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‘Got to be able to look after myself, Mum,’ she’d said, showing off some of her techniques.
Alexei took after Seth: he was gentle, thoughtful and prone to staring into the distance when working out a problem, his mind drifting off to some higher plane just the way Seth’s did.
Seth. All her thoughts came back to Seth. If a person was supposed to get better at things over time, why didn’t that dictum hold true when it came to marriage? Perhaps, she thought, closing her personal email and opening up her business mailbox where fifty new messages had arrived overnight, a visit from Seth’s long-lost half-sister might succeed in lifting his spirits.
He’d been so thrilled when he got the email from Melbourne. Thrilled, with a tiny and utterly-to-be-expected element of shock.
‘I have a sister,’ he’d said in wonderment as Frankie leaned over his shoulder to read the email. As she carried on reading he’d sat staring at the email as if it was a thing of fantasy that might vanish at any moment. ‘I’d always wanted someone else when I was growing up, a brother or a sister. And I had one all along …’
Frankie hugged him, aware even then that she could support Seth over this, yet the words that would help him with the grinding pain of his redundancy escaped her. Her career as a human resources executive was built on a mastery of effective interpersonal skills, arbitration, mediation, appraisals, setting goals and accomplishing them … but when it came to Seth, instinct told her that there was nothing she could do for him. If he was going to crawl out of this misery, he would have to do it by himself. Without her help. And Frankie, who wanted to solve everyone’s problems, hated herself for that.
Chapter Two
Peggy Barry had spent a long time searching for the perfect place: a town far enough away from home for her to flourish – and yet near enough for Peggy to drive to her mother if she was needed. Her mother was the reason she hadn’t left the country altogether, but nobody, including Mrs Barry, had to know that. Peggy wanted to remain in Ireland in case one day her mother would accept the truth and phone her daughter. Until then, she travelled, searching.
Since she’d left home at the age of eighteen, an astonishing nine years ago, Peggy had lived in all of Ireland’s cities and many of its towns and still hadn’t found the perfect place.
She had almost resigned herself to the likelihood that it didn’t exist, that there was no town or village or suburb where she could feel as if she belonged.
‘What are you looking for exactly?’ the owner of the last bar she’d worked in had asked her.
Peggy had liked TJ, even though he wasn’t her type. Mind you, in the past year, nobody had been her type. Men and dreams of a future didn’t appear to work well together. Guys mistakenly thought that tall, leggy brunettes working in bars wanted quick flings and couldn’t possibly be serious about saving money for their own business or about waiting for the right guy to settle down with.
The bar – lucrative, loud, boasting a vibrant Galway crowd – had been quiet once the last stragglers had been sent home. TJ was cashing up and Peggy was cleaning. Her shift ended in half an hour and she yearned for the peace of her small flat two storeys above the dry cleaner’s, where there was no noise, nobody gazing drunkenly at her over the counter and telling her they were in love with her, and could they have two pints, a whiskey chaser and a couple of rum cocktails, please?
‘Sanctuary,’ said Peggy absent-mindedly in reply to TJ’s question as she went from table to table with her black plastic bag, bucket, spray and cloth. She’d already gathered up the ashtrays from the beer garden and put them to soak in a basin. The glass-washing machines were on, the empty beer bottles collected. The floor, sticky with alcohol and dirt, was somebody else’s problem in the morning.
‘Saying “sanctuary” makes you sound like a nun,’ remarked TJ.
‘OK, peace, then,’ Peggy said in exasperation.
‘If you want peace, you need one of those villages in the middle of nowhere,’ TJ said, reaching for another piece of nicotine gum. ‘Sort of place where you get one pub, ten houses and a lot of old farmers standing at their gates staring at you when you drive by.’
