The Summer Everything Changed

Prologue

AT THE BEGINNING…

It was like an ache, a heartbreak, a total decimation of her soul.

She was a twenty-two-year-old who fell in love so hard and so completely over a summer.

For years afterwards, Rosie dreamed of Patrick, imagined alternative worlds in which they’d stayed together, the memory of him fading over time, but still there were glimpses of him, sights and sounds of that summer ten years ago.

She had been running her family’s hotel, Cliff Top, in Sandycove, on Dublin’s sparkling coastline, for a decade now, and he was no longer the first thing she thought about when she opened her eyes in the morning and he’d ceased to be the last before sleep enveloped her.

She’d had a few romances in the years since, which had fizzled out for various reasons.

Rosie O’Malley was now thirty-two and, these days, her main occupation was the hotel and decisions about laundry and paint colours and the fact that the hot water wasn’t hot enough in the bedrooms and managing her team.

Cliff Top had prevailed. It was the hotel she had chosen over love all those years ago, and it had been the right decision. Of course it had. The hotel was successful and finally in a good profit and her mother’s dream had not died as she had.

Rosie had concentrated on making serious changes in the hotel, such as the décor, and had turned it from a lovely-but-shabby old country guest house into a chic boutique out-of-town hotel. So, it had all been worth it, hadn’t it?

Her mother, Sarah, had been the first to fall for Cliff Top when she and her husband, Teddy, and their two small girls, Rosie and Nessa, went to view it one day.

Back then, Cliff Top was a crumbling old house – ‘Like Sleeping Beauty’s castle,’ Sarah had said.

The stone walls thatched with ivy wound themselves around the house and the garden.

The views from the hotel were spectacular, a large lawn ran from the front steps along to the cliff edge where on clear days you could see Wales and the old lighthouse which flashed at night.

Rosie would lie in bed, knowing the lighthouse was at work, keeping people safe, as she snuggled up cosily.

‘It’s a home that’s been waiting just for us. ’

They all had a part to play in the painting, clearing and cleaning, transforming the house into a comfortable, small fifteen-bedroom hotel.

Sarah loved everything about running Cliff Top; nothing was too much trouble and guests were encouraged to make themselves at home.

Bedrooms always had flowers on the nightstands, windows open to catch the breeze from the sea, antique eiderdowns folded at the bottom of beds.

There were scones and jam in the afternoon, cheese and biscuits with a glass of port in the early evening.

Their father Teddy had tamed the wildness, uncovering the old walled kitchen garden which had once been a tangle of jungle and was now a neat series of raised beds abundant with vegetables and fruit.

The old greenhouse had been reglazed and in the summer, as it was now, heavy with tomatoes and cucumbers.

They were a close-knit family, and the hotel was like an extra-strength glue which bound them all together, but this Eden had been halted when Sarah’s persistent cough became unignorable, the pain in her side grew worse, the cancer diagnosed too late and she declined rapidly.

Every day of those last few months, she diminished in front of their eyes.

When Rosie was eighteen and Nessa seventeen, Sarah had died, leaving Teddy, Rosie and Nessa heartbroken.

Teddy was worn out from the minding and ministering, from the hours at his beloved wife’s side, holding her hand.

Rosie and Nessa had tried to keep the hotel going as much as they could around schoolwork.

But, when Sarah died, they all fell apart.

The hotel was closed for six months, the weeds ran rampant.

The hotel’s housekeeper Maureen went on a trip to Australia to visit her new grandchildren and would phone from time to time, asking if they were opening ever again.

It was then that Rosie decided that she would manage Cliff Top and would return the hotel to its former glory.

The hotel had been her mother’s dream, and now it was to be hers.

Poor Teddy, grief-stricken, found solace in the garden and began reclaiming it from the weeds. Maureen returned home and they all cleaned, dusted, vacuumed, before once more throwing the doors open to guests.

They had all still been involved. Teddy wasn’t a natural hotelier, not like his wife had been, as he was far quieter. At least we haven’t crumbled, thought Rosie. At least for Mum’s sake, we’re still a family, the hotel is going to be okay. And we’ll look after Dad.

On the day of the reopening, Teddy and his two girls had stood outside the door of the hotel, on the gravel driveway, and looked at each other. ‘Well, girls,’ he’d said, ‘at least we have a plan.’

