Downstream Publishing
Featuring: Star Bluestone; Ingrid Fitzgerald; Charlie Fallon
400 pages ISBN: 1416586253 EAN: 9781416586258 Trade Size Add to Wish List
Kenny's Department Store is the pride of Ardagh, a small
town in Ireland. Known for selling one-of-a-kind, handmade
items and offering customers old-fashioned elegance and
personal service, the store has been hard-hit by changes in
the economic climate and competition from cheaper, larger
chains. David Kenny, the store's latest owner, is
struggling to stay afloat in a sea of red ink.
But while Kenny's is the grande dame of Ardagh, this story
is as much about the other ladies of the town: Ingrid
Fitzgerald, David's wife and a popular TV talk-show host,
seems to have it all -- a happy marriage and successful
career; Star Bluestone, an artisan who provides tapestries
featured at Kenny's, has a gift for seeing what others do
not; Charlie Fallon, a store employee with a husband and
child she adores, is still trying to escape the shadow of
her overbearing mother and famous sister; and Natalie
Flynn, a friend of Ingrid's daughter Molly, is desperate to
learn more about the mother she never knew.
When tragedy strikes, each woman will discover something
about herself and those around her that will change her
life forever.
This book immediately draws readers in with warmth, humor
and a distinctly Irish charm. Each woman is the star of her
own story, yet the narratives are woven seamlessly together
into a complex and beautiful tapestry worthy of being
displayed at Kenny's. You will root for these characters in
good times and bad as they experience joys and sorrows that
are common to all of us -- whether you're from a small town
or a big city. You might even decide you're an Ingrid...a
Star...a Charlie...or a Natalie. Grab a cup of tea, settle in
and enjoy.
Kenny's Department
Store, with its handsome Edwardian facade and unique
cherry-picked goods, is the jewel in the Irish town of
Ardagh's crown. Star Bluestone sells her beautifully crafted
tapestries at Kenny's. Made with natural dyes, they embody
her mother-earth spirit and creative vision. She has a
special reason for caring about Kenny's beyond her sales.
Meanwhile for Ingrid Fitzgerald, hotshot political
interviewer and wife of David Kenny, the store is the 'other
woman' in her marriage. With her children leaving home and
her career blossoming, she is worried by the toll the store
is taking on her husband.
Charlie Fallon, one of David's
staff, is one of the first to hear the rumour that Kenny's
is facing with a takeover bid. As the threat of closure
looms and with an owner who doesn't seem his usual self --
what does the future hold for the women who are bound
together by its fortunes?
Excerpt
Prologue
Star Bluestone had talked to bees all her life. She talked
to her flowers too, murmuring to the rare yellow poppies
she’d nurtured from seeds gathered in the old Italianate
garden thirty miles away across the Wicklow hills. She and
the young Kiwi gardener there had such great chats, he
walking her through the orchard and reaching up to cradle a
baby apple bud the way another man might touch a woman.
He understood that people who loved the soil talked to their
plants and to the bees whose careful industry made their
flowers bloom. Even though he was only thirty to Star’s
sixty years, he didn’t think she was an eccentric old lady.
Rather, he was impressed by Star’s encyclopaedic knowledge
of plant life. His earnest, handsome face became animated
when they talked.
When she watched this kind boy, Star always remembered
fondly that good gardeners make good lovers. Nobody capable
of the tenderness required to separate delicate fronds of
fern for replanting would ever be heavy-handed with another
person’s body.
It had been a few years since Star had lain in a man’s arms.
She’d had many lovers, but the one she would remember for
the rest of her life, the one whose memory was imprinted
upon her skin, hadn’t been a gardener. He’d been a poet,
although that wasn’t how most people knew him. To the world,
he was a conventional man, handsome, certainly, with
beautiful manners and an important job waiting for him. To
her, he was the man who sat with her under the stars and
recited poetry as he traced his fingers along her face and
talked about their future.
