5 Peppermint Grove (11 page)

Ruth felt strangely pleased that she didn’t have such big problems. Ian was spending this day with his wife and family but for the first time in years she didn’t mind – she wasn’t pining for him or feeling odd like she usually did when she spent Christmas with her parents.

It was midnight before the last of the guests had left and Julia was ready for bed. Ruth had already disappeared off to the spare room and Carol was sneaking upstairs with her laptop under her arm in an effort to have a final game with some of her friends in another hemisphere or timezone.

“Goodnight, Mum,” Julia whispered.

“Goodnight, Julia – I thought that you did everything beautifully – you made us all feel like you father was still here, making the day move so smoothly.”

Julia beamed inside. It was those few simple words that completed the day for her. She had kept his memory and Christmas traditions alive in the Perrin household.

Chapter Thirteen

It was coming to the end of Michael’s stay and he was well aware that time was running out and he would have to do something radical if he was to see Lydia. Julia had advised him not to contact her again. He had to wait until she responded to his emails.

But he was losing patience and he couldn’t get on the plane for
Singapore without seeing her.

He looked at his watch and decided to call his sister.

“Hello,” Julia said. She was in a changing room in Monsoon on Grafton Street, trying on a beautifully embroidered silk top.

“Julia, it’s me. Have you heard from
Lydia?”

“I told you that I would call you if I had – she’s probably at the sales like me. Give her some time.”

“But that’s just it – I don’t have much time.”

“She knows when you’re going back and if she wants to see you she will. You have to have a little faith.”

Michael listened and protested but finally agreed that it was better not to contact Lydia.

After Julia hung up, he set about calling Odette to kill some time. He was about to drive to see her in Malahide when his phone bleeped with a text message. It was from
Lydia.

Can meet in
Clontarf Castle at four if suits? L

Michael felt his heart pound. Of course it suited. He would go anywhere to see her and now he only had an hour and a half to wait.

Lydia
wasn’t completely sure why she had sent the text. She had managed to put Michael out of her mind on Christmas Day and for two days after. Peter had made it a magical festival and she could honestly say that it was the best Christmas she had ever spent. She didn’t want to hurt Michael
but she was feeling confident that she could face him and not feel in any way attracted. Peter had not produced a ring but she was sure that it was only a matter of time before he would. Meeting Michael would give her complete closure on her past and leave her free to start the future with a clean slate.

She parked close to the foyer and walked in, brushing her palm along the mane of the bronze lion that stood at the entrance. She was totally cool and calm. She had arranged to meet Peter at eight after he finished work and they were going into town to have dinner with his friends. She could do this, she repeated to herself.

Michael had suggested that they meet in the reception but there was no sign of him. She walked around the corner and into the older part of the hotel. Hidden away in a cosy private alcove Michael sat surveying the menu. She took a sharp breath – the repeated mantras were no use to her now. It had been five years since she had seen him and he had changed very little. But he still managed to floor her on first sight. Her insides turned to jelly and she had to hold onto the back of a nearby couch to prevent her knees from giving way. Yes, she was strong and a different woman to the one that had been in a relationship with Michael but she had been naïve to think that she could just meet him without feeling this way.

Michael looked up and smiled as she approached the alcove where he sat. He rushed over to kiss her. She offered only her cheek.

“Lydia – thanks for meeting me – I was afraid I’d be back on the plane without seeing you.”

Lydia
said nothing. She was feeling too emotional and scared of the words that might slip out if she started.

“Will you have a coffee – or maybe something to eat?”

“A cappuccino is good,” she said with a little nod.

“So how was your Christmas?”

“Oh fine!” she said, raising her brows and nodding her head. Feeling silly.

“And work, how is that?”

“Good,” she blurted.

Michael could feel the sweat build under his collar – she wasn’t making it easy for him and the phrase ‘drawing blood from a stone’ was coming to mind.

“How are your folks?”

Lydia
was finding it difficult to hear what he was saying. The words were there and she could understand them but they made no sense. A waitress came by and took their order but she still sat there feeling like a fragile china doll.

In his nervousness Michael started blurting out everything about his position in
Singapore and his desire to move back home. He was wound up like a performing monkey and didn’t stop to draw breath.

When the waitress returned with the coffee
Lydia picked up the cup gratefully – delighted by the distraction. But her jellylike fingers dropped the cup on the table and the brown liquid spilled all over her boots.

“Lucky they are black and leather!” Michael said, trying to make light of the situation. But the awkwardness wasn’t going away for either of them. Michael soaked up the liquid with paper napkins and asked the waitress for another cappuccino. He didn’t know how to relieve the tension between them – this reunion was not going as he had expected.

“I’m fine now, thanks.” Lydia stood up and shook herself down. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”

Michael stood up beside her and stared deeply into her eyes.

“I still have feelings for you, Lydia – you know that I do – I can’t let my life go by without doing something about these feelings. They are gnawing away at me as I try to sleep at night. Is there any way that you could feel the same?”

Lydia
was confused. She couldn’t deny that she was feeling an incredibly electric passion that she hadn’t experienced since she had last been with Michael. She sat down and he sat next to her. They held hands – unable to look away from each other’s gaze.

“
Lydia, please answer – do you have these feelings too?”

She couldn’t stop the words from falling from her lips. She was in a trance now.

