Epilogue
ONE YEAR LATER
Bi-locating in both Boston and Sandycove was both the easiest and most complicated thing I’d ever done. First of all, my foundation back in Boston had positively thrived while I was away, and Tara had loved being in charge.
‘I’ve missed you,’ Tara assured me, when we met by Zoom after I had told her I was staying on.
‘But I have to admit I’ve liked the challenge.
In fact…’ She paused. ‘I wondered if you would continue to allow me to have a bit more control. I mean, I don’t want to work for anyone else.
And I’m not ready to set up my own company… ’
‘Yet.’
She smiled. ‘Maybe. But I could be your partner?’
‘That’s exactly what should happen,’ I said.
‘Really?’
‘Definitely.’
‘You sure?’
‘Very.’
My mind was already spooling ahead and I was planning on giving myself a year in Sandycove, just a gap year.
I’d never had one and, at the age of thirty-two, I thought better late than never.
Perhaps there was another role for me, working with Irish producers and pitching to the US? Could I straddle the two continents?
‘Tara, would you mind taking on Fancy Plants again?’
‘The plant subscription business? The one we couldn’t make work?’
‘That’s the one. We didn’t see it. It’s about joy. Don’t worry. I’ll come up with a new pitch.’
Later, I dialled another number in Boston.
‘Hello, Bloomingdale’s, how may I help you?’
‘Sarah-Jane Lacey, please, it’s Kerry-Anne Daly.’
‘Putting you through.’
I waited, listening to Nat King Cole, and then there was a click and a tentative, ‘Hello?’
‘Sarah-Jane?’
‘It is. Look, Kerry-Anne, I want to say how sorry—’
‘There’s no need. And that’s not why I’m calling.
Not about Milhouse. It’s a business proposal.
I’m currently in Ireland and I have got to know a small knitting group, a knitting circle, and there are some incredible knitters here.
One of them made the sweaters for the movie The Annals of Inishfallen… ’
‘I loved that movie.’ Sarah-Jane was sounding a little more relaxed.
‘I wondered if you would like to feature them in Bloomingdale’s in Boston?
A kind of Irish showcase? I am sure I could get other crafters to take part.
We’re talking high-quality, incredibly beautiful things here…
’ I was back to the old Kerry-Anne, the one who could pitch, who was on form and in the room, and could talk to anyone.
Except I was fuelled by and filled with passion.
I had thought business was just business, but I’d never realised that you could combine it with things you cared about.
‘I could send over images later today. And perhaps, when I’m back in town, we could meet? ’
‘I’ll certainly look at them.’ Sarah-Jane paused. ‘But I do want to say I am sorry. I didn’t know of your situation with Milhouse. I think I’m going to take some time off the dating scene for a while.’
‘That’s probably a good idea,’ I said. ‘But I appreciate you taking my call.’
And so I settled into life in Sandycove, and I continued my morning swims with the girls, and living with Granny Annie in our little rented cottage.
Wait. Did I not tell you? She stayed along with me!
It was the morning after Mrs DeCourcey’s party and the whole village was asleep, either tired from the regatta or from staying up too late, or both.
At Mrs DeCourcey’s, the knitting circle was already setting up camp, and Granny Annie sat on the porch with Mrs DeCourcey, talking about Lolly and looking through old photographs.
Later, when I told Granny Annie and Johnny that I was going to stay on in Sandycove, she looked at me for all of two seconds. ‘I’m staying too,’ she said. ‘How would you like a room-mate?’
‘You?’
‘Yes, me.’
‘I would love it!’
Johnny was immediately hurt. ‘What? You’re both staying? What about me? This is very triggering. I have abandonment issues.’
‘You abandoned us first,’ I reminded him. ‘For California.’
‘It just means you have another home,’ said Granny Annie. ‘In Ireland.’
He pouted for a few seconds and then we managed to cajole him with the promise of daily Zoom calls, and that we would find a courier who would fly over Irish butter and some of the soda bread he’d fallen so hard for.
‘My new vacation destination is going to be Ireland,’ he said. ‘You know, I love the weather. You can actually do things, instead of collapsing in the heat.’
It was going to work, I thought. My business was going to change, but I needed change and I wanted to see if I could develop links between the US and Ireland, but most of all, I wanted to live and to have fun and do more of the things I was passionate about.
And one of those was a certain Mr Henry Campbell.
