My Mother's Secret (28 page)

‘Promise?’

‘I promise,’ he said. And this time he kissed her on the lips.

Chapter 25

Steffie was relieved that Davey had left her in Cody’s. She’d been afraid for a moment that he was going to drag her forcibly to the car. She was surprised at how angry he’d suddenly become. If someone had told him he wasn’t who he thought he was, she was quite sure he wouldn’t have been able to continue on as though everything was OK. Because right now, nothing was OK. She knew she was the same Steffie who’d got out of bed that morning, who’d driven down with the anniversary cake in her car, who’d laughed and joked with everyone at the party … but she was a different Steffie too. She was a Steffie who wasn’t as closely linked to everyone as she’d thought. And who wasn’t linked at all to Bobby, who was sitting across the table from her. Although, weirdly, Bobby had been the one she’d ended up confiding in. She felt the sudden ache of missing something that, strictly speaking, hadn’t even existed in the first place.

She took the final sip from the Irish coffee that Liam had insisted on bringing out to them after they’d finished the regular ones. She’d demurred at first, saying that she’d had more than enough to drink already, but Liam had said they weren’t very strong and that the warmth would do her good. And it had looked so pretty with its smooth cream topping that she hadn’t been able to resist. She had to admit that the whiskey combined with the coffee had worked exactly as Liam had predicted and had spread a warm, relaxing glow through her body.

‘Feeling better?’ Bobby asked her.

She nodded.

‘You look it,’ Tom said. ‘You’ve got some colour back in your cheeks.’

She smiled at him.

‘So what d’you want to do now that you’ve given Davey the boot?’ Bobby asked.

‘I can’t go back to Aranbeg,’ she said. ‘Not yet. It’s too hard.’

‘I understand,’ said Tom.

‘D’you think there’s a room for me at your guest house tonight?’ she asked.

‘Oh pet, I wish there was.’ Bobby’s voice was full of sympathy. ‘But it’s a case of no room at the inn. It’s full. Like everywhere around.’

‘Don’t you want me to drive you home later?’ asked Liam. ‘I don’t mind doing that for you.’

‘Um – that’s not going to happen. Not tonight, at any rate.’ Tom, who was looking at his mobile, interrupted her. ‘I’ve just had a text from Davey. The entrance to Aranbeg is impassable.’

‘You’re joking!’ Steffie was shocked.

‘Apparently it’s completely flooded,’ said Tom. ‘He says you’re not even to try to get home.’

‘Has everybody else left? Or are they marooned there?’ she asked.

Tom glanced at the phone again. ‘He doesn’t say.’

‘Crikey.’ Steffie grimaced. ‘Roisin will be going ballistic at how her party has turned out.’

‘It wasn’t Roisin’s party,’ said Bobby. ‘It was your parents’ party.’

‘Not as far as Roisin was concerned,’ said Steffie. ‘You know what she’s like, Bobby. She was the one who insisted on the whole surprise thing. If she’d told them what she was planning to do, they’d have baulked at it and none of this would ever have happened.’ Her voice trailed off. It wasn’t fair to blame the day’s events on Roisin, but it gave Steffie a fleeting moment of
Schadenfreude
in thinking that she herself had been right about the surprise party not being a good idea.

‘It’ll certainly put the poor girl off party planning for a while.’ Tom grinned. ‘Can you imagine them all stuck back at Aranbeg? Where are they going to sleep, for one thing?’

‘Oh, she’ll have that organised already,’ said Steffie. ‘All the same, I should’ve used my brain before I got all huffy and stormed off.’

‘I’m glad you’re thinking like that,’ said Bobby.

‘I’m saying it, I’m not sure I’m actually meaning it,’ Steffie confessed.

‘I wish you could stay with us,’ said Tom. ‘But I doubt Mrs Brannigan would let you kip down on the sofa.’

‘You can stay here, of course,’ said Liam.

‘Here?’ She stared at him. ‘In the restaurant?’

‘In the flat,’ he said.

‘But … there isn’t room,’ she said.

‘Of course there is. You can take the bedroom and I’ll sleep on the couch.’

‘Liam! I can’t—’

‘Yes you can,’ he interrupted her. ‘It’s only for a night. And it’s not like I’ve been run off my feet this evening and need to collapse in my bed.’

She hesitated. She’d been enough of a bother already. But Liam had sounded sincere in his offer and she couldn’t think of an alternative.

‘That’s really nice of you,’ she told him. ‘You’ve been beyond good to me already. But I’ll be the one to sleep on the couch.’

