Chapter 3
Grace’s life had gone in a different direction from Clara’s when her friend had fallen pregnant not long after they’d started college. Still, despite their differing circumstances, they’d stayed close. For a while there, poor Clara had been Emerald Bay’s poster girl for why you should always use contraceptives. Her friend would just laugh about it and say she was surprised Heneghan’s Pharmacy hadn’t done a Durex window display with her photograph next to it, but Grace knew her well enough to see the finger-pointing had hurt. Clara had come up trumps, though. With the help of her family, she’d finished college, and she was a brilliant single mum to Alfie, even though they’d faced bigger obstacles than most ever would. And now this had happened.
Would she answer? Grace wondered as the phone rang. Clara would be busy and might not have time to talk, but she couldn’t just flick her a text back. Then her friend’s face, more striking than pretty, was filling the screen, her hair a gingery-blonde halo. It was Clara’s eyes that drew you in, though. They were a jewel-like mix of green and blue, depending on what she was wearing. Today, they were blue, and the only clue that an early summer storm had damaged the roof of her house to the point of it being unsafe for her and Alfie to stay there was the dark smudges under them.
‘Hi, Grace. How are you doing?’
Clara sounded weary, and it was so like her to ask how her friend was, even though she was the one sitting amid a disaster zone.
‘I’m not ringing about me.’ Grace squinted past her, trying to get a look at where she was.
‘I’m at Mam and Dad’s.’
‘I thought I recognised that wallpaper. Your text was the first I’ve heard about bad weather.’ She was surprised her mam hadn’t rung or at the very least texted. If not Mam then her sisters, Imogen or Shannon, both of whom were back in Emerald Bay. As soon as she got off her call to Clara she’d be hunting them down.
Her mind began racing before settling on her eldest sister. What about Shannon and James’s cottage? They were renovating, pouring their hearts and souls into giving the old thatched-roof, wattle-and-daub building a new lease of life, and she hoped it hadn’t been damaged.
Clara rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and stifled a yawn. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I’m guessing you’ve been up half the night.’
‘I have. I rang James first thing and told him I’d not be in work for the next few days. He was very good about it.’
Grace wouldn’t have expected anything less. James, Shannon’s American partner, was lovely. He was also Clara’s new boss over at the veterinary clinic in nearby Kilticaneel, having snapped up the practice where Clara worked as a nurse when he heard the longstanding vet was retiring.
‘And your mam and everyone will be busy I expect. My mam said something about hot breakfasts being dished up at the Shamrock for those affected.’
That sounded about right. In good times and bad, the villagers of Emerald Bay gathered at the Shamrock pub. ‘How bad was it?’
‘Biblical.’
‘Seriously?’
‘The stuff of Noah’s Ark. I’ve never known rain like it. It started off with a spit, some thunder and lightning then the heavens opened. It’s only gone off in the last hour.’
Grace pictured it wide-eyed. Storms blew in from the Atlantic, battering the coastal communities from time to time, but this sounded worse than the usual rogue early-summer weather they’d come to expect.
‘I woke up at two in the morning and brought Alfie in with me. Then there was this almighty crack, and when I got up to look, I saw the roof had caved in over the front room and water was pouring in.’
‘Jaysus.’ Grace was shaking her head.
‘I rang my dad, and he came and got us.’
‘Alfie’s OK?’
‘He’s having a nap.’ Clara shrugged. ‘Kids are resilient.’
None more so than little Alfie, who’d been through the wringer in his short life having battled leukaemia.
‘It was a big adventure going to Nana and Granddad’s in the middle of the night.’
‘I guess it would be. And no one’s been hurt, like?’
‘Not that I’ve heard, and I think we would have by now. Dad called in at the pub to find out what was going on, and mine’s not the only house to flood, but everyone’s accounted for. The school’s been badly damaged, too. They’ve lost all their new equipment.’
Grace and her four sisters had grown up above the Shamrock Inn. The pub, run by her mam and dad with help from their nan, Kitty, was the hub of Emerald Bay life. Thinking of them now, keeping the locals fed and watered, something tugged inside Grace. She recognised it as a yearning to be home, helping, and not sitting on her bed feeling useless, but seeing Clara blinking furiously, she focused on her friend once more.
Clara had scrimped to save the deposit for her cottage, which Grace, who lived week to week, was in awe of. Her friend’s motivation was her son – she wanted him to have a forever home where they could make new, happy memories and put the sad times firmly behind them.
She remembered how proud her friend had been when she got the keys. ‘It’s not much,’ she’d said to Grace, ‘but it’s ours, so it might as well be Buckingham Palace so far as I’m concerned.’
Indeed, Clara had turned it into a proper little palace with a DIY attitude and an eye for thrift-shop treasures. It was utterly heart-breaking to think of all her efforts ruined. But positivity was what Clara needed now, so Grace dug deep.
