The Summer Villa
It was her day off, Annie recalled (hence the night out in the Dublin hotspots), so she didn’t have anything pressing to do really, she just wanted him out.
The guy scratched his jaw and took a deep breath before flopping back down onto her bed.
‘Another half hour, maybe? I’m wrecked,’ he protested, as he puffed up her pillow and stuffed it under his head, closing his eyes once more.
‘Hey! I said I need you to leave, so off you go.’ Annie poked at his exposed leg. He was wearing boxers, another cause for relief in her books. He didn’t seem her type at all, either; he was bone-skinny with a bit of a culchie accent, so she had no idea how or why he’d ended up here.
But did she even have a type these days?
Still, if this gobshite thought he could grab a lie-in at her expense, he was sadly mistaken. She’d throw him out on his arse herself if he didn’t skedaddle on his own, pronto.
Her persistence got his attention and he forced his eyes open once more.
‘Hey, why don’t you get back in and we can finish what we started last night?’ he said suggestively, and Annie’s hackles rose even more.
‘Are you deaf? Get the feck out!’ She grabbed the end of the duvet and yanked it off him. ‘I mean it.’ Then, grabbing his clothes, she marched across to the door of her flat (which didn’t take long as it was a tiny studio) and flung it open, launching his stuff through. ‘Don’t let it hit you on the way out.’
Her unexpected guest looked completely bewildered. ‘What the hell? Why are you being so weird? You asked me back, remember? You were all over me.’
Annie didn’t remember – that was the problem – but she wasn’t about to tell him that. ‘Look, I’m sorry but I told you already that I’ve got stuff to do and you’re getting in the way. So please just go,’ she insisted.
She watched as her guest jumped up again and stepped out into the hallway, scrambling for his clothes. He pulled his shirt over his head, sticking his arms into the sleeves in one smooth movement, then eyed her angrily from the doorway.
‘You’re something else, you know. Pure psycho.’
‘I know,’ she murmured airily, as she closed the door behind him, her heart racing a thousand beats a minute. She’d done a pretty good job convincing him of her bravado, but all the while she’d been terrified. A strange man in her bed and in her flat. It wouldn’t be the first time things had gone awry.
‘That’s it. No more getting pissed out your head, Annie … No more.’
She walked to her bed and looked at the sheets with scorn, before yanking them off. She’d be doing a wash today for sure. Once all the bedding was off, she returned to the bare mattress and flopped down on the edge of it.
Annie O’Doherty was never supposed to live, but she had. Abandoned in the toilets at Connolly train station in the centre of Dublin almost thirty years ago, she’d barely been breathing when she was found by a curious Irish Rail cleaner, who heard a noise from inside the ladies. There he found an infant, scarcely a few hours old, and had called for an ambulance.
Even before she had a name, Annie was making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Placed into the Irish foster system from the start, she eventually found herself part of a family. Robert O’Doherty, her foster father, had doted on her. He was the reason she’d been chosen by them – a real-life orphan Annie.
He always said he saw something in her eyes, a spark, which told him she was the right child for him and his wife Eileen. They’d formally adopted her when she was five, and over the following twelve years she had the most amazing life she could imagine. They didn’t have much money, just enough to get by, but after Robert suffered a heart attack and died, life was upended.
That’s when Eileen started drinking and Annie had no choice but to rely on herself. Life had steadily declined after that. The tongue-lashings, accusations of theft, and even the added bonus of being accused of trying to seduce Eileen’s boyfriends. As if she would stoop so low.
Now she sat on her bed thinking about just how badly her life sucked. She was thirty-two years old, working at a low-budget hairdressing salon for a woman who didn’t know a perm from a curl, paying an exorbitant rent for her tiny Dublin shoebox, and nothing or no one stable in her life whatsoever.
Most of the friends she had during her teens were by now settled with families of their own, while Annie embarked on a string of disastrous hook-ups with lads who were only after the craic. That had suited her down to the ground all throughout her twenties, but now it was getting old – as was Annie.
These days she mostly went out on the town with some of her hot young co-workers from the salon, and was already starting to feel (and no doubt look) like the desperate ’oul wan.
