All Because of You (Lakeview #2) (4 page)

“You’re certain you don’t want to tell him?” Tara asked gently. “It’ll be tough bringing up a baby on your own and – ”

“I’m positive,” Emma replied firmly, looking her sister straight in the eye. “I don’t want to tell him and, before you ask, I’m not going to tell you either. This is all my own fault – I did something very, very, stupid, and now it seems I’m going to have to pay the price.”

Later that evening, Emma lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling. She still couldn’t believe this was happening to her. 

How could it have happened? Why had it happened? Well, she knew exactly how and why, but why did it have to happen to her? 

She couldn’t tell him – not now. Emma’s heart tightened as she thought about their night together, how great it had been at the time and then afterwards how abruptly her happiness had come to an end. How could she have been so stupid? He didn’t care about
her, had never cared about her and now here she was alone and carrying his baby. 

And to think that Tara had been trying to get her to approach him, at least for support – how ironic was that? No, this would be her burden, and hers alone. Well, her mum and dad would probably have to shoulder some of that burden too, and Emma felt a bit guilty about that.

Just when she was getting her life back on track too. Just when she’d found a job and career that really fulfilled her, that got her excited about getting up in the morning and going to work, got her excited about the future. She’d really enjoyed living in Dublin these last few months, but all that was at an end now, wasn’t it? She’d have to move back home again.

She knew people thought her lazy and selfish at her age to be always relying on her parents and moving from job to job. But her mum didn’t mind having h
er living at home with them and anyway, her mum understood that her youngest child didn’t have the drive or ambition or pure
confidenc
e of her eldest.

No
Tara was the high achiever in the Harrington family – her with the nice new car, own business, and optimistic outlook. But it was easy for her big sister to be optimistic, because everything had gone right for Tara since she’d first come into the world, healthy and happy, whereas Emma had nearly died at birth and had spent her first few months riddled with coughs and infections and every kind of baby disease you could think of. 

And whereas Tara had excelled at school, Emma had been bored senseless. She couldn’t give a damn about dull things like Maths and History and stupid bloody Irish. What help were these things to you in life at the end of the day? 

No, at school she much preferred messing about with her friends and trying to get the boys to notice her – she couldn’t give a damn about V-shaped valleys and stupid glaciation. Of course if the teachers were any good they would have realised she wasn’t learning anything, and would have worked extra hard to ensure she ‘got’ it – but no, in class they were too busy fawning over the lick-arses to pay attention to the likes of her. 

So it wasn’t really her fault that she hadn’t got a good result in her school exams and therefore not enough points to go to university. Just as it wasn’t her fault that she could never find a job she liked, or one she was any good at. It wasn’t her fault at all. All she had ever wanted was to be a model, but at five-foot three she wasn’t tall enough and of course that wasn’t her fault either. Maybe if she hadn’t been so sick as a child she might have grown that little bit more, but of course there was nothing she could have done about that either. No, for Emma life so far had turned out to be a series of disappointments.  

And now this pregnancy was yet another in a long line of problems she had to surmount, although at least her mother, despite her initial annoyance, had agreed to give her as much help as she could. 

As had Tara, although clearly she would have preferred Emma to seek help from the father. But, of course, that was Tara – trying to find solutions all the time. Emma sniffed. Didn’t she know that sometimes there were just no solutions to be found? That l
ife didn’t always turn out rosy like it seemed to for her? 

A stray tear escaped from one eye and traced a line down Emma’s cheek. Nothing ever seemed to go right for her – ever. Whereas everyone else seemed to sail through life without a care in the world. And she often wondered why that was. What had she done to deserve this – why should
she
be the one alone and pregnant while he could go back to his happy little life and all the rest of it, without giving her a second thought? 

Emma wiped her eyes and lifted up her chin. 

Maybe she shouldn’t make things so easy for him after all. Maybe Tara was right; maybe he
did
deserve to know. Deserved to know that he couldn’t let her think they had a future and then just discard her like a piece of filth, leaving her to pick up the pieces of the mess he’d made.

No, Emma thought determinedly, he should
not
be allowed get away with it.

Now
all she had to do was find some way of making sure he didn’t.

On Saturday afternoon, Liz McGrath had just put her eighteen-month-old son down for a short nap, when she heard the familiar cacophony of agitated barks and yelps outside signalling the arrival of her latest houseguest.

She ran her fingers through her cropped dark hair and briefly wiped the front of her top, hoping that her Toby’s latest exploits with his Petit Filous might not be so noticeable. Dried strawberry fromage frais on a blue cotton T-shirt was not a good look, and while she’d normally never greet a customer looking like this, today her son had been acting up so much she’d had no time to change. Still, this particular guest wouldn’t care less, she thought, smiling. In fact, there was a really good chance that he’d be thrilled to see her covered in goo – tasty, slimy goo that he would only be too delighted to lick off. Bruno was like that.

“Hello there!” Liz waved a greeting at the woman coming through her front gateway, and her heart lifted at the sight of one of her favourite customers, who at that very moment was straining on his leash excitedly, e
ager to get to her. “Hey Bruno,” Liz bent down, and tickled the dog behind the ears. The German Shepherd responded by licking her chin enthusiastically.

“Will you stop that?” Bruno’s owner, a stern woman of about fifty, quickly jerked him back on his leash. Liz had been looking after Bruno since he was a three-month-old puppy, yet she’d never quite been able to take to Jill Walsh (unlike her skittish
, adorable pet who in fairness was extremely well-cared for). 

Still, in the boarding kennels business, it didn’t matter what you thought of the owners – the most important thing was what they in turn thought of
you.
And with  previous ‘guests’ returning on a regular basis since she’d first opened six months back, Liz was very well liked amongst the cat and dog owners in the region. In fact, most of her customers were not from Lakeview village itself, but from the bigger town of Greystones a few miles further down the road.

