The Matchmaker by Marita Conlon-Mckenna Read Free Book Online

be one too and it would be so sweet to have the two of them walking up the aisle together.’
    ‘Evie will be over the moon,’ said Sarah. ‘Orla, you are so good to think of her but you should ask her yourself. She’s playing out in the kitchen with a few of the kids.’
    A few minutes later Evie raced into the living room, bursting with the news. ‘Mummy, I’m going to be a flower girl for Orla’s wedding and I have to wear a special dress and carry flowers and have flowers in my hair!’ she cried, jigging up and down with excitement.
    ‘You will be a beautiful flower girl,’ said Sarah, scooping her up in her arms for a big kiss.
    Maggie was having a quiet moment sipping her glass of wine when she noticed Alan Ferguson, a friend of Harry’s, heading in her direction. He had separated from his wife Julia two years before and his face lit up when he saw her. She shuddered. Why did men like Alan assume that just because she was a widow she might be interested in them? All he wanted to talk about was sport and the latest GAA match he’d attended in Croke Park. Was it any wonder poor Julia had left him! Making her excuses she went and sat down on the couch to chat with Liam’s parents who were lovely Westmeath people and delighted to see their son finally taking the plunge.
    ‘We thought the day would never come!’ joked his mother Mary. ‘Honestly, what he was waiting for is beyond us!’
    ‘They don’t believe in rushing into things these days – they think they have all the time in the world,’ added his father Paul, a tall thin bespectacled man who was the image of Liam. ‘And houses cost a fortune so it’s hard to get on the property ladder.’
    Maggie watched as Kitty passed a tray of fancy canapés around the crowded room, her face aglow. She was wearing a lovely silver-grey outfit that she’d bought in Brown Thomas. Her sister looked well, filled with happiness for her daughter and future son-in-law. Her sons Conor and Gavin were both already married, one living in Malahide and the other down in Cork, and she had three grandchildren. Six years ago she had had an awful time when she had developed breast cancer and had a breast removed. Harry and the boys and Orla had struggled to cope with her illness. Thank God, after her surgery and treatment she had made a great recovery and this wedding news was particularly special as Maggie knew one of her sister’s biggest fears had been that she wouldn’t live to see her daughter walk up the aisle.
    Maggie raised her glass of wine as Harry congratulated the happy couple and Orla and Liam thanked everyone for coming to the party. A good man is hard to find, she thought, yet somehow Orla had. She and Liam had found each other and were now going to make a future together. She looked at her own lovely daughters chatting with their cousins and smiled to herself. One of these days, if she had any say in it, there would be sparkling rings on their fingers too.

Chapter Nine
    Recuperating from the previous night’s engagement party, which had ended in a mass rendition of ‘The Fields of Athenry’, Maggie decided to check her phone and email messages. She was relieved to see that there had been a good response to her discreet advertisement in the
Irish Times
seeking a new tenant to rent the small three-bedroom mews at the bottom of her garden, which had access to Pleasant Lane. Her previous tenants, three nurses, had been lovely girls but a bit of a headache, given to late-night parties on their monthly pay day and unfortunately flooding the upstairs bathroom. One had broken the microwave oven, blowing two of the kitchen sockets at the same time. The damages had been sorted out at the end of their rental period and the girls were now moving to an apartment nearer to St James’s Hospital where they worked.
    It was Grace who had first suggested converting the rundown former coach house at the end of the garden, where they stored bicycles and old garden furniture