Chapter 18
18
Owen was pulling a bottle of wine from the fridge when Jess came back in, feeling refreshed.
‘Have a seat,’ he said, placing the bottle on the table. ‘I’ve got juice or a soft drink if you’d rather that?’
Jess sat down and leaned forward to read the label on the wine. ‘Are you kidding? Oyster Bay is my favourite Sav.’ The grapes were a taste of home. ‘Pour away,’ she said, holding out her glass.
‘Aye, well, you Kiwis do produce a good drop,’ Owen replied, doing as he was told.
The meal was even scrummier than it had promised to be. Owen had poured lemon-infused vinaigrette over the beans and tossed a sprinkling of roasted walnuts on the top. There was a crusty loaf of garlic bread on a wooden board for them to share, and as for the pasta, it was carb heaven.
‘Can I get the recipe off you?’ she mumbled, her mouth full.
‘Aye, it’s pretty simple, though.’
‘Nothing is simple where me and cooking are concerned, believe me.’
‘It’s just fresh penne pasta, shredded smoked chicken, white wine, cream, zest of orange, dill and grated parmesan. You literally throw it all in together and you can’t go wrong.’ He shrugged. ‘I take it you’re not a cook then?’
‘No, not really. I’m more of an eater. I like to eat far more than I like to cook, probably because I’m not very good at it, despite having just completed half a dozen different cooking schools.’
Owen raised an eyebrow, and she told him all about her column, regaling him with her useless attempts at flipping Croatian pancakes and how she’d nearly hit the roof upon taste testing her heavy-handed chilli-flavoured attempts at Creole cooking.
‘You obviously enjoy cooking, though, if you can knock something up that tastes this good,’ she said, pointing her fork at him before stabbing another piece of penne.
‘Aye, I do. When I practised law, I found it helped me wind down at the end of the day. There’s nothing like dicing an onion or chopping garlic to make you forget about a shitty day.’
‘Chopping onions always makes me cry. What kind of law did you practice then?’
‘Commercial law mostly. It wasn’t me, although the money and the lifestyle it gave me certainly suited for a bit.’
Jess was itching to ask him about his ex-wife but didn’t want to spoil what was turning out to be a surprisingly enjoyable evening. She didn’t know whether it was the wine or the fact that Owen had resigned himself to being in her company for the entire evening, but he’d become quite affable, and she’d found herself relaxing around him for the first time since he’d picked her up from the bus stop.
‘So what about you then? How did a girl from Auckland come to be writing a column in a Dublin newspaper? That sounds far more interesting than commercial law.’
She filled him in on what she’d done briefly for a crust back home in Auckland, and he broke in with, ‘So you were a gossip columnist then?’
‘I was not! I merely passed on information to my readers about people who liked to be seen about town.’
Owen smirked.
She ignored him.
‘So what brought you to Dublin then – don’t most New Zealanders head for London? There were always a couple of Kiwi solicitors or legal secretaries doing their big OE, as they called it, at the firm I worked for. They were very fond of the Friday liquid lunches, from what I remember – that and the Friday night drinks sessions.’
‘I’ll have you know us Kiwis pride ourselves on our reputation of being extremely hard workers.’ Jessica said this tongue-in-cheek; she’d joined in plenty of those Friday night drinks sessions herself over the years. ‘I suppose most Kiwis do head for London, but then most head home when their visas run out, too. I’ve been in this part of the world since 2001; my grandparents hailed from England, and I did go to London initially. It wasn’t for me, though. I flew over there on my own, and the size of the city intimidated me. I just have one of those faces, I think.’ She shrugged.
‘What do you mean, one of those faces?’ Owen asked, topping up her glass.
‘The kind of face that always attracts weirdos. I must have soft touch written all over me because no matter where I was in London, they’d seek me out and track me down. It was like I had a heat sensor they could home in on.’
