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

Chapter 27

27

Eileen released her grip on Hannah’s arm, sensing victory. ‘Are you in?’

‘I’m in.’ Hannah shook her arm and hesitated. ‘But what about the knitting?’ She’d been looking forward to learning the craft, she realised. ‘Will I be learning or sitting here preaching?’

‘You’re not to carry on like that Greta one, Hannah. And I’ll teach you that, all right. These classes are a prime opportunity for knitting Christmas presents, especially for this lot. You’ll know yourself money’s tight at their age. I meant what I said about that baby of Shannon’s needing a layette, but you could start simple with something Christmassy if you like. And sure, there’s no harm in having a little chit-chat about things at the same time. Is it the official job title you’re after to clarify things, like?’ Eileen asked, her mouth twitching.

Hannah was a little disturbed that she had something in common with Isla Mullins besides getting the Greenhouse development squashed. She loved a good title, too: ‘Just to clarify things.’

‘OK, so. How about youth worker? But you’ll not get a name badge.’

‘Oh, OK.’ Hannah was a little disappointed to hear that, but after gleaning Eileen’s assurance that she’d write the role she was officially here for next to her name on the roll-call list, she straightened her spine and followed Eileen over to the group.

Eileen clapped her hands to get their attention. ‘For those who don’t know her already, this is Hannah Kelly.’

‘What did you do?’ A spiky-haired blonde with an angry red chin piercing stopped studying her nail and looked at Hannah curiously.

‘Nothing recently, but I once tied myself to a tree. Well, more than once, actually.’

That got their attention. She might surprise herself by enjoying this and have a chance to make a real difference.

She headed over to one of the few remaining empty chairs buoyed by this thought and sat down, only to jump straight back up, startled by the whoosh beneath her backside. It was followed by the drawn-out sound of a long, loud and proud fart. Hannah’s face went wumph like a gas flame as the kids erupted into fits. Looking around to see what had caused the rude noise, she spied a deflated whoopee cushion on the seat she’d just vacated. What had she let herself in for?

‘I beg your pardon,’ a bemused voice said as Eileen tried and failed to restore order.

Hannah’s eyes flew to the door where Tom Flynn stood, watching.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, not caring if she sounded rude. Her sense of humour had deserted her the moment she’d seen him standing there, pressing his lips together in an effort not to laugh at her. Being made to look an eejit in front of ten teens was one thing. For it to have happened in front of her nemesis, too… His timing had been impeccable. But what was he doing back in the bay, and what on earth was he doing at Eileen Carroll’s learn-to-knit session?

The giggling died down as the rag-tag bunch’s mirth was replaced by curiosity about the strange man in their midst.

‘It’s good to see you again, too, Hannah. I thought the classes sounded fun when you mentioned them, and when I bumped into Eileen, I brought them up.’ He shrugged. ‘She invited me along, and seeing as I arrived back earlier than expected, I thought I might as well put my time to constructive use and learn a new skill. Starting from tonight.’

‘Knitting?’ Hannah couldn’t keep the incredulous note from creeping into her tone.

‘Is that a problem?’ Tom eyed her coolly.

‘No,’ she lied, thinking how different he looked clad in a tracksuit ensemble, having ditched the corporate look. His hair tufted on end for a moment, thanks to the static from his wool beanie as he pulled it off. And what was with this ‘Eileen’ business? Since when was he on a first-names basis with the proud owner of the Knitter’s Nook?

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Eileen, whose face was giving nothing away, and then back at Tom, trying to figure out what was going on. As for the gathered teenagers, you could have heard a pin drop until one of them piped up with, ‘This is better than watching Fair City .’

‘Ignore Hannah; you’re very welcome, Tom.’ Eileen was out of her seat, crossing the room in a blaze of polka-dotted glory to take him by the elbow before she steered him over to the remaining empty seat in the circle. ‘Everybody, this is Tom Flynn. Tom’s down from Dublin on business. He’s an— What are you, Tom? I know it’s something with a long, important-sounding title?’

‘I’m an architectural project manager,’ Tom replied as he sat down.

Architectural arse , Hannah thought, scowling, wondering if she should warn these kids that Tom was here to take the shine off Christmas thanks to his part in trying to change the landscape of Emerald Bay. She decided that was erring on dramatic, however.

‘That’s it,’ Eileen said, puffing up proudly at the fancy qualification.

Hannah couldn’t believe how easily he was winning the older female generation of Emerald Bay over with his clean-cut good looks. Eileen was supposed to oppose the Greenhouse and Christmas tree farm, yet she was carrying on like he was her favourite nephew.

‘What’s that then?’ a lad clad top to toe in funeral black asked.

‘Basically, I’m brought in to manage and orchestrate construction projects.’

‘And why are you in Emerald Bay?’

The girl who piped up instantly made Hannah feel ancient. One look at her with her midriff-baring top had her thinking that she shouldn’t have been allowed to leave home without putting a vest on. Then, remembering Mam shouting after her many a time when she was around her age, ‘You’ll catch your death!’ told herself to pull her head in. She wasn’t that old!

‘He’s here to scope out the land on which the famine cottage sits for a potential garden centre and Christmas tree farm,’ Hannah butted in, her tone making it clear what she thought about that.

‘I know where I’ve seen your face!’ the girl with the chin piercing said, leaning forward as Hannah slunk low in her seat. ‘You’re that girl with the purple teeth. I saw your photograph in my da’s morning paper. Gis a look then.’

