The House On Willow Street (49 page)

And then his mother had stopped saying that and stopped mentioning Tess at all, and Cashel hadn’t asked, too proud to lower his guard. It wasn’t until he arrived back in Avalon eighteen months later, Tess’s image still engraved on his heart, that he found out why. Riach was the one who told him.

“She’s married now—nice fella, carpenter, you’d like him,” he said.

Riach was never one for beating about the bush.

“I’d like him, would I?” said Cashel drily to his brother. “Yeah, sure, love him already.”

“Well, you had your chance,” said Riach.

“No I didn’t,” said Cashel. “She made that very clear by what she did.”

“God, but you’ve turned into a hard man, Cashel Reilly,” said Riach. “I wouldn’t like you for an enemy.”

And Cashel had felt bad then. But when he’d found out that Tess was pregnant, that was the final blow. He’d never forgiven her for breaking his heart. Her actions showed that clearly he was the only one who’d really believed in their love.

As he drove through the town square, Cashel was astonished to find that the café was open and busy. The woman who owned it was very chatty and charming, and it was hard to resist the fabulous pastries that sat invitingly on the counter.

Brian was less scared of Cashel than he used to be. Until recently, Cashel wouldn’t have noticed, but he was beginning to pay more attention to the effect he had on people around him. It was that minx Mara, he thought wryly. She had a way of speaking to him like an equal, reminding him he was
an ordinary man after all. Being Master of the Universe was all very well, but when you came back to your hometown, the place you’d run around as a grubby schoolboy—then you came back to what you’d been all along.

“Grand morning, isn’t it?” he said to Brian behind the counter.

“Er yes, lovely, lovely. No rain forecast or anything,” stammered Brian.

“Tell me, Brian,” said Cashel, “have I ever said a cross word to you in all the time I’ve been coming in here?”

“No, Mr. Reilly,” said Brian.

“And you can call me Cashel.”

“Fine, Mr. Reilly . . . er, Cashel.”

“Seriously, have I ever said a cross word? You seem terrified of me.”

Brian busied himself being a barista, giving himself time to think. Finally, he said, “It’s just, you know, you have that look.”

“What look?”

“The look of someone who’s in charge and, and could buy up the whole town and everything,” Brian said fearfully.

“I’m not going to buy up the whole town,” said Cashel, exasperated. “I’ve bought Avalon House, that’s all. And if I’m going to live there, we are going to have to get to know each other better, Brian, so that when I come in here, you’re not scared of me.”

Brian looked as if he couldn’t quite believe this.

“Fine, Cashel,” he said, and put the Americano down on the counter. “Would you like a pastry?” he added daringly. He’d never asked this before.

Cashel did not look like the sort of man who’d so much as glance at a sugary pastry, as if such beautified cake things would be beneath him. No, he looked like he might tear
bricks apart with his bare hands and bite them in half like a Viking raider.

“Do you know what?” said Cashel, scrutinizing the selection. “You’ve tempted me. I’ll have that apple Danish over there.” He looked up at Brian. “How come you have such nice cakes, today of all days.”

“The recession,” Brian said simply. “People are willing to work all the hours to get their businesses going. These are made out the Dublin road by a Polish couple—they do amazing cakes.”

“I love entrepreneurs,” said Cashel, smiling.

“Me too,” said Brian.

His mother would be delighted. He was doing conversation—so there.

On New Year’s Day, Zach and Kitty were going with their father to Dublin to visit an indoor funfair. As a family, they’d often done this, but this would be the first time they’d gone without Tess—and with Claire.

Even though she’d never really liked the funfair and hated watching Zach and Kevin on the terrifying roller coaster, today Tess wished with all her heart that she were going. Not necessarily with Kevin or Claire, but with Zach and Kitty. It felt wrong to start the new year by having her children go somewhere to enjoy themselves without her. There was a huge hole inside her at the thought that, from now on, they’d be enjoying things, seeing things, going places without her.

Separation was so hard. If only she’d known what an abyss lay ahead of her, she mightn’t have suggested it. But then, she thought, this was a new year, there was no point looking back. She fixed herself her second cup of coffee of the day and looked at Silkie, who was lying in her bed in
the kitchen, looking forlorn, big, dark eyes pools of misery.

“Will we go for a walk?” she said.

It was icy cold but still a beautiful day with the low winter sun bright in the sky. Cashel was around the left-hand side of the house, looking up at windows that were broken and thinking what a complete nightmare it was all going to be. Freddie the builder had explained that it took a long time to get proper windows made, in the original style, with double glazing.

“It’s going to be difficult,” he said. “It can be done, but it’s slow and it’ll cost you.”

“That’s fine.” Cashel waved him away. “Do up an estimate, I want to know the price of everything. No little add-ons afterward, mind,” he said grimly.

“No, no, not at all,” said Freddie, chastened. “I’d never do a thing like that.”

Suddenly, a dog sprinted around the back of the house, some sort of miniature greyhound, a streak of fawn, with lolloping ears. The dog launched itself straight at Cashel in delight. Jumping and licking and desperate to be petted, barking crazily.

