Moving On

Deal

Deal

DOROTHY’S CONTRACT ARRIVED IN THE POST. TWO copies, one to keep, one to sign and return. Dorothy was to hold back ten per cent of everything Ellen earned, which might yet prove to be nothing at all. She skimmed over the rest before signing and returning the document with a thank-you note.

At Christmas, Iris came home with her boyfriend Ultan, who had graduated to the position of fiancé over the summer. The following week, Henri and Louis, now twenty-seven and twenty-five, visited Dublin for two days, staying in the nearby hotel Ellen had organised, and she replicated Christmas dinner, complete with crackers, in their honour.

In the spring, building started on the Galway house, planning permission having finally been granted. The builder, Fintan, was the husband of one of Frances’ friends: his name and number had been sellotaped to her fridge from the time she’d had a leaking chimney.

‘All done,’ he told Ellen at the end of June, so she got into her car and came for a final inspection. She walked with him through the bigger brighter kitchen, its newly plastered walls waiting for paint, and into the adjoining sunroom with its expanse of glass that looked out on the garden, now featuring a new patio.

They climbed the stairs and turned left at the top, into the new ensuite bedroom. Nice, she thought, to have her own bathroom. She would put Juliet into Frances’ old room, and Grace could take the one that had been Ellen’s.

The garden was smaller, but still big enough. After Fintan left, Ellen planted a camellia outside the sunroom in memory of Frances. ‘Not that I need a reminder,’ she told her aunt later at the cemetery. ‘Not that I’ll ever need one, dear Frances.’

As soon as the school holidays began, Ellen, her daughters and her father piled into his car and made their way back to Galway, armed with brushes and rollers, masking tape and overalls, ground sheets and lots of paint. For a week they worked, Ellen and her father doing the edges and borders of each room while the girls tackled the centre areas with rollers.

This arrangement required covert supervision and furtive redoing, and nightly scrubs in the bath, but she figured it was worth it to give them a sense of ownership of the house. ‘This will be our last move,’ she promised them.

And at the start of August, a week after her fortieth birthday and as they prepared for their move to Galway, she took a call from Dorothy telling her she’d been offered a two-book publishing deal.