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

Danae wondered how anyone ever managed to resist doing a single thing Belle ordered them to.

‘Yessir,’ she said, and she meant it. ‘That’s what I’ll do. I suppose she needs to know sometime. And if she runs away from Avalon, screaming … Well, I’ll have to get used to that.’

‘If you think Mara’s going to run away screaming when you tell her the truth, you don’t know what sort of girl your niece is at all,’ said Belle.

Back in the post office, Danae phoned Mara’s mobile and left a message.

‘Mara,’ she said tiredly, ‘I’ll tell you all about it. But give me some time to get used to the idea, OK? I’ll tell you, eventually, OK?’

That night, Danae lay in bed and thought about the past. She spent so much of her time trying hard not to think about it, but it was always there, every single month when she drove to Dublin: waiting for her in ambush.

Danae was not a woman for clutter. Her home had a few beautiful pieces she’d picked up over the years – a bit of driftwood from the beach, a lovely earthenware jug made by a local potter, some blue glass that she sometimes sat flowers in during the summer – but there was very little junk. It was the legacy of a childhood spent moving around, never staying in one place for long. Her mother had taught her there was no point in having much stuff because it only got in the way when you needed to get out in a hurry.

‘Better to be able to throw your few bits into a suitcase and be off,’ Sybil would say, as if this was a great gift.

Danae didn’t know any other way to live. The tenement on Summer Hill was where they’d lived the longest. Not that they put down roots there or made friends among the neighbours.

‘We’re better than the likes of them,’ Sybil would say, ‘never forget that.’

She never went to the laundry with the other women on washing day. Instead, she washed her lovely silk lingerie herself, draping it over a chair in front of the fire.

‘They’ll never have seen a pair of silk cami-drawers in their lives,’ Sybil would say, holding up a delicate peach garment with its exquisite lace.

Danae knew what the other women made of her mother. She’d heard them talking: ‘Thinks she’s Lady Muck,’ they’d say. ‘All fur coat and no drawers.’

But they were wrong. Regardless of what she might say, Sybil didn’t really consider herself above everyone else. The reason she tried so desperately to cling to a sense of superiority was because it was one of the few things left to her. Dignity was long gone. The men had taken that.

Big Jim was the first that Danae could remember. She must have been about three or four back then. She’d thought he was her daddy, because they all seemed to live together and other children had daddies. Then one night he came home in his cups and hit her mother such a clatter that she flew clean across the room and landed against the window like Danae’s beloved rag doll before sinking to the floor.

‘Daddy!’ shrieked the little Danae.

‘I’m not your father, you stupid child,’ he’d hissed at her. And then he left.

Danae had rushed to her mother’s side. But Sybil was made of the sort of stuff that said you didn’t cry, you didn’t need to be comforted. No, you got up on your own two feet.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, dragging herself up by the curtains, wiping the blood off her mouth with one hand. ‘Do you know, I think it’s time we moved out of here.’

‘But, but … we like it,’ Danae said fearfully. It was small, but she had her little bed in one corner, behind the chest of drawers, with the curtain around it. And she had her rag dolly, her only toy.

‘No,’ said her mother. ‘The rent won’t be paid now, with him gone. Time we were off.’

Two small suitcases and a small valise was all it had taken. Danae had had to drag one of them, small though she was.

‘Quiet now,’ her mother said as they crept down the stairs. ‘If you wake the landlord, there’ll be hell to pay.’ Sybil laughed, quietly. ‘Whatever’s to pay, we haven’t got the money for it.’

They’d made it out safely that time. Then on to the next place, the next town.

Sybil came from better stuff, she told her daughter. There were many stories about the good times in the past. Lovely times with servants and beautiful clothes and lovely meals. Always enough to eat.

‘Too much,’ Sybil would say. ‘Far too much. The waste!’

Danae’s mouth watered at the thought of food you could waste. They were living on a thin soup made of bones that her mother had beseeched from the butcher, saying it was for the dog. But we haven’t got a dog, Danae wanted to say, but she knew better. Her mother was also adept at digging up a few vegetables here and there from other people’s gardens.

‘They won’t miss them,’ she’d say. ‘Isn’t it a kindness to let someone else share a little of your good fortune?’

Each time they moved, Danae had brought her few books with her. Two on the lives of saints – her mother had been going to throw them out; the dratted nuns had given them to her. ‘Fling them in the fire,’ she’d said, ‘we might as well get some use out of them.’

‘No,’ cried Danae, ‘I like them. I like to read.’

So the lives of the Little Flower and Maria Goretti had been saved, along with the story of Edel Quinn and a copy of Wuthering Heights.

‘You’re a curious little thing, with your head stuck in a book there,’ said Mr Malcolm, one of the nicest men her mother had met up with.

‘I like to read,’ said Danae carefully, not really looking up into his eyes, because you never knew what sort of man Mother might bring home. Sybil never knew herself; that was the problem, Danae was beginning to see.

Sybil had never been what you would call a reliable narrator. All the stories of her past had to be taken with a pinch of salt because she was inclined to make her own role bigger or smaller, depending on circumstances.

When Danae had fallen out of the cot at the age of one, Sybil had barely been in the room at all, for goodness’ sake! A woman couldn’t spend her entire time watching a baby: she needed a bit of time to do her hair. The cat had taken much of the blame, on that occasion. When a chip pan caught fire and the whole house had been in danger of burning down, Sybil had risked life and limb to rescue her darling daughter. Any talk of the fire brigade’s involvement was glossed over, along with their reprimand for having two chip pans and a frying pan all going hell for leather on the one gas stove with the kitchen curtains flapping around nearby.

The fact that Danae had been left with a small burn on one leg was something she should be grateful for. If it hadn’t been for her mother’s speed, she could have been a lot worse off.

Sybil liked to be the heroine in every story. She was never happy until she was in the spotlight. It had taken Danae years to realize all this.

And then into their lives had come kind, jovial Bernie Wilson. He wanted to marry Sybil. Marry her and make an honest woman out of her, now that the baby was due.

Widows with children, Danae heard other women in the flats talking, were more likely to marry again rather than widows without children.

‘Men like ones who’ve been broken in, who know the score. And with chisellers, they know the score.’

But Bernie wasn’t like that: he was special.

Sybil was full of grand names for the baby, something to rival Danae.

‘Could we not have something nice and simple?’ said Bernie, ‘I was thinking Morris, if it’s a boy. That was my father’s name, God bless him. And maybe Alice, if it’s a girl?’

The baby had been Morris. Lying in her bed in the little cottage in Avalon, Danae recalled those years when she’d lived with Bernie and Morris as the happiest of her life. There had been stability then; a stability she’d never known before.

But for all her lack of clutter, on top of Danae’s big old wardrobe there were three boxes of things from the past.

In the first box was the diary she’d been asked to keep.

The second contained her wedding dress, carefully wrapped up in tissue paper – something she’d never been able to throw out.

In the third were her white satin shoes from the day, and her bouquet, also wrapped in tissue paper. She hadn’t thrown it. Somehow, in the wildness of the day and the excitement and the great drama of entering the Rahill family, no bouquet had been thrown.

Perhaps that had been the bad luck that marred the day, Danae thought. But no, the bad luck had been written in her life long before that. The bad luck meant she chose men the same way her mother chose them, for all the wrong reasons. Except her mother had finally found a good one in Bernie. Whereas Danae had made the worst choice of all right at the outset.

When she got home from Dublin, Mara hugged her aunt and said, ‘Whenever you’re ready to tell me, Danae, tell me. I love you, I wanted to understand so there wouldn’t be any danger of me hurting you inadvertently. The last thing I wanted was to upset you.’