She’d seen him a handful of times, furtively edging his way across the courtyard before industriously nudging the bin lid off and helping himself to the day’s leftovers. Sure, his untidy habits left a lot to be desired, but he did keep the mouse population down and she’d loved Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox as a child. The fox was staying.
‘Aisling, go and check on that lazy lump Ita. I can manage here now, I need to write my shopping list.’
Aisling knew when she was being dismissed and she knew better than to protest. Ita was supposed to be making up Room 9, the double Mr and Mrs Miller had vacated. The thought of geeing her up did not put a spring in her step as she climbed the stairs to the third floor. There was no lift in O’Mara’s and for those that couldn’t manage the stairs, Room 1 was the best option. Aisling reckoned running up and down between floors all day was more effective and economical than any gym. Her heels had the bonus of not just giving her several inches in height but giving her calves a jolly good workout too. If Mr Walsh kept his word and brought her back a slice of cake, she’d best pick up her pace.
The thought of gooey chocolate fudge cake revved her up and she wished, not for the first time Ita would move at a quicker pace. Moira called her Idle Ita and it was fitting because like Mrs Flaherty had just said she did err on the side of laziness. Aisling strode down the corridor. A close eye had to be kept on her if the rooms were to be made up to O’Mara’s high standard.
Ita Finnegan had worked at the guesthouse for just over two years. It had been her mammy who’d taken her on shortly before retiring from the business. Aisling would argue given how sick their dad had been at the time, Mammy hadn’t been in her right mind when Ita’s mam Kate, approached her. She and Maureen O’Mara were friends of old so when Kate asked Maureen if she could see her way to find something for Ita to do about the place, she’d felt obliged.
Aisling always got the impression from the younger girl she felt cleaning was beneath her. This was probably due to her insistence on not being referred to as the guesthouse’s housekeeper. As it stood it was a job description Aisling thought undeserving, but Ita was adamant she be called by the more grandiose, Director of Housekeeping.
To be fair, she only kept her on because she hadn’t done anything wrong per se and she hated the thought of having to give anyone their marching orders—especially not someone whose Mam was friends with her mammy.
She wasn’t good at confrontation. It came she reckoned from her position in the family. Patrick and Roisin had been the rabble rousers in their younger years, Moira the baby, and so it had fallen to her to be the peacemaker. Mind you, Ita sailed close to the wind at times, but she knew too given the current climate in the city a replacement would not be easy to find. Jobs were plentiful, and beggars couldn’t be choosers. So unless she wanted to take on the housekeeping role and explain herself to Mammy and Kate Finnegan, Ita for the foreseeable future was here to stay.
She found her sitting on the wingback chair by the window ignoring the gorgeous view of the Green as she leafed through a magazine. Mrs Miller must have left it behind. She jumped up from the chair when Aisling appeared in the doorway.
‘Morning Ita.’ Aisling managed to bite back the snarky, ‘hard at it as usual I see,’ on the tip of her tongue.
‘How’re you Aisling? I’ve done the bathroom and I was just about to sort the bed.’ At least she had the grace to look sheepish as Aisling began pulling the sheets off it in an effort to galvanise her. It had the desired effect. ‘Once you’ve finished in here Ita, could you check on Room’s 8, 6, 4, and 2, make sure they’re all restocked please. We’re full occupancy tonight.’ She shouldn’t have to spell it out after all this time, but if she didn’t their guests were likely to find themselves indisposed with no toilet paper!
Ita made a huffing noise as she balled the sheets and dumped them on the floor.
Give me strength, Aisling rolled her eyes, and left her to it. Mammy had made a serious error in judgment when she took that one on. Friendship or no friendship.
͠
‘Bronagh, I’m going to call around to Quinn’s, I promised the Freemans I’d make a reservation there for dinner this evening for them, and we’re nearly out of his brochures.’ She could have just telephoned and made the booking, but truth be told, she needed some fresh air. She was feeling irritated, Ita’s snail-like pace always had that effect on her. Bronagh brushed the biscuit crumbs off her sweater and waved Aisling off.
