The Ladies' Midnight Swimming Club(12)

‘Just bloody forget it,’ Niall said and he stomped up the stairs leaving his mother probably livid and his grandmother open-mouthed. It was no good though; he couldn’t settle in the tiny room. Nothing here felt like home and the only bit of technology he had was the smart phone his dad had given him for Christmas. He lay on the bed, browsing and generally absorbed in the world it led him into. He could hear his mother and his grandmother chatting away happily downstairs. It was all very well for them, catching up; what was he meant to do if they were staying here for a couple of days? God, he could die of boredom here.

He pulled his bedroom window tight, yanked over the curtains, so when his mother peered into the room, she assumed he’d fallen asleep. She closed the door gently with a click and with the finality of that soft sound, her footsteps moving lightly about the hall opposite told him she was turning in for the night. It was early and he wasn’t tired yet. After all, if they were at home, he’d often spend twelve hours soaking up game time at the weekend if his mother was called in for another shift. It was nothing unusual for his mother to leave him in his room. It was, he supposed easier than the ongoing argument of trying to get him to leave for anything much more than dinner.

As the night began to pull in around the cottage, he thought he would go mad. There was nothing to do in this place; he missed his games console and the people who passed as his friends. Quite simply, he missed being at home, where he could wander down to the fridge that contained recognisable fast foods and gallons of milk or juice and the special-brand coffee his mother loved and he’d acquired a taste for. He had to get out of here. He pulled on his shoes and jacket and made his way towards the front door, letting himself out with hardly a sound. He almost crashed into an old biddy from up the road. The doctor’s wife. He’d met her once, when her husband had fallen badly on his way home from the pub. The old doctor had been a right tosser, but of course, his gran had insisted they help him home. It was only up the road, that big musty house of theirs.

Mrs O’Shea had opened the door for them, led them up the long staircase, uneven steps catching them out occasionally. She’d said thank you at the finish, as if they’d just installed a new burglar alarm for her and Niall had marvelled at her reserve. She was from another age, he supposed, all pearls and set hair and probably afternoon tea and mothballs. She looked different today, walking along the street – smaller, inconsequential, as if the life had been blown out of her. Maybe he spotted tears in her eyes, but he didn’t look too closely. He had worries of his own to consider.

He bolted down towards the end of the village. There wasn’t really anywhere to go, not like their home in Dublin when he could have taken the bus into town, hung around the city streets for hours on end, before taking the last bus home. He’d been about fourteen the last time he’d done that and his mother had been livid. Deep down, he knew it was partly why they were here now. Maybe it had as much to do with her worries for him as it had with any concern for herself. Ballycove was the kind of place you couldn’t hide in. Not really. Oh, there was a beach that stretched for miles, but in the cool temperatures, it wasn’t the sort of place you wanted to spend hours on end. There was a coffee shop, a pub, the local church and a boat house where he’d seen some of the local youngsters hanging out. They were kids who had small boats or surfboards and Niall had zero interest in any kind of sport or anything else in this backward place.





6


Elizabeth


Elizabeth couldn’t decide if the lilies added a feeling of refinement to the hall or if it might look as if she’d forgotten to leave them up at Eric’s grave. She wanted to make a good impression and the flowers could swing it either way. The thing she had to ask herself: would the positive impression so far outweigh the negative one to be worth taking the risk? The answer, she decided, was no, so she moved them into the kitchen and set them on the draining board where she had no intention of bringing Lucy Nolan.

She would treat her as she’d treated every other colleague Eric had entertained in their home. She would show her around the surgery first and then they could sit and have tea and cake in the drawing room. Of course, she knew it was much too early for cake, but what else could she offer the woman? Sandwiches? Well, at least, that’s what Elizabeth thought they should do, but because she was Jo’s daughter, Lucy was not like Eric and a completely different species to Thea Gilchrist. Not all doctors, Elizabeth knew, were created equal.

Eric’s approach to being a GP was old-school. He was a rather conventional country doctor, a combination of tweeds, scuffed leather medical bag and gruff consideration. He turned up for a house call only if he had to; saw anyone who was well enough to show up, in his surgery. Over the last few years he dispensed decreasing amounts of sympathy and large numbers of antibiotics, muscle rubs and painkillers. He didn’t believe in anything that wasn’t scientific. The notion of sending people to a yoga class to deal with hypertension elicited a snort at best, and a loud guffaw when he’d read it aloud to Elizabeth from a supplement in the Times.

As small a village as Ballycove was, Elizabeth didn’t really know Lucy, apart from empty small talk if they met in Mr Singh’s supermarket on those rare weekends when she visited Ballycove over the last few years. Elizabeth thought about the way Jo described her daughter. She sounded like a very modern woman; cut of a different cloth to the type that had been available when Elizabeth was a girl. She could imagine Lucy Nolan being a Pilates devotee. That in itself was good enough to promote her in Elizabeth’s estimation. Ballycove needed a breath of fresh air and the surgery needed it more than anywhere else.