AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘It’s me, Georgie.’
‘I know who it is,’ Iris said softly and she realised that if it was a few weeks earlier she might have snapped – no, she corrected herself now, a few weeks earlier she probably wouldn’t have picked up the phone at all.
‘It’s Dad. I’ve just had a call from his GP. I’m afraid he…’ Georgie stopped a moment, as if there was someone pulling at her sleeve and then she sniffled. ‘Bloody sinus,’ she said more gruffly.
‘What’s happened to Dad? Has he had a fall?’ It’s what happened to old people, living on their own, and their father had been rambling about in a house too large for him for far too many years for the odds to be stacked any other way but against him.
‘I’m afraid he’s died,’ Georgie whispered so quietly that Iris wasn’t sure if she’d heard her properly.
‘He’s… but he can’t be…’ And then Iris dropped to sit in the nearest chair and let her sister’s words wash over her while her body went numb with what she supposed was grief.
Two hours Iris sat there, until the light began to fade outside. Her tea turned cold; the biscuits she’d placed on the coffee table still lay there, looking even less appetising now. She’d been lost in memories of her childhood in Ballycove. And then, occasionally, a creaking gate or a parking car would rouse her and remind her she was still sitting in the near-darkness of her too-tidy London sitting room. She could hear her father’s voice, fragments of conversations that had been buried so deeply in her memory; she wondered if they’d ever been real to begin with.
He felt very close to her, as if he’d just stepped into the room. And she thought back to that day long ago when she was hardly six years old and he’d brought her to the shops, promising her an ice-cream at the end. She’d wandered off, dazzled by the sweet counter and then before she knew it, she was lost. Suddenly, she could feel that rising childhood panic battering her ribs, hollowing out her insides. The feeling had been so overwhelming; she could recall the ghost of it even now. Fear had pushed tears and snot down her face. She had brushed them away but she couldn’t stop wailing as if the world had ended. And then he’d scooped her up and wiped away her tears, and all at once everything was right again. He’d told her then that he’d always find her if she was lost.
And suddenly, she wanted to be back in Ballycove, back with her father, in that grand old house where she could convince herself that everything was okay and that he would wipe away her tears, making sure she was never lost again.
It took her over like a yearning so strong it might be rooted in the relentless tide at the bottom of the village, a sort of primal call that she needed to go back there. She needed to make things right, not just with herself, but with her father too. And then she remembered. He was gone. Georgie’s phone call – the first time she had called in years – had put an end to any possibility of making things right ever again.
She was numb. Of course, apart from grief, it was guilt. She’d spent so many years trying to desperately hold onto a husband who couldn’t be held and in doing so, she’d missed out on her father’s last years.
At least it had been peaceful. In the end. Perhaps that would eventually make some difference to how she felt, but not yet. For now, she felt just as lost as that day in the shop. And this time, he wouldn’t be coming to find her.
*
The day she was due to fly, Nola’s alarm didn’t go off. Bloody typical! She leaped out of bed and made a lunge-fall-dash towards the bathroom. She scrubbed her teeth vigorously but quickly, grabbed her bags. She was starving, but there was no time; she’d have to get breakfast on the way. She was a ball of sweat by the time she was ready to leave. Only she, Nola Delahaye, could oversleep by an hour and put the flight home to her father’s funeral in jeopardy.
As she flew around her bedroom stuffing clothes into a bag, the realisation that he was gone hit her anew. Suddenly, on the morning when time was against her and she needed to hold it all together, her grief hit her like a tsunami and all she wanted to do was sit in the middle of her cluttered flat and bawl her eyes out like a baby. But she couldn’t, because she had to get to the airport.
As she was locking up, she felt a hand on her shoulder and a deep, gravelly voice said, ‘Miss Nola Delahaye?’
She whipped around, her heart pounding, to find a tall man far too close to her. ‘Dear God!’ she gasped. ‘Are you trying to give me a heart attack?’