‘Be sure and tell Quinn I said hello.’
Bronagh had a soft spot for Quinn Moran, she got giggly and played with her hair a lot whenever he called. He was oblivious to her flirting, which only served to make her even more giggly. Aisling found it amusing to watch, unlike Moira who was appalled by anyone over the age of thirty engaging in flirtatious banter. ‘Sure, it’d be like Mammy trying to have her way with him so it would,’ she’d shuddered. ‘Bronagh needs to find a man her own age. I might suggest she joins lawn bowls, it’s a sea of silver heads.’ Moira’s tongue could clip a hedge at times, but she did make her laugh. Aisling had told her that Bronagh was only in her mid-fifties and that lawn bowls was having a resurgence with the younger generation to which she’d replied tongue firmly in cheek, ‘it would be right up Bronagh’s alley then.’
‘I will,’ Aisling tossed back over her shoulder now as she turned the brass knob and opened the door. She shut it behind her before the wind got a chance to catch it. One of the familiar Hop on Hop off red Dublin tour buses whooshed past. There was a handful of hardy tourists huddled upstairs, cameras at the ready as they braved the elements. She paused to gaze wistfully across the road to the tree-lined park. It wouldn’t be long before the leaves began to fall. When was the last time was she’d taken a book and stretched out on the grass in the Green? She’d missed the boat there this year, it was too cold to do so now.
She used to love losing herself in a good story. She’d let the world pass her by making the most of the sunshine like any good Irish woman would—turning a blind eye to the luminous white, male chests on display. Aisling knew the answer to her question. The last time she’d picked up a book and whiled away a leisurely few hours in the Green lost in someone else’s story was when she’d come home to O’Mara’s on her holiday’s. This was an anomaly given her job had always felt like one big holiday to her!
Back then Dad had been well, and Mammy would shoo her away once she’d helped out with the breakfast telling her, ‘Look you’re due a break Aisling, go read your book.’ She’d shake her head, ‘How I wound up with such a bookworm is beyond me. You’ve never been any different though—always a dreamer. Right from when you were little your nose was buried in some book or other.’
It was true. She’d once hidden in the old dumbwaiter with a torch in order to escape her chores—that’s how desperate she’d been to finish whatever it was she’d been reading at the time!
Those were happy days before Dad got sick and she’d come home for good. She’d stopped reading then, and there’d been no time for lazy afternoons laying on a grassy sunlit patch on the Green because Mammy’s time had been sucked up taking care of Dad, and she’d needed all their help.
There was only one person to blame for her lack of work/life balance this last year though. Well two, herself and Marcus. Mammy and her sisters were right when they said she wanted to be busy. It was her choice to throw herself into the routine of the guesthouse’s daily tasks. She did so to avoid thinking. It hadn’t worked of course. You couldn’t bury your hurts.
That breeze was arctic, and she shivered before deciding if she walked briskly enough she’d soon warm up. She set off following the Green around to Baggot Street. She was oblivious to the admiring glances from the women she passed who’d love to be able to stride along like Aisling O’Mara could in her blue patent leather high heels.
Chapter 7
Aisling had always felt the tie to O’Mara’s more keenly than her siblings. It was funny then that she’d been the first t
o leave it. She’d needed to get away after college, make a fresh start somewhere else.
She continued on her way dodging a young man whose nose was buried in a guidebook. His backpack was so big it made her think of a tortoise with a shell on its back. For a moment she felt a pang, envying his freedom.
As a child it had been her, in between frantically turning the pages of a book who’d followed their mammy and dad as they went about their daily routine. She was eager to learn the ropes of running the popular guest house. She figured it was her love of stories that made her feel so strongly about O’Mara’s. The old manor house abounded with them thanks to their guests. All of whom came from different walks of life and had different tales to tell as to their reasons for coming to stay. She’d felt and still did for that matter such a sense of pride that the house had been in their family for so many generations.
