Second Chances

by Roisin Meaney

Genres: Family Life; Small Town & Rural; Women's Fiction; Romance; Humorous Fiction

Synopsis

It's never too late for second chances...

For the first time in her life, Lydia is taking a great big leap of faith. She's moving to a small town on the West Coast of Ireland to overhaul a large, long-abandoned residence named Chance House with her new husband.

Then tragedy strikes, and Lydia is reminded why she doesn't take chances. Suddenly she's facing a very different prospect: a half-finished ramshackle estate, an overgrown garden, dwindling funds, no-one to turn to - and everywhere she looks, reminders of the love she's lost.

Starting over feels impossible. Staying put feels harder still. But when the local community rallies around her, and Lydia is unexpectedly reminded of the power of new beginnings, she realises she might just owe it to herself and them to take a second chance on Chance House...

From the Irish bestseller comes a brand-new heart-breaking yet hopeful read about putting the broken pieces of your life back together again, even when it feels impossible, and the importance of community - perfect for fans of Lucy Diamond, Cathy Bramley and Jill Mansell.

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 80000

Sample

‘YOU MISSED YOUR TURN,’ SHE SAID.

He kept going, along the village’s single street and out the other side, taking the coast road at the fork. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

‘What?’

‘Wait and see.’

She sat back, smiling. She loved surprises, and he was good at them. Every time he left her Dublin apartment to take his long road home she found a treat hidden somewhere – her favourite chocolate, a framed photo he’d taken of the two of them, a bar of the seaweed and loofah soap she was addicted to. Once he’d replaced her bookmark with two tickets for an upcoming play he knew she wanted to see.

She planted her feet back on the dashboard and admired her blue toenails. They’d been on their way home from the beach: when she wriggled her toes she felt the not unpleasant graininess of sand between them. His car was always full of sand. She lifted a hand to lick her palm, and tasted salt.

In the hedgerows she saw dots of orange among banks of bright green spears. Montbretia getting ready to bloom, Damien had told her when she’d asked. Few more weeks, it’ll be like the hedges are on fire. Beyond was the patchwork of fields, some with animals, others with crops, and past that the shimmering turquoise ribbon of ocean that travelled along with them, the black shapes of wheeling gulls in the blue sky above it all.

A week before Christmas, a month after they’d met, in bed with flu and unable to cross the country to see him as planned, she’d answered a persistent knock at her apartment door to find him standing there with a large Thermos. He’d made the green bean, miso and noodle soup she loved, and driven three hours to bring it to her. Was that the moment – aching and feverish and shivery, hair a mess, not a scrap of make-up, wearing old comfy PJs she’d never have dreamt of letting him see her in – she’d fallen in love with him? She thought it was.

And now it was the last week of May, their sixth month together, and the weather had been unseasonably warm for the past few days, and they’d been swimming – or rather he’d cut through the water like the half-fish he was while she’d bobbed about closer to shore. He kept threatening to teach her to swim; she kept promising to learn. When we’re living together, she always added in her head.

Although nothing had been said, no promises given, no plans made beyond their next encounter, everything, it felt to her, was pointing towards a life together: the only unknowns were when and where. The when part would happen, but not just yet – six months of only seeing each other at weekends was probably not long enough for that particular conversation, impatient as she was for it.

The where part was a little more uncertain. Dublin was the only home she’d ever known, while he’d grown up in the little west coast village she travelled to every other Saturday to stay two precious nights and one full day with him. The village, with its single street, consisted of a church, a chemist, a primary school, two pubs, a chipper, a café that opened when its owner felt like it, a tiny hair salon, a butcher’s, a small supermarket with a post office tucked away at the back, and a hardware shop that was bigger than all the other premises put together, selling everything from lawn mowers to kettles to table lamps to birthday cards.

Between the shops were houses, and beyond the street more houses, gradually petering out as the countryside took over. The population, according to Damien, was around seven hundred.

But despite its small size, or maybe because of it, the place was very friendly. Everyone smiled at her on the street, everyone said hello, even children, and she loved that the bigger town half an hour away – still tiny in Dublin terms – was known simply as ‘the town’, as if it was the only one in Ireland, or the only one that mattered.

If Damien asked her to move here, she would. She’d live anywhere with him. He’d move for her too, she was sure of it, but sometimes when he came to Dublin it felt like he was trying on clothes that didn’t quite fit. He was a son of the village, known by all, perfectly content here. She couldn’t uproot him, not when she was willing to relocate.

