Michelle Vernal Box Set

by Michelle Vernal

  The meal was even scrummier than it had promised to be. Owen had poured lemon-infused vinaigrette over the beans and tossed a sprinkling of roasted walnuts on the top. There was a crusty loaf of garlic bread on a wooden bread board for them to share and as for the pasta, it was carb heaven. She hoped he wouldn’t think her too much of a pig—whoops, better make that glutton, she quickly admonished herself—if she helped herself to seconds.

  “Can I get the recipe off you?” she mumbled, her mouth full.

  “Aye, it’s pretty simple, though.”

  “Nothing is simple where me and cooking are concerned, believe me.”

  “It’s just fresh penne pasta, shredded smoked chicken, white wine, cream, zest of orange, dill and grated parmesan. You literally throw it all in together and you can’t go wrong.” He shrugged. “I take it you’re not a cook then?”

  “No, not really. I am more of an eater. I like to eat far more than I like to cook, probably because I am not very good at it despite having just completed half a dozen different cooking schools.”

  Owen raised an eyebrow and she told him all about her column, regaling him with her useless attempts at flipping Croatian pancakes and how she’d nearly hit the roof upon taste testing her heavy handed chilli-flavoured attempts at Creole cooking.

  “You obviously enjoy cooking, though, if you can knock something up that tastes this good,” she said, pointing her fork at him before stabbing another piece of penne.

  “Aye, I do. When I practised law, I found it helped me wind down at the end of the day. There’s nothing like dicing an onion or chopping garlic to make you forget about a shitty day.”

  “Chopping onions always makes me cry. What kind of law did you practice then?”

  “Commercial law mostly. It wasn’t me, although the money and the lifestyle it gave me certainly suited for a bit.”

  Jess was itching to ask him about his ex-wife but didn’t want to spoil what was turning out to be a surprisingly enjoyable evening. She didn’t know whether it was the wine or the fact that Owen had resigned himself to being in her company for the entire evening but he had become quite affable and she’d found herself relaxing in his company for the first time since he had picked her up from the bus stop earlier on that day.

  “So what about you then? How did a girl from Auckland come to be writing a column in a Dublin newspaper? That sounds far more interesting than commercial law.”

  She filled him in on what she had done briefly for a crust back home in Auckland and he broke in with, “So you were a gossip columnist then?”

  “I was not! I merely passed on information to my readers about people who liked to be seen about town.”

  Owen smirked.

  She ignored him.

  “So what brought you to Dublin then—don’t most New Zealanders head for London? There were always a couple of Kiwi solicitors or legal secretaries doing their big OE, as they called it, at the firm I worked for. They were very fond of the Friday liquid lunches, from what I remember—that and the Friday night drinks sessions.”

  “I’ll have you know us Kiwis pride ourselves on our reputation of being extremely hard workers.” Jessica said this tongue-in-cheek, remembering having joined in plenty of those Friday night drinks sessions herself over the years. “I suppose most Kiwis do head for London but then most head home when their visas run out, too. I’ve been in this part of the world since 2001, thanks to my Nana and Granddad hailing from Wigan and I did go to London initially. It wasn’t for me, though. I flew over there on my own and the size of the city intimidated me. I just have one of those faces, I think.” She shrugged.

  “What do you mean, one of those faces?” Owen asked, topping up her glass.

  “The kind of face that always attracts weirdoes. I must have soft touch written all over me because no matter where I was in London, they would seek me out and track me down. It was like I had a heat sensor they could home in on.”

  She saw Owen’s expression. “No, truly it was. Listen, I once had a chap announce that I had really lovely hairs on my arm just before he began stroking them while I sat completely hemmed in by him on the Tube. The worst bit was nobody around me moved or came to my aid and that’s when I—hey, it’s not funny—it was pretty traumatic at the time, I will have you know.”

  Owen stopped grinning. “Sorry. I’m sure it was but it was a compliment of sorts.”

