Growing Wild in the Shade: A Mags Munroe Story (The Mags Munroe Series Book 2) by Jean Grainger

Author:Jean Grainger [Grainger, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: GOLD HARP MEDIA
Published: 2022-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

The amazing thing is, after Kieran introduces them, Dolores and the two women become firm friends. She genuinely adores Phillip, and she thinks Annette and Martha are the best thing since sliced bread (although of course in her book, sliced bread isn’t a good thing at all, just more poison). In fact, Mam and I barely see her again for the rest of the visit. Apparently, my little sister isn’t just all talk when it comes to organic vegetables and healing herbs, because she gets completely stuck into the polytunnels and starts calling herself a WWOOFer, which means something like ‘worldwide opportunities on organic farms’.

‘Are they an item?’ she asks me one day, on a rare visit to my house.

‘An item? What?’

‘An item, Mags. I know this is Ballycarrick, but surely even you –’

‘Oh, you mean…Annette and Martha? Oh… Do you think they are? I thought they were just friends. Like Mam and Joe are friends.’

‘None so blind as those that will not see,’ Dolores says, and I feel like an old-fashioned fool.

I feel even more of a fool after Joe arrives into the station a few days later and says he needs to speak to me in private about something. I bring him into the room where we hold the neighbourhood watch meetings and make him a cup of coffee, then sit down opposite him. ‘What is it, Joe?’

Just like outside his shop, he spends a ridiculous amount of time saying nothing, until I very pointedly glance at my watch and pretend I’m running out of time. ‘Is there something wrong, Joe?’

‘It’s about your mother,’ he blurts out.

I suddenly wonder if he knows something I don’t, and my stomach turns over. ‘Joe, is there something wrong with Mam? Something she hasn’t told me about? Is that why you keep asking me about her health?’

‘No, God no, your mother is perfect. Wonderful. Beautiful. Never better.’

‘Oh, thank God…’ I breathe again. ‘Then what is it?’

‘It’s just…’ And to my astonishment, his brown eyes fill with tears. ‘Oh, Mags, I thought she and I had a… I thought we had an…well, an understanding, if you know what I mean. And now she… It’s all so… I mean, I’m not surprised, she’s the perfect woman, so obviously there are going to be loads of men falling at her feet. I just thought we had…’

Oh God. Poor Joe. And also, as much as I like him, I’m frustrated at him being so backwards in coming forward, as they say.

‘And now this man –’

I interrupt him firmly. ‘Joe. Listen to me. For a start, you shouldn’t be having this conversation with me, you should be having it with Marie. I mean, what do you expect me to do? Tell her to break it off with him and go back to her once-a-week lunch at the Samovar with you?’

He mops his eyes. ‘I don’t know. I’m a foolish old man. I suppose I thought you might tell her how I feel.’

I sigh. What a mess. ‘You’re the one who needs to do that, Joe.

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