Chapter 16
After they left the Christmas tree farm, Lucy drove back down the headland towards the village.
Dusk was already falling and the sea appeared inky in the half-light.
Conor Flynn, one of the Flynn sons, had helped them to tie the tree onto the roof of her car, as it wouldn’t fit into her tiny boot.
As they came into the village, Christmas lights were strung gaily between lamp posts and even the old shipwreck had been decorated.
A huge fir tree had been erected and a timber crib had been installed in the churchyard.
‘The village looks so pretty at Christmas time,’ Faith said as Lucy parked outside The Anchor and silenced the engine.
Madeleine had wanted to go straight home.
The girls knew she was itching to get back to her laptop, but they had insisted they go for a glass of mulled wine, in honour of Elizabeth as was their Christmas tradition.
They got out of the car and went inside to the dim interior of the pub.
There were a few other customers, and the soft murmur of chatter filled the air.
Lanterns aglow with tealights stood on each table, giving the place a warm, cosy feel.
The peaty smell of the turf fire scented the air.
They went up to the counter and greeted Jim, the owner.
His sheepdog Patch was asleep in his usual spot in front of the hearth.
He would usually amble over to greet customers, but he was getting elderly now and clearly didn’t hear them come in.
They chatted politely with Jim for a few minutes before ordering a mulled wine for Madeleine and Faith.
Lucy stuck to a soft drink because she was driving.
They sat in a snug and raised their glasses.
‘To Elizabeth,’ they chorused. Faith took a sip of the heavenly mulled wine, savouring the Christmassy taste of star anise and cinnamon.
‘You’re very quiet – are you okay?’ Lucy asked after a beat.
‘Yeah, I just didn’t expect to see Jack again after all this time,’ Faith replied sombrely.
‘He’s still as handsome as ever,’ Lucy quipped. ‘And his little girl is adorable.’
‘His wife is beautiful too,’ Faith muttered churlishly, unable to help herself. Seeing Jack with his perfect family had stung, and she couldn’t pretend otherwise.
‘You were like a lovesick teenager back there,’ Lucy teased.
‘I know,’ Faith groaned. ‘I can’t believe he still has that effect on me again after all this time.’
‘Who’s Jack?’ Madeleine asked.
‘The guy we met at the Christmas tree farm,’ Lucy reminded her. ‘He and Faith went out together for a while when we were younger.’
Faith was instantly transported back to all the glorious summer evenings they had spent on the beach, the group of friends gathered around a driftwood campfire.
The swell and break of the waves was their soothing soundtrack, the infinite sky studded with jewel-like stars their blanket.
She remembered how it felt to be in his arms: safe, secure and warm, like it was the only place she needed to be.
How innocent she had been to believe that those days would never end.
They had been some of the happiest, most carefree days of her life.
Life had been simple: she loved Jack and he loved her.
‘What’s the big deal?’ Madeleine asked in confusion. ‘That was a long time ago. Why would it bother you to bump into him after all this time?’
‘He was my first love,’ Faith admitted wistfully.
Madeleine rolled her eyes dismissively. ‘You’re thirty-two years of age.’
‘Come on, Mum.’ Lucy was growing weary of their mother’s insensitivity. She knew how much her sister had loved Jack and how devastated she had been by their break-up; of course it had been a shock for Faith seeing him today, married with a child. ‘We never forget our first love.’
‘So why did you break up?’ Madeleine asked. She took a sip of her wine and put the glass on the table again.
‘Don’t you remember? I wanted to move to Inishbeg Cove to give it a go with Jack, but you wouldn’t entertain it, and long distance was never going to work when we were both teenagers living on opposites sides of the country.’
‘I vaguely recall it now,’ Madeleine admitted. ‘You wanted to skip university to relocate here. I thought you’d lost your mind. I never realised it was because you had a boyfriend. Was Jack the reason you wanted to move to the village?’
Faith nodded. She had wanted to take a year out – a gap year of sorts – to give her blossoming relationship with Jack a chance to develop, and so she could decide what she wanted to do after school.
