In the small hours of the morning, another Atlantic storm hit Finfarran. Gathering strength as it travelled across the ocean, the wind roared in and battered the northern cliffs. Raging on across the peninsula, it spent some of its force against the solid mass of oaks and pines in Fury O’Shea’s forest, then swept across the motorway, threatening a high-sided lorry, and tore slates from the rooftops in Lissbeg. As the gusts struck, the trees in the nuns’ garden were stripped of their topmost budding leaves despite the protection of the old convent walls.
Swirled by the furious wind, fine sleet froze as it fell and was hurled against streaming windows. In the flat above the butcher’s shop, Pat woke with a start. As often happens when sleep has had to be courted, she had no idea of the time. She sat up, groped under her pillow, and couldn’t find her wristwatch. Through the uncurtained window she could see the half-orb of the moon, bright as a new penny behind pewter clouds. Briefly, the sleet turned to hailstones and rattled the windowpanes violently, like something trying to get in. Pat wondered if Cassie had got home safely. Forgetting her watch, she threw back the duvet and, having fumbled for her slippers and pulled on a dressing-gown, made her way to the foot of the attic stairs. Here in the stairwell the sound of the storm was dulled. On the little landing above her, Cassie’s door was closed. Pat went up and opened it gently, looked in, and breathed a sigh of relief.
Cassie was lying in bed, her face buried in her pillow and one arm thrown above her head. As the wind shook the house again, the clouds shifted and moonlight flooded the room. Turning in her sleep, she had pushed down the duvet, and the patchwork quilt that Pat had sewn lay like a multi-coloured pool on the floor. It was made of squares of velvet and the moonlight touched the nap with gleaming highlights. Pat instinctively moved to pull the duvet around Cassie’s shoulders. Then she drew back, unwilling to risk waking her. The back of the cropped head was a dark smudge against the pillow and the arm emerging from the sleeve of the T-shirt curved protectively around it. On the nape of Cassie’s neck, where a curl of hair flicked up like a little duck tail, was a small tattoo, a triple spiral motif in black ink. When Mary had first noticed this she’d sniffed in disapproval, but Pat thought it was nice. You’d see women these days with tattoos all over their arms and legs, and even their chests, in different colours, and all you’d find yourself thinking about was the way they were going to look in thirty years’ time. As Mary had said, they’d be going round like frights. But this little design half hidden by the single dark curl was different. Though Mary had said that Pat only thought so because she was moonstruck by the child.
Bending down, Pat lifted the quilt and gently drew it up. Cassie turned her head, but her breathing was deep and regular and she snuggled down, instinctively relaxing to the warmth. Looking down at her, Pat told herself Mary was absolutely right. From the day Cassie had met her and Ger at the airport in Toronto she’d fallen head over heels in love with her granddaughter. The flight had been long and she and Ger were tired when Cassie had appeared in Arrivals waving a bunch of roses. She’d driven them home and settled them into what Sonny’s wife called ‘the guest suite’. Later, when Ger was resting, she’d produced milk and brownies and sat Pat on a sofa in the family room where they’d watched Judge Judy together in companionable silence, and Pat had felt welcomed. Then, in the weeks that followed, when it turned out that she and Ger weren’t really welcome at all, Cassie had done her utmost to entertain them. It hadn’t made Pat feel less unwanted, but the joy of bonding with Cassie had almost outweighed the sadness. Faced with the fact that Sonny and Jim had made lives from which she was excluded, her granddaughter’s love had come as a gift that was all the more precious for being unexpected.
Closing Cassie’s bedroom door, Pat returned to her own room and got back into bed. The warmth had gone from the duvet and the sheet felt chilly, so she reached for Ger’s blue pullover and slipped it on. Outside, the storm had relented and the pale light of dawn was beginning to stain the sky. Soon she’d need to get up because there was plenty to do today. Fury had said he’d be round to finish laying the bit of carpet in Ger’s office, and she hoped that Frankie would come and help move the furniture back. She’d decided to make the office into a guest room and thought that, from now on, they could call the attic bedroom Cassie’s. Not that she wanted to put any pressure on Cassie to stay in Finfarran. She’d be back on the cruise ships before long, and her real home was Canada, but it might be nice for her to know that she’d always have a room in the flat, and even a place to leave a few things when she went off again on her travels. Happily, Pat turned on her side, and hugged herself.
Outside, as the grey sky turned pink, the house martins in the old convent eaves began to stir and sing.
* * *
Fury O’Shea was sitting at the table and The Divil was lapping tea from a saucer by the range when Cassie came down for breakfast. Pat reached for the teapot but Cassie shook her head and went to make coffee. Pat gave Fury a wink. ‘I do always forget that she won’t take tea in the mornings.’
‘Is that a fact?’ Fury added milk to his cup. ‘And yer man The Divil will hardly stir a foot without it. Mind you, he doesn’t like it strong. And he’d stick to water for the rest of the day, bar the drop of Guinness if he happened to get it. The end of a pint, say, if I’m having one myself. He’s got no head for the hard stuff, though. Wouldn’t touch it.’
Pat looked fondly at the little tan and white dog who had rolled onto his side with a deep sigh of contentment. ‘He’d be great company. He’s a great guard dog, too, I suppose.’
