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

Anger left to be replaced by love. ‘I don’t know,’ Tess said, snuggling her daughter close, ‘but Daddy and I love you best, remember that. We will always love you best. That’s what Mums and Dads do.’

Tess and Kevin were communicating by text message. It seemed easier. Texting made Tess less likely to want to kill Kevin for his thoughtlessness in forcing her hand with Zach, who was behaving moodily, as if it was all his mother’s fault.

They want to meet Claire, Tess texted.

I’d love that, wrote Kevin.

I want to be there, Tess replied.

She didn’t really want to be there, but she did want to inspect this woman who was going to have access to her darling kids.

A date was set, and in a fit of brilliance, Tess decided that a neutral location would be best for the first meeting with Claire.

Good idea texted Kevin back.

He’d have said ‘good idea’ if she’d suggested a moon meeting, Tess thought with a flash of humour. So it was that she, Kitty and Zach were to meet Claire at the Avalon Hotel over Sunday lunch.

‘Lunch is a good plan,’ said Vivienne. ‘It’s a buffet in there and you’ll all be busy organizing food and such, that way you’ll get round the awkwardness of it.’ She looked at Tess’s wry face.

‘OK,’ Vivienne amended, ‘it won’t be quite as awkward. And it’ll save on cleaning bills too – less chance of you throwing a plate of food all over Kevin if you’re out than if you’re at home.’

Even Tess had to laugh at the image this conjured up.

Then Kevin phoned, sounding worryingly grave.

‘I need to talk to you, Tess,’ he said. ‘Face to face.’

‘Fine,’ she said wearily. ‘Come tonight. After dinner.’

Tess rapidly ran through the things he might have to say: I want to move to Reno to get a quickie divorce so Claire and I can marry? Divorce in Ireland was notoriously slow and took five years. Or would it be: I want to bring Claire to live here too – we can all be happy, surely?

‘Daddy, Daddy,’ yelled Kitty, launching herself at him that evening.

‘Hi, Dad,’ said Zach, and stopped texting to bump fists with his father.

There was talk of how Kitty was doing in school, was she sitting next to Tamara, who was mean and stole her pencils while Miss Stein did nothing about it. Then there was chat about the football with Zach until, finally, Tess shooed her children away, telling them that she and Dad needed to talk on their own.

As a great concession, she made tea and put the plainest biscuits they had on a tray without bothering to open them or even add a plate.

‘So,’ Tess said.

Kevin, sitting on the furthest seat, squirmed a bit.

‘Well, it’s … it’s very difficult,’ Kevin said. ‘I’m not really sure how to tell you this, and over the phone wasn’t the best way, that’s for sure.’

God, maybe he was broke. Maybe he did want to move to Reno and get the quickie divorce so he could marry Claire. Zach and Kitty would be devastated.

‘What is it? Spit it out,’ she said. ‘It can’t be anything worse than what’s gone before. Plus, I’ve got to get Kitty to bed in the next hour, and you know how hard that is.’

‘Claire’s pregnant,’ he blurted out.

There was a brief interlude where Tess thought that, yes, this was a difficult thing to say, and then the information went from her brain down to her solar plexus and she felt as if she’d been punched.

‘Claire’s having a baby?’ she said, and even as she said it she knew it sounded stupid. Claire was having a baby.

‘Yes,’ he said, sighing heavily. ‘It wasn’t planned or anything. She’s on the pill and she was sick one night and …’

‘I don’t want to know the details,’ Tess said. ‘Exactly how pregnant is she?’

‘The doctor says eight weeks,’ Kevin replied.

Tess was silent. Eight weeks. Eight weeks of the baby growing inside her husband’s new girlfriend’s womb, which meant Kevin and Claire had been an item for a lot longer than he’d initially implied. OK, she could be calm and deal with this.

‘How are we going to tell them?’ she said. ‘Zach’s already barely talking to me. He blames me.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I thought maybe you could sound them out, you know, before we announce it, because it really is the end of you and me, and that’s going to be hard for them to take.’

‘I think that when you started going out with Claire, that was the end of you and me,’ Tess replied tightly.

‘Well, a baby makes it absolutely final, doesn’t it?’ said Kevin.

‘Oh my good lord,’ Tess said slowly. ‘Do you realize that this means we have to introduce Zach and Kitty to Claire and explain that she’s pregnant all in the same go?’

‘We don’t have to tell them that she’s pregnant,’ Kevin said. ‘You know, we could let them meet her and then maybe a couple of weeks later say she was pregnant.’

‘Like Zach cannot do sums? He’s seventeen, he’s going to work out that she was pregnant when he first met her and he’s going to be very annoyed at the subterfuge. He’s not a child, Kevin,’ Tess pointed out. ‘Kitty may be too young to understand the ins and outs of it all, but Zach isn’t. We owe it to him to tell him. No,’ she said suddenly. ‘YOU owe it to him. In fact, you can do it now. I’m taking the dog for a walk.’

She simply couldn’t bear to stay near Kevin another minute. ‘I’ll see you at the weekend,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘Bye.’

Out in the hallway, she grabbed her coat and Silkie’s lead and called up the stairs, ‘Kitty, I’m taking Silkie out for a walk. Zach, keep an eye on your sister – Dad wants to talk to you, and then he’s going. I won’t be long.’

She needed to be alone for a few minutes, to cry.

Silkie was thrilled with this unexpected treat, even if she shivered when they got out into the icy winter evening and felt the frost in the air.

In the darkness of the street, Tess allowed herself to cry. As tears ran down her cheeks, melting cool on to her face in the bitter air, she stopped trying to hold it all in.

Tess didn’t want any more children, not really. After all, she had darling Zach and her beautiful little Kitty. Yet as she edged closer to her forty-second birthday, she’d begun to realize that her chances of ever having a child again were growing slim.

That thought brought grief, a type of mourning for something precious now lost.

To add to that grief, here was Kevin, able to have a baby with Claire. Young, fertile Claire. Never before had Tess felt so old.

She walked slowly up Willow Street almost without thinking, some internal magnet pulling her homeward.

It was a clear night and above, the stars glittered brightly. Tess thought of the nights she’d walked up the hill with Cashel at her side, laughing as they walked arm in arm, stopping every while to kiss because it almost hurt not to. Had she ever been that young and foolish?

Chapter Fourteen (#ulink_ba2dd868-da2c-5133-9b02-93bdfc0b3f82)