‘That’s not at all what I want.’ Peggy moved on to the next table. Somebody’s door key was stuck there in a glue of crisps and the sticky residue of spilt alcohol. Peggy scrubbed it free and went back to the bar, where she put it in the lost property tin. ‘TJ, you can’t run a business in a village in the middle of nowhere and I want my own business. I told you already. A knitting and craft shop.’
‘I know, you told me: knitting,’ TJ repeated, shaking his head. ‘You just don’t look the knitting type.’
Peggy laughed. She seldom told people about her plans for fear they’d laugh at her fierce determination and tell her she was mad, and why didn’t she blow her savings on a trip to Key West/Ibiza/Amsterdam with them? But whenever she did mention her life plan, it was astonishing how often people told her that she didn’t look ‘the knitting type’.
What was the knitting type? A woman with her hair in a bun held up with knitting needles, wearing a long, multi-coloured knitted coat that trailed along behind her on the floor?
‘I want to run my own business, TJ,’ she said, ‘and knitting’s what I’m good at, what I love. I’ve been knitting since I was small: my mother used to knit Aran for the tourist shops years ago. She taught me everything. I know there’s a market for shops like that. That’s what I’m looking for – somewhere to start off.’
‘You told me, but I’m not sure I believe you.’ TJ’s eyes narrowed. ‘What exactly are you running away from, babe? You should stay here. You’re happy, we appreciate you.’
What got a woman like Peggy trailing all over the place looking for peace? A man, he’d bet tonight’s takings on it. When women moved all the time the way Peggy did, a man was usually behind it all.
Women like Peggy, tall and rangy with those steady dark eyes half-obscured by curls of conker-brown fringe and a hint of vulnerability that she did her best to hide, were always running from men. Not that she couldn’t be tough when she was dealing with angry drunks pulling at her clothes and making suggestions. But she was soft inside, despite the outer tough-chick exterior and the black leather biker jacket and boots. Too soft. He wondered what had happened to her.
‘I’m not running,’ Peggy said, straightening up from the final table and facing him squarely. ‘I’m looking. There’s a difference. I’ll know when I find it.’
‘Yeah.’ He waved one hand wearily. The soft women who’d been hurt by men all said that.
‘It’s not what you think,’ Peggy insisted. ‘I’m looking for a different kind of life.’
But as she walked home that night, hand wrapped around a personal alarm in one pocket of her leather jacket, she admitted to herself that TJ was sort of right – only she would never tell him that. He thought she was running away from a man, and in a way she was. Except it wasn’t the ex-lover TJ undoubtedly imagined. She was running away from something very different.
On a beautiful February day, shortly after leaving the bar in Galway, an Internet property trawl led Peggy to Redstone, a suburb of Cork that somehow retained a sense of being a town.
On the computer screen, the premises near Redstone Junction had it all: a pretty, Art Deco façade, a big catchment area and lots of other shops and cafés nearby to bring in passing trade.
Now, as she drove her rattling old Volkswagen Beetle slowly through the crossroads, she felt a sense of peace envelop her. This might, just might, be the place she’d been looking for.
It helped that it was such a lovely day, the low-angled winter sun burnishing everything with warm light, but she sensed that she’d have liked the place even if it had been bucketing down with rain. There were trees planted on the footpaths, stately sycamores and elegant beeches with a few acid-green buds emerging, giving a sense of the country town Redstone had been before it merged with the city. The façade of one entire block was still dedicated to Morton’s Grain Storage, pale brick with classic 1930s lettering chiselled into the brickwork itself, although the grain storage was long gone and the ground floor had been converted to a row of shops that included a pharmacy, a chi-chi delicatessen-cum-café and a clothes shop. Peggy parked the car and walked back through the little junction, loving the black wrought-iron street lights with their curlicues where the lamps hung. It was impossible to tell whether they’d been installed a hundred and fifty years ago or were a more recent addition.
She loved the trees and the flowers planted diligently around them, probably by a team of local people involved in the Tidy Towns competition, she thought. They’d obviously chosen a host of bulbs, for now buttery yellow early crocuses and pale narcissi were sweetly blooming in wooden troughs at the base of each tree along both arms of the crossroads.
