The Matchmaker Read online

  About the Book

  Maggie Ryan can’t help it! She constantly finds herself trying to match things and people together and with three bright, beautiful, single daughters she decides that a little romantic matching is needed.

  However, Maggie’s quest to find the perfect partner for each of her reluctant daughters is proving difficult. Grace has had enough of heartbreak and given up on men, deciding instead to concentrate on her career, and Anna believes that no man can ever live up to her romantic ideals. While single-parent Sarah devotes so much time to her little girl Evie that romance constantly passes her by.

  Determined to get ‘rings on those fingers’ Maggie Ryan believes that the arrival of new neighbour, bachelor Mark McGuinness, is an opportunity far too good to be missed!

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by Marita Conlon-McKenna

  Copyright

  THE MATCHMAKER

  MARITA CONLON-McKENNA

  For mothers and daughters everywhere

  Acknowledgements

  To Francesca Liversidge, my wonderful editor, for her constant encouragement and for making writing and working together such a pleasure.

  Special thanks to Lucie Jordan, Rebecca Jones and Richenda Todd for all their assistance with The Matchmaker, and continued gratitude to the rest of the brilliant Transworld team.

  To Caroline Sheldon, my agent, for all her hard work and support. For all at Gill Hess, Dublin with enormous gratitude to Gill and Simon Hess, Declan Heaney, Geoff Bryan and Helen Gleed O’Connor for looking after me and my books so well.

  For my own perfect match, James; thanks for always being there.

  For my family: Mandy, Laura, Fiona and James, my son-in-law Michael Hearty and my little granddaughter Holly. Thank you for making my life so happy and for giving me plenty to write about!

  Thanks to my sister Gerardine, her husband Blaine and children Rachel and Graham.

  For three very special aunts: Angela Conlon, Una Doyle and Genevieve McKenna, who have been so supportive and helpful since I started writing.

  For ‘les girls’: Ann, Grace, Karen, Yvonne, Helen and Mary for all the fun and friendship we’ve shared over the years. Vive la France!

  Thanks to Anne Frances Doorly for making me smile and laugh for the most part of my life.

  Thanks to Sarah Webb for her kindness, insight and the gift of her friendship.

  Thanks to Catherine Harvey for being such a wise and wonderful best friend.

  Thanks to Anne O’Connell for reading the first chapter of my first book, and encouraging me to write the rest.

  For all my writer friends in Irish PEN – a great club to be in.

  For my fellow ‘Irish Girls’ writers; thanks for all the great book launches, dinners and regular get-togethers.

  Thanks to all the bookshops and booksellers who bring writers and readers together and have given me such great support.

  Thank you to all my lovely readers, especially those who have been there from the beginning.

  For everyone involved in the publication and sale of this book, a heartfelt thank you from a grateful author.

  The most beautiful thing in the world is a match well made.

  Jane Austen, Emma

  The Matchmaker’s Tips for a perfect Match . . .

  Opposites do definitely attract.

  Best friends can make the ‘best’ husbands.

  Interfering in the lives of daughters, sisters and friends usually helps . . .

  Distance can make the heart grow fonder; but usually of someone else!

  Remember bad boyfriends make equally bad husbands.

  Men who are still living at home with their ‘Mammies’ at thirty will (no matter what a girl does) always be Mammies’ boys!

  Good Men are not like the 46A bus . . . they do not come along that often!

  Seeing a man when he is sick, in his pyjamas and is at his absolute worst, and still managing to find him somewhat attractive, is very encouraging.

  Always accept lunch, dinner and party and concert invitations as given time they may lead to a diamond ring.

  Remember falling in love can happen at any age.

  Chapter One

  It seemed to Maggie Ryan that she had been matching things all her life, from simple socks and underwear in drawers and linen baskets to table mats and table settings and menus, furniture, curtains and clothes, to the more complex choice of the perfect gift for the people she cared about, or the talents of her children with school subjects and hobbies. Matching people was another matter as it always tended to get a bit more complicated. Bringing people together, however, was what she was good at, and something that she actively enjoyed. She smiled thinking about today’s big Sunday lunch with family and friends gathered around her rather ancient dining table.

  As she looked out over the square of elegant red-brick Georgian houses that formed a neat rim around the lush hedges and greenery of Pleasant Square, she smiled again. ‘Pleasant’ was the perfect word for it, she thought, this historic square with its old family houses tucked between Leeson Street and Ranelagh where she had lived for thirty-two years. She and Leo had raised their family here, opposite the east gate of the park with its tantalizing view of the herbaceous borders and flower beds.

