Five Gold Rings

by Tara Heavey

Genres: General Fiction; Romance

Synopsis

Christmas is approaching and sisters Cara and Evie have returned to the village where they grew up to sort through their grandmother's belongings and say a final goodbye to her home before putting it up for sale.

Evie is hoping she doesn't run into the man whose proposal she turned down years ago - and wondering, yet again, if she made the right decision.

Meanwhile, Cara is delighted to have an excuse to avoid her husband - they recently married after a whirlwind romance (one her grandmother did not approve of) and now she's filled with regret.

In the process of clearing out the house, they find their grandmother's wedding and engagement rings (put away after her marriage to their grandfather ended) but also a mysterious gold ring with a small diamond, which they have no explanation for. And they decide to start digging into the family history to try to find out...

Release date: October 15, 2026

Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

Print pages: 400

Sample

ALTHOUGH EVIE HAD BEEN AWAKE FOR A WHILE, she was in no mood to get up. For one thing, her body felt impossibly heavy after the intense emotional load of the last few days. For another, she was enjoying letting the sound of the waves wash over her, transporting her back to her childhood when she would lie in bed of a weekend morning and listen to Gran clatter around in the kitchen downstairs.

Her eyelids flickered open and she was face to face, once more, with the sultry features of Justin Timberlake. He had been living on her wall, unbeknownst to himself, since she was fifteen years old. She did a quick mental calculation: nineteen years – that’s how long that poster had been up there. Unbelievable! It was definitely time to redecorate. Although she’d never been allowed to do so before, as Gran had always insisted that her room, and that of her sister’s, remained frozen in time, like a shrine to their respective teenage years. But now …

It was the day after the funeral, and less than four weeks till Christmas. Everything felt so odd – Evie didn’t know where her head was. She felt tremendous relief that the whole rigmarole was over and done with. It had been torturous, especially for an introvert like her, having to plaster a fake smile onto her face and deal with the constant barrage of hugs and handshakes – some from people she didn’t even recognise. She knew they meant well, but still … it was astounding to Evie that at a time of such intense grief, she was expected to make small talk, when all she’d wanted to do was to curl up into a ball and cry her heart out.

But at least it had been a distraction. Now what? The day seemed to loom up ahead like a yawning chasm.

Evie was saved from her thoughts by a sharp rap on the bedroom door.

‘Are you decent?’ The voice came from the landing.

‘Yes.’

In walked her younger sister, Cara, fully dressed. She looked as if she’d been up for a while, although she had dark smudges under her eyes. Kicking off her runners one at a time, she launched herself onto the bed.

‘Ow! That was my leg!’ Evie cried out in pain.

‘Sorry.’

‘It really hurt!’

Cara rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, don’t be so dramatic. Did you know it’s almost eleven?’

‘What – really?’

Evie felt around for her phone and saw, with surprise, that it was indeed seven minutes to eleven. She hadn’t slept in this long since … she couldn’t remember when. She eased herself up until she was sitting against the headboard and Cara snuggled in beside her.

‘I can’t believe you still have that gobshite on your wall,’ she said.

‘I know.’ Evie didn’t agree with her sister on a lot of things, but she had to admit that in this case, she was spot on.

‘You know,’ Cara continued, ‘I knew a girl who met Justin Timberlake backstage at a concert once, and she was so disappointed. She said you wouldn’t have looked twice at him if he wasn’t famous.’

‘Poor Justin. Not all men can be as beautiful as Miguel, you know. Have you—’

Cara cut her off abruptly. ‘I’m on my way to the corner shop – we’re out of milk. Do you want anything?’

Evie gave her sister a sidelong glance. This wasn’t the first time Cara had changed the subject when Evie had brought up her husband. It had been the case for the entirety of the week they’d spent so far in Crescent Cove. She decided not to pursue it. For now, at least.

‘I don’t know, do we need anything else?’ she asked instead.

‘Well, we have enough leftovers to feed a small army. There are at least two plates of sandwiches left and about ten apple tarts.’

