Chapter Two
Two
When it comes to most things around here, Lena’s standing policy is to avoid prying.
This goes double when it comes to Trey. Trey defaults to silence anyway; when nudged, she clams up like a prisoner of war.
Lena, who considers this the sensible response to Ardnakelty, doesn’t nudge her.
Once she’s dropped off Trey’s crowd, she drives all the way back to Cal’s place without mentioning Kate’s name.
“I like your mates,” she says instead.
“Aidan’s a chancer,” Trey tells her. “He was gonna ask you to get us a few cans for tonight, only I told him to get ta fuck.”
“Ha,” Lena says. “Knew it.”
“How?”
Lena gives her a dry glance. “Ah, God, no, I wouldn’t have a clue about that kinda carry-on. Me and your mam never touched a drop till we were legal.”
Trey grins.
“You know not to get stupid drunk,” Lena says, pulling up outside Cal’s gate.
Trey rolls her eyes, like she does every time. “I don’t get drunk.”
“Good. If you do, ring me or Cal, we’ll come get you.
” Lena doesn’t ask where they’ll be. The places have been handed down through the generations: a tumbledown Famine cottage low on the mountainside, the disused byre at the unwatched edge of Mossie O’Halloran’s farm, the abandoned house down by the river.
One or two of the kids who’ll be drinking there tonight were probably conceived there.
“Thanksforthelift,” Trey says, all in one word, as she gets out of the car.
Cal, who believes in manners, has been civilizing Trey bit by bit, seeing as no one else was doing it.
It’s sticking, to some extent, although Lena suspects that Trey is mainly humoring Cal rather than coming to grips with the underlying principles.
“No problem,” Lena says. “Tell Cal I’ll get the dogs and be over in time for dinner.
” Trey nods and heads for the cottage. Trey spent most of her life halfway up the mountains and she still walks like a mountain kid, a long, spring-kneed stride, buffered against tricky terrain.
Lena can tell by the swing of her shoulders that she’s happy.
She finds herself smiling as she pulls away.
Lena’s plans are held up by the fact that when she gets home, there’s a baby-blue Mini Cooper in her drive and Rachel Holohan is sitting on her doorstep with some kind of case beside her.
Lena doesn’t get many visitors, and she has no idea what Rachel would want with her.
Whatever it is, it doesn’t look good. Rachel is normally all bounce and sparkle—Lena can’t remember whether she’s actually training as a Montessori teacher, or whether she just seems like she should be—but today she’s huddled up like a wet bird, so deep in her thoughts and her furry hood that she didn’t even notice the car pulling in.
Lena hopes to God she’s not running away from home and looking for a place to stay.
“Rachel,” Lena says, a few steps away.
Rachel leaps. “Ohmygod,” she says, pressing her chest. “You frightened the shite outa me. Jesus, sorry, I shouldn’t say that, sure you live here, what was I expecting?”
“You’re grand,” Lena says. She likes Rachel.
To look at, Rachel has all the trimmings of someone Lena would find uninteresting: her hair is dyed platinum blond with the bottom half in big smooth ringlets, she’s an inch thick in fake tan and makeup, she has eyelashes like draft excluders, and she lives in yoga pants whose hems rise and fall with the temperature.
She looks like she popped out of Instagram by mistake and someone should put her back in before she gets smudged.
Since Rachel is from Ardnakelty, however, Lena has been seeing her around all her life, and she knows Rachel to be a gangling Labrador pup of a girl, cheerful, scatterbrained, inexhaustibly chatty, and good-humored about her own gaffes.
Lena favors people who don’t match their exteriors.
They give her something to wonder about.
“D’you know what,” Rachel says, struck by a thought, “I think it’s the weather. Honest to God, it’s like a horror film, isn’t it?” She waves her hand at the darkening fields, huddled under the rain. “I’m sitting here expecting Freddy Croaker to jump out at me.”
“Freddy Krueger?” Lena suggests.
“That fella,” Rachel agrees. She stands up, dusts off her arse, and picks up the case, which turns out to be a cat carrier.
“Would you, if you’ve got time only, would you have a look at Pugsy?
It’s his face, my dad said maybe he got in a fight but sure Pugsy wouldn’t fight a fly, he’s fixed, lazy great lump, only the vet’s closed. ”
“Right,” Lena says. This makes a bit more sense of things.
Back when she was a teenager, Lena had her heart set on being a vet, so she spent her school holidays volunteering at the vet’s up in Kilcarrow town.
