Chapter 16
SIX DAYS INTO JUNE, SHORTLY BEFORE FOUR O’CLOCK in the afternoon, there was a tap on the door that connected the apartment to the main house.
‘All done,’ Brendan said.
‘Finished?’
‘Finished.’
It wasn’t unexpected. The painters had been working on the outside for the past few days, their final task, and Lydia had heard the metallic clatters and bangs earlier that had signalled the dismantling of their scaffolding.
Still, to have the work completed was quite momentous, and it brought with it a pang that was not unexpected either.
Her and Damien’s dream finally realised – except that only she was here to witness it.
No celebrating, no new beginnings, just a sad closure.
But Brendan must have his moment. ‘Will you show me around?’
‘I will.’
The workmen were waiting in the hall to say goodbye. She gave them each an envelope into which she’d slipped a fifty-euro note a few days ago, and thanked them for all their labour.
Her overriding sense, as she walked with Brendan through the downstairs areas, was that it wasn’t finished, not in the real sense.
The floors were down, the walls and ceilings painted throughout, sockets in place, power and water connected.
Brendan and his team had taken things as far as they could, but with no appliances chosen for them to install, not even a sink in the kitchen, it felt horribly .
. . abandoned, before it had even been lived in.
‘Lovely,’ she said, and it would be, once whoever bought it filled in all the gaps.
Climbing the stairs to the first floor, she remembered Damien tossing a coin to decide the colour of the runner. She wondered what the new owners would choose. Maybe they’d opt to leave the stairs bare.
At the top she recalled their plan to hang mistletoe from the ceiling there every December, where guests couldn’t avoid it on the way to their rooms. Ambushed by mistletoe, Damien had said. By God, we’ll force them to kiss.
‘You OK?’ Brendan enquired, and she summoned a bright smile and told him yes, she was fine, and they walked through the bedrooms and looked into the ensuites – more pipes with nothing to attach to – and she said it was all great, and he’d done a wonderful job.
‘You don’t want to choose the toilets and showers and that?’ he asked. ‘And sinks for the kitchen? I could get Joseph to come back and install them. You’d have a better finish for when you sell it.’
Lydia shook her head. ‘I have no appetite for it, Brendan.’ She couldn’t bring herself to buy things for a house she was leaving in a few weeks, even if it meant the selling price would be lower without them. A few sinks and toilets couldn’t make that much difference, could they?
They stood at the window of what was to have been the guest lounge, its shelved alcove never to be filled now with their selection of books – they’d planned to hunt down old volumes in secondhand shops and house auctions – and looked out at the view Lydia had last seen with Damien by her side.
The sea blurred into the sky, and she blinked hard.
‘Toughest job I’ve ever done,’ Brendan said, so quietly she hardly made it out, even though he was right there. Without turning her head she found his arm and tucked her hand around it, and they stood close together in front of the magnificent view, lost in their joint sadness.
Afterwards they walked out to the gateway and turned back to take in the facade without the scaffolding, and she saw that the soft shade Marian had suggested for the walls, between grey and green, had been the perfect choice. Tasteful, she thought. Classy. He would have loved it.
‘Send me your last bill,’ she told Brendan, but he shook his head.
‘Hang on to it for the moment,’ he said. ‘You can pay me when you sell the house. You might need it between this and then. Just . . . with the baby and everything.’
He really was the kindest man. He would make the best grandfather for her daughter.
Her yoga classes had been due to finish at the end of the week, but in response to the demands of her students – You’re going to be here anyway, they’d said – she’d agreed to continue on a week-by-week basis. She’d pushed her departure date as far as she dared, to the last day of July.
Not a single one of her students had dropped out during the eight weeks of classes. They’d all keep coming if she stayed. Her studio could be in use all year round. She tried not to think about that.
The kittens had all been rehomed, with Andrew taking two as promised, and Marian, Susan and Greta claiming the others.
The four new owners had come on different days, and Lydia had found it hard to see the little family diminish, her head knowing she was doing the right thing, but her heart wanting to keep them all.
Andrew had been the last to collect his. One of each, Lydia had said, just like you ordered, and he’d tucked them into the new carrier he’d brought along.
You’re sorry to see them go, he’d said.
I’ll miss them, she’d admitted, and he’d told her she’d be welcome to visit them anytime, which was nice of him. He hadn’t spoken again of her admission that she wished to stay here. He’d probably forgotten about it.