Hannah bared her teeth and slowly did the rounds to reassure the group she didn’t have poor dental hygiene. Remembering she’d been brought in as a role model, she quickly espoused the importance of flossing and brushing twice daily.

Tom was clearly amused, and she could tell by the twinkle in his eyes that he was doing his best not to laugh at her again. Irritation prickled like an annoying rash that he found her such a source of amusement.

‘Thank you for sharing that, Hannah.’ Eileen steered things back in the direction she wanted them to go by gesturing to Tom. ‘Like all of us here this evening, Tom’s a culchie originally.’

‘I am.’

Aha! So that was Eileen’s angle. She was rolling with a country-boy-who-made-good scenario. But this lot wouldn’t be taken in by the old ‘I used to be like you’ malarkey, she thought, settling back into her seat in anticipation of Emerald Bay and Kilticaneel’s young rebels without a cause making mincemeat out of him.

Tom smiled winningly at everyone seated in the circle. His toothy grin didn’t falter, not even when he met Hannah’s steely glare. Maddeningly, he seemed right at home. She watched him lift and cross his leg so his trainer-clad foot rested on his knee. And how come he didn’t get the whoopee-cushion treatment? She jotted this down on her list of mental grievances concerning Tom Flynn, directly under the entry of him being offered the best biscuits.

‘I grew up in a blink-and-you’d-miss-it village called Ballyfreeman,’ he supplied.

‘I’ve never heard of it.’ A lad who smelled like he’d sprayed a year’s supply of Lynx deodorant before leaving his house eyed him suspiciously.

Tom grinned. ‘Exactly. Nobody ever has. It’s the arse end of nowhere. Or at least I used to think it was.’

‘Like Emerald Bay,’ someone piped up.

‘Kilticaneel’s not much better.’ Miss Chin Piercing popped her bubblegum.

‘The thing is most of us who grow up here, or in Kilticaneel, or even Ballyfreeman’ – Hannah avoided Tom’s gaze as she jumped in to defend Emerald Bay – ‘feel like that, and it’s not until you leave that you realise how lucky you are to have grown up with a strong sense of community.’

This was met with scepticism, but to her surprise, she found an ally in Tom, who agreed. This time, she did catch his smoky-eyed gaze fleetingly before feigning interest in the faded patch on her dungarees.

‘What’s it like being a jackeen then?’ a girl with her arms folded over her bare midriff asked, using the culchies’ term for a Dubliner.

‘Fierce, I bet.’ Mr Lynx Deodorant took his remaining ear pod out. ‘I can’t wait to get out of home.’

Hannah’s head tilted to the side of its own volition as she became engrossed in the story Tom launched into about how he’d gone to university in Dublin and how much of a shock to the system finding himself a small fish in a big pond was, let alone fending for himself in a damp student flat. She was unaware of time passing as he talked about feeling lost and alone, like he had a sign over his head that said, ‘I don’t belong here’.

‘I wanted to quit and go home.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ Mr Lynx Deodorant took the words right out of Hannah’s mouth.

‘Because there was nothing to go back to. I’d have wound up helping my dad in the pub for the rest of my days.’

There was a melancholy tone to his words, but Hannah couldn’t help but burst out at the surprise of the connection between them. ‘You didn’t tell me your dad’s a publican like mine?’

‘You never asked.’

They glowered at one another.

‘See, better than Fair City ,’ someone piped up.

‘But things must have got better because you stayed?’ Mr Fluffy Lip and Chin next to Hannah asked.

‘Yeah, it did. I joined one of the university societies. I realised I wasn’t owed anything, and people wouldn’t come to me. I had to put myself out there.’

‘What society did you join?’ Hannah queried, expecting him to say rowing or something all-rounded and sporty.

‘A Sinn Féin movement for young political activists revolving around republicanism, socialism, feminism, internationalism and environmentalism.’

Hannah openly stared at Tom with her mouth hanging open, surprised because those were all things she believed in wholeheartedly. For Tom to have been part of such a group completely shattered the mould she’d poured him into from the moment she’d met him. ‘But if you believe in environmentalism, why did you agree to work on the Greenhouse project?’

‘Because everything I work on uses sustainable building techniques.’

Eileen decided to interrupt what promised to be an exciting debate there by clapping her hands. ‘Right, time’s marching on, so let’s crack on with a quick round of introductions before getting on with what you’ve come here tonight to do, and that’s learning to knit.’

Names were reeled off, and Eileen hastily jotted them down on the roll of labels they were to fix to their chests. Once the roll had made its way round and back to Eileen, she retrieved her kit bag, and those who hadn’t already delved into theirs followed suit, keen to examine its contents. Next to Hannah, the girl with the chin piercing, named a saintly-sounding Maire, clacked her knitting needles, pretending they were chopsticks.

Hannah ignored her as she examined the green wool balls in her bag. She’d imagined whipping up a dainty pair of booties for her baby niece or nephew and Shannon’s delight over her sister having knitted them, but now she was wondering if a Christmas gift for Nan might be a good starting point.

But all the while, she was mulling over what Tom had divulged. Maybe she hadn’t been wrong with her initial feelings about him, and his firm grip when he’d helped her up on the stairs…

She was itching to press him for answers because if he hailed from a small village, he’d understand what the famine cottage and its land meant to the Emerald Bay locals. However, now wasn’t the time to drill into his conflicting morals. Eileen was introducing the art of casting on, and Hannah knew it would require her full attention.