What She Wants (19 page)

‘We all envy you so much,’ said a swaying Betsey, who’d come from a publicity launch in London for a new perfume and was half-plastered on free champagne, not to mention reeking of free scent. ‘You’ll have a blast.’

Hope, still exhausted from the stress of packing up the house and the misery of having to hand in her notice in the building society, sincerely hoped she would, although she felt that a week in a health farm was probably what she needed to relax her.

‘You will keep in touch, won’t you?’ begged Yvonne, who was unexpectedly tearful at the thought of Hope leaving. ‘I’ll miss you, you know.’

Hope hugged her. ‘ ‘Course I will. I’ll be back in no time at all. And you can come and visit us. Matt tells me it’s a beautiful place.’

He’d talked longingly of sitting on the coast on the Beara Peninsula looking over the rugged Atlantic, listening to the sound of the curlews as you created perfect prose. And he’d told her how Redlion nestled in a valley that protected it from the cruel winds that blew in off the sea. ‘Idyllic’ had been his word for it.

It didn’t seem very idyllic at the moment, though. Hope began to think that the original idea of Matt driving her Metro via the ferry to Ireland ten days earlier to get the cottage shipshape hadn’t been such a good idea. Travelling with the children was always a nightmare and she could have done with some help. It would also have been nice to have some reassurance that it didn’t rain all the time and that this downpour was unusual she hoped.

But Matt had insisted that someone had to do some work on the cottage because the lawyer had mentioned it was a bit ‘uncared for.’ And he’d also been keen to meet the artistic community people he’d been corresponding with, in relation to working in their centre, as soon as possible.

Hope tried to concentrate on the road, which wasn’t easy with Millie yelling. Their progress since landing had been slow to say the least. Just when Hope was panicking about

being stranded without their luggage, her five suitcases had finally turned up. Battling through the small but incredibly crowded airport with two fractious children, she’d picked up the sturdy four-wheel drive vehicle she’d booked in advance and had just managed to hump all their cases into it without giving herself a hernia when Millie decided to throw a tantrum. A visit to the ladies, bribery involving biscuits and juice, and the purchase of a cuddly bear in an Aran sweater had all been useless. Millie had decided she was not in a good mood, wailing so hysterically that a cluster of little old ladies disembarking from a coach at the airport doors had looked at Hope as if she was wearing a sign saying ‘unfit mother.’ True to form, Millie had yelled and cried at full blast for the last hour as her harassed mother read the map, worked out where she was going and made it out past the lunchtime rush in Killarney. Trying not to mow down pedestrians had been the biggest problem. People in Killarney just seemed to walk out in front of the car, not caring that she was a few feet away from them in a deadly piece of all-terrain vehicle with bull bars on the front. Did they look right and left before crossing the road? No, they just threw themselves blithely into the traffic, hopping over puddles and treating the passing cars like nuisances. The Irish were all mad, she decided darkly. She wished Matt had been able to collect them but as the Metro had burst a gasket and was currently languishing in the local garage, it made more sense to rent a car because they’d need transport until the Metro was fixed. Toby sat quietly in the back, strapped in carefully. Millie, feeling liberated because the car seats were coming later, kept trying to remove her seat belt until Hope had to stop the car and attach her even more firmly. Outraged at being unable to move so freely, Millie decided to roar even more. Finally, Hope could stand it no longer. The rain had practically stopped and they all needed a bit of fresh air. A

few miles outside Killarney, she stopped the car by a gate at the side of the road, got out and unhooked the children.

It was windy and there was still a fine mist of rain that dampened the children’s hair immediately, but Millie didn’t care. Delighted to be free, she bounced over to the big rusty gate, surprising the herd of muddy black and white cows huddled next to the ditch.

‘Cows,’ she said as happily as if she’d just discovered a herd of rare beasts.

Toby clung to his mother nervously. He wasn’t keen on big animals and when he’d been taken to the zoo, he’d sobbed at the sight of the elephants. Millie, on the other hand, had had to be restrained from clambering up the monkey enclosure, waving her ice cream enticingly.

‘It’s all right, darling,’ Hope said now, hoisting Toby onto her hip and carrying him to the gate. ‘They’re friendly.’

As if to disprove this point, one of the cows lurched towards the gate in investigative mode.

Millie squealed with delight and Toby hid his face in Hope’s shoulder, shuddering with fear.

‘Mummy, will we have cows?’ demanded Millie excitedly.

