Kissing Maggie Silver (19 page)

* * *

Maggie didn’t know a thing about Ruairi’s leaving date, or even if the production company had accepted his documentary idea until he brought Mrs. O’Connor to visit June and the new baby again. She was laden with gifts and flowers, as well as a bottle of Scotch for Mark.

“It’s to thank you for being so welcomi
ng, Mrs. O’Connor told him when he protested. “Now let me give baby John a cuddle before Sophie and Amy realize we’re here and try to drag me away to play with them.”

Maggie was in the kitchen with the children who were helping her make the pastry she was going to use for an apple pie for lunchtime dessert. With the door closed and Sophie and Amy chattering non
-stop as they kneaded their own very grey looking balls of dough, she didn’t realize they had visitors until she looked up and saw Ruairi standing in the doorway.

The lurch her heart gave at the sight of him temporarily removed her power of speech.
Ruairi seemed to be having a similar problem until the children, full of excitement that he had reappeared in their lives again, held up their uncooked pastry balls for inspection. Somehow he managed to admire them and ask what they were making while maintaining eye contact with Maggie.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Never better,” she told him. “Busy though. Ever since June and John came home the house has been full of visitors bringing presents for the baby and flowers for June.”

“All of which has
meant a lot of work for Maggie,” said Mark as he came into the kitchen to fill the kettle. “Why don’t you go in and see Mrs. O’Connor, while I make coffee for us all.”

Maggie didn’t need a second invitation. She would do anything to avoid being alone with Ruairi
again. Swiftly wrapping the pastry in cling film she put it in the fridge, rinsed her hands under the tap, and then followed the children through to the sitting room where Mrs. O’Connor was cuddling the sleeping baby.

“There you are my dears,” she said, her face lighting up at the sight of Maggie and the children.
Then, before Sophie and Amy could disturb John by coming too close, she stood up and settled him in his crib. Once she was certain he was going to stay asleep, she hugged them.

“Now if you two girls can help me to open the bags I’ve left by the door, there are presents for all of you.”

“For Auntie Maggie too?” asked Sophie as she darted across the room.

“Certainly for
Auntie Maggie too. Hers is the big one.”

Mystified, Maggie slowly unwrapped the bulky present while Mrs
. O’Connor helped the children to unwrap theirs. Inside the layers of blue paper was a flight bag made of soft, burgundy-colored leather, and when she opened it she found a matching document case inside with sections for travel documents, insurance papers, passport, credit cards; everything a traveler might need to carry.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, stroking the soft leather.
“But you really shouldn’t have bought me anything at all, let alone something as expensive as this.”

“Nonsense!
You’ve made me so welcome and encouraged me to start to plan for the future too, instead of wallowing in the past, so this is my way of saying thank you. I’m so pleased you like it though because I must admit I wouldn’t have thought of buying it for you myself. It was Ruairi’s idea. He said it’s just what you need to get you started on your travels.”

Maggie kept smiling as she hugged and thanked Mrs
. O’Connor and then admired the presents she had bought for the children. She wouldn’t let herself weep the bitter tears that were pricking the back of her eyelids, or acknowledge the fact that Ruairi’s choice of gift had finally made her realize, more than anything else had, that there was no future with him at all. He was going back to his own life and the beautiful burgundy luggage was his message to her. He expected her to do the same as him. He expected her to pick up her travel plans when she had finished looking after June, and to make a life for herself, the life she had once told him about before her dreams went sour.

She kept smiling right through the visit and when Mrs
. O’Connor hugged her goodbye, she promised to visit her in Ireland. She even let Ruairi give her a farewell kiss on the cheek after he had done the same to June and to the children, and shaken Mark by the hand. Then, as they gathered in the doorway to wave them off, she aimed for a lighthearted exit line.

“Good luck with your documentary.
And let us know when it’s going to be broadcast so we can tell everyone we know the famous Ruairi O’Connor who made it.”

It drew the laugh she was aiming for, so that the last view Ruairi had of her was her smiling face before she turned away and went indoors, back to her pastry.
The fact that the apple pie she was making turned out to be a complete failure was blamed on an uncharacteristic absent-mindedness on Maggie’s part. After all, why else would she have forgotten to add sugar to the apples, and why else would she have burnt the pastry almost to a crisp?

Only June, trying to salvage a few edible mouthfuls, failed to join in with the teasing laughter. Instead, she studied Maggie’s face and noticed
a faint pinkness around her eyes that she hadn’t quite managed to conceal with extra eyeliner and mascara.

Chapter
Fifteen

Cathy and John Silver returned home a few days later, tanned and relaxed and desperate to see their latest grandchild. Once he had been proclaimed perfect, and June and Mark had been congratulated for the umpteenth time, and Sophie and Amy had been hugged and kissed and cuddled, Cathy Silver turned her attention to Maggie.

“You’re looking a bit peaky dear,” she told her.
“All this domesticity seems to have worn you out. Never mind. I’m here now so you can get back to your own life.”

Maggie knew that she didn’t mean to be unkind but it still rankled.
Why did her mother have to be so dismissive? Why did she never give her any credit? Only June’s fervent thanks for all she had done soothed her as she collected her belongings together, ready to go home.

“I’ll drive you,” her Dad said, picking up her small suitcase.

“No, don’t bother. I’d rather walk. I could do with the fresh air.” Maggie was suddenly very anxious to leave. She needed some time on her own before she had to face her mother’s inquisition about everything that had happened while she’d been away.

