A sound tore through the speakers so loud that the room gave a collective swoon.
‘Sorry about that, folks,’ said the man on the stage. ‘But sure, that woke yous up!’ He gave a cackle and the band launched into the opening bars of ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’.
‘Oh, I love this one,’ Izzy said. ‘Come on, who’ll dance with me? Tom.’ She grabbed him by the arm and stood up and her chair fell backwards onto the floor. Tom rose and she felt his hand on the small of her back and hoped to God James was watching.
* * *
Father Brian was back at the pulpit to deliver the gospel, and afterwards told them he’d not prepared a sermon because he’d been down the country attending a funeral, which she knew to be a lie because he’d spent all afternoon on Thursday in her kitchen, smoking and drinking tea, and had mentioned nothing about a funeral. Still, she was relieved the sermon was to be left out. It happened only a handful of times a year, and given her current condition it was a stroke of luck. It would shave a good ten minutes off proceedings. But then the responses began again, the lurching cadence of them, and she knew she wasn’t going to make it to the end.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world.
Oh, the sweat was dripping down her back.
Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.
And the taste of bile snaking up her throat.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to the person next to her, and pushed her way past the seated congregants without lifting her head or
looking one of them in the eye. She scurried down the side aisle, her eyes fixed on the floor. Near the church door she jostled
her way through the men who, either too late or too drunk to be seen going into the church, had gathered in the porch. A speaker
hung above the door echoing what the priest was saying at the altar. She rushed towards the church gates with Father Brian’s
voice calling after her.
Chapter 2
Dolores Mullen had just reprimanded her three-year-old daughter for slapping her one-year-old son across the face, had lifted him off the floor screaming and placed him in his playpen, and was just about to put a fitness video in the cassette player when an ad came on the TV. A woman lifted a glass, a tiny champagne flute filled with blue dye, and poured it over a sanitary towel. The women in these ads were always flinging blue dye around, she thought as she watched the liquid being absorbed by the white pad and disappearing, and a thought surfaced in her mind – she had missed her period. She was certain of it. She was late by at least ten days. It was not uncommon for her to be late, especially when she was dieting, but nearly two weeks? she thought, and then, ‘Fuck,’ she said, out loud. Her last period had been at the end of August when they’d had the whole family over for a barbecue for Madeleine’s birthday, and that was six weeks ago. Four kids – a teenager, a toddler, a baby, and another on the way. Donal had been on at her to lose weight and she’d only just gotten her figure back after having Eric.
She dropped down on the enormous sofa, ran her hand over the smooth grey suede where, despite having tried everything to remove the stain, she could still make out a pair of tiny palm prints. She looked over at Jessica sitting on the floor on the other side of the room, scraping at the hair of a doll with a little brush.
‘Don’t you be giving me that eye, madame.’ Her voice echoed, bouncing off the pure white walls, and the tiled floors, and the expanses of glass that covered one complete corner of the house so that the entire length of the beach was always visible to them. It was like the house had been designed to keep her forever polishing glass. They had light and space in abundance, that was for sure. There were four bedrooms upstairs and two on the ground floor, and they were going a good way towards filling them. How had they managed to go ten years without having a second child and then she’d gotten pregnant three times in such quick succession? But she pushed that thought away. There had been miscarriages too, there might be again. Was there any point in telling Donal about this until she was a bit further along? There were only so many times she could blame his carelessness. He’d lost interest in her over the summer, which was usually a sign he had another woman on the go, and when his attention returned to her, she hadn’t the heart to refuse him.
She heard a car coming up the drive. She sometimes got a visit from one of her sisters in the morning, or else it was the postman, but now a sleek black BMW was pulling up in front of the house. The door opened and a leg emerged, clad in a black high-heeled boot. A woman stepped out, and when she rose to her full height, Dolores saw that it was Shaun Crowley’s wife. Dolores couldn’t understand why she didn’t tie up her mop of thick black hair. How had she been able to see the road in front of her with such a mess tumbling down over her face? She wore the strap of her leather saddlebag across her body, adjusting it so the bag rested on her hip. She was all covered up in a polo-neck jumper and a long plaid skirt. Dolores pulled on a zip-up hoody over her little tank top and went to open the door.
‘Hello, Dolores,’ the woman said, and right away Dolores could see that she was not as dowdy as she’d first appeared. She had pale, even skin and sharp blue eyes.
‘Hello,’ Dolores said.
‘Do you remember me? I’m Colette.’
The woman smiled and Dolores watched faint lines appear in the fine skin around her eyes and mouth. She had seen her down the town before, knew she was married to Shaun Crowley, but why in particular she was supposed to have remembered her she couldn’t say.
‘Hello, Colette,’ she said.
‘I was wondering if I could have a quick word with you – about the cottage.’
She smiled again, and it was extraordinary to Dolores how it transformed her face so her cheekbones became even more pronounced, her jaw two clean lines meeting at the neat point of her chin. And Dolores with not a stitch of make-up on. She pulled up the zip on her top, folded her arms across her chest.
‘The cottage?’ Dolores asked.
The woman threw a look over her shoulder at the white stone cottage perched on top of the hill flanking their land. ‘You own that cottage – am I right?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And you rent it out sometimes?’
‘Aye, but not this time of year.’
‘So it’s empty?’
Dolores’s daughter laced herself between her legs and Dolores reached down to pick her up. ‘I suppose you better come in for a minute,’ she said and opened the door wider to allow Colette to step into the hall. The heels of her boots clacked against the tiles.
‘You have a beautiful home, Dolores. I always admire it when I’m walking the beach. The view you must have!’ She was pivoting, staring around her at the hallway, the wide staircase leading up from it. She looked through the door of the sitting room to the view of the beach. ‘And how many children do you have now?’ She poked Jessica’s soft round calf, and the child smiled and turned her face into Dolores’s neck.
‘This is number two,’ she said, ‘and Eric’s number three. He’s in there in the playpen. The two of them had to be separated because they were acting up.’ Dolores scrunched up her face and rubbed her nose against her daughter’s. ‘Isn’t that right?’ she asked, and her daughter rubbed her forehead vigorously against hers and threw her arms around her neck.
‘Madeleine’s the only one I know,’ Colette said. ‘She was in one of the plays we did at the Community Centre a few years back.’
‘That’s right,’ Dolores said. ‘She’s thirteen now. In first year at St Joseph’s.’
The child had gripped the chain that hung around Dolores’s neck. It read ‘Dolly’ in gold script. She began to stab at her mother’s throat with the pointed end of the y.
‘Stop that, Jessica,’ Dolores said, trying to pick the child’s fingers from the chain.
‘Look, Dolores, I won’t keep you, but I wanted to let you know that I’m interested in renting the cottage.’
‘Where are you stopping at the moment?’
‘I’ve been staying at a B and B for the past two weeks but that’s not much of an existence for anyone. I’d like to try and get a bit more settled.’
Why she couldn’t go home and settle with her husband was unknown to Dolores but she did know they’d been separated for some time.
‘Well, we’ve never rented it out during the winter. I’m not sure we’ve had the place properly cleaned since the last lot moved out in August. They might have left it a complete tip.’