That had been over thirty-five years ago. Star talked to
flowers and her beloved bees in their white hives back then too.
When she’d been growing up, her school friends hadn’t
understood why Star did this, but they didn’t question it.
After all, Star was different in most things. So was her
mother. Their mothers didn’t grow herbs with such skill or
know how to brew potions of feverfew and camomile to soothe
menstrual cramps, nor did they stand gazing up at the
Midsummer moon. Eliza Bluestone did, and that it picked her
out from all the other mothers in the small town of Ardagh
was both a blessing and a curse to Star. The blessing was
the knowledge her mother gave her. The curse was that
knowing so much made her separ ate from all her friends.
Eliza mightn’t have told her daughter all the wisdom in her
huge, midnight-dark eyes, but that knowledge somehow
transferred itself to Star anyhow.
When she was a lithe young girl of twenty, and wanted to
dance with her friends and flirt with young men, being wise
was an impediment. She just knew that few people would be
lucky enough to meet their soul mate in a pub ten miles from
their home. Finding the right man to be her husband was
going to be hard because the Bluestone family – which meant
Star and her mother – were hardly conventional and it would
take a strong man to love them. In the same way, she knew
that her friends would not all have the joy and happiness
they expected in their lives, because not everybody could.
It was obvious. To imagine anything else was folly.
Though, Star, like her mother, couldn’t actually predict
what would happen in the world, she had enough wisdom to
understand the rules of the universe. While her friends
threw themselves blindly into everything and were surprised
when the man they’d met at the club hadn’t called, or
shocked that other people could be bitchy, Star was never
surprised by anything.
As she grew older, Star’s ability with her flowers and her
garden grew. Talking to her plants wasn’t the whole trick:
caring for them with reverence was and Star did that,
plucking weeds from around the orange-petalled Fire Dragon
so it could breathe again, moving the old redcurrant bush
away from the dry soil beside the shed, pausing occasionally
in her labours to listen. For Star loved music. She never
grew tired of hearing the distant singing of the church
choir, even though she had never set foot in the building –
this was another thing that set her apart from her friends.
Star’s church was the trees and the mountains and the mighty
roar of the sea. And although she loved church music, she
loved the music of nature better. The song of the bees was,
her mother had taught her, the Earth’s song. Melodic and
magnetic, with the bees moving to some ancient dance they’d
moved to long before man came calling. And was there
anything more uplifting than the sound of pigeons under the
eaves, skittering about and squabbling as they sheltered
from the rain?
It was raining now. As Star lay in bed, she could hear the
raindrops bouncing off the window panes. As usual, she had
woken at six a.m.; in summer, she would have risen
immediately to make the most of the golden sunrise, but on
this cold February morning, dawn was at least two hours away
– and it promised to be a murky one.
Danu and Bridget, her two cats, stretched on the bed beside
her, making their morning noises. Bridget was a showy white
ball of fluff, her magnificent fur requiring lots of
brushing. Danu, the smaller of the two, was a rescued tabby
who’d been given to Star the year before, the moment exactly
right because Moppy, Bridget’s sister, had just died. Life
had an odd way of doing that, Star knew: giving you what you
needed when you needed it. Not wanted – your want didn’t
come into it. Want and need were very different things.
Star lay in bed for a while, stroking the two cats, and
staring out of her window at the dark shapes of the trees
and shrubs in her garden. She could see the red maple tree
she’d planted when she was twenty and lost in love.
‘Plant something to remind you of this,’ her mother had
said, and Star had been surprised.
‘I’ll always remember,’ she’d said simply.
Everyone said she was at the peak of her beauty then, lush
like her mother’s precious peonies, full-lipped, and with
hair of spun gold – the Bluestone women always had golden
hair, no matter what their fathers looked like – that fell
about her slender waist. She’d secretly picked out her
wedding dress with her best friend, Trish, and she knew that
Danny and she would be so happy if they rented the house on
the hill road. From there they could see the town and the
sea, and he could be at his father’s garage, where he was
one of the mechanics, in five minutes.
