Chapter THREE
Lou
THEN
Christmas Eve, 24 Years Ago
I lay under my duvet, flipped open my red Motorola phone and said a quick prayer I’d already have a message from Ben now that our big day was finally here, even if it was still only 8 a.m.
It was Christmas Eve again at last. I had turned seventeen recently, and most importantly it was the day of the big Ballyheaney party.
I could almost breathe in the excitement from the moment I opened my eyes as I thought of the guests arriving at the big house, the crisp call of winter in the air and the romance on everyone’s lips, as we all succumbed to the charm and glamour of the Heaneys and their unrivalled hospitality.
But this year was already different, because this year I had an inside view of it all. I was part of the team, and it felt so good.
Downstairs, I could hear my mum and dad laugh over breakfast. It was one of my favourite sounds in the world. Life was good for me and my family, but the big day at Ballyheaney was going to make it even better. I just knew it.
My heart lifted when I read the brief text message from Ben. I imagined he had woken up full of butterflies for the day that lay ahead, just like I had.
Let’s rock it 2Day, Lou. Can’t w8 2CU later.
If he couldn’t wait to see me again, I could have doubled that feeling right back, even if it had been less than twenty-four hours since we’d parted ways.
We’d spent the evening before arranging tables for the party in the blue ballroom, blowing up balloons for a display in the hallway where a photographer would capture guests on arrival, and ferrying boxes into the kitchen where Ben’s sister, Cordelia, was helping the usual hired chef to prepare canapés.
But I wasn’t only helping out as an excuse to be with Ben.
I was involved officially that year, as I’d been helping at Ballyheaney House all summer after I’d got the holiday job for a student helper there, which had been advertised on the bulletin board in our local supermarket.
I took it as a sign of our destiny to be together when I was the successful candidate, but in reality the decision was no doubt influenced by my assistance in the delivery of Little Eve the year before, as well as by my obvious fascination with the home’s magnificent design.
No matter how many times I visited, I viewed everything at Ballyheaney House with wide-eyed marvel.
The high ceilings, the ornate teardrop chandeliers, the decorative floor tiles and intricate woodwork, the huge oil paintings, the centuries-old tapestries, the luxurious upholstery on the curved mahogany chairs: I was both deeply inspired and in awe every time I discovered something new.
It was like a dream. But at Christmas it was even more special. It was a place that made me dance around a floor brush or sing into a feather duster. It was a place where I felt right at home, and where I felt like I’d found my tribe with Ben’s mum Tilda, Cordelia, Uncle Eric, Little Eve of course, and even Jack, Ben’s grumpy father, who loved to show me around the red-brick walled garden with its climbing white roses.
‘You know this house almost as well as I do now,’
Ben told me when I clocked in at Ballyheaney House as soon as I’d got showered, dressed and ready for the day ahead.
‘I must say, my mum is a super fan of yours now too. And don’t even start me on Uncle Eric. He thinks you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. He doesn’t take to many people, believe me.’
I blushed as I polished bundles of silver cutlery, while Ben folded red napkins at a round table in the drawing room. We’d found our own private little corner, away from the madness and rush of the other parts of the house, and barely paused for breath as we caught up on what had happened in each other’s lives since we properly saw each other last.
Which was on Christmas Eve a full year ago.
‘I missed you in the summer,’
he said to me as we worked side by side.
‘Imagine, the only fortnight I was home in July, you were jetting off with your family to Spain! That really was a bummer.’
‘I know, I felt the same, Ben, believe me. It was a last-minute arrangement for my family to go to Santa Ponsa,’
I explained to him. But what I hadn’t revealed was how it had only happened because my dad won a few quid on a lotto he was involved with at work.
However, Ben or no Ben, my summer days in Ballyheaney House were some of the very best of my life as I emerged into young adulthood. As well as mucking out the stable where we shared our first kiss, my job also involved grooming Sally and Little Eve, walking them round the grounds and helping to clean the amazing rooms in the house; and on my lunchbreak I’d read in the sun by the roses in the walled garden, which gave me the kind of inner peace that I feel like I might have been searching for ever since.
I was devastated when September came round and I had to give up my post at Ballyheaney House so I could focus on my chosen subjects for A level with a view to making the grades for university.
Ben too was knee-deep in preparing for his Leaving Cert in Dublin by then, so he rarely made it home, but as soon as December came, I made a point of offering my services for the biggest event on our village’s social calendar, with the ulterior motive of an infatuated seventeen-year-old.
‘We’ve been texting each other almost every day this year,’
I reminded him as I buffed up the cutlery to the sounds o.
‘Merry Christmas Everyone’
from the CD I’d brought with me especially.
‘I don’t think my phone has ever been so busy, but yes, it was a pity we missed out in the summer. Ships in the night, that’s what we are, Ben.’
