Three Women Read online

  ‘I’d prefer to go shopping with Lisa, if that’s okay.’

  ‘Sure. What about I meet you back here, then, around half five? We can grab something quick to eat together downstairs before you head for the airport.’

  ‘That sounds great,’ she said, kissing him before taking over the bathroom.

  Lisa was sitting in the midday sunshine at an outside table at Bonne Bouche, waiting for her. The place was packed.

  ‘I booked a table,’ laughed Lisa, as if reading her mind. ‘You have to on Saturdays and Sundays over here.’

  Erin hugged her. She missed Lisa and, if she did move over here, having Lisa around would be fantastic.

  ‘Well, how’s the romantic weekend going?’

  ‘Great – really great,’ Erin said, embarrassed. ‘In fact, so great that Luke wants me to move in with him.’

  ‘Yippee!’ yelled Lisa, making heads turn in their direction. ‘I can just see the two of you getting a really fancy place in Dublin.’

  ‘Over here in London,’ revealed Erin.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Luke wants to transfer to work in Hibernian’s office in Canary Wharf and has asked me to move over here too.’

  ‘Oh Erin, that’s wonderful! The two of us being over here and being able to see each other and meet up, and Gavin and Luke get on great. You’d already have friends here.’

  ‘I know.’ Erin hugged her.

  ‘I’ll keep my ears open for jobs for you.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘I promise.’

  Erin had been so busy chatting that she had barely studied the menu, but she ordered a tempting Croque Monsieur, which the people on the table beside them were devouring. A jug of chilled juice and a big pot of French coffee – she couldn’t imagine a nicer way to enjoy Sunday.

  Lisa was more excited about the prospect of her move to London than she was, but her enthusiasm was infectious as she reeled off possible places to apply for work, good places to live, and even the name of the gym that she had joined; and she told her all about the all-Irish girly book club that she had joined.

  ‘It’ll be such fun having you over here, Erin, I can’t wait!’

  ‘Well, there are a few major things to sort out first, like me getting a job … getting a job … and, of course, getting a job.’

  ‘Okay, okay – we need to get you a job … But Luke’s right. You do need to get in touch with some of the big recruitment agencies here – set things up. I’ll email you a list and some names of people I used.’

  Afterwards Lisa brought her shopping to a little area full of new young designers with just the kind of clothes Erin liked.

  ‘The high street is great, but this little black dress is just wow. I can’t wait to wear it.’ She also hadn’t been able to resist a jacket and skirt in Anastasia’s. Then, realizing the time, Erin and Lisa said their goodbyes as she raced back to meet Luke.

  Luke had had a few pints with the lads and was hungry. The hotel’s plush restaurant wasn’t too busy and the waitress promised to serve them quickly.

  ‘Do you want me to come to the airport with you?’ he offered.

  ‘No, I’ll be fine. I’ll just get the Express.’

  ‘Then I’ll see you later this week. Hopefully I’ll be home on Thursday or Friday.’

  Erin realized as they said their goodbyes that she hated leaving him.

  Sitting on the flight, she sighed as the plane took off. It was only when they were in mid-air that she realized that Luke, when he’d asked her to move in with him, had never once said the words ‘I love you’.

  Chapter Twelve

  KATE CASSIDY AND HER best friend trish had jogged their regular circuit all the way up through their estate, through the local park and then taken the coast road on their way back home.

  ‘Come in and have a coffee?’ Kate urged as they both stood, sweaty and panting, outside her front door.

  ‘No coffee – it’ll only make me crave a biscuit or two,’ Trish said determinedly. ‘But a big pint of cold water would be great.’

  Kate went into the kitchen and got two glasses of water but still put the kettle on to boil.

  The two of them had taken up a keep-fit regime a few weeks ago with very definite goals. Trish was aiming to be at least a stone and a half down by the time her son Aongus got married in Croatia at the end of July, while Kate hadn’t much weight to lose but wanted to get fit and firm up her flabby tummy and arms in time for her Silver Wedding anniversary in September.

