Michelle Vernal Box Set

by Michelle Vernal

  “Who? Nick? Right, give me the phone.” Nora looked at her friend’s orb-like eyes and held her hand out, looking like she was ready to do murder.

  “No, not Nick—Owen.”

  “Well, fecking well answer it then!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  From her vantage point on the bridge, Jess could see that Owen had gotten there first. With downcast eyes, his hands were thrust deep in the pockets of his jeans to protect against the biting wind as he scuffed the pavement with the toe of his boot. At the sight of him standing outside her apartment building, her legs literally felt weak and she gripped the railings to steady herself.

  She’d panicked at first when she answered the phone, feeling sure he was going to tell her that Wilbur was no longer with them. Or, that he and his Dad had hated seeing “Amy’s Story” in print and the whole thing had been a huge mistake. Asking him to hang on for a sec, she’d gotten up from the table, unable to concentrate because Nora and Brianna were climbing all over each other in their desperate attempt to eavesdrop. Frowning at them both, she’d mouthed “behave” before walking the expanse of the restaurant to brave the elements outside. Having been assured Wilbur was on the mend, she wrapped her spare arm around herself, wishing she’d put her coat on as she braced herself to hear what he had to say.

  “I wanted to thank you for what you wrote and me Da asked me to let you know that he thought you made a grand job of it.”

  Jess exhaled. “I’m so glad. I was worried it might have been too much for him.”

  “No, he’s a tough old bugger, my Da.”

  A chip off the old block then, Jess thought, waiting for him to get to the crux of his call.

  “He’s had to be, you know, and it was a good thing reading about Amy in the paper like that because it meant we talked about her and Ma—the good times as well as the bad. Instead of both burying our head in the sand and pretending it was a day like any other. Anyway, the thing is, I’m in Dublin for the day and I wondered whether you might be free to meet up somewhere. It’s short notice, I know...”

  The casual indifference behind his words irked her. She wasn’t in the mood to jump to, not after the way things had been left the last time they had seen each other. It just seemed hard—too much of an effort required that she just didn’t have the energy for. Maybe if he had called her yesterday before everything that had happened with Nick, she might have been more receptive but today she wasn’t in a happy space where men were concerned at all.

  “I’m out for lunch with the girls at the moment, sorry.”

  “Ah.”

  They both drifted into silence and Jess, shivering, watched a young couple padded out in matching puffa jackets wandering toward the Green on the other side of the road. Between them was a toddler who could have passed for a Teletubby waddling along, holding both their hands as they entered the park. The woman was carrying a loaf of bread with her spare hand and Jess felt a pang. She wished her life were so simple that Sunday afternoons could be spent strolling St Stephens Green with people she loved, feeding the ducks. Not standing outside a restaurant freezing while she dealt with an unpredictable Northern Irish man with a troubled past.

  Owen cleared his throat but Jess stubbornly maintained her silence and her stance; she was not going to make this easy for him. He didn’t have the monopoly on moodiness and it was him who had rung her, after all, so let him sweat it out.

  “What about meeting up when you’ve finished your lunch like?”

  So he was prepared to wait for her? That boded well but hang on a sec, Jess cautioned herself; don’t get ahead of yourself. For all she knew, he could just want to collect the photos of Amy he had loaned her. “Why, is it urgent?”

  “Aye, it is in a way. I owe you a proper apology like for the way I behaved the other day and I’d like to do it in person.”

  Well, she hadn’t expected that. Was he sorry for kissing her or was he sorry for the way he had acted as though it should never have happened afterwards? There was only one way to find out and if he was going to be magnanimous then so would she. “Okay, I’ve finished eating, anyway. I could meet you at mine in an hour for a coffee—that way, I could give you your photos back too. Does that suit?”

  “Aye, an hour would be grand.”

  Jess gave him directions and then hung up before heading back inside to the warmth of Peploes where Brianna and Nora were chomping at the bit to find out what had transpired.