Still, she had liked the idea of a tree for them both and
planted the red maple.
But, ‘I’m too young to settle down,’ Danny had told her not
long after the tree was planted, when its roots had barely
had time to unfurl into the earth and Star was still patting
it each morning with joy at all it represented.
‘That’s not what you said before,’ Star replied, knowing in
a painful instant that the wedding dress, a jewel she’d
mistakenly thought was meant for her, would remain on the
rail in Brenda’s Boutique.
‘It’s my mother,’ Danny said reluctantly. ‘It’s about the
business, too. She said –’
‘She said you needed a better wife if you want to expand the
garage. She said she didn’t want you marrying one of those
atheist Bluestone women with their strange herbs and their
unnatural hair.’
Star wasn’t bitter towards Danny. It wasn’t his fault. She
should have known that he wasn’t a strong enough man to turn
the tide of public opinion. Even in the mid seventies, when
the rest of the Western world seemed to be enjoying free
love and the Pill, the more conservative parts of Ardagh ate
fish on Fridays, blessed themselves when they passed the
church and remained unsure of the Bluestones.
Old Father Hely, the parish priest, and Sister Anne,
headmistress of the Immaculate Mother of God Convent, had
both been remarkably understanding about Eliza’s preference
for her daughter not to practise the Catholic traditions.
Learn them, yes. Eliza was all for learning and tolerance.
She was fascinated by all religions: Catholicism,
Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism, everything out there. But
not practise. Eliza saw the central truth in the world
around her, a world that had been there longer than any
man-made religion.
‘We’ll take care of Star in school,’ Sister Anne said firmly.
‘You might not come to our church, but you understand
Christianity, Eliza. I know how kind you are to those who
need it. There are plenty here in town who trot along to
Mass every day and still don’t love their neighbour,’ she
added grimly.
‘Indeed, you’re right, Sister Anne. Nobody in this parish
will ever hear me say a word against you,’ agreed Father
Hely, who’d studied too much Christian history, from the
Crusades to the Inquisition, to be doctrinaire when it came
to unusual Eliza Bluestone with her earthly wisdom and her
home-made elderflower wine.
However, not everyone in Ardagh agreed with Father Hely and
Sister Anne, and many of the people who went to Sunday Mass
and hung holy water fonts inside their front doors disliked
the Bluestones because they were different. And clearly
Danny’s mother fell into this category. Star hadn’t realised
before quite how strong this dislike was. She herself didn’t
care what or whom anyone worshipped and was astonished that
other people could object to her views.
‘You’ll always have your tree,’ Eliza told Star the night
Danny broke the news there would be no wedding. Mother and
daughter sat in the hand-hewn walnut love-seat in their
garden that overlooked the sea, and sipped rosehip tea. Star
gazed gloomily at the tree. And then looked around at all
the other trees in the five-acre plot. The house, a
higgledypiggledy concoction of white clapboard with slanting
roofs and an oriel window, was surrounded by trees:
smoothskinned, tall ashes, swooping willows, a graceful
plane tree, a crowd of copper beeches by the vegetable
garden, and another sharp-leafed maple that turned blood red
in the autumn. ‘We have lots of trees,’ she said, suddenly
understanding. She got up to touch the other maple. ‘You
once said this was my dad’s tree?’
Star’s father had been the sort of man who preferred
travelling to settling down. India was his favourite place
in the whole world, especially the beaches of Goa, where a
man could lie in the sun and not have to think about
anything except what the human race was for and other
philosophical questions.
‘I loved your father,’ Eliza said.
‘But he left?’
‘I planted the tree when we were in love,’ Eliza answered.
‘Then he left.’ Star got it. ‘What about the other trees?’
she asked, wondering how they’d never discussed this before.