  Jess gave a little grin. “Yeah, well, one I could do without, thanks, and it was the kind of thing that could only happen to me. Anyway, after the hairy arm incident, I decided enough was enough and I headed over to Ireland to check out Dublin. I’d heard it was a boom town and it was my last-ditch attempt to see if I could make a go of things on my own before heading home with my tail between my legs and a mother waiting to tell me I told you so.”

  “It obviously all worked out then.”

  “It did, thanks to my two best friends and landing a pretty amazing job.” She had him laughing again with her tale of how she came to meet Brianna and Nora before filling him in on her job at Marriotts that had eventually opened a door at the Dublin Express for her.

  “You’re an awfully long way from home. You must miss your family.”

  “Yes and no. It’s one of those love-hate relationships. I miss them when I am here but when I go home to see them, I can’t wait to get back to Dublin again because they drive me nuts. Especially my Mum.” Jess rolled her eyes. “Honestly, you’ve no idea. She’s desperate to marry me off and refuses to believe it’s a lost cause.” Realising what she’d said, she cringed, apologising, “Sorry, that must have sounded awfully selfish, my moaning about my nearest and dearest after, well, after everything your family went through.” The wine had definitely loosened Jess’s tongue.

  “No, it just sounds honest and pretty normal. After Amy died, there wasn’t a lot of normal in our house but I remember what it was like before, when there was plenty of bickering and driving each other nuts going on under our roof, too.”

  From over on the bench, an egg timer suddenly pinged. Saved by the bell, Jess thought.

  “It’s seven thirty,” Owen said, pushing his chair back. “That means it’s time to feed Wilbur. It’s dark out so I’ll walk you over.” His voice brooked no argument as he got the milk ready.

  A chivalrous man—now that was a rare commodity in this day and age of equal rights, Jess thought, rather liking the masterful tone of voice but then he added, “Besides, I need to attach his drip bottle.”

  “Oh, right—well, I’m on dishes when we get back.”

  “SO ARE YOU WRITING the great novel in your spare time? Although I don’t suppose a footloose and fancy-free young woman in Dublin has that much spare time.” Owen was leaning against the wooden strut holding the middle of the barn up, waiting for Jess to finish feeding Wilbur. His attempt at nonchalance didn’t really work and Jess looked up, unconsciously registering what a rugged scene he set.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised how much spare time a footloose, fancy-free young woman has.”

  “Do I take that as a yes you are writing a book?”

  “It’s a very clichéd ambition. What writer doesn’t aspire to writing a book?”

  Wilbur made a soft snuffling noise and Jess felt her heart melt.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I know.”

  Their eyes met in a silent standoff before she sighed. “It’s a sensitive subject and I don’t like talking about it. The only people who know are Nora and Brianna. I want more than anything to write a book. It’s seems like such a natural progression from what I have been doing all these years.”

  “So what’s stopping you?”

  “The ideas are all there but I can’t seem to start it. Whenever I sit down to begin it, I go blank.”

  “Where do you begin when you write your column?”

  “That’s different. I get a tiny seed of any idea and then it just grows. The words come faster than I can type them.” Jess shook her he
ad. “If I am honest, I suppose what it really comes down to is that I am scared I won’t be able to do it—you know, put together something of that scale.”

  Owen looked intently at her. “You’ll do it when the time is right.”

  JESS WOKE WITH A START, casting her eyes frantically around the strange room. Where the hell was she and with a quick glance under the heavy covers...why was she in the nude? She spied a glimmer of sunlight peeping in through the crack in the curtains and as she remembered, her body relaxed again. Gosh, this was such a comfy bed, she thought, not wanting to get out of it but knowing she must. I’ll just stay here a minute longer, she decided, stretching languorously and enjoying the feel of the warm linen under her toes as she reflected on what a surprisingly enjoyable time she had had the previous night.

  They’d come back inside after settling Wilbur down for the night and done the dishes, chatting about inconsequential things as she washed and he dried. Neither had mentioned the dishwasher standing empty beside the sink. Once they’d finished clearing up, Owen had made them both a nightcap, which they’d taken through to the lounge to enjoy in front of the comfort of a blazing fire.

