The Rose Garden Read online

  ‘The dining table and chairs were made by Gillingtons and were probably commissioned by the original owner.’

  ‘Charles Moore.’

  ‘Then the magnificent hall table, the parlour chairs and library bookcase are by Robert Strahan, a renowned Dublin furniture-maker. There are also side-tables and a serving table by the firm of Mack, Williams and Gibton. You have some very special and valuable pieces here, Molly.’

  ‘Some of them came with the house,’ she explained, ‘and a few David and I bought at auctions ourselves.’

  ‘Well, you have bought well,’ he murmured. ‘Obviously the market is not as good as it was a few years back, but still there are always those who are interested in pieces of such fine quality. Is there anything else you’d like me to look at since I’m here?’ he offered.

  Embarrassed, Molly showed him around the rest of the house. Myles suggested that a few items that were in the spare rooms upstairs also be put into the auction.

  ‘This linen press is magnificent – and what about the writing cabinet?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she hesitated. ‘Obviously I want to keep some of my things around me when I move.’

  Myles also picked out some silver pieces.

  ‘This salver and these matching dish rings are beautiful. Would you consider selling them?’

  ‘I really need to think about it,’ she admitted, feeling rather overwhelmed.

  The grandfather clock in the hall began to strike and Molly realized that poor Myles Murray had spent the past two hours looking all around the house and she hadn’t even offered him a cup of tea. He must think her terribly rude.

  ‘Please, Myles, will you have coffee, or a bit of lunch?’ she found herself offering.

  ‘I hadn’t noticed the time myself,’ he smiled, ‘but that would be lovely.’

  Down in the kitchen she quickly made some toasted cheese-and-ham sandwiches, relieved that she had something in the fridge, and a pot of coffee. He was good company, regaling her with stories of some of the auctions he had held and of magnificent pieces found like buried treasure in all sorts of houses.

  ‘A lot of old convents have been sold recently and they are a virtual treasure trove of furniture and glass and silverware and art. The nuns, God be good to them, seemed to have had no idea what valuable things they were using day by day.’

  ‘But thank heaven they were being used,’ insisted Molly, ‘instead of being stored in some dusty attic or left in some empty house to rot.’

  ‘You are totally right, Molly. Everything was crafted to be used as well as appreciated. Function was important and still is,’ he added seriously.

  As she poured him a second coffee she found herself answering his gentle probing about David’s death. Myles had lost his wife, Jane, about nine years earlier.

  ‘Colon cancer,’ he said calmly. ‘We had no children, which was obviously always a big regret. Jane had been sick for years.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured.

  ‘We had a good, happy marriage, more than most people,’ he said proudly, ‘but I still miss her terribly.’

  ‘I know what that’s like,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t know how I would have got through losing David without the girls.’

  ‘I hate being on my own,’ he said vehemently. ‘I’m not very good at it.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘If you ever need to talk or want a bit of company …’ he offered.

  ‘Thank you, Myles,’ she said, suddenly feeling slightly uncomfortable, which was stupid. She had asked him to the house. He was just being sympathetic, that was all!

  ‘I’d better get going,’ he said standing up and carrying his plate and cup over to the sink.

  ‘Myles, thanks for coming over here and for all your good advice. I appreciate it.’

  ‘No problem, Molly! Thanks for the lunch, and I’ll draw up a valuation list and email it to you along with the dates of our upcoming auctions.’

  Following Myles’s visit, Molly made an inventory of all the furniture and paintings, silver and various pieces in the house as he had suggested. Kim helped her by taking photos of some of the larger or more valuable items.

  She had asked Ronan King to find out if Frank Dunne was interested in purchasing any of the larger pieces of furniture that had been specifically designed for the house, but got no response.

  Grace, her exams over, came home for a few days to flop and relax before heading to Amsterdam to go backpacking around Europe for six weeks with her girlfriends.

