Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

The door was opened by a dark, good-looking man in his early forties. He came down the steps, hand stretched out. 'On Ria's behalf you're very welcome to Tara Road,' he said, while Marilyn frantically searched for his name from the cast of thousands she had been presented with. Somehow she had thought it would be the sister Hilary, or one of the two women friends. 'I'm Colm Barry, neighbour and friend. I also dig the back garden but I use a back gate so I'll be no intrusion in your time here.'

Marilyn looked at him gratefully. He seemed to tell her what she needed to know and not too much. He was courteous but also he was cool in a way that she very much liked. 'Indeed, the man who runs the restaurant,' she said, placing him at last.

'The very one,' he agreed. He carried her cases up the granite steps.

Ria's photographs had not lied. The hall was glorious with its deep glowing wooden floor, and elegant hall table. The door to a front room was open, Colm pushed it slightly. 'If it were my house I would never leave this room,' he said simply. 'It runs the whole depth of the house, windows at each end. It's just lovely.' On the table was a huge bowl of roses. 'Ria asked me to leave those for you.'

Marilyn felt a gulp in her voice as she thanked him. The place was so beautiful and these rich pink and red roses on such a beautiful table were the final touch.

He carried her bag upstairs and showed her the main bedroom. 'I expect this is where you'll be, I'm sure all the details were written out for you. Ria's been getting ready for weeks. I know she's gone to huge trouble.'

Marilyn knew it too. Her eyes took in the immaculate white bedcover, brand new, must have been put on this morning, the folded towels, the shiny paintwork and the empty closet. This woman had worked at getting her house ready. Marilyn hoped guiltily that hers would match up. They went down to the kitchen and at that moment the cat flap opened and a large ginger cat came in.

'This is Clement.' Colm introduced the cat formally. 'An excellent cat, he has a little weakness sometimes of killing a perfectly innocent bird for no reason, and then he'll bring it back to you as a trophy.'

'I know, I have to say well done Clement how lovely,' Marilyn said with a smile.

'Good, just so long as you know the drill. Anyway Clement isn't very competitive, usually he just opens one eye and looks at the birds, then goes back to sleep.' Colm continued his tour of the kitchen, opening the fridge. 'Ah, she's left you some basics I see, including a soup made from vegetables grown in that very garden. Shall I take some out for you to heat up? You've had a long journey, you'll want to settle in.' And he was gone.

What a restful pleasant neighbour, Marilyn thought, exactly the person she would like to live near. There would be no problem in keeping someone like Colm Barry out of your life. He would never be like Carlotta, aching to come over the fence and get involved. And he was right, she did want to settle in. She was pleased that it had been this man rather than one of the women she had expected. He was a fellow spirit, a soul mate. He somehow understood that she wanted to be alone. She was glad he had been there to welcome her.

She wandered slowly about the house that would be hers until September. The children's rooms had been tidied, pictures of soccer players on Brian's wall, pop stars on Annie's. Plastic models of wrestlers on Brian's window-sills, soft furry toys on Annie's. Two well-kept bathrooms, one with what looked like genuine Victorian bathroom fittings. And one empty, lifeless room, a lot of shelving on the wall but nothing on display. This must have been a study or office that belonged to Danny in what Ria would have called happier times.

A warm, almost crowded kitchen, shelves of cookbooks, cupboards full of pans and baking dishes, a kitchen where people baked, ate and lived. A house full of beautiful objects but first and foremost a home. There was very little wall space that did not have pictures of the family, mainly of the children but some which included the handsome Danny Lynch as well. He had not been cut out of their lives because he had gone away. Marilyn looked at his face for some clues about this man. One thing she knew from being in his home: he must love this new woman very much or have been very unhappy in his marriage to Ria to enable him to leave all this without a backward glance.

'I wonder should I go and call on her?' Nora Johnson said to Hilary.

'Ah, isn't she perfectly all right where she is. Hasn't she a valuable house worth a fortune to sit in all summer for nothing?' Hilary sniffed.

'Yes, well, she still might be a bit lonely, and Ria said…'

'Oh Ria said, Ria said… there's many people she could have given that house to, to mind, if she had wanted to.'

Nora looked at her elder daughter with a flash of impatience. 'Listen to me, Hilary, if you're suggesting that you could have looked after the house and fed that very dim cat for Ria…'

'Yes, or you could have, Mam. She didn't have to go and get a perfectly strange American.'

'But Hilary, you great silly girl, the whole point of it was that Ria wanted to go to America. She didn't want to exchange houses with me down the road, and you across the city.'

Hilary listened, feeling very foolish. Somehow in her flurry of resentment she had forgotten this fact. 'We should give her tonight and tomorrow to rest anyway and maybe we might get in touch then,' she said.

'I'd hate her to think she wasn't welcome,' Ria's mother said. While Ria's sister hid the sniff she had been about to indulge in.

Carlotta pointed out all the amenities as she drove Ria to Tudor Drive.

Ria marvelled as they passed all the houses with their communal lawns in front. 'No fences,' she noticed.

'Well, it's neighbourly I guess,' Carlotta said.

'Is it like that in Tudor Drive?'

'Not our part, no, it's more closed in.'

Carlotta told her the names of streets and drives that would become familiar in the next days and weeks. She pointed out the two hotels, the club and the library, the good gas station, the one where the guy was a pain in the butt, the two antique shops, the florist, the okay deli, the truly great deli. And of course the garden centre, Carlotta gestured triumphantly.

'Oh well, that's not going to be of much interest to me, I barely know flower from weed.’

Carlotta was puzzled. 'But I thought you were crazy about gardening, that that's how you got to know each other.'

'Not at all, the reverse in fact.'

'Well, well, well. Just goes to show how you can get things wrong. It's just that Marilyn doesn't have any other interests, so I just assumed…'

They were nearly there.

'Look, I'd love you to come in and have something to eat and drink with me in my place, but you're here for the summer, you'll want to get into your own place, and see what it's like.' Carlotta took out the envelope with the keys in it and prepared to hand them over.

'But aren't you going to come in with me?' Ria was surprised.

'Well, no, honey, not really. I mean this is your house, Marilyn and Greg's house.'

'No, come in please, I'd love you to come in and show me around, won't you?'

Carlotta bit her lip in indecision. 'I don't really know where their things are…' she began.

'Oh please do, Carlotta. I'd feel much more at home if you showed me everything. And Marilyn said she was going to leave me a bottle of wine in her fridge. I left her one in mine. So it would be a lovely start for me.'

'I wouldn't want her to think…"

But further protest was useless. Ria was already out of the car and looking up at her new home. 'Do we go in this little gate or round by the carport do you think?'

'I'm not sure.' The previously suave and confident Carlotta looked flustered.