The Lost Garden by Kate Kerrigan Read Free Book Online Page A

infuriatingly.
    ‘Yes, I’m upset,’ she said, her words amplified by the empty deck and the expanse of sea, as if the whole wide world were supporting her in her annoyance. ‘Because you won’t leave me alone and you have spoilt my friendship with the other women. Everything was going perfectly fine before you came along.’
    As she said it, Aileen thought that while it was not strictly true, Jimmy’s presence was complicating things. If he hadn’t turned up, the women would have had to have been nicer to her.
    ‘Go away, why don’t you?’
    Although it was not her intention, Aileen saw that her words had hurt him as truly as if she had planted a slap on his face. His open-eyed upset infuriated her even more.
    ‘Oh, why don’t you just go away and leave me alone?’ she shouted at him.
    He stood looking at her, hurt but incredulous also.
    This Jimmy was a strange-looking boy, and despite that instantattraction she had had towards him, she could not quite decide if he was handsome or not. He was not as obviously fine-looking as her brothers and father – certainly not as square-shouldered or broad. At just a little taller than herself, he was of slim build, although he was physically strong – she could sense that more than see it. His features were pointed in a way that was full of character but also somewhat devilish. He had large blue eyes that spangled with life and mischief, and were rimmed with long, dark lashes – like a girl. These were matched in character with a strong Roman nose and a broad mouth that seemed to take up his whole face when he smiled, which he did every time she gave him the slightest encouragement.
    Jimmy was not the type of man she had always imagined she would fall in love with. Aileen was a fan of the brooding, troubled Heathcliff – dark and mysterious and strikingly handsome. Heathcliff never smiled, but was full of a bleak, unstoppable passion for his true love. Aileen had read Wuthering Heights a dozen times or more, imagining herself to be on the other end of such dark passions. Her rugged island was as similar to the Yorkshire Moors as one could imagine and the landscape had helped fuel a small fantasy. Aileen knew her hero was the figment of a writer’s imagination and that such a man probably did not exist in real life, and even if he did, he did not, in all likelihood, reside on Illaunmor. But Aileen had not yet known enough men to be entirely certain. The evidence so far pointed to Michael Kelly boasting of his Louth cousin, and while Jimmy’s dramatic opening of saving her life and his demonstrative singing on the quayside put him somewhat above Michael’s promise of a relation with a motorized tractor, they were both still a far cry from her Brontë idol.
    ‘Maybe I will go,’ he said, and turned – although he wasmoving slowly enough for her to see he had very little intention of actually leaving her there.
    The fool.
    ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Off you go.’
    He took a step forward towards the steep metal stairwell down to the cabins, then looked back at her with an expression of yearning that she found intolerably irritating.
    She stared at him accusingly, then waved him on his way before abruptly turning her back on him and facing out to sea again.
    What an annoying man he was, and how much better off she would be without her ‘shadow’. In the very moment that she thought that, Aileen looked around her and suddenly felt afraid. Alone on the empty deck, with its cold metal hull, the vast expanse of water stretched ahead, and beyond it was a world full of strangers. A feeling of bleakness and emptiness washed over her.
    She turned and shouted, ‘Jimmy,’ and he came bounding back up the stairs towards her.
    ‘We’ll wait until the boat takes off, anyway.’
    His face filled up with a smile, and although she pushed it aside, she could not help feeling glad.
    For the next twelve hours Jimmy did not leave her side – not once.
    Shortly after he came back up