It would be a massive change, after having everything on her doorstep in Dublin, but doing it for him, and to be with him, would turn it into something great, the best kind of adventure. She’d never been afraid of taking chances, and she wasn’t about to start now.

She’d have to travel for work if she lived here. Given its size, there wasn’t the smallest chance she could make a living from teaching yoga in the village – but again she didn’t care. She could look for work in the town; Marian said there was a community centre that might take her in – and maybe she’d organise a weekly class somewhere in the village, just to involve herself in local life. The school might let her use their hall.

She caught herself then, and smiled. Listen to her, planning their future. He probably wasn’t giving it a thought, not yet. She reached across to lay a hand lightly on his thigh, and he threw her a glance.

‘What are you smiling about?’

‘Nothing.’

He started humming. He was a hummer, always something playing in his head that had to come out. He wasn’t in perfect tune, but it didn’t bother her. She loved the happiness in him, the way he grabbed each day with the enthusiasm of a small child, and made the most of it.

She studied his profile as he drove. His eyes were between blue and grey, depending on the light. His nose had been broken in childhood from the accidental whack of a hurley, so now it had a small bump in the bridge that she decided gave it character. His mouth was wide, his cheeks ruddy and burnished from year-round swimming. Little creases radiated from the outer corners of his eyes.

And when he smiled, which was often, she melted. It was a thing of glory, a crooked grin with a kind of bashful quality to it that sent happiness into all areas and transformed his face into an adorable thing that she wanted to press between her hands and kiss fervently – and she did, anytime they were alone.

His smile caused butterflies to rise inside her and flutter madly. His smile had been the reason, on the night they’d met in a busy Dublin pub, she’d accepted his offer to carry her tray of drinks back to her table. In the city for a friend’s stag party, only his third time ever in the capital. ‘Complete culchie,’ he’d said, laughing, and something – the laugh, the merriment of him, the careful way he’d set down the tray and said a cheerful hello to her gang – something about him had found her tapping her number into his phone when he’d asked.

She’d been certain she wouldn’t hear any more from him – stag parties tended to blot out memories – but she had heard, late the very next morning. It’s the culchie, he’d said. A bit worse for wear, and in dire need of food, and their lunch date in the little Italian bistro she’d directed him to had lasted three hours.

In that time he’d told her he was a chef, still living in the seaside village where he’d grown up, and working in a busy restaurant in the nearby town. He had an older brother and no sister, and he was hopeless at DIY, and his favourite ice-cream was mint chocolate chip, and he loved music but couldn’t sing, and he’d learnt to swim before he started school.

They clicked. He made her laugh. He seemed impressed that she was a yoga teacher, and asked lots of questions about it. Her vegetarianism amused him – he himself, he told her, was a proud omnivore, nothing he wouldn’t try.

By the time he was leaving, she was smitten. When he leant in to kiss her goodbye her heart leapt, just the brush of his lips on her cheek leaving her wanting more, much more, and she couldn’t wait to see him again.

He’s the other side of the country, her friends had said, when she’d reported on the lunch. Do you really want to do a long-distance thing, Lydia? The answer to that, of course, was no. A long-distance relationship was definitely not what she wanted – she’d rather meet him every day, or at least every second one – but she’d take it over never seeing him again, and so it had begun.

Over the following weeks of long phone calls and snatched weekends – happily, both their work schedules gave them Sundays and Mondays off – they’d nurtured the precious thing they’d coaxed into being, and infatuation had quickly grown into love, and here they were.

‘Now,’ he said, turning down a lane on the coast side of the road. It was a mix of gravel and packed earth, barely wide enough for two cars to pass, a strip of grass running along its middle. Was he taking her to another beach, after just having left one?

He wasn’t. They rounded a bend and the lane petered out beside a set of rusting metal gates on the left. Damien pulled up at the gates and switched off the engine, and Lydia looked out at a big old ivy-covered two-storey house set at an angle to the lane at the end of a short curved gravel driveway.

The gates were closed, briars and more ivy clambering along the dry-stone pillars that anchored them. She saw gaps in the roof tiles of the house, and greenery climbing from chimneys, and glass missing from several of its windows. The front door, black paint peeling, had a broken fanlight above it. Sad, she thought, to let such an impressive building go to rack and ruin like that.

‘I need you to come with me,’ Damien said.

She turned and saw the excitement in him, the shine in his eyes, the smile that was on the cusp of forming. ‘What are you up to?’

