Chapter 16
Heather
Heather looked around her mother’s house and couldn’t help but feel that now she had almost emptied it, the emotion was not one of satisfaction or even loneliness, but rather disappointment.
Perhaps she had expected to feel too much.
The reality was, Heather had spent years of her life mourning the loss of her mother into the depths of a spirit bottle; her actual passing was almost an anti-climax by comparison.
Dotty had slipped away from her years ago.
Oh, they spoke once a week on the phone.
Heather rang her, every Thursday evening at seven thirty.
A perfunctory five minutes of enquiring after each other’s lives, which always felt as if it was an intrusion into her mother’s bland routine of soap operas, game shows and constant vodka top-ups.
Strangely now, her death felt as if someone had only closed the door long after she had left the room.
Maybe, back on Pin Hill Island, Heather thought she might feel more – she wanted to feel more, she wanted to feel something, because at the moment, all she felt was numb.
There was very little left in the house now.
Just the fitted kitchen and appliances and a small box of keepsakes that she had put aside because she knew they should mean something, but she really wasn’t sure what she should do with them.
She had kept all of her mother’s copies of Maggie Macken’s books.
Those, she had packed up carefully and placed with her other belongings that she’d committed to long-term storage when they’d sold the flat.
The tote bag now in her arms contained little things that reminded her only of her mother.
There was the funny little wooden box for Constance, she’d left that on the hall table, she mustn’t forget that, she reminded herself now.
Perhaps Constance could tell her more about it when she gave it to her, maybe she’d have a key.
Heather had searched the house looking for it and she was convinced now: it was not here.
She kept out a few pieces of jewellery and an almost empty bottle of her mother’s favourite perfume, the aroma of which brought Heather right back to her childhood.
She didn’t suppose her mother had worn it in thirty years, and yet, somehow, it evoked happier times when it had seemed as if they were just like every other family who lived along their little road.
After all that, there was quite a bit to carry, the box, her bag, her coat over her arm because the day was warmer than expected.
Just before she left the house, she placed her door key on the bottom step of the stairs.
Somehow, perhaps overtaken by unexpected nostalgia, she completely forgot about the ornate letter box her mother had wanted her to take to Constance.
And there was no going back for it then, even if she did remember it.
Once outside, she looked up, as she pulled out the front door. The estate agent had already hung a ‘For Sale’ sign. This house had been in the Banks family for many years, her father’s aunt had owned it, once, but it was time to let it go.
*
The click of her seat belt on the half-empty plane to Knock airport felt almost like a punctuation mark.
Despite the early-morning sleepiness of the other passengers Heather couldn’t help but feel that this was not the end of a sentence, but rather the start of a new paragraph.
She couldn’t dare to hope it might even be the opening of a new chapter.
She hadn’t been in Ireland since she was a child and her memory had been one of a long ferry journey, followed by a succession of buses, trains and finally a fishing boat ride to the island; all of which probably added up on both ways to being as long as the holiday itself.
Looking back, she supposed it was as much a pilgrimage as a holiday to her mother.
It was a sweet filling to the otherwise dreary sandwich of life that was busy streets, red-brick houses and buses that always ran late.
Strange to think of her mother going back there now, to be buried in that little graveyard on the side of a hill, because really, so far as Heather knew, all in all, Dotty had only spent a handful of years on the island.
Teenage years too, a time when she had felt the place was far too small to contain her dreams. She’d left just after finishing school for bright lights that dazzled more from afar.
Showbiz had given her a sum total of two chorus line parts in a decade before she’d married and settled in that little house in Fulham.
Sometimes Heather wondered, would her mother have been as well off staying on the island, would she have been any happier?
In hindsight, it was mainly pride that kept her from moving back after the divorce.
Couldn’t face the disapproval, that’s what she’d said once, and it had seemed so odd to think that her mother had ever cared what anyone thought of her.
This time round, the flight took just over an hour.
From there, it was a bus ride to the coast, albeit via the scenic route.
Heather had a feeling that they stopped by every little village along the way to pick up and drop travellers who for the most part were pensioners making what they could of their free travel pass.
It was pleasant, being driven along, eavesdropping on the conversations around her and drinking in a landscape that felt a million miles from London.
Here, it was green fields that ran as far as the eye could see, cut through with wonky walls built of stone and held together by wildflowers and weeds.
In the distance thick clouds lounged on military green and grey mountains with the promise that beyond them the sea lay, vast and waiting.
Ballycove. She remembered it well from when she was last here and now it seemed as if it had somehow been held in a time warp.
Everything was smaller, fresher, a gleam of modernity catching the light from under the squatting cottages and the tall Georgian houses on the hill.
There were obviously new roofs, solar panels and wind turbines off in the distance, but at the same time, there was a feeling of familiarity about the place that she couldn’t quite quantify.
‘Ye’ll have to wait for the next tide, I’m afraid,’ an old man bent over knotted nets on the quay told her.
It was too early in the season for the regular ferry trips across and Constance had organised for one of the local fishermen to meet her and bring her over.
‘You can go for a wander round, if you want. There’s plenty to do in the village, a nice bookshop and, of course, the hotel is open, if you fancy lunch,’ Finbar Lavin told her, when he pulled up to the pier just after her.
He looked as if he’d spent his life at sea, his face was fresh, washed clean by the salty winds, and his eyes were as clear as a summer’s day.
If it was possible to make your mind up completely about someone, Heather thought she liked him, she would feel safe in a boat in the very worst of waters with him.
‘Thanks, I’ll do that. When will we be ready to go…?’ She was conscious the man didn’t need to be out on the water as darkness drew in, better to make the journey earlier than later.
‘About two hours, I have a little business to attend to first, plenty of time for you to get a bit of grub to keep you going.’ Finbar smiled at her and raised his hand before turning back to his boat. He was scrubbing down the deck, clearing away any waste from his early morning catch.
It was pleasant to wander about the village. Heather took him at his word and dropped into the local bookshop, where she picked up another of the Maggie Macken books that she had assumed would be impossible to find.
‘Ah yes, I think the previous owner, he had boxfuls of those novels stored everywhere,’ the woman at the counter said.
‘It seems every housewife in the village devoured them, over and over, but then they’re of an age.
’ She was American and far more elegant than Heather remembered anyone being in Ballycove. ‘Joy Blackwood.’
Heather introduced herself and they chatted for almost half an hour. She had a feeling that if she came here very many times, she and Joy would surely become firm friends.
The trip across to the island was colder than she remembered from her last visits.
In the little fishing boat, about halfway across the bay, Finbar placed a huge oilskin jacket over her shoulders.
Her teeth had begun to chatter and they’d laughed when she’d tried to convince him that she was hardly cold at all.
When they reached the island, a girl dressed in a coat that surely belonged to her granny introduced herself as the official welcoming committee, Ros Stokes.
‘Well, when I say committee,’ she smiled then, ‘Constance sent me, to make sure you made it back okay.’
‘You can’t mean to tell me you expect Heather to walk from here.
’ Finbar shook his head as if there was no way he was having that.
‘Come on, the pair of ye,’ he said and he hoisted Heather’s bags across the back seat of an ancient jeep that smelled of a combination of sea air and dog hair.
Heather had a feeling that the dominant aroma would always depend on whether the windows were opened or closed.
‘Constance is so looking forward to seeing you.’ Ros leaned forward so she could chat to Heather as they bumped along the uneven roads.