A Winter to Remember

by Roisin Meaney

Genres: General Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

A heart-warming festive listen from the bestselling author of It's That Time of Year and The Restaurant

Emily Feeney has always loved the festive season, so when she invites some of her favourite people to Christmas dinner at her restaurant, she has an afternoon of delicious fare and seasonal fun in mind. But as the big day draws near, her plans start to look a bit uncertain . . .

Her partner Bill is preoccupied by family worries, and both he and Emily have been skirting around a big unanswered question. When events finally force Emily to issue an ultimatum, Bill must choose between the two women he loves.

Tom and Lil have moved into the apartment above Emily's restaurant, hoping to put the past behind them while they plan their summer wedding. Little do they know that an unexpected arrival in town is about to make the past a lot harder to forget.

And Emily's best friend Heather has surprise visitors too: the mother she left behind as a teen, who now needs Heather's help, and a man she thought she'd never see again. Maybe it's finally time to give each of them a second chance?

As Emily's prospective guests navigate their way through the holiday season, their lives become more and more complicated. Will they all find themselves around the table together on Christmas Day?

(P)2023 Hachette Ireland

Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

Print pages: 320

Sample

‘I DO BEG YOUR PARDON,’ THE MAN SAID, HURRYING into the little waiting room, maroon file wedged under an arm as he fastened the buttons on his navy suit jacket. Dark grey hair stood bristle-stiff on his head. His cheeks were threaded with red, his eyes between brown and green. Double chin. He looked to be around Bill’s age, Emily thought. Early fifties, or maybe a little beyond.

‘My last meeting ran on,’ he said. ‘I hope you helped yourselves to coffee.’

‘We did,’ Heather told him, raising her paper cup in evidence. ‘We couldn’t find the doughnuts, though.’

‘Ha!’ A short bark of a laugh. His teeth were even and large, and more creamy than white. ‘Sorry about that, must do better! Duly noted, Ms …?’

‘Taylor. Heather Taylor.’ She introduced Bill and Emily. Handshakes were exchanged: his was enthusiastic. He thanked them for coming and told them he was Derek O’Sullivan, and he was at their service. ‘Do call me Derek. Come this way, if you please. Bring your coffees.’

He led them down a corridor into a larger room that housed a long, polished table of dark wood around which a dozen or so padded chairs were ranged, and a rolled-up projector screen on its stand in a corner. Shelves were set into the far wall, which held an array of files and books. A white mug sat on a windowsill beneath one of the four sash windows. Emily smelt coconut, or imagined she did.

‘Sit, please sit.’ The solicitor undid the buttons he’d just closed and walked around the table to take a chair across from them with his back to the windows. His tie, grey like his hair, had a small whitish mark on it in the shape of a tiny crescent moon. He set down his file.

‘Might we have a window open?’ Emily enquired. ‘It’s so warm.’

He leapt immediately to his feet. ‘Of course, of course – extremely warm today indeed. Indian summer, for sure.’ He pushed up two of the windows before resuming his seat and opening the file.

‘Now,’ turning pages, ‘as I mentioned in my letters to you’ – glancing up, his gaze swivelling among them – ‘I’ve called you here in relation to the will of the late Mrs Astrid Carmody.’

The late Mrs Astrid Carmody. The words caused a pang. Five months after her death, Emily could still forget she was gone – maybe because it had occurred so swiftly, so out of the blue. The last time they’d spoken she’d been her usual bright self, climbing carefully into the waiting taxi outside The Food of Love, having just eaten Sunday lunch there. See you on Tuesday, she’d said – the day they always brought Pip to see her – as Emily had tucked in the trailing end of her scarf and closed the door, but Tuesday hadn’t happened.

I tried to wake her, the taxi driver had said, reappearing at the restaurant half an hour later, as Emily was clearing up. Scrubbing at his hair with a trembling hand, fighting tears. I – thought she’d just fallen asleep, so I – I called her, I tried for a bit, I shook her by the shoulder, just a little shake, but I couldn’t get her to wake up, so I brought her to the hospital.

The words had stuttered out of him, his voice wavering, threatening to break. I thought I should come back and tell you – I thought you’d want to know. She’s there now, I can bring you, I can wait till you’re ready – but by the time they reached the hospital, Astrid had been officially declared dead.

Are you family? Emily was asked, and when she’d said no, but a close friend, she’d been shown into the anteroom where Astrid’s trolley had been wheeled, and the hand that Emily touched was still warm. A peaceful death; what everyone hoped for.

