in the kitchen who told me that Valerie was taking a nap and wasn’t to be disturbed. She eyed her favorite wooden spoon as she said that, so I knew I shouldn’t take my chances.
“Can I help ye with anything?” I ask as I watch her putter about the kitchen, taking vegetables out of the fridge. “Don’t ye have that maid, Inga, or whatever her name is?”
“I don’t need yer help but you’re a dear for asking,” she says rather cheerfully as she brings out a sharp knife from the drawer. “And Inga is long gone. I caught her having a fling with one of the guests so she had to go. Right back to Sweden, for feck’s sake.”
“Shite. This place really is turning into Fawlty Towers.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway, it all worked out for the best. You remember Gail from next door?”
How could I forget Gail? She was the neighbor’s daughter I’d lost my virginity to. Nice girl but a bit of a mess.
“I remember,” I say carefully. Maybe she forgot the time she caught us together.
“Well, she was studying abroad, art or something exotic like that, and then decided she wanted to come back home to Shambles. Frankly, I think she ran out of money. All the girls in that house seem to come back home for a wee while. I’d gone over there to get some eggs from their hens and she was looking for a job and there ye have it. She’s our new maid.”
“Oh,” I say. “That’s good.” Gail and I had a rather tumultuous time in our teens. You know how it is when you’re sleeping with one of the girls next door. I didn’t really see her much when I started playing professionally but she’s always been weird around me. Hopefully she’s gotten over it by now.
“Yeah, she’s a real help she is. She makes breakfast in the mornings so I can have a wee break, cleans the rooms, does the guests’ washing. And in the evenings she’ll come over for dinner, help with serving the guests if there are any, and help your dad on over. He can walk fine, he just needs a little support some days and ye know how he is, he won’t dare rely on his mother-in-law.”
She clears her throat and spears me with her gaze as she starts to hack away at the carrots. “Now, enough about that. Tell me about her. Valerie.”
“What do you want to know?” I don’t like talking about her when she’s not here. It’s hard to keep our stories straight.
“She’s a looker, she is. Real beauty. If yer mam were with us instead of looking down at us, she’d say she’s like a fine Irish winter day. An old-fashioned kind of woman. Fair play to ye, Padraig. You did good.”
“So ye like her?”
“Very much. She passed the test dealing with me at any rate. She’s smart. Soulful. I trust her with yer heart and that’s the most important thing. You can never be too careful, ye know. Yer successful and handsome, despite those ugly tattoos on yer body and that frightful beard covering yer face. You have money and fame. A lot of women are only after those things, not ye heart. But Valerie … she’s after yer heart and nothing less. And you deserve it, my boy.”
My own heart seems to skip clumsily in my chest, like it’s slowly waking up from a long hibernation. I want what my nan is saying to be true. I want to be able to trust Valerie, not just in this charade but beyond that. But it doesn’t seem possible, not with the way things are laid out before us.
We’ve come back to my hometown to live out a lie.
How can anything real spring from that?
I spend the next couple of hours with Nan, helping out even though she keeps trying to shoo me away, or snacking on her cut-up vegetables, which she smacks out of my hand. I ask about how people in town are since the only people I keep in touch with is my mate Alistair who runs a pub down the road, and she talks and talks. She’s always had the gift of the gab.
Before I know it, the food is cooking away and she’s telling me I better go wake up Valerie so she can come down for dinner.
I finish setting the dining room table for us, then head up the narrow stairs to Valerie’s room.
I knock on her door