A Taste for Love Read online

  ‘Count us in,’ said Rachel and Leah.

  ‘But can we bring our husbands, Nick and Pete?’ asked Rachel. ‘We’d like everyone to meet them!’

  ‘Of course you can! The more the merrier!’

  ‘Finn and I’ll be along too.’ Lucy smiled. ‘I’m dying for you all to meet him.’

  ‘My boyfriend’s off at a football weekend in Barcelona with some clients,’ explained Kerrie, relieved that Matt was not around to meet her friends from the cookery school. ‘But if you don’t mind I’ll come along on my own.’

  *

  With Matt out of the way for two days, Kerrie had the opportunity to spend most of the day cleaning and tidying the apartment. Matt was so messy compared to her, and she had sorted out his sock drawer, his underwear drawer and his sportswear drawer. She had stripped and remade their bed. Cleaned out the fridge, washed the floor and polished the windows. Looking at their expensive grey leather couches and polished wooden floor and display of Mark Trubridge’s simple black and white prints, she thought the living room looked so perfect with nothing out of place, just the way she liked it. The kitchen was absolutely spotless, as was their bathroom, and the whole place looked like a show apartment now that she had jettisoned all Matt’s old newspapers and magazines and put all his DVDs and messy games into a black storage box which fitted behind the plasma TV.

  Pleased with herself, she hopped in the shower and then blow-dried her hair.

  Unsure of what to wear, Kerrie opted for black leggings and boots and a floaty pale-green tunic that she had barely worn. Gemma and Paul were hardly stylish dressers, and probably their friends were the same. She grabbed two bottles of Prosecco in the off-licence and got a taxi to their new address.

  A good crowd was already there, and Gemma gave her a quick tour of the place. They had a massive sitting room which opened off the hallway. There were three different couches in the room, one red, one black and a kind of black and white big daisy print one. There were candles and snacks laid out on a collection of small tables, and on one wall there was a display of charcoal sketches and some paintings and wonderfully decorated plates.

  ‘They’re mine,’ said Gemma modestly. ‘I just love working with ceramics and paints and seeing what happens.’

  On the other side of the hallway Gemma showed her their bedrooms.

  ‘We get all the morning sun in here,’ she said. ‘It’s such a relaxing room.’

  There was an enormous brass bed with a colourful throw, and a big wardrobe, a writing desk and a wickerwork chair, along with a range of blown-up photographs of Paul and Gemma on their travels.

  ‘That’s in Goa, it’s really tranquil and beautiful there, that’s Brazil … spectacular country, and that’s us diving in the barrier reef in Australia.’

  ‘Wow, you two sure have seen the world!’ said Kerrie.

  ‘We took two years out and explored. We wanted to do it before we settled and got married and started having babies!’ Gemma giggled. ‘Though we’re still working on the last bit at the moment. We got the bedspread in Indonesia, and that carving is from Peru, and that old saggy baggy elephant is Barnaby, and I’ve had him for ever.’

  ‘Kerrie, you can leave your coat in here,’ Gemma offered, opening the door of another room.

  The bed was already covered with a pile of coats, and two of the walls were stacked with bookshelves and bric-a-brac.

  ‘Come on, and I’ll get you a drink!’

  ‘I’ve brought some Prosecco.’ Kerrie grinned.

  ‘Well, let’s get it open then!’

  Paul was being barman in the kitchen, which was a big long room with windows and a door out to the garden. Gemma had something cooking in a pot on the cooker, and the kitchen table had been turned into a bar with a range of glasses and drinks. The units were ancient, but they had been painted a dusky blue and it was a lovely bright room.

  ‘Hey, Kerrie!’ yelled Rachel, introducing her to her husband Pete. ‘Leah should be here soon – their little boy Sam had a bit of an earache, so she wanted to get him asleep herself before they left.’

  Kerrie helped herself from one of the bottles of Prosecco and popped the rest into the fridge. The kitchen was pretty crowded, and Paul introduced her to a few of his friends.

  ‘This is another one from my cookery-class gang,’ he said.

  The party began to swell and swell as more people arrived, and some of the group spilled out on to the patio, where Chinese lanterns and fairy lights had been strung up.