We met for breakfast the day after the party, him waiting for me in reception of the hotel, and as soon as I saw him again, I wanted to grab him and kiss him. But he got in first.
‘Morning.’ He was smiling too, his eyes on mine. ‘Sleep well?’
‘Not really.’ I laughed. ‘Too much to think about. You?’
‘I slept terribly. Just thinking… about you…’
Maureen spotted us. ‘Ah, Henry, here for breakfast with our lovely Ms Daly? Come along, you two… the table is all ready.’
And that was when we began making plans.
There was a cottage for rent at the harbour, with two bedrooms and a small garden.
There was even office space in the small back garden.
There was so much to do – how did one move one’s life to an entirely different country, a completely different continent?
– but I was excited and happy for the first time in forever.
And it didn’t matter if it all went wrong, I was ready for wrong. But I was so ready for right.
Granny Annie took the second bedroom in the cottage, and we kept different hours; she slept longer, I was up early to begin my day with a swim at the Forty Foot and it was not very long until I had my forty swims done and I felt I would never go back to Boston.
The knitting circle was soon up and running in Mrs DeCourcey’s house and had taken over the drawing room. Mrs DeCourcey would sit with them, as the women talked and knitted and then packed the sweaters to send them off around the world.
Sheila returned to the knitting circle paler, thinner, and she took a bit of time to return to her old self, sitting on the couch beside Mrs DeCourcey, the two of them eating pink wafer biscuits.
But after a couple of months, she and Finnuala made a trip to see Adam and his family and were going to spend some time in the heat, away from the damp of Ireland.
From the beginning, Eddie and Granny Annie began by going for evening walks together, along the seafront, and as the summer moved into autumn, the walks didn’t stop, the two of them had a great deal of catching up to do.
And as for me and Henry, well, we took it slowly as I wanted to establish myself in Ireland, so I didn’t feel as though I was staying for him.
But he was a huge factor in me staying because, when love comes around, the proper kind, the one that makes you happy, the one that is based on just really liking the other person, then you need to take notice.
Johnny was now a regular visitor to Sandycove but had returned to California that first time having taught Matty the art of pruning and had set him the task of bringing Mrs DeCourcey’s roses back to life.
And he issued invitations for Matty and Eddie to fly over, with Lakers games to see, and Matty particularly wanted to go to Hollywood and see all the stars. Perhaps even Oprah.
Johnny and Mom spent Christmas with us, Mom staying longer than she had planned and returning with suitcases full of hand-knitted jumpers.
She now wears nothing else, with smart jeans, and all her circle in Boston have gone mad for them.
Mom hosted the Irish showcase at Bloomingdale’s and invited every Irish-American she knew, and the place was full of people drinking Black Velvets and eating smoked salmon on soda bread and admiring the Sandycove sweaters, along with other beautiful Irish crafts I was sourcing.
Even Mitzi Callaghan was photographed for Boston Woman wearing one of Betty’s black woollen collared cardigans.
Mom attended Audrey’s wedding and said she thought Audrey looked so stressed trying to keep Mitzi as well as her new husband happy, along with his domineering Moldovan family.
‘I’ve decided that weddings are overrated,’ she admitted to me when she returned to Sandycove for Easter.
‘You’re better off exactly the way you are, Kerry-Anne,’ she said.
But it hasn’t stopped her from developing a soft spot for Henry and Patch, and they took her out on the bay in Brendan a few times while she was staying in my old room at the Sandycove Arms.
And there was more sailing and I joined the local sailing club and was taking lessons, and eventually I began taking Granny’s red-sailed boat out by myself, Henry and Patch in Brendan, within shouting distance.
And there were walks and swims, and dinner in the sailing club, and trips out to the islands.
But more than anything there was this life I was enjoying, where every morning I woke up excited about what the world had in store for me today.
I was never going to waste a single second.
And sometimes, I might wake at dawn, the light just about creeping in the window, and I would feel excited about the day ahead.
And I would think that if I was in Boston now, I would be going to a Pilates class, and I would shudder.
As Caitlin said, I had to live for the two of us, and I wasn’t going to let her down.
But first, I might take my time, and roll over in bed, and snuggle up against a sleeping Henry, hear Patch’s breathing from his bed, underneath ours, and feel so incredibly happy.
The thing is about Caitlin, is that she’s still with me.
I think about her, talk to her, know exactly what she would think and what she would say, and I know she would love Henry and Patch just as much as I do.
* * *