  “Why did you not suggest meeting him here so we could get a good look at him?” Nora asked, her bottom lip sticking out.

  “Because, Nora, you two would scare the living daylights out of him.”

  “I think she wanted ease of access to the bedroom.” Brianna leered over the rim of her wine glass.

  “Oh my God, you don’t think that when I said meet me at my place for coffee, Owen would have heard meet me at my place for sex! Do you?”

  “Calm down, Jess. If you said coffee, then he’ll be expecting coffee, not you in sexy lingerie and for the love of Mary, go and get that piece of parsley out from between your teeth before you head off!”

  HE STILL HADN’T SPOTTED her on the bridge and Jess savoured the moment it gave her to compose herself. He was dressed in his civvies—as she had come to think of his non-farming attire: jeans and, squinting into the weak afternoon sunlight, a blue jumper that wasn’t an Aran knit.

  She didn’t know what today was going to bring; that was the thing with Owen—she never knew. All she could hope for, she decided as she steeled herself to carry on across the bridge, was honesty on his part. Her hands clenched into fists at her side. And if he started to pull any of his moody bullshit, well, she’d... She didn’t get past that thought because looking up, Owen’s gaze locked on hers. He waved out and began striding down the Quays to meet her.

  Trying surreptitiously to smooth her hair, Jess hoped she didn’t look too dishevelled. The wind had all but blown her down Grafton Street and along the Quays.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi.”

  They danced around, each self-consciously, on the cracked old pavement for a moment. What was the protocol when it came to greeting someone you had snogged passionately the last time you had seen them? In the end, Owen decided a kiss on the cheek was appropriate and when his lips brushed against her skin, Jess felt as though she had been scalded. Taking a step back, she waved in the direction of Riverside. “You found it okay then?”

  “Aye, your instructions weren’t hard to follow. There is only one River Liffey and one Guinness factory in Dublin, after all.”

  Jess’s shoulders relaxed as she spied that familiar twinkle in his eyes and they began walking toward the apartment building’s entrance. “What about parking—did you get one alright?”

  “Aye, I got one round the back, no problem, thanks. You could have warned me about the mad pigeons, though.” He indicated a white and brown stain on his shoulder. The pigeons that congregated daily around the side streets behind the Quays were a mangy-looking lot, always scrounging a crumb. They had a vindictive streak, too, if you didn’t produce the goods, hence the poop.

  Jess wrinkled her nose, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tremor in her hand as she pushed open the main doors. “They are a bit of a nuisance. I’ll get a cloth to sponge it off when we get up to mine.”

  Owen followed her through the foyer out into the quad and the first thing they saw was Jimmy flat on his back. Gemma was standing over him with one foot firmly planted on his stomach again.

  “Come on, you great big lump—sit up! You’ve another twenty-five before you’re finished.” Her ponytail swished back and forth as she shook her head. “If I don’t talk tough, he doesn’t even try. How’s it going, Jess?” Then, spotting Owen, her face lit up. “Well, hello there. You must be Jess’s mystery man?”

  Jessica could have kicked her and would have but the other girl was quite obviously stronger than her. “Gemma, this is my friend Owen; Owen, Gemma. Gemma is acting as Jimmy here’
s personal trainer while he tries to quit smoking.”

  “Howrya.” Jimmy wheezed pulling himself up.

  “Twenty-four to go—get on with it, lard ass!”

  Gemma grinned at them both, looking like butter wouldn’t melt. “I’m really enjoying this and there’s good money to be made in personal training so I might go solo—you know, quit the gym.”

  “Good for you, Gem. Catch you later.” Jess was eager to be away before she tried to recruit her.

  “She’d do a roaring trade if she wore a leather mask and cracked a whip,” Owen muttered and Jess laughed as she pushed the lift button.

  “She is a bit scary, isn’t she?”

  “Fecking terrifying!” They grinned at each other and as the lift door slid open, the ice between them thawed.