‘Oh God,’ Evie groaned. ‘What are we going to do with all those tarts? I suppose we could freeze a few.’

‘Put them out for the gulls, that’s what I say.’

‘Are you mad? All the neighbours would see what we were at.’

‘You’re right. I forgot we were back in The Valley of the Squinting Windows.’

Evie smiled at her sister as Cara got up and eased her feet back into her Nike runners. She suddenly found that she didn’t want her to leave.

‘Here,’ she said, patting the patch of bed beside her, ‘sit down and I’ll French plait your hair for you. It looks a bit mad.’

Cara seemed as if she was going to protest at first, then she plonked herself down on the edge of the bed, as if lacking the energy to do anything else.

Evie reached into her bedside locker and withdrew a brush. Repositioning herself, she began to brush her sister’s soft brown hair with long, rhythmic strokes. Cara’s hair was so like hers that it was oddly like brushing her own.

‘Are you alright?’ she asked her younger sister.

She felt Cara sigh beneath her hands.

‘Oh, I’m … you know.’

‘Yeah,’ Evie said quietly. ‘I know.’

‘Hey, did you notice who was standing at the back of the church as we were leaving yesterday?’

‘I did.’

‘Were you talking to him?’

‘No,’ Evie replied evenly.

‘You mean he didn’t even come up and shake your hand?’

‘I don’t think he stuck around. I can’t really blame him.’

‘I suppose not.’

For what must have been at least the thousandth time in her life, Evie expertly manipulated her sister’s hair into a French braid.

‘There,’ she pronounced when finished, tapping Cara gently on the shoulder as she did so.

She watched as her sister got up and examined herself in the mirror. Cara pulled down a couple of small strands to frame her face before making a satisfied sound, then her reflection nodded at Evie.

‘I’m off then,’ she said. ‘Won’t be long.’

‘Do you have enough money?’ Evie spoke from the bed.

She could almost sense her sister’s eye roll. ‘Yes.’

‘Make sure you wear a coat, it’s cold …’

Cara swivelled around to confront her.

‘Evie! For God’s sake! I’m almost thirty!’

‘Okay. I’m sorry. I just, you know.’

‘Yeah.’

Evie watched the expression on her sister’s face soften as she stood in the doorway. Then she saw Cara’s eyes being drawn, once more, to the wall opposite the bed.

‘Tell you what, I’ll forgive you if you take Justin down while I’m out.’

‘Alright then. But only if you take The Spice Girls down off your wall.’

Evie smiled. ‘Deal.’



IT WAS WITH MIXED FEELINGS THAT CARA LEFT HER grandmother’s townhouse that morning. She had felt claustrophobic ever since she’d woken up and now relished the sensation of the cool breeze on her cheeks, which had the effect of a reviving slap in the face. But she knew she was running the risk of bumping into someone she knew. And she’d had enough ‘sorry for your loss’ to last her a lifetime, although she had to admit, she’d been blown away by the warmth of the townspeople. Some of them she hadn’t seen in years, and she knew Evie hadn’t either. Maybe if they’d been that warm when she’d actually lived here, she wouldn’t have been so desperate to get away.

Thankfully, the short walk to the corner shop was uneventful. Cara paused at the window, momentarily taken aback by the sheer volume of Christmas decorations, undeniably festive, but tacky at the same time. It seemed excessive to have them all lit up this early in the day, but she supposed it was good for business.

The Christmas season had sneaked up on Cara this year, completely taken up as she had been with her own preoccupations – and now Christmas Day was less than a month away. It would have been so precious to have had just one more Christmas with Gran. One more day, even …

The door pinged as Cara entered the shop. She had been hoping against hope that old Joe Walsh would be serving – you were normally lucky if you got a nod out of him. But no, just her luck, it was his nosy wife, Dolores, who was deep in conversation with Brenda Power, professional town gossip. Cara groaned inwardly. Of all the people …

Their eyes lit up when they spotted her.

