The Ladies' Midnight Swimming Club(32)

‘It’s not that bad, is it?’ she asked as they sat finishing their coffee. He could see that fatigue hadn’t dulled her ability to see right through him.

‘What?’ Part of his brain was thinking, please, not the big heavy conversation now. He had actually thought they might get away without this at all.

‘Everything, I mean, you know, we’re all doing our best, but… well…’ she said. ‘I know that you’re a bit thrown by your mum taking up the job at the surgery, but it’s only to see how things go. She hasn’t jacked in her job or your lives in Dublin. Do you know, I don’t think I’ve seen her as happy in ages?’ Of course, she was talking about his mother’s job.

‘I know you’re right.’ He did. He’d seen it, compared to when she came home from a shift at the hospital; she was enthusiastic, as if suddenly she was doing something that meant something to her. ‘It’s just… I feel like it’s come out of the blue…’

‘And it has,’ his grandmother agreed. ‘For both of you, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing. Once you start making friends here, it’ll be different, you’ll see.’ She smiled kindly at him and he wondered if his mum had mentioned the idea of him going to live in Australia. He had a feeling his grandmother would be every bit as bereft if he left as she had been when they thought he’d fallen over the pier wall. He decided it was best not to mention it, no point in upsetting her. Instead, she sent him on an errand to deliver an apple pie to a shop on Garden Square.

Niall hadn’t noticed Mr Huang’s piano shop before; well you wouldn’t, would you? It was faded and shaded and a sign in the window said if you were interested in looking around you could ring the doorbell and someone would come to let you in. Niall rang the bell and waited, holding the warm apple pie close to him and enjoying the smell of freshly stewed fruit and warm cloves.

‘Hi.’ A young girl, about his age, answered the door.

‘Oh, hi, hello, um, I mean…’ he mumbled, because he had forgotten exactly what he was meant to be doing here, talking to a pretty girl in the middle of the afternoon. ‘I mean, here.’ He held out the pie. ‘My grandmother asked me to send this over for Mr Huang.’

‘That’s my dad.’ She smiled, taking the pie. ‘I’m Zoe and you must be Mrs Harris’s grandson… Neill?’

‘Niall,’ he corrected her a little too formally.

‘Oh, okay. Well, Niall…’ She waited for an uncomfortable moment, when neither had very much to say. ‘I suppose I’ll be seeing you around; that’s if you’re staying on in town?’

‘I um, I suppose you will,’ he said and backed away from the door, trying and failing miserably to pretend that each step wasn’t achingly self-conscious. Then, from a small distance, he shouted, ‘I’ll see you around, Zoe Huang,’ before racing back to his grandmother’s house.

For some reason the rest of the day seemed to pass by in a lazy haze; perhaps he was getting used to not having his PlayStation, but it was late in the evening before he even began to think about it again. And then, his mother had returned from work and it seemed he had more pressing things to think about.

‘Did you get a chance to talk to Dad?’

‘Yes, I asked him.’

‘And?’

‘There are some things he has to figure out. Of course, he likes the idea, I knew he would, but there are practicalities. He said he’ll ring on Sunday,’ she said neutrally and Niall wasn’t sure what to read into that, because the words alone led him to believe that it could be a possibility, but the tone cautioned him not to set his heart on it. ‘So, have you plans, for the weekend?’

‘Maybe,’ he said disinterestedly, because he didn’t really have any plans, except that Dan, the guy who had managed to pick him up off his living room floor, clean up the mess he’d made and then smooth things over with his mother, had texted an hour earlier and invited him to go for a hike and a cookout if the weather was fine. Niall surprised himself when he realised that he wouldn’t half mind going for a hike with the guy. It certainly beat knocking about the village on his own, or worse, hanging about the house while his grandmother tiptoed around him, trying to walk the fine line between spoiling and stifling him.

‘You won’t…’ she said softly. ‘You won’t do anything stupid, will you?’

‘Mum, I’ve never considered doing anything stupid. That was an accident, but no, I have no intention of jumping into the sea in a bid to end it all any time soon,’ he said sarcastically.

‘Please, don’t talk like that,’ she murmured, because after a long day in the surgery, she was too tired to fight with him.

‘Sorry,’ he said and he meant it. He must have, because he couldn’t remember when he’d last apologised for one of his cynical comments. ‘Anyway, I might go for a hike, tomorrow, with Dan.’

‘Dan?’ she said a little vaguely, perhaps trying to picture some local kid. ‘Saturday? I was going to ask you to come over to Ballybrack with me. There’s an exhibition and…’

‘Why don’t you bring Gran and Mrs O’Shea? I’m sure they’d love all that stuff.’ He wasn’t sure what that stuff was, but his mother’s idea of an afternoon out generally involved looking at some scruffy artist’s work, hanging in a coffee shop where a sliver of cake set you back a fiver and they still expected a donation on top of that.