Homecoming (9 page)

He chanced a wink at her as the lights finally turned green and she managed to edge her Mini Cooper forward and off down the bare expanse of road ahead.

And she winked back! He decided he’d chance the lottery at lunchtime. It was definitely his lucky day.

Nicky wanted to wink and smile at everyone today. Not that she didn’t smile a lot anyway: she had a lot to smile about, she knew. But today was special.

Today was her first day as an engaged woman. Last night, after the book launch, Freddie had taken her out to a late dinner.

There was rarely much in the way of food at book launches, just nibbles and wine, so if you stayed too long, you ate nothing, drank too much and made a holy show of yourself in front of your colleagues, your boss, and if you were spectacularly unlucky, press photographers too. Nicky was far too clever to fall into that trap, so she drank water at launches and ate afterwards.

She’d been telling Freddie all about the author’s speech, and how gratifying it was to have been thanked by the author.

‘Scarlett’s the first author I’ve edited from the start of her career. I feel like I’ve been a part of everything that’s happened, I can’t tell you, Freddie, how amazing that feels…’

When she’d started in Peony as an editorial assistant five years ago, she’d had to prove herself by spending a lot of time doing the vital but painstaking copy-editing work that took place after the author and their main editor had agreed on a final manuscript. Scarlett Ryan was the first author she’d been let loose on, so to speak, and when Scarlett’s debut novel had been a success, she’d insisted that Nicky was part of that success.

‘Dominic, the managing director, was there and Scarlett kept saying how much she owed me and what a fabulous editor I was! She said I’d
showed her how to find her true voice.
It was wonderful.’ She stopped long enough to take a sip of wine.

‘This is delicious,’ she remarked appreciatively. ‘Expensive, I bet. I thought you were broke, Freddie. Are we celebrating something?’

And that’s when it had happened. Freddie, wunderkind of Mesmer Marketing, boyishly handsome with his floppy dark fringe, hopeless at laundry but sterling when it came to doing dishes, had slipped off his chair in the fashionable Le Pinot Noir bistro, got to his knees and whipped a small box from his inside breast pocket.

Normally, nothing surprised Nicky. She was legendary for it. She noticed everything, from how low they were on milk in the office fridge, to how up-to-date the department was with getting through the slush pile of manuscripts. But in the excitement over Scarlett, she hadn’t registered Freddie’s air of excitement. She noticed it now, along with the glint of something that sparkled.

‘It’s a diamond,’ she said in shock, fingers brushing Freddie’s as she held the small blue box.

‘Do you like it?’

The ring was clearly new but made to look old, with a small round diamond surrounded by teenier specks of diamonds in a platinum band. For all her fondness for labels and fashionable clothes, Nicky was a romantic at heart. Huge diamonds meant
nothing.
This tiny but beautiful ring was proof of Freddie’s love for her. He’d gone and chosen it himself, which was quite something because Nicky had strong opinions on such things.

‘Here,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Put it on.’

With shaky fingers, he took the ring from the velvet surround and slid it on to Nicky’s delicate finger.

‘Oh.’ They both sighed as they admired it.

Nicky was so petite that on her finger, the tiny ring looked totally at home.

‘I was thinking,’ said Freddie, ‘let’s get married soon. We don’t have the money for a big bash, so we could have a small wedding. Nobody will mind, everyone’s broke, things are different now.’ He rushed on. ‘That way, we can save money for somewhere to live. What do you think?’

She touched her newly beringed hand to his cheek.

‘I think that’s a great idea. I was never a fan of those big, expensive weddings,’ she said gently, she, who had once upon a time dreamed of two hundred guests, a live band, wall-to-wall cream roses and a marquee decorated in floaty white muslin. Now that the time was here, all that seemed quite immaterial. They would be married and that was all that mattered.

People in the restaurant clapped as they watched Nicky gently kiss her fiancé.

Neither of the pair took a blind bit of notice of the rest of their meal. They talked about limited guest lists and how they’d present the plan to their respective parents to ensure there was no griping over endless second cousins once removed who now wouldn’t be invited.