The mother cat, newly spayed thanks to Greta, who’d done the vet drop-off and pick-up, had roamed the garden afterwards, mewing mournfully, hunting for her babies in the bushes and behind the trees, making Lydia feel like a monster.
Bad enough that she was about to abandon the animal after gaining her trust; now she had the added guilt of giving away her entire family.
She’ll be fine, Gareth told her. They forget their kittens very quickly – and she’ll have her fill of shrews and field mice here after you’ve gone. But Lydia had known the remorse would follow her all the way to Dublin, and she’d lined the box with fresh newspaper and left it in the shed.
Her pregnancy was advancing. Her due date, the eighteenth of September, was just over fourteen weeks away now, a month to the day before what would have been Damien’s thirty-fifth birthday. If she could, Lydia planned to bring her daughter back to the village on that day.
First babies are always late, Marian had told her. Jack was ten days over – I was the size of an elephant, and as cross as a weasel. Tom was on the point of divorcing me.
When her changing shape began to make her clothes feel uncomfortably snug, Lydia took to wearing Damien’s shirts over her stretchy yoga pants, until a box of maternity clothes arrived unexpectedly, donated by a few of her friends. Your turn! the accompanying note read, signed by everyone.
She lifted out the tunics, the cleverly draped dresses and elasticated-waist trousers and skirts.
There was a time when every item in her wardrobe would have been the latest fashion: now keeping up with the trends meant nothing to her.
She hadn’t been in a clothes shop in months, and didn’t miss them.
She still went to bed every night in one of Damien’s T-shirts. They’d long since lost his scent, but wearing something that had also touched his skin offered bittersweet comfort. She’d tried to imagine his arms around her at night, but that had hurt too much, so she’d stopped.
Even after her morning sickness had ebbed, her aversion to coffee hadn’t: in its place she drank ginger tea, and had grown fond of it.
Oddly, she’d also developed a taste for liquorice, something that had never interested her before, and she now preferred dark chocolate to milk, which was just plain weird.
She’d reported crampy twinges at the sides of her abdomen to Doctor Avril, who had reassured her. They’re perfectly normal, just your ligaments complaining a bit as they stretch. You’re very fit, she’d added, with all your yoga and cycling. You’re sailing through this pregnancy.
It didn’t always feel like sailing to Lydia.
Her head swam if she stood up too quickly.
Her back ached when she was tired, which was a lot of the time.
She demonstrated less in the yoga classes, finding volunteers instead among the students, and her own sessions were decidedly less spirited than they had been.
She needed the loo more frequently, especially at night. Her ankles had swollen and she’d gone up two bra sizes, which she didn’t exactly welcome. She’d always been perfectly happy with her small breasts, and Damien had never complained.
The baby movements had increased, as everyone had told her they would. She imagined her daughter tumbling about the womb like the kittens had in their enclosure, only not quite so energetically. They had frequent one-way conversations.
Let me tell you about your father, Lydia would say, or I fancy a cheese omelette tonight – what about you? or Will we try that jigsaw again, you and me?
She’d had a second scan in May. Now it was easy to pick out the limbs, tiny feet tucked up, a thumb going towards a mouth, the overall curled shape of her child. All was well, she was told. Everything fine.
Marian had passed on a pregnancy pillow. I found it a godsend in the last few weeks, she’d said, when no position was comfortable. You mightn’t need it yet, but you will.
‘I’m coming down again,’ Brona said, when Lydia rang to report that the renovations were finished. ‘I want to see the house all shiny. Is it fabulous?’
‘It is – or it will be, when it’s furnished.’
‘Will you find it hard to part with it?’
Lydia could at least be honest about this. ‘I’m dreading it,’ she admitted. ‘I’m sure it’ll be easier once I’m back in Dublin, but right now I hate the thought of leaving.’
‘Oh, poor Liddy. I didn’t realise you felt that strongly about it.’
‘It’s grown on me.’
Her reluctance to let go was tied up with Damien, of course – but it was also because of the people she’d met here, who’d held her up when she’d been unable to see the way forward, and who’d supported her every step of the way since then.
‘I’ll organise a coffee morning when you’re back,’ Brona promised, ‘or a welcome home dinner, if I can get a date when everyone’s free, and of course we’ll be doing a baby shower. How’s that bump coming along?’
And then, a week or so after the work had finished on Chance House, while Lydia was still enjoying the novelty of no more power tools, the postman arrived with a letter.