Three Women Read online

  About the Book

  Kate Cassidy is about to celebrate twenty-five years of marriage to Paddy. But the secret she has kept all this time is about to be discovered.

  Erin Harris has always known that she is different from the rest of her family. Over the years she has begun to put the pieces together and now she is determined to find out who she really is and where she comes from.

  Nina Harris has always put her marriage and family before everything else. But now she must learn to accept her daughter’s decision to go and search for a woman she doesn’t know.

  There is no escaping the past. As Kate, Erin and Nina face the truth about what happened so many years before, each is given a second chance for love and happiness.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  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

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  About the Author

  Also by Marita Conlon-McKenna

  Copyright

  THREE WOMEN

  Marita Conlon-McKenna

  For my wonderful mother,

  Mary

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my amazing family: my husband, James, and our children Mandy, Laura, Fiona and James and my son-in-law, Michael Hearty, and my two little sweethearts, Holly and Sam.

  To my sister Gerardine. Thanks for being there – the two of us sharing so much.

  And to Michael Fahy – almost part of the family.

  To Anne Murphy for her understanding and for making me laugh so much in Canada.

  To Fran Leach, for her constant encouragement, friendship and fun and all those sunny days in Baltimore.

  To my friends Catherine Harvey, Anne O’Connell and Joyce Van Belle.

  My special thanks to my wonderful editor, Linda Evans. Also thanks to Joanne Williamson, Vivien Garrett, Bella Whittington, Aislinn Casey, Kate Green and Sarah Whittaker, and to everyone at Transworld’s London office for their immense support, encouragement and work on this book. And to Eoin McHugh in Transworld Ireland’s Dublin office.

  To my agent Caroline Sheldon, for her constant belief in my writing and the excitement that working together on every new book brings!

  To Simon, Gill and Sophie Hess, Declan Heaney and Helen Gleed O’Connor and everyone at Gill Hess, Dublin, for making it all seem easy and for looking after me and my books so well!

  To bookshops and booksellers everywhere – thank you for bringing my books and readers together.

  To Sarah Webb, Martina Devlin and Larry O’Loughlin, and all my fellow writers – thanks for just being there!

  To my readers – thank you for making me enjoy writing so much.

  Chapter One

  ERIN HARRIS STUDIED HERSELF in the mirror. Long light-brown hair with an undeniable tint of red and gold, pale skin, freckles, weird blue-green eyes that seemed to change colour with her mood, long limbs and an okay figure. At twenty-six years of age she guessed she was kind of attractive – not beautiful, not pretty, but definitely attractive for someone who had just completed the first quarter of her life.

  Her mum and dad and brother Jack had already texted her their birthday good wishes, and later they would all get together for a family dinner at home. Today was going to be a good day. Even though it was only early March it was sunny and bright outside and, judging by the banging around in the kitchen, her two flatmates were busy making her a birthday breakfast before they all set off for work.

  She dragged the hairbrush through her thick, wavy hair and, grabbing her dressing gown, joined Nikki and Claire in the kitchen.

  ‘Hey, we were going to bring a tray into the bedroom to you!’ laughed Nikki, giving her a hug.

  ‘The scrambled egg and salmon will be ready in a min,’ added Claire, ‘and I’ve made us all a pot of proper coffee.’

  ‘I prefer eating here,’ Erin assured them as she curled up on to the old leather armchair that had pride of position at their kitchen table.

  ‘I’ll get the pressies,’ said Nikki, as Claire poured Erin a big glass of orange juice.

  ‘You two are spoiling me,’ sighed Erin, glad that she was sharing her apartment with two of her best friends.

  ‘That’s what birthdays are for,’ replied Claire, giving her a hug. ‘When you’re a kid it’s all parties and presents and no homework, but us grown-up girlies still deserve a bit of pampering from our best friends on our birthdays.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m twenty-six!’ Erin marvelled. It sounded so old. Yikes – thirty was only around the corner!

  ‘Sssh!’ hushed Nikki. ‘We won’t mention ages or years at this table. Agreed?’

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Claire and Erin, both aware of how obsessed Nikki was with age and beauty and looking good.

  ‘Here’s my pressie,’ said Nikki.

  Erin opened the pink-and-white-wrapped package. It was a bottle of her favourite perfume and a voucher for a facial at L’Esprit, the expensive salon that Nikki always went to in nearby Ballsbridge.

  ‘Nikki – you spent far too much!’

  ‘I’m a good customer there, so they give me a bit of a discount for my friends,’ Nikki confessed.

  Claire’s present was wrapped in zany Quentin Blake printed paper and contained a cute pair of pale-blue pyjamas decorated with little white rabbits.

  ‘Oh, I love them!’ said Erin.