In response he opened his door and went around to the boot. She followed him in time to see him lifting out two pairs of green wellingtons. ‘Put these on, Cinderella,’ he said, offering her the smaller ones.

She looked at them. She’d never owned wellingtons, never worn a pair.

‘Go on,’ he said, shucking off his sandals, ‘and bring your fleece too.’

‘My fleece? I’ll be too hot.’

‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘You’ll be glad of it.’

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Surprise,’ he said, and she knew she’d get no more, so she shook off her flip-flops and wriggled her bare feet into the wellingtons, which made her feel like she was dressing for a part in a play. They must look wonderful with her yellow sundress. She got her blue fleece and tied it loosely around her waist.

He took a walking stick from the boot before he closed it.

‘What’s that for?’

‘Wait and see.’

He didn’t bother locking the car. Nobody locked cars or houses around here. He pushed open one of the gates, making it screech, then took her hand and led her through.

‘Damien, this is private property,’ she said, but not with any real qualms. The house was clearly empty. ‘Who owns it?’

‘A family called Chance,’ he told her. ‘The last resident died about thirty years ago. Apparently he was a bit of a recluse.’

They stepped over creeping briars and around clumps of nettles in the driveway, and she understood the wellingtons. ‘How old is it?’

‘Nearly two hundred years. It’s called Chance House.’

He looked as if he was about to add something else, but didn’t. She was aware of a wonderful sense of peace, even as the air hummed with things that darted and fluttered and flew about them, and birds that chirped loudly in the trees flanking the building, and various rustlings from the undergrowth. No traffic: that was it. No sound of cars from the road. She could imagine the recluse sitting inside all on his own, savouring the uninterrupted sounds of nature.

They approached the house and he made to bring her around the side, but she eased her hand from his – ‘Hang on’ – and stepped up to a bay window. She cupped her hands the better to make out whatever was within, but saw only darkness. She tried the adjoining window, also a bay, and still saw nothing.

‘The shutters might be closed,’ he said.

Chance House. Nice name. She loved these big old houses, full of history. She wished she’d known it in its heyday. She imagined high ceilings, covings and architraves, a sweeping marble staircase, giant fireplaces, lots of heavy mahogany furniture that gleamed with beeswax.

Maybe there had been a butler. Maybe a maid or two, and a cook. Maybe the Chance family had dressed for dinner, the meal attended by a silent footman.

Maybe she’d seen too much Downton Abbey.

‘You’ll need to put on your fleece now,’ he said as they rounded the corner of the house. On seeing the dense overgrowth, she pulled on her fleece and zipped it up. He went ahead of her, using his stick to beat at the vegetation and create a path through it, but every now and again a rogue bramble would pull at Lydia’s sleeve.

‘Hang on to me,’ he said, ‘and watch your footing.’ She grabbed a handful of his shirt and stumbled along behind him over bumps and dips in the ground for what seemed like a long time. ‘Do we know where we’re going?’

‘I do,’ he answered. ‘Trust me’ – and all of a sudden, above the birdsong, she thought she heard the wash of the sea somewhere ahead. They must be close to it, walking in the direction they were going.

Damien gave a final whack – and she gasped as they emerged to a scene she hadn’t imagined. Beyond a low rusted railing the land fell a few feet to a small sandy cove, and beyond the cove was the ocean, huge and breathtaking, its edge rushing onto the sand and running away again.

‘A private beach,’ he said. ‘A few of us used to swim here as teenagers, until the garden got too overgrown. I thought you’d like it.’

She loved it. It was a little haven. She imagined a round table and two chairs on the sand. The perfect setting, on a summer’s evening with a glass of wine, to watch the sun slip below the horizon.

At one end of the railing was a gap that allowed access to a set of ramshackle wooden steps that led down to the beach. They negotiated the steps carefully and stood together, the water lapping just metres away.

Something, a bolt of excitement, took hold of Lydia. They were trespassers on a private beach. Like all forbidden things, it was thrilling. She unzipped her fleece and pulled it off. She shook her feet out of the wellingtons and strode to the water, the cool touch of it refreshing after the confinement of the rubber. She gathered up the hem of her dress and took another step, and another. With the water at her knees she kicked out, and a spray leapt into the air and arced back to drench her. She laughed happily and turned to give him a drenching too, to find him on his knees on the damp sand.

No, not on both knees, just one.

What was—?

