The Mistletoe Matchmaker

by Felicity Hayes-McCoy

  Dedication

  For Carmel, who was poised to save the day

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Read On

  Also by Felicity Hayes-McCoy

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Each year, the post office printed a leaflet that gave you the last dates for sending Christmas parcels overseas. You could find the same information on the internet, and that was far more convenient, but Pat Fitz liked having the leaflets as well. They were part of a thrilling countdown that she looked forward to every year.

  You’d get the first real nip in the air around the end of October or the beginning of November. There’d be a tang of wood smoke curling from garden bonfires, and sea salt blown by Atlantic winds. As the bracken and wildflowers died back on the mountains, the grey shapes of the stone walls would stand out between the fields. In the town, the lights would glow in the shops as the evenings began to get foggy. And if you went for a walk on the beach you’d need a scarf.

  Then, as November went on, you’d start to get in the fruits and spices to make the cake and the pudding. And the deli down the way from the butcher’s would start selling Christmas treats. There’d be long boxes of sticky black dates preserved in honey, and old-fashioned sweets that Pat’s husband ate, like Hadji Bey’s Turkish Delight, and things she liked herself, like Amaretti. And chocolate Bath Oliver biscuits in tall tins.

  Then, come December, you’d be looking for lifts into Carrick, to start choosing presents to send to the grandkids. And you’d drop round the corner to Lissbeg post office to get your stamps and your airmail stickers, and see if the leaflets were out. Pat always tucked hers up on the mantelpiece over the range. The truth was that she knew well what the postal dates were for Canada. They hardly changed at all from year to year. But the sight of the leaflet lifted her heart – and, anyway, there were different dates for posting cards and parcels. She always sent hers early, but you’d want to be sure all the same.

  One year, at a Christmas fête, she’d found cards that were photographs of Broad Street. You could see the shops on one side, and the old convent on the other, and the horse trough in the centre covered in snow, like sugar icing, and bright stars above in the night sky. And there was a glittery bunch of mistletoe in the top right-hand corner, with glittery writing underneath that said ‘Across the Miles . . .’.

  Her kitchen was on the first floor, at the front of the house, above the butcher’s shop. It was a fierce busy time of year and a great season for business. Ger would be below at the counter, trussing up Christmas turkeys. And Pat would be above in the firelight, with the kettle singing on the range and the tea made.

  And each year, as the excitement built, the coloured lights strung out across Broad Street would shine onto the table where she’d sit writing her cards.

  1

  Cassie Fitzgerald’s family was upwardly mobile. Thirty-five years ago her dad, Sonny, had come to Canada from a rugged little peninsula on the west coast of Ireland and within five years had become a citizen, found a job, achieved promotion, and married Cassie’s mom, a go-getter who’d started a business at her kitchen table and turned it into an empire. Well, maybe not exactly an empire but certainly Toronto’s fastest-growing office-employment agency.

  Five years later, having built up an impressive portfolio of contacts, Sonny had branched out on his own and, armed with Irish charm and a reputation for innovation, established a computer company that came to employ eighty people. So, having started married life in a cramped apartment, he and his wife, Annette, now owned a house in a leafy suburb, complete with a three-car garage, a landscaped garden, and an open-plan kitchen with a made-to-measure breakfast island.

  Along the way they’d produced Cassie and her two siblings. And, in proper Fitzgerald fashion, the older kids were now building empires of their own. Cathleen had her own knitwear label and a growing list of contracts with high-end stores. And Norah, who was a bit low on academic qualifications but high on social ambition, had married the heir to a chain of motels, so no problem there.

  It was Cassie, the youngest, who was the problem, at least in the eyes of her parents. With top grades at school and all the advantages of the family’s hard-won position, she could have done anything – she could have had her pick of university places, been an intern in any firm she liked – but instead she’d announced at the age of sixteen that she planned to work as a hairdresser. On cruise ships. She wasn’t interested in upward mobility, she told them. She was going to see life.

  There was no arguing with her. Before making the announcement to her parents, she’d found and signed up for a hairdressing course, and established when and how to join a waiting list for placements with liner companies. And by the time she’d finished her course and been through a local apprenticeship, a job had come up on a short cruise from Vancouver to Alaska.

  Her mom was horrified. ‘Alaska! You’ll freeze and there’s nothing to see there.’

  Cassie told her she was crazy. ‘There’s glaciers and grizzly bears and acres of rain forest. And it’s in September so we’ll see the Northern Lights.’

  ‘But you’ve got to get all the way to Vancouver first.’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s part of the fun. Dad can donate his air miles and call it my birthday present.’

  ‘And what happens when you’re back?’

  ‘Who knows? If I like the first trip I might sign on for another. Or if I feel like a change of climate I’ll head for the Bahamas. Or somewhere. That’s the point, Mom. I’m going to hang loose and take it as it comes.’

