Chapter Four
Callum keeps his word.
Within three days, all heavy traffic by my house stops.
No more beeping, no more thundering, no more rumbling engines or yelling voices.
It just stops. And I know it because one morning I wake up and it isn’t even morning.
It’s sometime after twelve and I slept the deepest sleep I’ve had in months.
By the end of the next week, I’m practically back to normal.
Better than normal. Because I’ve never felt so alive.
So energized. It’s like a whole new, eight-hours’-rest-a-night world and I take full advantage of it, putting a bunch of tasks and chores into motion that I immediately regret a few hours later when I have to see them through.
“Do you want the bad news?”
“You mean first?”
“What?”
I glance at Frank, who’s standing beside me with his hands on his hips.
We’re at the bottom of my garden, half-hidden among the weeds as both of us squint in the mid-morning sunshine.
Frank’s always been old to me. I guess everyone looks old when you’re a kid, but I swear the man hasn’t aged a bit in the last twenty years.
Even now with his neat gray beard and his ruddy cheeks, reddened from broken capillaries and an apathy for sunscreen, I have no idea how long he has been on this green earth.
Sixty years? Seventy? He could tell me he was thirty-eight, and I’d just have to accept it.
I like that about him. His consistency. Makes me trust him more.
Even if the look on his face right now isn’t exactly filling me with confidence.
“You’re supposed to say, do you want the bad news or the good news first,” I tell him.
“There is no good news,” he says bluntly. “You’re going to need to cut it down.”
“The branch?”
“The tree, Katie.”
“The tree ?” I stare up at my beloved hawthorn, which isn’t really that beloved but is still a pretty decent tree and one that I suddenly feel incredibly attached to. “According to who?”
“Me,” Frank says. “The person you asked to look at it.”
“But you’re meant to tell me it’s okay.”
He knocks on the trunk, producing a hollow thudding sound. “It’s not okay; it’s dead.”
“It’s sleeping,” I protest. “Trees sleep in the winter.”
“It’s April, your bark is peeling, and you’ve got no buds.”
“But—”
“Dead.”
He kicks the base of it for good measure and I scowl. But I know he’s right. It’s why I asked him to come up here in the first place.
“So now what?” I ask.
“Now you get a professional out to take a look and get it sorted.”
I make a face, not even wanting to think about the cost. “Can’t you do it? Since, technically, you’ve already had a look?”
He shakes his head. “You’re better off getting the right person, but I’ll help you negotiate. You’d want to do it soon, though. Along with everything else.” He glances around the garden. “You could hide a family of five out there and you’d never know it.”
“That’s a very specific number. Are you trying to tell me something?”
He gives me a look, one that softens when I smile at him. “If you need help, you just ask for it. You know that, right?”
“I do.” And Frank isn’t wrong. The place is a mess. I know it’s a mess. An acre of land surrounds the house and all of it is overgrown and wild. And not in the trendy, biodiverse way. More like a passing murderer might think this is a great place to hide a body.
“It will get dangerous for her,” Frank says, nodding toward the house. “I’ve almost tripped myself once or twice since I arrived.”
“I know.” I sigh, peering up at the tree.
“I need to put a new ramp in at the front door. And then we need to get the bathroom done. Then we’ll do the tree.
Then the garden.” And everything else. Just the thought of it all has me wincing.
I feel like as soon as I tick one thing off the list, another three more expensive tasks get added to the bottom.
Whatever I manage to save one month gets spent the next, and I can barely keep up with it all.
“Thanks for coming out,” I say, walking him back to his car. “I appreciate it.”
“I’m just glad I was able to make it. They’ve blocked off the entire road by Danny’s farm.”
“I saw.”
“You know, I never really bought into Anushka’s whole campaign.
But it’s all getting a bit too much. Like one day, I’m going to wake up and won’t even recognize this place.
” He gives me a fatherly pat on the shoulder.
“You take care of yourself now. You can’t look after Maeve if you don’t look after you first.”
“I’ll do my best,” I promise, and stand in the driveway as he reverses down the lane before I turn back to my somehow still-standing house.
We live in a cottage.