“Well in that case we’ll just bring your suitcase back with us when we come home
.” Her father sank down into his armchair again, obviously relieved that he didn’t have to make an extra car journey.

“Would you cuddle your new grandson while the girls and I say goodbye to Maggie,” June’s usually gentle manner was slightly acerbic as she thrust the baby at her mother-in-law before following Maggie out of the room.
When they reached the front door they stopped.

“Kiss Auntie Maggie goodbye children,” she instructed Sophie and Amy.
“And thank her for looking after you for so long.”

Both children flung their arms around Maggie’s neck as she knelt down to their level.
“We love you,” said Sophie, while Amy gently rubbed Maggie’s cheek with pink rabbit.”

“And I love you too,” tears sprang to Maggie’s eyes as she hugged them.
She scrubbed them away as she got to her feet. “Stupid of me,” she told June.

“Not stupid at all!
Now go home and have a long, hot bath with lots of bubbles, and relax. And try to forget what your mother said too. You know she doesn’t mean it.”

“I know,” Maggie gave her the ghost of a smile.
“It’s just that sometimes it would be nice to know she thought I could do something right.”

* * *

Things got back to normal pretty quickly after that. Thanks to all the support she’d received, June recovered swiftly and soon took over the reins of her household again although she was grateful for the extra help Cathy Silver continued to give her on an almost daily basis.

John Silver Senior returned to his final year at work so brown and relaxed from his cruise that his work colleagues teasingly told him he looked as if he had already retired so maybe they would cancel the farewell retirement party they were arranging for him.

Mark finished his paternity leave and hurried back to his office with a mixture of relief and regret, but not before June had made him promise he would take Sophie to school and Amy to nursery every morning once the new term started. He also agreed that he wouldn’t stay late at the office.

Sophie and Amy soon forgot
that baby John was a new member of the family and treated him as if he had always been there, sometimes cuddling him, sometimes forgetting about him for hours at a time when friends came to play, or when their grandmother took them to the park.

Maggie made preparations for the start of the
autumn term and the class of new children she would have to teach. She went shopping, too, and bought some new slacks and a couple of jumpers to smarten up her work wardrobe. She even started to trawl the internet again in a half-hearted attempt to find a teaching contract in another country. She buried her beautiful new flight bag at the very back of her wardrobe though, so she wouldn’t have to look at it on a daily basis. There was one other thing too. She stopped smiling, and very soon everyone started to notice.

“Whatever is the matter with you?” her Mother asked her in exasperation on one of the rare evenings when Maggie ate with her parents.
“You’ve hardly spoken to us since we returned from our cruise, and whenever we see you, you look as if you have all the worries of the world on your shoulders when in actual fact you’ve hardly any responsibilities at all.”

Her
father didn’t ask questions. Instead he buried himself behind his daily paper or turned on the Sports Channel whenever Maggie was around, but he did send a worried glance in her direction every now and again when he thought she wasn’t looking.

As for her brothers, they tried to jolly her out of it by telling her that not wanting to go back to work after a long holiday was all part of growing up; that if she had agreed to get engaged to Graham when he proposed to her then she would have had something to look forward to by now instead of indulging in the miseries; that maybe she should take up jogging or something else energetic to get her blood flowing or, instead, become a volunteer and help people who had real problems, instead of sitting at home feeling sorry for herself.

Only Mark got close to the truth when he teased her about Ruairi, saying he supposed that now he had returned to New Zealand she didn’t have anyone to discuss her so called travel plans with.

Maggie ignored them all. She tried to ignore the fact that she was missing Ruairi too, but that was like trying to ignore a missing tooth, especially when everyone around her seemed to be conspiring to keep him in the forefront of her mind, making her probe her memories of their time together, the memory of kissing him. First it was her
mother, reading a letter from Mrs. O’Connor at the breakfast table.

“She says to give you her love,” she told Maggie, after relaying the fact that she was serious about moving back to England
, especially now that Ruairi was away again.

“He’s gone back to New Zealand to work on a documentary and she doesn’t know when he’ll be home again,” she said.
“Did you know about that? Did you know he was going to leave his poor mother alone again?” she asked Maggie accusingly.

Maggie didn’t bother to answer because a reply wasn’t necessary.
Instead she resigned herself to listening to her mother’s views about an only son who thought nothing of abandoning his poor widowed mother in the middle of nowhere.

“That’s hardly fair
, dear,” John Silver observed mildly from behind his newspaper. “After all he left home years ago and the O’Connors made their own decision to move to Ireland long after he left.”

“That’s as may be…” Cathy Silver was getting ready to air her views on family life and responsibilities when Maggie, unable to take any more, pushed back her chair and, making her excuses, fled from the table.

Next she had to admire the postcards Ruairi had sent the children and agree they were the best pictures of penguins she’d ever seen, while all the time her heart was reminding her that he had also sent postcards to her when she was a child.
It was only now she was an adult that he was ignoring her.

June earned her eternal gratitude by not mentioning Ruairi at all but, instead, handing her baby John so she could cuddle him, and then asking her about her own plans for the future.

“You know you can always go and visit my parents for a while if you need a change of scene,” she said. “They would love to see you. Why don’t you ask them when they get here?”

“Mmm,” Maggie was non-committal but the more she toyed with the idea, the more sensible it seemed.
She even broached it to Jo when she made one of her regular visits to see her.

“Sounds good to me,” Jo
was enthusiastic. “It would be a great way to get your first experience of long distance travel but with a safety net at the end of it. You’d probably be able to find some sort of short-term job too, just to give you a taste of working in a different country.