  The square itself, though not very big or imposing, was still considered one of Dublin’s most desirable places to live, and the houses that surrounded it architectural gems. Verdant oak, ash, beech and chestnut formed leafy pathways through the small park, enjoyed by generations of the square’s inhabitants.
Pleasant Square’s appearance had barely changed over a century and a half and Maggie couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

  She glanced at the ‘Sold’ sign outside number 29, on the corner opposite. She had to admit she was curious to know who had bought the O’Connors’ house. It had gone to auction about two weeks ago. Over the past month streams of visitors, would-be purchasers and inquisitive locals had viewed the three-storey home. Property prices in the city had literally gone through the roof and an old house with character so near town coming on the market was bound to attract interest. Despite being rather ramshackle and a bit run-down the house had sold for a fortune and rumour had it that the purchaser was a man of property, a wealthy investor. Whoever the mysterious buyer was, he had made a wise decision!

  She remembered moving into this house, number 23, when she was a bride, Leo Ryan sweeping her up into his broad arms and insisting on carrying her up the steps and across the threshold, the two of them racing up the stairs and along the landing to the huge bedroom and the big bed, where they had stayed for hours, scarcely believing that they were man and wife and were now legally able to sleep together.

  The house had been let as flats for years and was much the worse for wear when they first saw it, but Leo, with his eye for investment, had seen the potential. Over time they had both worked to restore the old house to its original condition, junking flimsy partition walls, sinks and two-ringed gas hobs, replacing multicoloured carpet and lino with polished floors, restoring original plasterwork and revealing the magnificent boarded-up fireplaces in the drawing room and dining room. Year by year they had turned a house full of tatty bed-sits into a comfortable family home as they worked and raised their three daughters.

  The girls were grown up now. Grace, Anna and Sarah were independent young women, bright, beautiful, kind and good-hearted, just as daughters should be. She was proud of them, all so different. Grace, an architect, wrapped up in her career; Anna lost in the world of literature and academic life; and Sarah, who was still struggling to find a niche of her own but was devoted to her small five-year-old daughter Evie, who was the apple of her grandmother’s eye. She loved them dearly but she had to admit their single state perplexed her.

  Sometimes she wished that she could stop the clock, turn back time, have Leo alive again, back beside her, the children still young. But it seemed nothing could stay the same: Detta and Tom O’Connor deciding to move to England to be near their son Cormac and his family and selling up was just another example of it. Soon a new neighbour would be moving into the old Georgian house on the square. It was stupid for her to get sad and emotional about it. Pull yourself together, she told herself. You’ve a busy day ahead. She’d invited everyone for lunch to say a fond farewell to Detta and Tom before their big move to Bath next week. Lord knows they deserved a nice meal and a proper celebratory send-off from the square.

  Grabbing the Sunday newspapers off her doorstep she retreated to the warmth of the kitchen and the promise of a quick read, a mug of fresh roast coffee and two slices of wholemeal toast with honey before ten o’clock mass. Then she would come home and pop that enormous leg of lamb she’d got from John Flanagan the butcher into the oven with a few sprigs of rosemary from the garden and begin the preparations for lunch.

  Chapter Two

  Pulling the duvet up over her face and ears, Anna Ryan tried to keep herself warm and block out the nasty world that was waiting for her to emerge from her cocoon of sleep, drink and daydreaming. Her mouth, tongue and throat felt as if they were growing some kind of obscure turgid bacteria; how she wished she had had the foresight to bring a glass of water to bed with her last night. She contemplated the clock and the skinny strip of daylight that teased through her heavy chocolate-brown curtains. It was midday already.

  Why did she do it? Waste her time going to one of those awful student-type parties in an overcrowded apartment in Temple Bar where you had to shout over the Killers to be heard and where everyone was dressed in black and drinking cheap red wine, talking about scripts and trying to be sophisticated? Why did her drama students always have to be so predictable! She should have had more sense and left early like she had planned – made a polite appearance and then got a taxi home instead of staying there till four a.m. arguing about the state of the Abbey Theatre and whether plays should aim for Broadway or broke. She must be mad talking to a load of twenty-year-olds about the complicated influences on the structure of Irish drama on a Saturday night. She was pathetic. She had hoped Philip would turn up, only discovering at midnight when she texted him that he had gone to Kilkenny to run a workshop with a theatre group over the weekend, a fact that he had forgotten to mention to her. Philip Flynn worked with her in the college’s English department and as neither of them was involved with anyone, a somewhat unusual relationship had developed between them. With a mutual passion for theatre and literature, they often attended events together, sharing a bottle of wine or supper afterwards. There had been one or two late-night boozy romantic skirmishes between them but somehow good sense had prevailed and they had managed to avoid spoiling it. He was an interesting man and although others considered him self-centred – self-absorbed – and somewhat aloof, she understood the passion for drama and poetry that drove his personality. Still, a phone call from him would have been nice and saved her making an absolute eejit of herself!