She’d made it to her ninety-fifth year, a long life – and happy for the most part, Emily thought. Born Astrid Finklebaum, her family had got out of Austria just before the Second World War, coming to Ireland and making a home here. She’d married an Irishman, a farmer, who was long dead by the time she’d happened on The Food of Love one lunchtime, aged ninety-one. They may not have known her for a long time, but the four of them had been close.

‘Emily.’

Bill’s quiet voice brought her back. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was just … remembering.’

The solicitor regarded her sympathetically. ‘I was only saying that Mrs Carmody had a great regard for the three of you. Her best friends, she told me. A great regard altogether.’

‘We were fond of her,’ Bill agreed. Forty-four years between him and Astrid but they’d bridged that gap easily, never stuck for conversation anytime they found themselves at the restaurant table together. Emily wondered suddenly what the solicitor made of herself and Bill, knowing them to be living at the same address, but with an obvious age gap there too. Let him think what he liked: they were happy, and Pip was the icing on their cake.

‘Astrid was a sweetheart,’ Heather put in. ‘I cleaned her windows every two weeks. They didn’t need doing that often, but I guess she thought I could use the cash.’

She certainly hadn’t needed it. My folks both came from money, she’d confided to Emily, once their friendship had become grounded enough for confidences. It makes things easier for sure, but I don’t believe it ever brings happiness. She never talked much about her childhood, but Emily gathered that happiness hadn’t featured largely in it, despite the wealth.

The solicitor glanced down at his document. ‘Well, in the first instance, Mrs Carmody wanted her house left to Master Philip Geraghty, whom I understand to be your grandson, Mr Geraghty.’

Utter silence followed. They looked at one another, and then back at the solicitor.

‘Her house?’ Heather.

‘Pip?’ Emily, at precisely the same moment. ‘She left it to Pip? Are you sure?’

‘Assuming by Pip you are referring to Master Philip Geraghty—’

‘Yes, Philip.’

‘In that case, I am very sure. Mrs Carmody was quite definite on that point. I realise that the child is young – this will was written at the end of last year, and as I recall he was still under a year old at the time, so now he must be …?’ Looking questioningly at Bill.

‘He’s a year and four months,’ Emily said, when Bill made no response. She could see him still trying to take it in, trying to assess what it would mean for Pip. ‘He won’t be two till next May.’

‘Yes, thank you – so because he’s so young, it was Mrs Carmody’s wish that you three, her very good friends, would look after the house until Philip reaches the age of twenty-one. She instructed me, assuming you were all willing, to set up a trust, which would authorise you to act as caretakers of the house.’

More silence as they digested the news. Of course Emily was pleased for Pip – what a difference it would make to his life, to have been gifted Astrid’s lovely little cottage – but whatever way you looked at it, it was hard to explain, given the history between Astrid and Pip’s mother Christine. What could she have been thinking?

‘OK,’ Heather said, shifting a little on her chair, placing her palms on the polished table. ‘OK. Let me get this straight. Astrid, Mrs Carmody, has left her house to Pip, and she wants us to keep it safe for him until he grows up.’

‘Exactly. They were precisely her wishes.’

‘She wants us to look after her house for the next twenty years.’

‘Well, not quite—’

‘For the next nineteen years and eight months.’

‘Er, yes. That’s correct.’

‘Wow,’ Heather said. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m OK with it, it’s just … surprising, that’s all.’

Surprising for sure, Emily thought – but maybe after all it wasn’t so inexplicable. Astrid had left her house to Pip, not to Christine. She’d doted on the child from the first time Emily and Bill had brought him around to see her as a tiny infant, a week or so after Christine had run away. She’d knitted little blankets and cardigans for him in her tight, careful stitches. Maybe they should have expected exactly this from her, making generous provision for a boy whose mother had run out on him.

‘As regards financial considerations,’ the solicitor went on, ‘the gift of the house to Philip will unfortunately incur capital acquisition tax – quite a lot, in fact, as there’s no family connection between Mrs Carmody and her heir. However, as this tax will not become payable until Philip comes into possession of the property, it may be offset in the meantime through rental income, so I would strongly advise you to consider such a course of action.’

‘You’re saying we should let the cottage,’ Emily said.

‘Yes. You would advertise the property in the usual way and secure a tenant, or tenants. Mrs Carmody set aside some monies to cover expenses along the way, running repairs, the aforementioned advertisement, et cetera. She was most anxious that you would not be out of pocket.’

