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‘No, of course not, but I mean, what if I broke things off with you and no-one bothered to check if you were all right? You’re his friend.’
‘Well, that’s not likely to happen is it?’ He shook his head and for a moment, she wondered, which bit wasn’t likely to happen, because going on the amount of quality time they’d spent together over the holidays, she had to admit, even though he had made her the perfect engagement ring, it felt as if he wouldn’t be one bit gutted if she broke off their relationship in the morning. ‘I mean, if any of us is more likely to move on, it’s not going to be you, is it?’ He made a face. She hoped it was a badly made joke.
‘Okay, very funny,’ she said, because of course, he always played this card. He’d said from the very beginning that there was no tying Eddie Quirke down – and even though they were like an old married couple that he’d never walk up the aisle. Well, it looked like she knew different now. ‘Oh, Eddie, you’re impossible,’ she said leaning over and kissing him. She really did love him, even if he drove her mad sometimes with all his teasing.
‘What?’ he said, feigning complete innocence.
‘I think I’ll go home now,’ Maya said. She’d been drinking white lemonade all evening, keeping a clear head for the following day. She’d told Liv she planned to go into the office and sort out some files that were hanging on since before the holidays. ‘Mind if I leave you here?’ She touched Liv’s arm.
‘No, not at all. Take the jeep. You’ll walk me home in a little while, won’t you, Eddie?’
‘Huh? Yeah, sure, I suppose so…’ he said looking around. The walk would do them both good; it would give them a chance to be alone together for the first time since they got back to Ballycove.
By teatime, most of the players and supporters had emptied out of the bar. It was dark outside and Anya had drifted away when someone had offered her a lift home.
‘Come on,’ Liv said, taking Eddie’s hand. ‘You can walk me home and come back down and meet your buddies later.’
‘Fine,’ he said. Eddie liked to pace himself for big drinking occasions like today. They walked back towards the village square and she was right, it was absolutely perfect. Thick fresh snow had fallen and piled up in corners. The lights from the trees seemed to sparkle extra brightly and the night sky had cleared over to a silky black so the moon seemed to hang far closer to the ground than ever before.
‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ she asked. Over their heads a sprinkling of stars glittered high up in the heavens, but all of them were still, fixed determinedly in place. There was not a movement between them. Was it foolish to be hoping for a sign from Rachel? That would just make things perfect – a shooting star to let her know she approved.
‘What?’ he said, a little irritated.
‘My Christmas gift?’ She smiled at him. ‘Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten, Eddie Quirke, because I know that you’re not the sort of bloke who forgets things like that.’
‘Damn.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s still in the car. Do you really want to go back and get it now?’
‘It’s only down the road to your mother’s house. Come on, you can’t leave me in suspense any longer.’ And so they tracked through pristine white streets. The snow had stopped falling, which was probably just as well, or she had a feeling that Eddie might have refused to walk back to his mother’s house with her. He could be a bit of a grumpy boots, but Liv was too happy to let that bother her. She loved him; he was her old grumpy boots and once they got married and had a family, she was quite sure, everything would be very different.
*
‘It’s…’ She was almost speechless when she looked at the gift he handed her. Her heart sank. She wondered if he couldn’t actually hear it plop to the pit of her stomach and she had to fight hard to hold back the tears of disappointment. ‘It’s great.’
It wasn’t. It was a huge coffee table book about gemstones from some small African country that Liv had never heard of.
‘I just thought, y’know, it’d look good in the flat.’ He was obviously completely oblivious to her disappointment. The only thing that might have been worse was if he presented her with an ironing board or a toilet brush. How on earth could he be so blind? she wondered, as she fought hard to hold back the tears.
‘Well, I’d better be going back to the farm now,’ she said, doing her best to keep her voice even.
‘I thought you wanted me to walk you back?’ Eddie said, not actually making to move if he could avoid the track back to the farm.
‘Ah, no, you’re grand. I’d quite like the walk on my own. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. How’s that?’ she called over her shoulder, while she tucked the blasted, unwanted, oversized book under her arm and hoped it wasn’t enough to capsize her if she came upon a slippery patch of road.
*
Liv couldn’t remember the last time she’d been as eager to finish her shift. She was so relieved to hand her patients over to the young Libyan nurse who had arrived that she almost forgot to tell her about Mrs McDonnell in the plaster room who was waiting to be transferred up to a ward. Mind you, it wouldn’t be the first time a patient had been left there for hours on end, just because A&E was too busy and staff forgot that there was someone tucked away in the plaster room out of sight.
She raced upstairs, her feet hardly touching each step. It was funny, but when she’d left Finn that morning, she’d said goodbye and had no intention of visiting him again. After all, he was on the mend now, out of the coma, and his recovery should be straightforward, a day or two to make sure there wasn’t concussion or any risk of internal bleeding and he would be sent home to resume his life as normal.
‘Ooh, Mr O’Connell’s personal tonic.’ Morgan laughed as he buzzed her through. ‘According to the notes, he’s hardly opened his eyes all day and when he has, he’s been asking for you?’
‘I obviously made a lasting impression,’ she joked, but now she wondered if perhaps he was traumatised by waking from a coma to find a strange woman holding his hand. That certainly wasn’t something she was going to share with Morgan though.
‘Hey,’ she whispered this time to announce her arrival, but Finn O’Connell was fast asleep, so she sat down next to him.
There was something quite extraordinary about watching him sleep. His chest rising and falling, his soft breath, in and out. It was calming, grounding. It was strange, but all of those other noises of the ward – the ongoing buzz of machines, the occasional bleep of a monitor recording a change, the swishing, clicking, buzzing sounds that made up this place – just faded away while she sat watching him.
‘Hi,’ he whispered eventually, pulling her from her trance.