‘Ah, Cara, ’tis yourself,’ Dolores exclaimed.

Cara nodded cautiously, wishing it wasn’t too late to make a run for it and go to the supermarket instead. Brenda Power immediately approached her and took Cara’s hand in both of her own.

‘Ah, you poor cratur. How are you?’

‘Fine, thanks, I just came in for—’

‘Tis a terrible state of affairs, altogether.’ Brenda’s eyes were full of sympathy and curiosity, in equal measure.

‘Terrible altogether,’ Dolores echoed.

Cara disengaged herself, grabbed the nearest carton of milk and placed it on the counter.

‘So’, Dolores continued, ‘your husband couldn’t make it to the funeral, then?’

‘No,’ Cara replied reluctantly. ‘This is the busiest time of year for him; he was fully booked.’ Which was the same excuse she’d given Evie. Her sister had given her an incredulous look but said nothing.

‘That’s right, he’s a ski instructor, isn’t he?’

The two women stared intensely at Cara, as if ready to devour her words. But she knew better than to feed them any details.

‘Yes, he is. I’ll just take this milk please—’

‘Still, you’d think, for your own grandmother’s funeral …’

‘He had to stay and feed the cat. Now, how much is that?’

Cara knew she’d spoken harshly but she didn’t care. The two women looked taken aback.

‘That’ll be one euro thirty,’ Dolores said, sounding hurt.

Cara slapped down the money, then turned and left the shop without another word. She knew the women would have plenty to say about her behind her back, but then again, what was new?

Cara felt the anger surging in her chest as she walked back towards her gran’s house, imagining the conversation she had left behind her.

‘She’s always been flighty, that one.’

‘She broke her poor grandmother’s heart, running off and eloping like that.’

‘Sure, what would you expect, anyway? The women in that family have always been a law unto themselves …’

And so on.

‘Let them!’ Cara said out loud, before impulsively changing direction and taking the slip path down to Ladies Cove. Her soul needed soothing and she could think of no better way of doing that than by being beside the sea. It had always been her go-to in times of trouble. That and Gran.

Thankfully, the cove was empty. There were precious few tourists around in early December, and a body would need to be seriously hardy to brave the waves on a day like today. Cara zipped her coat up around her ears and settled on a welcoming rock – large and flat. She had sat here before. It was the location of her very first snog, with Andy McCarthy. Cara smiled at the memory. Neither of them had a clue what they were doing, and she’d somehow ended up with Andy’s chewing gum in her mouth. She wondered what he was doing now – she’d heard he was living in New York …

Sighing deeply, she closed her eyes. She let the sound of the waves cleanse her until she almost felt like her old self again. She could almost pretend that everything was the way it used to be – that she was headed back to the house to have a cup of tea with her grandmother, to tell her all about the next exciting trip she was going to take …

Almost.

When she opened her eyes, she looked towards High Street. She could see the row of shops, twinkling with Christmas decorations, and the tree at the junction of Ryan’s corner, all decked out in its traditional coloured fairy lights. Santa turned on the lights in the village at the start of December every year. Gran had always brought them, until they’d got too cool … Cara felt a prickle behind her eyes and blinked the feeling away.

This year it would be just her and Evie for Christmas. Even after they’d started skipping the tree-lighting ceremony, they had always embraced the holiday spirit as a family. And even though it had only been the three of them for a long time, they managed to fill the house with warmth and laughter without fail. What was Christmas going to look – and feel – like now? Maybe this year would even end up being the last one they ever had in the house …

‘Right.’ She stood up decisively, determined not to give in to yet another spiral of negative thoughts.

They would get a tree, that’s what they’d do. Gran had always looked after that, the tree always magically in the corner of the sitting room when they’d arrived home each Christmas. They’d decorate the house the way Gran used to, even though it would mean going up to the creepy little attic and braving the lurking spiders.

Between the two of them, they would pull it off – a festive Christmas: turkey, mince pies, paper crowns, the whole shebang. The way Gran would have wanted them to do it. And after Christmas, well … Cara would hopefully have everything figured out by then.

