The Matchmaker Read Free Page B

and a bright kitchen had been created and painted up with new heating and new fittings installed. When Evie was two and a half Sarah had gone back and finished her course at night, her mother encouraging her to get her qualification and babysitting on Tuesdays and Thursdays for her as she wrote her thesis and took on her final year project.
    She lived on the small income she got for working part-time in the local national school, which meant she was broke most of the time. She helped out with their library and gave art classes to the older children. The odd design job came her way through old college contacts and if she needed extra money her friend Cora, who ran a successful catering company, was always glad of an extra pair of hands either in the kitchen or serving at some of the fancy Dublin parties she catered for in people’s homes. Still Sarah had no regrets. She watched as her friends’ careers began to take off, and knew she wouldn’t change places with them for the world, for she had Evie.

Chapter Five
    Sunday lunch. Maggie Ryan was a great believer in the tradition of Sunday lunch. Some considered it old-fashioned, but she clung firmly to the tenet that gathering around the table for a good meal at the end of a busy week was the best way to keep a family together. It ensured time with her children, kept her in touch with relations and was a relaxed way to entertain friends. Leo had always enjoyed it, carving up beef or lamb or turkey or pork loin into slices as he sipped a glass of red wine and put the cares of the week behind him. When he’d died she had abandoned the whole idea of entertaining, hating Sundays with a vengeance because they highlighted his absence, making it an awful day. Gradually, however, over the past few years, as her anger and grief had subsided, she realized that she hated being on her own Sunday after Sunday and had reinstigated the tradition.
    Today the smell of roasting lamb and potatoes pervaded the kitchen and she had just added a tray full of peeled onions to the dish at the bottom of the oven. She had a large rhubarb crumble ready to pop in the oven later for dessert and some sticky toffee ice-cream in the freezer that she knew her little granddaughter adored.
    The big mahogany dining table was set and she had lit the fire in the drawing room as there was still a nip in the air. Satisfied with progress in the kitchen, she decided to have a read of the papers, putting her feet up for a few minutes before the onslaught of visitors. Podge, her aged marmalade tabby cat, snoozed beside her in the chair.
    Sarah and Evie were naturally the first to arrive, having only to make the short trip from the basement apartment up the stairs to the main part of the house. Sarah was wearing her usual jeans and T-shirt, topped by a pretty pink tapestry waistcoat.
    ‘Imagine! I found it in the Oxfam shop,’ she beamed as Maggie hugged them both, Sarah’s long straight fair hair such a total contrast to her granddaughter’s cascade of dark locks. Evie made a beeline for Podge who was lost in some cat reverie.
    ‘How old is he, Granny?’ she asked.
    ‘About twelve, I think.’
    ‘Will he die soon?’
    Maggie cast a look of alarm over at Sarah, not wanting to upset her granddaughter. Maybe they’d been talking about death in school?
    ‘Don’t worry, Evie,’ she reassured her. ‘I hope that Podge will live for another few years.’
    Sarah shot her a grateful glance, offering to help with the food as Evie’s attention strayed from the family cat. She certainly was a live wire and full of chat as she bounced around studying the table.
    ‘Granny, why are you using the special plates?’ she quizzed, scrutinizing them.
    ‘That’s because I’ve extra visitors coming,’ she replied, ‘and I thought they might like these plates with their pretty pattern.’
    ‘She’s full of questions about everything at the moment.’ Sarah laughed. ‘It’s non-stop.’
    ‘There’s nothing worse than a