Hope had absolutely no idea. If cows were included in the property, Matt hadn’t mentioned them. His memory of Uncle Gearoid’s had included a quaint cottage covered with old fashioned roses and an expanse of wild looking garden out the front. He’d been a bit woolly on the other details although the lawyer’s letter had mentioned four bedrooms, a kitchen with a genuine iron range and a bathroom with an antique claw foot bath. It all sounded lovely, but then, so did novels about the Middle Ages where nobody mentioned the pain of not having dentists and how women routinely died in agonizing childbirth. Hope thought about her lovely, only-just-paid-for modern freezer and the shower in their house in Bath where you’d swear you were being stabbed with millions of exquisite tiny needles when you turned it on at full blast. She didn’t hold out much hope for a quaint cottage having such a marvellous plumbing

innovation. But then, who knew? Uncle Gearoid could have been a modern sort of man with a passion for Bang and Olufsen stereos, giant kitchen equipment with icemakers, and a Jacuzzi. The unknown was exciting, Matt had said before he left. However, on the phone since then, he’d sounded a bit dreamy and short on facts about things like plumbing and installing two phone lines for the e-mail so he could correspond with the office. Men liked the unknown, women didn’t, Hope decided. ‘It’s so unspoiled,’ he’d said the night before over a crackly phone line. ‘You’re going to love it.’ Mind you, he’d thought she was going to love the black lace thong underwear he’d purchased for her birthday on a trip to Bristol. Sam had insisted that if you wore thongs for two weeks, you never went back to normal knickers again. Hope had given up after two days. Still, they had the house in Bath. If the rural writing retreat proved too rural, she could always up sticks and bring the children home. So, they had rented it out for a year but Hope was sure she’d find a way round that. That’s what lawyers were for. ‘Come on,’ she said now in bright Mummy-speak. ‘Back to the car, we’ve got a bit longer to go and then you can explore our new home!’ The children clambered back into the car and Hope strapped them in, thankful they’d fallen for her faux enthusiasm. Back on the road, she admired the scenery and tried to pretend that it didn’t look very bleak. Beautiful, certainly, with those majestic purple mountains looming in the horizon and a faint mist covering them like icing sugar rained down by some heavenly cook. Everywhere was astonishingly green in the rain but a tad desolate. Not really like the idyllic, sun-drenched place she’d seen in the Discover Ireland travel book. So far, Hope couldn’t imagine the sun ever shining in this remote part of the world. She liked visiting romantically

desolate spots for cosy weekends, enjoying going for a walk in the woods as long as there was a glorious hotel complete with log fire in the bar when they got back so they could roast their wet socks, giggle over a couple of hot ports and plan what to wear for dinner. Real life desolation all the time was a different proposition. The scenery around her looked so … well, untamed. The countryside around Bath was green too, but it seemed more laid out and more normal. Here, the fields were all sizes with stone walls and briar hedges going off in all directions. The drivers were all mad too: she’d nearly been forced off the road by some little old man in a van who could barely see over the dashboard and at least six flashy new cars had overtaken her in exasperation on dangerous bits of road, obviously furious to be behind a hire car going at a respectable forty miles an hour. At a tiny crossroads with no signpost at all, she consulted her map again. If it was to be believed, she had to take the right turn, follow the road for a few miles and then she’d come to a town. She drove carefully until she came to the first signs of habitation. ‘Quaint, untouched,’ had been Matt’s verdict on Redlion, the small town where their house was situated. ‘Really quaint,’ Hope thought grimly as she drove into it a few minutes later. She had to turn off before she got to the main street, therefore not seeing all of the place, but on first viewing with the rain pelting down in a sheet, Matt’s quaint town was anything but. What she could see consisted of a winding line of terraced houses, one battered pub, a tiny post office, a convenience shop with security bars that looked capable of stopping a tank, and a caravan park with its signpost hanging drunkenly from one corner. Thinking she must be in the wrong place, because this could hardly be the pretty place Matt had described, she came to a hump backed bridge. An elderly green water pump over the bridge signalled that she was, indeed, in Redlion. Matt had mentioned

both the bridge and the pump and according to him, she had to take the next left which was a winding road that led away from the town to her new home. It was official, she decided: she was now in The Back Of Beyond.