  Flicking her gaze round the living room a moment later, Jess was glad she’d tidied up a bit before she’d headed out with Nora that morning. There was no underwear drying on the clothes rack or dirty dishes piled up on the bench. Yes, all in all, the place was looking respectable. Owen had glanced around the room with curiosity etched on his face before being drawn to the windows with their view of the smoking stacks of the Guinness factory. Flicking on the kettle, Jess busied herself by fossicking under the sink for an old cloth he could use to clean himself up with. She didn’t see him crouch down to flick through her collection of old books.

  “Janice Bohan.”

  She looked up startled, rag in hand. “Pardon me?”

  He held out a battered copy of Rapunzel. “This book once belonged to a lass by the name of Janice Bohan. Seeing all these here brings home the randomness of you deciding to find out about our Amy.”

  “I suppose it does when you look at it like that.” Jess frowned at the suitcase stuffed full of all the other names she could have chosen to trace. At the fleeting memory of a dark-haired girl she thought she’d seen watching her and Owen, she wondered, “You know Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the last book I needed for my collection, so maybe it was just meant to be.”

  “Aye, maybe it was.” Putting the book back, he wandered over to inspect her shelves full of treasures before turning around to face her. “It’s just what I pictured. All this—it’s you.”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Jess handed him the cloth and waited for an answer while he rubbed at his shoulder. She looked around the room, trying to see the apartment through his eyes.

  Placing the rag down on the bench, he finally answered. “Oh, it’s definitely a good thing.”

  He pulled her toward him then and lowered his mouth to hers. For someone as gruff as Owen, his lips were incredibly soft and his caresses were so gentle, too gentle. Jess pushed her body up against his, trying to convey the urgency she felt for them to be closer. Pulling away, she took him by the hand and led him through to the bedroom.

  Afterwards, she lay exhausted with her head on his shoulders. Her hand rested lightly on his chest, feeling the sweat their lovemaking had left behind cooling beneath her palm. She had read somewhere once that happiness was in those perfect moments captured briefly, fleetingly throughout life. This was happiness, she decided, as Owen stroked her hair rhythmically. As the anaemic rays of autumnal sunlight faded from the room, he did what she wished he had done from the start. He began to talk and this time, he let the complicated layers that manifested themselves in that hard shell he’d let grow around him peel away.

  “I know I have behaved like a schizophrenic shite but I wasn’t sure I could open myself up to feeling anything romantic for anyone again.”

  Jess lay listening as he confided his fears of being unable to put the past to rest and of wearing his sister’s untimely death like an oversized suit for the rest of his days.

  “What made you come today then? What is it that has changed?” she asked, leaning up on her elbow and tracing a line down his cheek. He needed to shave but she liked the roughness of the prickles beneath her fingertips.

  “I missed you, and I knew I would have to step up to the mark or I would lose my chance with you for good. That’s mostly why I came but I also realised that at some point since I met you, I have moved on. Maybe it was all the talking about what happened and seeing it type-written so I could read it objectively for the first time. You know, take a step back and put it in the past or maybe it was simply time that did it? It’s supposed to be a great healer, isn’t it?”

  Jess nodded. She didn’t have firsthand experience with the grieving process but as a writer, she was familiar with that and all the other wise old adages.

  “Whatever it was, I feel now that she’s at peace up there.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling and Jess’s green eyes followed suit, unsure what she expected to see other than the smattering of fly poo that adorned it. “I feel like I have done right by her, and I know that she wouldn’t have wanted me making a pig’s ear of the rest of my life because of what happened to her.” He smiled at his little joke meant to lighten the weight behind his words and Jess punched him playfully on the arm.

  “That’s the second truly terrible pig joke I’ve heard you drop now.”

