Barefoot Over Stones (34 page)

‘That’s a plan so. We will pick you both up at about eleven. Now, do you remember I said that Ciara was off in India on some kind of trekking holiday? Well, she’s back as of last night.’

‘Have you managed to talk to her about me?’ Alison’s heart pounded. Her head told her that it didn’t matter what Ciara said. Yes, she would be disappointed if Ciara was not interested, but it had been ten years, after all, and as her mother had warned her, people do change – but her heart still raced.

‘Yes, I talked to her this morning. She was a bit shocked that I knew you and admitted she had
been avoiding coming to see Tom and me here because she didn’t want to run into you by accident in Caharoe. Says she nearly died when I told her we were moving here. Of all the towns in all the world and all of that. Anyway, if you are willing she says she would love to see you and she has agreed to come to Tom’s birthday party in October so you could maybe meet her there. But a chance to talk on your own before then might be easier. I can arrange it, or do you want to call her yourself?’

Alison allowed herself to breathe again. ‘I really appreciate all your help, I really do, but I should take it from here. If it goes badly, I don’t want it to spoil Tom’s party. Besides, I have wasted enough time already. If you give me her details I will call or email her.’

‘She asked me to tell you how absolutely sorry she was about what happened to Dan and wanted to know all about Lucy, so I filled her in as best I could.’

Colm was hoping that the mentioning of Dan’s name wouldn’t upset Alison too much. He knew how raw she must still feel.

‘That was nice of her. Maybe if he hadn’t died I wouldn’t have thought to make contact with her again. Who knows? Thank you again, Colm, because I am not sure I would have known how to make the first move. I look forward to Saturday.’ Alison hung up the phone as emotions of all colours washed over her. She had expected rejection from Ciara, had felt on some level that she probably deserved it, so Colm’s news of her reaction was a welcome but overwhelming relief.

Colm put down the phone too and enjoyed the blissful silence of the office on Betty’s day off. He couldn’t help smiling. She wanted his opinion about her house and she appreciated his help with Ciara, although in truth that was not a difficult task as Ciara had jumped at the offer. She had even given him the bones of their falling-out. Ciara admitted that she had developed a bit of a crush on Dan the summer of their final exams and when left alone with him the night of his mother’s funeral she had encouraged his drunken kisses and was hurt when he pulled away disgustedly from her. ‘Of course, me being me, I couldn’t help making the mess bigger by trying it on again a few weeks later. Dan was having none of it, which was bad enough for my ego but that would have been the end of it only this time Alison caught me in the act.’ Ciara told Colm that she had tried to make amends with Alison but her friend had remained stubborn and had ignored her until now. ‘Sometimes I blamed Dan, thinking he must have forced her to cut me off, but I can’t be sure. Maybe I will get to ask her now.’

Colm thought it seemed kind of old-fashioned to fall out with your best friend for over a decade for something that was ultimately so harmless. There were so many bigger betrayals possible in life, but then he had to remember not everyone had had a life that taught them that trust was an affliction suffered only by the inexperienced. He had to chide himself for being a cynical old misery when he started thinking like that and he had to admit that meeting and spending time with Alison had awakened something in him that he thought his bruising experience with Leda had ruined for good. He found it hard to stop picturing her face and he loved the sound of her voice, soft, lilting and a little playful. Maybe, just maybe there could be something there. Time, and he was prepared to devote plenty of it, would tell. He had come to enjoy his conversations with Alison Abernethy once they had got over any initial awkwardness of both knowing far too much about each other’s business without having ever met properly. Alison had made it plain that anything she knew from Dan would remain confidential between them (she had sworn her mother to secrecy) and Colm obviously had no interest in delving more deeply into the relationship between her father-in-law and the mother of his child. He told her that he wished he had been kinder to Dan on the one occasion they had met but he was knocked sideways by how much Dan had known about his life, when Colm had thought that Caharoe could be a fresh start. Alison reassured him that he couldn’t have been too off-putting because Dan had told her that Colm Lifford seemed way too straight and decent a man to be a solicitor. Colm laughed and said he would take the sideways swipe of her late husband as a compliment.