But then, her mother was a gentle and slow teacher: the
lesson came when the lesson came, it would never be forced.
‘Two more I planted, both before you were born, before I met
your father.’
Three loves.
‘And all these other trees?’ Star gestured.
‘My mother’s, her mother’s, all the Bluestone women have
planted trees for as long as we’ve lived here.’ Star laughed
then and ran around the garden, touching her hands to the
bark of each of the precious trees. She loved this link with
her female ancestors. It was like holding hands with all of
them, listening to them laugh and talk, strong women who’d
seen so much.
The trees, plants and flowers of her wild garden that gave
such comfort to Star eventually provided the raw material
for her livelihood. She designed and made tapestries
embroidered and appliquéd with wools and silks hand-dyed
from natural dyes. Star’s eye for nature meant her pictures
were landscapes of hills and woodland glades, sometimes with
a brightly plumaged bird peering out from the undergrowth,
or a blossoming creamy magnolia positioned against a
backdrop of verdant green, even the misty shape of a unicorn
in the distance. For many years, she had sold her work in a
tiny craft shop on the outskirts of Wicklow town and just
about made a living out of it. Then someone had brought one
of her tapestries to the attention of a buyer in Kenny’s
department store in Ardagh.
Kenny’s were always on the lookout for new talent, the woman
said, and Star’s exquisite artisan works would complement
their homes department perfectly. The store didn’t deal in
paintings: too complicated and time-consuming, but the
Bluestone Tapestries were exactly what they were looking
for. Within six months, Star’s tiny business had become a
thriving cottage industry. That was five years ago. She had
three employees now and they’d been working flat-out to
complete their latest order for Kenny’s, which was where
Star was bound that morning.
There were twenty hangings of all sizes ready in their
mossgreen tissue paper. She was dying to see what Lena, the
buyer and one of the store’s directors, would think of her
new departure, a large mermaid tapestry. Star hadn’t worked
on many sea pictures before: the pigments were hard to make.
It was easy to mix up rich loden greens and dusty ochres,
but the pure blues and aquas for sea pictures had been more
difficult. When she’d got into sea tapestries, she’d finally
begun using hand-made dyes bought from artisans, although
she still used the heads of pure blue hydrangeas to make
rich blues, and her blackberries summoned up an inky purple
that spoke of the ocean depths. Star had been in two minds
about selling the mermaid tapestry at all. It would have
looked so perfect on the wall in the kitchen, under the rail
where the copper pots hung. But she’d hardened her heart and
packed it up. The Bluestone Mermaid, with her foamy
sea-green eyes and skeins of pale hair, needed to be out
spinning her magic on someone else’s wall.
Star fed the cats, then made herself breakfast of fruit and
yogurt, and stewed a cup of mint tea which she drank in the
tiny conservatory. Breakfast over, she dressed. Her toilette
never took long: she would shower, brush hair that was still
as blonde as it ever had been, albeit with many strands of
white, and apply a little kohl on her dark eyes. It was an
unusual combination: pale hair, olive skin and dark eyes.
Her old friend Trish, whom she sometimes bumped into in the
supermarket, had grown round, and always wanted to know how
Star remained as slim as ever.
‘It’s nothing I’m doing,’ Star would say. ‘My mother was the
same, you remember.’
Trish nodded, remembering. And Star could almost read
Trish’s next thought, which was that three children made a
person put on weight, and Star, after all, had no children,
and no grandchildren, and what was the point of being slim
and sixty if you hadn’t the pleasure of a family?
Star would have loved to have children: the feel of a small,
trusting hand in hers, a little girl of her own to sit with
in the walnut love-seat and teach to plant trees. But that
hadn’t been her path. She’d been given the gift of creating
works of beauty, and the gift of making plants grow. Once,
it might not have been enough. Now it was.
