46

Hanna’s next encounter with Brian Morton was outside Lissbeg Library. Shaking hands, he explained that he’d come to Lissbeg for a meeting and was off to find a sandwich. Hanna, who had her own lunch in her bag, was on her way to pick up a coffee, so they crossed Broad Street together and made their purchases in HabberDashery. Then they chatted for a moment on the pavement before Brian suggested finding a place to eat.

“It’s not easy when the deli has no seating area.” Hanna glanced around with a grimace. “I usually just go back to the library.”

Brian shook his head decisively. Everyone needed a break from their workplace at lunchtime, he said, and on sunny days all sandwiches ought to be eaten outdoors. Then, taking a zigzag course through the traffic, he piloted Hanna across the road to the bench beside the horse trough.

“Not exactly bosky but at least we can sit in the sunshine.”

Hanna wasn’t sure that she wanted to eat lunch with him in the middle of Broad Street where everyone could see them. But that seemed idiotic, so she balanced her coffee on the edge of the horse trough and took her sandwich out of her bag. There was hardly time to unwrap it before a text arrived on her phone.

YOU CAN TELL THAT LISSBEG LOT IM SICK TO DEATH OF OLD WEEDS

Hanna groaned. “Oh, dammit, I’m sorry, if I don’t reply to this they’ll keep coming.”

She shot off a brisk Will call later, and, by way of apology, explained to Brian that the message was from her mother.

“People keep turning up with herbs and she thinks they’re weeds and gets fed up and shoots off texts.”

“Any particular reason why they keep turning up with herbs?”

Contriving to look harassed, Hanna produced the story they had concocted about God’s Garden.

“And the next thing I knew, Sister Michael was giving a talk about it in the library and half the peninsula was flagging me down in the van and handing me cuttings of herbs.”

“But why?”

“Because the audience at the talk decided it would be a good idea to restore the nuns’ garden to its former glory, and most of what used to be planted there has disappeared over the years.”

“Sounds great.” Brian took a sip of coffee and eyed Hanna over the cup. “But you don’t think so?”

She did, of course, but Sister Michael’s strategy required her to deny it.

“But why not? I mean, it’s a project that arose from a lecture about a book.”

“Yes, but Lissbeg Library doesn’t do lectures. Or projects.”

Brian grinned. Strangers turning up at all hours bearing pots of herbs might well be annoying, he said. And an elderly mother complaining by text must be worse. His response was so friendly that Hanna felt guilty about deceiving him, and, unaccountably, she remembered Conor’s woebegone voice telling her that he hated lying to Aideen. But, as she’d told Conor sharply only that morning, once you made an exception to a rule you were on a slippery slope. So, lowering her head, she concentrated on her sandwich, and, after a moment, Brian changed the subject. Did she happen to know, he wondered, where he could find a particular beach? He’d heard it was somewhere off the main road in the direction of Crossarra, very small and out of the way and a great place for basking seals.

It was a beach that Hanna knew well, and, glad to have something else to talk about, she tried to describe how to get there. You drove out the main road from Carrick to Ballyfin and took a narrow turn off to the south. But it was easy to miss.

“Anywhere near that lurid bungalow with the faux stained-glass door panel and the gravel driveway? No one could miss that.”

Hanna nodded. “Not me anyway. I live there.”

Brian turned purple. Then, as he began to stammer, she burst out laughing.

“Don’t worry. Really. Lurid is the perfect word for it. And it’s not my place. It’s my mother’s.”

Its appearance, she explained, was one reason she was longing to get out of it. That and the fact that—what with the weeds and the texts and the full Irish breakfasts—she and her mother were driving each other mad.

Perhaps because Brian still seemed discomfited, or perhaps because she still felt guilty, she found herself going on to explain why she’d come back to Finfarran.

“Basically, when my marriage broke up I wanted to get away. Well, to get home, I suppose. Now I’m just longing for a home of my own.”

And one reason for that, she reminded herself, was to regain a bit of privacy. So why did she keep confiding in this stranger?

After lunch a group of young mums arrived in the library and settled themselves at a table. Among them was Susan from The Old Forge Guesthouse who had joined the volunteer group that was now working in the nuns’ garden. Gunther, her husband, was outside helping to clear the beds under Sister Michael’s instruction, while their small daughter, Holly, along with several other toddlers, played in the sunshine. In the library, Susan and the other mums were making notes as they sat around the table. The pages from God’s Garden that showed the original layout of the beds had been photocopied so the volunteers could use them. Cross-referring between the photocopies and a book from the library’s open shelving, Susan was making a list of herbs to be planted, while Darina Kelly, in a grubby purple caftan, was making a hames of identifying cuttings. On her way back from lunch Hanna had seen Darina’s toddler, as disheveled as ever, running round the garden in mad circles. Now she watched Darina tip a pile of donated cuttings out of a plastic bag, scattering soil on the library table. Hanna’s mouth opened but before she could speak Susan had whisked an old newspaper under the mess and organized the leaves and flowers neatly on its surface. One of the other women moved to sit beside Darina and unobtrusively took over the identification process, checking the cuttings against the illustrations in a modern encyclopedia of herbs.

Hanna relaxed. There was a quiet buzz of talk from the group at the table but, as the only other person in the library was Oliver the dog man, who had now reached a row of books on electrical engineering, she decided she had no real reason to hush them. Logging on to her computer, she wondered why she’d agreed so readily to eat lunch with Brian Morton.