‘Sorry, I just…’ He took a step backwards. ‘I wanted to catch you before you left for work. Here.’ He shoved an envelope into her hands. ‘I’m supposed to deliver this to you,’ he said, before turning on his heel and heading towards the flat upstairs.
‘Right,’ she said, just relieved that he wasn’t going to mug her. She stuffed the envelope in her pocket. She hadn’t time to think of it now. She had a plane to make.
An hour later, she was sandwiched between an elderly half-deaf woman who was intent on saying the rosary and figuring out who the patron saint of flying was all at full volume, and a kid who looked like he was on a gap year and smelled as if he’d spent most of it deprived of any sort of shower facility. Nola buried her nose in her phone and hoped that they would make it to Ireland in record time.
The plane was already stiflingly hot, so she peeled her coat off and handed it to an already put-upon stewardess who was securing the overhead baggage holds.
‘I think this is yours,’ the stewardess said, handing her the letter. Nola hadn’t thought about it since she’d stuffed it into her pocket.
‘Thanks,’ she said easily. She pulled open the envelope to find it was a single page from a solicitor she’d never heard of. It took her two reads to figure out what they were trying to say between the lines of legal jargon. They were evicting her, wanted her out of her flat in a month’s time. There was a demolition order on the building and they’d helpfully (pah!) attached a cheque for two thousand pounds as compensation for any inconvenience caused. And oh, yes, they hoped that she would consider buying a high-end apartment on the site when they came up for sale late next year.
She felt herself begin to shake. She couldn’t cry (perhaps, she thought, she’d cried herself completely out), just felt cold and empty and scared for the future that looked as if it was being ripped up from every corner possible. Oh God, how could this be happening to her? She was going to be homeless. Homeless and alone in London. She took a deep breath, praying maybe it was some silly mistake. She pulled out the letter again, skipping from line to line, as if in doing so she could change what it said. But no matter how many times she went back over it, the sick feeling in her stomach made a mockery of her.This is what real fear feels like,she thought – like standing on a precipice. She was about to be pushed over the edge and, yet again, there was no-one to save her.
Nola held the letter in her hand for the whole flight, trying to make sense of where her life was going to end up. She couldn’t afford another flat in that area; she’d barely been able to afford the run-down one she already had. Two thousand pounds would be about as useful to her in compensation for upturning her life now as snow boots would be in the Sahara.
As the flight touched down on the Dublin runway, Nola crumpled up the letter and stuffed it into the pouch on the back of the seat before her, along with the various airline magazines. She folded the cheque carefully, tucking it into her jeans pocket with deliberateness at odds with the shaking, quaking foundations of her life.
*
It was greener. Iris was sure it was greener than she remembered, but then, perhaps that was because she hadn’t been back for so long. She had taken the first flight she could arrange into Knock airport, and now she was standing outside the small terminal, looking out at the glorious landscape of her childhood. Her employer had been very understanding and given her time off, telling her to spend as long as she needed in Ireland. They were very kind, but really she had no intention of spending any longer than she had to in the company of Georgie and Nola.
Since hearing the news, it felt as if she hadn’t stopped crying. She hadn’t expected her father’s death to hit her so badly. For a long time, she thought she’d never forgive him for saying that Myles was only after the distillery. He had taken Georgie’s word that Myles had been selling on bottles of whiskey to his friends after her father had promoted him to being his right-hand man. That had been the beginning of the end for Iris and Georgie and her father. The more they ran him down, the more determined she’d become to hang on to Myles.
Then, three months ago, her father had reached out to her, completely out of the blue. His letter had arrived one damp depressing morning and she must have read it a hundred times before she’d even had her elevenses. There was honesty and rawness to her father’s words. His pen had shook as it moved across each letter. It was, she knew, heartfelt and it touched her deeply in a way she’d never have expected. Very soon, it felt as if they were feeling their way back towards one another. It was as if he was guiding her heart back to Ballycove, if not quite forgiveness. On their last call, she’d almost promised to visit him. And now, she was back here and it was too late.
