Saving Christmas in the Little Irish Village (The Little Irish Village #5)

Chapter 6

6

The only part of Liam Kelly visible beneath all the layers as he stomped in the back door was his face, ruddy from the cold. He stopped dead and stared at his daughter. ‘Am I seeing things?’

What would he have had to say if she and Nan were still getting down to Bob Marley? Hannah thought, laughing, her phone in her pocket once more. ‘No, Dad. I thought I’d surprise you by coming home early for Christmas.’ She didn’t want to get into the real reason she was home early until they’d at least had a bite to eat.

Liam made to stride over to Hannah but walked head first into the hanging Christmas cards. ‘What the?—?’

Hannah was in convulsions, watching him mutter expletives and batting images of peace and goodwill away as though being attacked.

‘You’re not too old to have your mouth washed out, son. You’d do well to remember that, and muddy boots off!’ Kitty Kelly bossed affectionately, going back to her chopping.

Seeing that Nan’s winter slawdidn’t involve kale had been a relief. She’d gone a little mad with the leafy green superfood after her son’s heart attack earlier in the year. He was doing great now, though, and hopefully, she’d found a happy medium with the health food.

‘Jaysus wept,’ Liam grunted, disentangling himself and yanking the string down before doing as he was told. ‘It’s not funny. I could have lost an eye.’

‘What’s happened to my Christmas cards?’ Nora, hands on hips, surveyed the dangling string and puddle of seasons greetings piled on the floor after marching back into the kitchen.

‘I’m sorry, love, but you can’t have those cards hanging across the middle of the kitchen like so. A man can’t risk his eyesight every time he ventures in for sustenance now, can he?’

‘If you had the good manners to take that hood off when you came inside instead of standing there looking like you’re heading down to Antarctica to monitor the icebergs, it wouldn’t have been an issue,’ Nora said, crossing the kitchen to see if she could give Kitty a hand.

Liam pushed his hood back, pulling a face at his wife behind her back.

‘I saw that,’ Nora sang out.

Liam and Hannah grinned at each other before she laid the cutlery she’d been holding, ready to set the table, down so she could enjoy a beefy hello cuddle.

He smelled of the outdoors, and Hannah sniffed the familiar scent of her dad, snuggling in. Ozonic and crisp like an apple with a hint of Old Spice.

‘You should have told me you were coming, Pearl,’ he admonished.

Hannah smiled at the nickname – Pearl, after heath pearlwort. In the warmer months, his rambles extended to amateur botany, and he’d a Connemara wildflower name for each of his daughters.

‘I would have, but I knew you’d only worry, and sure, what’s the point in that? Besides, it’s not as if I can zip around the open roads in Doris. You know yourself, Doris barely reaches the speed limit.’

Liam chuckled, unzipping his jacket. ‘Fair point, but I’m just saying there’s no need to be pussyfooting around me. At my last check-up, the doctor said I could run a marathon if I’m inclined. Which I’m not, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Hannah grinned, watching him dislodging himself from his coat and hanging it on the back of the door. Receiving a glance over her shoulder from Nan as she tsked, ‘That table’s not going to set itself, Hannah,’ she set to work while her mam fetched plates.

Liam washed his hands in the sink before his mam and wife could call him a heathen. ‘So what is it that’s brought you home then, Hannah? Is everything all right over at Bee headquarters?’

‘You’re not funny.’ Hannah pulled a face, saved from having to explain why she’d taken her holidays early by Nora interrupting.

‘I just remembered. Hannah, I’ve news.’ Nora’s eyes sparkled with the suggestion this was news her daughter would want to hear as she carted the pie over to the table and placed it centre stage. ‘I’m telling you now, you won’t believe it. I’m only after hearing myself last night.’

‘Get on with it, Mam,’ Hannah urged, pulling out a chair and sitting down. She wasn’t one for gossip, so whatever it was, it had to be good.

Nora placed her hands on the back of a chair, leaning against the table conspiratorially. ‘Romance is blossoming in Emerald Bay.’

Hannah’s eyebrows raised. ‘Between who?’

Her mam was clearly loving this.

‘A certain reticent pharmacist and his lovely assistant.’

‘No!’ This really was breaking news.

‘Yes!’

‘For feck’s sake, woman, spit it out and be done with it,’ Liam grumbled, having joined them at the table while Kitty hovered with the bowl of slaw and jumped in with the punchline.

‘Niall Heneghan and Nuala McCarthy,’ she announced triumphantly, putting the slaw down next to the pie.

‘Thanks a million, Kitty.’ Nora sighed. ‘That was my line.’

Kitty ignored her. ‘It’s about time Niall saw what’s been right under his nose,’ she said, referring to the bay’s widowed pharmacist as she fetched the salad servers.

Hannah was smiling because Nuala had been a rock for the pharmacist and his two children these last few years. That she was also head over heels for her boss was plain for all to see except Niall. ‘So, what happened for Niall to finally take his blinkers off?’ she asked.

‘Nobody knows for certain,’ Nora replied. ‘But the current theory doing the rounds is Niall might have seen Nuala in a new light last St Paddy’s Day when he and Nuala dressed up as Danny and Sandy from Grease for the parade.’