Besides, the women she’d helped in her life were almost like
children to her. Star’s talent for collecting lost souls had
given her mothering instinct a powerful outlet. She dressed
with speed, her clothes the colours of the garden she loved:
pastels in spring, warm rosy hues in summer, golds when the
leaves were turning in autumn, and the cool shades of a
snowy landscape in winter. Today, it being February, she
dressed in a cream woollen dress with a grey fitted coat and
black high boots. She swept her hair up off her face and
fastened it in a low knot at the base of her neck. Her
everyday uniform was very different, loose skirts or jeans
and T-shirts, but today, she needed to appear the smart
businesswoman.
Kenny’s department store was an institution. The word had
become a cliché, but Kenny’s truly was one. Established in
1924, when Europe was recovering from the Great War and
Ireland was emerging on to the world stage, after the
ravages of the Civil War, Kenny’s became the local byword
for style. It was the place where all were welcomed, the
moneyed classes and those who hoped one day to belong to the
moneyed classes. Old Mr Kenny’s dictum was that every
customer was to be treated with courtesy, working man and
titled lady alike. Its combination of elegance and
egalitarianism contributed to its success.
Over the years, so much of Ardagh had changed: entire
streets had been transformed as old family businesses made
way for high street chains and big conglomerates. The
Classic Cinema, where Star and her friends had eaten popcorn
and screamed their way through Jaws, was now a car park, and
the Soda Pop where they’d drunk cheap coffee and
occasionally had enough money to indulge in the house
speciality – a banana split – had been demolished and a
supermarket built in its place.
But Kenny’s never changed. It had been updated, with plenty
of money spent, but the place looked and felt essentially
the same: a graceful old-style Edwardian shop front that
took up an entire block, with glossy small-paned windows and
swing doors ornamented with shining brass fittings. A
curlicued sign hung over every door: Kenny’s – Established 1924.
Star left her car in the car park behind Kenny’s, walked
around to the delivery door at the back and pressed the
bell. It was over an hour to opening, and most of the staff
wouldn’t have arrived yet, but Lena had promised to be at
the delivery door at eight. The door buzzed and Star pushed
it open, pulling the small wheelie trolley, with its
precious cargo of tapestries, behind her. The place was dark
and there was nobody visible, so Star wasn’t sure who’d
buzzed her in, but she began to walk in the direction of the
back stairs to the offices, looking around for signs of
life. The doors to the stairs were locked when she tried
them. The only bit of light was coming from the double doors
that led on to the shop floor. Perhaps that’s where Lena was.
Star pushed open the doors and breathed in the magical scent
of Kenny’s.
After the gloom of the delivery area, it was like entering a
beautifully lit jewel box. In the distance, she could hear
the faint drone of a vacuum cleaner. The lights were on in
the shop and the scents of perfume mingled with the smell of
furniture polish and a faint hint of warm pastries wafting
down from the café upstairs. She left her trolley against a
wall and began to walk through this paradise, enjoying the
sensation of being there all on her own.
Lena often chatted about the various departments. How David
Kenny, the current owner, had said he wanted a very
distinctive jewellery area, with unusual pieces from local
craftsmen and women as well as the big brands. It was the
same in the fashion department: there was a small section
where young, just-out-of-college designers could display
their clothes. The perfume and cosmetics halls, the most
valuable space per square metre in any department store,
were filled with all the usual brands, but pride of place
went to Organic Belle, a range of skin products made
entirely in a small village in West Cork.
‘David has a great eye for the next big thing,’ Lena
confided. ‘Nobody had heard of Organic Belle when he brought
them in two years ago; now they’re big in Los Angeles and
some famous hotel chain wants the range in all their spas.
They’re going to be huge. You should try the products. We’ve
a lovely woman who works there, Charlie Fallon. She could
help you.’
Star sensed that Lena thought she was the epitome of an
eccentric artist, partly because she lived in such a remote
spot, and partly because Star had said she rarely visited
Kenny’s. Lena, who lived and breathed the store, and didn’t
see how anyone else could fail to adore the place, was
shocked. ‘You mean, you don’t shop there?’
