Bronagh’s Irish Wedding (The Irish Guesthouse on the Green #20)
Proglogue
Patricia Harte tucked her sensibly short grey hair behind her ears and thanked the man with the wispy comb-over and florid face as he hefted her suitcase from the boot of his taxi and set it down on the pavement.
His wheezing rasp as he did so alarmed her because she did not want her bulging suitcase to be responsible for him expiring outside the long row of elegant Georgian townhouses.
Fortunately, he didn't, and she gave him a wave as he eased his girth back behind the wheel and merged into the midday traffic rumbling past St Stephen's Green, where she stood outside O'Mara's Guesthouse on the opposite side of the road.
Inside the popular park's wrought-iron surrounds, an oasis of calm awaited, sheltered from the busyness of cars and foot traffic.
There would be plenty of time to admire the autumn foliage over the next five days, however, and Patricia's gaze turned instead to the guesthouse outside which she'd been deposited.
She'd booked a room on the third floor for five luxurious nights to ensure a view of the fiery treetops across the road.
O'Mara's.
The guesthouse's brass name plaque gleamed discreetly on the brickwork.
It was polished to a high sheen, as were the blue door's knocker, letterbox and handle.
She felt a twinge of regret that she would be the one to leave fingerprints all over that shiny handle in a moment, but her excitement at, at last staying at the guesthouse she'd long admired overrode it.
As a child, the nuns had told her mam that her daughter possessed a vivid imagination and a talent for art. The observation had been true. She did.
Closing her eyes, Patricia blocked out the rumble of passing traffic and heard instead the clip-clop of a horse and carriage as she envisaged the sumptuous clothes and furnishings of another time; past lives coming and going behind the rows of colourful doors with their tell-tale fanlights arching overhead.
Her fingers twitched with the urge to sketch the images in her mind, but for now her sketchbook was packed away in her suitcase.
'You're finally here,' she murmured, oblivious to the strange look a young girl flicked her way.
Still, she lingered, blocking the pavement and causing people to step around her with huffy sighs, because the moment she turned that brass door handle and stepped over the threshold, she would cease to be.
Not literally, of course, but for the next five nights Patricia Harte, primary caregiver to her elderly mother, who lived a short taxi ride away, and who volunteered part-time in a charity shop, would officially be on sabbatical.
In her place would be Patricia Harte from London — well, Dublin originally; there needed to be an element of truth in her new persona — who had arrived at O'Mara's seeking respite from her hectic career as a costume designer for the stars of stage and screen.
Hence the overly full suitcase. It was stuffed with fabulous, eclectic outfits that she’d designed and made herself by repurposing pre-loved clothes from the charity shop. Getting first dibs on new stock was one of the perks. They were clothes she rarely got the chance to wear until now.
Patricia who resided in London, however, planned to wear every single thing she'd packed.
She would wear her flamboyant creations to the theatre, for which she'd booked tickets for every day of her stay in the heart of Dublin, and she would dine out for every meal pretending to be the woman she might have become if things had worked out differently.
A sudden cacophony of tooting horns and irate shouts jolted her from her reverie. Realising she couldn't stand there clogging up the footpath all day, she picked up her suitcase and half carried, half dragged it to the guesthouse door.
Patricia Harte, costume designer from London, was about to arrive.