  The cruise had turned out to be fun. There were occasions when she groaned at the thought of yet another middle-aged woman wanting her hair set in rollers. And there were some dodgy moments when one of the stewards decided he fancied her, and kept going on about her Irish eyes. Still, lots of the people she met were really interesting. She wasn’t supposed to socialise with the passengers but, on the other hand, it was part of her job to be pleasant. So, taking care to keep things appropriate, she made friends wherever she found them. On a long hike across the tu
ndra, a bearded travel writer from Chicago told her all about his book. The following night she lay on deck and watched the Northern Lights with a Swedish girl who turned out to be an astronomer. And on a shining day, surrounded by miles of white saxifrage and pink fireweed, she celebrated her nineteenth birthday with whale blubber and dried caribou.

  On that first cruise Cassie realised that, if she wanted to up her game, she’d need more experience as a stylist. Never one to do things by halves, she spent seven solid months on land improving her CV. As a result her next cruise took her farther from home and paid better. It was three balmy summer months on a classier ship for richer, more standoffish people, but the girls who shared her cabin were easy to get along with, and some of her clients actually wanted a proper cut and colour. On the Alaskan job she’d kept her own hair pretty nondescript – classic and obviously cared-for, but not really her style. This time her boss was out to encourage the wealthy passengers to experiment with expensive cuts and treatments, so Cassie cheerfully had her smooth bob chopped into an asymmetrical crop with a long, feathery fringe tipped with peacock blue streaks. The effect on the ship’s salon’s takings was remarkable, and several elderly ladies disembarked looking nothing like the photos in their passports.

  When she got home she was tanned by sea air and tropical sunshine, her fringe was tipped with purple and gold, and she’d plaited a row of tiny seashells close to her zigzag parting.

  Her mom blinked at her appearance as she hugged her at the door. Then she held her away and shook her head. ‘You didn’t text me your arrival time. I might have been at the office.’

  Cassie dumped her case on the kitchen floor and dug in it for presents. ‘I wasn’t expecting a welcome party. You would have turned up sometime. Look, I got this for you in Bathsheba, in Barbados.’ It was a little heart-shaped crystal pendant on a silver chain. ‘One of the ladies at a stall in the food market had a tray of bric-a-brac among the fish. I’d say it’s Victorian, wouldn’t you? God knows where she got it. I didn’t ask!’

  Her mom picked up the pendant doubtfully. ‘Well, it’s lovely, sweetie, but do you really think you should have bought it?’

  ‘Oh, Mom! I don’t mean she snatched it from the neck of a passing tourist. She just had a tray full of bits and pieces. Old postcards and stuff. I spotted that in a corner and spent ages cleaning it up.’

  As Annette crossed to the sink and washed her hands fastidiously, Cassie’s lips tightened. ‘Maybe I should have lied and said I got it from an antique store.’

  Annette thrust the towel away and reached crossly for the coffee cups. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Cassie, you’ve just come in the door! Don’t start trying to be provocative.’

  Meekly sipping her coffee, Cassie told herself that that was the problem. She never tried to be provocative. She didn’t even want to be. But that was how the family always seemed to see her. Provocative, meddling, and far too fond of asking questions. And disgracefully unwilling to settle down and get rich.

  Probably it had been really dumb to bring Mom a gift she’d picked up at a roadside market. She’d felt such a thrill when she’d spotted the little pendant, though. It was tarnished and grubby but she’d seen at once that the workmanship was beautiful, and she’d known how well it would look around her mother’s elegant neck.

  It had taken several hours to clean it, working in her cabin in the evenings with cotton buds and a tin of silver polish borrowed from the purser, then a drop of gin followed by soapy water to shine the crystal heart. And now that Mom knew where it had come from, the chances were she’d never wear it. She probably even saw it as proof that her daughter was a cheapskate, whereas, in fact, Cassie had paid almost as much as it would have cost in a store: it hadn’t seemed fair to cheat the poor fish lady in the market, who clearly hadn’t known what the pendant was worth.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see Mom looking rueful. Ever since Cassie could remember, the two of them had been this way. They’d set off down the wrong track and struggle to find a way back. Neither of them ever meant it to happen but somehow it always did.

  Pulling herself together, she set down her coffee cup, tossed back her fringe, and asked how the family was doing. ‘Did Cathleen get that contract she was hoping for? And how are Norah’s kids?’

  Mom took the olive branch gracefully enough, and for a while she kept up a smooth flow of talk while Cassie sipped and listened. Norah had found the perfect playgroup for her twins. Cathleen had got the contract and everything was fine; she was thinking of upsizing to a new apartment and changing her personal assistant. ‘The truth is that they’re so busy I haven’t seen them in weeks.’

  ‘And how’s your own work? And Dad’s?’

  ‘Couldn’t be better. Exhausting, you know, but things are really expanding. I suppose it’s just as well that you kids are busy, too, or I’d feel like a bad mother!’