He had been living in Caharoe for twelve months without so much as thinking about a woman (if you didn’t count how to throttle Betty Linehan) and he knew his stifled-up desire was bound to catch up with him eventually. He had gone out with a handful of women in Dublin since Tom had been born. He had never found it difficult to get dates for work functions or weddings, but he had never let himself get more than superficially involved with anyone since Leda. He and Tom had way too much to lose if he got close to someone and it didn’t work out. He had decided, until he met Alison Abernethy that is, to steer clear of anything serious. He was acutely aware that his judgement had let him down before and he was sensitive to the fact that it was only months since she had lost her husband. Alison had come to him for his professional help and he would keep it strictly professional as long as that was what she wanted, but at the first sign that she wanted more, he would be only too happy to admit how he felt himself.

Alison was doing her best to prepare herself for the expected ring of the doorbell, but she was overcome with nerves as she made her way from the kitchen of her new house to the front door. Colm had taken Lucy and Tom to see a film in Cork and had promised them treats afterwards so Alison knew that she had plenty of time with Ciara. It had been a risk suggesting Ciara come to Cork but she had readily agreed. She had flown in to Cork airport from London that morning, where Colm and an overexcited Tom had picked her up. They had left her bags at Lantern Lodge and Colm gave her the keys to an old car that he hadn’t yet got round to selling. He was glad he had kept the insurance up and Ciara too was happy to be able to arrive at Alison’s house under her own steam. Colm wished her good luck before he and Tom left to collect Lucy. Iris Lifford was due for one of her flying visits, and he counselled Ciara to be gone before his whirlwind mother roped her into redecorating or making dinner enough to feed twenty, which were her favourite occupations when she visited her son and grandson. It didn’t matter that Colm told her every time she came to Lantern Lodge that she was to relax and take it easy and that he had come to enjoy cooking so she wouldn’t starve if she would just wait for him to make dinner. She couldn’t help herself and seeing as he couldn’t stop her he’d given up trying. Ciara had only upped her domesticity a notch or two, from non-existent to passable, so she was in no real mood to tussle with Granny Lifford over the Marigolds or the bleach. Better to pour Colm’s mother a glass of wine before dinner and congratulate her on a job expertly completed. Before she could get to that glass of wine, however, she had to survive a visit with her friend whom she hadn’t seen for eleven years. When Ciara came to think about it, Iris Lifford might be very lucky indeed to get anything from the first bottle if today went badly.

Nothing much fazed Ciara any more. She was good at her job at the language school despite the fact that teaching bored her rigid. She had travelled a bit and shaken off the Leachlara birthmark that she felt as a handicap when she had first left, young and innocent but energized by a compulsion to flee at all costs. Still, on the point of confronting Alison, her first true adult friend, whatever composed confidence she had managed to cultivate in the intervening years seemed to fracture as lunchtime grew closer. Colm had carefully written out directions to Alison’s house, which turned out to be only a few miles of convoluted country lanes away from Lantern Lodge.

Colm said she would spot Alison’s home immediately. Her new stone house stood out in the
sea of identikit bungalows that trimmed the road like braid. To the side was a room almost entirely of glass reflecting the rich colours of the garden. The house was the first thing they spoke about when Ciara arrived on the dot of one o’clock. It seemed an easy and neutral topic, unlike much of what else they might have to discuss.

‘It really is beautiful, Alison, really smart and yet cosy-looking. How did you find it or did you have it built?’

‘Colm found it for me. He knew I wanted to move out of Michaelmas and when he saw this was for sale he brought me up here to see it. I put an offer in before we even left that first day. An American writer had it built as her retreat, but when it came to it she found Caharoe just too small and quiet. She still calls from time to time. It seemed to matter to her that I fell in love with the place. I think it compensates for the fact that she didn’t go through with her plan to base herself here. She’s very New York though. Caharoe must have seemed like the end of the world.’