It all sounded so organised. Again, typical of Astrid. Emily found herself wondering who’d been in line to inherit the property before Pip had come along, Astrid and her husband never having had children. Her nephew, most likely – or, rather, her husband’s nephew. He and his wife had visited Astrid occasionally, bringing fresh duck eggs from their farm, and whatever vegetables were in season at the time.

Emily had met them both at the funeral. Astrid told us about your restaurant, the wife had said to Emily, and how much she enjoyed calling in. Had the husband expected the little house to pass to him though? Would he resent the fact that Astrid had decided to make a boy with no family connection her heir instead? She hoped not.

‘You’ll maybe want to have a think,’ the solicitor said. ‘You’ll need time to decide if you’re happy to take on the business of looking after the house.’ He made it more of a question than a statement, and they told him no time needed, no thinking required.

‘Right. Right, that’s good. I’ll set the wheels in motion for the trust then.’ He turned more pages in the file. ‘Now, in a separate clause, Mrs Carmody has bequeathed the sum of one thousand euros to each of you. Once probate has been sorted I can arrange payment by whatever method you each prefer.’

Her parting gift to them, as giving in death as she’d been in life. No money worries, she’d told Emily once, well provided for by her husband’s careful investments, and by the sale of their home after his death, the little house she’d replaced it with costing far less. She hadn’t needed much to live on, her only extravagances, if you could call them that, the lunches she’d eaten every few days in The Food of Love, and Markus, the Polish gardener, who’d taken over when outdoor work had got too much for her.

And of course her fortnightly window cleaner, whom she’d insisted on paying.

The solicitor turned pages, came to the one he wanted. ‘Mr Geraghty,’ he said to Bill, a quieter, more cautious note entering his voice, ‘there’s one more matter to discuss, and since it is … of a delicate nature, you may prefer we do it in private.’

‘Delicate?’

A polite little cough. ‘It concerns your daughter, Christine Geraghty. Mother of Master Philip.’

Emily saw the tightening in him, the new wariness at the mention of her name. It always caused this change in him, this tensing up while he waited for what followed, and it usually wasn’t good. But this was different, wasn’t it? A reference to Christine in a will couldn’t be bad, could it?

Bill evidently thought the same. ‘You can say whatever you have to say here.’

‘Very well.’ He dipped his head and read: ‘I bequeath to Christine Geraghty my pearl necklace, to be held for her by her father Bill until she is in a position to claim it.’

For the second time that morning Emily was astounded. Astrid had left her precious necklace to the very person who’d stolen it from her two years ago. Never mind that Christine had subsequently returned it after Bill, suspecting that she’d been behind the theft, had tracked her down and confronted her angrily – this gesture of Astrid’s made no sense at all.

The solicitor spoke again in the same soft tone. ‘I was led to understand that Miss Geraghty’s whereabouts were unknown at the time of Mrs Carmody making this will. Perhaps that has changed now.’

Bill shook his head wordlessly, and Emily wanted to weep. No change, his daughter’s whereabouts still unknown. No contact at all with her father in almost a year and a half, and still he checked the landline’s answering machine each time he got home. How could she continue to hurt him like this, when he had done nothing in the world to deserve it?

Christine was twenty-seven, a young woman with potentially so much life left – but having succumbed to drugs aged just sixteen she was sabotaging it as fast as she could. A period of sobriety following a stint in rehab hadn’t lasted beyond the pregnancy that had been uncovered there – no man ever named as the father – and there was no way of knowing where she was now, or how she was living.

Still in Ireland, more than likely: following her departure from the house, Bill had found her passport in a dressing table drawer. When a week had gone by with no account of her he’d reported her as a missing person, which meant she was on a list somewhere, so if and when anything happened to her, the news would find its way back to him. Ireland was too small for the remains of any of its citizens, regardless of circumstance, to stay unidentified for long.

‘I’ll take it,’ Bill said. ‘The necklace. I’ll look after it for her.’

‘Thank you, Mr Geraghty. I’ll let you know when it becomes available to claim.’

The meeting drew to a close. The solicitor walked them to the lift and shook hands with each of them, and bade them good day. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he promised.

As the lift doors slid closed they looked at one another.

‘Unexpected,’ Bill said, pulling out his car keys.

‘Which bit?’ Heather asked.

‘All of it.’

Emily hitched her bag onto her shoulder as they reached the ground floor. ‘Good for Pip.’

‘It is,’ Bill replied.

She waited for him to add some comment about Christine, but he didn’t. She wondered if his daughter would ever get to claim her inheritance, or even be made aware of it. She thought it unlikely.