Kitty’s tone was disapproving. ‘Yer man would have had to have been blind not to notice Nuala in those spray-on yokes she was after squeezing into.’

‘That’s true,’ Liam added, receiving a sharp look from his wife. ‘I mean, it was a miracle she didn’t split the arse out of them when she cocked a leg over Niall’s motorcycle. Not that I was paying any attention. I was busy, but I heard about it.’ He was beginning to waffle under his wife’s intense gaze.

Hannah smirked, nudging him with her foot under the table. ‘I’d quit while you’re ahead, Dad.’

He duly zipped it.

‘That’s not all that’s happened while you’ve been in Cork. Nora, tell Hannah about the mystery woman,’ Kitty urged her daughter-in-law.

‘What mystery woman?’ Hannah was curious.

‘The mystery American woman who’s been watching your mam,’ Kitty stated, her cheeks pinkened with the drama of it all.

‘It’s nothing,’ Nora said dismissively, busying herself with the lunch things.

‘That’s not what you said when you burst in through the back door yesterday blathering about how you’d seen her again.’ She turned conspiratorially toward Hannah. ‘She was in a bit of a state.’

‘What’s going on, Mam?’ Hannah looked first at her mam, then her nan and finally at her dad for an explanation.

Liam and Nora exchanged a look, communicating silently like married couples do. Hannah knew this look well. It meant they weren’t sure how much to divulge, but it didn’t matter, as Kitty pipped them both to the post once more.

‘There’s an American woman who’s been coming and going to Emerald Bay since last Christmas who seems overly interested in your mam.’

‘Like a stalker?’ Hannah’s eyes widened.

‘No,’ Nora jumped in. ‘Don’t talk silly. There’s probably nothing to it. I’ve seen her a handful of times at a distance, that’s all. She never lets me get close enough to ask what she’s after. I’d have thought I could add hallucinations to the list of hormonal indignities the menopause brings to the party if she hadn’t been asking around the village after me. People assumed she was a cousin from across the sea.’

‘And no one knows who she is or where she’s staying?’ Hannah questioned.

A trio of heads shook.

‘I’d forgotten all about her until I saw her again the other morning. You’re not to be worrying your head now, Hannah. I’m sure she’s perfectly harmless.’

‘You don’t know that. When was the first time you saw this woman?’

‘After Ava’s wedding last Christmas and only fleetingly.’

‘Tell her what you told me, Nora,’ Liam said, receiving a look that told him his wife wished he’d kept quiet.

‘Mam,’ Hannah pressed, not quite believing this was the first she’d heard of this strange woman.

‘I’ve never seen her up close, you understand, but from a distance, something about her put me in mind of my mam when she was younger. It’s all a bit strange. And I’ve probably made something out of nothing. Sure, if I managed to get close to her, I’d probably find she looked nothing like her.’

Hannah’s forehead creased. The Kelly girls had never met their maternal nan because she’d cut their mam off when she’d married their dad, deeming him not good enough. It was hard to imagine a mam cutting a child off so coldly, which was why she didn’t feel she’d missed out on not having met her. It was too late now, anyhow, given she’d since died. Still, it gave her a chill that, reading between the lines, Mam obviously thought this woman was a relative. Although why she wasn’t making herself known was plain weird. She’d mention it to her sisters the first chance she got. Right now, though, she wouldn’t get to dwell on it any longer because her mam was clapping her hands together brusquely.

‘Enough of all that. Do your sisters know you’re here?’

It was a neatly done change of subject.

‘No. Well, Imogen does, but only because I bumped into her when I arrived.’ Hannah’s stomach rumbled audibly, and she wished Thomas would hurry downstairs, but only because she was starving and that pie smelled mouth-wateringly good. She’d give him another ten seconds, after which she’d not be responsible for her actions with the pie. ‘I’ll give them a call after lunch. I have to say it was strange arriving home and not being greeted by Napoleon.’

Nora and Kitty glanced at one another. ‘We miss him too, don’t we, Nora?’ Kitty said, pulling a chair out.

Nora agreed. ‘We got used to having the furry little fella about the place, so we did.’

‘Really? Because you did a lot of moaning and telling him off when he was here.’ Hannah looked from one to the other sceptically.

‘It was banter, is all.’ Kitty flapped her hand dismissively.

‘Sure, I do an awful lot of the moaning and telling off when you girls are home, but I still miss you when you’re not here,’ Nora added.

‘Thanks, Mam. I think.’ Hannah shook her head.

‘I miss the conversations we used to have.’ Kitty’s tone was wistful.

‘Nan, he’s a cat. He couldn’t talk back to you.’

‘Ah, but he was a grand little listener.’

‘That he was,’ Nora lamented.

‘He’s not dead. He’s down the road at Shannon and James’s. If you miss having an animal, why don’t you get a rescue cat or kitten? They’re crying out for a good home.’

‘Over my dead body!’ Liam thundered. ‘It was bad enough with Napoleon and his thieving ways. My poor heart wouldn’t be able to take a kitten leaping about the place or an old feral tomcat spraying the furnishings.’

Hannah laughed at the horror on her dad’s face. ‘I thought the doctor gave you a clean bill of health.’

The conversation was cut off as a shadow filled the doorway. It was Thomas.