She saw Owen’s expression. ‘No, truly it was. Listen, I once had a chap announce that I had really lovely hairs on my arm just before he began stroking them while I sat completely hemmed in by him on the Tube. The worst bit was nobody around me moved or came to my aid, and that’s when I—hey, it’s not funny – it was pretty traumatic at the time, I’ll have you know.’
Owen stopped grinning. ‘Sorry. I’m sure it was, but it was a compliment of sorts.’
Jess gave a little grin. ‘Yeah, well, one I could do without, thanks, and it was the kind of thing that could only happen to me. Anyway, after the hairy-arm incident, I decided enough was enough, and I headed over to Ireland to check out Dublin. I’d heard it was a boom town, and it was my last-ditch attempt to see if I could make a go of things on my own before heading home with my tail between my legs and a mother waiting to tell me I told you so.’
‘It obviously all worked out then.’
‘It did, thanks to my two best friends and landing a pretty amazing job. Oh, and having been granted residency eventually, of course.’ She had him laughing again with her tale of how she’d come to meet Brianna and Nora before filling him in on her job at the Marriott that had eventually opened a door at the Dublin Express .
‘You’re an awfully long way from home. You must miss your family.’
‘Yes and no. It’s one of those love–hate relationships. I miss them when I’m here, but when I go home to see them, I can’t wait to get back to Dublin again because they drive me nuts. Especially my mum.’ Jess rolled her eyes. ‘Honestly, you’ve no idea. She’s desperate to marry me off and refuses to believe it’s a lost cause.’
Realising what she’d said, she cringed. ‘Sorry, that must have sounded awfully selfish, my moaning about my nearest and dearest after, well, after everything your family went through.’ The wine had definitely loosened Jess’s tongue.
‘No, it just sounds honest and pretty normal. After Amy died, there wasn’t a lot of normal in our house, but I remember what it was like before, when there was plenty of bickering and driving each other nuts going on under our roof, too.’
From over on the bench, an egg timer suddenly pinged. Saved by the bell , Jess thought.
‘It’s seven thirty,’ Owen said, pushing his chair back. ‘That means it’s time to feed Wilbur. It’s dark out so I’ll walk you over.’ His voice brooked no argument as he got the milk ready.
A chivalrous man – now that was a rare commodity in this day and age of equal rights, Jess thought, rather liking the masterful tone of voice, but then he added, ‘Besides, I’m going to attach his drip bottle earlier tonight so I don’t need to go back out later. It will be an early night for me.’
‘Oh, right – well, I’m on dishes when we get back.’
‘So are you writing the great novel in your spare time? Although I don’t suppose a footloose and fancy-free young woman in Dublin has that much spare time.’
Owen was leaning against the wooden strut holding the middle of the barn up, waiting for Jess to finish feeding Wilbur. His attempt at nonchalance didn’t really work, and Jess looked up, registering what a rugged scene he set.
‘Oh, you’d be surprised how much spare time a footloose, fancy-free young woman has.’
‘Do I take that as a yes you are writing a book?’
‘It’s a very clichéd ambition. What writer doesn’t aspire to write a book?’
Wilbur made a soft snuffling noise, and Jess’s heart melted.
‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘I know.’
Their eyes met in a silent stand-off before she sighed. ‘It’s a sensitive subject, and I don’t like talking about it. The only people who know are Nora and Brianna. I want more than anything to write a book. It’s seems like such a natural progression from what I’ve been doing all these years.’
‘So what’s stopping you?’
‘The ideas are all there, but I can’t seem to start it. Whenever I sit down to begin it, I go blank.’
‘Where do you begin when you write your column?’
‘That’s different. I get a tiny seed of any idea and then it just grows. The words come faster than I can type them.’ Jess shook her head. ‘If I’m honest, I suppose what it really comes down to is that I’m scared I won’t be able to do it – you know, put together something of that scale.’
Owen looked intently at her. ‘You’ll do it when the time is right.’