Chapter 10
Grace carried her bag down the steps, thanking the driver as she got off the bus, and stood on the tarmac, trying not to inhale diesel fumes as she pulled the handle of her case up. The sky was clear here, too, but there was a bite in that wind, and her hair whipped about her face as she crossed the asphalt.
Liam Kelly would have been easy enough to spot in his wee-coloured Hilux, but he’d gone the extra mile and was half out of the cab, waving and tooting his horn. Galway’s bus station was hardly on par with, say, Mumbai’s train station, and given there was only a handful of other parked vehicles waiting to pick up the trickle of passengers, there was no chance she’d miss him. Under normal circumstances, his exuberance would have made her smile, but she was too keyed up for that, having decided to tell him what was bottled up inside her on the ride home. It was better to come clean than to stew on it, which would be a waste of energy, because her dad was too observant for that. He’d soon pick up that something was on her mind and wheedle it out of her.
‘How’re you, Dad?’ Grace wrestled with her case, which had the speed wobbles, and righting it took the remaining few steps to where Liam had now got out of his vehicle to greet her properly.
‘You’d no trouble spotting me then?’
‘Cop yourself on, Dad – I could hardly miss you,’ Grace replied with a grin, abandoning her case to enter his open arms.
‘Glad to hear it.’
She could feel his words vibrating through his sweater, and he smelled of the fabric softener their mam used.
‘Because that’s the whole point of the yellow wagon, Penny. Visibility. It’s key to keeping safe on the roads.’
His pet name for her was short for pennywort, a Connemara wildflower. Amateur botany might be an unusual hobby for a publican, but Grace knew he enjoyed the solitude of the countryside. It was his way of decompressing, and as she grew older, she understood life probably hadn’t always been easy for her dad as the only male in a household of seven women. He’d a wildflower name for each of his five girls, and while Grace would have preferred to have been bestowed with Imogen’s Rose after the guelder rose, Penny she was.
At least he’d dropped the wort, she thought, her cheek still pressed against the scratchy sweater as he asked, ‘Was it a good journey, then? The driver wasn’t after being lead-footed, I hope, because you’re five minutes ahead of your ETA.’
That saw Grace grin again, because she was sure her dad was a frustrated long-haul truck driver who would have been right at home in the US, crossing State lines in his big yellow rig while communicating with his little buddies on the CB, letting them know his ETA. She gave a muffled reply that the driver had adhered to the speed limit, aware of how he worried when any of his girls were travelling home. It was nice to be loved.
He patted her back, and before he could release her, Grace wrapped her arms tighter around his waist, burrowing in and making the most of the cuddle. She’d always felt the strength in her dad’s hugs. The fierce love he had for his family.
She might not get another one for a while, because this was the calm before the storm, and she was clinging on for all her worth.
‘Is there something you’re wanting to tell me, Grace? Has something happened in London? Not that you need a reason to come home and see your family, but it did come out the blue, like.’
‘It’s Clara that’s brought me home, Dad.’ Grace didn’t move as she confided her friend’s situation and her proposed solution, feeling a stab of disloyalty over disclosing such personal information, but it was for the greater good.
‘My flatmate Chris sings in a band.’ Once again, she didn’t drop his surname, rushing on instead. ‘They’ve agreed to play, and Chris’s organising the rest of the acts, because he knows loads of people in the music biz. We think the festival should raise enough money to help Clara, replace the damaged equipment at the school, and donate to the children’s hospital.’
A strong sense of déjà vu hit her, because the last time she’d been talking about Clara with her dad was when she’d found out Alfie was sick. She remembered what he’d said to her.
All you can do is be a friend to her, Grace. Listen to her when she needs to talk and have faith. I’m a big believer in the power of positive thought.
This time he was telling her he was proud of her for wanting to help her friend. That made what she had to tell him about having kept house-sharing with Chris from him – from all her family – that much harder. She tried to make the words come, but they stuck in her throat, and Grace gave her dad’s bear-like frame one last squeeze before wriggling free. ‘C’mon, let’s get on the road. I’m gasping for a cup of tea, so I am.’
The concern marking Liam’s face softened, and blue eyes so like his youngest two daughters and inherited from his mam, Kitty Kelly, twinkled. ‘Well now, it’s your lucky day, because your nan’s after baking a batch of shortbread in your honour. And, if you behave yourself, she might even let you have a piece before your dinner.’
That’s when Grace noticed the crumbs on his sweater and, gesturing to them, said, ‘You’ve already partaken, I see.’
Liam looked coy. ‘Not a word to your mam, do you hear me? Your nan gave me a piece for the road, like.’
Grace laughed. Her mam had made it her mission to get her husband to drop the extra pounds he was carting about these days. It was a losing battle, however, with Nan insistent on slipping her son treats.