  ‘I’d great fun when I did it!’ Kim joked. ‘But remember, if you are on overnight trains and don’t book a sleeper, someone needs to stay awake on guard duty or you will all get robbed! Also, bring lots of knickers! Get paper ones. And don’t forget baby wipes and sunblock!’

  Molly tried not to think of the antics Grace and her friends would get up to on their travels and just prayed she would return safely.

  Trish had drawn up two sets of plans for the cottage: one which just used the existing footprint and the other which included an enlarged kitchen-cum-living area, with ceiling-to-floor windows at the back of the cottage that opened out to the garden, creating almost another room. Molly absolutely loved it. Trish had costed both of them.

  ‘I know it seems expensive, Molly,’ she explained, ‘but it’s nothing compared to you buying a new house in this area or somewhere else.’

  Opting for the larger design, Molly went ahead with putting in the planning application for the cottage.

  She knew it was crazy, but even though she had found a buyer for Mossbawn she was still engrossed working on the rose garden. Day by day she could see it taking shape, the old roses beginning to bud and flower in the warmth of the summer. The new roses she had planted in the beds, which were edged with lavender and catmint, were tentatively pushing out shoots and roots. She loved all her old roses – her French ladies with their wonderful names and some of the newer ones too, like Nathalie Nypels with her pinky flowers that kept coming. Imagine having a rose named after you! She wondered about these women, their names captured for ever by a rose … She searched her books for their names, puzzled by a sweet rose with a heavy pale-pink head of petals that grew against the south wall. It was a good time to take cuttings and she gently took summer cuttings, as the old-fashioned roses would root easily. She kept them in a propagator, hoping that they would root and she would in time have more roses to plant out in the garden. Some would be used eventually to plant in the new garden at the cottage.

  She watched as mauve-pink clematis scrambled to cover the walls, as old climbing roses began to cling and move up through the trellises and up the archways.

  The garden was a haven away from the world, and she was determined to enjoy it and to have Mossbawn at its best. Paddy and Tommy were coming weekly to cut the lawns and trim the hedges and shrubs and to keep the place looking well. The large herbaceous borders were in full bloom, filled with tall delphiniums, lupins and foxgloves, and tumbling masses of spreading blue and pink geraniums.

  She often worked from early morning till late in the summer evenings, happy to be outside in the garden, working or sitting on a bench reading, her friends welcome to come and enjoy a coffee or a salad lunch on the terrace overlooking the garden. Molly tried not to think of the past or the future, but to enjoy the present.

  Chapter 32

  ON TUESDAY EVENING GINA WAS CLEANING UP THE CAFÉ. SHE HAD been kept on the go most of the day. Inga, the new girl she had taken on to help out for a few hours a day, was settling in really well. And the customers liked her. She was chatty and had an interest in cooking. She had worked in a hotel in Poland before she moved to Ireland with her husband, Marek, who worked in the big electronics-payment company near Castlecomer.

  Gina sat down and totted up the day’s takings; she would lodge the money tomorrow into Norah’s business account. Inga had finished at three o’clock, so this evening it was Gina’s turn to put all the chairs up on th
e tables and wash the floor. Bending down, she found a rolled-up menu on the floor, picked it up and flattened it out. She certainly wasn’t getting any more of these made. Honestly, someone had scribbled over one side of it, which was annoying. She was about to put it in the bin when something about it attracted her attention.

  It was a rough sketch of a house and gardens, but it was definitely familiar … Where was it? She recognized the crudely drawn shape of the house and glass orangery. It was a drawing of Molly’s house – but someone had put a massive cross through the house, scratching it out, and there were smaller houses added and some kind of roadway around the back near the woods. She had no idea what it meant, but she folded it and put it in her pocket.

  Later that night when the kids were gone to bed she showed it to Paul.

  ‘It’s a drawing – a rough sketch of Mossbawn House.’

  ‘I know, I recognize it,’ he said, studying it. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘I found it on the floor in the café. I’m not sure about it, but Liam Kelly was having coffee with some other guy this afternoon, and I’m pretty sure they were the ones who must have dropped it, as Molly hasn’t been near the place for about ten days.’