  ‘Open the other present,’ urged Claire.

  Erin laughed when she saw the latest Rachel Allen cookery book. ‘You two are just trying to get me to do some of the cooking round here.’

  ‘True, but there’s some really great recipes in it and they’re easy – even for someone like you or Nikki,’ replied Claire, a natur
al cook, as she served them creamy scrambled egg and salmon on toast along with their coffee.

  The sun poured in through the window as they ate and, just as she was finishing, her phone went.

  ‘Hi Mum!’

  Erin listened as her mum’s voice broke into the familiar refrain of ‘Happy Birthday to You’. Claire and Nikki both joined in the singing too.

  ‘Mum, thanks for phoning. Listen, I’ll see you and Dad tonight.’

  Her mum was big into birthdays. Erin guessed that’s where she got it from too, wanting to celebrate and mark birthdays and special dates and traditions.

  ‘Hey, I’d better rush.’ Nikki jumped up from the table. ‘We’ve a client meeting first thing. You and Luke enjoy tonight!’

  ‘Thanks, Nikki.’

  ‘Nikki – you’ve hardly touched a thing!’ complained Claire.

  ‘You know I’m not a breakfast person!’ called Nikki as she disappeared.

  ‘Talk about understatement. She has literally just had black coffee and a finger of toast and hasn’t touched her egg.’

  ‘You know what she’s like,’ said Erin. ‘She just wants to be stick thin like a super-model.’

  ‘I’d better get going too.’ Claire drained the last of the coffee. ‘Old Mr Stevens and his bad knee are my first appointment today. Wednesday always seems to be my OAP day at the surgery – they all seem to need physio for something or other!’

  Ten minutes later Erin was on the DART train heading into work. She smiled as she read Luke’s text. He was in London for the day at a meeting, but promised to be back in time for tonight’s dinner. Sometimes she could hardly believe that she was going out with someone as cool as Luke, who also happened to be as nice and kind as they come. Three years older than her, he worked on the finance team in Hibernian Stockbrokers, which impressed her parents and friends but also meant that they could still afford to eat out and go away for the odd weekend. So many of her friends had lost their jobs or were in pretty dire financial straits, but thank heaven Luke’s firm was okay. He might have to work crazy hours but at least he had a job, and a good job at that.

  Erin’s own salary had been cut by more than twenty-five per cent in the past two years, and she knew that De Berg O’Leary Graphics were hanging on by a thread. This year no graduates had been taken on and a few of the staff were on a three-day week. Monika De Berg and her husband Declan O’Leary had built up a wonderful business over the past fifteen years in Ireland, and had worked on some amazing campaigns, but the firm now spent a lot of time pitching for smaller jobs and tendering for design contracts that might never happen.

  Erin tried not to get disheartened. At least she had a job when so many graphic designers didn’t, and she was doing something she loved. She had to stay positive and believe that, career-wise, things would improve.

  She walked briskly to the office, where Alice, their receptionist, let her in. Sliding into her desk on the second floor of the old Georgian building, she switched on her computer. Today was going to be a good day, she resolved … a really good day.

  Chapter Two

  KATE CASSIDY STOOD IN the kitchen trying not to give into the overwhelming sadness she felt. Every year it was the same, the date imprinted on her mind for ever. No matter how much she tried to forget it, to put the past behind her, the date on the calendar always rekindled that sense of panic and pain that she still remembered so acutely.

  She’d been only twenty years old when it happened, and so naïve and stupid it was beyond belief. One mistake that had cost her so much and changed everything. One mistake that she could never forget, or undo, no matter how hard she tried. She steadied herself and gazed out in the garden. It was covered in yellow daffodils. She’d planted the bulbs under the trees, in the flowerbeds and crowded them into pots. She loved their colour and sense of joy. They symbolized the arrival of spring … new beginnings.

  The daffodils always evoked that period when her life had changed and she had given up her baby for adoption. At the time it had seemed a solution to her problem, but what kind of woman was she that would allow her own flesh and blood, her daughter, to be raised by strangers? Somewhere out there people she had never met had raised her child and made her their own.

  Over the years she had somehow learned to accept it. Still, it didn’t stop her from thinking about her daughter and wondering what she might be like now.

  Her phone went. It was her sister, Sally. She smiled – good old Sally was wonderful.

  ‘You okay, Kate?’ Sally asked, her voice full of concern.

  ‘Yes.’

  Sally was the only one in the family who knew her secret, who had helped her at a time in her life when she was desperate and felt so alone. And, like herself, Sally never, ever forgot the date. Every year her sister would phone to talk to her and later they would meet up for a chat or a walk and lunch. It was almost a ritual by now. A ritual that Kate valued so much – the only acknowledgement there was of what had happened.