On the path outside, Heather checked her phone. ‘I have forty-five minutes of freedom left. Who’s got time for a coffee?’

Bill shook his head. ‘I should get back to work.’

‘I have time,’ Emily said, fishing sunglasses from her bag. ‘Mrs Twomey said no rush picking up Pip,’ so they waved off Bill and walked in the sunshine to a café up the street that was owned by a pair of cheery Latvian brothers.

The door was propped open with a chair. ‘Hello, darlings!’ one of the brothers exclaimed as they entered. Dark haired, brown eyed, bearded, loading plates with a practised hand onto a tray. ‘You find a table, I send the waiter, OK?’ Their running joke, referring to each other as the waiter.

They sat by the wall, all the window tables being taken. Despite the open door, the air was laden with heat. After they’d ordered two iced coffees and one almond pastry, Heather planted her elbows on the table and regarded Emily.

‘Will you say it or will I?’

‘Christine?’

‘Damn right Christine. She gets the family pearls? What the hell is that about? What was Astrid thinking?’

‘Maybe she wanted to let her know she was forgiven.’

‘But that’s just it – she won’t know. She’ll never find out.’

‘You think she’ll never show up?’

‘You think she will?’ Heather countered.

Emily shook her head. ‘Bill still lives in hope.’

‘Of course he does. Will he try to find her again now?’

‘I’d say so.’ Astrid had just given him an excuse to renew his search, not that he needed one. More ads in the paper.

‘I guess Pip will end up with the necklace as well as the house. That’s a bit weird too, right? Leaving the house to Pip.’

‘Well, it’s certainly unexpected.’

‘And not a mention of my girls.’

Emily looked at her. Heather stared back. ‘What? It would have been nice if they’d been remembered, that’s all. Even if she’d just left them a trinket or whatever. Nothing valuable, just something to show they hadn’t been forgotten.’

She was hurt. Emily could understand it. Heather had brought the girls regularly to the cottage; Astrid would have known them almost as well as she’d known Pip. ‘I suppose she thought Pip was the more deserving.’

‘Well, sure.’ But they both knew that wasn’t the point.

Their order arrived, the iced coffees in tall glasses. Emily watched Heather dividing the pastry in two. ‘I wonder if there are any of Astrid’s relatives left in Austria – distant cousins, maybe. I know she never spoke of any, but it might have been hard to track people down after the war.’

Heather placed Emily’s half on a napkin and slid it across the table. She licked her fingers and wrapped her hands around her glass. ‘I guess I need to tell you about Astrid,’ she said.

Emily bit into the pastry. ‘What about her?’

‘She didn’t leave Austria before the war, like she told us. None of her family did.’

Emily shook her head. ‘No, you’re wrong. She said they had friends in Ireland, remember? That was why they came here.’

‘They didn’t,’ Heather replied. ‘They didn’t leave. They were going to, they’d planned it, but they were rounded up before they had a chance.’

‘No, that’s definitely not right. I remember distinctly—’

‘Emily.’ Quietly, but with a note in it that made Emily stop. ‘Astrid told me herself. It was about a month before she died. We were in her house, I’d cleaned the windows and we were having tea afterwards. I don’t remember how it came up, but I asked her the same question you asked just now, about possible family left in Austria, and … she told me everything.’

The little café was too hot. Emily’s chest felt tight. She breathed in, breathed out. ‘I don’t believe it. I don’t believe she lied to us. Astrid wouldn’t lie.’

‘Hey, don’t look on it like that. The truth was too hard for her, that was all. Or maybe she didn’t want to burden us with it. Maybe she saw it as a kindness, not telling us.’

‘Everything OK, ladies?’

One of the brothers had returned. They looked wordlessly at him until Heather said, ‘Yup, fine, thanks.’

When he’d gone, Emily pushed aside the rest of her pastry. ‘So tell me.’

‘You sure you want to know?’

She wasn’t sure, not at all, but she said yes, so Heather told her. In the overheated café that smelt of coffee and cinnamon, Emily learnt of a young girl coming home from an after-school dance class to find her entire family – parents, brother, grandfather – gone from the apartment where they lived. She learnt of a terrified wait, alone in the apartment, until darkness fell, and then a panicked rush to the home of a near stranger, and the long, frightening years of hiding that had followed.

She sipped the cold coffee. She touched the glass to her hot cheeks in turn. ‘And – did they survive, her family? Did she find them after the war?’ But she knew the answer, didn’t she? She didn’t have to wait for Heather’s silent shake of her head. ‘All of them gone? Everyone?’