Nobody had ripped up the flowers or stubbed cigarettes out in the earth. The people here obviously admired how they brightened up the street.
Even before she’d looked over the premises for rent – a former off-licence, which had unaccountably gone out of business – she’d felt a kind of peace in Redstone.
The vacant property was a double-fronted shop with two large rooms out the back and a flat upstairs, should she wish to rent that too, the estate agent added hopefully.
The downstairs would need only cosmetic work, but the upstairs needed a wrecking ball, Peggy thought privately. The fittings were old and hazardous. Besides, living over the shop was a mistake, she knew that after working as a waitress in a Dublin bistro and living upstairs.
‘Downstairs is enough for me,’ Peggy said. ‘I don’t have a deathwish.’
The agent sighed. ‘Ah well, plenty of people are looking for bijou doer-uppers,’ he said over-confidently.
‘As long as the floor’s safe and they don’t come crashing down to my place when they’re using the sander,’ Peggy replied. ‘The landlord’s responsible.’
The agent laughed.
Peggy eyeballed him. What was it about a woman in tight jeans and leather jacket that made people think you were both ignorant of the law and a pushover?
‘I mean it,’ she said.
The deal to rent the shop was signed five days later.
She found a small cottage for rent at the end of St Brigid’s Avenue, on a 1950s estate of former council houses, about a mile away from the shop. The house wasn’t overly beautiful with its genuine fifties decor, but it was all she could afford.
Peggy celebrated her new life with a quarter-bottle of champagne and a takeaway pizza in front of the cheap television-cum-DVD player she’d bought years ago. She slotted Sleepless in Seattle, her favourite film of all time, into the player, sipped her champagne and toasted herself.
‘To Peggy’s Busy Bee Knitting and Stitching Shop,’ she said, happily raising her glass before biting into the pizza. She’d achieved her dream and her life would be different from now on. The past was just that: the past. Then she settled down to watch Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks nearly but not quite miss each other, and she cried, as she always did.
The process of renovating the shop had to be accomplished as quickly as possible so she could begin trading. Peggy knew exactly what she wanted and loved the hard work of rolling up her sleeves and getting into it – discussing the finish of the shelving with Gunther, the carpenter and shopfitter, and working with a sign-maker to get precisely the signage she had in mind.
‘You certainly know what you want,’ the sign designer said. ‘So many people dither for ages over different styles.’
Peggy had smiled at her. ‘I’ve been planning this for a long, long time,’ she said.
But in spite of all the activity over paint, wood finishes and what shape to have on the cast-iron sign that hung at a right angle to the door, what Peggy hadn’t expected was to fall quite so much in love with Redstone itself.
She loved the small-town feel of it all, though it was nicer than any of the many towns she’d lived in through her life.
She loved the way people greeted each other cheerily.
‘How’s the leg, Mick?’ one man had yelled at another at the crossroads one morning as Peggy made her way to the shop.
‘Ah, you know,’ replied a tall elderly man with a stick and a small dog bouncing at the end of a lead. ‘Not up to line dancing yet, but some day. Did you ever get that thing sorted out?’
‘No,’ said the first man solemnly, adjusting his briefcase so he was holding it under the other arm. ‘It’s the timing, isn’t it? Still, I might yet!’
The lights changed and the man with the dog limped off in the direction of the small shopping centre tucked snugly away behind Main Street.
What was the thing, Peggy wanted to know. Why wasn’t it sorted yet? She had to control herself not to run and ask Briefcase Man, who was crossing the road and heading off in the opposite direction.