She strode up the slip path and headed for home.

It wasn’t until she was back in the kitchen that she realised she’d forgotten the milk.



‘WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO DO IT SOONER OR LATER.’ Evie looked imploringly at her younger sister.

Cara avoided her gaze. ‘I vote for later.’

‘How much later?’

‘After Christmas.’

‘What? But January is the most depressing month as it is. I really don’t think I can handle clearing out Gran’s stuff then, when the weather’s so shite …’ And won’t you be back in Andorra after Christmas? Evie wanted to ask.

‘The weather’s shite now.’

‘Yeah, but at least we have all the twinkly lights to cheer us up. Come on, Cara. Just imagine how happy we’ll be to have it done. Think of it as like ripping off a plaster.’

‘I’d rather rip off an actual plaster.’ Cara grumbled, but Evie sensed that she’d won her around.

She was relieved to have a plan for the day, something to do other than feel sad. And going through Gran’s things would help them to talk about her, something they’d been struggling to do in the shock and busyness of the past few days.

Evie started to gather the bags and cleaning supplies she’d rooted out of the kitchen presses. ‘We’ll start in the attic.’

‘What?’ Cara looked and sounded horrified. ‘But that’s the worst room in the house!’

‘Well, we have to go up anyway to get the Christmas decorations, remember? So, we might as well kill two birds with the one stone.’

Cara folded her arms crossly and stomped up the stairs, huffing and puffing as she went. ‘You’re too fucking sensible for your own good.’

Evie smiled tightly as she followed Cara. Not as sensible as you think, she thought to herself.

The attic door opened with an ominous creak and Evie pulled the bockety steps down to the floor of the landing.

‘You can go first,’ said Cara. ‘I’m not getting eaten alive by rats.’

‘Talk about dramatic!’ Evie said as she started to climb the steps, but she did look around nervously as she switched on the bare light bulb.

Cara followed her up moments later. ‘Holy crap, look at all the cobwebs. It’s as if someone’s been decorating for Halloween, never mind Christmas.’

‘I’m sure they’re old cobwebs.’ Evie spoke with a certainty she didn’t feel. Maybe they should leave the attic for another day …

‘Look, my old space hopper, and it’s still inflated!’ Rodents and spiders forgotten, Cara surged forward, dragged her long-forgotten toy out from the corner and proceeded to bounce on it, an expression of glee on her face.

‘I’d be careful if I were you, the floorboards might not be all that stable.’

‘Rubbish, it’s absolutely fine.’ Cara bounced even higher, bashing her head off a low beam. ‘Ow.’

‘Told you.’

‘Oh, get lost.’ She clambered off the hopper, rubbing her forehead.

‘It’s not all that bad.’ Evie moved further into the space. ‘It’s a damn sight more organised than the last time I was up here. Look, most things are boxed up neatly. And labelled. It’s as if she … knew she would be gone soon.’ Evie’s statement hung in the air.

The sisters looked at one another.

‘I think she did know,’ said Evie.

‘How could she have known when she literally died in her sleep?’ Cara protested. ‘Doctor Aylward said she wouldn’t have felt a thing.’

‘I’m not saying she suffered. She probably just … you know, when you’re in your eighties, you probably start thinking about that kind of thing.’

‘Actually, they do say that some people have a “knowing” about when they’re going to die. Like, they get a kind of premonition.’

‘Hmm, maybe.’ Evie was the least ‘woo-woo’ person in the world.

‘It’s quite common, Evie, I read about it.’

‘On Instagram?’

‘No. As a matter of fact, it was in a book I got out of the library.’

Evie raised an eyebrow. ‘The library – excuse me!’

‘Oh, shut up. Seriously, some people even get visitations from deceased relatives. Maybe Grandad appeared to her.’

Evie considered that for a moment. ‘If he had, she would have kicked him in the balls.’

They smiled wryly at one another, no longer so focused on their creepy surroundings.