  ‘Great house!’ said Emmet, who had brought along his friend Steven.

  ‘What kind of a cook is he in class?’ asked Steven.

  ‘Great! Why?’

  ‘I’d always figured him for an instant quick-frozen pizza and frozen-lasagne type, and now when I call over he wants to make three-course fancy dinners! He seems to have chilled out a bit, which I suppose is a good thing.’

  ‘We all have,’ Kerrie admitted.

  She smiled when she saw Tessa had arrived. Tessa was wearing jeans and boots and a pretty pink shirt and looked younger. She had brought along some food.

  ‘They’re spicy meatballs, and there’s a yogurt dip to go with them!’

  ‘Great,’ said Gemma, giving her a big hug.

  ‘Is everyone else here?’ Tessa asked, looking around.

  ‘There’s a few more to come, but it’s pretty crowded,’ said Gemma, passing her a large glass of red wine and steering her to the rest of the gang.

  ‘Hi, everyone!’

  ‘Wine’s good,’ said Rob. ‘Very good.’

  Kerrie left Tessa and Kitty chatting with Rob, who was busy explaining to them about how to tell a good red wine from a bad.

  She escaped back outside to Emmet and Paul, who were comparing the merits of the Xbox and the Playstation; it was a debate she’d heard Matt regularly discuss, and was happy to join in even if she was crap at playing both of them.

  ‘Hey, here’s Lucy and her new boyfriend!’

  Lucy looked amazing in a long maxi dress, and Finn was wearing a ‘Busy’ T-shirt under his combat jacket.

  ‘What does it say?’ asked Paul.

  ‘“Busy Partying”! What else?’ joked Finn, downing a can of beer.

  ‘I want one of them,’ said Emmet.

  ‘Me too!’ said Steven.

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ said Kerrie. ‘Nearly every guy in Dublin is going to want one!’

  ‘That’s what we’re hoping,’ admitted Lucy, her eyes shining.

  ‘He’s so cool and so nice,’ Kerrie whispered under her breath to Lucy as the guys went to get more beers from the big plastic basin filled with ice on the patio.

  ‘I know,’ said Lucy. ‘He just makes me so happy!’

  Twenty minutes later Gemma announced that there was some food in the kitchen, and everyone thronged in as Leah helped her to serve plates of chilli and rice. There was also a selection of salads and breads, meatballs, chicken and vegetable kebabs.

  ‘Where’s Alice?’ asked Kerrie, surprised that she wasn’t there.

  ‘It’s her dad’s birthday so she couldn’t make it,’ confided Kitty, who had, as usual, come on her own.

  Once the plates and bowls were put away, Paul turned up the music volume and everything seemed to get louder. Salsa music pumped through the flat.

  ‘Won’t your neighbours mind?’ asked Kerrie.

  ‘No.’ Paul laughed. ‘Because they are all here! See that gang over there in a huddle knocking back all our wine? That’s them … and that tall grey-haired man with the lady with the big earrings – they live upstairs. Tom and Rowena had us up for supper a few days after we moved in. They’re great. Why, what are your neighbours like when you have parties?’

  Kerrie knew hardly any of their neighbours. Because they were on the eighth floor of their building, they only really saw people getting in and out of the lift or in the car park. Besides, Matt and herself had never had a party! They’d had friends for dinner a few times, and once Matt had org
anized to have some people for drinks before they went to a concert in the O2. But she would hate to have people in messing up their place and spilling wine and beer everywhere!

  ‘It’s a bit different than this,’ she said, slightly envious.

  About midnight everyone got up dancing, and Kerrie found herself swinging around between Emmet and Steven and wishing that Matt was here with her.

  Tessa and Rob were up dancing, and Finn had Kitty in his arms, with Lucy taking photos on her phone camera.

  ‘You will send them to me, Lucy love?’ shouted Kitty.

  ‘Of course,’ said Lucy.

  ‘She wanted her husband Larry to come,’ confided Gemma, ‘but he’s such an old stick-in-the-mud he just wanted them to go to his local as usual, so Kitty dressed herself up and came on her own.’

  ‘She’s such a character!’ said Kerrie, who had found Kitty very helpful the past few weeks in class.