Aisling was lost in her thoughts as she reached the busy intersection joining the cluster of people all waiting to cross. If she hadn’t come home, then she wouldn’t have met Marcus and put old ghosts to rest. Was it better to have loved and lost as the old saying went, then to never have loved at all? She’d loved twice, and she didn’t know the answer. As her eyes alighted on Boots her deep thoughts were diverted as she remembered she was currently using her finger to gouge out was left in her lipstick. She’d pop in now and buy a new one—and that was when she saw him.
Chapter 8
Oh Jaysus, it was Marcus; she was sure of it! It was as though just by thinking of him she’d conjured him up. What was he doing in Dublin? He was supposed to be over two hundred kilometres away from her in Cork—not waiting at the lights to cross Baggot Street. She must be seeing things. When he’d first left she used to think she saw him all the time. There’d been times she’d thought she really was going around the twist seeing these Marcus look-alikes everywhere. The mind can play funny tricks, and that was what it must be doing now.
Aisling peered around the burly man she was standing behind, but a bus rumbled past obscuring her view. It had only been a glimpse maybe it wasn’t him. She was having a Marcus-look-alike relapse that’s all. She’d close her eyes for a tick and when she opened them again, she’d realise it was a stranger who had a similar look about him. It was her sub-conscious telling her to stop poring over his letters and move on.
She squeezed her eyes shut and then opening them peeped around the burly man again. Feck, feck, feck. It was definitely him; he was wearing the Oasis shirt she’d bought from their concert for him under his jacket. It was the most rock ‘n’ roll he ever got wearing that shirt. She felt herself spiral into fight-or-flight mode as her senses went into overdrive. Her heart began pounding and her skin prickled with cold, clammy sweat. What should she do? She’d never been much of a fighter and instinctively she wanted to run. To turn and run as fast as she could back to the guesthouse, locking the door behind her in order to keep the big bad wolf out.
Marcus would see her if she made a holy show of herself by sprinting down St Stephen’s Green. He hadn’t spotted her yet. She was sure of it and without thinking it through Aisling veered off to her right. She kept her head lowered as she ducked and dived her way down the road heading into the sanctuary of O’Brien’s sandwich bar.
The lunchtime queue was stretching long but thankfully hadn’t reached the door, and she tagged onto the end of it behind two girls in office wear. The mundaneness of their conversation, what would have more calories a chicken Caesar wrap or a tuna melt? helped her to breathe and focus her thoughts. He must have been going to see her at the guesthouse. There was no other reason for him to be on fecking Baggot Street, for feck’s sake! Calm down Aisling.
She should have replied to his stupid letters and told him there wasn’t a hope in hell of them getting back together. Not after what he’d done. She hadn’t though, she’d let them pile up. Locking them away in the bureau drawer to pull out and angst over when no one was around and now he was fecking well here.
She’d have to face the music sometime. She couldn’t not go home. Besides, a spark of anger flared, why should she feel like she had to go into hiding because he’d decided he’d made a mistake? Look at her now for feck’s sake. Swearing her head off, albeit silently but if Mammy could hear her, she’d be threatening to wash her mouth out and she was hiding in a fecking sandwich shop!
She shouldn’t allow him to affect her like this. She should have brazened it out, greeted him coolly and made him feel foolish for wasting his time coming back to Dublin. Now the shock was wearing off, she mulled the situation over. Perhaps it was a good thing him coming to see her. If she talked to him face-to-face it might give her closure, and she’d finally stop having nightmares about white dresses, with bodices of Irish lace and people staring at her sympathetically before whispering about her behind her back.
The queue shuffled forward. It was all well and good being brave and having bold thoughts of bringing her ex-fiancé down a peg or two as she hid in O’Brien’s. How strong she’d be when they did meet was an entirely different matter altogether. His very presence had always affected her, given her a thrill each time she saw him.
