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Epilogue
One Year Later…
They had been walking along the seafront when Nola heard the call above their heads. Wild geese returning home for winter, late this year, but welcome all the same. They were walking more slowly now, three sisters – friends, arm in arm.
‘We really should be getting back.’ Georgie looked at her watch. She was nervous, trying to keep her excitement and apprehension buttoned down, so it didn’t overflow into this precious quiet time before they went back to get ready for the launch of Iseult Gin. It was hard to believe that finally, after their father’s years of dedication to getting it just right, it was about to go out into the world.
It was strangely moving, even seeing the final packaging. Georgie had used a photograph of her mother, faded into the deep velvety blue packaging. It seemed to be so luxurious, but Georgie had made sure it all came in well under budget. The whole thing had brought tears to Iris’s eyes.
‘I can’t believe we’re finally doing this,’ Nola said softly.
‘Yes, it feels as if we’ve come full circle.’ Iris looked down at the little girl holding her hand. Isolde had arrived six weeks earlier. She was already one of them; perhaps she had been long before she arrived. Her hair was a tangled mess of red curls; in fact, Iris thought, if Georgie had a daughter, she couldn’t be any more like her. But she was a lot quieter and more reserved than Georgie. Already, Nola was trying to convince Iris to let her join the Delahaye Theatre Company, but there was lots of time for that.
It was hard to believe that they’d been back over a year. So much had happened since their reluctant and grudging agreement to fulfil their father’s final wishes. Iris had dived in with her usual energy and enthusiasm to create the guest house that she wanted. She planned it with precision; it would come to life, room by room. As each room was completed, she opened it up to guests. The summer months had far exceeded her expectations and there had been one or two nights when she’d been in the happy position of being able to send her overflow to the local hotel, much to her own and their amusement. The main part of the house remained very much as it had always been. It was scrubbed and cleaned, but retained the sense of old-world cosiness that appealed to nostalgia lovers who just wanted to escape the similitude of everyday life. ‘It’s a work in progress,’ she would tell anyone who asked, and it would be, for a very long time, and she was happy with that. She had lived long enough, or maybe deeply enough to know that happiness was about the journey, far more than the destination. For a short while, when it became apparent that the kitchen would not pass muster, she’d moved in with Georgie to the gate lodge.
It turned out that once Georgie unpacked her things, she knew that she had finally arrived home. The little cottage was everything Georgie could want even if she’d never realised it before. She was looking forward to the dark evenings drawing in, so she could light a roaring fire and enjoy the rain beating against her windows. It was all so different to London. Here, when her work was done, she was not alone. Robert was such a regular guest, he’d almost moved in permanently and every other day someone dropped by to say hello or to ask for her help. She had become involved in the local tourism committee, who were thrilled to have her marketing skills, and she in turn was learning how to make friends, some of whom she had a feeling might last a lifetime. Georgie still occasionally pinched herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming that this wonderful life was unfolding so easily before her.
‘You’re miles away,’ Nola said, bringing Georgie back to what she was saying.
‘I’m thinking of what Father used to say, you remember, that quote,There is another world, but it is in this one.’
‘He said that to me before I left Ballycove all those years ago.’ A shadow of sad recollection passed across Iris’s features. ‘It’s taken a long time for it to make sense.’
‘It’s not about how long it takes though, is it?’ Nola said. ‘It’s about remembering and what we learn along the way.’ She reached down and stroked Isolde’s beautiful hair.
‘You are getting far too wise, little sister,’ Iris said. ‘Are you all right, Georgie?’
‘I’m just going over everything for tonight.’ She smiled.
‘Everything is sorted, you’ve checked your to-do list a hundred times over, and we’ll all be there, supporting you.’
‘You’re both only coming for the gin,’ Georgie joked.
‘True, but it’s very good gin.’ Nola smiled. She was a little nervous too, but it was a pleasant feeling, butterflies before a performance, only better. A few of her students had agreed to put on a short excerpt from the play they were due to stage in a few weeks’ time.
‘Do you think they’d be proud of us now?’ Iris’s voice sounded as if it was very far away.
‘I think they’d be very proud,’ Georgie said easily, because she knew it as truly as she knew the tide would turn each day and the sun would set. By being here, by mending the bridges that had almost been washed away, they’d fulfilled the terms of their father’s will. But more than that, they’d come together in a way that meant the Gin Sisters’ Promise would be something that would sustain them for the rest of their lives, and maybe that was more than any of them could have ever wished for.