Feeling a fresh wave of hangover-inspired exhaustion, Annie fell back on the bed and lay atop the exposed mattress. She stared at the cracks in the yellowed ceiling as she tried not to cry. She was frustrated and disillusioned.
Life was supposed to improve the older you got, wasn’t it? Life was supposed to be a series of ups and downs. So when was her up coming? When was it her turn to have something good finally come her way?
Tears stung her eyes and she didn’t try to stop them. It wasn’t every day that Annie allowed herself to feel her emotions. Pretending she didn’t have any seemed to work best for her over the years, at least for a while, until the flood rose too high, smashed the dam and, like now, she had to release it.
She hated her life. She hated this dingy kip of a flat. She hated her job, her mother, this stupid city.
She hated everything.
‘No more,’ she said firmly as she balled her fists at her sides. ‘No more. After today, you’re making a change. Things are going to be better. You’re going to make them better.’
But even as she said the words, Annie knew she was kidding herself. She’d tried that mantra before.
And still, nothing ever changed.
Chapter 10
‘Good morning, Betty,’ Annie sang, as her first salon client of the day took a seat in the chair in front of her. ‘What’ll it be today?’ she asked as she danced about, getting the woman ready for her treatment.
She wrapped and secured an apron around her neck and draped a towel over that, clipping it in place.
‘You’re in great form today. Is it a fella who’s responsible?’ the older woman teased as her eyes followed Annie’s every move.
Betty was one of her regulars. She always came for the same thing – a wash and set – despite Annie’s angling to get her to try something new. She never did. Most of the women who came here were the same.
‘No,’ she replied, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. ‘Why must it be a fella? Why can’t we just be happy all on our own?’
Betty guffawed. ‘Sure, isn’t that the only reason God created Adam?’
Annie rolled her eyes as she chuckled. ‘Maybe you can’t be happy without a man, Betty Corcoran, but I certainly can.’ She looked at her client in the mirror as she began to run her fingers through her hair. ‘I make myself happy.’
Betty sniggered.
‘Don’t mind that one,’ her boss Rose put in. ‘She’s Not-So-Little Miss Sunshine these days,’ she said, taking a blatant aim at Annie’s muffin-top – another thing she’d been meaning to fix by taking long walks in the evening after work. But she was always too tired.
The salon owner teased the hair of the blonde in front of her. Rose was lost in a time warp, still back in the Eighties, where people liked their hair puffed up to the size of a football helmet. And the explanation for why all of the salon’s clients were in their forties or older, Annie knew; no one else would be interested in getting their hair done by her.
‘At least sun is better than rain,’ she quipped back at her boss. ‘So what colour do you want?’ she asked, turning her attention to Betty. ‘Same as last time?’
‘I’m thinking something spicy for a change,’ she answered with a wicked grin.
Annie raised an eyebrow. ‘Spicy?’
Betty smirked. ‘I’m meeting my fancy man tonight,’ she boasted. ‘I want to look my best.’
‘In that case,’ she answered, ‘I think you’d look amazing with a richer burgundy shade. I can darken your eyebrows a little too,’ Annie added as she turned towards her mixing station and began pulling colours from the cupboard.
People thought just a tube of solid hair dye could give you the right look, but that wasn’t true. You needed the right mix to give the highlights and low tones. She grabbed a fire-engine red, a dark blonde, and a chestnut, with the addition of a drop of dark brown to make a tone that would be uniquely Betty. That was what Annie did.
She didn’t ‘do’ cookie-cutter clients. She made sure everyone who stepped away from her station was spectacular in their own right. She picked up the dyes, mixing them quickly in a fluorescent pink bowl with her medium brush.
‘So where did you find this fancy man then?’ she asked as she began applying dye to Betty’s roots, starting at the back.
‘At Tesco,’ she replied. ‘He was trying to pick the right peppers and I helped him find the best one.’
Rose laughed. ‘Passion over peppers. Spicy indeed.’
‘I think we could all use a little of that,’ Annie said dreamily.
‘Even you with your Ridey Rabbit?’ Betty joked as she gave Annie a look in the mirror.
