The House On Willow Street (5 page)

Seventeen-year-olds didn’t like their mothers tidying up their bedrooms. It was all part of the process of growing up. Like the part that said mothers had to let go. Tess knew that. Had known it from the first day Zach stopped holding her hand as they walked into the village school.

“Ma—let
go of my hand
!”

He’d been seven and a bit at the time. Tall for his age, dark shaggy hair already ruffled despite being brushed into submission minutes earlier at home.

Tess had let go of his hand and smiled down at her dark-eyed son, even though she felt like crying.
He was growing up. So fast.

“Am I embarrassing you?” she asked with the same smile that always shone through in her voice when she spoke to her son.

Because she adored him so much, she was determined that she would not be a clingy mother, not make him the vessel for all her hopes and dreams.

“Yes!” he’d replied, shrugging his schoolbag higher over his shoulder as a sign of his machoness.

Tess had watched him march into the classroom without giving her a second glance.

Ten years on, he still hugged her. Not every day, not the way he had as a small child. But he was an affectionate boy, and now that he towered over her, he’d lean down and give her a hug.

He called her “Ma.”

“See ya, Ma,” he’d say cheerily as he was about to leave the house for school.

He reminded her of his grandfather, her own beloved father. Zach had the same silver-gray eyes with lashes so black it looked as if he wore eyeliner. He had her father’s patrician features too, and his gentleness. For all that he played prop forward on the school rugby team, Zach was a gentle giant. All the girls in Avalon loved him. The ones he’d been to primary school with gazed at him with a combination of fondness and attraction. Tess could see that too: he also had the charisma of his father, the indefinable characteristic that would make women look at him always.

For the past two months he’d hauled the bins to the gate on Thursday night for the Friday-morning collection, trying to fill Kevin’s shoes. Every time he did it, Tess battled the twin emotions of pride and sadness.

Huge pride at him behaving like the man of the house, and sadness that it was necessary.

From the hallway below, Silkie yelped, eager for her next trip out—she knew her daily itinerary as well as Tess did.

Tess grabbed Zach’s laundry basket and went slowly downstairs. Silkie was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking forlorn.

“I’ll put the washing on and we’ll go.”

Tess walked to work every day, come rain or shine. She and Silkie would set out from the house on Rathmore Terrace, through the garden Tess was always planning to spend many hours on but never did, and out the white wooden gate.

Instantly, Silkie would pull on the extendable lead, sticking her nose into the gatepost in case some passing dog had marked it.

“Come on,” Tess said most mornings. “No loitering.”

Every second house was home to one of Silkie’s friends, so there were delighted squeaks at the house of Horace, a Great Dane who lumbered over to greet her and then lumbered back to the porch to rest his giant bones; a bit of roughhousing with Rusty, a shiny black collie who loved games and had to be told not to follow them; a few tender doggy kisses with Bernie and Ben, twin cockapoos who could rip any neighborhood dustbin apart in minutes and caused chaos when they were in their owners’ holiday home.

By the time she and Tess had come to the end of their street and turned down the hill on to the lane that led to Main, Silkie would be panting with happy dogginess.

Their next stop was St. Ethelred’s, the oldest Presbyterian church in the country, where tour buses paused for tourists to take pictures of the twelfth-century building, the moss-flecked tombs and small crooked headstones. The graveyard was watched over by three towering oaks that were at least, according to the local tree man, two hundred years old. At this hour of the morning, the great wooden door under the arched porch was locked. The rector would be along at ten to open up, with Mrs. Farquarhar-White following him in to bustle around and polish things.

On warm, sunny mornings, Tess would take the time to stroll into the grounds with Silkie, drinking in the serenity that inhabited this sacred space. Today, however, a breeze that felt as if it had come straight from Siberia ruffled Tess’s short fair hair as she stood at the church gate, so instead of going in she waited for Silkie to snuffle among the dog roses for any rabbits who’d dared to visit, then the two of them set off down the lane again.

Cars passed her by, some of the drivers waving or smiling
hello, others too caught up in their morning routine to do anything.

Tess was happiest when the tourist season began to wind down and locals got their town back. With the school holiday over, the caravan parks had mostly emptied out and Avalon was beginning to fall back into the relaxed and gentle routine that would continue through autumn and into winter.

Not that she objected to the summer visitors—they kept the town going, and provided a bit of excitement for local teenagers. Cabana-Land—which used to be called The Park when she was young—had always had a reputation as party central. She remembered how, back in the early eighties, she’d longed to stay out late at The Park like her elder sister. Suki never paid any attention to the curfew imposed by their father. On summer nights she would shimmy down the drainpipe wearing her spray-on stonewashed jeans, with her sandals in her hand, hissing, “Don’t tell him or I’ll
kill
you!” at a worried Tess as she peered down at her from their bedroom window.

There was a seven-year age gap between the two sisters and in those days, Suki and Tess had been complete opposites. Suki hated homework, was breezily unconcerned when she got into trouble at school, and by the time she reached her teens she had mastered the art of swaying her hips so that men couldn’t take their eyes off her as she walked through Avalon. She was taller than Tess, with blonder hair and the widow’s peak, inherited from their long-dead mother, and full lips that she made use of with a carefully practiced pout.

Tess, on the other hand, was never late with her homework, fretted over whether she’d get top marks on her history test, and was never in trouble either at home or school. She
was the pale version of her sister, chiaroscuro in action, with strawberry blonde hair, and a fragility that made her perfect for ballet classes—if only they could have afforded them.

