The Stone House Read online

  About the Book

  Everything changes for Kate, Moya and Romy when Maeve, their mother, falls critically ill. They return from Dublin, London and New York to Rossmore and the old stone house overlooking the Irish Sea where they grew up – but ancient jealousies surface as each sister confronts the past and the decisions they have made.

  For Kate it is time to re-examine of her role as a high-flying lawyer and single parent. Moya must take a good look at her marriage to the charming but unfaithful Patrick. Romy, who hasn’t set foot on Irish soil for years, has to find the courage to face her family. Over the years Maeve labelled her daughters; Kate the brains, Moya the beautiful, and Romy the bold one. Now it is time for all three to break out of the box.

  A gripping story of love, loss and the power of sisterhood and family relationships to survive the deepest hurts and secrets from one of Ireland’s best-loves writers.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  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

  About the Author

  Also by Marita Conlon-McKenna

  Copyright

  The Stone House

  Marita Conlon-Mckenna

  For Mandy, Laura and Fiona,

  my own three wonderful daughters.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Maria Grech Ganado, for the use of her wonderful poem ‘Relative Time’.

  The two men in my life who are each so good in their own way: my husband James for his constant belief and support and my son James for making me laugh and smile every day and for being one of the kindest young men on the planet.

  Mandy, Laura and Fiona, my three daughters – all so different and wonderful!

  My sister Gerardine, it is so good to have you home.

  Sarah Webb for being one of the nicest people I know and for always giving the best advice.

  ‘The Irish Girls’ who help make being a writer so much fun. Martina Devlin, Claire Dowling, Mary Hosty, Julie Parsons, Deirdre Purcell, Marisa Mackle, Jacinta McDevitt, Ann-Marie Forrest, Catherine Dunne, Tina O’Reilly, Suzanne Higgins, Cauvery Madhaven et al. – thanks for all the dinners, drinks and chats.

  My ‘Irish PEN’ friends, especially Christine Dwyer-Hickey, Patricia O’Reilly, Denise Deegan, Nesta Tuomey and Kathleen Sheehan O’Connor.

  My agent Caroline Sheldon.

  My wonderful editor Francesca Liversidge.

  Nicky Jeanes and all the team at Transworld.

  Gill, Simon, Geoff, Declan and all the team at ‘Gill Hess’, Dublin.

  The Irish booksellers for all their support over the years.

  Lastly to all my readers, especially those who have grown up with my books, thanks for making writing such a pleasure.

  RELATIVE TIME

  (for my mother)

  Towards the end, my mother would regularly

  bid me wind the clocks she couldn’t reach –

  how little time I felt I had, how slow

  to respond, bipolared like a pendulum that’s stopped.

  Younger, I’d rushed to do it, directing from the stool

  the ticking and the tocking with a wave of each hand,

  gleefully flitting with each ding and dong

  as I had paced them, clock succeeding clock.

  When time ran out between the chores

  of my own motherhood and my lost name,

  all it became was the tighter twisting of keys

  in yet more faces without doors, each effort

  a rehearsed piece played for my mother

  who thought me younger than she.

  She’s gone. As has my own young family.

  And I’ve inherited the clocks, and the time

  to wind them in. I keep their faces

  within reach of mine. Sometimes their chimes

  bring memories of lighter days. Sometimes

  all they can say is GONE GONE GONE.

  Maria Grech Ganado

  Maeve Dillon walked down the gravelled driveway and across the main road, before turning through the gap in the hedgerow on to the narrow lane that led to the Strand. She savoured the solitude and quiet of the empty beach as she kicked off her flip-flops and wriggled out of her loose grey tracksuit. She loved to swim at this time of the morning and she walked across the bleached sand to the beckoning curve of swirling foam. The tide was in and she waded out to the tops of her thighs, her screams like that of a five-year-old as the freezing chill of the waves enfolded her and she dived in. The water was so cold it almost took her breath away. A good swimmer, she took long even strokes as she swam along the shoreline. Back and forth, five times, six times, the sea water invigorating her, sending the blood coursing through her veins, making her feel young, alive. She floated, letting the rhythm of the waves take her. There was nothing like it. Ever since she was a small girl she’d been swimming on this stretch, and now that she was getting older it was one of her great pleasures. Light and ageless she floated. Her daughters fussed and told her it was dangerous to swim alone but she ignored their concerns – it beat going to a gym or aerobic classes any day! Two more stretches, backstroke, over-arm. She ran out and grabbed her towel, scrubbing at her limbs and shoulders, trying to dry herself, warming as she pulled the fleece sweatshirt over her mottled blue and pink tinged skin as she set off back up the beach, nodding to Philip Doyle, who was walking his two golden Labradors.

  She walked briskly, turning towards home.