Some of the attic boxes were of the official, archive-storage type, while others were old biscuit tins and the like. It was quite a raw experience, sifting through Gran’s belongings, with all sorts of memories being triggered.

‘Do you remember this?’ Cara held up a pink, floaty, flowery scarf.

Evie’s smile was somewhat watery. ‘Of course I do. She wore it to my graduation. I can still see the look on her face.’

‘She was always so proud of you,’ said Cara.

Evie looked keenly at her sister. ‘She was incredibly proud of you too, you know.’

‘Yeah.’ Cara’s voice was quiet. But she seemed to shake off whatever she was thinking and started rummaging around again. ‘Oh, I like this one, we’re definitely not throwing this out.’ Cara unearthed a pink velvet box in the shape of a heart, which had probably once held chocolates. ‘I wonder what’s inside.’

She brushed off the worst of the dust, then promptly sneezed.

‘Bless you.’

Cara slid the lid off. ‘Jewellery – I thought it might be.’

They made seats out of the sturdiest boxes they could find and sat opposite one another, knees touching, heart-shaped box on Cara’s lap. Then they began to sift through the tangle of trinkets, holding up items at intervals. There were chunky pearl necklaces, bejewelled brooches in the shape of butterflies, and clip-on earrings in every shape and size.

‘I doubt we’re going to find anything we can bring to Antiques Roadshow,’ Evie remarked with affection.

Cara nodded in agreement. Their grandmother had not been a rich woman, but they both knew that she’d thought of herself as rich.

‘Don’t I own my own home!’ she would say proudly. ‘With sea views to die for.’ This was true. ‘And don’t I have the two most precious jewels in all the world?’ Here she would grab the girls by the wrists and smile warmly at them.

Her love had been an absolute certainty.

‘Ah, here they are, I wondered where she’d put them.’

Evie lifted out both her grandmother’s wedding and engagement rings, holding them up for inspection.

The girls had been under strict instructions. At least once a year, for approximately the past decade, Gran had told them, ‘If you put that bastard’s rings on my finger after I pop my clogs, I’ll come back and haunt ye!’ Apparently, she’d even put it in writing, but they hadn’t come across that particular missive yet.

She had stopped wearing her rings on a regular basis shortly after her husband Gerry’s death. (Why she did this had never been much of a mystery to Evie and Cara, who were well aware of the grim reality of their grandparents’ relationship.) Gran had done it by stealth at first, keeping them in the lining of her handbag so she could slip them on discreetly if she met any of her in-laws. Over the years, many of them passed on and she made a point of seeing as little as possible of the rest of them, so the rings were no longer needed at the ready – and had obviously made their way to the attic.

‘They could do with a good polish,’ Cara remarked now, holding the engagement ring close up to her face and peering into the diamond.

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ said Evie. ‘We can take them down to Crawford’s after we’re done here.’

‘Yeah, and you can keep the wedding ring and I’ll have the engagement ring.’

‘No way! Why should you get the diamond?’

‘Because I missed out on getting one when I married. All I’ve got is a boring old wedding band.’ Cara’s tone was plaintive.

‘That’s not my fault. I haven’t got a diamond ring either.’

‘Well, that’s not my fault.’

‘Look, how are we going to decide who gets it? There’s only the one diamond ring and two of us.’

‘We’ll just have to find a way to share it. Six months on, six months off, or something. Or maybe the first-born great-granddaughter gets it?’ Cara suggested.

‘Good plan,’ Evie said. ‘Let’s see if there’s anything else of value in here. A lot of it is tat.’ She looked upwards. ‘Sorry, Gran, but it is.’

‘How about we keep anything we remember her wearing and donate the rest to the charity shop?’ said Cara.

‘Good idea.’

They sorted in silence for a while. Cara extracted the fake pearl earrings she’d bought Gran as a birthday present when she was a child. Evie put aside a gold brooch – there was nothing particularly special about it, but Evie remembered her gran tell her once that wearing it made her happy. That was one of the things Evie would miss most about her. The way simple things made her happy.