  “Aye, sorry; it goes with the territory and I couldn’t resist.” He cuddled her closer to him, breathing in the scent of her hair for a moment. “You know, reaching that thirty-year marker and re-reading our family’s little bit of history yesterday—well, it was like a chapter in my life that has coloured things for far too long finally closed. Talking to me Da yesterday, I realised it’s different for him. He’s given up and accepted that he will always live with it. Amy was his girl and he won’t get over Ma’s passing, either, but I have to move on. Neither Ma or Amy would have wanted me to bury myself in the past.” He paused to wipe a tear that had escaped from the corner of Jess’s eye away.

  “Don’t cry. It’s a good thing you’ve done, coming into my life the way you did. I’ll always remember them both, of course I will, but for the good stuff from now on. Not the one bad thing that came to pass and shaped everything else that came after it. That would be nothing but an insult to the people they were. I can see that now.” He sighed and if he had been wearing them, it would have come from the bottom of his boots before exhaling slowly. “You know, I hope that reading how Amy was killed might just make someone—whoever—think before they go down a road they’ve no business going down.”

  Jess took his metaphoric meaning to be that if one person took on board that no good came from fighting a fight no one could really win, then it had been worth sharing his family’s pain. It was her sentiment, too.

  She lay there listening to him breathing, thinking over what he had just told her. He had said everything that she thought she needed to hear him say but there was still something bothering her. “What about Sarah?” She referred to his ex-wife. “Is she still part of that oversized suit you’ve been wearing all these years?”

  Owen turned to look at her in surprise. “Did you think that?”

  “I don’t know; you haven’t exactly been an open book.”

  “Neither have you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were seeing someone, weren’t you?”

  So he had registered her call from Nick the day she’d done her mercy dash to see Wilbur. “Is that why you turned cold on me after we’d kissed at the barn?”

  He looked a little shamefaced at that. “Aye, I suppose. I was jealous and like I said, I didn’t want to put myself in a position where I might be exposed but then I decided you were worth getting burnt by.”

  “I am not going to hurt you, Owen, not ever.” She kissed the tip of his nose. “Believe me, he wasn’t worth getting jealous over and it was over before anything really got started. It’s been you all along.” She’d fill him in one day on what had happened with Nick but not now.

  “I’m glad.” He kissed her and then pulled away to look at her, his expression serious. “The way I have been was never anything to do with Sarah. When that was finished, it was over and I walked away from he
r and our marriage, that life, without a backward glance and so did she.” Owen shook his head. “We were just a bad fit, Sarah and I. I think we both knew we had made a mistake the moment we said ‘I do’ but it was too late then. The problem all along has been that from the moment I picked you up at the station and watched you being harangued by Mad Bridie, I knew you were going to be a very good fit.”

  Jess had never known the kind of certainty where it is instinctive that you have met the right person before either. It was overwhelming but as she lay in the darkened room enjoying the contentedness it had brought with it, a thought sprang to mind unbidden. Bugger! She had forgotten about the oversized suit problem of her own that was heading her way—her mother. It was only two days until she set foot on Irish soil.

  ON TUESDAY EVENING at seven, the tin can that was part of the fleet belonging to the budget Cheap-Cheap Airline her mother had been forced to fly, thanks to what she termed her husband’s tightfisted tyranny, touched down. Its wheels, as they skidded down the damp Dublin tarmac, sent a spray of water up in the air and the airline’s bright yellow canary logo was just visible in the gloom of the evening. Marian Baré was officially in the country.

  As Jess hopped from foot to foot in the Arrivals hall waiting for her to clear Irish Customs, she let her mind drift back over the last couple of days.

  Owen had stayed that night and they’d only dragged themselves out of bed to order pizza. When it arrived, they’d taken the box straight back to bed with them. Propped up on pillows, feeding each other slices, they’d marvelled over the fact, like new lovers do, that pepperoni supreme was both their favourite. What other things would they find out they had in common over the course of time? The sense of a new beginning was tangible and it had been heavenly. The being with Owen, not the pizza obviously, Jess reiterated to herself. Although now, as her tummy grumbled at having been given no dinner, the pizza took on a divine status too.