  They’d sat in an easy silence, both lost in thought as they stared at the flickering flames. Owen’s face was inscrutable but the frown that had marred his forehead during the day had softened. This was the sort of cosy companionship married people must experience on a nightly basis, Jess had realised and for the first time ever, she felt truly envious of the life Brianna shared with Pete. Imagine having someone to cook with every night, talk to every night and someone to have sex with every night—well, initially anyway. Jess liked to think she was a realist.

  It was with these spinning thoughts that she became acutely aware of the intimacy of the situation she found herself in and suddenly she could no longer relax. Her face flushed at the direction in which her mind had taken her and terrified Owen would be able to read her expression, she drained her glass and announced she was bushed.

  Owen had muttered something about catching the late news as she’d said goodnight and beat a hasty retreat to her room. Shutting her bedroom door firmly behind her, she’d sat until she grew chilled on the end of the bed, telling herself off for being so childish as to be unable to simply enjoy a man’s presence without reading more into it.

  Stripping off, she’d climbed under the covers, convinced she would be awake half the night due to the strangeness of finding herself in a pig farmer’s cottage in a wild corner of Northern Ireland for the night. Her mind began ticking over what Owen had told her about Amy’s short life and she knew she would have to stop mulling it over and over or she really would get no sleep. I’ll think about Nick and what I should wear for the wine bar opening, she decided, surprised to find it was the first time she had thought about him all day. Her last conscious thoughts were that—heaven forbid!—her mother was probably right. Wool would not send the right signals out to Nick; she would raid Nora’s wardrobe. Then, the next thing she knew, she was waking up. It must have been all that fresh air, she decided, having one more starfish stretch before reluctantly pushing the covers aside and getting up.

  Having made herself as presentable as she could with her limited resources, Jess opened the door and wandered into the hall, where her nostrils were assaulted by the smell of toast. Owen was up and about then, she concluded, hoping that he wasn’t cooking up a full Irish breakfast with lashings of bacon.

  “Good morning,” she said, entering the warmth of the kitchen.

  “Morning. How did you sleep?” he asked, turning away from the pan of eggs he was in the process of scrambling.

  “Really, really well, thanks. I haven’t slept like that in ages—well, years actually.”

  “Aye, it’s being in the country—you know, the absolute darkness you get without streetlights and the quietness. When my friends come over from London to stay, they say the same thing.”

  “You should bottle it and sell it; you’d make a fortune.” He didn’t raise a smile and Jess sensed she was back where she had started. That wall she had encountered the first time she had spoken to him on the phone and that he had put up between them for most of yesterday was firmly back in place. She felt let-down after having managed to knock it down last night only for it to have been rebuilt overnight. By the set of his shoulders as he hunched over the stove, she knew she could forget about the easy, relaxed banter they’d shared doing the dishes.

  “The eggs are nearly done. Sit down—there’s a pot of coffee on the table. I’ll drop you to the station after breakfast.”

  “Oh, okay, thanks,” she mumbled, doing as she was told. “Have I got time to pop down to see Wilbur before we have to go?”

  “Aye.”

  Grumpy bugger with his friggin Ayeing, she thought, pouring herself a mug of the strong brew in the percolator in front of her. Owen joined her a few minutes later, placing a heaped plate of the yellowest-looking scrambled eggs she had ever seen in front of her. They were obviously laid by happy hens, she thought, noticing the fresh parsley he had sprinkled on top as a garnish—ever the gourmet and ever the grump.

  Despite the awkward silence, Jess couldn’t help but eat with relish—she was starving. It really must be all that fresh country air, she decided, scraping up the last little bit of egg before getting up to stack her plate in the dishwasher. “That was great, thanks. I’ll head out to say goodbye to Wilbur, shall I?”

  “Aye, alright, but don’t be long.”

  She stomped across the dewy grass, oblivious of the beauty of the morning sun warming the surrounding fields in her annoyance at her host’s moodiness.

  Her foul temper evaporated a moment later, though, as she stroked Wilbur’s warm, trembling body and her eyes grew hot and gritty as she said her goodbyes.