‘Everyone. The apartment too, bombed by the Allies. There was nothing left for her, no photos, not a thing – apart from the string of pearls that she’d thought to take with her before she left. It had been passed down through the females in the family for generations.’

‘Yes …’ Emily remembered hearing the story of the necklace, after it had been stolen and returned. At least one thing was true. How precious the necklace must have been, quite apart from its monetary value – doubly precious after the loss of her family. How Astrid must have treasured it, her only keepsake.

And now it belonged to Christine. Emily felt a surge of anger that she tried to quash. She couldn’t be angry, not when it was what Astrid had wanted to do. She must respect it, unpalatable as it was.

Horrible to think of the young Astrid living through that nightmare. Incredible for her to have emerged as the generous, positive person they’d known, despite those experiences. For one who had every reason to be bitter and cynical about the ways of the world, she’d been neither.

‘Had she no other relatives at all?’

‘None. Her father’s brother, who would have been her only uncle, died young in a skiing accident. No aunts on either side. Her three other grandparents were gone before the war – I think she said her father’s parents died of the Spanish flu.’

Shocking that she’d kept all this trauma, all this sadness to herself. Why hadn’t she confided in them, the people she’d claimed as her best friends? Wasn’t that what friends were for?

But she had told someone. She’d told Heather. ‘So what did she do then?’

‘She got some kind of secretarial qualification and left Austria. She moved to England, worked in a typing pool in London. It was there she met her husband.’

‘But … wasn’t he an Irish farmer? How could she have met him in London?’ Emily had a sense of it all sliding away, a crumbling of everything she’d believed to be true about Astrid.

‘He wasn’t farming then. He’d joined the British Army at the start of the war. He was in the process of being demobbed when they met. He brought her to Ireland and took over the family farm then.’

So much to process, so much mental reshuffling to do. Emily pushed back her chair, feeling unsettled by the account. ‘I’d better collect Pip.’ She needed to hold him, to nuzzle into his soft warmth, to take comfort from the innocence of him. He might be Christine’s son, but he was also Bill’s grandchild, and he was happy and sweet-natured, and Emily loved him every bit as much as she loved Bill.

‘I’ll ring you,’ she told Heather, ‘in the next few days. We must get together and sort out what we’ll do with Astrid’s house.’ It might be best, she thought, not to say anything to Bill about this revelation, this true account of Astrid’s history. What was the point in telling him? The truth would only bring him sadness. She wished Heather hadn’t told her either.

To distract herself on the way home she tried to think what she and Bill should do with the money Astrid had left them. Nothing sensible: frivolity was called for here. Astrid would have wanted them to have fun with it.

That evening she asked Bill if he’d fancy spending it on a holiday. ‘We could do with a break. I wouldn’t mind Scotland – I’d love to see Loch Lomond. We could rent a place for a week, do a bit of walking.’

They were washing up after dinner. Bill wiped a plate and returned it to its shelf. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I was thinking of using mine to have another go at tracking down Christine. I could try more ads first, and if nothing came of them I might hire someone.’

Hire someone. He’d pay a private detective to find a woman who didn’t want to be found. Emily lifted cutlery from the water and dropped it into the holder on the draining board. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘it was just an idea.’

‘Emily—’

‘Really, it doesn’t matter. You must do what you feel is best.’ She pulled out the plug and let the water swirl away. She peeled off her rubber gloves.

‘I know you think it’s a waste of time,’ he said, picking up another plate.

She shook her head, unable to put a denial into words in case he heard the insincerity of it. ‘I hate to see you disappointed, that’s all.’

She couldn’t bear the thought of him wasting his money on a wild goose chase. Could he not see that even if Christine was found she’d simply take the necklace and sell it, or trade it for more of the poison she was putting into her, and disappear again? Was he so blinded by fatherly love that he honestly thought a necklace would bring her back to him and make everything right?

Then again, wouldn’t Emily feel the same if Pip was missing now instead of Christine? Since she’d moved in with Bill to help him raise his tiny grandchild, Pip had snuggled naturally into Emily’s heart, and it had been a perfect fit for him. Wouldn’t she move heaven and earth to find him if the unthinkable happened and he went missing? How could she object to Bill wanting to do the same for his child?

‘Of course you must try to find her,’ she said. ‘We’ll go to Scotland another time.’ They’d go, she thought, when no trace of Christine was found, when Bill finally gave up the search again. A. . .