“Oh he’s OK, Mrs Walsh
aren’t you, Bruno?” Liz stood up, and wiped her hands on her jeans, before taking the leash from Mrs Walsh as was their routine. Some dog owners liked to see their pets settled in their accommodation before leaving, whereas others, like Jill Walsh preferred to just drop them off and leave. 

“I’ll be back in the country on the twenty-fifth,” Jill told Liz, her tone businesslike. “But I’ll give you a call before I come to collect him.”

“That’s no problem – one of us will be here anyway,” Liz told her pleasantly. 

And one of them would be. Since Liz and her husband Eric’s decision to move to his home village of
Lakeview and subsequently start the boarding kennels, she’d been tied to the place almost every day what with trying to get the house decorated and getting the kennels set up. She and Eric had been living here almost a year now and, although she was a Dublin girl by birth, Liz was loving it, especially as the move out of the city had given her the freedom (and the space) to set up her precious kennels business in the first place.

But what Liz was enjoying most about her life now was finally having a family of her own. When growing up, she had always been shunted from family to family, her own parents having died when she was twelve years old. As the youngest in the family, her older married brothers had done what was necessary, and over the years took turns looking after their teenage sister and raising her along with their own children. While she adored each of her brothers, and now as an adult could truly appreciate the sacrifice their respective wives had made in taking her in, all the chopping and changing meant that Liz had always been on the periphery of their families, and had never truly been part of any of them. Nor had their houses ever really been home and, for as long as she could remember, it had always been her dream to have a family and home t
hat she could call her own. Now in Lakeview, with Eric baby Toby and their lovely (although still-dilapidated) home, complete with dogs Ben and Jerry, the dream had finally come true.

The lack of rigid working hours that went hand in hand with the kennels occasionally got to Eric, but knowing how much his animal-mad wife loved what she did, he didn’t complain too much. In truth, he loved having the dogs around too, and although he worked hard during the week at his security officer’s job, which was based in Dublin, he was usually willing and eager to help Liz out at the weekends. 

But the real reason they’d made the move to Lakeview was for Toby. Here there was so much more room for a young child to explore outdoors and enjoy the fresh air – which would have been almost impossible had they stayed living in the city. In Dublin, Liz and Eric might have taken him to the park the odd time; in Lakeview their long back garden was practically a park in itself. 

She’d loved
Lakeview since she’d first visited the place with Eric towards the beginning of their relationship, and long before they married. The popular tourist village – centred around a broad oxbow lake from which it took its name – was absolutely stunning.  Its bank lined with low-hanging beech and willow trees wound its way around the centre of the village and a small humpback stone bridge joined all sides of the township together. But it was the cobbled streets and ornate lanterns, as well as the beautiful one-hundred-year-old artisan cottages decorated with hanging floral baskets, that really made Liz fall head over heels in love with place. Because of its beauty, the village had long ago been designated heritage status by the Tourist Board, so the chocolate-box look and feel of the place was intentionally well preserved. Having grown up in and around suburban Dublin, Liz had been blown away by the romantic little village and thought that Lakeview would undoubtedly be a fabulous place to bring up a family.     

And when
shortly after Toby was born, she and Eric first set eyes upon their little two-bed pre-war bungalow a short walk from the pretty village – complete with one-acre field behind it – she couldn’t imagine herself living anywhere else. 

Of course the beauty of the kennels business meant that Liz could be a working mum with the all the benefits of a stay-at-home one too. It had taken a while to get into a routine, and was getting trickier as Toby got older and was starting to walk a little, but so far it was working out OK. But it would be even better if Eric could find work in the village here, instead of having to commute to and from Dublin, but she was sure that would happen in time.

Not long after she’d said goodbye to Jill Walsh and settled Bruno into his lodgings, Liz had another visitor – the caller’s approaching car again setting off a chorus of yaps and barks from the dogs, while the cats just yawned, pretending to be bored but Liz knew, interested all the same.  

Unfortunately, all this recent activity had in the meantime woken Toby, and by the time Tara appeared on her doorstep, it was a weary but excited Liz who came to greet her at the front door.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” said Tara, taking in Toby’s red-rimmed eyes and mussed-up hair. “Was he asleep?”

“For about all of ten minutes,” Liz replied, rolling her eyes. “But don’t worry about it – he doesn’t stay down for long these days, and I’ve just taken another dog in so …” She shrugged, then beckoned Tara inside the small cottage. “Great to see you! And I
love
the new car – when did you get that? Come in for a cuppa first, and afterwards we’ll go out for a good look.” Going through to the kitchen, she set Toby down on the floor amongst his toys, hoping that watching
SpongeBob SquarePants
on TV would keep him occupied for a little while, and hopefully tire him out once and for all.

“Mmm, I’m still not too sure about the car yet,” Tara said, taking a seat at Liz’s kitchen table. “It’s more Glenn’s choice than mine.”

“Typical.” Liz laughed. “And where is lovely Glenn? Did he come with you? Oh no, you said he’s working overtime this week, didn’t you?”

Tara nodded.

“Well, I know Eric’s eyes will pop out of his head when he sees  that car. He’s in bed sleeping off the night-shift by the way,” she informed Tara. 

“Pity – it seems like ages since I’ve seen you both,” Tara replied, automatically lowering her voice so as not to be responsible for waking yet another McGrath male. The two girls had been friends for a long time, having worked side by side in the same Dublin telesales company for many years, and Liz was really looking forward to a good chat with Tara. In fact, it had been Tara who’d first introduced Liz to her old friend and fellow
Lakeview native, Eric McGrath.