  ‘Are they redeveloping the place?’ he asked.

  ‘Not as far as I know. Molly was with her friends and they were all talking about some new family from England moving into the big house.’

  ‘Well, this shows a lot of families moving in, not one family …’ he said grimly.

  ‘Paul, I’m worried that maybe Molly doesn’t know about this.’

  ‘If Liam Kelly is involved, heaven knows what’s going on!’

  Paul Sullivan had absolutely no time for Liam, the local auctioneer, who seemed to have a finger in every pie. He had worked on building an expensive new kitchen for Liam and his wife when they had first moved back to Kilfinn. He’d been glad of the work, but when the time came had only got paid half what he was due. It was still a sore point.

  ‘Do you think I should say something?’ she asked, hesitantly. ‘Molly’s been good to me and I feel she’s no husband to look out for her … Maybe it’s too late …’

  ‘Show it to her, Gina, that’s all you can do. Maybe she already knows about it, but at least you’ll feel that you’ve done the right thing.’

  Paul went into the kitchen to make a quick mug of decaf coffee and get some cheese and crackers for them as she switched over to watch The Politics Show. She’d call to see Molly first thing in the morning before she went to work. There was nothing worse than being kept in the dark about something.

  Kim and Molly were having breakfast next morning when Daisy started barking.

  ‘It’s probably the poor postman at the door!’ laughed Kim. ‘She hates him.’

  Molly put some more bread in the toaster as Kim ran to open the front door.

  ‘I’m sorry for calling so early, Molly, but I’m on my way to work,’ Gina Sullivan apologized as she joined them in the kitchen.

  ‘Will you have a cup of tea?’ asked Molly.

  ‘No thanks, I’ve just had breakfast and dropped the boys to school, but I wanted to give you this before I went to the café,’ she said, reaching into her handbag. ‘I found it on the floor when I was cleaning up the café last night.’

  Molly was puzzled: why was Gina giving her a copy of a menu?

  ‘Turn it over to the other side!’

  Molly turned it over, at once recognizing the scribbled drawing of her house and the surrounding land. Someone had scratched out the house and drawn lots more smaller houses around, and the woods were gone …

  ‘What is this?’ she asked, sitting down at the table.

  ‘I think you should look properly at it. Liam Kelly and some other man were in the café yesterday – I think they were the ones that dropped it,’ Gina explained. ‘I’m not sure what it means, Molly, but Mossbawn is your house and I thought maybe I should show it to you. I hope you don’t think I’m interfering.’

  ‘You did the right thing, Gina, thank you.’

  ‘I’m afraid I have to go and open the café,’ Gina said, picking up her handbag.

  ‘Thanks so much for bringing this to show me,’ said Molly as she walked her to the back door.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Kim, looking at the paper on the table. ‘What’s on it?’

  ‘It’s obviously a plan for Mossbawn,’ Molly said, studying it intently. ‘Someone has drawn up some kind of development plan which clearly entails knocking down the house and destroying most of the garden.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ demanded Kim, furious.

  ‘I don’t know, but it explains a lot: that man Frank Dunne’s absolute lack of interest in the house, and when Ronan King mentioned to him two weeks ago about the dining furniture he said I could keep the lot, he didn’t need any of it. I presumed he was moving his own furniture, but obviously if the house is going to be knocked down no wonder he doesn’t need it!’ she said angrily.

  ‘You can’t just go knocking down a beautiful old house like Mossbawn, surely?’

  ‘Unfortunately it’s not a listed property.’

  ‘What can you do?’

  ‘Well, first off I can talk to Ronan King, find out what he knows about all this and see if he has any connection to Liam Kelly.’ She sighed. ‘I’ve already signed the first part of the contract, so I’m not sure what that means. I’ll call Michael and talk to him.’

