5 Peppermint Grove Read Online Free PDF Page A

through the open window and left him parched. It was six o’clock and sweltering hot – like most mornings in Singapore but especially during this time of year. He hit the switch on his air-con – the room would resemble a freezer in ten minutes. Lydia came into his head again. This was the fourth morning in a row that she had done so. It was six years since he had let her go – so why was she such a hauntingly permanent fixture in his life? Their history had started with a blind date – organised by Julia of course. It was while Julia and Lydia were in college together in UCD and Lydia complained that she wanted a bit of excitement in her life. Lydia being the complete opposite of Michael, Julia felt that he would show her friend how to have a good time but that there would be no love lost. She was surprised at how well the two hit it off and they became besotted with each other for six months – which was something of a record by Michael’s standards.
    However, Lydia was only twenty-one and Michael twenty-six and the passion that Michael was feeling scared him and he finished with her abruptly. It wasn’t until four years later when she was dating a fellow apprentice in KBMD that Michael started to ask about Lydia again. Julia was reluctant this time and grudgingly set up a meeting. The apprentice got the flick and Michael and Lydia settled down to a tempestuous relationship that lasted four years. Everyone thought that they would soon announce their engagement and Michael was on the verge of proposing when he had a moment of weakness with a nurse in Buck Mulligan’s at his friend’s birthday party. One of his friends told his girlfriend who felt it her duty to spread the wicked news of his deed. If Michael had denied it Lydia would have been happy to believe him. But he told her that he did snog the nurse and that he didn’t know her name and that it didn’t mean anything. Lydia was distraught and worried that she could never trust him again. No amount of pleading and begging on his part would convince her otherwise. She broke off the relationship and went out that weekend with her friends – when she bumped into Michael at another venue on Lesson Street she saw him do it again and this time with her own eyes. Even Michael couldn’t recall what the girl looked like – he was more upset than he would ever admit to a soul about the break-up of his relationship with Lydia and was trying to get comfort wherever. Lydia couldn’t get over seeing him in the arms of another woman and insisted that she would never take him back. Over the next few months Michael spent every weekend with a different girl. Julia did whatever she could to take Lydia’s mind off her brother but she knew how much she was hurt.
    When Michael announced that he was leaving for Singapore, Julia told Lydia very gently one day and was amazed at how she took the news with no emotion or reaction. Lydia had shut him off and, as far as Julia was concerned and even though she knew they had corresponded briefly through Facebook, there was no hope they would ever be an item again. She had made her views perfectly clear to Michael but this only made him think of Lydia all the more.
    “You always want what you cannot have!” Julia had berated him.
    Michael realised that she was correct but at certain times of the year – especially coming up to Christmas – he thought of her even more.
    Although it didn’t feel very Christmassy as the beads of sweat fell from his brow in Singapore.
     
    Ruth needed to feel good about the massive move that she might make. She wondered what her mother’s opinion might be. Angela had spoken very little about the time she had spent in Perth when her brother Kevin was a little boy. Ruth knew that her father had loved Australia and only came back to Dublin after she was born. It was a chapter in her family’s life that she had never been interested in finding out about – until now.
    Alone in her apartment on a dark