‘Hey, that’s not what I meant by making myself happy! And I never said I didn’t want a fella either. I’m just tired of the eejits you get around here. I want someone real. Someone who gets me,’ Annie explained.
‘Hear, hear,’ Felicity Finch piped up. She was one of Rose’s oldest regulars (and Annie’s favourite clients) and was sitting in the corner waiting area reading a magazine. She folded the periodical and rested it on her knee. ‘Good for you, Annie. It’s about time your generation realised there’s more to life than mindless craic. Eventually, you need to get serious.’
‘Listen to yer wan,’ Rose joked. ‘You sound like a school teacher, Felicity.’
‘No, I sound like wisdom,’ she replied. ‘I lived the wild life myself, Annie, but it gets boring after a while. I know what it’s like. And I know the repercussions.’
Annie’s gaze shifted towards her. While her personality was typically light-hearted, the older woman’s expression was now deadly serious. There was a look in her eyes that Annie could only describe as regret.
‘I ran around like there was no tomorrow,’ Felicity continued, and Annie was discomfited by the fact that she seemed to be looking her right in the eye. ‘I loved men, and boy did they love me. I was practically the town bike—’
‘Really, now …’ Rose interrupted, but Felicity smiled, continuing her story as if she hadn’t been interrupted.
‘I don’t mind. I had loads of men running after me, and I thought it was great. Mad craic altogether. Then I stopped being twenty and became thirty, and still I thought I could live the same life. Then thirty became forty,’ she explained. ‘And I started waking up with lads I didn’t remember, in places that weren’t my own. Then one day I was on the far side of forty-five and there was no one. All the men were settled and married. My friends had moved on and had families, whereas I had just me.’
A hollow feeling began to fill Annie’s stomach as she listened to a story that sounded way too familiar. It was as if the older woman could see right into her soul. She didn’t want to be Felicity. She wanted a family, preferably while she was young enough to enjoy it. But there was no sign of that anywhere on the horizon just now.
It took her a moment to realise that her hand had stopped its work and was hovering just above Betty’s head.
Everyone was looking at Felicity, surprised. No one had expected that story. She was a frequent customer but not one who routinely chit-chatted about personal stuff like some of the others. Today she’d revealed more than any of them ever had.
Now Felicity’s gaze met Annie’s full on and there was no mistaking the warning in them.
‘Decide what you want and go for it, Annie. Don’t think that tomorrow will always be there. You won’t always be thirty, or even forty. One day, the way you lived in your younger years will catch up with you.’
Annie got it. She understood. She already felt as if she’d lived as long as some of the women who came to the salon. She was tired.
Tired of meaninglessness, empty encounters, having no one she could call on to be there. She looked at Felicity, with her sad eyes, grey hair and wrinkled brow. Would she look like that in thirty years’ time? Would she be telling someone else a similar cautionary tale in years to come?
Not if she could help it.
‘Well, it just got very serious in here,’ Rose joked, breaking the stillness. Everyone laughed. Everyone but Annie.
Felicity’s story had hit home.
That night, as she walked home, Annie’s mind was racing while her body was weary. She’d seen a record number of clients that day, including several last-minute emergencies that she simply couldn’t refuse. Why did people try to do their own hair when they’d never done it before?
She flopped onto her bed and once again stared up at the ceiling as she kicked her shoes off. Annie worked hard; she always did. She had to.
She was seventeen when she moved out and got her own place. Life with her mother had become unbearable, and after one of Eileen’s boyfriends made a pass at her, she knew that it was time to get out of there.
Her mother hadn’t protested and Annie believed she was happy to see her go. In fact, she was sure of it. She’d walked out the door and moved into a friend’s place for a while, then bounced from one couch to another until she finished secondary school, by which time she was already helping out Rose. Fifteen years later she was now her longest-serving (and oldest) staff member.
Annie rolled onto her side. Fifteen years. In one respect it was such a short time; in another, it was forever.
She was still young, but in those years she’d felt like she’d lived a thousand lives. She’d been wilder than most. Lack of parental supervision and the misguided belief that she was living the high life had seen her make mistake after mistake. She gave a hollow laugh at her silliness. Did she really think that being parentless had served her well? At the time she had. Now she knew better.