That was thirty years ago, and mostly all she did was clean up dog piss and put flea drops on cats, but it takes longer than thirty years to shake off a reputation in Ardnakelty.
People still bring animals to her, when the vet is closed or too expensive. “Come on in and I’ll have a look.”
Lena’s dogs, Daisy and Nellie, come charging up to investigate—they’re beagles, so their main priority is food, but a cat is interesting enough for them to put that on hold.
While Lena shoos them out of the kitchen, Rachel pushes back her hood and looks around the room with frank curiosity.
Lena is aware that her kitchen wouldn’t be what Rachel’s used to.
Rachel’s daddy owns the big home-goods shop up in Kilcarrow, making him the richest man in the townland, bar Tommy Moynihan.
According to Noreen, Claire Holohan feels a duty to keep her house like a showroom, with new furnishings every year or two and a deep clean every Saturday, so as not to bring the family business into disrepute.
Lena’s kitchen is clean but messy, with battered furniture and stacks of books in odd places, a room that’s been shaped to her convenience and liking by long, steady wear.
“Now,” Lena says, coming back from shutting the door on the dogs, who know cats are off-limits but who are still wounded by the injustice. “Let’s see this fella.”
Rachel plumps down on the floor in a tangle of long legs, unzips the carrier, and pulls out a fat ginger cat who has clearly decided this whole situation is beneath his notice.
“There,” she says, dumping him in her lap.
“Don’t worry, he won’t go for you, he’s got no more fight than a, I don’t know, a spud, and anyway he’s got no teeth left. ”
Lena sits down opposite her and offers the cat a finger, which he ignores. He’s got a few scratches above one eyebrow, but they’re shallow, the fine lines of blood already dry. This is nothing that couldn’t have waited till Monday.
“He’s been scratching himself,” she says, “is all. Something’s itching him.
It could be ringworm, see how he’s a bit baldy round the scratches?
Or—” She tilts the cat’s head to look inside his ear, which he bears with magnificent disdain.
“It could be mites, but the ear looks clean enough to me. You’d have to have the vet take a look.
Till then, just give his claws a clip so he can’t do too much damage, and wash your hands after you pet him. ”
“Ah, that’s great,” Rachel says, on a sigh of relief. “Thanks a million. My dad says I’m a total sap about that cat, but I’ve had him since I was only little, d’you know the way? I’d be pure devastated if it turned out there was something wrong and I let him suffer.”
“No problem,” Lena says. She’s aware that Rachel is bullshitting her.
“I did nothing.” She knuckles the cat’s cheek and gets up to wash her hands.
When she turns from the sink, Rachel is still sitting on the floor, pulling at a ringlet and letting it bounce back into place.
The cat, done with this nonsense, has curled up in her lap and closed his eyes.
Lena knows she should offer her a cup of tea. Instead she dries her hands on the tea towel and waits. Whatever Rachel has come for, Lena isn’t going to help her out.
Rachel blows out a breath and straightens her back. “I’m gonna ask something awful nosy,” she says. “You can tell me to feck off and mind my own business, I won’t be offended or anything, honest to God. Just I’d love to know. Not outa nosiness.”
Lena looks at her. Under all the makeup and the chatter, she’s taut and wan, like she’s been hit by a shock and worn herself dazed trying to fight it. She’s been crying.
“Ask away,” Lena says. “I mightn’t answer, but you’re welcome to ask.”
“Right, so,” Rachel says. She presses her hands down on the cat, which opens one baleful eye and then shuts it again. “D’you know back when you were married? Not the beardy fella, ’cause you’re only going out, sure; Sean Dunne. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Lena agrees. Sean has been dead more than six years, long enough that she can hear his name almost without pain. “What about it?”
“OK, you know the way he didn’t want you hanging around with people?
I mean, obvi you didn’t mind too much, ’cause you coulda just done it anyway, it’s not like olden times when you hadta do everything your husband said or the priest would give out, or you coulda left him.
But wasn’t it terrible lonely, like? Did you not miss having girls’ nights out, and calling round to people for the chats, and all that?
And even now, like, ’cause it’s still not the same for you as it is for my mammy and the rest of them, sure it’s not.
Is it awful tough? Or is it all worthwhile because you had your fella? ”
Her upturned face is honest and worried. Lena bites down a flare of fury. Sean, dead and buried, is still in Ardnakelty’s hands, being mauled and branded as they please; and, regardless of how many barriers she puts up, so is she.