A Posy of Promises Read online

  A Posy Of Promises

  Sharon Dempsey

  Contents

  Also By Sharon Dempsey

  Praise For Sharon Dempsey

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  A Note from Bombshell Books:

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © 2018 Sharon Dempsey

  The right of Sharon Dempsey to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2017 by Bombshell Books

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.bombshellbooks.com

  Also By Sharon Dempsey

  Little Bird - A serial killer thriller

  Praise For Sharon Dempsey

  “Sharon Dempsey writes with such warmth and affection it's hard not to be bowled over by her cast of characters as they deal with all life throws at them. Please tell me there will be a follow up and we will get to see what happens next? I think there is so much more to come from these women.

  Sharon writes Belfast so well, I almost felt as if I was there and I could really picture myself in Moonstone and in the big house on Mount Pleasant Square. I'd love to sit with a cuppa in that back garden! I think this would make a fab TV series - it has so many heart-warming ingredients.” - Claire Allan, Irish Times bestselling author of eight women's fiction titles and new thriller release, Her Name was Rose.

  For Jeannie and Teddy,

  you both inspire me every day.

  1

  Dating back to 1898, this handsome and individually designed house retains much of the original character, including decorative plasterwork to the ceilings, ornate mahogany staircase and sliding sash windows, and is set amidst mature gardens extending to circa half an acre.

  The accommodation is of generous proportions and covers three floors, making it an excellent home for a growing family. On entrance, the wide hallway boasts the original wood block flooring, oak wood panelling, a cloakroom with high wall-mounted flush WC, pedestal wash hand basin, tiled floor, part-tiled walls and a built-in cupboard with ample space for storage.

  The main drawing room offers an original marble fireplace with tiled hearth, inset and surround, picture rail, cornicing, and solid block wood floor. This room leads to a small bookcase-lined study with French patio doors to the side courtyard style garden.

  The sitting room provides a view over the extensive rear gardens, with a window seating area, ceiling cornicing, fireplace with marble hearth, wood block flooring and door through to dining room.

  Bedroom accommodation set out over two floors.

  Master bedroom suite with period fireplace, separate dressing room and large

  en suite bathroom. Guest bedroom suite with separate sitting area and en suite shower room.

  Two additional bedrooms on first floor and two further bedrooms are found on the second floor.

  Outside there are exceptional gardens as well as a garage and ample parking. The property provides spacious family accommodation which retains many original characteristics and features, and is perfectly complemented by the generous and private site with delightful level gardens to the rear along with a sheltered patio area with southerly aspect.

  Mount Pleasant Square is a mature leafy park off the popular Stranmillis Road and is recognised as one of the area’s most sought after residential locations. It is situated in a conservation area, and undoubtedly Belfast’s most desirable residential address. While this property enjoys considerable privacy and seclusion, the location could not be more convenient for access to Belfast City Centre, the vibrant Lisburn Road, main arterial routes, leading schools and academic institutions, parks and golf clubs.

  Please note extensive modernisation required.

  Ninety-seven Mount Pleasant Square. The address created a certain sense of contentment, as if to live there was to have reached a plateau of happiness and well-being.

  Until that morning, when Ava received the estate agent particulars, she had it all sorted out in her head. She would sell up, pocket a mighty fortune and start her own business, or even go travelling, though she doubted she would go too far when she had her gran to consider. Realistically, Ava couldn’t go backpacking around the south of Ireland let alone New Zealand, knowing her gran was languishing in the Sisters of Mercy nursing home.

  The point was, that for the first time in her life, Ava had possibilities, choices which only a significant sum of money could provide. She felt like a Jane Austen heroine, thinking of how money could turn one’s life around, except she didn’t have to hunt down a man of good standing to secure her financial future. Financial security had sought her out, and might as well have fallen straight out of the sky onto her lap for all she knew of how it had come about.

  The paperwork had stated that she was now the sole beneficiary of the estate which comprised of number ninety-seven. She had no way of establishing the reason why she had been left the house. She certainly didn’t know of any rich relatives who would have left it to her and knew no reason why it should have remained a secret. It was unlikely her gran had known about the house, for surely, she would have told her that she had this inheritance to look forward to. Why had whoever owned the house chosen to neglect it and allow it to fall into such a poor sorry state? It was all a bit of a curiosity.

  When she had received the initial letter requesting that she meet with Ms Boston of Hawkings Solicitors, Ava had assumed it was to do with her gran’s affairs and her move to the nursing home. She had even prepared for the meeting by digging out the deeds of her gran’s house along with social security numbers, her pension book and other such details.