  Seething with annoyance, Molly phoned her solicitor, David’s partner Michael Quinn, but his secretary told her that he was busy and would phone her back. She then managed to get through to the Dublin auctioneer, who made it very clear that, while he was acting for her in regard to the sale of the property, he had utterly no responsibility for what a buyer might do with a property once they had purchased it.

  ‘Obviously most of us want our homes kept as homes, but with large houses like these, this is often not practical and they may end up as nursing homes or put to some other use. I remember one beautiful house in West Cork was turned into a recording studio by a musician.’

  ‘So you had no idea about Frank Dunne’s plans for Mossbawn?’

  ‘We didn’t discuss it,’ he said defensively. ‘I have a large number of properties on my books and could not be expected to follow up what happens to them.’

  Fifteen minutes later Michael Quinn phoned her. As she quizzed him about what her legal position was with regard to the sale, he asked if she had signed the contract.

  ‘Yes, I dropped it back into your office last Friday.’

  She could hear Michael rustling around searching for something.

  ‘I have it,’ he declared.

  ‘A copy?’

  ‘No, the original,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m sorry, Molly, but Denise has been on sick leave for the past two weeks and we have a new girl filling in for her, so I’m afraid there has been a bit of a backlog with documentation.’

  ‘It’s still sitting in your office?’ she laughed.

  ‘Exactly!’ he apologized. ‘I have the contract here in front of me.’

  ‘Tear it up, Michael!’ she said and explained to him what had happened.

  ‘Gladly!’ he said.

  Kim was grinning from ear to ear when Molly told her she would not be proceeding with the sale of the house to Frank Dunne.

  ‘I’m so glad that awful man is not buying the place and getting his hands on Mossbawn.’

  ‘So am I, and hopefully the next time we’ll find the perfect buyer,’ she said, reminding Kim that the situation with regard to selling Mossbawn had not changed.

  ‘Or maybe you’ll find some other way of holding on to the house,’ added Kim encouragingly, already texting Emma and Grace with the good news.

  Chapter 33

  KIM WAS WALKING DOWN BY THE RIVER WHEN SHE SPOTTED THE pair of swans with their cygnets. Automatically she reached for her iPhone to take some photos of them as they glided along, the baby swans paddling gently between their serene parents.
The light was perfect and she did her best to capture the moment without disturbing them.

  ‘Hey, I’d love a copy of that!’ said a voice, and she turned to see Luke Ryan sitting on the stone bridge in the sunshine watching her.

  ‘No problem,’ she replied. ‘Give me your phone number and I’ll send it to you.’

  He called out his number and she saved it to her contacts.

  ‘Thanks, I left my phone in my jacket pocket in my car.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she said, stopping to watch the swans. ‘They are so beautiful.’

  ‘I’m planning on doing a project on legends with my class, so the swans will tie in perfectly.’

  ‘Where do you teach?’

  ‘Kilfinn National School,’ he said proudly. ‘The village school is small, but the kids are great.’

  ‘It looks cute.’

  ‘It opened over a hundred years ago, so most people in the village went there sometime,’ he explained.

  ‘Have you been teaching there long?’

  ‘About two years. I was working in London and one day it hit me that I didn’t like what I was doing. I worked crazy hours, and moving figures and numbers on a computer screen just didn’t do it for me any more. I didn’t give a damn about it, so I applied to teacher training college and was very lucky to get accepted.’

  ‘I worked in banking for years but lost my job last year,’ she admitted. ‘I guess I’m a bit like you and now I’m ready for a change in direction.’

  ‘Is that why you came to Kilfinn?’ he asked.

  ‘Partly. I was in a relationship and that broke up too.’ Kim didn’t know why she was telling a virtual stranger so much, but she felt that she could trust him. ‘It’s all been a bit of a disaster and I don’t know why, but I just wanted to come and stay with Molly, hang out in Mossbawn, the way I used to when I was a kid.’

  ‘And I bet Molly has you doing plenty of hard physical graft!’ he teased. ‘Spreading shite and the like!’

  ‘Yes, and I smelled to high heaven after!’ she said, bursting out laughing.