The biggest difference between the sisters was that Tess loved living in Avalon, while Suki couldn’t wait to escape. She longed to live somewhere exotic, having failed to realize what Tess had grasped even as a child: that for the visitors who came from far-flung places, Avalon
was
exotic. City dwellers were charmed by the crooked main street with its scattering of gift and coffee shops and a single butcher’s. People from other countries thought that the high cross in the central town square with its working water pump and stone horse trough was adorable. They beamed with delight when grizzled old farmers like Joe McCreddin stomped out of the post office in his farming clothes and threadbare cloth cap with his trousers held up with baler twine, as if he’d been sent from central casting just for their amusement.

And they all loved Something Old, the antique and curio shop Tess had run for seventeen years.

Tess knew that her business had survived this long because she understood her clientele. She knew the pain of selling treasured heirlooms because money was in short supply.

“My family owned a big old house which was once full of the most glorious antiques,” she’d say, “and we never had a ha’penny. By the time I was ten, my father had sold just about everything of value, including old books, furniture and silver dating back two hundred years.”

Zach helped too. Tess took him along on all her calls to buy antiques, right from when he was a baby, strapped in his car seat, big round eyes staring out of a chubby face. People liked having a baby arrive: it made the painful process of parting with heirlooms a little easier to bear.

She and Zach would be invited in for tea, cake would be
produced, then stiff old gentlemen would unstiffen and reveal how they hated having to sell the sideboard or the vase their great-granddad had brought back from India, but there was no other option.

Her success also owed much to her innate kindness and sense of fairness.

“You’ll never make a fortune selling a Ming vase after buying it for twenty quid,” said one lady, who was delighted to find that her set of old china was actually a full and unchipped early Wedgwood, worth at least five times what she’d thought.

“Money earned in that way doesn’t bring you luck or happiness,” said Tess. She simply wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night if she’d conned anybody out of a precious piece.

As always, Tess felt a glow of pride in her town as she turned onto Main. Few of the visitors who stopped to admire the quaint shopfronts and exteriors were aware of the transformation that had taken place in the town ten years earlier, and the effort that had been put in by local businesses in order to achieve it. They had been forced to up their game by the construction of a bypass that stopped cars passing through the town on their way to Wexford. Belle, who at that time was the lady mayor as well as the owner of the Avalon Hotel and Spa, had started the ball rolling by calling a town meeting.

“The caravan parks and the beach aren’t enough,” she warned. “We need to revamp this town, brand it, put it on the map or we’ll all go out of business.”

Dessie Lynch, proprietor of Dessie’s Bar and Lounge (
Come for breakfast and stay all day!
), disagreed. “The pub’s doing grand,” he blustered. “I’m making a fortune.”

“People drinking in misery,” said Belle with a fierce glare.
“When all the locals have destroyed their livers and are sitting at home on Antabuse tablets, you’ll be out of business too.”

Galvanized by their strong-willed mayoress, local traders had set about tidying up the town; shopfronts were painted and a unifying theme was agreed upon—Avalon was to be restored to look like the Victorian village it had once been. The chip shop reluctantly gave up its red neon sign and now did twice the business selling old-fashioned fish and chips wrapped in newspaper. The council was squeezed until they came up with the money to clean the high cross and the stone horse troughs that surrounded it. The water pumps were repaired and repainted, and a team of locals volunteered to hack away the brambles that had grown up around the ruined abbey and graveyard high above the town to turn them into a tourist attraction too. There hadn’t been enough money to pay for research into the abbey’s history so they could print up booklets and make an accurate sign, but illustrated pamphlets had been printed for St. Ethelred’s.

The result was an increase in the town’s business and a second term of office for Belle.

Drawing level with Dillon’s Mini-Market, Tess tied Silkie’s lead to the railings beside the flower stand. Immediately the whippet adopted the resigned expression she always used on these occasions:
Abandoned Dog in Pain
would be the title if anyone were to paint her. Tess knew that dogs couldn’t actually make their eyes bigger just by trying, but Silkie did a very good impression of it: two dark pools of misery taking over her narrow, fawn-colored face.

Inside, Tess grabbed a newspaper and a small carton of milk. She nodded hello to a few of the other shoppers, then went to the counter where Seanie Dillon held court.

“Grand morning, isn’t it, Tess?” he said.

Seanie had a word for everyone, yet understood when someone was in a rush to open up their shop. He could wax lyrical on the village for interested tourists, telling them about that time the snow fell so heavily that several people got stuck inside the shop overnight and they all had a party with the roasted chicken, bread baked on the premises and an emergency cocktail made out of wine, cranberry juice and some out-of-date maraschino cherries.

“Lovely day,” Tess replied. “A soft day, as my father liked to call it.”

“Ah, your father, there was a great man,” sighed Seanie.

Tess took her change and wondered why she’d mentioned her father. She’d dreamed of him the night before; the same dream she always had of him, on the terrace of the old house with his binoculars trained on the woods behind, watching out for birds.

“I’d swear I saw a falcon earlier,” he’d say excitedly. He was fascinated by all birds but particularly birds of prey, which was surprising, given that he was the gentlest, least feral person she’d ever met.

Above all, he was interested in everything—politics, art, other people. He’d have loved Something Old, even if he’d have hated to see his daughter working so hard and still not making enough money from the business. He would have liked Kevin too and if he’d only been alive he would have never let her consider something as crazed as a trial separation.

Milk purchased, Silkie and Tess walked across the square and the last few yards up Church Street to her shop. She nodded hello to Mrs. Byrne and Mrs. Lombardy, who were out doing their morning shop, an event which always looked like a patrol of the area to Tess, as their eyes beadily took in everything and everyone. A bit of paint flaking off a
flowerpot in the square, and they’d be up to report it to Belle in the hotel.