  The solicitor, a blonde elegant woman named Amanda, had expressed her delight at having tracked Ava down so easily. She had few details to go on, she explained. If Ava had moved, then the solicitor would have been stuck like a duck in a mudflat. She had extended her manicured hand to congratulate Ava on her good fortune, a diamond engagement ring winking in the sunlight as it cast prisms of light around the airless Ormeau Road office.

  Ava sat there on the wine-coloured leather chair, dumbfounded, clutching the irrelevant paperwork, trying to process the information. A house? Left to her? Her initial reaction had been to assume that she had inherited the house from her mother. But firstly, as far as Ava knew, she hadn’t died, and secondly, she hadn’t vi
sited Northern Ireland for many years, let alone owned a house here.

  ‘Yeah, I can see it’s a shock, but aren’t you the lucky one?’ Amanda had said, obviously happy to pocket the fee for tracking Ava down and finalising the details. It was clear to Ava that it wasn’t every day that Amanda got to play the fairy godmother role. She was probably more used to dealing with Disability Living Allowance fraud cases and chasing up legal aid paperwork on behalf of good-for-nothing joyriders and recreational summer time rioters, hell-bent on throwing petrol bombs at the emergency services, fire brigade and ambulances included.

  ‘This blue cardboard file has sat gathering dust for years. It must have been instructed well before my time,’ Amanda said. ‘Mr Hawking senior would have dealt with the original client way back in the seventies or eighties when the practice was in its heyday. We have a few leftover documents and cases to be tallied up from the days when Samuel Hawking ran the practice and this bequest file was one of them.’

  Ava sat there, not really taking it all in, thinking that at some stage the solicitor would realise she had been mistaken and that she had the wrong Ava Connors. Ava could feel her skin prickle with the beginning of a heat rash – she always got over heated and itchy when she was nervous.

  ‘But why now? And who left it to me?’

  ‘All I can tell you is that the benefactor has requested that the house be signed over without disclosure of identity. Believe it or not, it isn’t all that uncommon. Sometimes people don’t wish for the whole world to know their business. You just got lucky.’

  Amanda indicated with her heavy Waterman fountain pen where Ava should sign.

  ‘I’ll send an email confirming the transaction has been completed to the other lawyers acting on behalf of the benefactor. They made the initial contact with our office last month,’ Amanda said, licking her poppy red lipsticked lips.

  ‘Great, that is everything all nicely tied up,’ she said.

  Ava nervously pulled at her hair, leaving her unruly mane looking even more bedraggled than normal. ‘What about things like inheritance tax, stamp duty?’

  Amanda merely shrugged her narrow, navy pinstripe-suited shoulders. ‘Technically it wasn’t an inheritance, as such, more like a gift from a benefactor and so you needn’t worry as that side of the transaction has been taken care of.’ She smiled at Ava, flashing her professionally whitened teeth.

  ‘And you are absolutely sure it’s me the house has been left to? You haven’t got the wrong person?’

  ‘No doubt about it – Ava Connors, it’s your lucky day. Hey, enjoy it. Celebrate and thank your lucky stars.’

  Ava left the solicitor’s office having agreed for Amanda to go ahead and have the house valued, with a view to putting it on the market. There was little point in keeping it, she reasoned. What was the point in rattling around in a big old house with Maggie in the nursing home? Ava wandered up towards University Street where she had parked her trusty Fiat Uno. A bluish streak of bird poop had splattered all over her window screen like a Jackson Pollock canvas. Maybe it was auspicious. Her gran always claimed that being shat on by a bird from above was a sign of good luck. Somehow, Ava couldn’t see it as such, but today she felt like luck was on her side and, for a change, she was going to make herself enjoy it instead of fretting about it.

  She threw her bag on the passenger seat and glanced at the address on the paperwork Amanda had given her. It wasn’t so far. Her curiosity could barely be contained. It was one of those moments that she knew she should have been sharing with Finlay, her former boyfriend. He would have been beyond excited at the thought of them owning a big house, but this was something she now had to do alone.

  Fifteen minutes later she peered through dense overgrown, snowberry hedging, its tangle of thickets almost preventing her from seeing much and was relatively unimpressed. Sure, number ninety-seven stood proud and imposing in its own way, but it did look tired and in desperate need of work and a good bit of money being spent on it. Money she didn’t have.