‘It’s pretty different from Michaelmas. Do you miss living in the town?’ Ciara was looking at the house and, while she could appreciate the fact that it was beautiful, she knew she could never live in the middle of nowhere again. Leachlara had cured her of that. From the minute she left she hankered after the city, with all its attendant buzz and promise. Noise and distraction remained her salvation.

‘It’s different to Michaelmas, that’s for sure, with none of the nooks and crannies and the crooked walls, but I knew I could make it my own. Apart from the time I spent with you in Dublin I lived my entire life in that house and I most likely would have been happy to stay there except for what happened. I needed to start again and I couldn’t do that in Michaelmas. I still see all the friends and neighbours that I had in town. They sometimes come out here, braving the absence of street lights, but they prefer me to come into town, convincing themselves that my trip in there is less of a distance than the haul out here! I had been looking, wondering if I would even know the right house if it came up, and the minute we saw this both Lucy and I thought it was just perfect. Or “deadly”, as Lucy would say. It’s her new word. “Cool” is just so last year, you know.’

Ciara laughed and welcoming the opening in the conversation she asked if she could see photos of Lucy. Alison reached to a shelf by the fireplace and took down a bulging photo album, the sight of which made Ciara gulp, though she hoped not audibly.

‘Here, look at this and while I get our lunch together you can pretend you looked at all of them.’

‘What makes you think that I won’t look at every single one?’ Ciara said, annoyed at herself for messing up before they had barely begun.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you always had the attention span of a gnat and I guess I am hoping you haven’t changed too much.’ Alison smiled, hoping that a little humour might smooth the way for them to open up with one another.

‘Well, as it happens my attention span is as crippled as it always was but I did think I had got a little bit more skilful at covering my shortcomings.’

Alison disappeared into the kitchen and from the living room Ciara could hear the kettle boiling and the low hum of the radio. It seemed that Alison was still addicted to it. The butterflies in Ciara’s stomach relaxed a little and she looked at the photos of Lucy, the green eyes of Dan and, with them, the echoes of the past looking back at her from every one.

They picked over a lunch that neither had any real appetite for while both tried to work up the courage to talk about Dan. Accustomed to her role by now as his memory-keeper, it was Alison who mentioned him first.

‘I half expected you to come to Dan’s funeral. I knew you would have heard if you were in any contact with your parents. It was big news in Leachlara because of Con and everything.’

Try as she might, Ciara could not get herself to come up with a suitable response so Alison
continued, determined for them to discuss what had torn them apart.

‘Without Dan I felt I would hardly be able to stand upright, and for the first time I allowed myself to miss you. I feel so ashamed that we lost contact because of me. It seems such a waste, doesn’t it? I wrote you a letter but I didn’t know where to send it. To be honest, I am not sure I would have posted it even if I had known. Too afraid you might not respond, that you would say my getting in contact was too little too late. I know I don’t deserve much after rejecting all your attempts to make things up.’

‘I would have come, but I had no idea that you would have wanted me there. You made it pretty plain that you never wanted to see me again that night in Aughasallagh and when you wouldn’t take my calls and sent back my letter I gave up. You are right, it is a waste, all this lost time, but you shouldn’t blame yourself about what happened. I drank too much at Mary Abernethy’s funeral and I lost myself in some sort of reverie over the perfect life that you and Dan had. Leda turned up hunting Con and I was reminded once again of how absolutely mental the entire Clancy household was. I wanted to be normal. I wanted some of what looked to be your perfect life and I tried to help myself. I am sorry, I really am. I’m not sparing Dan because he isn’t here to defend himself: it was mostly my fault. He kissed me but I was the one that made the move on him really. Even though he was upset and drunk he still told me to cop on. I took advantage of you not being there and of him being in such a state. He must have told you how it happened. Then I made things worse that night on the beach. My pride was hurt that he had rejected me and so I tried it on again. I wanted to prove to myself that I could have him if I wanted to. It was drink, stupidity and a crush that had run a bit mad in my head.’ Ciara was on a roll now. Her initial fear of being unable to speak about Dan was now being replaced by a growing panic that she would say too much and offend where she meant only to explain.