Mary Casey slammed the frying pan onto the stove, whipped a brown paper package out of the fridge, and reached for the rasher scissors. It never ceased to amaze Hanna that Mary, who ate processed cheese and synthetic cakes, was a purist when it came to rashers. She demanded what she called ‘proper hairy ones,’ cut before her eyes to the right thickness, with rind that she snipped in a series of cuts before laying them in the frying pan. The snipping ensured that the rashers wouldn’t curl as they fried and the ‘hairy’ rinds were cut off before each perfectly cooked piece of bacon made it to the plate. The only man Mary would buy rashers from was Ger Fitzgerald. Ger, she claimed, sold proper meat; whereas the pale, plastic-wrapped stuff sold in Carrick was nothing but water and air. For as long as Hanna could remember, rashers had arrived in the Casey household wrapped in greaseproof paper and encased in brown paper bags. The greaseproof paper was so thick that the bags remained pristine, and piles of them, neatly folded and laid away for later use, erupted from every drawer in Mary’s kitchen.
Now, with a sniff for Hanna’s plate of yogurt and muesli, Mary Casey laid three rashers in the frying pan and shook it vigorously. Then, turning them at the optimum moment, she reached for her black-handled knife and began to cut slices from a loaf of white soda bread.
“I suppose there’s no chance that you’ll take a decent breakfast instead of going off out to work on a spoonful of chicken feed?”
Hanna ignored the question and opened her phone. Transferring the rashers to a plate in the oven to keep them warm, Mary broke an egg into the frying pan. As soon as it was cooked she would move it to one side of the pan and use squares of soda bread to take up the last of the bacon fat, keeping them over the flame until each was crispy and golden brown on the outside while the inside stayed meltingly soft.
“Anything from Jazz?”
There was a text to say that Jazz had fixed a flight to London and arranged to have dinner with Malcolm when she arrived. Mary Casey tossed her head when Hanna read it out to her.
“Well, we all know that’s no subject for this breakfast table. If that child knew what kind of a scruffy pup her father is, she’d be telling him what she thought of him, not eating his pâté de foie gras!”
Hanna held her tongue. After all, she told herself, it wouldn’t be long before she’d be having breakfast in her own house. By the fire. Sitting on the doorstep with the birds overhead. Or perched on the wall above the high cliff, listening to the sound of the waves. For the last few weeks she’d hardly dared to indulge her fantasies. But after the event in the library the other night Fury had sidled up and suggested an on-site meeting to schedule the restoration. Apparently he now had a time slot for the work. So perhaps when Jazz was next in Crossarra, the house would be taking shape; maybe she and Jazz could go online or take a trip together, to look at kitchen cupboards and consider paints. In light of such a prospect, it shouldn’t be too hard to smile and be civil to Mary. So, pushing the sugar bowl across the table, she asked what she’d planned for her day.
Mary Casey twitched her shoulders restlessly. “Ah, nothing at all but the bit of cleaning.”
“Would you like me to run you in to Lissbeg to see Pat?”
But apparently Pat was off to Carrick to buy presents for her grandkids.
“Well, would you not go with her yourself, just to look at the shops? I could take you with me to Lissbeg now if Ger’s going to be driving her into Carrick. And I could pick you up this evening when I’m leaving work.”
Mary looked mulish. If Pat wanted her company she would have asked for it, she said. Besides, Pat was stone mad about those kids and no company at all when she was shopping for them.
Hanna found herself losing patience. What was the point in trying to help someone who refused to be helped? Taking a last gulp of coffee, she stood up, forced a smile, and said she must go. But Mary Casey refused to meet her eye. Instead she speared a morsel of rasher to a square of fried soda bread and conveyed it to her mouth with an air of injured reproach. Clearly this was the start of a massive sulk that could well go on for days.
Later, driving to Lissbeg, Hanna asked herself if she might have handled things differently but, for the life of her, she couldn’t see how. It was as if, lacking any other form of entertainment, Mary was now turning sulking into a hobby; and Hanna had never had her father’s knack for coaxing her back into cheerfulness. Nor, she told herself honestly, had she much inclination to find it. All she really wanted was to swap the stormy atmosphere in the bungalow for the joys of a house of her own.
It was coming up to closing time that afternoon when she looked up from her computer and saw Tim Slattery in the doorway. The after-school influx of parents and kids was over, Conor was tidying up in Children’s Corner, and Oliver the dog man was working his way through Cookery, even though Hanna had assured him that most publishers chose images of food, not dogs, for the covers of cookbooks.
But Oliver had a method. “I begin at the beginning, Miss Casey, go on till I come to the end, and then I stop. That’s the way I like to approach my given tasks in life.”
Since he was clearly a Lewis Carroll fan, Hanna had been tempted to offer him The Hunting of the Snark as light relief from his quest. But, crushing the impulse, she’d nodded and let him get on with it. Oliver was squat, shortsighted, and middle-aged so, to help him reach the top shelves, Conor had found him a step stool. He’d also tried to help by checking the publishers’ websites and once, at the beginning of the week, it had briefly seemed that he’d found the elusive book. But the black Labrador on the cover of Richard Adams’s The Plague Dogs had the wrong-shaped ears. So the search continued.
Now, Hanna stood up to welcome Tim. He was sprucely dressed in one of his three-piece suits and wearing a watch chain that appeared to be purely decorative; on his wrist was a severely minimalist watch consisting of an elastic band and a Perspex face. The acid-green band reminded Hanna of the hair ties she used to buy when ponytails were all the rage in Jazz’s playground. Tim strode briskly across the room and shook her hand. He was just passing, he said, and had dropped in for a word. She pulled out a chair to let him sit down but, glancing at Conor, he asked if they could speak privately. Hanna concealed a smile. It was typical of Tim to turn a chat about acquisitions and computer systems into a high-level, closed-door session.
“Of course. Let me get you a coffee.”
Ushering him into the kitchen and filling the kettle to make his coffee, she told herself that she had a lot to thank Tim for. True, his air of eccentric pomposity could be irritating, but since her return to the peninsula he’d been one of the few people she felt she could call her friend. Minutes later, as the kettle boiled unheeded in the background, she wondered how on earth she could have been so wrong.