  This seemed so unlikely that Cassie glanced up sharply. The others had upped sticks long ago – it was only she who still treated the family house as home. Anyway, even when they were kids, they’d spent most of their time with au pairs. If Mom was coming down with Guilty Mother Syndrome it was definitely late-onset.

  Catching Cassie’s eye, Mom twisted her wedding ring. ‘I mean, in a way it’s a bit difficult that we’re all so busy right now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘But, of course, you’re not, are you? Busy. I mean, you’re home for a while?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t made plans.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I mean. You probably need a rest after all those long hours and hair nets.’

  Cassie grinned. ‘More like silver streaks and razor cuts but, yes, I could do with a break. Maybe a month or so. I’ve plenty of savings so I might take a road trip.’

  ‘The thing is . . . Dad got a call from Lissbeg the other day.’

  ‘From Ireland?’ Cassie swivelled round on her stool but Mom had turned away to fetch more coffee, so she couldn’t read her face. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Fine. Fine. It sounds like Frankie’s shouldering more of the business now the parents are getting older.’

  Frankie was Dad’s elder brother. Cassie had never met him, though he and his wife regularly sent birthday and Christmas cards.

  ‘And are Gran and Grandad okay too?’

  She’d never met them either. Grandad ran some kind of retail enterprise he’d set up a million years ago and, according to Dad, he was so focused on work that he never took a vacation. Which, given that he was a Fitzgerald, sounded par for the course. Gran made the odd Skype call and kept in touch a bit on Facebook. Mostly she put up shots of Finfarran – the peninsula where Lissbeg was – and eager requests for news of the family, which usually went unanswered until Mom stuck up a photo.

  Now and then, when yet another hand-knit sweater the wrong size arrived in the post as a birthday present, Cassie had felt bad about the lack of real contact with her grandparents. But whenever she’d tried to ask Dad about Ireland, he’d always seemed determined to change the subject. To be honest, she hardly even knew what Granny and Grandad looked like.

  Now Mom turned round, holding the coffee pot. ‘They’re both fine. Fighting fit, by the sound of it. In fact, that’s why it’s really great that you’re hanging loose again. The call was about their arrival time. You can pick them up at the airport next Tuesday.’

  2

  Pat Fitz tapped the poker against the bars and, bending down, peered at the flames, like a doctor inspecting a patient. She’d been coping with this range for thirty years and a tap on the bars at the right moment could make all the difference in the mornings. That or a lot of coaxing with a bit of rag and some paraffin. Thirty years was a long time to put up with its sulks and temperaments, though Ger still screwed his face up and referred to it as ‘that new yoke’. It didn’t matter, though. Having tiptoed round it all that time, Pat had the measure of it. And, having coped with Ger for fifty years and more, a sulky range was no bother to h
er.

  It was a damp Irish day with an autumnal nip in the air, which was why she’d lit the range. Mind you, the sun had been splitting the stones yesterday. You never knew what the weather might do in Finfarran. People were always telling each other you could get the four seasons of the year in a single day, and that was true. Especially since you wouldn’t get winters with snow and ice, like you’d see on a Christmas card.

  Of course, most years there’d be white caps on the mountains that reared up in the west, dividing the little fishing port of Ballyfin, at the end of the peninsula, from the rest of Finfarran’s farmland, cliffs, and villages. And Knockinver, the highest peak in the mountain range, was often silver-white from Christmas to Easter. But here in Lissbeg the worst of the winter howled in as gales from the ocean. Usually accompanied by weeks of mist and rain. Not snow. Pat could almost count on her fingers the times in her life when the town had had a white Christmas.

  And, God knew, her memory went way back. She’d grown up in a nearby village and attended Lissbeg’s convent school for girls. Ger had gone to the Christian Brothers’ school down the way, where Brother Hugh sounded just as bad as crazy Sister Benignus. That was how it was back in those days, boys in one school, girls in another, and no place for them to get to know each other, the way kids did these days. Instead, they’d just hung round after school, cracking jokes and taking dares round the stone horse trough in Broad Street.

  Neither Pat nor Ger had much time to themselves back then. Pat got a lift home after school from a friend’s dad, who collected them sharp at four in his blue Morris Minor; and Ger was always getting roared at from his dad’s shop across the road. And by the time Ger was fourteen his schooldays were well over. But Pat and her friend Mary, Ger and his mate Tom had made up a foursome by then and, in the end, when Tom had married Mary, Pat had married Ger.

  Frankie, who was born a year later, was the apple of his father’s eye. Even when the lads were still at school, Ger had his mind made up to leave him the business. Whatever else you might say about Ger, he was a close man with a nose for a deal, and by the time the lads were in their teens he’d trebled the size of the family farm. He’d bought sites, too, that developers from Carrick came round later and gave him a fortune for.