  She crossed the road to the Stone House, the granite-clad house, where she had grown up, and where she and Frank in turn had raised their own family. The house built by her grandfather was set on a slight slope overlooking the beach, and provided magnificent views of the Rossmore coastline and the shipping lanes, the sound and smell of the sea a constant in the lives of its inhabitants.

  A shower, then breakfast, for she had a busy day ahead.

  She pottered around the kitchen. Porridge oats, milky tea, and some toast with bramble jelly. A solitary breakfast; she was still unused to this empty kitchen, children grown, Frank gone. She sat inside the window perusing yesterday’s edition of the Irish Times, Jinx, the cat, mewing for attention. She let him out and watched him chase a daring robin across the patio.

  She loved this house, this garden, and drew comfort from them. Since she had been widowed she had resisted pressures to sell it
and to move somewhere smaller. This was her home and she had absolutely no intention of selling it. The place held far too many memories for her to even consider leaving it. Growing up, her daughters had filled the house with their laughter and stories and parties and Frank and herself had hatched so many plans together at this very table. They had fought and cried, loved and grieved under this roof, struggled at times to keep their marriage together. Good and bad times, all shared between the bricks, roof, floors and polished wood of this old house. But now Frank was gone, her daughters caught up in their own lives and she was for the most part alone. She did her best to keep herself busy, create new routines, enjoy simple things: the garden, the church choir, lunches, the bridge club.

  Maeve stirred herself. She had a few things to do before meeting her sister for lunch.

  Chapter One

  KATE DILLON CONSIDERED the notes, letters and stacks of files on her desk. She’d been far too wrapped up in the Bradley and Hughes merger, and look where it had got her. A backlog of cases to deal with and a senior partner breathing heavily down her neck, looking for some kind of date and time strategy that he could use to appease his mighty corporate clients. She rubbed at the back of her neck, hoping the circular movement of her fingers might ease off the tension of her impending headache. She stretched and, moving her head sideways, gazed from the tinted windows of her office to the quays below. A soft sunshine speckled the dark waters of the River Liffey, the late-afternoon traffic already building up. Like a princess in a shimmering glass tower Kate looked down over the city below her. She loved Dublin with its mix of old and new, ancient streets and modern contemporary architecture. Patterson’s, the huge law firm where she worked, was situated right in the heart of Dublin’s busy International Financial Services Centre in the redeveloped docklands. Old warehouses and derelict buildings and yards had given way to glass and steel and concrete; the dollars, pounds, euro and yen of banking and finance had created an artistic landmark. She had fought hard to work in such an environment and soon hoped to reach the level of junior partner, a title few women of her age had achieved.

  ‘Kate, have you looked at that paperwork for Hughes’s yet? They want a contract drawn up now!’ interrupted her boss. Bill O’Hara, a former Irish rugby star, was now an eighteen-stone legal powerhouse who usually had the charm and wit to soft-soap the most truculent of clients. ‘Colman Hughes wants it all wrapped up by next Monday.’

  Kate let out a whoosh of breath. There was at least twenty-four hours’ solid work in it and she had to collect Molly from the crèche in an hour and a half.

  He looked down at the pile of work on her desk.

  ‘Just leave the rest and concentrate on this. It’s too important,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  At Patterson’s, everyone knew that even the best and most loyal client could be fickle as hell if someone didn’t jump through hoops to get their work done and on time. Their competitors were waiting with open arms.

  ‘Promise I’ll do my best but . . .’

  ‘Good girl, Kate. I knew I could rely on you.’ A smile lit up his broad face as he walked away from her in his immaculate Louis Copeland suit.

  ‘I’m out to dinner with those two Americans but I’ll be home by ten, so you can e-mail me with a draft.’

  Kate cursed her own ambition and need to be appreciated as she phoned Derry to tell him yet again that she had to work late and to ask him if he could possibly pick up their three-year-old daughter.

  A smile relaxed her face as she heard his calm and unhurried voice.

  ‘It’s all right, Katie. I was just in the middle of some designs. But it’s no problem. I’ll see you later.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Derry. Really I am. It’s Bill, he’s put me in a spot. I’ll try and get home in time for bedtime, OK?’

  ‘Sure. Molly and I will mind each other so don’t worry, and I’ll make her pancakes for tea.’

  Kate laughed. Molly was going through a pancake stage, demanding them at every opportunity.

  ‘Save me some!’ she said.

  Putting down the phone she said a mental prayer of thanks for Derry’s easy nature and the fact that he was self-employed. He worked from a small mews office close to her apartment, designing yachts and boats for a number of clients, including boat-builders and yards. Their three-year-old daughter was the result of a passionate fling. Derry was a good father who paid her some support money and had insisted on playing his part in raising Molly, a wild bundle of mischief who was a perfect balance of their two separate personalities.