With an increasing sense of doom, Hope drove down a narrow lane with a grass spine in the middle and big puddles of mud either side. She felt the same way she’d felt when she and Sam had gone to big school for the first time: a little bit excited at the thought of being a big girl, a bit more excited about her school uniform with the dark blue jumper, and absolutely terrified at the thought of all those other girls with their normal families who’d think that she and Sam were weird having no parents and only a mad old aunt to pick them up from school. She rounded a corner, past a giant monkey puzzle tree that bent out over the lane, and then she saw it. Her new home. If the outskirts of Redlion had been given a grievous battering with the ugly stick, Curlew Cottage had escaped. Gloriously pretty, it sat snugly in a wilderness of hedges and beech trees and looked as if it been drawn by an illustrator who was trying to imagine a home for the Seven Dwarves. From the small windows with their latticed shutters to the fat wooden door with black iron fittings, it was adorable. The pretty climbing rose that Matt had waxed lyrical about had been cut back and, as it was November, there would have been no flowers clustering round the door anyway, but that was the only negative thing she could see. It was a bit run down but what would you expect from an elderly man living here on his own for years? Hope sighed with relief. At that exact moment, an unseen cockerel loudly proclaimed that this was his territory and that they better back off. Toby shrieked with fear and Millie shrieked with delight. ‘Let me out Mummy,’ she roared, desperate to explore. The cockerel crowed again.

An attack hen, Hope decided, feeling her sense of humour return.

The rain had stopped, so she let the kids out, warning them to stay close. Toby didn’t need any telling and clung to her trouser legs. Millie, on the other hand, raced off after the cockerel.

‘Come back!’ yelled Hope nervously with her city-mother mentality. ‘Right now!’

Millie wavered long enough for her mother to grab her anorak hood. With Millie reined in and wriggling crossly and Toby sucking his thumb nervously, they made their way to the front door.

‘Where’s Daddy?’ Millie said with interest.

Good question, Hope thought. She’d hoped he’d be waiting for them, ready to run out, throw his arms around his family and say he’d missed them desperately for the past ten days. She’d been watching too much TV, she reckoned. Husbands only ran out in thrilled delight on made-for-TV movies or romantic dramas. They never did it in real life except when they were famished and you’d just been at the shops buying food.

She knocked at the front door. No reply. After a moment, she turned the handle and the door creaked open a fraction. Should they go in or not? She dithered until an ominous rumble in the sky signalled an end to the brief interlude of dry weather.

Rain started pelting down again like a tropical storm. ‘Gosh, isn’t this exciting,’ Hope said gaily to the children as she pushed the door fully open.

Inside, the adorable cottage scenario went awry. The first thing to hit Hope was the cold. Still warm from the steamed-up atmosphere of the car, the cool November air had barely registered with her at first. Now, standing inside the cottage she was struck by an arctic sensation. Stone floors, stone walls and no visible source of heat made for a combination of bone-chilling damp and cold. In fact, everything in the cottage looked damp and cold. Instead of the

hand-crafted wooden furniture, lovingly made frilled curtains and air of sparkling cleanliness she’d prayed for, she was faced with a big bare room with no curtains at all. The only furniture was a coffee table and two elderly tweedy armchairs with disturbing dark, oily patches on the cushions. Hope held the children’s hands more tightly as she gazed around her in horror. This wasn’t fit to live in: it hadn’t been painted for years and was completely filthy. The cobwebs that festooned the ceiling were the least of her worries. Matt had made the entire family emigrate and their new home wasn’t a cosy cottage but a dishevelled shed. She wanted to cry. Her thoughts were broken by the sound of a car engine and a slamming door. ‘Millie, Toby! Sorry I’m late, love. Just got caught up with the gang!’ Matt rushed into the room, hair plastered down on his forehead, wearing an unfamiliar sludge brown jacket, mud splattered corduroys, Wellington boots and a welcoming expression. He gave Hope a brief warm kiss and then picked a child up in each arm, hugging them to him. ‘Did you miss Daddy?’ he demanded. ‘Yes,’ said Millie huskily, burying her little head lovingly in his shoulder. ‘Lots and lots and this big.’ She demonstrated how much she’d missed him by holding her arms wide. Hope didn’t want to break up this cosy family thing. She felt like the bitch from Hell about to remind Snow White that it might not be a good idea to shack up with seven small men who were looking for a cheap housekeeper, but it had to be done. Besides which, Matt hadn’t thrown his arms around her. ‘Matt,’ she said in her everything-in-the-garden-is-rosy voice so as not to alarm the children, ‘we need to talk about the cottage.’ ‘Isn’t it lovely,’ he said. ‘So naif.’ ‘What?’ she said, rosy garden voice disappearing to be replaced by sour-milk voice. ‘You know, unspoiled,’ he said artlessly.