  At two o’clock the party was beginning to thin out, and Kerrie decided to leave. She’d drunk far too much, and was ready to go home and collapse into bed. Tessa was a bit drunk, too, and she and Rob were sharing a taxi home. As Emmet and Steven were heading into a nightclub in town they agreed to drop Kerrie off en route.

  Gemma and Paul were still going strong when they said their goodbyes, with Paul and his brother Dave playing their guitars and singing with a crowd in the kitchen.

  At home Kerrie fell into bed. She was too exhausted to think about anything, and just wished that Matt was home with her. When she woke she felt awful, dehydrated and nauseated, but didn’t have the strength to get herself a cup of tea or a mug of coffee.

  She had dozed off again and was drifting in and out of sleep when she realized that there was a warm body in the bed with her.

  ‘Mmm.’ She sighed, curling in against Matt, enjoying the feel of his naked skin against hers.

  ‘I missed you,’ Matt said, kissing her.

  ‘I missed you, too,’ she said. ‘What time is it?

  ‘Lunchtime.’

  ‘How did the match go?’

  ‘Brilliant, Barcelona was great. Everyone enjoyed it.’

  ‘Good,’ she said snuggling against him.

  ‘Where did you go last night?’

  ‘Just out with the girls, we ended up at a bit of a party. But it wasn’t the same without you.’

  ‘Well, I’m here now,’ he said, Kerrie feeling his arms wrap around her. She pulled the duvet up over the two of them.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Rob Flanagan hadn’t been sure what type of gift to bring along as a house-warming present to Paul and Gemma, and had gone into Brown Thomas and bought them an expensive casserole set like the ones Alice used, as he knew they hadn’t anything like that.

  ‘Oh, Rob, that is so kind of you, so generous.’ Gemma hugged him when she opened the box. ‘It’s just what we need.’

  He hadn’t been at all sure about coming along to this house-warming party in Booterstown; he was a different generation after all, but Paul Elliot had been very persuasive. And he had come along a little in trepidation as to what Alice’s reaction might be, but hoping that meeting in the relaxed atmosphere of a party might be just the thing.

  It was a fine old house, but a bit gone to rack and ruin, and Paul and Gemma had the total run of the ground floor and also the use of the garden.

  ‘I’ve been clearing it a bit, and I’m just starting to plant some things,’ confided Paul. ‘And we hope to have some of our own vegetables by the summer.’

  Rob looked at the cans of cheap beer on the table and in the fridge, and opted to drink wine for the night.

  ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ he offered Kitty, who was slightly upset that her husband Larry hadn’t come along. To Rob, Larry Connolly sounded a bore of a man, stuck in front of the TV all day and night, and he wondered how such a nice woman as Kitty stuck him.

  ‘What about you, Tessa? What would you like?’

  ‘I could murder a double vodka … but I’ll have a glass of white wine instead.’ She laughed. Tessa looked good. Different … She’d changed her hair, and instead of her usual black or grey trousers was wearing jeans which showed off her long legs.

  Rob asked where Alice was, and was a bit disappointed when Gemma told him that she wasn’t coming because she had a previous dinner arrangement.

  He hoped that she wasn’t trying to avoid him. He realized that he had tried to rush things too much … made too many assumptions … putting two and two together and getting it totally wrong. Just because they were both of a similar age, and both on their own, and shared a lot of common interests, that didn’t mean he had the right to a relationship other than friendship with her. He’d been talking to Bill Deering about it, and Bill had reminded him that sometimes it was much harder for those that had lost their partners through unfaithfulness and deceit and disloyalty than those who had lost their partners through death.

  ‘They often have more baggage of anger and hurt than we have,’ he explained. ‘Our loved ones are gone from us, whereas their loved ones may be only living half a mile away and with someone new!’

  *

  Rob spent a while talking to Paul’s neighbours, discovering that one of them was Frank Gallagher, who had been in school with him since he was twelve. It was nice to reminisce.

  Gemma served up a great chilli and Rob had two portions of it, and also some of the lovely meatballs that Tessa had brought along.