“I do.”

Michael was sitting patiently at the kitchen table waiting for Julia’s return. He was sure that Lydia would consider his feelings and they were on track to reconciliation. When Julia did come through the front door, laden with bags from the Christmas sales, he jumped up and helped her.

“Julia, I met
Lydia – it went great!”

Julia was in the middle of unwinding her scarf but Michael’s enthusiasm made her smile.

“Hold on – give me a minute – I need to take my coat off. Why don’t you put the kettle on and you can tell me all about it?”

He did as she suggested and Julia followed him into the kitchen.

“So when did you hear from her?”

“I couldn’t believe it – she sent me a text shortly after I was speaking to you. Then we went to Clontarf Castle and I swear she was in a daze – totally into me – we were right back to the last time that we made up.”

Julia didn’t want to burst her brother’s bubble but she was astonished to hear all of this – especially after Lydia’s account of the marvellous Christmas that she had spent with Peter.

“And did she say that she wanted to see you again?”

Michael placed two mugs filled with tea onto the kitchen table and took a seat.

“I told her that she should take a holiday in
Singapore in the New Year and that it would be my treat. A week, a month – whatever she felt like. Then we could discuss what we both wanted.”

“Did you not scare the living daylights out her, Michael? It’s not like you to come on so strong.”

“This is Lydia and me we’re talking about – we know each other so well, it’s different.”

“Alright,” Julia shrugged as she took a sip from her mug. “I just don’t want to see you getting hurt.”

Michael was adamant that his feeling were reciprocated.

Julia listened more but didn’t comment. She didn’t want to see either her friend or her brother mess up again.

Chapter Fourteen

Ruth needed somewhere safe to store her special keepsakes. It was one of the last tasks that she needed to do before packing her suitcase for her journey to
Perth in two days’ time. Over the years she had kept her love letters and special mementos in a wooden jewellery box that she had bought from a stall in George’s Street market. The box was carved in India.

She carried the box downstairs and went into the kitchen where her mother sat at the table reading the newspaper.

“Mum, do you have somewhere safe where I can keep some old bits and pieces?”

Without looking up, her mother said, “Your father put a stairs in the attic – you know, one of those ones that you pull down. There are plenty of nooks and crannies up there.”

Ruth turned on her heels and climbed the stairs. She wondered when her father had done that. Was she so consumed by her own life and her affair with Ian that she never even heard about the stairs? She looked up when she reached the landing and sure enough the knobs that used to be on the attic door were now replaced by a flash new handle. She pulled down on it and the stairs were released. She ascended with ease and was surprised to see a new light switch. Her father had done a wonderful clean-up job and all the boxes there were now arranged in order.

She needed to find a spot where nobody would look because there were cards from Ian in the box that she wouldn’t want her mother to read. She went over to the corner and spotted a plank sticking up. She tugged at it gently and it came up in her hands. She put it back into place and it slotted back with ease. This was the ideal place to hide her mementos. As she lifted the board again she noticed a large manila envelope squashed in at the back. Curiosity overcame her and she lifted it out. She could feel the weight and shape of what seemed like three or four slim books inside but the envelope was stuck closed by three pieces of Sellotape. She peeled them back and revealed some notebooks with a sealed airmail letter among them. She pulled out the envelope. Scribbled across front of it in faded, barely legible writing was a name and address:
Charles Walters
,
5 Peppermint Grove Road, Peppermint Grove, Perth, Western Australia
. The handwriting was her mother’s. She had written this letter and then didn’t post it. How odd! Ruth was really tempted to open it but of course that was out of the question.

Her mother had always been the keeper of a diary and, because she had hidden them away with this letter, Ruth presumed that these notebooks were her diaries from her time in
Australia. She really wanted to peep inside but controlled the urge. Diaries were sacrosanct and it would not be right or respectful to open them.

It did mean, however, that her mother had claimed that great hiding place and she would have to put her box of mementos somewhere else.

Ruth found a little nook under the insulation in another part of the attic and put her jewellery box in there. Her mind was ringing with a new curiosity and she wondered what her new life would be like in Australia and if it would be like her mother’s.

She went back down to the kitchen and joined her mother at the table.

Angela looked up. “Do you want tea?” she asked. “I’m about to make myself a cup.”

“I’ll make it for you,” Ruth said and, as she filled the kettle with water she asked her mother, “Where exactly did you live in
Perth?”

“We stayed in
South Perth – all the Irish did at that time.”

“What was the name of the street you lived on?”

Angela chuckled. “Don’t laugh – we lived on Hope Street!”

“Was there ever any
hope
that you would stay in Perth?”

Angela put her palms up to her face and rubbed her eyes. She shook her head and watched as her daughter put the teabags into the china mugs.

“There was a time when I was happy in Perth – a short time, mind you. I had a friend who lived in Cottesloe which was a very beautiful part of the city – you’ve heard of Cottesloe Beach?”

“Of course,” Ruth nodded.

“Well, this friend of mine was Welsh and a great support to me.”

Ruth wondered about Charles Walters and was itching to ask about Peppermint Grove but that would betray the fact she had seen the envelope.

“Steve is organising some accommodation close to the Central Business District – but he said I would most likely choose to live out beside the beaches – he would do his best to get somewhere that was near both.”