  “Look after yourself, my little mate. I know that we have only just met but I’m really going to miss you, and I just know that you will grow up to be big and strong just like your brothers and sisters next door. Keep drinking that milk and you’ll catch up to them in no time.” Wilbur let out a little whimpering noise and, assured it wasn’t just a one-sided conversation she was having, Jessica kissed her fingers and pressed them against him. “Don’t you let any of the big pigs push you around...” She was about to start giving him a few more lessons in life as to what he could expect when he finally got out into the big wide world, when she heard a cough behind her.

  She whirled around, embarrassed to find Owen standing there, and wondered just how much of her piggy pep talk he’d overheard but his face was, as usual, unreadable.

  “We’d better get going if you’re to get on that bus,” he muttered, turning and walking away abruptly. She said one last goodbye to Wilbur.

  The journey back to Ballymcguinness wasn’t a long one but in the rattling silence of the Land Rover, it felt interminable. Jess stole a surreptitious sideways glance at Owen but his face was a mask of concentration as he tried to avoid the many potholes. She’d turned away, folding her arms firmly across her breasts and stared instead at the lush, patchwork fields. If that was the way he wanted to play it, she told herself, then that was fine; she would be Ms Professional too. After all, it wasn’t as though she had come to the North to make a new friend. She had come as a journalist to hear a story, which she had done. Mission completed. It was time to go home now and write that story.

  Owen screeched to a halt outside the school and the children on their morning break all stopped playing to stare over at them. Then, realising there was nothing more to see than a grumpy looking farmer and an equally grumpy looking woman, they returned to their games. The bus’s timely arrival spared them from having to hang around awkwardly and Jess turned toward him as it pulled up beside them. “Well, er, thank you for everything.”

  “No problem.”

  God, it was like getting blood out of stone, she thought. “Right, well, I best be going then. I’ll email you through a copy of the draft article when it’s finished.”

&nbs
p; “Aye, that would be good.”

  “Okay, well...goodbye then.” As she climbed aboard, she didn’t see Owen turn on his heel and walk away; she was too busy breathing a sigh of relief. It wasn’t Leery Len sitting in the driving seat but rather a woman who took her ticket with a cheery smile. Just as well, she thought; otherwise she wouldn’t have been responsible for her own actions with the mood she was in.

  As she sat down heavily in her seat, she glanced out the window and caught a glimpse of a girl with long dark hair standing on the pavement where she herself had stood a moment ago with Owen saying their awkward goodbye, but as she blinked, the girl vanished. She looked around for Owen’s jeep; perhaps he was still there. Maybe he had seen her too? But all she could see was a cloud of exhaust fumes in the far distance. It had been nothing, nothing at all, she told herself. She was overwrought from all she had learnt about Amy yesterday; that was all. The bus juddered into life and Jess sat back in her seat, determined not to think about what she had just seen, and to her surprise, as the bus rolled through the little village and out onto the open road, she found herself feeling a little sad to be leaving Ballymcguinness behind.

  Chapter Nine

  “What do you think of this one?” Nora was holding out a gorgeous LBD Jess had seen her wearing a couple of times. “You can’t go wrong with a little black dress.”

  “You can if it is a woolly one, apparently, and little is definitely the operative word with that one. I don’t think I’ll fit it.” Jess frowned, surveying the strip of silky black material dangling from Nora’s fingertips.

  “Go on, give it a try. You can always wear those support knickers your mam sent you over last Christmas but just make sure you whip them off and replace them with something more appropriate should things get fruity between you and Nick. Otherwise, he’ll think you’re off to do the Tour de France in a pair of nude-coloured cycling shorts!”

  Jess laughed. Trust Nora to say it like it was. Lucky for her, she was heading into work after lunch so they had the morning to put together the perfect outfit. Standing in her bra and knickers in Nora’s sumptuously feminine bedroom, she shivered. There had been a nasty frost this morning, a sure sign that winter was around the corner. She hoped Wilbur was faring okay with the sudden drop in temperatures. Taking the dress from Nora, she wriggled her way into it. “Zip me up, would you?”