Last Port of Call: The Queenstown Series

by Jean Grainger

  Rose moved beside Harp, placing her hand on her shoulder.

  Ralph stood foursquare before them, his hands in his pockets, seemingly perfectly relaxed. ‘Well, Harp, you do look like him.’ He paused and examined her more closely. ‘You’re not what I expected, though. I’d rather hoped you’d take after your mother, but then I daresay, so do you. And you now own the Devereaux family home, do you?’

  Harp drew herself up and replied, her voice showing no indication of the inner turmoil she felt. ‘I do look like him, and he was not poor or hapless. He was a wonderful, intelligent man, and I’m very proud to call him my father. And yes, the Cliff House is mine.’

  Ralph smiled, but it never reached his cold grey eyes.

  The End

  Acknowledgments

  This is a story about a mother and a daughter.

  A friend once told me that it struck her as strange how all the songs and films and novels were about the relationships between men and women. To her mind, and I’m inclined to agree with her, those are fairly straightforward and didn’t warrant the level of introspection they are afforded in popular culture. Men love women, women love men, or desire them, or endure them or loathe them, whatever they feel it’s usually fairly simple.

  According to my friend, the most complicated relationships on earth are between mothers and daughters. Here, she and I diverge.

  I do not have a complicated relationship with my mother. She loves me and I love her. She is my accountant, my advisor, my loudest cheerleader and biggest fan. Since embarking on this rollercoaster life as an author she has been my business manager, but long before that, since the day I was born in fact, she has been the rock, the strength, the shoulder that my siblings and I have needed. Always.

  This is my twenty second novel. And I write about families, relationships, and complications. The inspiration for the mothers in my books, Isabella, Elizabeth, Anastasia, Carmel, Rose, Solange, Mrs Kearns, Ariella, Mrs Tobin, all comes from Hilda. They are all versions of my own mother. I can create these wonderful women because of the mother I have. I am very lucky.

  Cork, Ireland February 2021.

  About the Author

  Jean Grainger is a USA Today bestselling Irish novelist living in a stone cottage in rural County Cork, Ireland. She writes a combination of contemporary and historical Irish fiction. She lives with her very lovely and extremely patient husband, and the youngest two of their four children. The older two come home occasionally to raid the fridge and moan about the cost of living now that they are paying for the toothpaste themselves. She also has two very cute but utterly clueless dogs called Scrappy and Scoobi.

  Last Port of Call is her 22nd book.

  Check out her website for books, blog, news and to download a free book.

  www.jeangrainger.com

  Also by Jean Grainger

  The Queenstown Series

  Last Port of Call

  The West’s Awake (coming summer 2021)

  The Tour Series

  The Tour

  Safe at the Edge of the World

  The Story of Grenville King

  The Homecoming of Bubbles O’Leary

  Finding Billie Romano

  Kayla’s Trick

  The Carmel Sheehan Story

  Letters of Freedom

  The Future’s Not Ours To See

  What Will Be

  The Robinswood Story

  What Once Was True

  Return To Robinswood

  Trials and Tribulations

  The Star and the Shamrock Series

  The Star and the Shamrock

  The Emerald Horizon

  The Hard Way Home

  The World Starts Anew

  Standalone Books

  So Much Owed

  Shadow of a Century

  Under Heaven’s Shining Stars

  Catriona’s War

  Sisters of the Southern Cross

  All books can be purchased as paperbacks, audiobooks and large print paperbacks here:

  author.to/Jeangraingerbooks