‘I was there twice last year,’ Star pointed out. ‘But that
was to see me,’ Lena said.
Consequently, she did her best to sell the notion of Kenny’s
to Star, highlighting bits she thought Star might like,
which included anything vaguely natural.
Passing the Organic Belle counters, Star inhaled the subtle
scent of the brand’s best-selling balm: an instantly
relaxing combination of lemongrass and lavender.
Star had seen Charlie, the woman Lena had spoken of, on one
of her earlier visits. Although she didn’t exactly resemble
her mother, Star was pretty sure that Charlie was the
younger daughter of Kitty Nelson, a stalwart of the women’s
feminist movement in the seventies and someone Star had
known many years ago. It was the eyes: ever so slightly
cat-shaped. But while Kitty’s eyes had been feline in every
respect, particularly when it came to men, Charlie’s were
soft and gentle. She would be a very different sort of woman
to her feisty, femme fatale mother, Star instinctively felt.
Beyond the Organic Belle counters, lay the entrance to the
food hall, and even though all the boxes of sweets and
cookies were packed away, the lingering aroma of caramel and
butter filled the air.
‘I love the food hall,’ Lena had explained, determined to
make Star into a Kenny’s fan. ‘We sell proper food there.
David realised there was a vast market for ready-to-eat
gourmet food and since we’ve started selling the locally
produced “I Made It Myself, Honest” range, sales have been
enormous.’ People loved the food, Lena went on: simple
produce expertly cooked with zero additives.
On her previous visits, Star had been into the homes
department, which sold Irish pottery and glass. Star could
never resist pottery, but she hadn’t been into the lingerie
department, despite Lena explaining about their biggest
seller: a range made by a former home economics teacher from
Dublin who was fed up with trying to get comfortable
suck-it-all-in underwear for women over size 18, and had
designed her own range.
‘Fabulous idea,’ said Lena. ‘She made it all on her sewing
machine, but when she went round the shops trying to get
business, David was the only one to bite. And now look at
it. We can’t keep it on the shelves and all the big stores
in London want it too. What other man would see that there
was a need for that?’ Lena asked.
Star smiled. Lena would have died with embarrassment if
she’d thought she was implying that slender Star needed
control pants.
‘And it’s not as if he has any experience with a wife at
home looking for control pants every time she needs to dress
up,’ Lena went on. ‘He’s married to Ingrid Fitzgerald, for
heaven’s sake – she’s only a size 12. Has an incredible
figure. So it’s pure business sense on his part. You have to
admire that, don’t you?’
Star rarely watched television. She had one, but it was
ancient and she really only turned on for the news. Even so,
she knew who Ingrid Fitzgerald was. In a world where many
political television interviewers were male, Ingrid stood
out as the best of them all: highly intelligent, poised and
adept at getting answers to the hard questions. And
beautiful, too. Not the fleeting type of beauty that came
from fluffed-up hair and a carapace of make-up, but a real,
deep-down kind – lovely bone structure, intelligent eyes and
an expressive, warm face. And the thing was, Ingrid looked
as if she was as lovely inside as she was out. Star had
always been a very good judge of that. They were similar in
age too, although Ingrid might be younger, Star thought. In
another world, they might have been friends. Ingrid had two
children, grown-up now, and her daughter, Molly, shared a
flat with a girl Star had known when she was just a baby.
Natalie was twenty-three now: Star kept count.
Natalie had nearly been born in Star’s house, and Star would
never forget the frantic dash to hospital with Des, while
Dara lay on the backseat howling in pain. Star had been one
of the first people to hold the tiny baby with the head of
curly dark hair and she’d felt what she always felt when she
held a newborn – that they knew all the wisdom of the world.
