did see someone once,’ she interrupted. ‘When I was fifteen. I was a bit...wild. I got sent to a home for troublesome adolescents and they gave me a few sessions with a psychoanalyst. She hauled out a memory of me at eight, being moved on from a foster home. There was a fire engine I played with. I’d been there a couple of years so I guess I thought it was mine. When I went to pack, my foster mum told me it was a foster kid toy and I couldn’t take it. The shrink told me it was significant, but I don’t need a fire engine now. I don’t need anything.’
He cringed for her. She’d said it blithely, as if it was no big deal, but he knew the shrink was right. This woman was wounded. ‘Jo, the money we’re both inheriting will give you security,’ he said gently. ‘No one can take your fire engine now.’
‘I’m over wanting fire engines.’
‘Really?’
And she managed a smile at that. ‘Well, if it was a truly excellent fire engine...’
‘You’d consider?’
‘I might,’ she told him. ‘Though I might have to get myself a Harley with a trailer to carry it. Do Harleys come with trailers? I can’t see it. Meanwhile, is it lunchtime?’
He checked his watch. ‘Past. Uh oh. We need to face Mrs O’Reilly. Jo, you’ve been more than generous. You don’t have to face her.’
‘I do,’ she said bluntly. ‘I don’t run away. It’s not my style.’
* * *
Mrs O’Reilly had made them lunch but Finn wasn’t sure how she’d done it. Her swollen face said she’d been weeping for hours.
She placed shepherd’s pie in front of them and stood back, tried to speak and failed.
‘I can’t...’ she managed.
‘Mrs O’Reilly, there’s no need to say a thing.’ Jo reached for the pie and ladled a generous helping onto her plate. ‘Not when you’ve made me pie. But I do need dead horse.’
‘Dead horse?’ Finn demanded, bemused, and Jo shook her head in exasperation.
‘Honestly, don’t you guys know anything? First, dead horse is Australian for sauce and second, shepherd’s pie without sauce is like serving fish without chips. Pie and sauce, fish and chips, roast beef with Yorkshire pud... What sort of legacy are you leaving for future generations if you don’t know that?’
He grinned and Mrs O’Reilly sniffed and sniffed again and then beetled for the kitchen. She returned with four different sauce bottles.
Jo checked them out and discarded three with disgust.
‘There’s only one. Tomato sauce, pure, unadulterated. Anything else is a travesty. Thank you, Mrs O’Reilly, this is wonderful.’
‘It’s not,’ the woman stammered. ‘I was cruel to you.’
‘I’ve done some research into my mother over the years,’ Jo said, concentrating on drawing wiggly lines of sauce across her pie. ‘She doesn’t seem like she was good to anyone. She wasn’t even good to me and I was her daughter. I can only imagine what sort of demanding princess she was when she was living here. And Grandpa didn’t leave you provided for after all those years of service from you and your husband. I’d have been mean to me if I were you too.’
‘I made you sleep in a single bed!’
‘Well, that is a crime.’ She was chatting to Mrs O’Reilly as if she were talking of tomorrow’s weather, Finn thought. The sauce arranged to her satisfaction, she tackled her pie with gusto.
Mrs O’Reilly was staring at her as if she’d just landed from another planet, and Finn was feeling pretty much the same.
‘A single bed’s fine by me,’ she said between mouthfuls. ‘As is this pie. Yum. Last night’s burned beef, though...that needs compensation. Will you stay on while we’re here? You could make us more. Or would you prefer to go? Finn and I can cope on our own. I hope the lawyer has explained what you do from now on is your own choice.’
‘He has.’ She grabbed her handkerchief and blew her nose with gusto. ‘Of course...of course I’ll stay while you need me but now...I can have my own house. My own home.’
‘Excellent,’ Jo told her. ‘If that’s what you want, then go for it.’
‘I don’t deserve it.’
‘Hey, after so many years of service, one burned dinner shouldn’t make a difference, and life’s never about what we deserve. I’m just pleased Finn and I can administer a tiny bit of justice in a world that’s usually pretty much unfair. Oh, and the calendars in the kitchen...you like cats?’
‘I...yes.’
‘Why don’t you have one?’
‘Your grandfather hated them.’
‘I don’t hate them. Do you hate them, Finn?’
‘No.’
‘There you go,’ Jo said, beaming. ‘Find yourself a kitten. Now, if you want. And don’t buy a cottage where you can’t keep one.’
She was amazing, Finn thought, staring at her in silence. This woman was...stunning.
But Jo had moved on. ‘Go for it,’ she said, ladling more pie onto her fork. ‘But no more talking. This pie deserves all my attention.’
* * *
They finished their pie in silence, then polished off apple tart and coffee without saying another word.
There didn’t seem any need to speak. Or maybe there was, but things were too enormous to be spoken of.
As Mrs O’Reilly bustled away with the dishes, Jo felt almost dismayed. Washing up last night with Finn had been a tiny piece of normality. Now there wasn’t even washing up to fall back on.
‘I guess we’d better get started,’ Finn said at last.
‘Doing what?’
‘Sorting?’
‘What do we need to sort?’ She gazed around the ornate dining room, at the myriad ornaments, pictures, side tables, vases, stuff. ‘I guess lots of stuff might go to museums. You might want to keep some. I don’t need it.’
‘It’s your heritage.’
‘Stuff isn’t heritage. I might take photographs of the tapestries,’ she conceded. ‘Some of them are old enough to be in a museum too.’
‘Show me,’ he said and that was the next few minutes sorted. So she walked him through the baronial hall, seeing the history of the Conaills spread out before her.
‘It seems a shame to break up the collection,’ Finn said at last. He’d hardly spoken as they’d walked through.
‘Like breaking up a family.’ Jo shrugged.
