The Ladies' Midnight Swimming Club(37)

‘My hat, just because you look like butter wouldn’t melt – don’t be heeding her. She’s the one who’s out here as naked as Gypsy Rose Lee on a Saturday night at the Palladium.’ The two women giggled again. ‘Even Lucy when she comes has the decency to wear a swimsuit,’ Jo ribbed her friend.

‘It must be…’ he tried to think of a word that could capture the essence of joy that seemed to envelop everything about her appearance now; he settled on the perfectly inadequate: ‘bracing… in these temperatures.’

Elizabeth turned and they fell in step together as they headed back for the village. ‘I suppose it is, but it’s more than that.’ She looked out to the water, as if giving some kind of secret salutation to it at the end of a long journey. ‘It has made me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt before.’ She smiled, turning her face towards him. ‘Those probably sound like the words of a woman on the edge of madness, but it’s the only way I can describe it.’

‘It doesn’t sound mad at all,’ Dan said softly. ‘In fact, it sounds completely reasonable to me.’ And it did. Somehow, he could feel the aliveness of it, the sea breathing in its fresh full body towards the waiting shore and at this hour, the cold and the sound of crackling rocks and shingle only added to the energy of the place. ‘Still, I don’t think I’ll be following you in, just yet.’ He laughed at that and they walked on a little in silence.

‘You probably already feel as if you’re living life to the full,’ Jo murmured and she glanced at him shyly. ‘I mean, you’ve done so much. I’ve looked you up. You’re all over the internet.’ A nervous laugh fell out on the air before them. ‘Is it okay to say that?’

‘Of course. It’s what people do, isn’t it? Look each other up? See exactly what the global village has already shared on the bush fires.’ He smiled at this. He had looked up Lucy – Jo’s daughter, no particular reason, just curious. ‘I hope you didn’t unearth any dark secrets I’ve been hoping to hide.’ They all laughed at this.

‘Only one,’ she said and her voice had a tinge of something in it, which sounded like compassion, but that was such an outdated quality where Dan had come from that he almost missed it amidst the tide racing in towards their slow, easy steps. ‘And I’ve told everyone in the village – you’ve written scripts for every English heart-throb we’ve ever heard of.’

‘Stop it, Jo – you’re going to embarrass him,’ Elizabeth castigated her friend. ‘You might have the decency to embarrass yourself too, if you had an ounce of decorum about you.’

‘Yep, if only their sex appeal wore off on me,’ Dan said self-deprecatingly.

‘See,’ Jo said triumphantly. ‘We’re as bad as each other.’ And they all laughed as they made their way back towards the village.

‘Niall says you’re writing a book next.’ Jo looked at him expectantly.

‘That’s right. I came here to get away from the madness of London and maybe finally start that novel I’ve been hoping to write for years.’

‘Well,’ Jo said stopping at her gate. ‘Tell us – what’s it about?’

‘Yes, is it all about Ballycove and the scandals that secretly lie hidden behind our pristine net curtains?’ Elizabeth laughed. ‘What?’ She looked at her friend. ‘You know it’s what we’re all wondering…’

‘Is it about the old convent?’ Jo asked then.

‘Sorry,’ Elizabeth said touching his arm, ‘but it’s just someone mentioned you’d been up there, looking about the place, so naturally, we assumed that you might be…’

‘Researching?’ Dan finished for her. He took a deep breath. ‘Yes, something like that. I’m looking into a few things as well, and yes, you can rest assured that the novel will be set here in the west of Ireland, but don’t worry, I have no intention of scandalising any of you with secrets that have been kept hidden.’ Then he laughed. ‘Although, if there are secrets that I could work into a subplot, I’d be delighted to hear all about them.’ He was only half joking and half telling the truth, because aside from getting away from London and starting the novel, he wanted to come to Ballycove for more reasons than just peace and quiet. But, nice and all as these two old ladies were, he was nowhere near ready to share any more of his reasons with them than he had been with Harry before he’d left London.

‘Well, you’re talking to the right women if you’re interested in village gossip.’ Jo laughed.

‘Jo!’ Elizabeth bristled. ‘I never gossip.’ She leant in closer to Dan now. ‘But if you’re interested in the convent I might be able to help a little.’

‘Actually, she’s probably one of the only people around who will help. Apart from Elizabeth, there’s only a handful of nuns left. Most of them are going gaga and none of them are inclined to talk about what went on there,’ Jo said.

‘And the women who lived there?’ Dan asked.

‘I’m afraid that the few who were left when it closed down are scattered to the four winds now. Mostly, they’d become so institutionalised they ended up in some sort of sheltered living. None of them wanted to come back here; you couldn’t blame them really. They felt abandoned by the people of the village. They’d been thrown in there as young girls and forgotten about. That leaves a sort of scar that isn’t healed just because the prison door is swinging open.’