In the taxi on the way home, they sat in joyous silence and held each other. Nicky honestly had never felt such peace.

Now all that remained was to tell her sister. Nicky knew that Connie would never begrudge her happiness. On the contrary, Connie had always wanted everything for her little sister. But this was different. This was telling the person she loved second best in the world that she was getting married – something Connie had always longed to do but had the opportunity snatched away from her by that waster Keith.

Connie had always done everything first: moved away from the family home in Wexford, gone to college, got a job, bought her own place. Now, for once, Nicky would be breaking new ground first and for Connie that was bound to be hard.

She’d be abandoning Connie too. The apartment in Golden Square belonged to Connie, although Nicky paid rent, but they’d lived there together since Connie had bought it ten years before.

For the first time in years, Connie would be totally on her own. Would she be all right? Nicky wondered.

When she got home after the hen night, Connie went into Nicky’s bedroom where her sister was half-watching an old film, and lay down on the bed next to her. Several unaccustomed glasses of wine sloshed around inside her, along with dessert wine – Sylvie had insisted, although it was sickly sweet – and what with the wine and the melancholy, she began to cry.

‘I’m so happy for her about the wedding and everything,’ Connie sobbed. ‘I love Sylvie and she deserves to be happy, but Nicky, don’t I deserve it too?’

Nicky had looked so stricken that Connie sobered up at high speed, and apologised.

‘I’m fine, honestly. Everyone was getting maudlin by the end of the night, and I kept thinking about Keith – not that I’d want him back, or anything, but you know, it was my chance to settle down and…’ She stopped talking. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, say anything about her diminishing chance to have a baby. It was too painful to speak out loud, even to Nicky. Better to keep it hidden in her heart.

‘Oh, Connie, I’m so sorry.’ Nicky still looked stricken.

Connie clambered up the bed to hug her sister. ‘Don’t mind me, I’m a mad old lady, I’ll turn into one of those ferocious spinsters of the parish and you can get married and have eleven children, and I’ll drive them all insane. We can take over the whole of this house and all the kids in Golden Square will be afraid of me. Mad Miss O’Callaghan who lives with her sister and the eleven children. What do you think?’ she grinned at Nicky, who gave her a very halfhearted grin back.

Eventually, Connie got off the bed.

‘I’ll have a terrible headache in the morning,’ she said. ‘Please, I beg you, get me out of bed at seven thirty. Mrs Caldwell will be like a weasel if the hen-night people are late in.’ The Principal considered good time-keeping to be on a par with saving the world from destruction.

‘I’ll wake you,’ Nicky said, in such a voice of gloom that Connie spent the next hour in bed berating herself for worrying her sister. Some people got what they wanted in life and some didn’t. it was futile to cry over being a have-not rather than a have. Life
wasn’t
fair. She knew that.

And finally, exhaustion got the better of her and she dozed off.

5
Potatoes

The famine road isn’t far from our house. It’s a stony route to nowhere, built to give men a few coppers when the countryside was riddled with potato blight. Perhaps your generation won’t hear much about the famine – it’s true, we’ve grieved enough about it, but it would be a pity if people forgot the past.

Ireland isn’t the only country to have suffered starvation. Agnes said she heard them talk at the Fitzmaurices about the people out in Africa who have nothing. There are little babies with bellies big from hunger. It must break a mother’s heart to watch a little one starve and not be able to find a crumb to feed it. It would break mine. A bit like the people eating grass here when there was nothing else.

Every time I pass that famine road, I thank the Good Lord for what we’ve got. Thanks for you, Eleanor, thanks for my beloved Joe, thanks for Agnes, the best sister ever. I get on my knees to say thanks for all the gifts I’ve been given. To some people, I haven’t got much, but I know I’ve had the best of life.

Sister Benedict in the convent says not to feel guilty over our luck in life. We all have our crosses to bear,
she says, even though not everyone can see them. All lives have some pain.

This isn’t the story the canon says, mind you. Pain is what you get for sinning, according to him.