She had no intention of ordering a sandwich of any description so excusing herself she pushed past the people who’d lined up behind her and ventured back out to the street. The coast was clear, so she continued down the road. Despite no sign of him, she was relieved when she spied the brass nameplate, Quinn’s Bistro arching over the doorway of the whitewashed, ground-floor restaurant.
There was a gorgeous profusion of pansies decorating the windows either side of the entrance and she knew credit for the beautiful floral displays didn’t lie with Quinn. The hanging baskets overflowing with vibrant, pink and purple lobelia were lovingly tended by his maître d’ Alasdair. He’d told her when she’d complimented him on his green fingers that he’d been head gardener for the Lord and Lady of a great house in a previous life.
A dose of Alasdair would take her mind off Marcus. He was one of a kind, with his flamboyant style, and insistence on sharing the details of his past lives with anybody who cared or didn’t care for that matter to listen. He was also Quinn said, fabulous at his job. The punters loved him even if he had been a Viking warrior back in the days when they’d plundered Dublin!
She paused to eye the blackboard outside, liking the sound of slow cooked beef and Guinness stew. Her mouth watered, despite the fright she’d just had as her gaze darted down the handwritten menu settling on a Baileys Irish cheesecake for dessert. She’d always loved her food and been prone to comfort eating. She was the girl who would get caught with her fingers raking through a tub of ice cream after a teenage drama. When Dad had been sick, she’d piled on the pounds. Then when he’d passed, she’d lost all interest in food despite Quinn’s best efforts to keep her fed. He’d been such a good friend to her, to all the family. She’d lost her appetite when Marcus left too. Quinn had been a steady shoulder then as well.
She’d gotten her appetite back eventually, and sometimes comfort eating was the order of the day. She’d take Quinn up on his offer of dinner on the house. She needed a heart-to-heart with Leila. Her pragmatic friend would tell her what she should do where Marcus fecking coward McDonagh was concerned. Besides, it had been too long since they’d last caught up.
The cheery red door to the bistro opened emitting a burst of noisy chatter from inside. A girl around Moira’s age in a skirt so tight it would surely split if she bent over tottered out. An older man in a well-cut suit looking very pleased with himself followed behind her. There was a furtiveness about them and Aisling watched them from under her lashes. She’d put money on wandering hands under the table as they waited for their respective Quinn’s burger and bangers n mash. She found herself composing one of her letters. The image of a world-weary, middle-aged woman who’d been let down by her husband sprang to mind. She was sitting at her kitchen table, pen poised over a writing pad.
Dear Aisling,
My husband often takes hi
s young secretary out for lunch. He says it’s thanking her for being so efficient. He comes home smelling of perfume, and bangers n mash. It’s a cliché, but I think they’re having an affair. What should I do? Confront him about my suspicions or continue to bury my head in the sand?
Yours faithfully
Wronged Woman
God, Mammy always said her talents were wasted—‘with your imagination Aisling and your love of books,’ she’d say, ‘you should have been a writer. Sure look at the success that Keyes woman is having.’ She also said she should have been on the stage when she had one of her dramatic outbursts. She said it quite a lot come to think of it. Instead she’d qualified with a much more practical Diploma in Tourism. It didn’t stop her imagination running riot though and it was getting out of hand. She was seeing philanderers everywhere these days. These two had probably had a perfectly innocent business luncheon. She changed her mind a beat later as the man planted his hand firmly on the girl’s derriere. Dirty old sod.
Shaking her head, she pushed open the bistro door and stepped inside the humming interior. She loved Quinn’s with its exposed bricks and low timber beams. The atmosphere was always inviting especially come winter when the log fire was roaring. What she loved most of all though was the aroma of garlic and onions that hung in the air. It called to her to take a load off and make herself at home.
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