  The roof looked like it had warped under the strain of one too many harsh winters. The tall chimneys tilted slightly to the left, as if mimicking the leaning tower of Pisa, and the brickwork showed tell-tale signs of neglect where creepers had embedded the plaster, creating cracks. She didn’t have the keys yet. Amanda had said it would be a couple of weeks before she could have them, but no one could stop her having a good nose around.

  Now, sitting in the park a week later, reading the estate agent’s spiel, her heart sank like a pebble in a pond. Ava was used to feeling that life was safe, steady, and most of all predictable. She didn’t seek the thrills of unknown situations or crave excitement. She was one of life’s contented few. But accepting that this house was truly hers for the taking, and that she could move into it, seemed to be asking for trouble. The gods of fate would look down and see that life had thrown Ava Connors a surprise and welcomed bonus and would seek out ways to disrupt her equilibrium. Not that she truly believed in all that carry on. It was more a sense of feeling that life would be different if she moved into number ninety-seven, and although that may not have been a bad thing, she was wary about what it could mean. She wasn’t one to go looking for change, so when it came her way, her natural inclination was reluctance to allow it to unfurl.

  Perhaps it’s time I allowed myself a wee bit of excitement, she thought enjoying the weak warmth of the sun on her skin.

  Sometime between receiving the solicitor’s letter detailing the transfer of ownership to Ava and receiving the estate agent’s folder, the house had begun to take on a significance, a character all of its own. She no longer saw it as an escape route to something else, easy money to pave her way in life, removing her from everything she was used to and comfortable with, but rather more like a sanctuary. On one hand, she admonished herself for being so sentimental. She was allowing the estate agent speak to sell the house to her.

  But then again, someone wanted her to have it and perhaps there was a good reason she had yet to discover. It was a lovely warm feeling to think that someone, somewhere, had decided that Ava Connors should be bestowed such a grand house, no matter how run down and sad it looked.

  How it had come to be in her name was all part of the mystery. Her gran, really her only family to speak of, had never been comfortably well off, let alone wealthy. She had struggled to earn every penny. So why, if she had possession of such a large house in a prestigious postcode, had she not either sold up and lived off the profit or lived in it? Instead, whoever had owned the house had left it to grow mouldy and rot, as if it were waiting for Ava to turn up.

  Ava brushed a few crumbs off her lap for the birds to eat and threw her cardboard cup in the bin. She felt lighter to have made the decision, as if somehow, she had been expected to do so all along but she needed to go through the motions of sounding out the alternatives to herself.

  It had a certain allure, not just because of the exclusive post code or the grandeur of the square in which it sat. Ava was drawn to it like a magnet. She felt some familial connection with it; one which she was willing to nurture like a baby plant sprouting from a bud on the stem of a dendrobium orchid.

  2

  ‘Got the keys!’ Ava all but squealed with excitement down the phone to Niamh.

  ‘Can’t believe I’m stuck in Dublin. Can’t you wait until I’m home and we can go together?’ Niamh pleaded. She was on a film job, but Ava knew even the thought of pressing mineral powder on Cillian Murphy’s brow wasn’t enough to stop her longing to accompany Ava on her first proper viewing of the house.

  ‘No way. You’ll have to wait. I’m about to head there now.’

  ‘Let me know every detail and pick a lovely room for me to stay in.’

  ‘Niamh, I still haven’t decided for sure if I’m keeping it.’

  ‘Of course, you’ll keep it, you lucky cow. Good luck. Gotta go, the catering truck has pulled up and if I time it right I might get to eat my dinner with Cillian.’

  Ava
placed her phone back in her bag and smiled. Niamh had been good to her those last few weeks as she tried to get over her heartbreak. Everyone agreed Finlay Kane was a good catch. You would need to be dead from the waist down not to fancy him, as Niamh often liked to tell Ava. There was no denying his obvious appeal: six feet one, a good head of thick brown hair that showed no hint of thinning or greying, dark, almost menacing eyes which twinkled like fairy lights when he laughed and a body, hard and broad, obtained through regular training sessions to feed his passion for playing Gaelic football. No, certainly, no one could deny he wasn’t a good catch on paper.

  Everyone, except Ava, that is.

  Then, just when Ava thought he might be in the throes of proposing, he went and broke up with her, making Ava realise that what she had with Finlay was something special.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ava,’ he had said, ‘but there isn’t any point in hanging on in there. You just don’t light up for me.’ He continued, his voice soft and low with emotion, ‘Maybe I’m wrong, but I think I haven’t had the best of you and that someone, somewhere, will. I wish them well and I’m sorry it can’t be me, but there it is.’