The canon has lived a sheltered life and sees every sin as worse than the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah put together. You should hear him at funerals. Most poor corpses are two inches from hellfire, to hear the canon speak. I don’t think he’s in his right mind. There’s no joy in the man. God is kind, my mam used to say. I like to pray to that God and not the canon’s one.

It’s strange that the potato blight killed so many and still we live off the potato. Your father never thinks it’s a proper dinner unless there are potatoes in it. Agnes is the same, for all the fine meals she’s had at the big house.

My mam’s Cally is the best dish you’ll ever have with potatoes. There’s many names for it, Colcannon is one, but in this part of the West of Ireland, we call it Cally. Take some nice floury potatoes and boil them in their skins. When they’re falling apart, tear the skins off, mash them, make a round shape on the plate and then pour the sauce into the middle – melted butter, with a little hot milk and some chopped spring onions. Then eat. When life is falling apart all around you, this is as good a comfort as any, I promise you.

Every morning since she’d arrived in Golden Square a week ago, Megan had woken to the noise of building work coming from across the street. The sounds of drills, diggers and builders laughing were comforting, familiar. There was always somebody building or extending something on her street in London: she was used to it as the background of birdsong and bleating horns from the street below.

So every morning, waking to the building hum, she enjoyed a sliver of time thinking that life was still glorious. She’d stretch, revelling in the feel of her body between the sheets, the body that Rob loved. For one misguided second it seemed that the day lay ahead of her with dazzling brightness: Rob’s smile as he saw her, the director’s smile as he told her that her performance was breathtaking…

Then she’d wake up properly and real life shoved out her fantasy dreamworld. Everyone hated her, her career was over and her heart was broken.

The next step in the morning routine would be awareness of something furry shifting on top of the duvet and then a rough tongue would lick whatever part of Megan was out of the covers.

‘Cici?’ she said the first morning and the shape had wriggled with delight.

Leonardo liked to lie on the floor on the other side of the bed and Megan’s sleepy voice was all he needed to start his welcoming proceedings.

Both dogs would clamber on top of her, licking and wagging their tails eagerly.

After a week, they had the routine down to a fine art. With enough licking and snuffling, they could force Megan out of bed and into the kitchen to give them dog biscuits, and then, once she’d had her morning coffee and cigarette, she might take them for a walk. Nora, of course, would have gone to work.

It was her own fault, she knew, for setting a precedent that first day. But today she had a mission to accomplish on the walk. She’d decided she needed a disguise.

It took ages to clip the leads on because the dogs were dancing about so much, but she wanted to take them with her because she figured she’d looked less strange wearing glasses she didn’t need and a dark bandana to cover her hair if she was hauling two dogs along. Mad people often had dogs. Once out of the door, the dogs pulled towards the garden in the square but Megan dragged them in the other direction.

There was a highly glamorous hairdresser’s about half a mile away, all smoky glass and exquisite hairstylists. She wouldn’t go there. They’d take one look at her and know exactly who she was, and in the fashionable clubs of the city – which they would frequent – the news of both her arrival and her new hair colour would be that night’s gossip. On the west side of the square, however, tucked in front of the Delaney council flats, was Patsy’s Salon, a place that had probably looked old and faded twenty years ago but which she’d noticed the night she’d arrived. She’d found the number in the phone book yesterday but it just rang out. So today she took a chance and went to make an appointment. If Patsy’s was closed, she’d just buy a home dye kit.

Patsy’s was remarkably busy for a place that clearly hadn’t been redecorated for many years. There were three baby-blue basins, all being used, and two women under dryers, talking loudly to each other over the noise.

One girl was delicately putting Velcro rollers into a very elderly lady’s silvery purple hair.

Megan stood for a moment watching.

‘Can I help you?’ said a woman with curled hair an unnatural red, who emerged from the back of the shop.

She had to be fifty, and boasted an hourglass figure all poured into very tight Capri jeans and a red gingham blouse fastened by buttons which looked to be under considerable strain. Megan would not have been surprised if the woman had launched into the chorus of ‘D.I.V.O.R.C.E.’ right there and then.