Her hands flew to her mouth as he reached into his shirt pocket and drew out a small box, a new, different smile spreading now across his face. A nervous smile.

‘Oh,’ she breathed, her heart hammering in her throat. Her eyes filled with hot, happy tears that spilt over to mix with the cool water of the sea on her face.

‘Will you?’ he asked, opening the box, holding it out to her. ‘I know it’s soon, maybe I should have waited longer, but I’m as certain as I need to be. Will you please marry me, Lydia Foley?’

‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘Yes! Yes, I’ll marry you, Damien Cotter!’

She splashed from the water and pulled him to his feet. Half laughing, half crying, she covered his face with kisses, and he put on the ring and they danced on the sand, and then he caught her up, still in his wellingtons, and waded into the sea and whirled her around, and nobody was as happy as they were.

When they ran out of breath she sat on the steps and he pushed her wellingtons on again, and they scrambled back up and returned through the jungle of overgrowth to the house, panting, wet dress clinging to her, hands intertwined.

Engaged. She was engaged. They were going to be married. Her insides kept giving happy little swoops. Back at his car they packed up the wellingtons and sat in, and only then did he tell her that the property was for sale.

‘Really?’

She looked at it again. Once upon a time it had been beautiful. She imagined owning it, calling it home. She’d be the envy of everyone she knew. She wondered how much it would cost to buy it, and how much more it would take until it was beautiful again. Someone in the village might go for it, make it their project. The publicans might be well off, or the owner of the giant hardware store.

‘We could put in a bid,’ he said.

She turned. ‘Us?’

‘Why not? We have assets. I have my house here. You have your apartment in Dublin.’

‘Damien – are you serious?’

He laughed. ‘I think I am.’

She felt a leap of excitement. Was it possible? Could they really consider this? ‘What’s the asking price?’

He told her. Lower than she’d expected – but of course they’d need far more to restore it. Then again, she’d get a lot more for her apartment than she’d paid for it seven years ago. Property prices in Dublin were climbing all the time.

God, could they do it?

She turned to look at the house again. It would have been a family home through the ages but everyone lived in more modest properties now, easier to heat and maintain. Still, she imagined it filled with children. She pictured a girl playing a piano, a boy reading in a big armchair by the fire. She saw herself and Damien hosting dinner parties around a long table. The thought was intoxicating: she literally felt her head spin.

‘Listen,’ he said, taking her hands. ‘This house would make the perfect destination restaurant. Not just somewhere you’d go for a meal, but a place that offered a night away too, or maybe a weekend. And I’m talking quality: the best of ingredients for the food, the best bed linens, tasteful finishes and furnishings, the works. I could see families looking for it, or a group of friends, maybe to celebrate a big birthday or an anniversary. Some occasion they’d want to make a fuss of.’

A restaurant, not a family home. Of course it made more sense to run a business in it, but she was sorry to let go of the piano-playing girl and the reading boy. ‘So where would we live?’

‘We’d be in there, in our own private quarters. We could always extend the house down the line, if we needed to.’

He had it all worked out. ‘How long have you been thinking about this?’

‘Since I heard it was up for sale last week. I gave the estate agent a shout – she was at school with Tom.’

Tom, his brother. Everyone had some connection here. ‘Has anyone bid on it?’

‘No. She said my house should make enough to buy it.’

‘Wow. So whatever I made on the apartment—’

‘– would cover the renovations,’ he finished. ‘We could get my father to do the job – it’s just the kind of project he’d love, and he’d give us a good price.’

His father Brendan owned a small building company, managing a team of local tradespeople. He’d built his own house, and one each for his sons. If he could handle a job on this scale, he would be the one to ask. She liked him, with his quiet, gentle ways.

‘Does he know about this? Have you spoken to him?’

‘Not yet. You had to be the first.’

It would be a huge undertaking. They’d be selling their properties and sinking the proceeds into what amounted to a dream – but dreams came true, didn’t they, if you worked on them? Look at herself and Damien, overcoming the long-distance challenge.

‘And Marian would help us kit it out,’ he said.

Marian was his sister-in-law. Infant teacher in the local school, jangle of bracelets, blue streaks in her hair. She always looked good, hunting down designer labels in charity shops, putting items of clothing together with style, wearing colours that should clash but didn’t, and knowing exactly how to use accessories. And yes, her house was very nicely put together too.

‘And we could find room for a yoga studio in there,’ he added. ‘Just if you wanted it.’

She stared at him. ‘What?’

‘Why not?’