‘Hold on, what’s this?’ Cara held a small black box aloft.

‘Looks like another ring. Open it.’

It was a ring, also gold, set with a flower-shaped cluster of diamonds. The largest stone was in the centre, with six tear-shaped smaller stones surrounding it, like petals.

‘I’ve never seen this before, have you?’

Evie shook her head. ‘It looks like another engagement ring, but it can’t be …’

The two sisters stared at one another.

‘It’s probably just more costume jewellery,’ said Cara.

Gently lifting the ring out of the box, Evie held it up to her face, tilting it slightly this way and that so the diamonds sparkled in the dim light. ‘But it’s real gold, look, there’s the hallmark.’

‘Oh yeah. That is weird.’

Evie’s mind started racing. Why would her grandmother have a ring like this hidden away? If you turn down a proposal, you don’t keep the ring. That Evie knew for sure. Had she been engaged to someone other than their grandfather? But when? And what had happened? ‘You don’t think …’

‘That what? Gran had a secret “lover” after Grandad died?’

‘Oh, yuck, don’t say that. But seriously, Cara, it is bizarre. Why didn’t she ever mention this to us?’

It was Cara’s turn to examine the ring. ‘Wherever it came from, I like it. Change of plan, I’ll take this one and you can have Grandad’s engagement ring.’

‘We could bring it to the jeweller when we’re getting the other rings cleaned. Ask him to verify that they’re real diamonds.’

‘And if they are real?’

‘Well,’ Evie said, rubbing her forehead. ‘I guess it might mean that we didn’t know our grandmother as well as we thought we did.’

They looked uneasily at one another.

‘I don’t like that idea,’ said Cara.

‘Me neither.’ Evie agreed.

Cara let out a huge sigh. ‘It sucks that we can’t just ask her, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes. It really does.’ Evie reached for her sister’s hand and squeezed it.

‘I can’t believe that I’m never going to be able to ask her anything again. There were so many things I was planning to talk to her about this Christmas.’

Evie frowned. ‘Like what?’

‘Just … things.’

After a long pause Evie said, ‘You know you can always talk to me, if there’s anything bothering you.’ Say, for example, the fact that you change the subject every time Miguel is mentioned. But Cara wasn’t the only one keeping something to herself. Evie had just planned on figuring out her ‘things’ on her own. She had no choice now, with her grandmother gone.

Cara looked up at Evie and smiled. ‘Thanks, sis. I guess it’s just you and me now.’



‘MAYBE SHE STOLE IT,’ SAID CARA, SLIGHTLY OUT OF breath as they walked up the hill towards High Street.

‘You think Gran was involved in a jewellery heist? I’d like to think that if she was, she’d have the good sense to take more than the one ring.’

‘Or she could have been a cat burglar.’

Evie laughed and shook her head.

Regretting not taking her sister’s advice to bring gloves, Cara tucked her hands in her pockets, relieved that her attempts to lighten the mood were working. Evie had been quiet since their discovery the previous day, shaken, no doubt, by the idea that Gran could have been keeping a big part of her life secret from them. Cara herself had been awake half the night thinking about it. Could the ring have belonged to someone else in the family and her grandmother had been keeping it safe for them?

The door to Crawford’s Jewellers chimed as Evie pushed it open.

‘Wow!’ Cara gazed around in awe. Everywhere she looked, there were sparkles. No doubt the run-up to Christmas was a busy time at Crawford’s, with lots of people in town searching for gifts – or for the perfect ring for a Christmas proposal.

For the thousandth time, Cara wished she hadn’t married in such haste and foregone an engagement ring. It had seemed so exciting at the time: Miguel’s impulsive proposal on the top deck of New York’s Empire State Building, and their subsequent wedding at City Hall. He’d worn a blazer with his faded blue jeans, she a lilac shift-dress she’d picked up in a thrift store that morning – and both of them had big grins on their fa. . .