“Down, girl, down,” said Cashel. “Calm down now.” He held the dog against him and petted its quivering flanks. “You’re a beauty, aren’t you.”

“Silkie, where are you?” called a voice, and Cashel stiffened. He’d recognize that voice anywhere. He turned and saw her coming toward him: Tess Power.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said and stopped a distance away. They hadn’t spoken for nineteen years.

“Yes, it’s me,” he said. “I own this now.” Then he felt sorry for such a cheap shot.

“I know,” she said tautly, then she called the dog: “Silkie,
come on, we’re leaving. I’m sorry, I never come here, I wanted to today for some reason, I don’t know why.”

“You never come here?” Cashel said, intrigued.

“No,” she said. “Why would I want to?”

He walked closer to her, Silkie dancing around him.

Tess glared at her dog, who was behaving so disloyally, cavorting with the enemy.

“Silkie, come here,” she hissed, but Silkie wouldn’t obey, delighted to have found somebody new to play with.

“Silkie’s lovely,” said Cashel. “How old is she?”

“About six,” said Tess. “At least, we think so. She’s a rescue dog.”

“That’s funny,” Cashel said, “rescue dogs can sometimes be a bit scared of strangers.”

“She’s not frightened at all, but you’re right,” she said grudgingly, “many rescue dogs are wary. How do you know that? You don’t have dogs, surely? Not with all the traveling you do.”

“No,” he said, “I don’t have dogs any more. I did, though, Do you remember the little Jack Russell?”

“Pookie,” she said, and laughed.

“Yes, Pookie.”

And suddenly they both laughed, thinking of the adorable Jack Russell, named after the Irish word for ghost because his fur was snow white, apart from one fawn ear and one little diamond-shaped fawn patch on his hip. He’d been quite a character.

“He used to love it up here,” Tess said. “Sometimes your mother would bring him up with her, and when you’d come home from school, you and Suki would run around playing hurling on the lawn. I wasn’t allowed to play because I was too young, so I’d sit with Pookie and talk to him and tell him stories.”

“I remember,” Cashel said. “You were such a quiet little thing and you’d sit there petting him. He loved you. I used to think I should give him to you, but then I’d look at him, curled up on my bed beside me, fast asleep, and I couldn’t bear to do it. I’d have been heartbroken to part with him.”

“I never knew you’d even thought about it,” Tess said, stunned. “I mean, dogs are great company,” she added, recovering. “I’d be all on my own today if it wasn’t for Silk—” She stopped herself. What was she doing? It was ludicrous, telling him something that personal.

“But why, why would you be on your own?” he said. “You have two children, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said quietly, “Zach and Kitty.”

“Where are they today?”

“They’re with their father and his girlfriend. They’ve gone to the funfair in Dublin.” Tess knew her face must look bitter and twisted even as she said it.

“Right,” Cashel said. “That must be difficult for you.”

“Yes,” said Tess, and she really thought she might cry.

This was all too surreal, standing outside her beloved old house, with the man she’d once loved, the man who’d turned his back on her. She wanted to break down and cry.

“I’d better go, Cashel. I’m sorry for trespassing, I won’t do it again. I simply wanted to see the place one last time.”

She reached over and grabbed Silkie and clipped her lead on. Silkie wriggled, furious at being restrained when she wanted to bounce around and look for rabbits and be petted by the strange man.

“You don’t need to go,” Cashel said gruffly. “Please, stay. Come up any time, really. It was your home.”

“It’s yours now,” said Tess as she marched down the avenue. “Goodbye, Cashel. I wish you luck with it.”

In New York, Redmond Suarez sat at the very elegant New Year’s Day lunch he’d been invited to and looked around the table, cataloguing his guests. Two face-lifts for the soap actress over there, probably had the first one when she was thirty, the second at forty. That was the trick with young actresses, have your first face-lift when you were very young so that the muscles hadn’t had a chance to become weak. Nobody would ever notice the first face-lift. Then, when you had the second one, you looked like you were aging amazingly. Add in Botox, a bit of filler, perhaps some Sculptra to keep the plumpness in your cheeks, and you could stay looking like you were thirty until you were sixty. Although, by the time you got to sixty, people would have worked out you’d had the work done, no matter how many times you trotted out the
I have good genes, eat well, drink lots of water and exercise
schtick. Genes that good were pure science fiction.

Still, she looked pretty amazing, beautiful enough to have snagged the fifty-something-year-old billionaire on her right.

“Oh, darling you must sit beside me,” she’d said, completely ruining the hostess’s table plan.

Clever girl, Redmond had thought approvingly; she’d obviously realized there were too many attractive women present to let her date out of her sight. Manhattan was a jungle when it came to holding on to single rich men.

There was a couple on the verge of divorce at the table. Redmond had heard all the details. The husband had been having an affair with the nanny. Really—such a cliché! They were a wealthy couple, not terribly famous, but sufficiently well known that if details of his fling were to become public it would prove a huge embarrassment both to them and to the stockholders of his publicly listed company. That was probably why they were here together today, Redmond
figured: to quieten the rumors. But you didn’t need to be a body language expert to sense the distance between them.