The Guesthouse on the Green Series Box Set 2

the lazy, looping script she’d never expected to see again, seemed to vibrate in her hand. It was nonsensical she knew. Her heart, she realised, had begun to race in a way she should perhaps at her age find alarming but the doctor had told her just last week her ticker was strong as an ox.
‘Go and sit down, Clio,’ she ordered and with the envelope pulsing on top of the small pile she’d swept up, that’s what she did. She pushed her glasses onto the bridge of her nose and pinched her bottom lip between her teeth as she retrieved the letter opener from the dish on the table. Then, sliding it through the crisp white paper, she retrieved the card inside. The last correspondence she’d had from him had been a letter written on a sheet of notepaper. That was forty-one years ago, although, if you were to ask her, she could tell you exactly where that letter could be found. This card, she saw inspecting it, was rather nondescript, an expensive looking nativity picture, a slightly different version of the same scenes already draped over the string she’d tied around one curtain finial stretching it across to the other as she did each year to dangle her cards from.
She wondered if he’d spent time in the newsagent’s loitering for an age by the rack of Christmas cards trying to decide which to choose, in the end playing it safe and settling on something rather stock standard. Or, perhaps it had simply come from a packet of ten, selected at random from the choice of Santa Claus with his sack of presents, a Christmas tree or the nativity scene. Nerves were making her procrastinate because it wasn’t the image on the front that mattered, it was what the card said inside. ‘Go on, Clio, old girl. Since when you were afraid of anything? Open it.’ She did so.
Chapter 1
London, December 21, 1999
Roisin O’Mara was not feeling festive. In fact, she was feeling decidedly foul and full of fecks as with her free hand she closed the gate. It clanged shut with a force threatening to snap it off its hinges. The plastic bag with the presents she was carting banged against her leg as she stomped up the path to the front door. Its green colour was a beacon on a day that was threatening more snow and she sent a flurry of the sludgy stuff that had settled overnight flying as her feet skidded on the icy surface. ‘Fecking, Colin,’ she muttered, her breath coming in huffy, white puffs. You’d have thought he’d have swept the path for them. Mind you, she shouldn’t be surprised. Considerate had never been a word that sprang to mind when she thought about her estranged husband. She was beginning to agree with her sister Moira, Arse was a much more fitting term for Colin Quealey.
Sure, a girl could fall over and do an injury on this path, she griped silently. ‘Watch your step, Noah.’ Her son was in a hurry to reach the house and she’d rather he made it there intact. They were late, which wasn’t helping her mood because she knew their tardy arrival would be noted with a sniff. Her soon to be ex-mother-in-law, Elsa, was the queen of the disapproving sniff. The annoying thing was it wasn’t even her fault. They’d left their tiny flat in a leafy, overpriced pocket of Greenwich in plenty of time but her old banger had protested against the cold by refusing to start. Her language, muttered under her breath, had been ripe as she turned the key for the umpteenth time knowing she was in danger of flooding the engine. She’d been about to tell Noah to unbuckle because they’d have to go back inside and ring Daddy to ask him to pick them up when she’d given it one last try. She’d sent a “thank you” heavenward as the engine spluttered into life.
The traffic despite the busy time of year had been light on the drive over. Roisin was guessing most people had the sense to hunker down for the day than to venture out and about. She envied them, she’d thought, turning into Staunton Mews ten minutes later. It was the sort of Sunday that should be spent in pyjamas, snuggling under a duvet on the couch watching videos while stuffing one’s face, not partaking in a farcical Christmas day with whatever you called your mother-in-law and husband once you’d pulled the pin on your marriage.
She’d managed to slide into a parking space a few doors down from number nine and even though she’d only walked from the car to the path her feet were already icicles inside her boots. This was despite her having worn socks so thick over her black tights she knew her boots would be pinching before the day was out.
Oh yes, this two Christmas day’s lark was a pain in the arse and she’d have rather left Colin, Elsa and Noah to the goose that was undoubtedly on the menu but Elsa had other plans. She’d been insistent she come, giving a loud sniff before remonstrating, ‘It’s important to present a united front you know, Roisin. That poor boy deserves a proper Christmas with both his parents given everything he’s been through.’
Roisin knew she wasn’t being overly sensitive—there was a definite accusatory tone in Elsa Quealey’s voice. She’d been tempted to point out that her son had played a lead role in their marriage disintegrating too. Elsa seemed to have forgotten all about the bank having foreclosed on them, selling their home and assets to clear debts Colin had amassed, unbeknown to his wife, with his ill-fated, investments. This was why Roisin and Noah now lived in a flat the size of a shoebox and why she drove a temperamental car that would have been right at home cruising the streets back in nineteen seventy-one. It was also why her husband at the ripe