They nodded at him. ‘It’s not a bad plan,’ said Nessa. ‘Dad’s going to keep the hotel going for the next year while Rosie does hotel management and I do accountancy.’ She smiled at Rosie. ‘I can do the books for the hotel when I’m qualified.’

Rosie had enrolled on a three-year hospitality degree and finally, in her last summer, was to undertake a placement at the oh-so-posh five-star Shelbourne Hotel on St Stephen’s Green, right in the heart of Dublin’s fair city. And then she’d be all done.

Teddy had been busy all year and had even changed the old family living quarters into new bedrooms for the hotel, and had refurbished two of the cottages on the estate – one for him, and one for the girls.

It had been his idea to move out of the hotel, where they had been able to turn their family’s old quarters into new bedrooms and suites.

‘It makes so much more sense,’ he had said.

‘What do I need with all that space?’ But, really, it was because he’d lost the love of his life and it was painfully hard for him to return every evening to the rooms he’d shared with his wife.

Life was creeping back into all of them.

After her year of accountancy, Nessa had joined her friends in Malaga, working in Mucho Loco, which was patronised by the rowdier class of Irish and British tourists, Teddy was knee-deep in the garden, tending his walled garden and the greenhouse vines, and they were reshaping as a family, discovering how the three of them worked, and it seemed that somehow they did.

Rosie was sure that she was doing the right thing, taking the pressure about the hotel from her father’s shoulders, and freeing Nessa from any obligation.

She was now twenty-two and ready to fulfil her mother’s legacy.

For her final placement, she’d decided to live in the city centre, rather than commuting in from Sandycove, to be close to the Shelbourne.

Summer in Dublin was always a beautiful time, when, for those precious three months with the long evenings, its citizens made the most of it – al fresco pints, floral displays, bare legs, picnic lunches in the parks, and a giddiness in the air.

Rosie was even a little bit giddy as she arrived at the shared house she was subletting.

Suitcases at her feet, she stood in the hall with the peeling wallpaper and a smell in the air which was either cabbages or something worse.

Her new flatmate, Smoggy, who was doing a degree in physical education, had just arrived back from a run, dripping with sweat in his green Limerick sports jersey.

‘You haven’t met the other new lad yet. Patrick.

Seems grand enough, like. Even though he’s from Cork.

Lives in Boston doing some business degree but back for the summer, working in some investment place.

Haven’t seen much of him, leaves for work early and back late.

’ Absent-mindedly, Smoggy pulled his shorts from his groin area.

‘I’ll get myself sorted, so,’ Rosie said, moving away, and reaching down to pick up her case. She had an hour before she was due to meet her new manager at the Shelbourne and so a quick shower, minimal make-up, flat shoes, navy skirt suit, and she’d be ready.

The front door was opening, a face appearing. ‘Ah, talk of the devil,’ said Smoggy. ‘What’s brought you home at this time?’

‘Forgot my wallet.’ The man edged into the cramped hallway so Smoggy and Rosie had to cram up against the walls.

Smoggy performed the introductions. ‘Patrick, Rosie, Rosie, Patrick.’

Patrick was holding out his hand. Short hair, brown eyes, broad shoulders squeezed into a cheap suit, white shirt and no tie. ‘I thought you’d be here later…’ He had a soft Cork accent.

‘Rosie O’Malley.’

‘Patrick Power…’ He smiled. ‘You’re here just for the summer too?’

She nodded. ‘Hotel management. I’m on my placement.’

‘Same. Except I’m business management in the States. But placement here in Dublin.’

‘He’s not happy to be back,’ said Smoggy. ‘Are you, Paddy?’

Patrick shrugged. ‘Thought I was leaving Ireland for good and then they go and send me back.’ He smiled again at her, this time taking her in properly with his blue eyes.

‘But, look, it’s only a few months.’ He hesitated.

‘I’d better find my wallet…’ He spied it on the hall table, resting on the free newspapers, the bills and the flyers for the local pizza place.

‘Good to meet you, Rosie. See you later, Smogs.’

Smoggy was always around the house over the next few days, whisking up raw egg smoothies and hanging off the door frame and doing pull-ups; Patrick was more elusive, there were just signs of his existence: his toothbrush in the bathroom, shampoo in the shower, a suit jacket hanging off the bannisters.

But, at the end of her first week, Rosie had just finished a late shift at the hotel and she was in the kitchen eating cheese on toast. She heard the front door open, and someone whistling in the hall.