‘And a judge of character. There’s many a one he’d see off that’d turn up with a suit on him, and many another he’d welcome in that hadn’t an arse to his trousers.’ Knocking back his tea, Fury declared that he ought to get on with the work.
Pat smiled at him. ‘You’re very good and so is Tintawn Terry. I know well that you shouldn’t be here painting walls and laying down carpet. You’re a builder, not a handyman, and I can’t thank you enough.’
‘Don’t I know the kind of money the smart lads would ask if they saw you stuck? You wouldn’t want to go running up bills at this stage. Not till you’ve got probate through and everything right and tight.’
It was an aspect of things that Pat had considered. And ever since the day that Frankie had taken Ger’s papers she’d wondered if she ought to have checked whether or not they should have been moved from the flat. But life had to go on and it was Frankie who had to manage things, so she supposed that, among the files, there were things he needed to hand.
Cassie joined them at the table with her coffee, saying she wasn’t going out in the van today. ‘It’s in for repairs, so I’ll be helping in the library. There’s a coffee and cake fundraiser thing happening this afternoon.’
Pat looked stricken. ‘Do you know what it is, I forgot all about it! I’ll make a pavlova and bring it over, Cassie. I do every year. What time do you start?’
‘Hanna said I should come in round lunchtime to help set things up.’
By lunchtime the carpet in Ger’s room was down and looked great. Des had turned the sign on the shop door from OPEN to CLOSED, and come up to the flat, to give a hand with the lifting. Pat had sent a text to Frankie and had no reply, but shortly they heard him coming up from the shop. Cassie, wearing her coat and about to go over to the library, was hunkered down on the floor scratching The Divil.
When Frankie came in he stopped dead on the threshold, his face darkening as they all looked round. Pat smiled and held out her hands to him. ‘There you are, son. Aren’t you good to come over? Des will give you a hand to move the furniture.’
Frankie’s eyes swivelled between Cassie on the floor and Fury, who was lounging by the window. In a voice dripping with sarcasm, he remarked that Pat had a grand, hefty team already installed. Pat laughed uncertainly. ‘Well, I wouldn’t ask poor Cassie to go lifting furniture! And Fury’s done far too much already.’
‘Well, if he’s done all that he has to do, how come he’s still hanging round?’
‘Frankie!’ Horrified, Pat turned to Fury in distress, but he didn’t seem disturbed. With a flicker of a sidelong glance at Des, he said he’d love to help, but his back was at him.
Pat gasped. ‘Ah, no, Fury! And you down on your knees laying carpet! You should have said.’
‘Not at all, Mrs Fitz, that wouldn’t take a feather out of me. I’m just explaining to Frankie why I won’t be doing his lifting for him this time.’
To the others’ surprise, Cassie rose to her feet and glared at Frankie. ‘Fury’s been very helpful to Pat, so I don’t think you should be rude to him. And I’m perfectly happy to help Des with the furniture.’
‘Oh, I bet you are.’ Frankie returned her glare. ‘Don’t think I haven’t seen your game, girl!’
Cassie, who’d been bristling, looked bewildered. ‘What do you mean?’
‘How well you’ve got your two feet under the table. I suppose you spotted over in Toronto the way it was with Ger, and decided to get in a plane with them and be here at hand when he died.’
Pat gave a little cry, and Cassie took a step forward. ‘None of us had any idea that Ger was ill. Not then. He even kept it from Pat as long as he could. So, no, I didn’t see it in Toronto. And what exactly are you saying?’
Without moving, Fury intervened. ‘He’s saying you only came here for what you could get.’
The Divil growled fiercely, deep in his throat. Cassie went scarlet. ‘That I’m looking for money?’ Pat reached out to Cassie, who gently pushed her away. ‘No, wait, I need to understand this. Is he saying I’m here because of Granddad’s will?’
Frankie shrugged his shoulders. ‘If the cap fits, wear it.’
Pat spoke before Cassie could reply. ‘Cassie is here looking after me out of pure loving-kindness. And you should be ashamed to say such a thing of your own brother’s child!’
‘Ah, for God’s sake, Mam, would you have a bit of sense? Wasn’t she overheard inside in the library asking straight-out questions about the will? Didn’t you hear her yourself, and she fishing about the price of the very tiles on the shop walls? Weren’t you there when she tried to deny she was out walking the bounds of the farm? She was totting up the value of the land, trying to guess the worth of it.’
‘I was not!’
‘And you didn’t drive over to my place wanting to talk about sharing things out?’
Cassie turned frantically to Pat. ‘I wasn’t totting up the worth of anything. It never occurred to me. I didn’t ask questions about the will. I didn’t! Well, I said something to Hanna about it when you and I got back from Resolve but truly . . .’ She faltered, unable to remember exactly what she’d said to Hanna on that first jetlagged day. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Fury looking at her.
But Pat’s attention was on Frankie. ‘What? When did she drive out to your place?’
‘Oh, she didn’t tell you that? She wouldn’t, of course. She told me she’d sneaked out of here while you were asleep.’
Cassie was aghast. ‘I wanted to talk about ways of helping Pat. I’d been worried about her, and she was asleep, and I thought you and Fran and I could sit down for a family talk . . .’ Her voice trailed away, and she found herself shaking. ‘I mightn’t have made myself clear, but that’s why I came.’
Frankie raised his eyebrow at her scornfully. ‘Ay, you were real careful not to spell things out. But I could tell fine well what you meant.’