The Honey Queen. Cathy Kelly

around. Someone in the executive dining room was overheard by one of the chefs who told his girlfriend on the third floor. I heard about it last night, haven’t been able to sleep. I mean, if we’re taken over by another company, loads of us are going to lose our jobs. What’ll I do? The mortgage is huge and we can only just manage it with both our salaries.’

      She looked so distraught that Frankie, who had spent her working life mentoring colleagues, ignored her own shock and pain to comfort Anita.

      ‘Now listen here,’ she said, ‘it’s just a rumour. Companies thrive on that sort of stuff. Besides, whatever happens you can get through it. We can get through it. We’re made of stronger stuff. We’ve gone through childbirth! You had a ten-pound baby, Anita. There’s nothing you cannot cope with.’

      The comment had the desired effect. Anita gave a snort of laughter.

      ‘Yeah, I guess,’ she said, shaking her head ruefully.

      Baby Peaches had been a positive Goliath, taking after her tall, broad father rather than her petite five-foot-two mother.

      ‘I know there’s no medal for childbirth, but there should be,’ Frankie went on. ‘A ten-pound baby – you should get gold for that. No, platinum.’

      They talked a while longer and then Frankie looked at her watch.

      ‘Time to move,’ she said, finishing her coffee. ‘Once more unto the breach and all that.’

      She hurried back to her office, rumours of a takeover now adding to the turmoil in her mind. Stay focused, she told herself. Panicking never got anyone anywhere.

      With the office still empty she decided to grab the chance for a speedy morning email to Emer and Alexei.

      Beautiful Emer, currently in Sydney but thinking of moving to the US for a few months, was waitressing by day and putting years of piano lessons to good use by playing in the restaurant of a boutique hotel by night.

      It’s incredible here, Mum, you’ve got to come out before I leave, she’d emailed only last week. I love it. The sun, the people, you’d love it. too.

      If Frankie, who had read many CVs in her time, had to come up with one word to sum up her daughter, that word would be light: the shining light that flowed out of her like the sun. Emer was vivid and sparkling and prone to mischief. Frankie had been the same as a child.

      ‘How come you always know, Mum?’ Emer would demand crossly when Frankie would take one look at her child’s eyes shining naughtily in her tiny little face. ‘You always know what I’m doing – have you got X-ray vision?’

      ‘Yes,’ Frankie would say gravely, suppressing the urge to laugh. ‘All mothers have it. As soon as the baby is born, kapow! – we are given the gift. I can see through ceilings. So I know you have been upstairs doing something verrry naughty.’ She’d drag out the syllables in pretend menace.

      Emer was a kind person too, but in Sydney she was far removed from the pain in Sorrento Villa and it was out of the question to let on that there was a problem. That would only have her rushing home to help Frankie cope.

      So when Emer telephoned and asked: ‘Dad sounds down on the phone, is he all right?’ Frankie made herself smile into the receiver and slipped into her cheery, buoyant tone.

      ‘No, love, he’s just relaxing, taking time off from being a wage slave.’

      ‘Has he started work on the house yet?’ Emer said.

      In the background, Frankie could hear happy voices and could almost sense the sunniness of Emer’s new world. Wishing some of that sunniness would beam out of the phone and light up the gloom in her world, she upped the cheeriness a notch:

      ‘Not yet. We’re still discussing things. You know your dad, he wants it to be perfect. Now, tell me all about you, darling. What’s the weather like? It’s chilly here, I can tell you …’

      It was a struggle to come up with snippets of cheerful news from home, so her emails followed the same tactic of swiftly shifting the focus from life in Redstone to the latest goings on in Sydney and Japan. It was a little trickier in Alexei’s case, because he was hugely intuitive and much more liable to pick up on things. While Emer took after Frankie, drawing on a tough nugget of strength buried deep inside of her, managing to stay positive no matter what, Alexei was a worrier.

      She pictured him now, with his wide Slavic cheekbones, grey eyes and the shock of blond hair, so different from everyone in the family. He might not have been born from her body, but he was very much the child of her heart. It had been a wrench, letting him go off on a gap year before college. The thought of her daughter travelling alone actually troubled her far less than the thought of her son venturing out into the world with three other boys for company. Emer had street smarts in abundance while Alexei was softer, much more vulnerable than his feisty sister, who’d signed up for a self-defence course months before she left.

      ‘Got to be able to look after myself, Mum,’ she’d said, showing off some of her techniques.

      Alexei took after Seth: he was gentle, thoughtful and prone to staring into the distance when working out a problem, his mind drifting off to some higher plane just the way Seth’s did.

      Seth. All her thoughts came back to Seth. If a person was supposed to get better at things over time, why didn’t that dictum hold true when it came to marriage? Perhaps, she thought, closing her personal email and opening up her business mailbox where fifty new messages had arrived overnight, a visit from Seth’s long-lost half-sister might succeed in lifting his spirits.

      He’d been so thrilled when he got the email from Melbourne. Thrilled, with a tiny and utterly-to-be-expected element of shock.

      ‘I have a sister,’ he’d said in wonderment as Frankie leaned over his shoulder to read the email. As she carried on reading he’d sat staring at the email as if it was a thing of fantasy that might vanish at any moment. ‘I’d always wanted someone else when I was growing up, a brother or a sister. And I had one all along …’

      Frankie hugged him, aware even then that she could support Seth over this, yet the words that would help him with the grinding pain of his redundancy escaped her. Her career as a human resources executive was built on a mastery of effective interpersonal skills, arbitration, mediation, appraisals, setting goals and accomplishing them … but when it came to Seth, instinct told her that there was nothing she could do for him. If he was going to crawl out of this misery, he would have to do it by himself. Without her help. And Frankie, who wanted to solve everyone’s problems, hated herself for that.

      Chapter Two

      Peggy Barry had spent a long time searching for the perfect place: a town far enough away from home for her to flourish – and yet near enough for Peggy to drive to her mother if she was needed. Her mother was the reason she hadn’t left the country altogether, but nobody, including Mrs Barry, had to know that. Peggy wanted to remain in Ireland in case one day her mother would accept the truth and phone her daughter. Until then, she travelled, searching.

      Since she’d left home at the age of eighteen, an astonishing nine years ago, Peggy had lived in all of Ireland’s cities and many of its towns and still hadn’t found the perfect place.

      She had almost resigned herself to the likelihood that it didn’t exist, that there was no town or village or suburb where she could feel as if she belonged.

      ‘What are you looking for exactly?’ the owner of the last bar she’d worked in had asked her.

      Peggy had liked TJ, even though he wasn’t her type. Mind you, in the past year, nobody had been her type. Men and dreams of a future didn’t appear to work well together. Guys mistakenly thought that tall, leggy brunettes working in bars wanted quick flings and couldn’t possibly be serious about saving money for their own business or about waiting for the right guy to settle down with.

      The bar