  ‘Really tasty,’ he said, paying Tessa a compliment. Afterwards when the dancing started, Gemma pulled him up on the floor. Then he danced with Kitty and Leah and Lucy and Rachel, and eventually managed to persuade Tessa to get up.

  He ended up dancing with her and chatting to her for most of the rest of the night, surprised by how easy she was to talk to. Like him, her background was in business, and she had her own theories about the current economic climate and the way various governments were handling it. She had worked in Bridgetown & Murrow for many years in London, and when he mentioned he was friendly with one of the partners there he could see she was a bit uncomfortable and changed the subject.

  They danced a bit more and joined a few people out on the patio chatting, moving inside into the big sitting room where they talked to Leah and Rachel and their husbands.

  ‘God, look at the time! We’d better go as we’ve both got babysitters in,’ Leah said suddenly.

  Rob hadn’t realized the time either, and decided to get a taxi home. The young crowd were singing in the kitchen, and he offered Tessa a lift as he knew she was living fairly close by in Mount Merrion. The two of them had definitely had enough to drink and said their goodbyes to their hosts.

  ‘Lovely party,’ he said, as he helped Tessa into the back of the cab.

  They were almost there when he realized Tessa had gone asleep, her head against his shoulder. He wasn’t exactly sure which road her house was on, but luckily she woke.

  ‘Sycamore Grove. Here it is, Rob,’ she said, waving madly and pointing out the white pebble-dashed 1950s-style house with the neat garden.

  ‘Will you be OK going in?’ Rob asked. ‘You do have your key?’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ She giggled.

  The taxi man threw his eyes to heaven.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ she asked, hiccupping.

  As she got out of the cab she nearly stumbled and Rob jumped out and grabbed her arm, paying the taxi driver. She was just like Kate, couldn’t hold her drink. He didn’t want to frighten poor Florence. So he’d make sure Tessa got in safe and then walk back down to the main road and grab another taxi.

  He put on the kettle and made Tessa coffee, two big cups of it, and then settled her nicely on the couch in the sitting room with some cushions and a rug over her. Tessa would be fine in the morning, right as rain. It really had been rather a good party, he thought, as he closed out the door gently behind him and went home.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  ‘Tessa, Tessa!’

  Tessa gr
oaned as she heard her mother calling her. Turning around, she realized that she was not upstairs in her bed but … hold on … she was on the couch, wrapped up in her mother’s big red and green check Foxford rug, lying in the sitting room. She was mortified as she suddenly remembered the previous night. Gemma and Paul’s party had been so much fun. She recalled drinking wine, and talking to Emmet and his friend, and dancing with Rob, and Paul finding a bottle of vodka near the end of the night and having two glasses of it in the kitchen, with everybody singing, before leaving and getting the taxi home with Rob.

  She tried to piece the journey together, and realized that Rob must have brought her in home. She took a sip of the big glass of water left on the coffee table, and saw that her black boots had been placed neatly near the couch. Shit … what had she done? What had she said?

  Florence Sullivan appeared in the living room in her pink dressing-gown, concern on her elderly face …

  ‘Are you all right, Tessa? I was worried when I woke up and saw that your bed hadn’t been slept in.’

  Groggy and nauseated, Tessa sat up, praying the sitting room wouldn’t spin.

  ‘It’s OK, Mum. I was out very late, and just didn’t want to wake you up by clattering about upstairs, and I must have come in here and sat down and fallen asleep.’

  The last time she had done this she had been sixteen, and she and Suzie Corrigan, her best friend, had got drunk in Suzie’s parents’ house testing out bottles of gin and vodka and whiskey from the drinks cabinet. They had both been violently ill. She had managed to crawl home and on to the couch before the rest of the house had woken up, and had lain there for hours praying for death.

  ‘Was it a good party?’ Florence asked.

  ‘The best,’ Tessa said.

  ‘I thought I heard voices downstairs,’ murmured her mother, ‘someone in the kitchen.’

  ‘One of my friends came in briefly, we’d shared a taxi.’

  ‘Would you like some breakfast, pet? I’ll make it.’

  If she was paid a thousand euros, Tessa couldn’t have cooked her mother’s regular Sunday breakfast of bacon and scrambled egg and toast today.