Sleep crept up on her. Annie didn’t even realise when she’d started to drift off, but the sound of her mobile phone ringing had awakened her.
‘What now …’ se whined as she forced herself off the bed. She shuffled towards her coat pocket and took the phone out, answering grumpily. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Annie.’ The voice on the other end was the last she’d expected to hear.
‘Felicity? How did you get my number?’
Her mind was whirring like an out-of-control mechanism as she listened to the older woman speak.
‘Annie, I’ve been keeping an eye on you over the years and you have a wonderful heart. I see a lot of myself in you – the younger me, I mean – and like I said in the salon, it’s all too easy to stray off-path when you’re young and foolish.’ She cleared her throat. ‘But I suspect you’ve already realised that yourself.’
Annie was confused. ‘I’m not sure what you mean …’
‘I can’t say too much at the moment, and it’s hard to explain, but, love, I’d like to do something for you. Something small as a thank you for being so good to me over the years.’
‘For me?’ Annie asked sceptically when the other woman finished her spiel. This was weird. ‘You don’t have to do anything for me, Felicity. Really, I’m doing grand.’ She wasn’t about to let on about her struggles.
‘Please. Don’t argue. Just … keep an eye out for something in the post from me soon. Can you let me know your address?’
Annie’s brow furrowed afresh. ‘Felicity, no, I appreciate you thinking of me, but really, I don’t need anything …’
Felicity was having none of it, insisting she pass on her address or she’d just get it from Rose at the salon anyway. Indeed, she seemed just as stubborn as Annie was.
‘OK,’ she finally conceded, ‘but you really don’t have to do this.’
‘I know that. But promise me this: just accept it, OK? For me.’
Reluctantly agreeing, Annie said goodbye to Felicity, put down the phone and once again curled up in her bed. What was the woman on about?
Just accept it?
Accept what?
Annie rolled onto her back, her eyes staring up at the ceiling, now wide awake, her thoughts whirring.
‘What are you up to, Felicity?’
Chapter 11
Now
The drive back from the restaurant in Sorrento had been a silent one. Kim knew Antonio wanted her to confide more in him but she couldn’t.
She and Gabriel weren’t him and Emilia. There were some major differences in their relationship. Kim idolised the older woman, who might soon no longer even remember her.
Right from the start, Emilia had inspired and encouraged her. She had facilitated everything that Kim had achieved with The Sweet Life, had pushed her out of her comfort zone, and encouraged her to break away from the hold her parents had on her.
After all these years, Kim wished she could thank whatever god was smiling on her the day she’d met her and Antonio. His wife was someone Kim admired and adored, but definitely not one she could compare with.
Emilia was the best of women.
‘Are you going to be grumpy for the rest of the day? If so, I might as well fix us both a drink.’ Antonio’s voice again interrupted her musings.
They were back at the villa now, sitting at a patio table outside on the terrace, next to the adjoining lawn that was to be the centre’s yoga area.
‘I don’t think my being grumpy is the reason you want a drink,’ Kim drawled, briefly checking her phone.
‘Perhaps, but it is the reason I’m going to use.’
Still his words brought a smile to her face. The Italian knew the right things to say at just the right time. He had for as long as she’d known him.
Having checked her email, she scrolled idly through her social media, noting with some satisfaction that her latest post – a pretty and artistic shot she’d taken earlier of the villa’s lemon groves and the azure waters of the bay as a backdrop – had already racked up lots of activity.
She read a little way through some of the comments, before one in particular stopped her in her tracks.
The Sweet Life? That’s a joke, considering. Don’t you mean The FAKE Life?
Kim frowned.
Since the villa project had ramped up, lately she seemed to be getting some negative and downright nasty comments from people (although possibly even the same person using different identities, as online trolls often did).
Par for the course with social media, she knew, especially for an account with a following in the hundreds of thousands, and while Kim didn’t usually pay too much attention, she didn’t like the sound of this one.
The Fake Life …
It was unsettling, as it suggested something more sinister – personal, even – and because in truth, it tapped into Kim’s own deeply held insecurities.
