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Funny – he wondered what made him remember all that. He’d have sworn he hadn’t thought of her once from that day to this.
His last task was to rub his own fingerprints off the knife handles. The final track of the album was playing. Fergal hummed along while he buffed the bog oak to a dark gleam, but when it came to the final chorus, he let loose and sang out loud.
Seán leaped from his second bed (the one in the kitchen was his favourite) and set up a tremendous barking. Fergal turned down the music and heard the heavy crunch of a Range Rover on the gravelled lane.
‘It’s alright, boy,’ said Fergal, rubbing the dog’s head to reassure him. ‘Relax. It’s only your woman off the telly.’
In the Air
Claire had the window seat again, on the right-hand side this time (Port Out, Starboard Home). Ronan was once again stuck in the middle, but he had turned and stretched out his legs underneath hers. His eyes were closed, and his right hand lay, relaxed and heavy, along her thigh.
She was tired, too. She could barely keep her eyes focused on her book. She closed it and pressed her hand against the front cover. Ronan had presented it to her over breakfast. It was the book he’d attempted to give her at the cash desk of Shakespeare and Company, the book he’d run back to get – the screenplay ofBefore Sunset. Claire leaned her head against the window frame. Already, Paris had disappeared. She watched as the suburbs gave way to wide golden fields.
Life is hard,she thought.Shite happens, by chance, and we deal with it. That’s evolution. It’s how we came to be. It’s the thing we do best. The ability to adapt to random shite is the human superpower.
It’s shocking, she thought, how life can feel so different from one day to the next. Once upon a time, she was an excited, expectant mother. People told her she was glowing, and she believed them, because she could feel it inside, a new sort of power. She was right in the middle of living happily ever after. And then, in the space of one shattering afternoon, everything changed. The End.
Shite happens all the time. It might be that you lose a parent, a sister, a brother, or your best friend. It might be that you lose a limb, a fortune, a job, a home, or a lover. There are some losses that so fundamentally alter the plot of your life, you’re not the same person anymore. You’re the widowed, the crippled, the dispossessed. You’re one of the poor people or the broken ones. You’re the grief-stricken parent of a dead child. You’re a different character in a different story. The old you is a closed book, stored on a high shelf inside your heart. You can glance at it, from a distance, every now and then, but you can never open it. And it might be that you have to find a way to pick yourself up and keep going and see what happens when the page turns. The chance is slim, but you might win the lotto. You might round the corner in a bookshop and come face to face with your one true love. You might move to Mars. You might write a novel. Who knows, you might, last night, have created the embryo of a whole new person.
You can look at life as a long list of endings, she thought, or you can see it as an infinite series of new beginnings. That much – the way you decide to look at it – is up for the taking. The thing is, you keep trying. Like Harry said, you try and try again. Because the oldest cliché in the book remains true.
* * *
‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ Ronan’s hand squeezed her knee as he spoke.
‘What is?’
‘How life goes on.’
She laughed out loud and turned to face him. ‘How do you do that?’
‘Do what?’
‘Never mind. Hey, here’s Imelda.’
Claire recognised the flight attendant’s lacquered chignon as it came down the aisle, closely followed, as before, by a rattling trolley.
‘Anything to eat or drink?’ came the same, nicely rounded accent.
‘Fancy a paper cup of champagne?’ Ronan asked.
‘God, no,’ she said. ‘I’m semi-catatonic as it is.’
‘Are you sure? One for the road?’
Wincing, she shook her head.
‘Hair of the dog?’ He smirked.
She nudged his ankle with her toe.
Imelda was leaning over their seats with an expectant expression. ‘Anything to eat or drink?’
‘Can I have a cheese toastie, please?’ said Claire. ‘And a large coffee?’
‘Same, please,’ said Ronan, pulling down his tray table with a shrug of acceptance.
‘Did ye have a good weekend?’ asked Imelda.