Exactly who was in charge of the Kelly kitchen was a good-natured bone of contention between Nora and Kitty Kelly. Beneath their banter, though, the two women rubbed along well, and between them, the Kelly kitchen was always filled with delicious aromas and the promise of something hot and tasty, fresh from the oven. They’d no choice but to get on well, given they’d lived together at the Shamrock since Liam and Nora were first married. Initially, the young couple had helped Kitty and Finbar with the running of the pub, but when Finbar Kelly passed away, Liam had taken charge.
Now, at the thought of her nan’s not-too-sweet but rich and buttery shortbread, Grace wished she could click her fingers and magic herself home. Instead, she adopted a plummy accent and ordered, ‘Home, Jeeves.’
‘Cheeky, madam,’ Liam said, laughing as he picked up her case with an exaggerated groan and hefted it in the back seat. He made his usual remarks about her having packed bricks in it as she climbed into the passenger seat and buckled up.
‘Right, let’s get this show on the road.’ Liam rubbed his hands together as he clambered behind the wheel.
Grace studied her dad’s profile as he pulled his seat belt across and gunned the engine. He was in good form, and there was no time like the present. She breathed deeply and moistened her lips. ‘Uh, Dad?’
Liam was already reversing out of the space. ‘Hmm?’ He was checking over his shoulder out of habit, given he had a reversing camera. Then Grace startled as his hand and foot simultaneously slammed on the horn and brake.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, would you look where you’re going!’
The words she’d been about to say had dried in her throat as she twisted round to see what had rattled him.
A string bean in running gear was jogging past, hand raised in an apologetic acknowledgement that he’d narrowly missed being knocked down by a wee-coloured Hilux.
Liam glared at the runner, unappeased. ‘You young wans with those ear pod thing-me bobs permanently jammed in…’ He shook his head, easing his foot off the brake and continuing to pull out, muttering about liabilities, menaces and hazards.
Only once they’d left the station behind and were on the main road heading away from the city did he turn to his daughter and ask, ‘You were going to say something before Usain Bolt back there nearly met his maker.’
Grace opened her mouth to speak just as her father braked hard again, sending her lurching forward. The lights suddenly changed on him, and she jolted forward and back. It was like being in Rally Ireland! She decided to wait until they were on the open road without joggers or traffic-light distractions. Instead of fessing up about Chris, Grace relayed the conversation she’d tuned into on the bus during the latter half of the journey. It had begun with the word ‘affair’ and had seen her eyes ping open and her ears prick up.
The voice, she told her dad, had come from the seat behind her, and it had sounded aghast. She’d seen the two middle-aged women, laden down with clinking duty-free bags, plop down behind her earlier, and curiosity prickled. They were too alike not to be sisters, but which one’s husband was playing away? she’d wondered.
Grace had sat up a little straighter in her seat and soon gleaned it was neither of the women’s spouses but rather their niece Fidelma’s slimy-arsed (their words, not hers) other half, Gerard, who was in bother. He was suspected of carrying on with the young lass who worked at the Circle K petrol station where the couple always filled up. Apparently, Fidelma had grown suspicious when she’d noticed the length of time it took her husband to pay and how the petrol receipts never included the hotdog he always came back with.
‘You know, the real American-style ones with the long sausage in the bun, like,’ one of the women had supplied.
‘With the mustard and the sauce. I prefer a sausage in bread, me.’
‘With onions.’
‘Oh yes, with the onions. It’s the smell, like.’
‘You can’t beat the smell of frying onions.’
Her dad interrupted Grace’s story to agree with the sentiment.
‘I was tempted to agree with them, too.’
‘What did they say next, after they moved on from sausages and onion, like?’
‘And bread – don’t forget the bread.’
‘I thought it was a bun?’
‘It was both.’ Grace parroted the chatter that had come from the seat behind her.
‘But Fidelma said Gerard was always munching on one of the American hotdogs when he’d finally reappear, having taken forever to pay for the petrol, and she said he’d be whistling for the rest of the day.’
There’d been a tutting, and Grace had envisaged the two women shaking their heads.
‘The hotdogs won’t be doing him any favours. Did you notice he’s starting with the middle-aged spread?’
‘And him not thirty yet. He has the cholesterol problems, too. Fidelma says she’s after spending a fortune on fancy margarines. Mark my words, yer Circle K wan will soon catch on it’s no prize she’s after giving the free hotdogs too.’
There had been a lull in the conversation then, but it didn’t last long.
‘What was it he was after whistling?’
‘I don’t think he was whistling a tune, like. I think it was more a cock-of-the-walk whistle.’ Grace turned to her dad. ‘Do you know what a cock-of-the-walk whistle sounds like? I never heard a live demonstration, because their conversation moved on to anecdotes from their week in Tenerife.’ She laid her hand on her chest and, in a dramatic voice, said, ‘I’ve to live out the rest of my days never knowing whether Fidelma did confront the cheating arse she was married to and “shove one of those frankfurter sausages where the sun don’t shine”.’
Liam chortled. ‘From what you’re after telling me, I’d say your man Gerard had better watch out, or one of his wife’s aunts will do it for her!’
Grace laughed back, but her heart wasn’t in it. She knew she’d only delayed the inevitable.