  Sitting down and relaxing as they got their breaths back, Trish filled her in on the on-off relationships of her twenty-four-year-old daughter Niamh.

  ‘That girl has so many boyfriends that Alan and I can’t keep up! God knows who she will bring to Aongus’s wedding! We are all booking our flights to Dubrovnik and our accommodation and we haven’t a clue what to do about her. Is she sharing a room with young Roisin or not?’

  ‘Trish, I’m sure if she is bringing a boyfriend that he’ll organize his own flight and they’ll get their own place to stay,’ Kate said soothingly as she put two mugs of coffee on the table in front of them.

  ‘Black – well, almost black – for me,’ insisted Trish, who usually loved her coffee creamy and sweet. Kate tried not to smile when she saw her grimace as she sipped it. She just pushed the milk jug towards her.

  ‘What about you and the party?’ asked Trish.

  ‘Paddy is doing up a list.’ Kate sighed. ‘It’s getting bigger and bigger! He won’t listen to me about keeping it small.’

  ‘I hope I’m on this list!’ laughed Trish.

  ‘Of course you and Alan are on it!’ Kate took the pad of paper from the worktop and passed it to Trish.

  ‘Holey Moley, where are you going to fit all these people?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, but you know Paddy – he is so determined.’

  ‘Maybe you should count yourself lucky that after twenty-five years Paddy still loves you so much that he wants to celebrate it in style!’

  ‘I know,’ said Kate. ‘I do.’

  ‘Hey Mum, hey Trish,’ said Kevin, coming into the kitchen. ‘The post has just come.’ He dropped two letters for Kate on to the table.

  ‘No bills, hopefully!’ teased Trish as Kate began to open them.

  Kate stopped the minute she had opened the large white envelope. The address on the top of the letter inside it was immediately familiar to her. And it seemed to contain another letter.

  ‘It’s just a charity thing looking for another donation!’ she pretended, as she closed the envelope and put it away on the counter, trying to disguise her total dismay as Kevin busied himself making a sandwich for college.

  Her younger son was so like Paddy, easygoing and trusting and great fun. He was very popular and he loved the course on computers and business that he was doing in college. He lived in a uniform of jeans, T-shirt and hoodie, and with his unruly fair hair, blue eyes and broad face he was the spit of his dad.

  ‘Hey, I’d better get going!’ He leaned down and kissed her quickly as he grabbed his backpack. ‘I’ll be late home tonight, but will you keep me dinner, please, Mum?’

  ‘Hey, I’d better get going too,’ announced Trish, standing up. ‘I’ve to collect something from the dry-cleaner’s and go to the chemist. But I’ll see you tomorrow, Kate.’

  Kate waited till they were both gone, the house quiet and empty, before she picked up the envelope and opened it. It was a letter from the adoption agency to tell her that her daughter had been in contact with them and that she had a copy of her original birth certificate and had written a letter to Kate, which they enclosed. Her daughter wished to establish some kind of contact with her birth mother and was interested in meeting her. The letter had been sent by a social worker called Marian Kelly, and she had enclosed her daughter’s letter to her.

  Kate couldn’t believe it. She felt a chill going through her as she looked at the words on the page. How had they managed to find her? How did they discover he
r current address? She opened the second letter. It had been handwritten on expensive white paper.

  She read it over … and over again … It was almost like a voice talking to her.

  ‘I am twenty-six years old, happy and healthy … living in Dublin … with my family …’ Kate had to stop. She couldn’t breathe. This was too much.

  ‘I often think about you. I wonder what you are like and wonder if the two of us are any way alike?’

  Kate read on.

  ‘I would really like to talk to you, to see you, to meet you, even if it is only once in my life so that I know who you are and … I suppose, who I am.’

  Kate read the letter over and over again. Touching the words, she traced them with her fingers. Her daughter had written them only a day or two ago … Suddenly there was a link between them.

  She read both letters again. The agency shouldn’t have contacted her. She had told them, years ago, that she didn’t want any future contact with her child. Didn’t they understand that? This is what all these reforming social workers and justice people were doing by saying people had rights to information. What about her rights to protect herself and her family?

