‘Are you?’ he whispered, his breath warm against her face.
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‘Blissfully.’
And she was.
Finn now worked from home two days a week—though he claimed that she and his daughter distracted him far too much.
‘So what?’ she had asked him airily. ‘You’ve enough in the bank, and a bit more besides!’
‘Have you a shameless disregard for your future, woman?’ he had demanded sternly.
Catherine’s mother was a frequent visitor, and she and Finola had struck up a firm friendship.
‘Would you ever listen to those two?’ Finn would often say, when the rise of their laughter made Mollie giggle. ‘What the hell do you think they’re concocting now?’
And Mollie continued to thrive. The most beautiful child on the entire planet, as her adoring parents were so fond of saying when they looked at her sleeping every night.
Her early birth, while unexpected, had soon been explained by Catherine’s gynaecologist. It seemed that Catherine really had got her dates wrong, and that Mollie had been conceived in Dublin, not London, which made her heart lift with pleasure.
‘You know what that means, don’t you, Finn?’ she had asked him.
He certainly did. It meant that their child had been conceived in passion, not anger—thank God.
Catherine had abandoned the book she had been writing; she found motherhood much more rewarding. ‘Doesn’t mean that I’ll never write again,’ she’d told Finn. ‘Just not now.’
And Finn had taken to helping her in the garden sometimes—a plot which she had so transformed that word had spread of its beauty through Wicklow and beyond. Last year she had opened it up to the public, charging entry to those who could afford to pay and selling tea and cakes to raise money for the local library.
Finn called it ‘helping’ her in the garden, but in reality he just planted things occasionally. Primroses and roses and hollyhocks, and an unusual variegated tulip. And a peach tree, and the arbutus which did so well in that part of Ireland and which was known affectionately as the strawberry tree.
She had leaned on her spade one day and looked at him. ‘Odd choice of plants, Finn.’
‘Mmm.’
Something in his tone had set her thinking, set a distant memory jangling in her head, and she’d gone to her computer that evening, when he had gone up to the pub for a pint with Patrick. She’d browsed through her search-engine and had looked up the language of flowers. And there it all was, in black and white before her eyes.
Primrose—fidelity.
Variegated tulip—beautiful eyes.
Peach tree—my heart is thine.
And most lovely of all was the arbutus, which meant esteemed love.
Her eyes had been moist when she’d opened the door to him later.
‘You’ve been crying!’ he accused.
‘Oh, you stupid man!’ she exclaimed, flinging her arms around him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘The garden! All those things you planted and I never knew why! Why didn’t you just come out and say so?’
‘That I love you?’ he said tenderly. ‘Is that what you want to hear, my sweet, beautiful Catherine?’
‘Of course it is!’