Elizabeth had offered to let Faith stay with her in her cottage until she figured things out, but Madeleine had not agreed.
In fact, she’d had a very tense argument with Elizabeth, who she saw as encouraging Faith’s notions.
Madeleine had taken a hard line and insisted that there would be no gap year – that Faith was coming home to go to university and would not waste her life in a tiny village for the sake of a silly crush.
‘I really loved him. I wanted to make it work.’
Madeleine shook her head at the memory. ‘I still stand by my decision. I did what I thought was right. You were seventeen years old. I couldn’t let you jeopardise your education for a teenage romance. Anyway, you were far too young. It clearly wasn’t meant to be.’
‘Well, it didn’t make a difference to my education because I dropped out of uni anyway,’ Faith goaded.
Faith had followed her mother’s wishes and studied accountancy, which she deemed a safe and sensible profession, but Faith had hated it from the first lecture.
One day, during a tutorial on double entry bookkeeping, she had walked out and never gone back.
Faith dropping out of university had been a huge drama.
First, instead of coming clean and explaining how she felt about accountancy, Faith had tried to hide what had happened from their mother.
Lucy had tried telling her that she was better off being honest and facing the music, but Faith hadn’t been able to work up the courage to tell their mother.
She had pretended she was going to university every day when really she was just hanging around the campus drinking coffee and playing pool.
It wasn’t until after the first semester, when Madeleine queried why she hadn’t received any exam results, that Faith had eventually confessed the truth, much to their mother’s horror.
Madeleine had tried to persuade her to change course and study something else, but Faith didn’t know what she wanted to study so instead found herself a job in a call centre for a company that manufactured paddling pools.
She had lasted a few months before she got fed up of listening to people complaining all day about how their pool had a leak or wasn’t inflating properly, so she left that job.
She had flitted from job to job and now worked in office administration for a market research company.
Faith would be the first to admit that it wasn’t the most exciting job in the world, but it paid the bills.
Their mother was always encouraging Faith to consider going back to education, or at least to further her career.
She wanted her daughter to ‘better herself’, as she put it.
‘It’s not too late to return to education, you know,’ she was fond of saying.
‘You could work your way up to be a supervisor or a manager if you put your mind to it.’ Another favourite was ‘You could study by night and still keep your job.’ She just couldn’t understand how Faith could be content as she was.
‘But I don’t want to be a supervisor or a manager,’ Faith would explain calmly.
‘I like my job as it is. I have very little stress. I can go home at five o’clock and not think about work until I turn on my computer the next day.
’ When she saw how frazzled some of the more senior staff in the organisation were and how much overtime they put in, it made her glad to have a low-pressure job.
As the old argument raised its head once more, Madeleine shook head in despair, muttering, ‘I don’t know where I went wrong with you. You were so bright in primary school.’
‘I’m happy as I am, Mum. Not everyone wants to climb the career ladder.’
Madeleine tutted. ‘Well, I think you’re wasting your life, but you just won’t listen to me.’ She tossed her hands into the air dramatically before turning her attention to Lucy. ‘And speaking of first loves, are you going to tell me what on earth is going on between you and Kyle?’
Lucy picked up a beer mat and began fiddling with it. ‘I told you, he’s busy in work. I thought you were all for women keeping their independence.’ Lucy took a mouthful of her Coke Zero.
‘Independence is one thing, but you seem to be living completely separate lives.’
‘Just leave it, Mum,’ she snapped, then stood up and left the table.
Madeleine turned to Faith in bewilderment. ‘What’s got into her?’
‘Look, Mum, it isn’t my place to say, but she and Kyle are going through some stuff. She’s not ready to talk about it just yet.’
‘What kind of stuff?’
Faith was torn. ‘I promised I wouldn’t say anything, but I’m sure she’ll tell you when she’s ready.’
Madeleine flopped back against the seat in a huff. ‘There was once a time when you girls would tell me everything,’ she replied, miffed.