  She groaned, staring at the wall, wishing the day was over before it had even begun. She would have dearly loved to give in to her hangover and loll in bed for the rest of the day but she remembered that she had promised to go for Sunday lunch at her mother’s. If she didn’t show up Maggie Ryan would have a search party out hunting for her, which meant that one of her sisters would turn up, give her a lecture and see the calamitous mess and state of her house – a fate she intended to avoid at all costs.

  Stretching gradually, she braved getting out of bed. She looked and felt absolutely mind-blowingly awful. Clutching at walls like an invalid, she gingerly made it to the bathroom. Her brown wavy hair was in a frizz that even the bravest hairdresser wouldn’t touch and her freckles stood out like paint spatters on her pale face; her eyes were smudged and smeared with that stupid natural plant dye mascara that she had been trying out. Throwing cold water on her face and neck to revive herself she realized carbs and coffee were urgently needed and, wrapping herself in the duvet, struggled to the kitchen for a mug of coffee and a slice of toasted brown bread. She had only instant and a half a carton of milk, but the brown bread she found was in no fit state to be handled, let alone toasted. Desperate, she searched her kitchen presses and the fridge for something to eat, torn between a half-packet of water crackers and a pecan-nut cluster bar. She opted for the water crackers, which she smeared with butter and a slice of Edam cheese topped with a smidgen of peanut butter that was rather ancient-looking but still in date.

  A good hot shower and she might even begin to feel human in about an hour, she thought. Scrambling among the clutter of newspapers and books strewn on the kitchen table she searched for the copy of the new volume of poems by an incredible woman Russian poet who had moved to Ireland. It was here somewhere . . . Ah! Finding it, she gave a sigh of contentment as the caffeine began to work its magic. Curling up in the chair, she began to read.

  Chapter Three

  The Sunday streets were quiet as Grace stared out the window of her apartment overlooking Spencer Docks. Barefoot in her oyster-coloured silk wrap, she listened to a church bell ringing, calling the faithful of the city to mass and watched as below a rowing boat skimmed its way across the water, the crew perfectly in time, the oars lifting and dipping in unison. A perfect Sunday morning, dry and clear with only a hint of cloud in the sky.

  The coffee-maker was on and the smell of toast filled the apartment. She opened the fridge: eggs, yes, bacon, none; she’d cook scrambled eggs for breakfast. She grabbed three eggs from the shelf, whisking them quickly with butter in the small saucepan. The creamy yellow eggs were almost cooked when Sha
ne walked in.

  She blinked, surprised to see that he was dressed already for she had intended they should share breakfast in bed. He had obviously showered for his fair hair was still clinging damply to his forehead and neck as he reached and kissed her.

  ‘Mmm, that smells good,’ he said, lowering himself on to the kitchen chair.

  She piled some eggs and toast on to his plate, passing him the coffee and some butter.

  ‘I’m starving,’ he admitted, tucking in as she sat down beside him.

  The eggs were just perfect. Nothing worse than over- or underdone scrambled eggs. There was definitely a knack to it, she thought as she began to eat.

  ‘Why did you get dressed so soon?’ she asked.

  ‘Things to do,’ he said, buttering more toast. ‘Johnny phoned me last night. There’s a sale on golf clubs over in Howth. We thought we might run over and have a look and then maybe play a few holes. The weather looks as if it might hold so we may as well.’

  ‘There’s lunch at my mother’s at two thirty,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Sorry, Grace, but I just can’t make it.’

  He didn’t sound the least bit apologetic and as she studied his handsome face she realized that spending the day together had never been part of his plan.

  ‘She’ll be disappointed,’ she said, trying to conceal her anger, ‘but she’s invited quite a crowd.’

  ‘There you go.’ He laughed, reaching for the coffee. ‘No harm done.’

  She wanted to say to him: Forget Johnny, forget golf. Forget lunch at my mother’s. Why can’t we just stay here for the day looking out at the water, being with each other. But she didn’t.

  ‘It was a great night,’ he said dipping his toast in the egg. He had butter on his lip; his beige cords were brushing against the tanned and toned skin of her bare leg.

  Grace said nothing, thinking about the expensive meal they’d shared in Peploe’s on St Stephen’s Green the night before. The busy restaurant had been packed and they had been so lucky to get a table. They’d talked for hours, telling silly stories, taking it in turns to impress each other by being outlandish.