‘Your house will be fixed up in no time, then you and Alfie will be back home,’ Grace reassured her. Poor Clara would be exhausted after the night’s events, and everything always seemed worse when you were sleep-deprived. Although, to be fair, your roof caving in and your house flooding in the middle of the night was pretty bad. At least they’d be able to stay with her mam and dad in the interim. ‘Sure, if I were you, I’d make the most of your mam’s home cooking and some TLC.’ Mrs Casey, like Grace’s own mam and her nan for that matter, firmly believed that food maketh the home.
Clara gave her a watery smile.
‘That’s better. Have you rung your insurance company? You probably want to get on that as soon as possible.’
Her friend’s eyes darted away from the camera, and her bottom lip quivered.
‘Clara?’ Why hadn’t she answered her question?
On receiving no response, Grace’s voice dropped to a desperate whisper. ‘You are insured, aren’t you?’ She willed her friend to nod at least.
But Clara didn’t nod. Instead, she dropped her gaze altogether, and her shoulders began shaking.
If Grace felt sick, she could only imagine how Clara felt. So she offered up soothing platitudes, because telling her she was a complete eejit for being uninsured wouldn’t help.
At last, Clara had calmed down enough to speak, and her explanation gushed like the water had through her roof the previous night.
‘I was insured. Of course I was. But then Christmas was coming.’ She shrugged. ‘Grace, there were so many bills, and they all pinged in one after the other. My inbox was full of the fecking things. I don’t know what happened. It was some sort of aberration. I mean, you know what I’m like. I’m never late with my bills.’
Grace was nodding furiously, because it was true.
‘But this time, I shoved them to one side. I deleted them all. One after the other.’
That was completely out of character, and Grace tried to imagine her sensible friend metaphorically screwing her bills up and tossing them in the bin.
Clara shrugged again. ‘I saw the trash in my email as the too-hard basket. I didn’t want to think about stuff like that. I wanted to think about Alfie and give him the best Christmas he’s ever had. You know yourself what he’s been through. He deserved it.’
She did, but she was still trying to wrap her head around the idea of her friend – who, to be frank, she’d always thought of as the sensible one – doing something so, well, not sensible. It would sound obnoxious if she were to say something like, ‘Clara, Alfie doesn’t need things. He just needs you.’ And, besides, would she have been all smiles as a child if, on Christmas Day, she’d come downstairs to find an empty stocking and smiling parents saying that this year, all she was getting was love? Erm, no, she wouldn’t.
‘So your renewal forms for your insurance were in the too-hard basket?’
‘Don’t say it like that. I feel stupid enough as it is, doing that. And then time just ticked on.’
‘Sorry, but, Clara, you don’t live beyond your means. I do. You don’t even have a Visa card.’
‘Didn’t have. It’s maxed.’
Grace was about to say, ‘You could have asked me for a loan,’ but stopped herself, because that was laughable. She’d nothing to lend. Instead, she asked, ‘Why didn’t you go to your mam and dad for help?’
‘I promised myself when I bought the cottage that I would stand on my own two feet from thereon in.’
Grace knew her friend was proud. It hadn’t been an easy road single parenting, because Alfie’s dad – not that you could call him a dad – was an arse who wasn’t on the scene. There were times you needed to swallow your pride, though.
‘Mam and Dad aren’t rolling in it anyway, and they’ve already done so much to help Alfie and me. Not just money-wise. They were my rocks when he was sick, but he’s my son and my responsibility, not theirs. They plan to see Geordie and the new baby in Australia next winter. I didn’t want to lean on them again, because they deserve more.’
Clara began to cry then. ‘Jaysus, I could lose the house.’
That brought Grace up short. ‘But you can’t. You worked so hard for it.’
‘It’s not habitable. The only way I can see out of this mess is to borrow the money for the repairs then sell it to repay that loan.’
Grace shook her head. ‘No. There must be another way.’
‘I’m not asking anyone for money.’
‘But, Clara—’
‘Grace, I’ve been awake all night. There’s no other way out of this mess.’
‘But have you told them? Your mam and dad.’
Clara shook her head. ‘I don’t know how to.’
‘Just tell them what you told me.’
‘They’re going to be so disappointed in me, though, and then they’ll want to help. I’m done with charity. I mean it. This is my mess.’
‘You still have to tell them. They love you, and you’ll probably have to stay with them for a while.’
Clara groaned. ‘Please don’t remind me. I love them too, but you know yourself, as soon as you’re back under your parents’ roof, they revert to being your mam and dad and treating you like you’re ten years old again.’
Grace did know. ‘I wish there was something I could do.’
‘Short of stumping up thousands of pounds, which I wouldn’t take off you even if you had it, there’s not. Listen, I better go. Alfie’s calling out.’
‘OK, well, hug him from his Aunty Grace and say hello to your mam and dad from me, too. And, Clara?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Everything will work out OK.’
The despondent look on her friend’s face broke Grace’s heart. ‘I hope so. Thanks for letting me offload.’
‘That’s what I’m here for.’
It didn’t feel enough, though, Grace thought. Not nearly enough.