‘Steffie—’

‘Honestly. There’s no need to be all self-sacrificing and macho about it. I’m the one who barged in so I’m the one who should take the couch and be grateful.’

‘OK.’ He shrugged. ‘Whatever you like.’

‘At least it’s somewhere for you to stay,’ said Bobby. ‘And tomorrow …’

‘I’ve no idea what I’m going to do tomorrow,’ said Steffie.

‘Things will have settled down a bit by then. You’ll feel differently,’ said Tom.

‘You think?’ Steffie’s tone was bleak.

‘You’ll be better in yourself,’ he amended.

‘Tom’s right,’ said Bobby. ‘Tomorrow is another day, as the magnificent Scarlett O’Hara in the best book and movie in the world would say. In the meantime, could you bring us the bill, Liam? We’d better go, it’s getting late.’

‘It’s on the house,’ Liam said.

‘Absolutely not.’ Bobby looked horrified.

‘My treat,’ said Liam. ‘At least you guys kept me busy this evening.’

‘Hardly,’ said Tom.

‘I’d have been sitting around like an eejit otherwise,’ Liam said. ‘I much prefer that I was able to cook for someone.’

‘And rescue a damsel in distress,’ added Steffie.

Liam grinned. ‘You can’t say that your family haven’t kept me occupied tonight.’

‘Though I really shouldn’t stay either,’ said Steffie.

‘You’ve already accepted my limited hospitality,’ said Liam. ‘You can’t run away again.’

‘Please let us pay.’ Bobby stood up and took his wallet from his jacket pocket.

‘No,’ said Liam. ‘You can spread the word about my wonderful restaurant instead.’

‘I’d do that anyway,’ said Bobby. ‘It was a fantastic meal. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Liam walked with the two men to the door of the restaurant and handed them a giant golf umbrella before waving them into the night.

‘It’s normal Irish rain out there now,’ he told Steffie when he returned. ‘Heavy, but not sheeting it down. So hopefully they’ll only get a bit wet, not totally drenched.’

‘Perhaps I could get to Aranbeg after all. Although …’

‘If the gate is flooded, it’ll stay flooded,’ Liam pointed out. ‘It hasn’t actually stopped raining. Anyway, we’ve agreed you’ll stay here.’

‘You’re being incredibly good to me,’ she said.

‘I’m known for my compassion towards rain-sodden maidens.’ He grinned. ‘Do you want to go upstairs to the flat? Have another coffee? Tea? Whatever?’

‘I’d better not have any more coffee or I’ll start walking on the ceiling,’ she said. ‘If you have stuff you need to do, please go ahead.’

‘I need to tidy up a little,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you go on up and relax?’

Steffie felt slightly awkward about being in Liam’s flat alone, but she realised that he had things to do and that she’d be in the way. So she nodded and left him to his own devices.

It was very difficult, she thought, to be in someone else’s home and not have a nose around. As she’d observed earlier, the living room was small and sparsely furnished, but the cardboard boxes were probably full of possessions that Liam hadn’t yet arranged around the flat. The one personal item she could see was a family photo of Liam, Michelle and their parents. Liam and Michelle were still children in the photo and it had been taken long before he’d embarked on whatever diet had seen him lose his excess weight. She picked it up and studied it. His eyes were the same, she decided, still that intense indigo blue. And his hair was as dark as ever. But otherwise he was almost unrecognisable from the boy in the photo. Steffie didn’t want to be fattist; while being slender herself, she didn’t think everyone should look the same, but there was no doubt that the weight loss suited Liam.

‘I’ve changed.’

His voice, in the doorway of the flat, startled her so much that she almost dropped the photo.

‘Sorry,’ she said as she replaced it on the shelf. ‘Sorry.’

‘Good catch,’ he said as he walked into the room. ‘Not entirely surprising, though. I remember you being pretty OK at ball games and rounders when you were younger.’

She laughed, although she was still shaking from having been caught with the photo in her hands. ‘I’d forgotten the rounders,’ she admitted. ‘I’d forgotten that you bothered to play with us.’

‘My mum insisted.’ He made a face. ‘She thought the exercise would be good for me. I was crap.’

Steffie nodded. The games had been played at Liam and Michelle’s house. Two families, both with children around the same ages, lived nearby and Mrs Kinsella had often invited them, along with Steffie, to play. Steffie couldn’t remember who organised the rounders but it was a constant feature of being at the Kinsellas’. She recalled the excitement of hitting the ball high into the air, and pelting around the garden trying to score runs. She’d covered the ground well because of her long legs, and despite her being the youngest everyone had wanted her on their team. Her desirability was in contrast to Liam, whose hand-to-eye co-ordination was awful and who pounded from post to post, often getting hit out. She hadn’t thought much about how he’d felt when the kids would shout at him to try harder, or indeed what it was like to be picked last every time.