‘Are you OK, bella?’ Antonio asked, frowning as he came back out with a decanter of rich amber that he’d stolen from the villa’s freshly stocked kitchen.
‘I’m … fine.’
He studied her face and then his brows furrowed slightly as he noticed her faraway expression. He set the whiskey down on the patio table.
‘OK, maybe this is something that should be spirit-free,’ he decided. He lowered himself onto the seat beside her, his knees pointed towards her. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’
Kim exhaled and looked out over the water. She wasn’t going to tell Antonio about the comments; not until she could get a proper handle on it all herself.
Not to mention that he didn’t really get social media, routinely joking that it was ‘not of his generation’.
‘You asked me earlier about Gabriel …’ she began, though the strain to get the words out was considerable.
Antonio didn’t interrupt. He sat quietly, his expression still, as he allowed her the time and comfort to say what she needed to.
‘When I met Gabe, I really thought I’d hit the jackpot, that everything I’d ever dreamed about was actually happening. A kind, accomplished, wonderful man wanted me by his side and it had nothing to do with my parents. It was a bit surreal. He was so good to me, genuinely kind and caring. He understood my passion for what you, Emilia, and I had started. Eventually, he became my best friend.’ Kim could feel sadness start to rise up as she spoke and her eyes began to sting.
‘You are speaking in the past tense, bella. Did that change? Did he stop being good to you?’ Antonio queried hesitantly, as he placed a comforting hand on top of hers.
‘No,’ Kim answered. ‘The very opposite, actually. Once we were married, he remained all those things and more. My biggest champion and supporter. I was so happy and felt I could take on the world with him at my side. We had everything, the rest of our lives to look forward to. Then I got pregnant.’
She noted how her words affected Antonio. He shifted slightly, a disapproving expression passing over his face. She knew his view on children. He adored them, believed them a gift from God, something to cherish. Kim didn’t get that line of thinking. Her parents obviously hadn’t, either.
‘When I found out I was going to have a baby, I was scared out of my wits. I didn’t know how to be a parent. I didn’t even know where to start. Having a child had never been a consideration for me. Everything with the business was going so well and I was happier than I’d ever been in my life. Then there was this baby in the mix and I was supposed to be over the moon about it. Everyone else was. Gabriel was beside himself with joy.’ She shook her head as her eyes glassed over at the memory.
‘Kim—’ Antonio began but she stopped him.
‘I know what you’re going to say, but please hear me out,’ she pleaded. ‘I didn’t really want the baby.’
The words were horrible to say out loud, but nonetheless true. Kim hadn’t wanted her own child. She felt terrible for it, but it didn’t change what was. She might not have wanted Lily, but not having her wasn’t an option either. Gabriel would never have forgiven her (nor could she have forgiven herself), and he assured her every day that she would be a great mother. Her fears would pass and she would see that she could do it.
But it hadn’t happened.
‘I carried Lily for all those months and every day I hoped to feel the excitement and happiness everyone said I would, but I didn’t. The closer I got to her birth, the more scared I became. When she finally arrived, it was almost a confirmation that I shouldn’t be a mother. She refused to nurse and cried whenever I picked her up. It was almost as if she didn’t want me either.’ Kim took a deep breath as emotion began to overwhelm her. ‘It’s like she knew.’
‘It is all right. Let it out.’ Antonio spoke gently, like a father to his child.
‘She had colic. She’d cry and cry but nothing I did helped. Only Gabriel could get her to stop. He’d hold her in a special way and she’d just go quiet and fall asleep. It never worked for me, no matter how many times I tried. Eventually, I stopped trying and just left him to it.’
‘You let him take over caring for her because you felt you couldn’t, and he would be better?’
Kim nodded solemnly.
‘Babies sometimes reject breastfeeding. It is nothing strange and it certainly isn’t personal,’ Antonio assured her.
‘It felt like it.’
‘I can’t imagine. I can, however, imagine a colicky child. I had one myself. Nothing worked. Nothing Emilia or I did worked, but we got past that. It wasn’t us, it wasn’t the baby. It was just a simple condition that Giuseppe got over, and I am sure Lily got over, too.’