‘Yet here we are again,’
he said. I didn’t need to look at him to know he was grinning from ear to ear, because I was too.
‘I feel very lucky to be back in the company of my bestie.’
‘Ahh, that’s sweet,’
I replied.
‘I was talking about Uncle Eric,’
he joked, so I gave him a playful nudge in return.
It was such a thrill to be behind the scenes with the Heaney family on Christmas Eve as they welcomed in musicians, caterers and the local media, including a very fussy photographer and a representative from the nominated charity who had arrived far too early and was now vacuuming the stairs while Tilda Heaney applied her make-up in her bedroom. Her husband, Jack, was off shopping for extra fairy lights as the decorator had brought faulty spare bulbs for the hundreds of lights around the garden, and Uncle Eric had just arrived from his fancy townhouse in Wicklow, dressed like someone from a period drama.
I adored Uncle Eric (which everyone called him, even Tilda Heaney), so I was very glad to hear that he liked me too.
‘Ah, there you are,’
he said when he found us tucked away in the drawing room.
‘My two shining stars of Ballyheaney House. But don’t tell Cordelia I said that. As her godfather, she’d be very upset and rightly so.’
‘Rather you than me admit that in public,’
said Ben, shooting me a glance as if to say I told you so.
‘She’d send you to the Tower for that, Mr Darcy.’
Uncle Eric looked down at his very elegant, navy knee-length jacket, white frilled shirt and cream dandy-style trousers. The corners of his lips curled up at the comparison to Jane Austen’s famously dashing hero.
‘A gentleman always dresses to impress on occasions like this, especially when I live in hope each year that my secret one true love might walk through those doors,’
he declared.
‘Surely you aren’t wearing that, Benjamin? Haven’t I taught you anything in your eighteen years?’
Ben patted at his scruffy T-shirt and jeans with a shrug. I thought he looked extra sexy, especially in the bottle-green tee, which complemented his dark auburn hair and light stubble.
‘Women, beer and poker, that’s what he’s taught me,’
Ben said with a nod in my direction, which I knew couldn’t be further from the truth.
‘Everything bad, I’ve learned it from my Uncle Eric. He is the definition of a rebel, or the black sheep of the family if you want to put it bluntly.’
Uncle Eric threw his head back and laughed so heartily, I thought he might explode. He was a handsome man in his late fifties, and like his nephew – who I was by now totally besotted with – he oozed charm and good manners and was a treat to be around. But he certainly wasn’t a womaniser in any shape or form. He’d told me about his secret one true love one morning in this very room when we indulged in coffee and scones smothered in jam and cream while putting the world to rights.
‘I stand over all of my bold behaviour with pride,’
he said, keeping the joke going.
‘On that note, have I told you about the new lady in my life? A barrister from Malahide called Sue with the most beautiful set of—’
‘All right, Uncle Eric!’
I said quickly. I wasn’t sure if this part was true or not.
‘Teeth, I was going to say, Lou,’
Uncle Eric continued without so much as a pause.
‘Honestly, I’ve no idea what you thought I was going to say.’
I was mortified at that, while Ben chuckled beside me. Uncle Eric was on a roll.
‘Her late husband was a dentist, so she has a smile that would light up any room.’
‘Is Sue a real person, though, that is the question,’
Ben said, which made me giggle. Uncle Eric could give out banter, but he could also take it.
‘Cordelia and I have this long-held idea that our dear uncle might not be telling us the whole truth about his love life. How would we really know? Mary the former beauty queen was never to be seen in real life, Maggie the actress disappeared into thin air, and now there’s Sue the barrister with the perfect set of teeth. Sometimes we think they’re all a figment of his imagination. We’ve never actually seen or met any of them. And don’t get him started on his secret one true love.’
‘Oh, I’m totally up to speed with that one,’
I chirp in.
‘Though her identity remains a mystery to us all.’
‘As if I’d bring any of my lady friends here to Ballyheaney House,’
joked Uncle Eric in return, rubbing his hands together again.
‘I’d never hold on to them if they met my crazy family.’
‘Crazy?’
said Ben.
‘Look who’s talking!’
‘I’m kidding, Lou, you do know that?’
Uncle Eric declared.
‘My niece, my nephew and their parents are my actual favourite people, and you, my darling, are right up there too. You earned that place when you brightened up Ballyheaney House all summer. And now it’s Christmas Eve. How blessed are we to have you on our team.’
‘Thank you,’
I said, pursing my lips with pride.
‘And she’s my favourite too,’
said Ben, which made me drop a silver spoon right out of my hands and on to the round mahogany table.
‘I may be dressed like I’ve been dragged out of a ditch, but doesn’t Lou look stunning in her red, Uncle Eric?’
‘Truly scrumptious,’
said Ben’s uncle.