When people think of cottages, they tend to picture cute, storybook places, but having lived in one all my life, I can confidently say that all they are is cramped and dark with little to no storage space.
I toyed with the idea of renovating it a few years ago, figuring I’d be able to apply for a few grants to cover most of it.
I spent days looking up websites before phoning a bunch of men who eventually came in their vans and spoke in loud voices while they knocked on walls, held up little sticks, and announced they were doing “readings.” They all said the same thing.
Tear it down, start again and pay a lot of money to do it.
I gave up after that, doing my best to paint over moldy ceilings and fix cracked floor tiles as and when I had time.
It’s the front step that’s the biggest problem now.
It’s getting a little steep for Granny since she had her fall, and while we’ve put in a makeshift ramp, we need to get something more permanent.
I make a mental note to look into it as I step inside, almost tripping over Plankton, who has chosen to lie right in front of the door.
“Helpful,” I tell him, as he gives me a wounded look.
The postman must have come sometime in the last few minutes as a few letters lie scattered around him.
A postcard, some bills, and another expensive-looking leaflet from Glenmill to add to our collection.
Or at least to the recycling. I skim through it, eyeing the blond man I’d met last week smiling on the cover.
Jack Doyle, Managing Director.
Dickhead of the century.
“Granny?”
“Who’s that?” an irritated voice calls from my right.
“Who do you think?” I toe off my sneakers, leaving them by the stairs as I crumple the brochure into a ball, but instead of finding Granny in her usual chair, I open the door to the living room to see her on her hands and knees, surrounded by boxes and scattered paper.
“What happened ?” I ask, horrified.
“None of your business. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine; you’re on the ground.” I kneel beside her, helping her to her feet. “Did you fall again?”
“I didn’t fall; everything else fell.”
I ease her onto the couch and grab a blanket for her lap before turning to scoop up the books and photographs strewn across the rug.
“What is all this crap?”
“A little respect, please, Katie. You’re referring to my lifetime of memories.”
“I’m referring to the crap all over the floor. What were you doing?”
“Looking for one of my books,” Granny grumbles, and I know by her tone she’s embarrassed that I found her like this. “ The Prince’s Conquest . There’s a man on the cover.”
“All your books have men on the covers.” Usually in some state of undress. “Your friend Nancy sent you a postcard,” I add, handing her the letter from the hall.
“Nancy died three years ago.”
“No, Mary died three years ago. Nancy lives in Vancouver. And she sent you a postcard. You should stay in touch with your friends.”
“Why?” She gives it a cursory glance before putting it on the table beside her. “It’s not like they’ll be alive for much longer. Pass me those.”
I hand over a couple of books and settle beside her to sort through the photographs.
We’ve got mountains of them around the house, mostly in boxes that neither of us can bear to get rid of.
I’m familiar with most, but these ones are older and seem to span a few decades, judging by their faded colors.
“I don’t think I’ve seen these before,” I say, examining them.
“You have. But not for a few years. I used to give them to you when you were younger when I wanted you to be quiet.”
“You did?”
She nods, flipping through one of the books. “I told you there was a ghost in one of them. You’d spend hours looking at them.”
Ah, yes, my ghost phase.
I sit back on my heels, looking through the box with renewed interest.
“Is this you?” I ask, holding up a black and white picture of a grinning young woman.
“Should be,” Granny says, peering at it. “Ugly little thing, wasn’t I?”
“Would you stop!” I laugh. “You’re beautiful.”
“And you’re a liar. But that’s alright. It didn’t stop your grandfather from falling in love with me. I had other attributes.”
“Your charming personality?”
“That,” she says. “And I was very loose.”
I pretend not to hear her, pausing on the next picture in the pile. It’s one of the newer ones, a snap of my mother sitting draped over my father’s lap. They’re both wearing Santa hats and looking more than a little tipsy as they stare into each other’s eyes, sharing a smile.
My parents died in a car accident when I was five. They were returning from visiting friends in Dublin when a speeding driver hit them on the wrong side of the motorway.
My mother’s grandparents lived in Wales and offered to take me in, but everyone agreed not to uproot me any further, so I went to Granny, moving into her small cottage in a village no one had heard of.
Despite all the odds, it kind of worked.