What was this madness that possessed her? Wanting to know about people? It was unlike her. She’d spent her entire life avoiding getting to know anyone. That way, they didn’t want to know you. Peggy was the girl who’d live in a town for a year, blending into the background as far as possible, remaining on the fringes of everyone’s lives. She’d spent too long as a solitary child to learn the gift of easy friendship as an adult. After a while, when she’d had enough, she would simply pack up her belongings and drive away. She had never allowed herself to put down roots. But for some reason here in Redstone she had an urge to belong, and belonging meant meeting people.
Because she was nice and early, there was plenty of parking outside the shop. She felt her spirits lift as they did every time her old blue Beetle shuddered to a halt at the kerb and she looked up to see the old-fashioned swing sign that read Peggy’s Busy Bee Knitting and Stitching Shop.
Nobody looking at this modest establishment with its fresh lavender paintwork and unfinished inside could imagine the sheer joy it already brought to its owner. It was still something of a miracle to Peggy. The miracle had involved years of hard work, hard saving and loneliness as she’d gone from job to job, getting experience in wool shops when she could, doing accountancy courses at night so she’d know how to run her own business, and working in bars or restaurants when she could get nothing else.
Now, she felt that all the sacrifices had been worth it. She, Peggy Barry, who had never been on any school’s most-likely-to-succeed list, had finally found exactly what she’d wanted all her life: a business doing what she loved best and financial independence. She was her own boss and she would never answer again to any man.
The money from her grandmother’s will – a grandmother she’d never even met – had been a godsend. The day the cheque arrived she had banked it in a high-interest account and then left it there, watching it grow year by year. Without that, she wouldn’t have been able to open her own shop.
Surveying her empire as she got out of the car, Peggy ran through the sums in her head. It would take only one or two more days at the most for Gunther, the carpenter, and Paolo, his apprentice, to finish. She’d considered several quotes before giving the job to Gunther. His had not been the cheapest, but he’d been the most professional of the carpenters she’d talked to, and he hadn’t given her a flirty grin, the way the young guy with the lowest price had.
As soon as the woodwork was finished, Peggy mused, she would clean all the dust from the shop and start painting the walls the same lavender as the outside—
‘How’rya, Peggy,’ yelled Sue from the bakery across the road as Peggy put her key in the shop door.
‘Hello, Sue!’ she called back.
Sue and her husband, Zeke, were always in at five in the morning. By the time Peggy arrived at half past seven, they were already halfway through their day’s work, baking organic breads and muffins to be delivered to shops and office canteens around the city.
Peggy enjoyed talking to them about the difficulties of setting up your own shop. And they’d been so helpful.
‘Advertise in the Oaklands News, don’t bother with the Redstone People. They charge twice as much and will mess up your advertisement every time,’ Sue advised. ‘Our ad for “hand-crafted cakes” turned into “dead-crafted cakes”. There wasn’t exactly a rush for them after that.’
‘What’s your web presence like?’ said Zeke.
‘A bit basic, but I’m working on it.’
‘Good. In the meantime, stick up your cards everywhere,’ he added, admiring the lavender-coloured notecards Peggy had commissioned with the shop’s name and pen-and-ink illustrations of wool and fabrics along with the shop’s address and fledgling website. ‘Be shameless. Ask everyone who has a noticeboard if you can put one up. Introduce yourself everywhere, even if you’re shy.’
Peggy had blushed to the roots of her dark hair. She’d spent a few days casting glances over at the bakery before Sue had marched across the road with a tray of muffins and said, ‘Welcome to Redstone. I thought I’d give you a week of staring at us like Homeland Security before I’d make a move. We don’t bite. Well, I might bite the odd time, but I only do it to Zeke and he’s used to me because we’re married.’
She had made it seem the easiest thing in the world to walk across the road and make friends but Peggy’s usual ability to put up a pleasant front seemed to have deserted her. It hadn’t ever been real, that was the problem. Years of moving from town to town had obviously taken its toll. The older you got, Peggy figured, the harder it was to put on a brave face.
That evening, Gunther had suggested that Peggy join him and Paolo for a Friday-night drink in the Starlight Lounge. Peggy, worn out cleaning the back room which was full of junk and damp, had said yes straight away.