  She read the letter again

  ‘With love from your daughter

  Erin’

  She must have sat in the kitchen for hours.

  ‘You okay, Mum?’ asked her sixteen-year-old daughter Aisling, coming in from school.

  ‘I’m fine – just feeling a bit tired, love.’ Kate quickly put the letters back in the envelope.

  ‘I’ve got so much homework it’s unbelievable!’ complained Aisling as she grabbed a drink and a banana. ‘We have a whole page of algebra to do and I haven’t a clue.’

  ‘Maybe Kevin can help you a bit when he comes in later?’

  ‘Yeah – he’s the maths genius!’ she grinned.

  ‘Listen, I think I’ll go up and have a rest for an hour,’ Kate said. ‘I’ll get the dinner later.’

  Upstairs in her bedroom she hid the envelope.

  Kate had never expected to hear about what happened to her first daughter. It was something that she had accepted would probably secretly gnaw at her and upset her all her life – and now this letter. She didn’t know what to think. She couldn’t think. What happened if somehow Paddy or the kids found out about this girl – found out that she had a daughter called Erin who wanted to meet her?

  ‘Kate? Kate, are you okay?’ Paddy was standing at the side of the bed.

  ‘I’ve a bit of a headache,’ she said stirring under the duvet. ‘I thought I’d try to sleep it off. What time is it?’

  ‘Seven p.m.’

  ‘Why didn’t someone wake me?’

  ‘You looked exhausted and you were having a great sleep. It will do you no harm.’

  Kate sat herself up in the bed. She felt terrible, like she had been in a car accident. She felt physically and emotionally drained.

  ‘What about dinner? I’ll get up and get it.’

  ‘You will not!’ warned Paddy. ‘Kevin and Aisling are just cooking something downstairs. Leave them at it.’

  Paddy went off downstairs and Kate lay back down, her eyes closed, disbelieving … What the hell was she going to do?

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘THIS IS ALL your fault, sally!’ screamed kate accusingly as she paced up and down on the tiled floor of the sun room of her sister’s house in Rathfarnham. ‘Why did you have to go and interfere and give them my address? Why couldn’t you say you had no idea where I live or what I’m doing?’

  ‘I’m your sister,’ Sally reminded her. ‘They obviously still have kept a record of all the details from when you were pregnant and in hospital. Remember you put me down as your next of kin? You gave them my address, my phone number and told them where I worked. The hospital and the adoption agency both knew you were staying with me.’

  ‘Shit, you’re right!’ admitted Kate, collapsing down on to the blue armchair.

  ‘The adoption agency phoned me at work,’ continued Sally. ‘What was I meant to do – change my job and give up working in St James’ Hospital because of you? I love my job and I’m good at it. Anyone phoning the hospital switch would be told the ward and floor I work on. I have nothing to hide,’ she said angrily, her blue eyes flashing. ‘You need to calm down about this, Kate. Marian Kelly, the social worker, told me that everything they do is in total confidence. She promised me that they will not give your address or phone number to anyone and I believe her. She posted on the letter to you. Your daughter Erin has no idea where you are. No one has.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sally. I guess I’m paranoid about it,’ Kate apologized. She had been a nervous wreck for the past week, ever since she had got the letter. Sally and Mike had been away in France for a few days and she had totally panicked about what to do. She couldn’t tell anyone and she hadn’t wanted to ruin her sister’s holiday by phoning her.

  ‘You are being paranoid!’ said Sally, seriously. ‘Nothing bad is going to happen and if you keep acting as if your world is falling in, Paddy is bound to notice.’

  ‘I know, but I keep thinking about it. I can’t sleep. I wake up at two or three in the morning in a sweat, thinking of what I did. It’s so awful, Sally—’

  ‘I know,’ said Sally, slipping her arms around her. ‘But surely, you must have thought sometimes that your daughter might when she was older try to find you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. She was gone from me for ever – and I had got used to the idea. It was as if she was dead – as if I had lost my baby when she was born … You don’t understand, Sally, but I had to think like that or otherwise I would have gone mad.’

