The Ladies' Midnight Swimming Club(41)

‘This is heaven, just being able to kick off my shoes and relax. It’s as if all the worries of the world are out there somewhere.’ Lucy waved her arm towards the exit, perhaps trying to keep the tears at bay.

‘It’s okay to cry about your mother, you know?’

‘But that’s the thing, Elizabeth, it’s not just Mum, it’s Niall too. I’m losing him and I’m not ready to let him go yet.’

‘Go on, a problem shared is a problem halved. Isn’t that what they used to say?’

‘I’m not so sure there’s any halving this one.’ Lucy looked at her now, then closed her eyes and said softly, ‘Niall wants to go and live with his father in Australia.’ She opened her eyes now. ‘Don’t laugh, but I thought coming here, taking time out, it might be just what we need.’

‘That sounds reasonable.’

‘That was the idea and starting in the surgery, working with you and Alice, I’m really happy here, but he’s just not settling in…’ She smiled sadly. ‘I was beginning to think, I could enrol Niall in the local secondary school next term. Maybe spend the next year or two here, with him, forging some kind of family around him. In a few years’ time, he’ll be heading off to college, and then…’

‘They say that time flies once they start in secondary,’ Elizabeth said, because she had no real experience of the kind of worries that weighed so heavily on Lucy. ‘Would it be a bad thing, if he went to Australia, made a life out there, with his father and his new wife?’ she asked softly. She didn’t want to upset Lucy, but she’d learned something in the last few weeks and it was this: happy ever after may be very different to how you could possibly have imagined, but that didn’t make it any less happy.

‘Honestly? If all things were equal, maybe I’d be okay with it. You know, it’s going to break my heart anyway, if he takes off for good, but the truth is, I have a feeling he’d just be in the way out there. His father has a new life there with a woman who was never going to sign up for kids. There’s no warmth there, not for Niall, at least. Deep down, I think he knows that, but naturally he wants to be with his dad.’

‘Perhaps they’ll just say he can’t come?’

‘That’s the thing; my ex-husband has never once played the bad guy. He’s always left the dirty work to me. It’s not that he’s spineless exactly, but he’d rather wriggle out of any kind of situation that paints him as being anything less than perfect.’

‘He sounds a bit cowardly to me.’ Elizabeth huffed. ‘Sorry, but you know, I’d much prefer people who say it as it is. I suppose I spent my married life with someone who swept so much under the carpet that since he’s died it’s as if I’ve found an entire continent of secrets and lies and it could all have been so different.’

‘It’s one of the things I love about my mother.’ A flicker of a smile drew up Lucy’s lips now. ‘But of course, Niall is much too young to see that as a real quality worth valuing.’ She shook her head now.

‘What will you do?’

‘I’ve already done it.’ She clapped her hands together; it was a fait accompli, but not one to celebrate. ‘I’ve asked if Niall can come out to Sydney and his dad has, as I expected, said yes. All we have to do now is book the tickets and they will have to sort things out from there.’

‘Oh, dear. Does he know?’

‘No, I’ll probably tell him tonight. He asked yesterday, but I just wanted one night, the two of us together, without it hanging in the air between us.’ She laughed now, but it was a hollow sound. ‘And then, I was so tired, I just fell into bed and Niall disappeared up into his room, so I probably should have told him. Maybe it’ll make him happier. I don’t know anymore.’ She shook her head, as if it was her last stand and she was just about to concede the battle.

‘Look, maybe if Niall gets to spend the summer down in Sydney – winter there, I suppose – he might be delighted to come home in September and settle into village life here in the west,’ Elizabeth said lightly. She hoped she was right. The idea of Lucy returning to Dublin wasn’t one she even wanted to think about.

They spent over an hour in the little antiques shop. It turned out they had unexpectedly similar taste when it came to a lot of things. At four, the little town of Ballybrack would yield no more so they decided to head home and soon they were trundling back into Ballycove again.

‘You know,’ Elizabeth said mildly, as they were approaching Jo’s house, ‘I’ve always loved these cottages. Years ago, I used to think it would be lovely to live down here, next door to your mother…’ It was the truth. On many of those days that she’d spent happily cocooned in Jo’s kitchen, she’d have given anything to have a little cottage all to herself rather than return to the depressing mansion on the hill.

‘Yes, I could see you here all right, with roses about the door and a wild flower garden at the back.’ Lucy smiled. The springtime sun was inching out across the land, as if it had somehow stood on its tippy-toes so it could reach a little further to cast off the winter cold that clung stubbornly in darkened corners still.

‘It’s such a pity they never come up for sale anymore…’

‘You know there’s no guarantee you’re going to lose your home,’ Lucy said gently.