  Kate, a single mother, had fought hard to develop her legal career and establish her financial independence. She had seen too many of her colleagues put their career on the back boiler as they gave in to the demands of self-centred husbands or demanding young families. She had worked too hard to throw in the towel and give up the position and respect she had earned at Patterson’s. She had no rich husband or family to support her: everything she and Molly had, she had earned. She had learned the hard way when she was younger not to rely on men and had no intention of ever being dependent on anyone. No, she was quite capable of taking care of herself and her child, but at this minute was very glad that Derry had agreed to help out.

  Free to concentrate, she cleared her desk and opened the file on her laptop, making notes on the yellow pad as she read through the minutiae of the agreements of undertaking that were to form part of Colman Hughes’s latest acquisition. Funny, it reminded her of something she had worked on three years ago . . . Leaving her desk she headed down to the third floor to the company’s library of back cases and legal opinions, where she hunted for the exact documents she needed and the letter from the inspector of taxes she had dealt with.

  Vonnie Quinn sat snug in the window seat of Lavelle’s, looking out over the seafront and harbour.

  Putting on her reading glasses she studied the menu, noticing the daily specials written in chalk on the black-board over the busy serving counter as Sheila O’Grady the owner ambled over.

  ‘How are you, Vonnie?’

  ‘I’m fine, Sheila, fine. I’m just waiting for Maeve.’

  ‘Can I get you something while you’re waiting?’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be along in a few minutes.’

  ‘Then I’ll give you time to make up your minds. How’s Joe and the family?’

  ‘They’re all grand. The boys are big as houses now, all grown up. What about your own children?’ enquired Vonnie.

  ‘Lisa’s doing her finals and Anna’s just started working for one of those fancy French banks in Dublin as an economist. Deirdre and Tommy are in the business here with me, and Brian’s just moved back from Manchester.’

  ‘Brian’s the married one?’ said Vonnie. She wondered if Sheila had any grandchildren yet. She could sense a reticence in the other woman at the mention of her older son. Years ago Brian had dated her niece, they’d been childhood sweethearts, mad about each other. Then all of a sudden it had broken up. She couldn’t remember why, but perhaps it had been for the best.

  ‘Brian and his wife divorced a while back.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Well these things happen nowadays. He works for that big engineering firm Jameson’s. They’re doing all the work on the new bypass road and motorway.’

  ‘That’s a big project.’

  ‘Aye, but he seems to like building roads and bridges, and it’s good to have him back home.’

  Vonnie smiled. She was full of admiration for Sheila, who had worked so hard in Lavelle’s over the years to put her children through school and college and given them every opportunity. The two women had both attended Rossmore local Convent of Mercy and were classmates. Sheila, a bright girl, had married young, too young, and by the time she was thirty had been left a widow with five small children to raise and no income. She had never complained and instead of whining about her misfortune had gone to Hazel Lavelle’s looking for work. Rolling up her sleeves she’d set
to, her hard work and intuition a huge factor in turning the small coffee shop into one of the finest restaurants in the county with a huge local trade, and the humble bakery into one of the main suppliers of gourmet breads and pastries and desserts in the South-East.

  Vonnie settled down to watch the passers-by and hoped to catch a glimpse of her younger sister. She smothered a flicker of annoyance. It was so like her sister. Of late, Maeve always seemed to be delayed, caught up in something. Ever since the death of Frank over four years ago, Maeve was constantly trying to lose herself in things. Bridge, book clubs, gardening, the choir. No doubt she was attending to her plants or typing up a letter for one of the charities she volunteered for, had forgotten the time and would arrive in a few minutes, hair flying, all flustered.

  The restaurant was filling up and a queue was forming for tables as she lifted up the hand-painted menu. Carrot and parsnip soup with a hint of ginger, that sounded good, then perhaps the vegetable bake and a side salad with a glass of wine.

  ‘Still no sign,’ smiled Sheila as she took her order.

  ‘You know Maeve!’

  She watched as Sheila walked back to the kitchen, envying her trim figure and her short hair, a subtle shade of highlighted ash blond. She was an attractive woman and yet had never remarried. No wonder there were still so many rumours about her. Years ago the small town’s gossips’ tongues had wagged and she’d been linked with a local married businessman: Vonnie’s brother-in-law’s name was among those mentioned. Maeve had steadfastly never said a word to deny or confirm the accusation and had kept coming to Lavelle’s for coffees and lunches until gradually over time the innuendoes were forgotten.

  The soup was delicious, served with freshly made brown bread, and she tried to stifle her annoyance with Maeve as she began to eat. She hated sitting alone while all around her people were immersed in conversation. Sheila diplomatically brought her over a copy of the Irish Independent. She called Maeve’s number: no reply. At least she must be on the way.

  Annoyance gave way to alarm as her main course was served, and she ate the leek, mushroom and pepper mixture, not even bothering with coffee as she paid the bill.