  She looked around her kitchen, neat and clean with good, hand-painted cream units and a top-of-the-range Neff cooker. She had a lovely home, a good husband, three children – and yet she always felt that something was missing, something that she could never have, could never regain … ever …

  Chapter Three

  NINA HARRIS WHISKED THE eggs together before folding in the rest of the ingredients to make the chocolate almond cake. She poured the mixture carefully into the cake tin and popped it into the hot oven. Now she could set about making the creamy chicken and mozzarella dish that was one of Erin’s favourites. She and Tom had offered to treat Erin to a birthday dinner down in the village tonight, but their daughter had said she’d far prefer dinner at home if that was okay.

  Nina had phoned Erin at breakfast time to wish her happy birthday and, as she listened to her daughter’s excited voice on the phone, Nina still couldn’t credit that it was twenty-six years since Erin had been born. It seemed like only yesterday that she had held in her arms a beautiful, blue-eyed baby with a steady gaze and a fuzz of reddish-gold hair.

  Every year as they celebrated Erin’s birthday Nina remembered the past, and the other woman who had given birth to their daughter on that date and then somehow made the difficult choice of giving her up for adoption.

  When Erin was small Nina had been nervous that one day this woman would turn up and demand her child back – even try to steal her back. But as the years went by the fear had eased and she had been so busy, always organizing birthday parties with cakes and balloons and bouncy castles and face-painting and magic shows and trips to the puppet theatre, that gradually the worry of this other woman had passed.

  Erin had been almost twelve weeks old when all the complex legalities and stringent interviewing processes and assessments were finally overcome and they received the good news from the social workers for the adoption agency that they could collect their baby from St Raphael’s Children’s Home. After so many years of trying to become parents they couldn’t believe it and were totally overwhelmed finally to be handed a baby girl to take home. They had been scared as anything coming home with Erin, worried they would somehow harm or hurt her, this precious baby they had been given, and neither of them had slept a wink that first night as they watched her sleep in the antique wooden crib they had bought for her.

  It had taken them a while to learn to relax and enjoy being parents, but from the first minute when Erin Grace Harris had grasped her finger fiercely in her tiny hand, Nina knew that Erin was hers for ever. She was her mother and that’s what mattered …

  Motherhood was such a complex issue, as Nina had discovered. One did not have to give birth physically to a child to love and bond with it and become a mother. Giving birth was the least of it! Every day you concentrated on doing your best to love your children, to help them to grow and become warm, rounded, good people capable of loving and being loved. From coping with sleepless nights and childhood temperatures and illnesses, and cooling down hot, teething gums, to
teaching them how to talk and walk and cycle their bikes and learn to read and write and study and think and become decent human beings. As far as Nina was concerned, it had always been a case of nurture, not nature, with Erin and their son Jack. Tom and she had done their utmost to be good parents and make Erin and Jack feel totally loved and wanted. They’d encouraged each of them to learn, explore and enjoy the things that held their interests and gave them pleasure and joy.

  On days like today she thought of the scared young woman who had given them such a gift when she had signed the agreement to let Erin be adopted. She hoped that, wherever that girl was now, she was happy and had a family of her own.

  They were quite a crowd for dinner, as Nina’s sister Lizzie – who was also Erin’s godmother – and her husband Myles were coming and Tom’s brother Bill and his partner Charles. Her mum May would join them for dinner too; Myles and Lizzie would collect her en route. May Armstrong was eighty-six years old and had her good and bad days, though she had seemed chirpy enough when Nina spoke to her earlier. Between them, Lizzie and she kept a good eye on their mother, who unfortunately was beginning to suffer with failing physical health and worrisome early signs of dementia. Her geriatrician had advised two years ago that their mum should consider moving into a home, but May had refused point blank, saying she could manage and that she would far prefer, when the time came, to die in her own home than to be incarcerated in a nursing home surrounded by old people she didn’t know.

  All they could do for the moment was try to be around as much as possible to help, and to keep things to a balanced routine that worked best. Her mum had a home help who came in three mornings a week and she went to the Silver Seniors Lunch Club every Thursday, which was held in Glenageary’s local parish hall and was something May really enjoyed. Weekends they took turns, and once a month their brother Mark came up from Kilkenny and stayed with his mum for two nights.

  Nina set the table then hurried upstairs to change before everyone arrived.

  ‘Nina, what will you have?’ Tom asked when she came back down. Her mum was ensconced in the armchair near the fire, enjoying a sherry, while Lizzie and Bill and Charley were downing gin and tonics. Her brother-in-law Myles, a teetotaller, was on his usual Ballygowan with ice and lemon.