33

Hanna was sitting at her desk inspecting a copy of The Female Eunuch returned by Darina Kelly when Conor put his head round the door. He was wearing his motorcycle gloves and had pushed his crash helmet up onto the top of his head. Beneath it his usually cheerful face looked apprehensive. Hanna looked up at him. “Well, it’s definitely not your day and there’s nothing wrong with the computers, so what on earth are you doing here?”

Conor had hung round the horse trough on Broad Street for a good half hour after he’d left Moran’s, waiting for the library to open. With one eye out for Miss Casey’s car, and still praying that he might be mistaken, he had rung Dan Cafferky and confirmed his horrific memory of the night before.

Miss Casey looked at him sharply. “Well, come in if you’re coming. Don’t hover.”

Conor took a deep breath and approached the desk. Standing in front of it with the crash helmet still perched on his head and his gloved hands clasped in embarrassment, he managed to get his story off his chest. There was a long pause during which he shot a nervous glance at Miss Casey. She wasn’t looking happy.

“Let me get this clear. You’ve called a public meeting to be held here in the library tonight?”

“No, really, I didn’t.” Conor’s face twisted in concern. “I mean I didn’t mean to. It was just that we were talking and everyone was really . . . engaged, you know, and then . . . honestly, Miss Casey, I don’t even remember what I said.”

“And that makes it better?”

It didn’t, of course, but it was the truth. After they’d left the girls last night, Dan had said that, according to the Met Office website, there was due to be an amazing meteor shower. Dan was going to watch it from the cliffs and would Conor come with him? It had sounded great, so they’d driven back to Dan’s place and walked out to a headland. Dan had brought a naggin of whiskey in his pocket and the two of them had sat there and shared it, looking up at a trembling silver curtain of shooting stars.

“So, you’re telling me that you got drunk?”

Conor supposed that he must have. A bit. He’d never meant to call a meeting in the library. But he must have kind of suggested it. And Dan must have got up this morning and texted the girls. And then the thing had snowballed. And, according to Dan when he talked to him just now, all sorts of people were coming. They’d fixed it for seven o’clock.

“Honest, Miss Casey, I’m sorry. And I don’t know what to do.”

There was a bright chiming sound from his pocket and he leapt like a startled faun. Directly above Miss Casey’s head was a large sign that read TURN OFF YOUR MOBILE PHONE. Frantically, Conor tried to remove his glove. The Velcro fastening defeated him until Miss Casey reached across the desk and released it briskly, like a nurse removing a Band-Aid. Dragging off the glove and pulling his phone from his pocket, Conor looked at the screen.

“It’s me dad saying he’ll maim me if I’m not home in ten minutes.”

To his horror, he heard his voice wobble as he spoke.

Annoyed though she was, Hanna couldn’t bring herself to add to his despair. “Look, calm down. If you’re needed at home, that’s where you should be.”

“But how am I going to stop them all from turning up this evening?”

“I’d say it’s way too late to try, so I wouldn’t bother. And half of the people who say they’ll turn up to things never do.”

“But I don’t even know what we’re supposed to be talking about!”

“Can you remember what you were talking about last night?”

“Well, there’s this consultation meeting that Aideen says the council’s setting up. And Dan reckons it’s rubbish.”

Hanna nodded at the poster she’d been given by Tim Slattery. “You mean that?”

Conor swiveled round and looked at it. “I suppose so. Aideen saw a notice up in Carrick.”

“Well, you can’t call a meeting to announce that Dan’s deeply suspicious of something he knows nothing about.”

“I know!” Conor clutched his head. Taking his elbow, Hanna steered him to the door.

“Look, go home. Stop worrying. I’ll keep the library open this evening till eight. The chances are that hardly a soul will turn up. But you can make a speech saying that there’s a consultation meeting coming up shortly, which people should attend. Then you can draw the attention of your audience to the notice on the wall.”

“Right.” Conor looked hunted. “Then what?”

“Then you thank them for coming and send them home.”

“Ah, God, Miss Casey, I don’t know what Dan will say to that.”

“Well, you have two choices. Tell your friends you had no authority to offer the library as a venue. Or do as I say and carry things off with an air.”

Hanna could practically see the wheels going round in Conor’s head. Then he clenched his jaw and nodded. “Okay, so, I’ll do that.”

“Good. And Conor, don’t tell the others. Even when it’s over. Not even as a good joke. I know this town, they’ll be laughing at you for seven generations.”