‘Would there be enough demand around here for that?’

‘Course there would. You’d be a real novelty – first yoga teacher in the area.’ He started the car. ‘We’d put it on the sea side of the house, so you’d have that view once the garden was cleared. In the summer you could teach out of doors, put mats on the lawn.’

All the way back to his house, she saw nothing of the scenery beyond the windscreen. She was seeing the overgrown weeds and brambles gone, the garden returned to the thing of glory it must once have been, the sea spread out at the bottom of it.

She was seeing yoga students unrolling their mats, filling their lungs with the clean ocean air as they went through their sun salutations and warriors and cobras and downward dogs. And in the winter a heated studio, with big windows to hold on to the sea view.

Was he right, saying she’d get enough takers? She liked the idea of being the first to bring yoga here. A novelty. A pioneer. She’d surely find her students among the seven hundred.

He pulled into his driveway and turned to face her. ‘It has to be an omen,’ he said. ‘The name, I mean.’

‘Chance House,’ she said.

‘It’s our chance to make something wonderful there.’

She nodded, her eyes brimming again. This day had too much in it.

He thumbed away the tears as they fell. ‘You’re with me, sweetheart?’

‘All the way.’

‘You don’t mind the thought of moving from Dublin?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘Brilliant. I’ll arrange a viewing for when you’re down again.’

‘Do.’

Chance House. She hardly dared to hope.

Later, showered and changed and on the train back to Dublin, she phoned Brona to tell her of the engagement.

‘About time,’ Brona said. ‘I can’t believe he took six whole months to propose.’

A year ago, Brona had married her childhood sweetheart at the age of thirty. They’d been together since she was fifteen.

‘I can smell your sarcasm from here,’ Lydia told her. ‘Six months isn’t a long time, but we’re both sure.’

‘I know you are, Liddy. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more perfectly suited couple – apart from me and Shaun, obviously – and I’m thrilled for you.’

‘And there’s more.’

‘Tell me absolutely everything.’

Lydia told her.

‘Let me get this straight,’ Brona said. ‘You’re planning to buy a tumbledown house and do it up. You’ll be moving three hours away from me to live in the middle of nowhere.’

‘It’s very near the village, only about half a mile outside it. And my own yoga studio, don’t forget.’

‘Yes, your own studio is wonderful. So you’ll be moving three hours away from me to live near a village that’s in the middle of nowhere. Am I right so far?’

Lydia laughed. ‘Oh come on, don’t be negative. You and Shaun can come and stay once it’s done up. And I won’t be going anywhere until that happens, so I’ll be around for ages. And that’s all assuming we get the house – we might be put off it when we see the inside, or someone with more money might come along and outbid us.’

‘But if you get it, you’ll definitely be leaving. What will I do without my Liddy?’

‘Don’t,’ Lydia said. They’d known each other for as long as she could remember, grown up two streets apart, started school on the same day. ‘We’ll still see lots of each other. Dublin isn’t a million miles away.’

‘Have you told all this to his parents – and yours?’

‘Only his so far, and only the engagement part. We won’t mention the house to anyone unless it happens.’

‘And how did they react?’

‘His father’s happy. I’ve told you what Kathleen’s like.’

‘You have.’

His mother hadn’t taken to Lydia. Nothing had been said, but it was clear in the way she never called her by name, never spoke to her unless she had to, never made proper eye contact. At the start, Lydia had wondered if she’d inadvertently said the wrong thing, but Marian had put her right.

It’s nothing you’ve said or done – Kathleen would rather a local girl for Damien, that’s all.

What does it matter where I’m from?

Maybe she’s afraid you’ll whisk him away to Dublin.

I’d never do that.

Well then, you have nothing to worry about – but Lydia still had to endure the aloofness, the feeling that she was not appreciated by the woman who was now destined to be her mother-in-law. It was all Kathleen could do to congratulate her when they’d broken the news of their engagement. Anyone could see it wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear.

No matter: all the Kathleens in the world couldn’t spoil this wonderful day. ‘Wait till you see the ring,’ she told Brona. ‘It’s gorgeous.’

She tilted her left hand to watch it sparkle. Damien had said they could do a swap if she didn’t like it – the jeweller was a neighbour of his father’s cousin – but she liked it a lot. A simple, sweet solitaire, the band white gold because Damien knew she preferred it to yellow. Exactly what she would have picked herself.

Brona was right: they were perfectly suited. It had taken a long time for their paths to cro. . .