The Boatman's Wife(11)

‘Lily,’ she whispered, walking towards her, reaching out her hands. ‘Oh, Lily.’

‘No,’ Lily hissed, feeling as if she would fall down, never to get up again. She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to look at her mother. Hunted her eyes for hope.

‘I’m so sorry, honey,’ her mother said, her eyes full of tears, her face gaunt.

‘No!’ she said, barging past her mom.

‘Lily, come back!’ Her mom followed her, pulling on her arm.

Lily spun around. ‘They can’t stop looking! He could still be out there, Mom. Clinging on.’

Her mom shook her head. ‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘They’re certain of it. I’m sorry.’

The pain inside Lily’s chest was so intense, she thought she might stop breathing. This wasn’t happening to her. Connor was only twenty-four. She was almost twenty-five. They were going to have lots of babies. They were going to share their whole lives together. This couldn’t be the end.

Lily pulled away from her mom. Part of her knew she should go see her father, but she couldn’t bear to be in the hospital one more minute. She ran back down the corridor, her mom calling after her, and outside into the wild darkness. The wind pushed and pulled her across the parking lot, and she kept running. Not thinking where she was going. Just following a narrow residential road as it wove through the tight pine trees. No one was about. Of course not: most sensible people were inside, snug and safe, watching the wildness outside. She ran on until she saw signs for Thomas Point Beach, and then just followed them all the way to the ocean.

The waves unfurled and crashed upon the shore, and the rain beat into her face, mixing with her tears. She fell to her knees on the wet sand and rough shingle, not caring as it cut through her jeans, and she howled. How could she live her life without Connor?





Chapter Four





Mullaghmore, 8th July 1992





So many times, she and Brendan had met in secret over the years. They used to go to the graveyard, where her daddy had been buried. Niamh had never liked meeting there. She felt the ghosts of all the dead souls, particularly her father, watching her. Besides, it made more sense to meet away from town, out on the bogs they both knew so well, or in the enclaves of nearby woodland. The bog was a territory which could be dangerous to a stranger who didn’t know how to negotiate the lurking sink holes. Which could suck you into their black depths, as if they were quicksand.

Niamh pulled her bicycle off the road and hid it in the hedgerow, pushing it in as deep as she could without cutting her hands to shreds. It had begun to rain lightly as she crossed the fields, lacing her eyelashes with tiny drops, misting up her vision. But she could have her eyes closed and she’d know the way. Through the opening into the tight-knit spruce wood, then she kept on walking up and down root-exposed hollows until she saw the still silhouette of her cousin squatting at the base of a big lime tree, and smelt the scent of his lit cigarette wafting towards her.

‘I can’t stay long,’ she said, as they hugged each other. ‘I’ve to be in work in less than an hour.’

‘Sure, old Murphy isn’t going to sack you if you’re a few minutes late opening up.’ Brendan gave her a mocking look.

He never took her job seriously. She was not so important. He always made that clear, no matter what she did.

‘Daddy says hello,’ Brendan said to her, then stood up and began to walk fast through the woods. She followed him, almost breaking into a run to keep up. This was how it always went. Niamh following Brendan, blindly, without question.

The bond between them was deep. He was family, but not so close it was wrong. Their fathers were first cousins. Brendan had always been there for her. She would trust him with her life. At times, he almost felt like an extension of herself.

Although Brendan had never gone to college, barely finished school, he had been the greatest teacher of her life. Showing her and naming all the edible and poisonous plants of the woodlands, teaching her how to survive outside in the wilderness while they camped during the summer months of her teenage years. Most of all, Brendan had taught her about belief. Not the Catholic kind, which had always rung fake and hollow for Niamh. How she had hated being brought on Saturday afternoons to sit in the tiny confessional box on the other side from Father O’Donovan. Forced to share her deepest secrets with the old man, who had sounded like he didn’t care one bit about what she was thinking or feeling, let alone about advising her on it. How relieved she’d been when one Saturday afternoon, just a few months after her father had died, her mam had marched into the church with her shopping basket hooked on her arm, and yanked Niamh out of the pew. All Niamh’s school peers had looked at her mother in awe as she swore inside the church.

‘By Jaysus, Niamh, I’ll not have you in that box with the old pervert,’ she’d said, dragging Niamh out of the church.

When Niamh had asked her mam to explain herself, she’d only shaken her head, and said she’d been told something about Father O’Donovan, and that it wasn’t for a young girl’s ears but there was no way she or Niamh would ever set foot in their parish church again.

Of course, Niamh had heard all the gossip at school about what Father O’Donovan had been up to. She’d been delighted at first that she no longer had to go to church every week, but thought it very strange no one else in Mullaghmore ostracised Father O’Donovan, and that the bishop did nothing about removing him. When she asked her classmates, they just shrugged, said their parents still wanted them to go to church, and they were all for an easy life. Their families had always gone to church every week, for decades, and then there were weddings, funerals and First Communions. These were important events. They couldn’t just ban Father O’Donovan. But that was exactly what Niamh and her mam did. It set them apart from everyone in Mullaghmore, as if it wasn’t already bad enough because her mam was a widow.