‘You’d probably be better at it now,’ she said.

‘I doubt it,’ he told her. ‘I’m still absolutely useless at anything that requires hand–eye co-ordination. Except chopping things with a knife.’

‘All the same, you’re fitter.’

‘And you’re very polite.’ He smiled. ‘I had to get fitter. I was eating myself into an early grave. By the time I left school I wasn’t just fat, I was obese.’

‘Oh, I don’t think—’

‘I was,’ he said firmly. ‘And I was having all sorts of health problems. But in college I met with a dietician and worked out a plan. Then I started exercising.’

‘What exercise do you do?’

‘Boxing,’ he said.

‘Boxing? You? Seriously? Doesn’t that require really good co-ordination?

‘It’s not the same as rounders or cricket,’ he replied. ‘I’m surprisingly adept at it. Maybe there’s something buried in my psyche that means I like hitting people on the jaw.’

‘I hope not.’

‘Ah, no, what I do is very technical.’ He grinned. ‘Obviously you’re punching someone but it’s not as aggressive as you think.’

‘Hmm.’

‘I work out in the gym too,’ he said. ‘I have to confess I’m not great at that. I prefer the competitive thing.’

‘You weren’t one bit competitive as a kid.’

‘I hadn’t found the right thing to be competitive about.’

‘And so …’ She walked to one of the sofas and sat down. ‘You then went into a business that must be a terrible temptation to you every day.’

‘Not really.’ He sat on the sofa opposite. ‘I had a dysfunctional relationship with food but now it’s much healthier. And in the restaurant I try to make healthy taste good. It’s not that I don’t use butter or cream or anything like that, but I like to make my meals nutritionally good without going overboard on the sugary, fatty stuff.’

‘It’s obviously working if you’re winning awards,’ she said.

‘My new-found competitive nature.’

‘The French onion soup was amazing,’ she said.

‘You should try my Moroccan roast lamb. Or my Basque chicken.’

‘Perhaps sometime,’ she said.

‘Definitely.’

They sat in silence. But it was a companionable silence. And Steffie felt the most relaxed she had all day.

Chapter 26

Colette was in Aranbeg’s upstairs bathroom. She’d filled the sink and every so often she splashed water around so that anyone walking by would hear it. But she wasn’t washing her hands. She was looking at the ring that Davey Sheehan had bought Camilla Rasmussen, and which she was currently wearing on her engagement finger.

It was a rock, no doubt about it: a large centre diamond surrounded by six smaller ones set into golden petals, so that the whole thing looked like a glittering flower. Beneath the halogen light of the bathroom cabinet it sparkled and shimmered, throwing pinpoints of colour on to the sink below. It was the most beautiful ring she’d ever seen. Far more beautiful than any of the three she’d been given herself. When she’d been younger she’d imagined what it would be like to be engaged to Davey and had visualised herself wearing the ring he’d given her; when she’d seen the one he’d planned to give Camilla nestling in the blue velvet of the box, she hadn’t been able to help herself. She’d sneaked away to the bathroom and slid it over her finger, thinking that it wasn’t a bad fit although possibly half a size too small for comfort. But it suited her. It was the perfect shape for her long fingers. She held her hand out in front of her and looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. And she felt her heart splinter. If only Davey had bought it for me, she thought. If only he’d thought I was the one who deserved such a magnificent piece of jewellery.

But it isn’t you, she told herself, even as she moved her hand so that the diamonds continued to sparkle gloriously beneath the light. It wasn’t back then, when we were kids, and it isn’t now when we’re grown-ups. It doesn’t matter that he insisted on accompanying you in looking for Steffie. He’s in love with someone else. He loves her so much he wants to marry her. He bought this magnificent ring for her. As far as he’s concerned, you’re just the sad little cousin who used to come and stay.

She sat down with a thud on the toilet seat and put her head in her hands. She knew she was being foolish but she couldn’t help herself. Her childhood crush on Davey Sheehan had always been a lot more than that as far as she was concerned. She’d fallen in love with him even though he was her cousin and, God help her, she was still in love with him. And the madness was that he didn’t know – he’d never know – how much he meant to her. That she measured every man she ever met against him and found them wanting. That because of him, she was still single. Despite the three engagement rings of her own.