. ‘Are you sure something’s not wrong?’

‘No,’ said Danae.

‘Oh, right,’ said Belle. ‘Something is wrong, but you’re not going to tell me over the phone. Fine, when can you come over?’

‘I was thinking of shutting the post office now,’ said Danae.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the saints!’ said Belle in alarm. ‘It must be something very serious. We’ll go into a corner of the coffee shop – no, better yet, the bar. I’ll have a big pot of green tea ready. No one will disturb us in there.’

‘Actually, I think I might have a strong coffee,’ said Danae.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Belle said again. ‘I’ve never seen you drink coffee in your life.’

‘Today is one of those days.’

Danae felt nothing like her normal self. She hurriedly shut the post office. It was half ten in the morning, hours away from her normal half-hour lunch break. She didn’t think she’d ever done anything like this in all the years she’d been postmistress; not even that time when she had the terrible flu and had to keep rushing in the back to go to the bathroom. No, nothing stopped her doing her duty. But today, she simply couldn’t cope. Not after the phone call from Morris.

She’d had an inkling of what Mara was up to when she’d casually said, ‘I’m going to set off for Dublin today, drop in and see Mum and Dad, stay overnight. I feel a bit guilty, you know, ’cos I did come straight to you from Galway, and you know my mam, she worries, she needs to see me.’