She was hungry, too tired to cook, and after a week of Gunther and Paolo, she was very fond of them and thought it might be nice not to eat on her own for once.
The Starlight Lounge was a quirky establishment about a quarter of a mile from the shop. The name and the decor didn’t quite match. The façade resembled a working men’s pub where women were only allowed in to clean up, while the inside turned out to be a confused combination of Olde Oirish Pub and fifties Americana, complete with mini jukeboxes in the booths.
‘My friend owns it,’ said Gunther when he saw Peggy looking round with amusement. ‘It’s a mess, I know. He was experimenting with styles …’
She admired the line of tiny disco balls on the ceiling behind the bar.
‘Crazy.’ Gunther shrugged. ‘He has no money now to do anything, but the bar food is good.’
Peggy chose a semi-circular booth with a round Formica-topped table. On the wall behind a picture of Elvis hung beside a watercolour print of a forlorn Irish mountain. Gunther’s friend had clearly been trying to appeal to a very diverse audience, but it worked. Despite the mad decor, it was welcoming.
Gunther grabbed menus and studied his with total concentration while a languid bargirl lit the red lamp on the table. Paolo stood at the bar gabbling in Italian to some friends.
Glorious aromas drifted from the kitchens and Peggy realized she hadn’t eaten anything but an apple since breakfast.
‘What’s good?’ she asked Gunther.
‘The fish and chips,’ he said.
Peggy’s mouth watered. ‘Sounds good to me.’
By eight o’clock, Peggy had eaten cod coated in feather-light batter, and was considering a dessert, while a stream of Gunther and Paolo’s friends had come and gone after joining them for a drink.
Gunther was in no rush: his wife was at her mother’s with the children and Paolo was meeting his girlfriend in town at ten. The jukeboxes, disco balls and the house speciality cocktail, Starlight Surprise, were working their magic, and a few people were dancing close to the bar. Paolo was talking to a tall, athletic guy who’d arrived at the table. He couldn’t take his eyes off Peggy.
‘David Byrne,’ he said, leaning in to shake her hand.
‘Peggy Barry,’ she said, smiling.
He was good looking, but not really her type. Despite fighting it, she’d always been drawn to bad boys and David Byrne was clean-cut and good looking, the sort of guy who’d been captain of the football team, head boy and undoubtedly Pupil Most Likely to Succeed. He probably helped old ladies across the road, which wasn’t a bad thing – she helped old ladies across the road. But for some reason, those sorts of guys never lit her pilot light.
Closer, she could see how handsome he was, with dark hair, blue eyes and a stylish suit – even though he’d taken the jacket off and loosened his tie. Despite the clean-cut handsomeness, there was something indefinably interesting about him that Peggy, who’d spent years watching people from the sidelines, couldn’t pin down.
And then, when Paolo slipped out of the seat to take a phone call, David slipped in. She found herself sitting next to him. He kept staring at her as though he’d been searching for something all his life and she was it.
Utterly disconcerted, Peggy stared back. His eyes weren’t blue, as she’d first thought, but a green-tinged azure, and around the black of the pupil were striations of amber like shards of sunlight. She couldn’t look away. His gaze wasn’t predatory or sleazy. It said: Finally, I’ve found you.
‘Paolo says you just moved into Redstone,’ David said, smiling.
His voice was deep, gentle. And kind. How could you tell that from a voice? You couldn’t, but still, he had a kindness about him that drew her in. Jolting herself back to reality, she said: ‘Yes, I’m new to the neighbourhood. I’ve taken over the old off-licence – now, how could a place that sells drink go out of business!’
Oh heck, she thought, now I sound like a deranged boozer who needs alcohol 24/7. And to prove it, I have two cocktail glasses in front of me!
She tried to surreptitiously shove the empty cocktail glass behind the ketchup and sugar containers.