Star had been part of Natalie’s world for little more than
three years before Dara had died. Star, like everyone else
in Dara’s circle of friends, had sworn to abide by Dara’s
rules about her little daughter.
‘Let me go, don’t try to hold on to the past,’ Dara had
insisted, fearing that the memory of her dead mother would
darken Natalie’s future.
‘She deserves to know who you are,’ Star had pleaded.
‘Were,’ she amended sadly.
Dara had shaken her head fiercely. ‘It’s better this way,’
she said. The past could destroy people, and she didn’t want
that for Natalie. What she wanted for her daughter was a new
life with her father. ‘Des is wonderful, he’ll bring her up
so well. Perhaps he’ll marry again, and they’ll be much
happier without me like a spectre in the background.’
And so everyone who loved Dara had promised her that they
wouldn’t be a part of little Natalie’s world, telling her
how like her mother she was or recounting tales of the days
before she was born. Though Star had only known Dara a few
years – since that rainy day she’d found her lying in utter
despair on the coast road – she was one of the few people
who’d heard the heartbreaking story of Dara’s earlier life.
‘The past hurts,’ said Dara, determined to spare her beloved
daughter the pain.
‘But knowing can bring about healing,’ Star replied. ‘You
can transcend the misery: you have.’
But Dara was firm. For Star, who lived on instinct, staying
out of Natalie’s life as she grew up had been one of the
hardest vows she’d ever kept.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the double
doors on to the street swinging shut. A blast of icy
February air whirled in, along with a man in a long grey
overcoat, the collar turned up. He was tall and
broad-shouldered, and he walked at speed, as if there wasn’t
enough time to do all he wanted in life.
From her position beside a display of jewelled clips and
silk-flower hairclips, Star watched David Kenny pass though
his department store. He didn’t survey his surroundings the
way she imagined he normally did, those clever eyes noting
every detail and marking it down in his memory if something
needed to be changed. His eyes were focused on something
else entirely, something inward. The closer he got, the more
she could see the tension in his face. His hair was greying,
salt and pepper around the temples. Distinguished, Star
thought; that was the word for it. He reached the stationary
escalator in the centre of the store and instead of climbing
up, showing how fit he undoubtedly was, he jabbed a red
button. The escalator hummed to life and he stood in perfect
stillness as it bore him up to the next floor.
Star had heard that David Kenny, like his father before him,
made a practice of walking through his beloved store every
day, making sure all was well. All might have been well in
the store this morning, but watching him now, Star was
certain that all was not well with David Kenny.
Most people wouldn’t have noticed. Only someone who knew him
well could detect the strain on his carefully composed face.
Once, she’d known David Kenny better than she’d known any
other human being. Now, the closest she got to him was when
she reached a hand out in her garden and touched his tree, a
rowan that had grown tall and strong in the thirty-five
years since she’d planted it. She hadn’t talked to him since
then, though she was sure he was well aware that she was
Bluestone Tapestries. Lena’s initial attempt to arrange an
introduction had been gently brushed away, with Star
explaining that she ‘didn’t do corporate stuff’.
‘Oh, but David meets everyone,’ Lena said.
‘Not me,’ Star replied, smiling to show that she was happier
that way. And she was grateful that David appeared to accept
this, for he had made no attempt to meet her.
It wasn’t that she was angry with David. No. It hadn’t ended
that way at all. It just wasn’t meant to be for her and the
passionate young poet who’d written verses to her beauty,
and made love to her as if he’d found his life’s meaning
when their bodies were together. No, she wasn’t angry with
him. Her life had worked out in its own way. Until now,
she’d imagined David’s had too.
But seeing how tense he looked, she wasn’t so sure. An old
saying of her mother’s came to mind: ‘What’s meant for you
will find you.’ Many people took that to mean good things,
but Star was enough of a student of the universe to know
that it could mean bad things too.
Whatever terrible sadness was touching David, Star hoped he
was able to deal with it.