The Ladies' Midnight Swimming Club(31)

Sitting here, watching a tiny robin peck about the ground, with the weariness and fulfilment of a busy day behind her, she realised that she was very much at peace with herself.





13


Niall


Considering how long they’d been here, Niall thought it was time to put things straight with his mother.

‘Look, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with it, I just need to know when we’re going back to Dublin,’ he said, because the truth was, even if he hated school and hadn’t a friend to call his own there, at least he felt invisible during the summer holidays. He could hole up in their anonymous house and play games all day long. Here in Ballycove, it was painfully obvious that he was just an outsider, killing time with not much more to do than walk the beach or help his grandmother with her shopping.

‘Listen, Niall.’ She switched on the bedside light and sat down on the side of his bed. ‘I’ve been thinking, I want you to be happy and if you think that your father could make you happier than being here, well…’ She said the words softly, but there was a grief to them that was immeasurable.

‘You’re saying that I could live with him?’

‘I suppose I’m saying I could ask.’ Her voice was as gentle as he remembered it to be when he was a tiny kid and for a second, he felt overwhelmed with the kind of love he’d forgotten he had felt for her all those years ago. It seemed like a lifetime away, but of course, it was probably only four or five years earlier.

‘He’ll say yes,’ Niall said and it scared him a little that the confidence that shot through in his voice didn’t quite reach his heart.

‘I have no doubt he will want you, but that doesn’t mean you can book your flight just yet.’ She smiled bravely then. ‘There’ll be things to consider, like school and visas and…’ She didn’t add his dad’s new wife, but she was always hanging there between them all.

‘My flight?’ Niall couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice. ‘So, it’d mean me going out there to live?’

‘That seems like the only way we can make it happen for you now, I suppose,’ she said and he wondered what she would do without him, because he knew that even if she started a new life down here in Ballycove, his leaving would be like losing his father all over again.

‘I think,’ Niall said, making some effort to look into his mother’s eyes, knowing that he was going to cast a heap of pain into her heart, ‘I think it might be good to find out if I could. I think it would be better than…’ he said softly.

‘Okay, well, leave it with me for now,’ she said. ‘It’s a lot to take in and a lot to get organised. Nighty, night, my darling,’ she whispered before kissing him gently on his forehead and stealing out the door, leaving only the faint trace of bergamot and a lingering sadness in her absence.

As he drifted off to sleep, maybe, Niall realised, he was sorry too. He was sorry that his dad had left and that the lives they’d thought were guaranteed forever had come to such an abrupt end. Niall shuddered. He turned over on his side, facing the window. Reaching out he pulled the curtains back silently. The night sky was patchy blackness. There were no stars catching the clouds tonight. There was no moon peering in at him. He would have to make do with the endless tattoo of spiking rain that cut against the old window.

Soon, he was drifting off, thinking of that unexpected warmth he felt when he’d returned to the house after they’d thought he’d been lost in the storm. Niall had liked it. Perhaps, this place wouldn’t be so bad, if they had some measure of the life he’d remembered when his father had been here. Back then, his parents had friends, people who came over for dinner at the weekend, people who drank wine in the garden and joined them for walks in the Dublin Mountains when the snow was on the ground.

Of course, he realised now that his parents’ friends had divided into two camps – the bigger of which fell on the side of his father. Niall felt it was hardly surprising at the time. Back when it had all gone wrong, his mother had been a wreck. There was no point visiting their house then and expecting a good time. His mother hadn’t been up for entertaining or mingling or even trying to pretend.

With that thought, Niall felt himself drift off into a deep sleep. Only in the morning he’d wonder at the notion that his father had managed to carry on as if nothing much had changed in the world and for some strange reason, over a year after it had all happened, this seemed like a fresh revelation.

The next day, his grandmother didn’t call Niall until after two and then they sat down to brunch together. They spent a leisurely hour, between readying their meal and then sitting at the small kitchen table overlooking the rocky garden that fell away towards an old brick wall at the end. Amid all of the emotion since they’d arrived, the one thing that had registered with Niall was his grandmother’s appearance. She had become old-looking. It wasn’t that her hair had greyed more or that she walked with a stoop, it was something more abstract, and yet weirdly more profound. She was tired. Niall wasn’t sure if that fatigue was all about the drama that had kicked up around him, or if it was something else, just the amalgamation of all the worries of the last few years, all coming together to wash the vitality from her. The realisation added to a new emotion that Niall had become aware was beginning to sit somewhere at the back of his conscience. Was it guilt?