statue of some long-dead mayor. ‘I can’t wait to see our house.’
After the beauty of the buildings they had passed in Dunmore, the home the company had rented for them was a definite disappointment. The box-like terraced house on a shabby 1980s estate was so small that it was completely filled by their packing cases and their furniture, which had arrived the day before. Even a deeply apologetic letter from the agent on the kitchen counter top, explaining that due to unforeseen circumstances the house they’d been supposed to have was unrentable, didn’t bring a smile to their faces.
‘“I apologise to both you and Mrs Kennedy,”’ Greg read from the letter,‘“but if you could just bear with us for the next couple of weeks, we’ll have other, more suitable premises for you then.” I’d better get on to Steve Richardson about this. His office are supposed to have sorted the house out. Oh, the letter says there’s champagne in the refrigerator as compensation,’ he added, cheering up as he read the next paragraph.
Erin looked round the kitchen, which, although heroic last-minute efforts had been made, had clearly been rented out for years to people not familiar with basic cleaning equipment. One wall in the kitchen diner was obviously where the kitchen table had stood, for it bore a line of suspicious reddish stains that scrubbing hadn’t been able to remove. The mustard-yellow cabinets and the pink-tinged walls hinted that at least somebody had a sense of humour, but wafting down from upstairs there was a definite hint of tomcat in the air.
‘There’d better be two bottles of champagne,’ Erin said, wrapping her arms round Greg’s waist, ‘because I’d hate to find out that the cat peed in the master bedroom and, at least with a bottle each, we’ll sleep.’
Greg lifted her up effortlessly and sat her on the counter, so that her legs were free to lock round his waist.
‘I vant to take you here, in ze kitchen, my Irish maiden,’ he said, nuzzling into her neck. ‘But I zink we bettair clean up first.’
‘Good idea, Casanova,’ said Erin, kissing him on the mouth. ‘You wouldn’t know what you’d catch here and I’m not taking off my knickers until this place is spotless.’
‘Ooh, stop with ze durty talk,’ moaned Greg.
‘Later.’ She held him close, loving the feeling of his heart beating next to hers. ‘You open the champagne and I’ll find the carton with the rubber gloves in it.’
Three days later, Erin was fed up. The day after they’d arrived, the weather had suddenly become unaccountably cold and the heating was either a very mysterious system that normal humans couldn’t work, or it was broken.
Greg fiddled around with the timer for half the evening but he was so exhausted with the combination of jet lag and starting the new job that he failed to make any improvement.
‘Sorry, honey,’ he said. ‘I know you’re cold. Let’s get on to the agency tomorrow.’ Then he’d fallen into the deep sleep of the shattered, leaving Erin shivering in bed beside him, despite her bed socks and thermal shirt.
The agency said they would send round a maintenance man, but nothing happened. The next morning she phoned them again and they promised to send someone out that day.
Erin, who felt strangely out of sorts and still jet-lagged, wasn’t amused. ‘You said that yesterday,’ she pointed out drily. ‘Is there some kind of draw going on? You put all the names into a hat and when my name comes out, you actually send someone out. Is that it?’
The agency lady sounded quite sniffy and pointed out that two days of freezing weather had burst pipes in a few of their properties and that their maintenance men were busy.
‘Burst pipes?’ Erin enquired. ‘If that’s what it takes to get you guys out here, just tell me where they are and I’ll burst them. OK?’
She hung up and glared round at the empty kitchen. It had been too chilly to unpack things since the cold snap. She had only opened the boxes for the living room because there was a gas fire in there. Besides, if they were going to be moving into a better house soon there was no point in getting out everything. She made yet another cup of coffee for personal central heating and stomped into the living room, pausing only to pick up Greg’s old ski cap from the banisters and jam it on her head.
She was already wearing leggings under her track bottoms, two sweaters and an electric-blue padded ski gilet. All of which looked ridiculous, she knew. But who cared. She didn’t know anybody in this town so there was nobody to wonder what had happened to the normally exquisitely groomed Erin Kennedy to turn her into such a slut.
Plonking herself down cross-legged on the floor, she tackled a box destined for the study. She was engrossed in a pile of newspaper clippings she was sure she’d thrown out in Chicago, when the doorbell rang.
Fantastic. Losing it with the rental company was clearly the way forward.
But it wasn’t the maintenance man at the door. Instead, there stood a tiny Flower Fairy of a person, with round dark eyes, rippling ebony curls and a red hooded woollen coat that made her a dead ringer for Little Red Riding Hood.
‘I don’t know whether to invite you in or tell you that Grandma’s sick and the big bad wolf is around,’ said Erin before she could help it.
The woman laughed: a deep, throaty laugh utterly at odds with her Little Red Riding Hood image. ‘I’ll have to throw this coat out,’ she cried, pushing back the hood.
‘Sorry,’ Erin said quickly.
‘No, you’re right,’ insisted Red Riding Hood. ‘Grown women should not buy clothes because they’re cute. Then people call you cute and I hate that. Cute is an overused word. I’m Sally, by the way. Sally Richardson, Steve’s wife.’ When Erin still looked blank, she added: ‘Steve Richardson works with Greg in Cuchulainn.’
Erin grimaced at her own stupidity. Greg had spoken every day about Steve Richardson, the hardworking second-in-command, who, to Greg’s delight, did not appear to have applied for the top job, being newly promoted himself, and, therefore, who did not have a chip on his shoulder about a new boss.
‘Sorry again,’ apologised Erin. ‘My brain isn’t functioning these days. Jet lag. Or hypothermia, perhaps. The heating isn’t working.’
‘So I hear. Steve says Greg is worried sick because you’re stuck at home getting frostbite.’
‘I am wearing some fetching thermals.’ Erin pointed down to her Michelin Man outfit. ‘I didn’t think it would be this cold.’
‘It’s freak weather, lowest temperatures for March in fifty years,’ Sally said. ‘We never usually get really icy weather because we’re beside the sea. How about coming out to lunch with me? Steve phoned me to say he got Cindy in personnel to have a word with the rental company boss. Cindy loves a challenge.’ Sally grinned. ‘You’ll have a maintenance guy out at half three.’
‘I may offer to have sex with him in gratitude,’ Erin deadpanned. ‘Sorry, that was a joke. That’s incredibly kind of you and Steve. Lunch sounds great.’
While Sally sat amid the boxes in the kitchen, Erin rushed upstairs to change into a less padded outfit. She hadn’t washed her hair since the day after they’d left and she knew it was greasy. So she stuck a black felt beret on it, added mascara and lipstick, and was ready.
‘Oh, I wish I could wear hats,’ said Sally in genuine admiration when Erin arrived downstairs, willowy in a mocha corduroy coat, her long legs endless in suede bootlegs. ‘I’m too short but you’re so graceful and elegant, you can get away with it.’
And Erin smiled and said, ‘This is the lazy woman’s hairdo. It’s been too cold to shampoo my hair, so a hat is the only option.’
‘Well, if that’s how you look when you haven’t made an effort, you must be pretty amazing when you have.’
They went to a cosy pub and sat beside a crackling