  Kate found even saying it out loud to her sister was releasing some of the immense stress and guilt that she’d been feeling since she’d got that letter.

  ‘Kate, can’t you be happy that Erin is well and has grown up into such a nice young woman – you can tell by her letter. She’s not a drug addict or an alcoholic or some kind of dysfunctional needy person. She has a job and a boyfriend and a lovely family, who have raised her really well and who she is very close to. She’s not looking for anything from you, so why are you so afraid?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘She has written to you. Why won’t you write back to her? She deserves to know something about herself, Kate, it’s only fair.’

  ‘What if Paddy finds out? What do you think that would do to our marriage?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sally sighed, ‘but Paddy is a very decent, fair man. I don’t think his reaction would be half as bad as you think.’

  ‘You don’t know that. Can you imagine the kids’ reaction? Imagine Aisling suddenly finding out she has an older half-sister! She’d be heartbroken.’

  ‘You keep worrying yourself about what other people will feel,’ said Sally. ‘But this is about what you and Erin feel.’

  Kate could feel herself calming down as she sat in her sister’s sun room. Sally had always been able to make her feel better about things. Maybe that was why she was such a good nurse, because she could clearly put things in perspective.

  ‘I think that you should write back to her,’ Sally said firmly. ‘She is your daughter, and Erin deserves to have you write a letter to her, to have a few words on the page from her mother. It would probably mean a huge amount to her. It is the least you can do, Kate.’

  ‘I know,’ said Kate, trying to control herself. ‘I have to write back to her.’

  ‘And I think you should give some consideration to meeting her too,’ insisted her sister. ‘She is your daughter and all she wants is an hour of your time. I don’t think that is a lot for Erin to ask for.’

  ‘No – I’m not meeting her!’ cried Kate, flying off the handle again. ‘I’ll write back, but I don’t want to see her, or for her to see me, and that’s all there is to it!’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. I’ll do the letter, I promise, but I’m not taking things any further,’ she insisted
. ‘You’re right, it is good to know that she is okay and happy. I always only wanted the best for her – that was why I agreed to have her adopted. But now she is grown up I’m not a part of her life and I don’t need to be. Erin has great parents by the sound of it, and I have my own family. My priority is to protect them.’

  ‘If that is the way you see it, Kate, then just do the letter,’ Sally urged quietly. ‘Write to her this week.’

  ‘I will,’ she promised.

  Driving home, Kate felt drained, her energy sapped from her. She had barely been able to think for the past few days, and had had a massive row with Kevin over something stupid, and had berated Aisling about the state of her school uniform, and had implied to Paddy she had some sort of virus so he wouldn’t get too close to her … Her poor husband hadn’t a clue what was going on. She had to sort this out.

  She’d think about it and try to write to Erin, but she would make it very clear to her daughter that there would be absolutely no more contact except for that letter.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ERIN KEPT HERSELF busy as the weeks dragged on and there seemed to be no response from her birth mother. She was deeply disappointed. She had written a good letter to her and was getting nothing back. What kind of person was this Kate woman to treat her like this?

  Her mum and dad had asked a few times about it, and who could blame them? It was very obvious that once again this woman had let her down. Nikki and Claire said nothing, and even Luke was discreet and didn’t ask her.

  She wanted to shrug it off and say it didn’t matter, but inside it did. It hurt, really hurt. She talked to Marian Kelly on the phone and Marian suggested she see Sheila Lennon, the agency’s counsellor.

  ‘We recommend anyone who is going through the process here has at least one meeting with Sheila. She’s very good. I’d really advise it, Erin. Whether you get to meet or make contact with your birth mother or not, it is very important to talk through some of the issues with a good counsellor like Sheila.’

  So Erin found herself meeting this Sheila woman. She wasn’t expecting much and was totally surprised at how well she got on with the large, blonde woman, whose warmth and sincerity immediately made her relax.