Conor nodded again, squaring his shoulders. “Right. I hear you. Thanks, Miss Casey.”

Back at her desk, Hanna hoped she’d made the right decision. It hadn’t felt possible to let poor Conor lose face. But having set her own face so firmly against using the library as a community venue, it was she, not he, who’d be laughed at if the evening turned out to be a farce.

At lunchtime Hanna decided to supplement her homemade sandwich with a coffee and a cake from HabberDashery. Usually when she was alone at the desk she closed for half an hour at lunchtime, giving herself a break in the kitchen with her sandwich and a book. She was supposed to take a full hour for lunch, and on the days that Conor worked she did, but many people in Lissbeg only had time to get into the library on their lunch breaks. So Hanna saw it as her duty to keep the door open.

Mary Casey thought she was a fool to herself.

“Name of God, girl, don’t you have a right to a proper dinner and a bit of peace and quiet? Do you think the traders in Lissbeg would keep their doors open for you one minute longer than they had to? Not a chance of them. They’d slam the door in your face as soon as the clock struck one!”

This was nonsense. The shops in Lissbeg stayed open at lunchtime, and had done so for ages. But Mary Casey’s fantasies about a sort of 1950s Ireland in which grocers sold sugar in twists of brown paper were increasing as she grew older. Hanna found them profoundly irritating, mainly, she suspected, because they frightened her. For the most part Mary’s aggression appeared to be fuelled by a great sense of gusto, but at times like these it seemed to express a failing grasp on life. If that was so, it inevitably foreshadowed a loss of independence in the future—and an increasingly dependent Mary wasn’t something Hanna wanted to think about. Not in the midst of her current plans to regain some independence for herself.

Locking the library door, she set out to buy her coffee. There was a line at the counter in HabberDashery where Aideen and Bríd were busy taking orders. As she selected a slice of almond cake and reached across the counter for her cup of coffee to go, Hanna congratulated Aideen on the crowd.

“I know. It’s great, isn’t it? And it’d be better still if we had room for a couple of tables. We get this big takeaway crowd at dinnertime, but it’s quiet the rest of the day.”

As she dodged through the traffic on Broad Street, she told herself Aideen was right; it would be nice to take her lunch break in the cheerful deli with its bright paintwork and delicious smells. Reaching the center of the street, she considered sitting on the bench by the horse trough. Then she decided against it. The scarlet geraniums in the old stone trough were attractive in the sunshine, but the cars parked all around it made it a depressing place to sit. So instead, carrying her takeaway, she returned to the kitchen in the library.

Aideen’s coffee was as good as ever, hot and fresh with an expertly feathered design in the foam on top. As she sipped it, Hanna wondered if the consultation meeting announced on the poster that she’d hung up that morning might indeed be a cynical cover for a fait accompli. If so, with the county’s entire development budget plowed into Carrick and Ballyfin, businesses in other parts of the peninsula would find it hard to survive. Which, despite Aideen and Bríd’s efforts and energy, didn’t bode well for HabberDashery.

Thinking about Aideen and Bríd made her think about Jazz, whose next long stopover would be spent with Malcolm. Each time Jazz visited the London house Hanna wanted to ask her if the wallpaper had been changed, and if Tessa had uprooted the pear trees or moved the furniture. But to discuss Tessa at all was to risk Jazz discovering the true length of Malcolm and Tessa’s relationship. And to discuss the London house would release memories of a past so corrupted by deceit that Hanna doubted her own ability to continue to endorse Malcolm’s lies. Now, still troubled by his accusations in that idiotic hotel room, she reminded herself that she had to be responsible: her feelings were irrelevant in comparison to her daughter’s peace of mind. Yet standing in the kitchen in the back of Lissbeg Library, her own mind still wandered up a curved mahogany staircase polished with beeswax to a room hung with hand-printed paper, where soft gray fabrics complemented sage-green walls.

But that narrow London house belonged to the past. Her future lay in Maggie’s house with its huge view of the ocean. Crumpling the paper that had held her almond cake, Hanna dropped it into her empty coffee cup and went to turn the sign on the library door. Her job might bore her but at least it was secure. And now the time had come for a new leap of faith, a perilous investment of love and creativity, which would transform a hollow stone shell into a sanctuary. Her choice was made, her money committed, and nothing could stop her now.