‘Absolutely splendid and with all the grace of her dear … all the grace of a swan gliding along the still waters on Lough Beg.’
I wondered if Uncle Eric was going to say something else and then changed his mind, but I didn’t have the courage to ask so I quietly accepted the compliment instead. I’d bought a new woollen red dress especially for the occasion, one which both my parents and even my grandmother complimented without me even having to ask. I’d worn lipstick to match and applied an extra layer of mascara to emphasise my brown eyes.
‘I mean this earnestly when I say that without Lou during the summer, I don’t know how your parents would have managed,’
Uncle Eric said, clasping his hands together as he spoke.
‘And that is no exaggeration. Little Eve is like a baby to her, isn’t that right, duck?’
Uncle Eric had affectionately called me ‘duck’
since a day in the summer when I’d had a run-in with Ballyheaney House’s flock of mallards which left me in hysterics. Once I’d got over my shock and embarrassment, I too saw the humour in it, and I named him ‘goose’
in return.
‘Little Eve holds a very special place in my heart and always will,’
I replied, much to Uncle Eric’s satisfaction.
‘It’s her birthday today, of course, so I’ve brought her a gift. It’s a new blanket, so I’ll slip off and give it to her later when everything is up and running.’
Ben put a friendly hand on my shoulder while I polished the last batch of knives, forks and spoons. They were heavy and were stamped with a silver hallmark, a bit like the fancy set my parents used for special occasions only.
‘Well, in that case I’ll let you both get on with it,’
said Uncle Eric. As much as I had come to adore the older man, I was more than happy for him to read the room. I was keen to have Ben all to myself as much as possible.
‘I’ll see you on the dance floor later, eh, Lou?’
‘That’s a date,’
I told him as he strode out, leaving me with a huge smile on my face and what felt like an orchestra of crickets in my tummy.
‘As long as you save the last dance for me,’
said Ben, moving his chair closer to mine.
‘I can’t tell you how glad I am to be here with you at last, Lou.’
I carried on polishing the cutlery, unable to wipe the grin off my face. If happiness was a person, it would have looked exactly like me.
‘Same, Ben,’
I whispered.
‘This is cosy, isn’t it?’
I could hear him breathe beside me, then we both sang along to the Christmas songs on my CD like we were the only two people in the world.
When our first set of chores were done, we made a point of slipping off to see Little Eve at the stable, feeling like Romeo and Juliet hiding their attraction out of plain sight, though I didn’t stop to wonder why.
Ben had been very open and honest with his uncle when he said I was his favourite, and that was good enough for me. After all, I hadn’t told my parents how close he and I had become either. I feared they’d warn me off, that they would be concerned that someone like Ben Heaney would never be serious with someone like me.
So I said nothing to my family. And Ben, it seemed, hadn’t said anything to his either.
‘Hey, Sally. Happy birthday, Little Eve,’
I cooed as soon as we reached our hiding place. It was warm in the stable – well, warmer than outside, where the morning dew had frozen crispy and white at the lawn’s edges.
‘Look what I have for you.’
I opened a carrier bag to unveil the burgundy blanket I’d bought in Belfast a few weeks before when Dad and I were Christmas shopping. It was warm and fleecy on the outside, with satin quilted lining. Best of all, it cradled over her back like a hug.
‘Oh wow, she really suits it,’
said Ben from where he stood in the doorway with one hand resting on the stall door, his cold breath visible in the frosty air.
‘I think so too,’
I agreed, smoothing the blanket down and patting the horse’s flank while feeling his gaze on my every move.
Little Eve snorted in approval, which made us both laugh, and when Ben walked towards me with a hunger in his eyes, I thought I may have died and gone to heaven.
We kissed on the warmth of the hay with a passion so fierce it almost frightened me, but before we could get any further, I heard the voice of Jack Heaney coming towards the stable.
Ben and I sprang apart, our cheeks flushed and our hair tossed from the brief encounter that may have been a whole lot more had we not been interrupted.
‘Ah, you beat me to it,’
said Jack when he reached the open stable door.
‘I was bringing the horses some fresh blankets, but as always, Lou, you’re one step ahead of us all round here. What would we do without you?’
‘How do you know it wasn’t my idea?’
quipped Ben, winking at me behind his father’s back.
‘Because I know my son,’
Jack guffawed.
‘Now, how about you go and change into something smarter before the guests arrive? Lou, you’ll need to brush down your clothes too. We can’t have our staff smelling like horse hay and manure.’
Our staff.
Well, that was me put firmly back in my place, even though Ben rolled his eyes as if to tell me not to take his father’s words too seriously.
I was more than ‘staff’
to Ben, I knew that for sure.
I was seventeen years old. I was falling in love at the speed of lightning in his presence. And I’d a strong feeling that Ben might be falling in love with me too.